Sabrina Sergott

Sarah Hoglund

UF 200

4/17/18

Ancient Egyptian Burial Rituals

            The mummification processes in Ancient Egypt is a ritual that no other culture practices. This one of kind funeral practice began around 2600 BC and is not continued today in modern times. Back then, this process was a typical funeral for someone of high power. To people today, mummies seems creepy and unusual. And most especially, misunderstood. A lot of people’s knowledge of mummies comes from movies and tv shows. My first understanding of mummies came from Scooby Do. From what I learned, they had ancient curses on them and haunted anyone who disturbed them. Our culture, in my opinion, developed these silly ideas because it is something we have a hard time understanding and respecting because it not something we are familiar with. As ridiculous as movie portray them, the mummification process is very interesting and had a lot of significance to the ancient Egyptians and to American culture.

In ancient Egypt, diseases such as tuberculosis, polio and parasitic infections were widespread, and people seldom lived past the age of 40. With death looming so quickly for them, it’s not hard to understand why Egyptians were so fascinated with the idea of an afterlife in which they could continue to exist for eternity. But to become immortal, the Egyptians believed, a dead person had to get to the afterlife, and that wasn’t easy or simple. To the contrary, the body had to be carefully prepared and stored for eternal existence. Additionally, the journey itself was fraught with perils, and to reach the destination, a dead person needed ample provisions and the help of rituals and magic spells. In the end, if everything was done properly, the deceased had an opportunity to become an ash, or transfigured spirit, which was blessed with magical powers and ready to live forever among the gods.

The Egyptians believed that a person’s spirit became disconnected from the body at death, but could reanimate it in the afterlife, provided that the proper rituals were performed. For that reason, they sought to preserve the body carefully. To do that, they began to utilize mummification, which removed moisture from the body and left behind a dried-out form that would resist decay. At first, it was such an elaborate and costly process that it was only used for Pharaohs, though eventually, a streamlined version was available to other Egyptians as well.

Mummification was carried out by a special class of priests, who not only treated and wrapped the body, but also performed rituals and prayers along the way. The first step was to carefully remove the brain, using hooked instruments to delicately extract small pieces through the nostrils so that the corpse’s face wasn’t disfigured. Then, they cut open the abdomen and removed the stomach, liver, lungs and intestines, which often were preserved separately in jars, or else wrapped and reinserted in the body. Only the heart, which the Egyptians believed to be the core of a person’s intelligence and spirit, remained intact. Then, the priests covered the corpse with natron, a salt that acts as a drying agent, and inserted additional packets of natron inside it as well. After moisture had been removed, the priests washed off the natron and then used linen and other materials to pad areas that had shrunk, so that the dead body would continue to resemble how the person had looked while alive.

Then, the priests wrapped the body in hundreds of yards of linen cut into long strips. They wrote prayers and magical words on the fabric, and inserted amulets between the layers, to protect the dead person from any dangers that might arise along the journey to the afterlife. Often, they also attached a mask made to resemble the person’s face between the linen strips. At several points during the process, they coated the body with warm resin to hold the covering together. Finally, at the end, they wrapped the completed mummy in a shroud and secured it with more linen strips.

Egyptian funerals also were elaborate. The body was placed in a coffin and transported to the tomb in a cart pulled by oxen. It was accompanied by a procession that included relatives, priests and priestesses, along with dancers, and musicians. The participants sometimes carried the jars containing the dead person’s organs. The march would proceed to the banks of the Nile, where everyone would board boats and cross to the Western side, the favored location for burials. At the tomb, the body was raised upright, and the priests performed rituals to ensure that the dead would be able to use their senses in the afterlife, which included prayers and touching the body with sacred objects. Food and clothing were placed in the tomb for the journey to the afterlife. Starting around 2000 BC, Egyptians began placing small statues of human forms called shabtis in tombs. Initially, they probably served as an alternative body for the dead person’s ka, or life force. But over time, the figurines’ function evolved. A person would be buried with an assortment of shabtis, which Egyptians believed would labor as farm workers and servants in the afterlife, sparing their master from having to work.

Additionally, ancient Egyptians’ practice of preserving bodies has provided us with knowledge about how they lived and died. In recent years, technology such as CT scanning machines have enabled scientists to peer inside mummies without unwrapping them and enabled us to learn about the diseases and health problems that afflicted the ancient Egyptians. A study of Egyptian mummies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2009, for example, revealed that atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, was common in upper-class Egyptians, just as it is among people today—which suggests that researchers should look beyond modern lifestyle factors to understand the disease. The ancient Egyptians did manage to achieve a sort of immortality.

Thousands of years later, the ancient Egyptians are long gone, but much of their funeral culture remains with us—from the pyramids to the tomb artifacts that we can look at in museums. Their burial practices have provided us with a wealth of knowledge about how they lived. For example, the elaborate decorations in their tombs—including depictions of ancient farmers, fishermen and carpenters—have provided a wealth of information. It’s important to recognize and learn about this Ancient Egyptian tradition is because this was once an important identity to this culture, even though it is no longer practiced. As Americans, it may be hard to see how important this is for native Egyptians and even ourselves. We have look at it from a unique perspective. The stories we have passed on from our ancestors and what people from other parts of the world learn about their ancestors, is the same. We may have different traditions and practices, but they still have important meanings to our cultures. In Prejudice and Discrimination “We must build coalitions with people who are like us and people who are different from us. We will not be the minority if we work in coalitions. We will gain the necessary vision and power to reconstruct new rules that are truly are equal, roles that complement each other instead of competing, assumptions that value all groups instead of ascribing value to some and devaluing others, and structures that promote cooperation and shared power over each other” (21). Learning about cultural practices we don’t understand helps us to appreciate traditions from all over the world. Even if something as strange to us as “mummification”. In Five Faces of Oppression, “Participants need to open themselves to the discomfort and uncertainty of questioning what is familiar, comfortable and unquestioned. Facing the contradictions between what participants have been taught to believe about social justice and the realities of the experiences of different social groups is complex. At the same time, we believe that understanding social oppression and taking action against it can be a joyful and liberating experience” (35). Understanding cultural practices around the world can help to learn about the “unquestioned” and blur the lines between normal and unusual.

Bibliography

“Ancient Egyptian Funerary Practices.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_funerary_practices.

Bobbie Harro, "The Cycle of Socialization," from Readings in Diversity and Social Justice, 3rd edition, Routledge, 2013

Mark, Joshua J. “Ancient Egyptian Burial.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, Ancient History Encyclopedia, 19 Apr. 2018, www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Burial/.

Iris Marion Young, "Five Faces of Oppression," from Readings in Diversity and Social Justice, 3rd edition, Routledge, 2013