Mummification is still one of the wonders of the ancient Egyptian civilization that not all of its secrets have been revealed.
The word ‘mummy’comes from the Arabic word mumiyah, and it means bitumen.
A mummy is a body that has been preserved so that it will last forever. The ancient Egyptians believed that if a person's body was preserved, he or she would continue living in the next world.
The first evidence for mummification procedures as found in the last of the first dynasty pharaohs regime. The legend says that the first Egyptian to be embalmed and reincarnated was Osiris himself.
Until the popularizing of the Osiris cult, mummification was only practiced on kings and those closest to them, but from the Middle Kingdom onwards it was made available to all who could afford it.
Before mummification the Egyptians buried their dead in simple earthern pits. The dry sandy soil of Egypt had a natural tendency to preserve dead bodies, allowing the fluids to drain away and preventing the corpse from decaying and thus creating lifelike and natural mummies.
Later, the ancient Egyptians began burying their dead in coffins to protect them from wild animals in the desert. However, they realized that bodies placed in coffins decayed when they were not exposed to the hot, dry sand of the desert.
Over many centuries, the ancient Egyptians developed a method of preserving bodies so they would remain lifelike. The process included embalming the bodies and wrapping them in strips of linen. Today we call this process mummification.
