Essay On Mummification

In the ancient Egyptian religion, mummification was a significant and important step in the burial traditions as they believed that the only way to get to the afterlife was to have a preserved body and many treasures. However, it was not until the 4th and 5th centuries that Egyptians started intentionally mummifying the dead. Before there were dynasties in Egypt, the bodies of the dead were dried out in the sun before being buried in the ground but the practice evolved to the commonly known form of mummification in the New Kingdom with tombs and better-preserved mummies. Some of the best-preserved mummies are dated from around the 18th – 20th dynasties in the New Kingdom, one of these mummies included the boy-pharaoh, King Tutankhamun.

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He travelled to areas such as Africa, Asia and Egypt. During his time in Egypt, he documented many traditional practices such as mummification. He wrote about a mummification of a wealthy member of Egypt and described the process that he witnessed. He explained that the mummification process took 70 days, majority of those days were used to dry the body with Natron. In the New Kingdom, all mummies had their internal organs and brain removed (leaving the heart) and what remained was washed out by water and drugs. For the Pharaohs, it was common to have their eyes removed and replaced by false eyes made of clay, this was believed to allow them to see in the afterlife. All internal organs (excluding the brain) were believed to be important so they were stored in Canopic jars decorated with the heads of the sons of Horus. The linen used to wrap the body with was decorated with prayers and small treasures. Herodotus is seen as a questionable source as on some accounts, particular facts were exaggerated or false. However, the information he wrote on mummification is seen as mostly reliable as it is very similar to the practices that have been discovered through archeology and Egyptian

King Tut) ruled Egypt for 10 years and died aged 19 in roughly 1324 BC. Like many Egyptian pharaohs before him, his parents were brother and sister, and he married his half-sister. He was often depicted as a tall and frail boy and was often depicted in hieroglyphs as sitting during many activities (www.history.com, 2017). King Tut’s tomb was discovered in 1922 (sealed for 3200 years) by Howard Carter. When the tomb was discovered, it was believed that all tombs in the Valley of the Kings had been discovered. As Tut’s tomb was found to be a very small tomb for a king and with the limited number of hieroglyphs, it became clear that King Tut died