June 1, 2006 — As someone who works in a region where there was no writing (ancient Peru and Chile didn't have a written language that we know of until the Spanish arrived around 1532), I am amazed sometimes how vibrant and detailed archaeological interpretations can be when you have access to such information.
In Egypt, you can actually give someone a name. This is what makes Egyptology simultaneously incredibly rich, but also incredibly complex and hard to understand and keep straight.
While I was struggling to keep all the dates and names right, I paid most attention to how the mummies were made and the mythology behind the process. I knew that there were seven anthropoid [resembling human beings] coffins in KV 63, which hinted that there may be mummies present.
The society that we know as ancient Egypt began about 5,000 years ago with the appearance of hieroglyphic writing. It was also during this time that the first hints of an artificial process to actually make mummies appeared.
We generally categorize mummies based on how they are made. Anthropogenic or "artificial" mummies are those in which humans have taken steps to halt the decomposition process; while spontaneous mummies are those in which no human action was taken — they just "spontaneously" dried out.
The oldest mummies in Egypt are actually older than Egyptian society, and would be considered spontaneous because the bodies were naturally desiccated by the heat and sand.
While I was reading about mummification throughout Egyptian history, I was paying particular attention to the New Kingdom method. For us, this was the most important time period, because the Valley of the Kings was predominantly used by New Kingdom rulers like Tutankhamen.
Dr. Arthur Aufderheide, the master-of-all-things-mummy and my former adviser from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, breaks down the New Kingdom mummification process into a series of stages:
1. Operative Stage
In this process, the brain was removed through the nose with a metal rod. Next, the organs were removed from the abdomen through a small incision on the left side of the belly. The actual location of this incision on the body was changed over time and can potentially be used to date a mummy to a particular period.
Probably the most important detail of this stage is that the heart was left in place. The heart was viewed as the seat of all thought and emotion, and it was the key to entering the afterlife. The rest of the organs were individually mummified and either placed back in the body cavity or placed into jars.
2. Desiccation Stage
After all the internal organs had been removed, the body cavity was stuffed with packages of natron, a naturally occurring salt.
3. Waterproofing and Cosmetic Stage
After about 40 days of natron-induced drying, the body was rinsed with wine. Then, the cavity was lined with a hot, liquid resin, and subsequently filled with the resin. In some periods, this stage also involved the application of artificial eyes and the stuffing of certain body parts to make them resemble the person in life.
4. Wrapping Stage
The wrapping of the body began with the fingers and toes, moved to the hands and feet, and then up the arms and legs. Larger sheets were placed over the trunk and incorporated the already wrapped limbs.
This is really only a thumbnail sketch of Egyptian mummification. The process was continually changing, which makes understanding how mummies were made so important. There are Egyptologists that can look at how the body was prepared and tell you what time period it belongs to. Incredible stuff.
For me, the most striking aspect of all of this was the care that was taken to make sure that the body survived. From mummifying individual organs to tying down finger and toenails, ensuring survival of the body ensured survival of the soul.
If the heart (which, remember, was the seat of all thought and emotion for ancient Egyptians) was damaged during evisceration, it was replaced by what is called a heart scarab. If the body was damaged, a sculpted image could serve as a proxy. If the worst happened and the body was lost, then the preservation of a name would mean eternal survival of the soul.
Ultimately, this is what is so powerful about Egyptian archaeology — we can read names that have survived for thousands of years, bringing their original owners eternal life.
