The Mummification Process: How Egyptians Preserved the Body
Mummification was the technical heart of Egyptian funerary religion. For more than three thousand years, the Egyptians developed, refined, and transmitted a complex set of techniques for preserving the human body after death. These techniques were not the work of curious experimenters but the practical expression of a religious conviction: that the Ka, Ba, and Akh, the three parts of the soul, required an intact body to survive.
The mature mummification process of the New Kingdom, which is the best documented, took approximately seventy days. It was carried out in a workshop called the wabet, attached to a temple or a mortuary complex, and was performed by a guild of embalmers organized under the supervision of a high priest. The process is examined in detail in the related pages how embalmers prepared the body and canopic jars.
One preliminary point, because the literature is full of an unhelpful consensus on it. “Mummification” gets described in most textbooks as a single, well-defined procedure, the seventy-day New Kingdom ritual laid out in orderly stages. This is true of the most elaborate royal and noble burials, and it is the version that Herodotus reports. It is misleading for the rest of Egyptian history. The actual practice varied enormously: by period, by region, by social class, and by the individual choices of the family paying for the work. Some mummies of the Late Period are little more than skeletons wrapped in linen; some Ptolemaic mummies in the Fayum are extraordinarily elaborate. To say “the Egyptians mummified the body” obscures how varied the practice really was. This page focuses on the New Kingdom procedure as the best documented, but it is one version of a flexible tradition, not the tradition itself.
The Origins of Mummification
The earliest preserved bodies in Egypt are not mummies in the strict sense. They are bodies buried in the hot, dry sand of the predynastic period, around 4500 BCE. The desiccation produced by the sand, combined with the lack of moisture in the soil, preserved soft tissue in a way that burial in a coffin or a stone-cut tomb could not. The Egyptians appear to have taken this accident as their starting point.
The transition to deliberate mummification came in the early dynastic period, when bodies were placed in stone-cut tombs and began to decay. To prevent this, the embalmers developed a series of techniques: wrapping the body in linen, treating the body with resin, and eventually removing the internal organs that decayed most quickly. The earliest full mummies, from the late fourth millennium BCE, already show signs of deliberate preservation.
By the Old Kingdom, mummification had become a sophisticated craft. By the New Kingdom, it had reached a peak of technical skill, with results that have rarely been matched since. The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 produced a striking demonstration of the art: more than three thousand years after his death, the king’s body, with its golden mask and his bandaged limbs, was essentially intact.
The Purpose of Preservation
Why did the Egyptians go to such lengths to preserve the body? The answer lies in their concept of the soul. A human being, in their view, was not a single self but a compound of body, name, shadow, and several spiritual elements. The Ka, in particular, was thought to depend on the body as a kind of home. If the body was destroyed, the Ka had nowhere to dwell. The soul would wander, hungry and discontent, unable to participate in the offerings left by the living or to join the gods in the afterlife.
The full theological context is examined in the journey of the soul in ancient Egypt. The mummification process itself, however, was practical: it was the work of removing the conditions of decay and replacing them with the conditions of permanence. What could not be removed, the soft tissue of the body, was dried, treated, and wrapped in materials that resisted further change.
The Mummification Process: An Overview
The standard New Kingdom mummification process took seventy days and proceeded in a number of well-defined stages. The first stage was the purification of the body. The second was the removal of the internal organs. The third was the desiccation of the body with natron. The fourth was the anointing and wrapping of the body. The fifth was the placement of the mummy in its coffin and the final ritual.
Each stage had both a technical and a religious dimension. The technical work was the domain of the embalmers; the religious work was the domain of the priests. The two were closely intertwined, and most stages of the process were accompanied by spells, recitations, and ritual gestures.
Purification
The process began with the washing of the body, both to prepare it for the technical work and to render it ritually pure. The body was placed on a stone slab slanted toward a drain, and water mixed with natron was poured over it. This was not a symbolic bath but a real cleansing, intended to remove the impurities that the embalmers and the deceased would otherwise be handling.
Evisceration
The next stage was the removal of the internal organs. The brain was extracted first, by way of the nose. A long, hooked bronze instrument was inserted through the nostril, and the brain was liquefied and drained. This may have been the most technically demanding step; in some cases the embalmers had to abandon the attempt and leave the brain in place. The brain was not considered important in Egyptian thought (it was associated with bone and marrow, not with thought or feeling), and its removal was seen as a routine matter of hygiene.
The internal organs of the chest and abdomen were removed through an incision made in the left flank. The liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines were taken out, treated, and stored in four canopic jars — the four containers protected by one of each of the Four Sons of Horus (Imsety/Hapy/Duamutef/Qebehsenuef). The heart was usually left in place, as the seat of intellect, memory, and moral character. Without the heart, the deceased could not speak in his own defense at the weighing of the heart.
The technical and ritual aspects of this stage are examined in how embalmers prepared the body.
Desiccation
The body, now emptied of its organs, was packed and covered with natron, a natural salt mixture found in the Wadi Natrun and other parts of Egypt. The natron absorbed the water from the soft tissue, desiccating it in a way that inhibited bacterial growth. The body was left in the natron for forty days, after which it was removed, washed, and inspected.
The Egyptians appear to have understood the principle of desiccation well. They were less successful at removing all the water, and the tissues of even the best mummies often retain a substantial proportion of their original moisture. But the treatment was sufficient to slow the decay process dramatically, and many New Kingdom mummies have survived for more than three thousand years.
Anointing and Resin
After desiccation, the body was anointed with oils and resins. These substances had several functions. They softened the desiccated tissue, making it more lifelike. They also acted as mild antiseptics, inhibiting further bacterial activity. Finally, they were ritually important: the anointing of the body was the act by which the deceased was identified with the gods, who were themselves described as being anointed with the sweet-smelling resin of Punt.
The most common resins used in mummification were myrrh, frankincense, and a form of pine resin. Modern analysis has also identified the use of a wax-like substance that may have served as a sealing agent. The resins, on the whole, were expensive and the quantity used in the most elaborate mummies, particularly royal ones, was substantial.
Wrapping
The body was then wrapped in linen. The wrapping was not a single piece of cloth but a complex multilayered construction that could include dozens of meters of linen and hundreds of individual bandages. Each limb was wrapped separately; each finger and toe was wrapped individually. Amulets were placed between the layers, at the points they were meant to protect.
The wrapping was both a technical and a magical act. Technically, it held the body together and protected it from the environment. Magically, it identified the body with the form of Osiris, who was himself mummified. The Book of the Dead contains spells for each stage of the wrapping, identifying each bandage with a god and each layer with a stage of creation.
The Final Coffin and Burial
The wrapped mummy was placed in a series of nested coffins, often three or more, each elaborately decorated and inscribed. The innermost coffin was a human-shaped case, carved or molded to the form of the deceased, and the outer coffins were progressively larger and more elaborately decorated. The whole assemblage was placed in a stone sarcophagus, which was in turn sealed in the tomb.
The tomb itself was the final stage. Some tombs, like the pyramids of Giza, were monumental constructions on the surface of the earth. Others, like the Valley of the Kings, were hidden chambers cut into the rock. Each tomb was equipped with the offerings, the texts, and the protective images that the deceased would need in the afterlife.
The Embalmers
The embalmers were a skilled and respected craft guild. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BCE, described three packages of varying cost and elaboration that the embalmers offered to the family of the deceased. The embalmers’ art was a closely held body of knowledge. It was transmitted from master to apprentice, often within families. The guilds had a special legal and social status, and their work was protected by religious and royal sanction. The most elaborate mummies, like those of the pharaohs, were the work of the most senior embalmers in the country, who were paid by the state.
A full account of the embalmers’ techniques is given in how embalmers prepared the body.
Mummification in the Late Period
Mummification continued in Egypt into the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, though the technique changed. Some of the most elaborate mummies in Egyptian history date to the late period, with gilded masks, beaded nets, and elaborate coffin decoration. But the quality of preservation declined. By the time of the Roman occupation, some mummies were little more than skeletons wrapped in linen, and the religious convictions that had driven the art had largely faded.
When the Arab conquest of Egypt began in the seventh century CE, the production of mummies effectively ceased. The last known mummifications are from the early medieval period, in the Coptic communities of the Fayum and elsewhere. The art of mummification, which had lasted more than three thousand years, was finally brought to an end.
Mummification and the Modern Study of Egypt
Modern science has been able to study the mummification process in remarkable detail. X-ray, CT scanning, and endoscopy have made it possible to examine the interior of mummies without unwrapping them. Chemical analysis has identified the resins, oils, and natron that the embalmers used. DNA analysis has revealed the family relationships between mummies, and has occasionally rewritten history, as in the case of Tutankhamun, whose mummy has been the subject of some of the most intensive scientific investigation in the history of archaeology.
These studies have shown that the embalmers were remarkably skillful. They were also remarkably consistent. The same basic process (purification, evisceration, desiccation, anointing, wrapping) was used for more than two thousand years. The variation came in the elaborateness of the materials, the quality of the workmanship, and the religious texts that accompanied the process. The underlying conviction, however, was unchanged: that the body was the home of the soul, and that the soul required a home to survive.