How old is mummification

Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email! GR News. Greek News. All Archaeology Art Charity Crime. Thessaloniki Celebrates Liberation from the Ottomans. 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. It is produced by Windfall Films, and the cameras follow international archaeologists during the excavation season in Egypt. The mummification discovery will feature in episode four — entitled Rise of the Mummies — on 28 November. The investigation into its dating and analysis emerges in the new series.

Hieroglyphs revealed that it belonged to Khuwy, a relation of the royal family who lived over 4, years ago. So her initial reaction was: this is definitely not Old Kingdom. The earliest known example of canopic jars which were intended to hold the viscera of the deceased were found in the burial of Queen Hetepheres the mother of Khufu.

Her viscera were inside the jars, wrapped in linen and placed in a weak solution of natron and water to preserve them. There are few mummies from the First Intermediate Period.

They seem to have followed late Old Kingdom procedures fairly closely. However, an unusual mummy from Deir el Bersha belonging to the eleventh dynasty nomarch called Djehutynakht revived the earlier method of moulded wrappings and the addition of paint to the exterior surface to depict a detailed likeness of his face.

This mummy is also notable as it is evident that the brain was removed through the nose, a development generally more associated with Middle Kingdom and later mummies.

During the Middle Kingdom embalmers continued to remove the viscera via an incision in the left side of the body, but they also began to experiment with using cedar or juniper oil as an enema to dissolve the organs. Numerous female relatives of Montuhotep II were prepared for burial in this manner. In all of these mummies, the brain seems to have been left in place, but the bodies are so well preserved that elaborate tattoos are still visible on their skin.

Embalmers also experimented with the position of the arms during this period. In some cases, the arms lie at the side of the body as before , but we also see instances such as the mummy of Wah where the arms are folded across the chest. The brain was often, but not always, removed through the nose.

Bandaging becomes more thorough, with an additional layer forming a cocoon around the whole body.