All Wrapped Up In Mummies
When thinking of an Egyptian mummy, what comes to mind? Most people usually picture an Egyptian mummy wrapped in bandages buried deep inside a pyramid. According to Piotr Scholz, the Egyptians believed that "Life beyond the grave was far more important and valuable than life on this side, and the burial accurately reflected what they knew and valued" (40). It was more like a religious ritual that was crucial for a great eternity. Over three thousand years ago, the Egyptians developed the process of mummification?"a chemical method for drying and preserving the body" to preserve the people they most esteemed and loved (Oliphant 74). The whole process took seventy days to complete (DiPaolo 1).
The whole reason why the Egyptians mummified a person was because they believed that "if everything was properly arranged, the dead person would live on in the other world as they did on earth" (Oliphant 74). They believed that when someone died various spirits were released. The Smithsonian Online Encyclopedia states:
"The Egyptians believed that the mummified body was the home for this spirit. If the body was destroyed, the spirit might be lost. The idea of ?spirit' was complex involving really three spirits: the ka, ba, and akh. The ka, a ?double' of the person, would remain in the tomb and needed the offerings and objects there. The ba, or ?soul', was free to fly out of the tomb and return to it. It was the akh, perhaps translated as ?spirit', which had to travel through the underworld to the Final Judgement and entrance to the afterlife. To the Egyptian, all three were essential."
According to James Putnam, the ka needed food ...