Mummification Step by Step: How the Egyptians Made a Mummy

For the ancient Egyptians, death was not the end but a journey — and to make it you needed your body. The soul (split into the ka and the ba) had to be able to recognise and return to its remains, so letting the body rot meant condemning someone to vanish forever. Mummification was, above all, an act of love and of eternal survival. Here is how it was done.

Why mummify at all

The Egyptians noticed that bodies buried in the dry desert sand were naturally preserved for centuries. When they began building more elaborate tombs, shielded from sun and sand, the corpses — paradoxically — rotted. Mummification was invented to reproduce, artificially and more perfectly, what the desert had been doing for free.

The whole process took about seventy days and was run by embalmers who were part technician, part priest. The chief wore the jackal mask of Anubis, god of the dead and of embalming, to embody him during the ritual.

Step 1: wash and purify

The body was taken to a tent called the ibu, "the place of purification", and washed with Nile water and palm wine. The gesture was both hygienic and sacred: the deceased had to set out clean.

Step 2: remove the brain

Here is the part that still startles people. The brain was considered useless — the Egyptians believed we thought with the heart, not the head — so it was discarded. A bronze hook was pushed up through the nose, the ethmoid bone was broken, and the brain was pulled out in pieces or liquefied. The skull cavity was then packed with resin or linen.

Step 3: empty the abdomen

A specialist called the paraschistes made a cut in the left flank with a sharp blade of obsidian or flint. By tradition, the moment he finished he was symbolically insulted and chased away: he had "wounded" the body, and the rite demanded he be punished for it.

Through the incision, the lungs, liver, stomach and intestines were removed. The heart was left in place: it was the seat of intelligence and emotion, and would be needed at the final judgement, when it was weighed against the feather of Maat, goddess of truth.

Step 4: the canopic jars

The four removed organs were dried, wrapped and stored in the canopic jars, guarded by the four Sons of Horus:

• Imsety (human head) — the liver.
• Hapy (baboon) — the lungs.
• Duamutef (jackal) — the stomach.
• Qebehsenuef (falcon) — the intestines.

In later periods, the organs were treated and returned to the body, and the jars became purely symbolic.

Step 5: dry with natron

This is the heart of the process. The body was packed inside and out with natron, a natural salt (a mix of sodium carbonate and bicarbonate) gathered at Wadi Natrun. The natron drew out every trace of moisture and desiccated the tissue, halting decay. The body lay buried in natron for about forty days.

Step 6: pack and beautify

After drying, the body was a stiff, shrunken shell. It was washed again and anointed with oils, resins and fragrant spices to restore suppleness and scent. Then it was padded — with linen, sawdust, leaves or rolled cloth — to bring back a human shape, and sometimes given false eyes and packing under the skin to look lifelike.

Step 7: the wrapping

Wrapping a mummy could take fifteen days and hundreds of metres of linen. Each limb was bound separately, then the whole body together. Between the layers, priests placed protective amulets — the most important a heart scarab over the chest — and recited spells from the Book of the Dead. Warm resin was brushed between the bandages to seal everything. Finally, a funerary mask covered the face so the soul could recognise its owner.

Step 8: the opening of the mouth

At the tomb, before burial, came the "opening of the mouth" ceremony: a priest touched the mummy's mouth, eyes and ears with ritual instruments to restore its senses symbolically. In the afterlife, the deceased would then be able to breathe, eat, see and speak again.

Not just for pharaohs

Top-tier mummification was hugely expensive, but cheaper versions existed. The Greek historian Herodotus described three price brackets: the full treatment, a middle option (in which cedar oil was injected to dissolve the organs), and a budget one (a simple internal flush and natron). And it was not only people: the Egyptians mummified millions of sacred animals — cats, ibises, crocodiles, baboons — as offerings to the gods, many of them buried at Saqqara.

Where to see it in Cairo

The royal mummies — among them Ramesses II and Seti I, astonishingly well preserved — are displayed today at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC) in Fustat, in a hall built for them. The Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square holds coffins, canopic jars and embalming equipment. To stand before a 3,000-year-old face, skin and hair intact, is to confirm that the embalmers' plan — to defeat time — actually worked.