Egyptian Mummies

Here is the website that I found about the Egyptian Mummies:
http://www.worsleyschool.net/socialarts/mummy/page.html

Mummies are bodies that have been preserved after death.Although many long-ago cultures prepared their dead as mummies, the most well-known examples are the mummies prepared by the ancient Egyptians. The Egyptians believed that it was necessary to preserve a body in order to allow the soul to survive.

The earliest ancient Egyptian mummies were preserved by heat and dryness, the heat and dryness of the sand dehydrated the bodies quickly. Later, the Egyptians began putting the dead bodies into coffins to protect them from the desert. But the mommies dacayed in the coffins. Over many centuries, the Egyptians embalmed the dead bodies and wrapped them in strips of linen.

Egyptian embalming methods involved the removal of the brain and organs from the body. And then the body was immersed in carbonate of soda, and the cavities were filled with a mixture of herbs, salt, and other substances. Finally, the body was wound with cloths saturated with similar materials.

The mummification process took seventy days. Special priests did the embalming, and it took the detailed knowledge of human anatomy. The brain was removed by carefully inserting special hooked instruments up through the nostrils, in order to pull out bits of brain tissue. It was a delicate operation, it was really easy to disfigure the face when they did this.

The embalmers then removed the organs through a cut made on the side of the abdomen. They left only the heart in place, believing it to be the center of a person's being and intelligence. Next, moisture was removed from the remaining tissue by packing the insides with a type of salt. After this was removed, the mummy was made even more life-like by filling sunken areas of the body with linen and other materials. And then they added the fake eyes, and painted the bodies usually. And for adornment, they added the jewelry. And the wrapping of the mummy. Every part of the body was wrapped individually. For instance, the hands, head, arms, feet, legs were all wrapped separately from the rest of the body. Each mummy needed hundreds of yards of linen, along with warm resin to seal the layers of fabric.

The Egyptians were really good at embalming. The feet of mummies, when unwrapped after as much as 3000 years, are often still soft and elastic. The historians estimate that by AD 700, when the practice had died out, the Egyptians had embalmed approximately 730 million bodies. archaeologists believe that millions are still preserved in undiscovered tombs and burial places. Many are probably in their original coffins, which were often, if the deceased was rich, decorated to resemble the person who had died.