How Did The Egyptians Preserve Mummies?
A mummy is a dead body that had been preserved. The word “Mummy” comes from the Arabic which meant “a body preserved by wax or tar”. The reason the Egyptians wanted to preserve the body of the dead is that they believed in life after death, and so they wanted to prepare for it. The Egyptians buried their dead in a curled-up position in the hot sand in desert and the sand preserved the bodies. Later bodies were buried in tombs cut of rock. But the problem was the pyramids and the rock tombs were not as dry as desert sand. This is why they developed the art of mummification. In mummification when a person died, the brain, digestive organs and lungs were removed and those were preserved separately and placed in four vases called “canopic jars”. Then the body was treated with salts which were put inside the body, together with the dryness of desert air to make the body dry. After that it was bathed, rubbed with resin from pine trees, and wrapped in hundreds of yards of linen. It took 70 da
