And it will display a number of burial masks, panel portraits and sarcophagi associated with ancient Egyptian burials, offering further proof of the original intentions of mummification.įor weather, science, space, and COVID-19 updates on the go, download The Weather Channel App (on Android and iOS store). The mention of cleansing salts and incense brings to my mind a spa day and not preserving a dead body, but Victorian researchers had other factors influencing their line of thinking.Įnglish Egyptologists thought that the deceased would require their earthly bodies in the afterlife - adding undue credence to the misunderstanding of mummification.įortunately, the "Golden Mummies of Egypt" exhibition will be on display at the Manchester Museum beginning February 18, 2023. You're not necessarily preserving it," he added. The ghastly Lake Natron, in northern Tanzania, is a salt lake meaning that water flows in, but doesn’t flow out, so it can only escape by evaporation. But then when you're using incense resins on the body, you're making the body divine and into a godly being. "Even the word for incense in ancient Egyptian was 'senetjer' and literally means 'to make divine.' When you're burning incense in a temple, that's appropriate because that's the house of a god and makes the space divine. Lake Natron, situated in northern Tanzania, close to the Kenyan border, in the Great Rift Valley, is one of the most peaceful places in Africa. "In ancient Egyptian history, we've found that they were also appropriate gifts for a god." "Look at frankincense and myrrh - they're in the Christian story of Jesus and were gifts from the three wise men," Price said. Natron was used by the ancient Egyptians in temple rituals and was applied to the statues of gods for cleansing.įurther, the incense commonly associated with mummies likely served as a gift to the gods. Dubbed 'natron', the salt was a naturally occurring blend of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride and sodium sulphate sprinkled abundantly around lake beds near the Nile. However, the salt that Egyptians used for mummification was different. "So, they assumed that what was being done to the human body was the same as the treatment for fish," said Campbell Price, the museum's curator of Egypt and Sudan. "The idea was that you preserve fish to eat at some future time," Price said. UberFacts The Lake That Turns Animals Into Stone UberFacts Lake Natron in northern Tanzania is one of the harshest environments on Earth. Earlier, they believed that ancient Egyptians were preserving their dead in a similar fashion as one would preserve fish simply because both processes involved one common factor: salt. It is ironic how it's this England-based team that is correcting our misgivings regarding the purpose of mummification, considering it was Victorian-era English researchers who wrongly brought forth the idea in the first place. Researchers at the Manchester Museum in England are addressing misconceptions about mummification's intended purpose as a part of an exhibition called "Golden Mummies of Egypt", slated to open early next year.Īnd a recent reveal suggests that the elaborate burial technique was actually a way to guide the deceased toward divinity and had nothing to do with preserving the dead. If you're having a 'my life is a lie' moment, you're not alone. So imagine our surprise when we heard that this elaborate process of mummification was never intended to preserve the bodies of the deceased at all! The painstaking process involved embalming the body, removing the internal organs, thoroughly drying it out and finally wrapping it in layers and layers of linen. There, sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate combine to make "natro carbonatite," or "natron." Without it, it's likely that the mummies in the sarcophagi would have wound up mere bones and hair.Egyptian mummification, which is thought to have begun in 2600 BCE, is counted among the best methods for preserving a body and is no less than art. The streets were repaved specifically for this event, and each pharaoh's shock-absorbent chariot was filled with a nitrogen mixture to protect from the elements.īut how did the Ancient Egyptians figure out their highly complex embalming and mummification technique to begin with? Most likely, Mother Nature was the teacher, starting with salt deposits in dry lake beds in Natron Valley, Wadi El Natrun, as Saltwork Consultations explains. Dubbed The Pharaohs' Golden Parade, the mummies were transported in a multimillion dollar golden motorcade of lavish fanfare, horse-mounted guards, and attendants adorned in ancient garb. As the BBC outlines, 22 pharaohs, arranged in order of reign, starting with Seqenenre Taa II and ending in Ramses IX, traveled seven kilometers across Cairo to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. In April, 2021, this exact thing happened.
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