The mummies of ancient Egypt were essential spiritual vehicles.
Consequently, the embalmers of mummies loom large in Egyptian civilization.
Yet little is known about them, though recent discoveries have shed new light.
Keep watching to discover what it was really like to be an ancient Egyptian embalmer.
To understand what life was like for an ancient Egyptian embalmer, you need to know about Egyptian
religious beliefs. Egyptians believed that a person needed to live in harmony with the
cosmic order. After a person died, they were judged by Osiris, the Egyptian god of death.
Their heart was weighed against a feather. If it was lighter, then their spirit,
which was known by the term ka, would pass on to an afterlife in the Field of Reeds.
But if people's hearts were too heavy, they'd be devoured by Ammit, a crocodile-shaped goddess.
The Field of Reeds was a mirror image of the physical world.
Ka wasn't an ethereal thing. Instead, it was intertwined with the physical body.
Both were needed to pass into the Field of Reeds. According to Egyptologist Rita Lucarelli,
"The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with the afterlife.
They believed that there is another life after the life here on Earth."
This was modeled on the myth of the rebirth of Osiris. Thus,
the idea of embalming by preserving the dead body through mummification was born.
Mummification started by accident. The arid Egyptian environment is very conducive to
mummification. The first Egyptian mummies were probably bodies dried out in graves dug in the
sand through natural processes. The resulting well-preserved corpses were seen as an inspiring
sign from the gods that this is how the dead should be treated. As Egyptian society developed,
people began to place the bodies of their rulers within sarcophagi in tombs. However,
bodies don't preserve as well in tombs as they do in dry desert sands. So embalmers had to develop
the techniques they needed for mummification. By about 2600 B.C., Egyptians probably started
to embalm the dead on purpose. This practice began with royalty and continued for over two millennia.
Egyptian pharaohs were considered to be divinely appointed and acted as the
intermediary of the gods. For the embalmers, this meant that their work was a sacred act,
so their job associated them with the priesthood and granted them high status.
The exact details of how Egyptian embalmers mummified the dead is a trade secret that's
still being pieced together by archaeologists. There aren't any existing Egyptian technical
manuals on the subject, though the ancient Greeks did write about it.
The first account is by Herodotus, who wrote about embalmers in 430 B.C. in his Histories.
Embalmers first needed to remove the internal organs, which easily decayed.
The process began by taking the body to a temporary building where the embalmers took
an iron hook, inserted it up the cadaver's nostril, and penetrated the brain cavity.
A good embalmer tried very hard not to break the nose, though sometimes it was unavoidable.
Once done, the hook was used to swirl around the grey matter and extract it.
The brain bits were discarded, since the Egyptians believed that the brain was useless.
"If I only had a brain! Ohh!"
Instead, they believed that the heart was the source of a person's individuality,
including their intelligence, wisdom, and personality.
According to Grafton Elliot Smith and Warren R. Dawson's classic account of embalming,
after the brain was tossed out, work on the body proper began. A scribe marked where to
cut an opening on the corpse's side. Cutters, or slitters, did this work with an obsidian knife.
Then the lungs, liver, intestines, and all other organs except the kidneys and the heart
were removed. These cutters were actually not embalmers, since the work they did was
considered desecration. They were of much lower status, and after they finished their work,
they fled the scene having objects and curses hurled at them as a matter of ceremony.
"Boo!" "Weak!" "Ooh!"
The embalmers then began the preservation process. They removed the remaining organs
and cleared out the body cavity and washed the body out with substances including palm wine.
Then in order to counter any odor from putrefaction, they applied liberal amounts
of aromatics such as myrrh and cinnamon. Meanwhile, organs that had been removed
were washed with palm wine and placed into jars for preservation. When all was done, the heart
was placed back inside the body, as the dead needed their hearts for when Osiris judged them.
In later years, the heart was replaced with a scarab, symbolizing Osiris's rebirth. Meanwhile,
the kidneys, which were considered unimportant, were most likely left inside the body.
After the organ removal, the embalmers would dry the corpse with natron,
a form of naturally occurring salt that the Egyptians harvested from lake beds.
Embalmers would both bury the body with natron and insert packets of it inside the body cavity.
Ideally, the corpse sat like this for 40 days. After that period, the embalmers took the body,
washed it, and removed the salt packets. The resulting body was dried out but otherwise
recognizable. To improve its appearance, the embalmers would occasionally fill the inside
with rags or straw to puff out sunken areas. They even added false eyes, sometimes using onions.
The embalmers then entered the last stage of the work, spending about 30 days dressing the body.
They applied sticky resin to the body and wrapped it with hundreds of yards of linen bandages.
They occasionally stopped either to insert a protective amulet or to recite a chant.
Then after a little more than two months of work, the mummy was complete.
All that was left was the "Opening of the Mouth Ceremony," in which the mummy
was placed into a standing position and symbolically reanimated for the afterlife.
"It's alive! It's alive! It's alive!"
Embalmers originally treated only Egyptian royalty. But when the Old Kingdom gave way to
the Middle Kingdom around 1938 B.C., the practice started to be extended to the population at large.
Embalming reached its peak as an art and science during the New Kingdom,
which is dated from 1552 to 1069 B.C., though it continued for centuries after.
Throughout this period, embalmers would modify their recipes and ingredients,
but in general, the mummification process remained the same.
The embalming business grew into one of Egypt's most thriving industries. As Salima Ikram,
an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo, noted in a 2006 interview with Nova,
"Some people estimate [that there were] 70 million mummies, but I think that's an underestimate.
Mummification was carried out in Egypt [...] for over 3,000 years.
I'm sure more human mummies were made during this time period."
Mummification may have moved to the masses, but not all mummies were created equally.
In 2018, field archaeologists at the Saqqara burial ground found what was purported to
be history's first funeral home deep underground in long-ignored shafts.
After two years of excavation, they discovered a workshop dated to approximately 600 B.C.
It sported a raised table, drainage channels for blood, and sensible ventilation shafts.
If there was any concern about the smell, the very large incense
burner could furnish enough aroma to overpower any whiff of putrefaction.
Furthermore, the archaeologists found considerable amounts of pottery shards,
as well as oils that were used in the embalming process. When reconstructed, Egyptologists saw
that these were labeled with ingredients and instructions that provided clues as to what
ingredients the embalmers were using to prepare the mummies. All of this adds to our knowledge
of ancient Egyptian society. While there is a significant amount of written and even artistic
evidence of embalming, there had been little archaeological evidence prior to this discovery.
While Egyptian royalty and the richest in society could afford the full embalming treatment,
those of lesser means needed to find a more middling vehicle to pass into the afterlife.
This was no problem for the embalmers who offered a menu of options that a dead person's relatives
could choose from. The process started with the deceased's next of kin being presented with model
mummies, each of different quality. The bereaved needed to select a tasteful yet affordable plan.
According to Herodotus, there were three basic plans. There was the full royal treatment. Then
there was the middle-class option, which consisted of injecting cedar oil into the body cavity with
natron. This dissolved the organs, which were then purged. A low-income person could resort
to a simple purge followed by the natron treatment before the body was returned to the next of kin.
Herodotus's account holds up to archaeological findings, as some mummies were buried in
private while others were buried in shared chambers. According to National Geographic,
the embalmers also provided ongoing services in a priestly capacity, such as caring for the soul of
the deceased. Literally hundreds of bodies could be housed within their tombs. The family of the
mummified were then responsible for bringing cash donations to keep their lost kin in good graces.
Embalmers also had a flourishing business mummifying animals.
Since the afterlife was considered to be just like the living world,
Egyptians expected to have all the necessary materials for a rewarding post-life.
This included animals, which could be used as food, sacrifice to the gods, or as pets. Cats,
ibises, crocodiles, dogs, hawks, and snakes are all among the animals that were mummified.
"Why'd it have to be snakes?"
One section of the Saqqara burial ground contains an estimated 8 million mummified
dogs and 4 million ibises in a neighboring area. These were not pets, but instead votive
offerings to the gods Anubis and Thoth. It isn't clear if the embalmers themselves were
engaged in the procurement of these animals or if they were just doing the embalming.
Nevertheless, there was money to be made in this practice. As noted by Nature,
"The animal mummification 'industry' required high production volumes,
necessitating significant infrastructure, resources, and staffing of farms that reared
animals for mummification and subsequent sale. Dedicated keepers were employed to
breed the animals, while other animals were imported or gathered from the wild.
Temple priests killed and embalmed the animals so they were made suitable as offerings to the gods."
While Ka may last forever, the embalming business in Egypt did not. It's unclear when exactly the
practice of embalming ended, but it's believed to be connected to the rise of Christianity.
As Egyptians converted to Christianity between the fourth and seventh centuries A.D.,
the demand for mummification dwindled, although it's worth noting that early Christians in
Egypt did accept mummification to some degree until it faded away.
And so, the embalming craft of ancient Egypt became lost to history and is now
being pieced together by archaeologists. In the embalmers' 3,000-year history, it's
estimated that they created at least 70 million mummies, as well as millions of mummy animals.
Sadly, most of the legacy of ancient Egypt's embalmers has been lost to posterity due to
cannibalism and Victorian-era gothic parties. Over the centuries, mummies were taken from their tombs
for use as medicine. These remains were used as a snake oil treatment for a variety of ailments.
One 18th century medical treatise lists mummy remains for use as a blood thinner,
a cough suppressant, a painkiller, and even a menstrual aid.
There were also rumors that mummies were used for fuel for steam locomotives and fertilizer,
though neither of these claims seems to have a basis in fact. But it is true that mummy
remains were used as a paint pigment and that British Victorians held mummy unwrapping parties.
The trend actually started in 1698 with the French consul in Cairo, and by the 19th century,
British Victorians were wild for unwrapping mummies. These public dissections actually
humanized the ancient Egyptians for many people and provided knowledge
about what they were like as individuals. Ultimately, though, it was the embalmers
who knew their clients intimately as they transported them to the Field of Reeds.
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