If the parts agree to hand over the body to the mummified and begin their work by removing the brain from the skull with a metal instrument with a twisted tip, then wash it from the inside with date wine and liquids with a fragrant smell, and then fill it with bitter powder and other fragrant substances And then if they are done with the viscera and soft organs, they put the whole body in the salt of the natron for 70 days, and if this period ends, they wash the body well and then wrap it in a linen cloth after soaking it in an adhesive liquid.
What worries us about the mummification process here are its religious rituals, which begin in its early days with the time of washing with water from the Nile to remove excess salt, and it was a ritual work as far as possible because the Egyptian saw it as a symbol of the myth of the creation of the sun from the water of the Nile and the withdrawal of the waters of the Nile. A common image of this ritual is a view we see in the tombs or coffins of the New Kingdom, depicting the deceased sitting on a large pot, bathed in a jet of water flowing over it.
Religious rituals continue through spells read at each stage of mummification, with two Papyri mentioning some spells accompanied by instructions that we recommend removing the nails and fingers before wrapping them, accompanied by a special spell for the mummy to recover afterwards, and wipe the head with oil in a final step with a number of coils irradiated with oil or resin and take care of the spells that are supposed to cool the senses and so on on the rest of the limbs.
Most of these tools are made of bronze, with the exception of the embalming brush made of palm leaves, and these tools are likely to be used in mummification processes as they are included in embalming residues inside and outside cemeteries.
The inner bowels were preserved in Canopic jars, a stone, wooden and pottery pot in which the bowels of the deceased were placed, each in the form of the four sons of Horus: Imesty with the head of a human being, Hapi with a monkey head and Kebeh Senu Ef with a falcon head, and Dwa Mut Ef with the head of a jackal protected by the goddesses of escorts, respectively: Isis, Nephtis,Stelket and Neith, and we addressed the theological relationship between the gods, members and destinations of the world.
The God Anubis was the god of the mummified, and the God Apollo who with the head of the jackal was a familiar face in funerary rituals and beliefs as well as the gods Osiris, Hathor, Merit Sejeret … etc. As part of the funeral, priests performed special religious rites at the tomb's entrance. The most important part of the ceremony was called the "Opening of the Mouth. By touching the instrument to the mouth, the dead person could now speak and eat. He was now ready for his journey to the Afterlife.
The mummy was placed in his coffin, or coffins, in the burial chamber and the entrance sealed up. Such elaborate burial practices might suggest that the Egyptians were preoccupied with thoughts of death.
On the contrary, they began early to make plans for their death because of their great love of life. They could think of no life better than the present, and they wanted to be sure it would continue after death. But why preserve the body? The Egyptians believed that the mummified body was the home for this soul or spirit.
If the body was destroyed, the spirit might be lost. The idea of "spirit" was complex involving really three spirits: the ka, ba, and akh. The ka, a "double" of the person, would remain in the tomb and needed the offerings and objects there.
The ba, or "soul", was free to fly out of the tomb and return to it. And it was the akh, perhaps translated as "spirit", which had to travel through the Underworld to the Final Judgment and entrance to the Afterlife. To the Egyptian, all three were essential. After death, the pharaohs of Egypt usually were mummified and buried in elaborate tombs. Members of the nobility and officials also often received the same treatment, and occasionally, common people. However, the process was an expensive one, beyond the means of many.
For religious reasons, some animals were also mummified. The sacred bulls from the early dynasties had their own cemetery at Sakkara. Baboons, cats, birds, and crocodiles, which also had great religious significance, were sometimes mummified, especially in the later dynasties.
Ancient writers, modern scientists, and the mummies themselves all help us better understand the Egyptian mummification process and the culture in which it existed. Much of what we know about the actual process is based on the writings of early historians such as Herodotus who carefully recorded the process during his travels to Egypt around BCE.
Present-day archaeologists and other specialists are adding to this knowledge. The development of x-rays now makes it possible to x-ray mummies without destroying the elaborate outer wrappings.
By studying the x-rays or performing autopsies on unwrapped bodies, experts are learning more about diseases suffered by the Egyptians and their medical treatment. A better idea of average height and life span comes from studying the bones. By learning their age at death, the order and dates of the Egyptian kings becomes a little clearer. Even ties of kinship in the royal line can be suggested by the striking similarities or dissimilarities in the skulls of pharaohs that followed one another.
Dead now for thousands of years, the mummy continues to speak to us. Ancient Egypt Egyptian Mummies. Dimly lit with light spots coming from the ceiling falling on the displays without shedding light on anything else in the display room, the Mummification Museum takes its visitors into a real journey inside the world of the Mummification process of ancient Egypt.
The display hall in the Museum has a surface area of around square meters. It includes more than 65 pieces of exhibits that document the Mummification process in different eras of the ancient Egyptian history. This excludes two displays, the salt that was brought recently from Wadi El Natrun region. This was where the Pharaohs originally brought the salt they used in mummification. This is besides the mummified duck that was done by the Egyptian scientist, Zaki Iskander in The display hall of the Mummification Museum consists of two sections.
The first is like an ascending slope that hosts ten portraits created by Khaled Amin, a contemporary Egyptian artist. They tell the story which is demonstrated in the two important papyrus papers of Ani and Hu-nefer that tell the story of mummification from the point of the death of the deceased till the burial rituals.
These two papyrus are now put on display in the British Museum in London and this was why the paintings of Khaled Amin were used instead. The other section of the display hall of the Mummification Museum in Luxor shows two types of exhibits; the tools the ancient Egyptians used in the mummification process and some examples of mummified animals and humans.
The tools used for mummification include a small chisel which was used to break down the cells of the brain. There is also a small spoon and other similar tool that was used to clean the parts inside the head. A sharp short tool that looks like a knife that was used to cut into the left part of the abdomen of the deceased.
Among other tools the ancient Egyptians used in mummification that are put into display in the mummification museum in Luxor there are a pair of scissors, tweezers and a scalpel that were used for Evisceration. This is besides a brush that was used for the dry cleaning of the inner parts.
There are also the substances used by the ancient Egyptians during mummification like the salt brought from Wadi El Natrun and sawdust that was used as a temporary filling in the chest and the abdomen. The Pharaohs have also used many oil perfumes to purify the mummy and they were rapped at the very end of the process with pieces of linen before being buried at the end of the funerary rituals. The other part of this section in the Mummification Museum in Luxor displays many mummified animals like remarkable mummy of a monkey in a sarcophagus that was found in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.
0コメント