drying out and covering body with natron ancient egypt

In between layers put warm sticky stuff like pitch or tree sap on the linen. Fingers and toes can be wrapped individually, but they don't have to be. Use long strips of the linen to carefully wrap the body. You'll need about 150 yards of linen - the length of one and a half football fields. Fill sunken parts of the body with linen and add false eyes. The body will look like a blackened dried out human. When the body is dried out completely, remove all the natron. Cover the body with natron, a salt that works great for this process, and put natron packets inside the body. Next, all the moisture must be taken out of the body.

The heart stays where it is but the stomach, liver, lungs and intestines are put in special boxes or jars, known as canopic jars. Then make a cut on the left side of the stomach and remove stomach and chest organs. Take a special hooked tool - it looks like a crochet needle - and carefully put it up the nose and scoop out brain tissue. First, internal parts of the body have to be removed. It takes 70 days to make a well preserved mummy. Back then, if you wanted your body mummified by the pros it would have cost an arm and a leg, or your weight in gold. In fact, one of the oldest Egyptian mummies (from about 3500 B.C). Desert winds and scorching hot sand would quickly dry out a dead body. This might have more to do with their very hot climate than their skill. Master Mummy MakersĮgyptians weren't the first or the last to create mummies but they were probably the best known for them.

Bodies can be dried in the sun, with fire or smoke, or by freezing it. Lack of air and moisture delays the decaying process and mummifies the body. Some of the world's best-known mummies were accidentally created when a body was put in a place where no air or moisture could get to it. This mummification can happen on purpose or by accident. It's not a skeleton or a fossil cuz some soft tissue (skin, organs and muscles) is still stuck on the bones.

What is a Mummy?Ī mummy is a very old, dead body. Whatever the case, these shriveled, icky looking bodies go back a long way. When you hear about a Mummy do you think about some stiff-legged, skeleton wrapped in loose cloth trying to seek revenge? Or maybe you think of young King Tut laid out in his golden tomb.

Drying out and covering body with natron ancient egypt