Burial Rituals of Ancient Egypt
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We are fascinated by the Ancient Egyptians, those people who came so many thousands of years before us and lived lives that were both exotically different from us in some respects and yet intimately the same in others. It is no doubt this combination of the familiar and the strange (in addition to the simple age of Egyptian civilization and artifacts) that makes them so compelling to us, and the Egyptian process of preparing the dead for the journey to the next life is one of those arenas in which the familiar and the exotic come together. For while few people today would even consider having themselves prepared for eternity with the particular elaborate skills used by the Egyptians, we still treat our dead with much the same respect as did the Egyptians. Moreover, many Americans (as do those in other cultures) embalm their dead very much as the Egyptians themselves once did, although they too must have known that the arts of the embalmer are no sure defense against the natural processes of decay, and that even the best-preserved corpse is no substitute for the continuance of life. And yet the Egyptians sought to do everything possible to maintain the appearance of life in the dead so that when the soul of the deceased met with the gods of the dead across that portal that we must universally cross, he or she would do so in a body that was as resplendent as it had been in life. Ironically, the very chemicals that the Egyptian embalmers would use to this end often caused a subs
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belief behind the Egyptian customs of embalming and mummification and is responsible in large measure for the push toward ever-more effective methods of guarding against the decay of the body.
As noted above, Egyptians began the art of embalming at the very beginning of their high civilization in the very earliest dynastic times. The EgyptiansĘ skill in embalming would grow over the centuries and would in fact spread to other ancient peoples, including the Assyrians, Jews, Persians, and Scythians.
The ancient embalming methods of the Egyptians (and this is most true during the Middle and New Kingdoms when these techniques had been perfected) consisted of removal of the brains and viscera, and the filling of bodily cavities with a mixture of balsamic herbs and other substances. This removal of the organs helped desiccate the body quickly, which was probably the single most important aspect of the embalming process as practiced by the Egyptians in terms of preserving the bodies in a lifelike state. It is possible that, given the climatic conditions of the region, evisceration alone (and the concomitant reduction in body fluids, including of course blood) might have served to preserve the bodies, but cultural beliefs mitigated ag
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2393
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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