Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs_ A Popular History of Ancient Egypt - Barbara Mertz [43]
The best description of the process of mummification comes from those helpful Greeks, Herodotus and Diodorus. According to the former, there were three methods, which differed in elaboration and in price. In the cheapest type, the intestines were cleaned out by means of a purge and then the body was placed in natron, a compound of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate. The application of natron was the penultimate process in all three types of embalming. In the second type the corpse was first given an oil of cedar enema; the oil dissolved the stomach and intestines. Modern authorities question the word cedar, claiming that the substance in question came from a juniper or other coniferous tree; and there is some doubt as to how this “oil” was employed.
The mummy and its equipment, and the ba
The fanciest, and most expensive, method of mummification employed during the New Kingdom involved the removal of the internal organs, except for the heart and kidneys. The brain was removed through the nostrils and the viscera through an incision made in the lower abdomen. The internal organs were cleaned and treated, and then placed in four containers called “canopic jars,” which were, in turn, placed in a square canopic box. The empty body cavity was cleaned and anointed, and then the corpse was covered with natron, as in the other two methods. The abdomen was filled with linen packing, or with sawdust. Once dehydration was complete, the body was washed and treated with oil or precious ointments, and, finally, the wrappings were applied.
The wrappings were of fine linen, torn into strips and wound around limbs and body; sometimes even the fingers and toes were separately wound. The cloth padded out the shriveled body, which had suffered from the desiccating procedures of embalmment. Occasionally, additional pads of linen were inserted to fill out sunken areas, or the external contours of the body, such as a woman’s breasts, might be modeled in plaster.
After the mummy was wrapped and placed in the coffin, another ceremony might be performed, consisting of the pouring of a liquid preparation of resin or pitch over the wrappings and coffin. This may have been a kind of anointing, or it may have been intended to preserve the body. Ironically enough, it had the reverse effect. In certain cases the pitch fused the tissues or produced a chemical reaction in which the flesh was consumed.
Yet the greatest threat to the dead man’s hope of immortality in the flesh was not putrefaction, but the tomb robber. Mummies were often destroyed by thieves in their search for the jeweled ornaments with which the bodies were adorned. The Egyptians of the Old Kingdom developed a way of dealing with this terrible possibility: they carved statues of themselves, which were placed in the tomb and which could, if necessary, assume the vital functions. No man was entirely obliterated if anything of himself remained—his likeness, or even his name carved on stone.
The kings of the Fifth Dynasty were the first monarchs, so far as we know, to add the carved Pyramid Texts to their varied forms of insurance of life everlasting. This, and the rise of the cult of Re, are the most interesting features of the dynasty. The beautiful painting and sculpture of the preceding dynasty continued during