Human+Mummies

Human Mummies


 * Other Names:**

Khat

The English word //mummy// is derived from medieval Latin //mumia//, a borrowing of the Persian word //mummiya,// which means "bitumen ." Because of the blackened skin of mummies, it was mistakenly believed that bitumen was used in ancient Egyptian embalming procedures.

The Egyptians made mummies for over 3,000 years, and the process changed often, with new techniques being invented and others forgotten. Egyptian texts suggest that there were up to five different methods to making mummies. None of these methods are known in their entirety, and educated guesses have to be made based on ancient writings and examinations of mummies. Mummification also varied in price - the more elaborate the embalming, the more expensive it was. The burial of the poor was often just a grave in the desert, sometimes lined with wooden planks. Mummification could usually not be afforded by the poor. Ironically, burial in the hot, dry desert often preserved the bodies of the poor better than the elaborate mummification that could be afforded by the rich.

When a person died, first there was a wake, in which the body was openly displayed and mourned over for a period of one to three days. The wake included a march through the streets, with the mourners lamenting, beating their chests, tearing their hair, and covering themselves with dust. A priest lead the procession, rapping two sticks together. Once the wake was done, the body was then taken to be mummified. Until the burial, the relatives of the deceased were expected to follow the rites of mourning, which included cutting off the hair and shaving the eyebrows, eating only bread, water, and vegetables, and refraining from wearing bright clothing.

The preliminary stages of mummification involved the opening - the violation - of the body, an action that only the god Anubis himself would have been allowed to perform. The priest who took on this role wore an Anubis mask and was called //Hery-Seshta// ("Overseer of the Mysteries.") It was thought that he would magically become the funerary god himself and so be able to legitimately cut open the corpse for the mummification process.

The //Hery-Seshta//'s second-in-command was known as the //Khetemu-Neter// ("The Gods' Seal-bearer"), responsible for making sure that all the steps of mummification were done properly. Just as important was the //Khery-Heb// ("Lector Priest"), who read the appropriate instructions and spells, and acted as a scribe and bookkeeper. All together, they were known as the "Men of Anubis." The tools of the embalmers included flint or stone //dega// knives, //medjat// scalpels, retractors, needles, depilation pincers, nostril spoons, and syringes.

First, the body was taken to the //Ibu en Waab// ("Place of Purification,") where it was undressed and ritually washed in water from the Nile in the "Pool of Khonsu", mixed with natron. Like other embalming workshops, the //Ibu en Waab// was made of mudbrick or stone, surround by high walls for privacy. Then the body was carried to the //Wabet// ("Pure Workshop") and placed onto a slanted stone table. The abdomen was opened with a 3 to 5 inch incision at the lower right (on some occasions left) side and the liver, intestines, lungs, gall bladder, and stomach were removed. These organs were rinsed in palm wine, dried in natron, anointed with oils and spices, painted with resin, and then wrapped in linen. The organs were then preserved in canopic jars or tiny coffins.

The heart was also removed. The Egyptians considered the heart to be the seat of the soul, so it was returned to the body and sewn to the chest with gold thread instead of being placed in a canopic jar. When mummymakers misplaced (or accidentally ruined) the internal organs of one mummy, a rope was symbolically substituted for the intestines in a canopic jar. Any broken bones or missing limbs were replaced with wood and linen substitutes. The brain was considered useless (some thought that its function was to produce nasal mucus) and was removed through the nose with hooks or through a small incision in the back of the head or neck, then discarded. Other organs such as the kidneys were also discarded.

The body was given an enema of cedar, juniper, or pine oil to liquefy and remove the remaining viscera. The emptied body was then covered in a salt-like substance called natron for about 40 days, to speed up the process of dehydration and prevent decomposition.

Mummy labels made of wood or limestone were often used, and were strung around the neck as a means of identification. These labels listed not only the name of the deceased but also their parents' names, their profession, age, date of death, home town, the place where their body was to be buried, date of the funeral, and what type of funeral they had paid for. Sometimes mummy labels contained images of the protective funerary god Anubis and short prayers. An example from the Roman Period reads "May his Ka live: Psenmonthes, Son of Psenmonth, Stonecutter and Prophet of Imhotep. He lived fifty-eight years. His Ka serves Osiris, the Great God, who repeats for him rejuvenation and vigor into eternity. Consignment: to the harbor of the village of Kreke in the Arsinoite nome, from the village of Phila."

Once the forty days of drying were done, mummies taken to the //Per-Nefer// ("Divine Booth"), a large booth covered by a tent. They were ritualistically rubbed and anointed with oils, perfumes, beeswax, spices, milk, moisturizers, palm wine, and barley and emmer wheat (symbolic of rebirth.) To give the mummy a more realistic shape, the abdomen, back, neck, arms, legs, buttocks, head, and thighs were padded out with rolls of linen, sawdust, straw, bags of natron crystals, rags, dried lichen, sand, plaster, or mud. Sometimes a mixture of fat and natron was injected under the skin to plump it out. The torso was then sewn up and a Two-Finger Amulet and a gold, wax, copper, bronze, or silver plate was placed over the incision.

The nose, mouth, and ears were plugged with wax or linen. The eyes were pushed down into the sockets and covered with glass, stone, ceramic, or painted linen, and then the eyelids were coated with wax. Sometimes onion skins or even whole bulbs were placed over the eyes, an obscure practice relating to the underworld god Sokar.

The tongue was covered with a tongue plate, often made from gold, and finger and toe protectors were placed over the mummy's digits to prevent breakage. The mouth was covered with a plate as well. The mummy's mouth would later be opened in a ritual designed to symbolize breathing, called the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, giving rise to legends about revivified mummies.

After drying and packing, the body was then painted (red for men, yellow for women) and coated with resin, which toughened the skin and made it waterproof. The soles of the feet and the palms of the hands were sometimes stained with henna. False plaits and curls were woven into the natural hair, or wigs were placed on the head. If the deceased was elderly, the hair was dyed to give a youthful appearance (Ramses the Great's white hair was dyed red.) To ensure sexual pleasure in the afterlife, men had false penises attached to their mummies, while women had artificial nipples attached.

Make-up was applied to women and sometimes men - cheeks were rouged with red ocher, lips were stained, and kohl was painted around the eyes. Mummies were then dressed in jewelry such as rings, necklaces, bracelets, pectorals, earrings, girdles, and diadems, and items of clothing such as sandals, tunics, kilts, cloaks, and dresses. Flowers and herbs were sometimes scattered over the body.

The last step was the bandaging, done by the //Wetyw// ("Bandagers" or "Wrappers"), which took ten to fifteen days. Hundreds of yards of linen were used - a recently unwrapped mummy was covered in an astonishing three miles of bandages. On average, it took 3,800 sq. feet (350 sq. m) of cloth to wrap a mummy. Family members of the deceased would donate cloth to the embalmers and in many cases, special fine cloth with spells written upon them were used. Each strip that bound the head of the deceased had its own magical name. In a funerary prayer the deceased is told: "The gods adore thee, saying thou art the best prepared of spirits. They rejoice to see thy form, rising in its shapes, dressed in linen . . ."

The fingers, toes, and limbs were wrapped separably, and altogether up to twenty layers of linen were wound around the body. During this process dozens, sometimes hundreds, of sacred charms and amulets such as scarabs, the Ankh, the Djed, the Tyet, and tiny figurines of the gods were placed on and around the mummy and the wrappings, to protect the body from harm. Sometimes mummies were made more rigid by being bound to lengths of palm-rib with leather straps. Between each layer of linen the bandages were painted with resin in order to make the wrappings stick together. Often plaster was applied to the bandages to create a kind of "mummy sculpture." In a tomb at Meidum this so well preserved the head of one mummy that it recorded every detail of his face, including his mustache.

Only male royal mummies had both their arms placed across the chest, reminiscent of the sacred Horus-falcon - the queenly pose was the left fist held against the chest. Those of lower rank were buried with their arms at their sides, or laying across the stomach. Sometimes mummies were positioned on their side, rather than on the back. In Predynastic times, bodies were laid in the grave in a contracted position, like a child in the womb.

When the wrapping was done, the face of the deceased was painted on the bandaged head, or a funerary mask (called the "head of mystery") was placed over the face. The mummy was then wrapped in anywhere from seven to twenty linen shrouds colored red, yellow, and white. Sometimes there was a special beaded shroud that was used as well.

Finally, the mummy was placed into a series of elaborately decorated sarcophaguses made of cedar, sycamore, tamarisk, silver, granite, limestone, or gold, each fitting neatly into the next, rather like Russian dolls. Coffins were often decorated inside and out with glass and precious stones, motifs of feathered wings (//shuty//), funerary texts, pictures of food and drink, or images from the Book of the Dead. One side of the coffin had a false or Ka door, a panel painted with eyes that allowed the spirit of the deceased to enter and exit the coffin. The end of the mummification, the placing of the mummy in the coffin and the rituals around it, was known as the "Hour Vigil." In the twelve hours of the night and the twelve hours of the day, every hour a different deity was invoked to perform special rituals. The last deity was Horus, who offered the deceased the "breath of life." The entire mummification process, from beginning to end, took 70 days, and after that time the funeral for the deceased was held.

On the day of the funeral, four sacred vulture plumes were fixed to each corner of the outermost coffin. The coffin was taken to the location of the tomb by oxen drawing a four-wheeled chariot or covered sled. Egyptian tombs were located on the west bank of the Nile, the place of sunset and the land of the dead. The procession was led by the //Sem//-Priest (in royal burials, the role was often played by the new pharaoh) clad in a leopard skin, sprinkling milk and wafting incense. Following were lesser priests with shaven heads and white robes, carrying the deceased's chest of canopic jars.

Then came the friends and relatives of the deceased, wailing their sorrow. The deceased's relatives wore strings of onions or a Wah Collar around their necks and clothing that they had torn and rubbed with ashes, as signs of their bereavement. They often wore blue, the color of mourning. Last in the procession came the servants, who carried the funeral feast and the possessions of the deceased.

In ancient Egypt, women were often hired to accompany or greet the coffins of the decreased at funerals (professional mourners). These women tore their hair, beat their breasts, covered themselves in dust, and wailed songs for the dead. They were referred to as the “Kites of Nephthys” - the particularly shrill, piercing cry of the kite is thought to have been suggestive of the cries of wailing women in mourning. They were led by two chief women mourners – called the “Great Kite” and the “Little Kite” – representing the goddesses Isis and Nephthys. The role of the Great Kite was sometimes filled by the deceased's widow.

Because most cemeteries were on the West bank of the Nile, part of the procession nearly always involved a crossing of the Nile in a shrine-shaped barque. When the tomb was reached, the transport oxen were sacrificed. The coffin was placed onto a lion-shaped bed, and the //Sem//-Priest preformed the rite of Opening of the Mouth.

The //Sakhu// rite was also preformed, during which special prayers and spells were recited over the coffin to aid in the deceased's transformation into a spiritual body, //Akh//. Relatives and friends made formal speeches, consisting of traditional phrases and chants from major funerary texts: "You will unite with Osiris in the great Hall, you cry out to Isis, and Osiris hears your voice, and Anubis comes to lead you to the Hall . . . May the Eye of Horus cause the magic which flows from it to come to you and to your heart forever!"

Bouquets of flowers were presented to the deceased - when the mummy was set upright before the entrance to the tomb for the final rites, a bouquet was placed beside it, and buried with the coffin. Formal bouquets seem to have been composed of mandrake, poppy, and cornflower. Flowers were also scattered over the mummy, and wrapped within the bandages. Attending a mummy unwrapping in 1867, author Theophile Gautier wrote: "Who has placed these poor flowers there as a last leave-taking while the late lamented body was about to disappear under the first layer of bandages? Flowers four thousand years old - fragility and eternity in one - make a strange impression."

Frankincense, libations of water, and perfumed oils were offered to the deceased, and an unguent cone was place onto the head of the coffin. The female mourners circled the coffin and the deceased's wife knelt at the foot, all crying aloud their grief. When the goddess Isis was mourning for Osiris, she cut a lock of her hair as a protection. Egyptian widows similarity buried locks of their hair with deceased husbands, as a charm of protection in the afterlife. King Tut was buried with a lock of his grandmother's hair. The Egyptian hieroglyphic of a lock of hair meant "mourning."

Relatives ate the funeral feast at the door of the tomb while the priests chanted //hetep di nesu// (the offering prayer), inviting the deceased to come and enjoy the food and drink. The mourners also danced and played funerary games in honor of the deceased. These funeral games included boxing, stick fighting, and wrestling. Such ritual games were fairly common in the ancient world. They may have had a religious significance as well - the winner of the boxing or wrestling match would proclaim "Horus has prevailed in truth!", suggesting a re-enactment of the battle between the forces of good and evil personified by the god Horus and the evil god Set. As expected in a ritual scene, the outcome of the match is never in doubt - Horus must always triumph over Set, in accordance with the myth. It is most likely that that it was not an actual match but a sort of religious pageant.

The deceased's belongings were placed within his tomb - furniture such as beds complete with mattresses and headrests, chests, jewelry, linen garments, wigs, sandals, walking staffs, mirrors, fans, musical instruments, toiletries, jars of oil, statues, perfumes and cosmetics, heirlooms and other personal mementos, tableware, the Book of the Dead, gaming boards, pottery, fuel for the hearth, an Osiris Bed, baskets, lamps, mats, magical wands, Ushabti, jars of beer and wine, and perserved food for the deceased to enjoy in the afterlife. Symbols of professions were also included in the burial, such as weapons and chariots for a warrior, birthing tools for a midwife, or rolls of papyrus paper and pens for a scribe.

The priestesses of the goddess Nekhbet, wearing blue kilts, reed crowns, and robes of vulture feathers, escorted the coffin into the tomb. They bared their breasts as a magical promise of the nursing Nekhbet’s tender care, dancing and clapping their hands above their heads. The head of the deceased was always pointed to the East, in order to share in the daily rebirth promised by the sun. Four special amulets were mounted on mud bricks and placed in niches in the walls of the burial chamber - these objects mimicked the rituals which were carried out at childbirth to ward off harmful forces. The echo of the birth rituals emphasized that the dead person would be reborn. Priests wearing jackal-headed Anubis masks collected the fee for the funeral and the offerings to the deceased. Lastly, the tomb was swept clean and sealed, and a stela identifying the deceased was erected.

In front of each tomb was a pit, containing the embalmer's cache. This included things such as leftover objects from the mummification - linen rags, packets of natron, straw, sawdust, and pieces of wood from the embalming tables - and the remains of the funerary feast, jars and dishes ritually broken after the meal, and the floral collars worn by the mourners. Although trash, anything associated with the deceased was still considered to be sacred, so it was buried near his tomb. The Ka (spirit) of the deceased was fed by the family of the deceased or by a Ka priest leaving periodic food offerings at the tomb. Relatives visited the tomb on holidays and left flowers or sometimes written letters asking the deceased for advice, or to simply tell the person how much they were missed.

In ancient Egypt, the tomb industry was a vast and complicated business. The need for contracts arose because generations were often buried in one tomb that remained in the family for hundreds of years. Contracts were needed to specify who was and was not to be an occupant of a particular tomb, and how much space they were allotted. Contracts were also updated to include children as they were born, and spouses as members of the family married. Overseeing a particular tomb was the responsibility of an embalmer deeded hereditary rights in the tomb's contract, which he passed on to his son. The embalmer was responsible for the maintenance and inspection of the tomb and its occupants, as well as for embalming any future bodies placed within it.

As the Romans took over Egypt, the practice of mummification declined (the Romans typically cremated their dead) and the knowledge was totally lost when the early Christians came into power, outlawing the practice. Athanasius quotes the dying St. Anthony as asking his followers to assure that he is not mummified: "Permit no man to take my body and carry it into Egypt, lest according to the custom which they have, they embalm me and lay me in a tomb, for it was to avoid this that I came into this desert. And ye know that I have continually made exhortation against this thing and begged that it should not be done, and ye well know how much I have blamed those who have observed this custom."

Unfortunately for the Egyptians, their dead rarely rested peacefully. Their tombs were looted so often that to date only King Tutankhamen's tomb has been found undisturbed. Many of the mummies themselves were ripped apart by tomb robbers looking for gold and jewels. The Arabs produced a volume known as the "Book of Buried Pearls" specifically for robbing ancient Egyptian tombs, with magic formulate for outwitting guardian spirits. It was so widely practiced that in the 15th century tomb robbing was classifed as a taxed industry. In the Middle Ages, based on the bitumen mistranslation, it became common practice to grind mummies into a powder to be sold and used as medicine. The substance was used for treating cuts, broken bones, nausea, and internal ailments in antiquity, and in the Dark and Middle Ages it continued to be prescribed by Arab doctors. Arab traders opened up the great death-pits at Memphis and other ancient cities, and mummy, in dry or powered form, was exported to the West in considerable quantities.

The practice developed into a wide-scale business which flourished until the late 18th century, and destroyed countless mummies. Two centuries ago, mummies were still believed to have medicinal properties against bleeding and gout, and were sold as pharmaceuticals in powdered form. Francois I of France carried around a supply of mummy dust in case he was injured out hunting, and Francis Bacon swore by it. In 1809 the King of Persia made a gift of ground mummy to the Queen of England. Apothecaries commonly stocked it. It should not be surprising that one of the earliest accounts of a mummy unwrapping was authored by an apothecary. The trade inspired one of Sir Thomas Browne' most famous remarks, in //Urn Burial//: "Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsam." Arab merchants remarked in surprise that Christians, so particular about their diet, could actually eat the bodies of the dead.

Artists also made use of Egyptian mummies; the brownish paint known as //Capu ////t mortuum // (Latin for "death's head"), also called "Mummy Brown," popular in the 17th to the early 19th century and one of the favorite colors of the Pre-Raphaelites, was originally made from the ground-up wrappings of mummies. Even in the 1970's there was a small but regular demand for mummy among those who dealt in magic and the occult. In New York, genuine powdered Egyptian mummy could be bought at some drugstores for forty dollars an ounce. The demand for mummies was so high that some people made fake mummies to sell by covering modern corpses with bitumen and drying them in the sun. A French physician, Guy de la Fonteine of Navarre, investigated the mummy trade in 1564 and found clear evidence of fraud and the use of modern corpses to satisfy the insatiable demand for mummified human flesh.

In Britain during the 1830's and 1840's, mummy “unwrapping” parties were popular. Wealthy tourists traveling to Egypt would bring back a mummy and invite friends over to witness the unwrapping, followed by refreshments. These parties destroyed hundreds of mummies, because the exposure to the air caused them to disintegrate. Due to the rise of //wunderkammer// - cabinets of wonders - it became in vogue for Victorians to keep an entire mummy or at least the hand or foot of one in a glass case as a display piece. By 1833 the monk Father Geramg remarked that "It would hardly be respectable, on one's return from Egypt, to present oneself in Europe without a mummy in one hand and a crocodile in the other." Mummies and mummy cases were even burned as fuel for trains and boats - Mark Twain wrote how they "fueled his trip up the Nile."

Even the Egyptologist Harold Carter, discoverer of the famous Tutankhamen, was not interesting in preserving the mummy of the king but in the 150 jewels and amulets on the body. In order to remove the objects from the body and the body from the coffin (Tut's mummy was stuck to his coffin with hardened resin), Carter's team cut the torso in half, and detached the arms and legs of the king. The skin and bones were broken in numerous places by this harsh treatment, and the body itself was broken into eighteen pieces. The head of Tut, cemented to the golden mask by resins, was severed and removed from the mask with hot knives. Pieces of the body were misplaced or went missing, including the sternum, parts of the ribs, fingers, toes, and vertebrae, and the phallus (it was later found.)

Modern, noninvasive CT scans of Tutankhamen's mummy have provided a great deal of information about the young pharaoh. He was 19 years old and in overall excellent health, slightly built and standing 5 ft 6 inches (170 cm) tall. Tut had a mild cleft palette and overbite, a slightly elongated skull, a mild clubfoot, and pierced ears. Experts agree that the young pharaoh did not have scoliosis as previously thought (the slight bend in the spine of the mummy was due to positioning by the embalmers), nor was he murdered - the damage to the back of the skull was likely due to the removal of the brain during the mummification process, or by Carter's team removing the head from the mask.

Tut was not weak or sickly, but a vigorous athlete who enjoyed hunting and chariot riding. Records indicate that Tutankhamen fell from his chariot and broke his lower right leg, which became badly infected. Tut developed necrosis (tissue death) from this injury and it eventually caused his death. It was a painful, lingering death - scholars have noted that Tutankhamen was buried with 130 walking sticks, some of which show clear signs of use. New studies also suggest that he had been weakened by a bought of malaria. A great deal of care was taken in the mummification of the king, with the extensive damage to the body being due to handling by Carter's team, rather than the body being prepared hurriedly and carelessly as previously thought.

In the early 1860's, a Canadian doctor named James Douglas illegally purchased and snuggled home some artifacts from Egypt, including a number of mummies, for seven pounds. The remains of one of the mummies, which turned out to be the pharaoh Ramses I, ended up in a "<span class="wiki_link_ext">Daredevil Museum " near <span class="wiki_link_ext">Niagara Falls on the <span class="wiki_link_ext">United States -<span class="wiki_link_ext">Canada border. Records indicate that it had been exhibited alongside displays such as a two-headed calf for nearly 140 years, until a museum in <span class="wiki_link_ext">Atlanta, Georgia, which had acquired the mummy along with other artifacts, determined it to be royal and returned it to Egypt's <span class="wiki_link_ext">Supreme Council of Antiquities in 1999. The mummy of Ramses I is finally home, and currently on display in the <span class="wiki_link_ext">Luxor Museum.

Mummy