DEATH, MAGIC & MUMMIES
(Access RetroActive1: Chapter 2.7)
Preparation for death in ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptians spent a considerable amount of time and money preparing for their death. They purchased funerary items, commissioned or bought a coffin and built a tomb that was often more elaborate than their lifetime home.
Why prepare for death? The ancient Egyptians believed that when they died their spiritual body would continue to exist in an afterlife very similar to their living world. However, entry into this afterlife was not guaranteed. The dead had to negotiate a dangerous underworld journey and face the final judgment before they were granted access. If successful, they were required to provide eternal sustenance for their spirit. These things could be achieved if proper preparations were made during a person’s lifetime.
Preparations A variety of different preparations were required. These included:
1. Purchase of small funerary items Shabtis: workers for the afterlife Shabtis were small funerary statuettes inscribed with a spell that miraculously brought them to life, enabling the dead person to relax while the shabtis performed their physical duties.
Amulets: the magic of charms Egyptians believed that amulets endowed the wearer with magical powers of protection and healing and also brought good fortune. From an early age, they would wear a variety of these charms around the neck, wrists, fingers and ankles. Most were symbols related to a god or goddess so placed the wearer under their specific protection.
Heartscarabs The heart, which contained a record of all the person’s actions in life, was essential for the ‘Weighing of the Heart Ceremony’ as it was weighed against the feather of the goddess Ma’at. If the scales were balanced, the person passed and entered the afterlife. For those who were concerned about this test, they could recite the spell inscribed on their heartscarab to prevent their heart from ‘betraying’ them.
2. Commissioning or buying a coffin Coffins were probably the single most important piece of funerary equipment. To ancient Egyptians they were ‘chests of life’ with every aspect designed to protect the physical body in this world and also the spiritual body in the afterlife. To achieve this, almost every surface was covered with prayers and spells from funerary texts, important religious symbols, and scenes of various gods and goddesses associated with death, protection and the underworld.
3. Building the tombs Many years could be spent on building and preparing tombs, which were known to the ancient Egyptians as ‘houses of eternity’. They were usually built on the western bank of the Nile, in the land of the dead, and made from non-perishable material such as stone. Preparing tombs correctly was a common theme in Egyptian texts. Master builders and supervisors were instructed to perform rituals during construction and guidelines were provided on where to build, how to design, and also what materials to use.
Magicians Priests were the main practitioners of magic in pharaonic Egypt, where they were seen as guardians of a secret knowledge given by the gods to humanity to 'ward off the blows of fate'. The most respected users of magic were the lector priests, who could read the ancient books of magic kept in temple and palace libraries. In popular stories such men were credited with the power to bring wax animals to life, or roll back the waters of a lake.
Real lector priests performed magical rituals to protect their king, and to help the dead to rebirth. By the first millennium BC, their role seems to have been taken over by magicians (hekau). Healing magic was a speciality of the priests who served Sekhmet, the fearsome goddess of plague.
Amulets were another source of magic power, obtainable from 'protection-makers', who could be male or female. None of these uses of magic was disapproved of - either by the state or the priesthood. Only foreigners were regularly accused of using evil magic. It is not until the Roman period that there is much evidence of individual magicians practising harmful magic for financial reward.
Magic for Protection:
Angry deities, jealous ghosts, and foreign demons and sorcerers were thought to cause misfortunes such as illness, accidents, poverty and infertility. Magic provided a defence system against these ills for individuals throughout their lives.
Stamping, shouting, and making a loud noise with rattles, drums and tambourines were all thought to drive hostile forces away from vulnerable women, such as those who were pregnant or about to give birth, and from children - also a group at risk, liable to die from childhood diseases.
Healing:
Magic was not so much an alternative to medical treatment as a complementary therapy. Surviving medical-magical papyri contain spells for the use of doctors, Sekhmet priests and scorpion-charmers. The spells were often targeted at the supernatural beings that were believed to be the ultimate cause of diseases. Knowing the names of these beings gave the magician power to act against them.
Since demons were thought to be attracted by foul things, attempts were sometimes made to lure them out of the patient's body with dung; at other times a sweet substance such as honey was used, to repel them. Another technique was for the doctor to draw images of deities on the patient's skin. The patient then licked these off, to absorb their healing power.
Curses Though magic was mainly used to protect or heal, the Egyptian state also practised destructive magic. The names of foreign enemies and Egyptian traitors were inscribed on clay pots, tablets, or figurines of bound prisoners. These objects were then burned, broken, or buried in cemeteries in the belief that this would weaken or destroy the enemy.
In major temples, priests and priestesses performed a ceremony to curse enemies of the divine order, such as the chaos serpent Apophis - who was eternally at war with the creator sun god.
The dead All Egyptians expected to need heka to preserve their bodies and souls in the afterlife, and curses threatening to send dangerous animals to hunt down tomb-robbers were sometimes inscribed on tomb walls. The mummified body itself was protected by amulets, hidden beneath its wrappings. Collections of funerary spells - such as the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead - were included in elite burials, to provide esoteric magical knowledge.
Mummies
Dead Bodies to Mummies If you were rich or you served the Pharaoh, you would have a proper burial after your body was mummified. It took 70 days to complete the burial process. First they had to take out your brain, your inner organs, and your heart.
Taking Out the Brain Do you think they cut the top of your head open and pulled out your brain? Actually they didn’t even touch your head. They shoved a metal hook up your nose and pulled your brain out through your nostril. After that they threw the brain away because they didn’t think it was important.
Taking Out the Inner Organs
After they took out your brain, they cut a slit in the left side of your body (called an embalming cut) and took out your inner organs: lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines. Each organ was placed in its own jar (called a canopic jar) that was made of stone or clay. The lid looked like the head of a god that was also made of clay or stone. These gods protected the organs. The god Hapy protected the lungs, the god Duamutef protected the stomach, the god Imsety protected the liver, and the god Qebhsenuef protected the intestines. These were the gods chosen to protect the organs because they were the four sons of Horus, the protector of the dead.
Taking Out the Heart
In later times the Egyptians took out your heart and replaced it with a scarab beetle made of stone. A scarab beetle is a type of beetle that was sacred to the Egyptians. Afterwards, they chopped up your heart and fed it to the Pharaoh's cats.
Drying Out the Body Once all of the organs were removed, they dried out your body with a grainy chemical known as natron, which is found in deposits of the Nile River. The embalming cut was covered with a golden plate with the protector of the dead on it, the protective eye of Horus.
Wrapping the Body After they dried out your body, they stuffed the empty spaces with pads of linen (a type of cloth), spices, herbs, and Arabic gums. The eye sockets were plugged with linen and were closed, the nostrils were stuffed with beeswax, and the fingers and toes were covered with caps of gold. They put jewelry, gold, and precious stones on the dead body. The body was then wrapped in cloth. The fingers, toes, arms, and legs were wrapped individually. The body was huge after it was wrapped in about 20 layers of cloth. The person’s name was written on the cloth. Magic amulets were tucked in between the mummy’s wrappings.
Sarcophagus The mummy was put into a wood or stone coffin. The coffin was called a sarcophagus. Hieroglyphics were written on the inside of the sarcophagus as spells of protection.
The Final Ceremony When they finished making the mummy they had a long, solemn ceremony. The mummy was dragged by oxen on a sled. The canopic jars with the organs inside were put in a chest on a different sled. Priests, family, servants, and mourners were paid to weep, and they followed the sled. Porters carried furniture, food, and other possessions that would be buried with the mummy.