Online Activities: Ancient Egypt

Artificial Mummies
In the Old Kingdom c. 2650-2150 BCE

Two methods evolved to preserve bodies artificially: linen and plaster and natron.

Linen and Plaster
The first method of preservation was to wrap the body in as many layers of linen as possible. Individual fingers and toes were wrapped separately, and the whole body, when wrapped like this, kept the form of a human being. [These mummies look like the ones in movies and comic books.]

Sometimes plaster was smoothed over the face and body, to preserve the appearance of a human being even better. The face might be carefully modeled to look like the deceased. Hair and facial features, such as moustaches or prominent eyes, could be indicated.

Bodies treated in this way show what the people looked like in the Age of the Pyramids. The body beneath the wrappings, however, is usually skeletal. Linen stiffened with plaster or gesso is called cartonnage and was used in mummification until the beginning of the Christian era.

Natron
Natron is a kind of salt that occurs naturally in Egypt. It can be dug up in the Wadi Natrun, and other places. Its chemical composition varies from one place to another, but the best is more or less half sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and about the same of sodium carbonate (washing soda), with sodium chloride (table salt) and sodium sulfate as 'impurities.' Poor quality natron is almost all sodium chloride.

In mummification, this salt takes the place of the hot, dry desert sand. The process is actually rather similar to preserving fish or meat by desiccation. The body is placed on a special table, perhaps on a layer of natron, and covered with natron. Natron was also used internally. Small packets of it were made up and put inside the body cavity to speed the drying process.

The Ancient Egyptians did not discover the best way to mummify a body all at once. During the Age of the Pyramids, there were many experiments. One important observation was that the internal organs, because of their moisture, would rot quickly, and should be removed if the body was to be preserved artificially. The lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines were taken out of the body, dried out separately, and placed in four canopic jars. During the Old Kingdom, these jars had simple flat lids. They were placed in a separate stone compartment in the burial chamber of Fifth and Sixth Dynasty pyramids. A canopic jar of Pepy I has been found, intact.

At some times, a solution of natron in water seems to have been used to 'pickle' the dead person. The evidence for this comes from canopic jars. The organs of the Fourth Dynasty queen Hetepheres, the mother of King Khufu, for example, seem to have been preserved in solution. Because there was a very long delay (over two hundred days) between the death and burial of Queen Meresankh, also of the Fourth Dynasty, it is sometimes argued that she was mummified by being placed in a solution of natron. Experiments have shown at a 4% solution of natron will preserve small animals, but to preserve a human body in this way would require a very large containers - something bigger than a bathtub - for the liquid and the body, and no such containers have ever been found.

 

 

Predynastic burial

Egyptian Desert