Scope: Mummification was a trade secret, and the Egyptians didn’t leave records of how they did it; thus, detective work is needed. In this lecture, we learn about the four papyri that give Egyptologists clues about how the Egyptians mummified their dead.
Outline
I. Ask any curator what draws people into museums, and he or she will tell you, “mummies.” For a long time, little was done to conserve mummies because they were considered dead people, not artifacts. In Egypt, mummification was the Big Secret. Why?
A. There isn’t a single papyrus that tells us how to mummify.
B. The secrecy derives in part from the fact that the details were considered trade secrets.
C. Two existing tombs show mummies in late stages of mummification.
II. The first of four papyri, the “Embalmers’ Archive,” describes the Men of Anubis, or the lives of embalmers. Anubis is the jackal-headed god named for animals that feed on decomposing flesh.
A. Embalming duties were varied—embalming families, sealing tombs, and maintaining the tombs.
B. An oath of allegiance had to be taken. The embalming families apportioned parts of the town between them.
III. The “Rhind Bilingual Papyri,” discovered by lawyer Alexander Rhind (1860) in an intact Roman tomb, is another important source.
A. The tomb had been plundered. Rhind found damaged mummies and tags with their names.
B. In a Roman-period tomb he found the papyri next to a gilded mummy.
C. We learn about rituals in the Rhind papyri, not surgical procedures.
1. For thirty-five days the body rested in the “place of cleansing.”
2. Seven openings of the head and seventeen members of the body are described. These are magical numbers.
3. Seventeen rituals and seventy days to burial also indicate magical numbers.
D. The wrapping ritual included naming the bandages.
E. A husband and wife died within forty-six days of each other, and the papyri give important details about them, including the cutting of hair as a sign of mourning.
IV. The “Ritual of Embalming” is another papyrus dealing with mummification.
A. Here again we learn ritual, not surgical, procedures.
B. First, there are a few days of mourning.
C. The body stays in natron for thirty-five days in a place of cleansing.
D. On the forty-sixth day after death, bandaging takes place.
1. Horus, the falcon-headed god, came with ragged bandages, perhaps a sign of ritual belief that one took familiar (used) things to the next world.
2. Frankincense was placed in the head, myrrh in the body. They helped dehydrate the body and keep it from smelling.
V. Finally, Herodotus describes the mummification procedure in some detail.
A. He describes the mourning procedure.
B. He details the price ranges of different “models.”
C. As for the cutting, first a red line was drawn on the abdomen to indicate the incision.
D. The brain was removed through the nose with an iron hook and the internal organs taken out with a “sharp Ethiopian stone.”
E. The body was steeped in natron—a salt—for seventy days, although an earlier Egyptian account says thirty-five.
F. The Egyptians don’t give us the details we want on mummification. Only the mummies can do this, as we’ll see in the next lecture.
Essential Reading:
Bob Brier, Egyptian Mummies.
Supplementary Reading:
Salima Ikram and Aidan Dodson, The Mummy in Ancient Egypt.
Questions to Consider:
1. Why were mummification techniques kept a secret?
2. How do we learn about mummies?