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Mummy
The practice of preserving dead bodies occurred all over the ancient world. Egypt is perhaps best known for its mummies, but the Inca of Peru also perfected a preservation process. Preserved bodies have also been found in such diverse places as peat bogs in Denmark, the Canary Islands, and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.Modern mummies have taken center stage in a number of movies as evildoers. For instance, in the 1999 film The Mummy, archeologists stumble into an ancient Egyptian tomb, causing an angry and lovesick mummy to wake up.
The Egyptians dreaded the thought that one day their world might cease to exist. With their belief in the power of magic, they developed a funerary cult which, in their eyes, ensured their survival for ever. This involved preserving the body of the deceased. The embalmers took the body to the Beautiful House, where they worked. They made a cut in the left side of the body with a flint knife and removed the liver and lungs. These were dried out and stored in special vessels called Canopic Jars. The brain was also removed, but the heart was left in the body, so that it could be weighed in the afterlife. Then the body was covered with crystals of a substance called Natron, which stopped it rotting, packed with dry material like leaves or sawdust, and wrapped in linen bandages.
The final stage of the embalming process was to put the body in the coffin. For a rich person, this could be an elaborate container made up of several different, richly decorated layers. The body would then be well preserved and, as far as the Egyptians were concerned would last forever. The reason they did this was that they thought that after a person's physical death a number of elements lived on. The most important was a person's "Ka" which they thought of as the body's double and which could bring the corpse back to life. Another spirit which survived was a person's "Ba", which had the head of the deceased and the body of a hawk. They also thought that a person's shadow had an eternal existance as well as their name.
Ancient Egyptian beliefs on the Afterlife:
The Ancient Egyptians believed that, the journey into the afterlife required a sin-free heart and the ability to recite the spells, passwords, and formulas of the Book of the Dead.
The beliefs were that the deceased appears before a panel of 14 judges to make an accounting for his deeds during his life. Anubis (who is depicted with the head of a jackal) who represents the underworld and mummification leads the deceased before the scale. Anubis then weighs the heart of the deceased against the feather of Ma'at (goddess of truth and justice).
If the heart of the deceased outweighs the feather, then the deceased has a heart which had been made heavy with evil misdeeds. In that event, Ammut (god with the crocodile head and hippopotamus legs) would devour the heart, condemning the deceased to oblivion for eternity. However, if the feather outweighs the heart, and then the deceased has led a righteous life and would proceed to be presented before Osiris (lord of the underworld) to join the afterlife.
Horis (god depicted with a falcon head) leads the deceased to Osiris. Horus represents the personification of the Pharaoh during life, and his father Osiris represents the personification of the Pharaoh after death.
Osiris sits on his throne, represented as a mummy. On his head is the white crown of Lower Egypt (the north). Behind him stand his wife Isis and her sister Nephthys. Together, Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys welcome the deceased to the underworld.
It was believed that after death the deceased would continue to carry out their daily occupations in the afterlife and so everything required was packed in the tomb along with the body. Therefore writing materials were often supplied along with clothing, wigs, and assorted tools.
Life was dominated by Ma'at, or the concept of justice and order. Egyptians believed there were different levels of goodness and evil. Egyptians believed that part of the personality, called the Ka, remained in the tomb. Thus elaborate and complex burial practices developed.
The deceased had his internal organs removed and they were separately treated and stored in jars of clay or stone commonly called Canopic Jars. The Canopic Jars were then closed with stoppers fashioned in the shape of four heads: human, baboon, falcon, and jackal - representing the four protective spirits called the Four Sons of Horus. The brain was sucked out of the cranial cavity and thrown away because the Egyptian's thought it was useless. Personal belongings were usually placed in the tomb to make the Ka more at home and to assist the dead in their journey into the afterlife.
Text was read from the 'Book of the Dead' and the ritual of "opening the mouth" was performed before the tomb was sealed.
The name "Book of the Dead" was the invention of the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius, who published a selection of some texts in 1842.
The Book of the Dead constituted as a collection of spells, charms, passwords, numbers and magical formulas for the use of the deceased in the afterlife.
The book described many of the basic tenets of Egyptian mythology. It was intended to guide the dead through the various trials that they would encounter before reaching the underworld. Knowledge of the appropriate spells was considered essential to achieving happiness after death. Spells or enchantments vary in distinctive ways between the texts of differing "mummies" or sarcophagi, depending on the prominence and other class factors of the deceased.
The earliest known versions of the book of the dead, date from the 16th century BC during the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1580 1350 BC). It partly incorporated two previous collections of Egyptian religious literature, known as the Coffin Texts (ca. 2000 BC) and the Pyramid Texts (ca. 2600 2300 BC).
After judgment, the dead either went to a life not unlike that on Earth or were cast to the 'Eater of the Dead' the god Set.
Some works and images taken from:
http://www.crystalinks.com/egyptafterlife.html
http://www.geocities.com/art_religious/fresco_mural_egyptian1.html
http://www.ravensflight.net/images/isis-osiris2-small.jpg
Mystic-Apotamkin |
Latest page update: made by Mystic-Apotamkin
, Jun 7 2009, 5:26 AM EDT
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