Mummy in Ancient Egypt: Equipping the Dead for Eternity

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 1998 by Alfred Mayor

The ancient Egyptians provided for life beyond death at the average age of thirty by keeping the body eternally free from corruption, entombed below a chamber where survivors could leave offerings of food or picnic while communing with the departed. The seventy-day process of preparing a body involved evisceration, desiccation, and careful wrapping in yards and yards of linen interlarded with protective amulets.

Considering the elaborateness of these preparations in the interests of eternal life, the casualness with which they were disrupted by grave robbers and even the embalmers themselves is truly paradoxical. Both aspects of the ancient Egyptian way of death are the subject of the comprehensive Mummy in Ancient Egypt: Equipping the Dead for Eternity, written by Egyptologists at the University of Cairo and at the University of Bristol in England.

The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with the evolution of burial practices and tomb robberies. The second addresses the requirements for mummification (and includes an ancient price list), amulets, wrappings, masks, coffins, sarcophagi, and canopic jars for the viscera. Part three contains a time line, a glossary, a list of ancient Egyptian cemeteries keyed to a series of maps, and lists, locations, and descriptions of royal mummies. There are a good index and an extensive bibliography but, oddly, no footnotes.

The first European interest in mummies was for the alleged medicinal properties of mummies ground to a powder. The apothecary in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet stocked it, and Francis I of France never left home without it. After Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 and the introduction of mummies into France as souvenirs, tourists felt obliged to bring back at least parts of a mummy. As result, the authors write: "as they went into sepulchres filled with mummies, they wrenched off hands, feet, arms, heads, and indeed sometimes removed entire bodies, which were taken back to Europe to reside in libraries and salons as peculiar mementos of a trip to Egypt." In the 1830s Thomas Pettigrew, who published one of the first scholarly books on the subject, held mummy unwrappings in London before crowds of ticket holders so large that on one occasion the Archbishop of Canterbury had to be turned away.

Despite the fact that in ancient Egypt impalement was the punishment for violating a royal tomb, the trade was brisk, and by the Twenty-first Dynasty (1075-945 B.C.) group interments in remote locations were the rule in an attempt to evade robbers. Often the problems began before the burial. It was discovered, for example, that the viscera of one deceased lady had evidently been lost during mummification, so the embalmers fashioned intestines of rope, a cowskin liver; and other internal organs from leather and rags. In another instance the wrappers lost track of which was the front and back of their charge, one Baki, so they arbitrarily chose a front and created feet, chest, chin, and arms with padding, Alas, Baki spent the next several millenia face down in his coffin, as was discovered when he was unwrapped in the present century.

This book is claimed to be the first modern treatment of three thousand years of Egyptian burial practices and malpractices. It is illustrated with more than four hundred drawings, black-and-white photographs of mummies in various stages of undress, and splendid color reproductions of the objects found in tombs.