Why Ancient Egyptian Were Mummifying their Dead?

Why Ancient Egyptian Were Mummifying their Dead?

The Origin of the Egyptian Mythology:

Surely you have asked yourself one day why the Ancient Egyptians used to mummify their dead ones, as everything in the life of the Ancient Egyptians it came from their believes and thoughts about the origin of the universe.

The begging of the universe in Ancient Egypt as they believed was from god Atum or in other versions god Ra, who is the hidden one who created himself from only saying his name, at first he was living under water in the eternal ocean but after a while he came to the surface of water, created a mound and lived on the top of it. After a while he created the second generations from the gods which were Geb and Nut; Geb was god who representing the earth and Nut was goddess who representing the Sky but they get married without the permission of god Atum so he cursed them with separation by the third generation of gods which were Shu god of air and his spouse goddess Tefnut goddess of humidity during the whole year except for 5 days (For your information the number of days in in the year of Ancient Egypt was 360, this 360 was divided into 12 months and for the weeks they used to divide the month for 3 weeks each is 10 days).

 This 5 days was taken from god Atum by god of the wisdom, god Thoth who was created even before god Atum himself as the wisdom is exist before anything, these five days was taken from god Atum by god Thoth after god Geb and goddess Nut complained to him about the punishment they had given by god Atum and as a result of that god Thoth asked to play Senet (Which was the original form of the modern chess game and you will find one in the collection of the King Tutankhamen) with god Atum and every time god Thoth win he will take 1 \ 72 from the light of god Atum, god Thoth fortunately won and not one time but five and the sum of the score became 5 \ 360 and because of this god Thoth took 5 days over the 360 days that was the only chance for god Geb and goddess Nut to meet.

In these days every year the gods were able to meet and as a result of these meetings they came with the last and most famous generation of gods, god Osiris of fertility, goddess Isis of magic, god Seth of desert and goddess Nephthys of moaning.

Isis and Seth was Twins, Nephthys and Osiris was Twins so Isis married Osiris and Nephthys married Seth and then the famous confliction happened between the siblings and Osiris became the first one to be mummified in Ancient Egypt by god Anubis who was the protector of the necropolises and the first embalmer also, after that Osiris became the main god of the afterlife, and because of this mythology the mummification became a main feature in Ancient Egypt.

From this mythology and other circumstances the Ancient Egyptians start to believe in the afterlife concept, from the dawn of history the Ancient Egyptian was a good observer and due to this skill he noticed the duration of many things after thinking of its death as:

• The Sun: The Ancient Egyptians noticed that every morning the sun rise in the sky in stages starts with weak shine and then gradually its glow and light became shiner and then dies again every day this happed so he linked this and the death as he understood that after the death he will be revived again.
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• The Nile River: Nearly the same happened with the sun happened with the Nile River as every year the inundation will came to irrigate the dry land and give the life to the plants which also gave the idea of the afterlife.
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• The Desert: Ancient Egyptians was used to bury their dead ones in a bit in the ground with their simple equipment in the desert in the embryo position with their face facing the west, after they opened some old pits accidently they found that the buried bodies were preserved well by the dryness of the desert’s sand so that supported their thought about the afterlife and their need to the body well preserved to have peaceful resurrection.
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With all these reasons combined together the Ancient Egyptian started to form an imagination about what will happen next after death they were not giving attention to their quality of life as their life after death, their houses were from mud brick which is a very weak building material so with inundation every year there were no houses left from that period of history but we can find their well-preserved tombs with its decorations that turned them into masterpieces, and even they started to write religious texts on the walls of this tombs and with time this texts evaluated with the changes of the main gods from kingdom to another.

 For the normal people the process of mummification and the tomb preparing were way more different than the whole process for the Kings, for Example:

• The Locals: They were more simple than the higher classes like the officers and the scribes, not all of the locals where mummified only those who have money can afford the costs of these process as the mummification process used to be done in 70 days with many patience and steps with the presence of the priests, their tombs were simple with less decorations and have few number of equipment.
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• The Kings and High Officials: On the other hand the higher classes especially the Kings were having more attention, the Kings were mummified with the best materials and their bodies were rubbed with essence oils and after removing the organs and mummifying it their bodies were be stuffed with fragranced wood, each organ was mummified and was put in a specific jar for each organ, there were many priests must attend the process as the lector priest, the priest performing the (Opening Mouth Ritual) and after the Royal mummifying process the King was moved to his Funerary Complex to be buried, the Complex was consists of the Tomb which is the main part where the deceased is buried with all his treasures and equipment that he will need in the afterlife even food was buried either, the Funerary Temple was where the priests used to read rituals for the king after his death, the Cause Way where the parade of the King were walking from the Valley Temple to the Funerary Temple then to the Tomb and at the end the Valley Temple was the link between the Nile River and the Funerary Temple where the Complex should be linked with the Nile Rive.