Experts from the Museum of the University of Manchester in the UK told why the ancient Egyptians actually mummified the dead.
It’s long been believed that mummification was meant to preserve the dead. It turns out that notion is dead wrong.
So, how exactly did this misconception flourish for so long? Price said the Western-led idea began with Victorian researchers who wrongly determined that ancient Egyptians were preserving their dead in a similar fashion as one would preserve fish. Their reasoning? Both processes contained a similar ingredient: salt.
“The idea was that you preserve fish to eat at some future time,” Price said. “So, they assumed that what was being done to the human body was the same as the treatment for fish.”
Related: Hundreds of mummies and pyramid of an unknown queen unearthed near King Tut’s tomb
However, the salty substance used by ancient Egyptians differed from salt used to preserve the catch of the day.
As scientists found out, when mummifying bodies, the Egyptians used the mineral natron, which was rich in the silt of a lake near the Nile River. With the same mineral, the priests cleansed the statues of the gods.
In addition, incense was used during mummification, which was used to fumigate temples.
If you put these facts together, it becomes clear that in ancient Egypt, the process of mummification was needed to deify the deceased. And the entrails extracted from the body prepared the body for transformation into a “divine statue”.
So, how exactly did this misconception flourish for so long? Price said the Western-led idea began with Victorian researchers who wrongly determined that ancient Egyptians were preserving their dead in a similar fashion as one would preserve fish. Their reasoning? Both processes contained a similar ingredient: salt.
“The idea was that you preserve fish to eat at some future time,” Price said. “So, they assumed that what was being done to the human body was the same as the treatment for fish.”
Related: Hundreds of mummies and pyramid of an unknown queen unearthed near King Tut’s tomb
However, the salty substance used by ancient Egyptians differed from salt used to preserve the catch of the day.
