What is mummy?

- a mummy is any dead body where the fleshy parts have been somehow preserved - Mummies are found all over the world - and have been preserved in a variety of ways -Sometimes they are mummified accidentally by nature, and sometimes they are mummified intentionally by human Types of mummy -black mummy - the first black mummy named Uan Muhuggiag found in 1958 in Libyan Sahara by an Italian archaeologist,Fabrizio Mori - its more than 6000 years old mummy,and its older than any comparable Egyptian mummy -frozen mummy The first frozen mummy named Otzi found in Similaun mountain between Austria and Italy on September 1991 It was found by Helmut and Erika Simon,Germany tourists - it is a well-preserved natural mummy of a man who lived about 3,300 BCE -bandaged mummy -firstly found in Egypt -were about to focus on this kind of mummy Egyptian mummy -The first evidence of intentional mummification in Egypt dates to 3500 B.C -Because Egypt is avery dry place, where it hardly everrains, the ground there is also very very dry. When you bury people in such dry ground, they often don't rot. There are too few bacteria alive in the ground. Instead, the bodies often gradually dry up and turn into mummies -The richer you were, the more complicated your mummification was Why Egyptians made mummy? -The Ancient Egyptians believed that when a person died they made a journey to the next world -Egyptians believed that a person's soul had many parts, and that all people and the parts of their souls were sculpted from clay by the ram-headed god named Khnum -One of these parts was called the ka. These ka statues were a back-up, to make sure the ka had a body to belong to, just in case something should happen to the mummy. When Egyptians left food and water at the tomb, they were leaving it for the ka -another part of the soul was called ba. The ba was usually shown as a bird with a human head that looked like that of the dead person. Unlike the ka, which stayed in the tomb with the mummy, the ba was able to leave. It could fly out of the tomb, magically passing through walls of solid rock. But it always returned to the mummy at night.

The mummification process -The entire process of mummification took 70 days to complete -The chief embalmer was known as the hery seshta. He wore a jackal mask to represent Anubis, the god of mummification. Assistants of the chief is called wetyw.the wetyw bandaged the body and carried out other tasks of the embalming process. The mummification process takes 2 stages: -embalming -wrapping -In the past, when the internal organs were removed from a body they were placed in hollow canopic jars. solid wood or stone canopic jars were still buried with the mummy to symbolically protect the internal organs -there are 4 canopic jars -Imsety the human-headed god looks after the liver. - Hapy the baboon-headed god looks after the lungs - Duamutef the jackal-headed god looks after the stomach - Qebehsenuef the falcon-headed god looks after the intestines. - the heart is left in the body because they believed that heart is the organ for thought and they wanted the person to be able to think in the afterlife Sarcophagus Their sarcophagus is actually 5 coffins: -first outer case is made of wood and gold foil -second case is just the same with the first one -the third case is made of 250lbs pure gold -the fourth is only a layer that has spells,jewels,and anything that will be needed in the afterlife -the fifth of course the mummy