How did mummification come about?
They learned about mummification the hard way. In the early days when they simply planted the dead person a few feet under the desert sand and left them there, and they were dug up either by tomb robbers or jackals, they discovered the bodies were naturally mummified. The sun beating down on the desert sand had drawn all the moisture out before the body could rot. Then they got very sophisticated and wanted nice, deep shafts way down underground. The sun’s rays couldn’t do anything there, so the bodies rotted. And because they had to take the body with them, they discovered that they had to artificially induce mummification. The soft organs in the abdominal cavity were the ones that corrupted first, so they took those out and handle them separately – either put them in little jars or wrapped them up and put them back in the cavity, so you’d have those with you as well. They were sure that if you left the organs there, their deterioration would lead to the deterioration of the rest of t
