Mummy

I. Introduction

Mummy, term used to describe a human body that has been preserved by the natural environment or by embalming techniques. Mummies have been found in several regions of the world, including Egypt and other parts of North Africa, the Middle East, the Andes Mountains of South America, desert regions of Peru, western China, and peat bogs in Scandinavian countries. This article focuses on mummies made in Egypt between about 3400 BC and about AD 641.

The Egyptians embalmed their dead because they believed that the deceased were reborn after death, and therefore needed bodies for existence in the afterlife. The English word mummy is probably derived from mummia, the Persian word for bitumen, a dark, heavy oil. The Persians equated bitumen with the substance the Egyptians smeared between the layers of the mummy wrappings. However, the Egyptians instead used a resin-like substance taken from trees.

II. Practices and Beliefs

The Egyptians devoted great effort to preserving the lifelike appearance of corpses because they believed that the deceased needed physical bodies for the next life. They preserved bodies by drying them and placing them within a protective covering. Early practitioners wrapped the dried bodies in mats. In later years, the dried bodies were placed in wooden or stone coffins. Several styles of mummification were used, depending upon the wealth of the deceased's family, but even bodies with minimal embalming remained preserved for many years when buried directly in the hot, dry sand.

The earliest Egyptian mummies, discovered at the southern city of Hierakonpolis, date from about the year 3400 BC. The embalmers had simply padded these bodies with linen and covered them with a pitch-like substance that sealed the body against moisture. In later burials, embalmers fully removed the body's internal organs (stomach, lungs, liver, and intestines) in a process called evisceration. They placed the organs in special containers called canopic jars.

People devoted tremendous resources to mummification and funerals, especially in wealthy families, and they planned their burials well in advance. The burials of wealthy men or women included objects used during their lifetime as well as objects specially made for the tomb. The soul of the deceased was given guidance to the realm of the afterlife by religious texts such as the Book of the Dead, which contained charms designed to overcome dangers.

Many gods were associated with mummification. The jackal-headed god Anubis, known as "He who is in the [mummy] wrappings," served as the guardian of a city's burial area, called a necropolis. In most periods of Egyptian history, people believed that once the gods found the soul of the deceased to be morally acceptable, the deceased entered into an eternal afterlife ruled by Osiris, the god of the underworld. Osiris himself had been mummified by his faithful wife Isis, who gathered up his dismembered body after his death and bound it in a mummy-like fashion before burial.

The Egyptians believed that the soul of the deceased dwelled among these gods but did not lose full contact with the land of the living. One aspect of the soul, which the Egyptians represented as a human-headed bird called the ba, could leave the dark tomb. So too, the living could call upon their deceased relatives (most often by letters that they left in the tomb), imploring them for help curing illness, settling law suits, or promoting fertility.

III. Embalming Techniques

Embalming a mummy generally took about 70 days. Right after death the deceased's body was taken to an embalming workshop, where specialists washed the body and shaved most of the body hair as an act of ritual purification. (They left only the facial hair and hair on the head.) They then made an incision along the left side of the abdomen and removed the internal organs, including the intestines, stomach, lungs, and liver. In some cases they removed the heart, but in others they left it, because it was considered to be the seat of the soul that testified on behalf of the deceased during judgment before the gods. The embalmers also broke a bone behind the nose of some bodies, which enabled them to cut the brain into small pieces and to use a hook to remove it through the nose. They then filled the skull with a thick plant-based resin or with resin-saturated sawdust.

The embalmers covered the body with powdered natron (sodium bicarbonate), which absorbed moisture and dried the body. They dried the stomach, liver, lungs, and intestines separately with natron and then placed the four organs in canopic jars. Each jar had a lid sculpted in the form of a deity associated with the protection of the specific organ. Beginning in the 21st Dynasty (1070 BC-945 BC), techniques changed. The later embalmers frequently placed the bundles of dried organs back in the abdomen and chest of the mummy.

After a period of about two months, the embalmers cleaned the body and anointed it with perfumes. They could then stuff the body cavity and mouth with herbs, sawdust, or bags of linen, and insert stones or small onions under the eyelids to restore a lifelike appearance. The embalmers wrapped the body with strips of linen and covered it with a linen shroud. The bodies from the wealthiest families received special treatment, being wrapped in great amounts of costly linen that had ornate amulets with protective powers placed between its layers.

Once the embalmers completed the preparation of the mummy, they placed it in a coffin. Until about 2000 BC, these were most often rectangular boxes of stone or wood. After this date, the coffins took human shapes and were made in sets that nested one within another. In the 21st Dynasty form-fitting coffins made of a papier-mâché substance called cartonnage were popular. Some coffins were works of art decorated with scenes of the gods and inscribed with hieroglyphs that noted the name of the deceased.

On the day of the funeral, the mummy was brought to the tomb, where priests performed the Opening of the Mouth Ritual–touching the eyes, nose, and mouth of the painted coffin with a sacred tool. This ritual reactivated these senses for the afterlife. Before the tomb was sealed, family members deposited food, clothes, furniture, and dishes, which the Egyptians believed the deceased would need for eternity. Scenes of offering bearers and daily life were painted on the walls of the tomb, which provided comforting and familiar surroundings for the deceased in the afterlife. After the tombs were closed, some wealthy families hired priests to offer food to the soul of the deceased periodically. Family members visited the site during special holidays to conduct ceremonies for the deceased.

IV. Opening the Tombs

Since ancient times mummies have fascinated visitors to Egypt. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus gave a comprehensive account of the mummification process in the 5th century BC. Some Greeks and Romans living in Egypt were mummified in the Egyptian fashion, even into the 5th century AD, when Christianity had taken hold in Egypt. Over time, however, the practice of mummification ended, and many grave sites fell into disrepair. In some cases grave robbers stole valuable items or the mummies themselves. They took the mummies because beginning in the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), people mistakenly believed that mummia, a highly sought after medicinal substance, could be obtained by grinding up mummies.

In the 1600s and 1700s many travelers from Europe bought mummies from Egyptians and took them home, where the mummies became the centerpieces of cabinets of curiosities—small private museums maintained by collectors. The study of Egyptian antiquities, called Egyptology, emerged as an academic discipline in the 1800s. During this time, explorers such as Italian archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni took mummies and other antiquities from Egypt and provided them to European museums. Unwrapping mummies also became a popular attraction at European exhibitions.

The discovery of two groups of royal and priestly mummies at the turn of the 19th century provided Egyptologists with much data about the preparation of mummies from wealthy classes. In 1896 British archaeologist William Flinders Petrie began using X-ray techniques to examine mummies without unwrapping them. During the early 1900s the pace of archaeological discoveries quickened. Archaeologists such as Howard Carter and George Herbert, 5th earl of Carnarvon, both of Britain, made many archaeological discoveries in Egypt, including the tombs of King Thutmose IV and Queen Hatshepsut. In 1922 the discovery of the largely undisturbed tomb of Tutankhamun provided scholars with their first view of an undisturbed royal mummy.

In 1965 more than 5,000 well-preserved mummies from Nubia (southern Egypt) were studied to established their relationship to the modern population of Egypt. Two years later, the first comprehensive X-ray study of the mummies in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, was undertaken by a team from the University of Michigan. Since that time, electron probe analysis of hair has been employed to establish family relationships between individual mummies.

Beginning in the early 1970s scientists began to use computed tomography, or CT scans, to study mummies. This technique provided information about wrapping and embalming processes by producing computerized three-dimensional reconstructions of mummies. During the 1980s and 1990s scientists began experimenting with the recovery of DNA from Egyptian mummies. Scientists hoped these techniques would yield information about ancient diseases, the genetic characteristics of the ancient Egyptians, and patterns of settlement and migration.

Increasingly, teams who study mummies are interdisciplinary, and are made up of Egyptologists, specialists in ancient languages, physical anthropologists, physicians, and radiologists. Recent recoveries of mummies from the Sinai Peninsula, the eastern delta of the Nile River, and desert oases have provided information about regional styles of mummification. The discovery and translation of texts dealing with mummification have complemented this archaeological work, giving scientists a more complete understanding of the practice of mummification.

V. Folklore

Over the centuries, mummies have figured prominently in popular literature and film. By the 17th century, mummies, and curses upon anyone who disturbed them, served as story lines in many Gothic novels. During the early 20th century, stories associated with mummies continued, such as one tale about the 1912 Titanic disaster, which blamed the sinking of the ocean liner on a mummy that was supposedly being transported on the ship. Another unfounded legend recounts that everyone associated with the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun died unnatural deaths.

The first major film concerning mummies, The Mummy (1932), featured Boris Karloff as the threatening but sympathetic title character. Later films, however, portrayed mummies as violent and murderous. These treatments obscured the fact that in ancient Egypt the mummy was a reassuring and soothing reminder of the deceased, who had passed on to a carefree existence with the gods.

VI. Mummies in Other Cultures

Although other ancient peoples used embalming practices, the only nearby culture that adopted the Egyptian form of mummification was in Nubia, a region south of ancient Egypt. Several Nubian kings during the 8th and 7th centuries BC were buried in Egyptian-style coffins and entombed in pyramids.

But mummies have been found in other regions of the world, including North and South America, Europe, Syria, Yemen, and Asia. In 15th-century Peru, the people of the Inca empire preserved mummies by drying them with smoke in the cold, dry climate of high altitudes. After embalming the body in a fetal position, the preparers placed the body in a large beehive-shaped jar with clothing, gold jewelry, personal items, food, and a corn drink called chicha. The bodies of dead rulers were among the holiest shrines in the empire. The Inca treated these rulers as if they were still alive, providing servants to attend to them and consulting them for advice on daily affairs.

Not all mummies were intentionally prepared. So-called accidental mummies have been found in desert areas on the coast of Peru, where hot, dry sand helped the mummification process, and in the western region of China, where salt acted as the preserving agent. Mummies in Alaska and Greenland have been found stored in caves, where the cold, dry climate slowed the rate of tissue deterioration. Mummies in Scandinavia were created from bodies deposited in peat bogs, where natural tannin and lack of oxygen prevented decay. Other accidental mummies have been found in mud and under glacial ice.

Contributed By: Emily Teeter, B.A., Ph.D. Associate Curator, Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. Author of The Presentation of Maat: Ritual and Legitimacy in Ancient Egypt and Scarabs, Scarboids, Seals and Seal Impressions from Medinet Habu. American Research Center in Egypt Fellowship recipient, 1985-1986.

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