Online Activities: Ancient Egypt

Artificial Mummies
Late Period 713 BCE - 393 CE

A great many mummies remain from the later periods of Egyptian history, and it is these that are usually encountered in museums. The bodies of the royal dead from these periods have not been found, and so we cannot know what treatment was available at the upper end of the scale. Therefore, this description applies to the bodies of the middle classes.

Some are almost as well made as those of the New Kingdom, some are very poorly preserved. The painting of bodies continued, and so did experimentation and variation. Many bodies were prepared chiefly by evisceration and then having a coating of molten resin applied. These bodies are often shiny and black, and look rather as though tar - bitumen- had been used. During the Roman period, bodies sometimes had gold leaf applied to the skin, and some mummies from this period, particularly those from the Oases, were well preserved by the natural climate. However, many beautifully wrapped corpses turn out to be mere collections of bones when x-rayed. Artificial mummification gradually died out in Egypt as the old religion which believed that the preservation of the body was essential was replaced by Christianity and Islam.

 

 

Predynastic burial

Egyptian Desert