They have come to be accredited with "soul-substance," since their use in mummification and as incense and for making coffins, has made them the means for attaining a future existence.
The ideas which grew up in association with the practice of mummification were responsible for the development of the temple and its ritual and for a definite formulation of the conception of deities.
Incidentally also in course of time the practice of mummification came to exert a profound effect upon the means for the acquisition of a knowledge of medicine and all the sciences ancillary to it.
But there can be little doubt that the practice of mummification gave greater definiteness to the ideas regarding the "heart" and "breath," which eventually led to a differentiation between their supposed functions.
After the latter moved north, they found that the bodies of their dead decayed, and the practice of mummification was introduced.
Elliot Smith, A Contribution to the Study of Mummification in Egypt; Myers, Textbook of Embalming.
The custom of mummification arose in Egypt, and promoted the study of anatomy.
The earliest mode of mummification was extremely simple; the bodies were prepared with natron, or dried in ovens, and wrapped in woolen cloth.
The bodies were not embalmed, and the extended position and mummification were never used.
We do not find the process of mummification reaching any degree of elaboration until the period of the New Kingdom.
The rites and ceremonies of mummification followed those of the Old Kingdom, and were religiously carried out.
Mummification Mummification was, as has been said, probably an invention of the Osirian cult.
At that period the process was costly in the extreme, and a mummification of an elaborate kind cost about L700 in modern currency.
Mummification was extensively practised even among Christians, and amulets were buried in their coffins.
Contents:--A skeleton of a young man with hardly any traces of mummification visible.
The decoration of the coffin and the manner of mummification of the body were both similar to 1.
This last statement then serves to explain the reason for the high state of preservation in the forms of mummification as exists in those countries like Egypt with their extremely hot and dry climates.
In those climates with high temperature, but dry or absence of moisture, the tendency is to dry up the tissues, and instead of putrefaction we have mummification as the result.
The mummified sun-god did not exist for the Babylonians, for the practice of mummification was unknown among them.
Between mummification and secondary burial no reconciliation is possible.
But, as we shall see hereafter, the practice of mummification was closely bound up with a belief in the resurrection of the dead.
Mummification was never universal in Egypt, and there was a time when it was not practised at all.
When the body had remained some time, perhaps four or six months, on the scaffold, and the process of mummification was far advanced, a dance of death was held to celebrate the final departure of the spirit for its long home.
This discovery, however, is very valuable to obtain the mummificationof certain parts, which it is intended to preserve in the open air.
