I’ve never really been a big Halloween person. Oh I loved it as a kid – what’s not to like about wearing fun costumes and getting free candy? Not to get all preachy or overly philosophical, but now it’s just a bit too commercial for me. Halloween’s the first in a line of heavily advertised holidays that includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day and ends with Easter. Here in upstate NY you can add President’s day to the list. Kodak used to pay their annual bonuses in February, which meant a bonanza for local furniture stores and auto dealers. Kodak’s dominance of the local economy is a thing of the past, but the tradition of big February sales continues.
Ah, but I digress, back to Halloween. As a kid I dressed up as lots of different things. If you could make it from stuff lying around the house it was fair game. My costumes included a caveman, a clown, a ghost (twice), and even a toothbrush – hey it was the 70s and a fire hydrant won first prize the year before. One of the more popular costumes then and still today is the mummy. My brother went as a mummy one year. I wanted to wrap him in toilet paper, but he and my mom wouldn’t go for it. Instead he wore white and we wrapped him with crepe paper, careful to leave a few streaming ends to give him the proper disheveled look. Today’s kids can buy a complete mummy costume from any number of retailers.
While the oldest known mummies are from the Chinchorro in South America, the Egyptians are the most well-known. Their process was much more intricate than the one we use for Halloween. Here’s an excerpt from Misaligned: The Silver Scepter, where Eddie and Steve (eighth grade students) teach their classmates about mummification.
“Hey, I hear you’re an expert on mummification, is that true?” Eddie asked Steve.
“I don’t know if I’d say that, but I have watched quite a few internet videos and flipped through a few presentations. I even read a book about it.”
“Well, that sounds like an expert to me,” said Eddie, nodding his head. “So tell us, why did the Egyptians practice mummification?”
“Their observations of nature – the sun falling in the west each evening and emerging reborn in the east the next morning; the waxing and waning of the moon; and new life sprouting from a seed planted in the earth – taught the Egyptians that life was a cycle of death and rebirth. They believed that after they died, they would journey to another world and lead a new life. Unlike later concepts of a spiritual afterlife, their afterlife required the use of their bodies. To ensure their bodies would be available, they preserved them using mummification.”
It was Eddie’s turn. “That makes sense, but what exactly is the mummification process? I mean, can you really just wrap something in a sheet and create a mummy?”
“No, wrapping the body in linen is one of the steps, but there’s a lot more to it than that. The first step is to remove the brain and the other soft organs.”
“That sounds interesting. Can you describe it for us?”
“Sure, since the whole point of the process was to preserve the body for later use, they tried to remove the organs with as little damage as possible. They reached the brain through the nose and broke into braincase through the nasal passages. Since they couldn’t pull the brain out intact, they used a metal tool to scramble it inside the skull,” Steve made a jabbing and swirling motion with his hand. “After thoroughly mixing it, they’d tilt the head up and pour the scrambled brain out the nose and into a bowl.”
“Kind of like pouring a milkshake out of a blender?” Eddie offered.
“Yeah, a grey milkshake with streaks of red,” said a nodding Steve.
“Ewws” and “Yuchs” and the sound of at least one person retching, echoed through the auditorium.
Ignoring the audience, Steve continued, “Next, a special person known as ‘the splitter’ came into the tent and used an obsidian knife to make a three to four-inch incision on the lower left side of the body. After he made the cut, the others threw stones at him.”
“Why’d they do that?” asked Eddie.
“Defiling a dead body was a serious taboo to the ancient Egyptians. So even though they needed the incision to preserve the body, they couldn’t condone the act.”
“So they weren’t trying to hurt the splitter?” Eddie asked.
“No, it was a symbolic act meant to show their rejection of the defilement. The stones were never more than pebbles.
“Once the splitter left, they reached into the body with various probes and hooks, removing all of the organs except the heart, which the Egyptians believed was the center of intelligence.”
“What did they do with the removed organs?”
“They stored them in four clay pots known as Canopic jars. Each of the pots represented one of the god Horus’s four sons and guarded specific organs; the human, Imsety protected the liver; the baboon Hapy, watched the lungs; Duamutef, the jackal, defended the stomach; and the falcon, Qebehsenuef, safeguarded the intestines. The scrambled brains were deemed unimportant and discarded,” said Steve.
“What about the linen wrappings, the shriveled heads, and the dark colors of the mummies?” asked Eddie.
“After removing the organs, they preserved the bodies by filling and surrounding them with a natron, a naturally occurring mixture of baking soda and salt. The combination of as much as 400 pounds of Natron and the hot dry air took thirty-five days to remove most of the body’s moisture. Next they cleaned the body, rubbed it with perfumes and oils, and wrapped it in multiple layers of linen held in place with a glue-like resin. The resin is what gives mummies their dark brown or black color. Finally, they wrapped the body in a linen shroud, which often included protection symbols and sometimes the name of the person.”
“That’s really amazing, but given that the Egyptians stopped making mummies more than a thousand years ago, how do you know so much about the process?”
“Actually,” said Steve, “Dr. Robert Brier and a team of his students created a modern mummy using a cadaver that was donated to science. A crew from National Geographic filmed the process, and I’ve brought a few excerpts from the film to demonstrate some of the techniques we discussed.”
Thanks for reading,
Armen
Additional Information
Please visit my website for more information about the Misaligned series
For more information about mummification here’s My Learning’s Guide to Mummification