The ancient Egyptians believed that the physical body was essential to the afterlife. The soul needed a home to return to. Without a preserved body, the ka — the life force — had nowhere to go, and the soul faced permanent death rather than eternal life. This belief drove one of the most elaborate, technically sophisticated preservation practices in human history.
The word mummification comes from the Arabic mummiya, meaning bitumen or pitch, reflecting a mistaken early belief that Egyptian mummies were treated with tar. They were not. The process relied primarily on natron, a naturally occurring salt found in dried lakebeds in Egypt, combined with desiccating oils and resins that prevented decay.
The Seventy Days
The complete mummification process took approximately seventy days — a number that matched the period during which the star Sirius was absent from the Egyptian sky before its annual reappearance, making the timeframe ritually significant as well as practical. The process fell into distinct phases carried out by specialist embalmers at a tent or workshop called the ibu, the place of purification.
The first step was the removal of the brain. The Egyptians did not consider the brain the seat of thought or personality — that role belonged to the heart. The brain was simply waste matter that needed to be removed before it decomposed and damaged the face. Embalmers typically broke through the ethmoid bone at the back of the nasal cavity using a long hook, scrambled the brain tissue, and drained it through the nose. Occasionally they removed it through the back of the skull instead. The resulting cavity was sometimes packed with linen or resin.
Next came the removal of the internal organs. An embalmer called the ripper made a single incision in the left side of the abdomen using a flint knife — flint rather than metal, apparently for ritual reasons. Through this incision, the liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines were removed. Each was cleaned, treated with natron, wrapped in linen, and placed in one of four canopic jars, each protected by one of the Four Sons of Horus. Hapy (baboon head) guarded the lungs; Imsety (human head) guarded the liver; Duamutef (jackal head) guarded the stomach; Qebehsenuef (falcon head) guarded the intestines.
The heart was left in the body. It would be needed for the weighing of the heart ceremony in the afterlife. The kidneys were also often left in place, apparently considered too minor to require separate treatment.
Desiccation
With the organs removed, the body cavity was rinsed with wine — likely for its antiseptic properties — and packed with natron, linen, and sometimes sawdust or resin-soaked bandages to maintain the body’s shape. The entire body was then covered with dry natron and left for approximately forty days.
Natron is a remarkable substance. It draws moisture from organic tissue, halts bacterial growth, and leaves the treated material dry and preserved without becoming brittle. The forty-day natron treatment reduced the body to a fraction of its original weight, left the skin leathery and brown, and effectively stopped decomposition.
After the natron was removed, the body was cleaned, anointed with oils and resins, and the temporary packing replaced with permanent stuffing — clean linen, sawdust, or natron wrapped in cloth — to restore a lifelike shape. The incision was sewn or covered with a decorative plate. Eyes were sometimes replaced with artificial ones of glass or stone, or the lids padded from below with linen to prevent the sunken look of deflated eyeballs.
Wrapping
The wrapping of the mummy was the longest phase and was accompanied by elaborate ritual. Specialist wrappers applied hundreds of meters of linen bandages, each layer accompanied by specific prayers and the placement of protective amulets. The most important amulet was the heart scarab, a large beetle-shaped stone placed over the chest with an inscription from the Book of the Dead instructing the heart not to speak against its owner during the weighing ceremony.
Between the layers of bandage went the djed pillar (stability), the tyet knot (protection of Isis), golden finger and toe covers for royalty, and numerous other protective objects. The bandaging of the face was performed last and with special care. Over the face of wealthy individuals went a cartonnage mask — moulded plaster and linen painted and gilded — or, for royalty, a solid gold mask like Tutankhamun’s.
Did It Work?
Remarkably well, in many cases. Mummies that have survived three thousand years in stable conditions are often extraordinarily well preserved. The mummy of Ramesses II, who died around 1213 BCE, shows us a tall, thin-faced man with long white hair and an aquiline nose. His skin is intact, his fingernails are preserved, and the features of his face are recognizable as matching his portrait statues. Medical examination of royal mummies has revealed details of their health, diet, diseases, and causes of death that would have been impossible to know from written records alone.
The practice evolved significantly over time. Old Kingdom mummification was less sophisticated than New Kingdom technique, which in turn differed from Late Period practice. The very best examples of the craft date to the New Kingdom, roughly 1550 to 1069 BCE. Later mummies were often more elaborately wrapped but less carefully prepared — in some cases, Ptolemaic mummies with beautiful painted cartonnage cases contain bodies that were quite poorly embalmed.
Mummification was not exclusively for humans. Sacred animals — cats, ibises, bulls, crocodiles, baboons — were mummified by the millions, especially in the Late and Ptolemaic periods when animal cults reached their peak. The cats of the goddess Bastet were mummified and offered to the goddess by the hundreds of thousands. Modern X-ray studies have found that many animal mummies contain nothing at all, or only fragments of animals, suggesting an industry that moved faster than the supply of sacred animals could support.