FALSE (sort of): the aim of mummification was preservation
Generations of schoolchildren have been taught that ancient Egyptians treated the remains of high-status individuals to preserve them for the afterlife. Yet this idea is shaped by modern – which is to say modern western – cultural expectations of what the dead should look like, linked to the fact that the first Europeans to investigate ancient Egyptian mummies in the 18th century were themselves interested in embalming techniques.
These researchers were keen to preserve their own dead just as they had been in life – so they looked as if they had simply fallen asleep. Even today, people take comfort from this approach.
The ancient Egyptians, however, did not intend their dead to be seen by the living, and were apparently less concerned with preserving the transitory appearance of a human during their lifetime. Rather, they focused on transforming the body into an enduring and perfect effigy resembling one of their immortal gods.
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None of the gory details of mummification are depicted in Egyptian art. Instead, our knowledge comes from the Greeks and Romans, both morbidly fascinated by mummies, who left accounts of a practice they thought weird. They describe how mummification dehydrated the body, made it hard and brittle. Once anointed with scented oils, the body resembled the expensive woods from which sculptures of the gods were carved.
In ancient texts, Egyptian deities are said explicitly to have flesh of gold, bones of iron or silver and hair of lapis lazuli, a blue semi-precious stone. So those who could afford it might be supplied with a gilded mask and a blue-painted hair covering to emulate these divine features. The facial appearance of a mummy mask is the product of the shaping of plaster and linen on an idealised and reusable mould – so was never intended to be an accurate likeness of the deceased.
In inscriptions, the dead are often referred to in divine terms, with men and women alike given the designation Osiris, the god of rebirth. From around 300 BC, women alone were referred to as Hathor, also known as the ‘Golden One’, the afterlife goddess par excellence. For the wealthy, therefore, mummification was about transformation in order to achieve immortality – not about preserving the body in the form of that person while alive.
FALSE: the brain was always removed from a mummy’s body
The ancient Egyptian concept of post-mortem judgment is illustrated by a scene in the funerary composition known as the Book of the Dead, first written on papyrus during the 16th century BC. This depicts the heart of the deceased being weighed on a set of scales against a feather representing Maat – the concepts of truth, order and justice.
It is often assumed that, for this reason, the heart had to be kept in place in the body during mummification, while the other internal organs might be removed and placed in containers that became known to early Egyptologists as canopic jars.
But what of the brain? According to popular perception, this wasn’t even afforded the respect of being placed in a jar. Instead, so we’ve been led to believe, it was always removed and discarded. As many schoolchildren can recount, this was achieved by breaking through the ethmoid bone to penetrate the skull cavity with a metal instrument, then spooning brain matter piecemeal out through the nostrils.
This procedure is often explained both by a perceived need to reduce the rate of putrefaction and by the assumption that the Egyptians did not understand higher brain function, believing that intelligence and consciousness resided in the heart. However, ancient medical texts describe treatment of head injuries that shows an understanding of the effects of damage to the brain casing, while the vulnerability of the head is also a major concern of religious texts.
Physical examinations and X-ray and CT scans of mummified bodies have shown that, in fact, the brain was often left untouched. In addition, more often than not, the heart was removed – sometimes prompting headlines about the apparently exceptional and unintended ‘loss’ of a heart. In short, neither of these ‘rules’ of pharaonic funerary practice is as neat and tidy as has often been assumed.
FALSE: ancient Egyptians mummified their pets to accompany them into the afterlife
The people of ancient Egypt were widely believed to have been great animal lovers. Greek and Roman visitors to the Nile Valley viewed what they saw as excessive devotion to these creatures as yet another of the Egyptians’ odd traits. This is why, for example, the Greek historian Herodotus recorded that, when a cat in an Egyptian household died, everyone in that household shaved off their eyebrows.
However, keeping a relatively domesticated feline to control vermin is not quite the same as coddling a pet cat. In pharaonic Egypt, animal forms were a means of expressing and communicating with the divine. Only in rare cases were they viewed as worthy of specific veneration.
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A single living bull was the focus of several religious cults throughout Egypt, notably at the site of Saqqara, near the prominent city of Memphis in the north, where a succession of sacred Apis bulls were kept over many centuries. Asked if he wanted to visit the bull on a tour of his newly conquered territory in 30 BC, the future Roman emperor Augustus declined, saying he was “accustomed to worship gods, not cattle”.
Pet ownership was limited to a few apparently domesticated animals given personal names. The most famous example belonged to a prince named Thutmose, who had a stone sarcophagus created for a cat named Ta-miu (literally, ‘the she-cat’) in the 14th century BC. However, this was highly unusual and there is no evidence that Ta-miu was buried with the prince.
In fact, the tens of millions of mummified animals known from ancient Egypt were almost all raised for slaughter as wrapped gifts to the gods. Depending on the sacred animal of the intended divine recipient, you could give a cat, a crocodile, a fish, a falcon or even a shrew. Each was an appropriate offering, even in cases where the mummified bundle didn’t actually contain any animal inside. Most important was that the mummy was associated with, or in the image of, one of the gods.
FALSE: people were buried with all of their possessions
Ancient Egyptian ideas about the afterlife seem to offer an exception to the rule that ‘you can’t take it with you’. Tutankhamun’s relatively small – but hugely famous – tomb in the Valley of the Kings was found stuffed full of objects, many of them covered with gold. But this was not stockpiling bullion just for the sake of it. Every item found in the tomb was there for a very specific reason: to help transform the king into, and maintain his status as, a god in the afterlife.
Tutankhamun was provided with more than 140 linen loincloths – essentially, ancient underwear – not because this set was expected to last him for eternity but because these items had likely touched his skin. Considered a semi-divine being while alive, items with which he had come into contact were thought to be sacred. The same special treatment was given to linen cloth that had wrapped statues of gods during temple rituals.
Tutankhamun’s tomb even contained a plain reed staff, richly embellished with gold and bearing an inscription saying the king had “cut with his own hand” this reed from a thicket.
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Bearing this in mind, a royal tomb had more in common with caches of temple equipment used in rituals. They earned their place in the tomb not because the king planned to use them in the afterlife, but because they were considered too religiously charged to discard. The king would, after all, be a full-blown deity in the beyond, so presumably wouldn’t need material trappings such as undergarments and a walking stick.
What’s more, these objects may have had magical value, and could have been buried to prevent personal items of the king from falling into impure hands. Presumably the much larger tombs of longer-lived kings contained even more stuff – items they had used during their lives rather than things they’d need to navigate their way through eternity.
There’s another factor we need to bear in mind when considering the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb: it was far from the norm. Egyptian royalty was exceptional in almost every way and even the richest courtiers did not receive the same treatment in burial as kings. Although they might try to emulate their ruler, a noble person’s own burial provisions were much more restricted. Most ancient Egyptian tombs contain very few, if any, grave goods. The vast majority of the population were likely buried with a few simple items.
TRUE: Victorians used mummified remains as paint, and mummified cats were used as fertiliser
The Egyptian dead have been used for purposes they could never have imagined – and would probably have feared. Indeed, many modern treatments of mummified remains make tomb robbery seem the preferred option.
For a mummy left untouched for thousands of years, a museum was in some ways a stable destination – if not one where it could be guaranteed to stay intact. Scientific examination of mummies has included dissection, in some cases resulting in various parts of one body being placed into hundreds of sample jars across several institutions. Other desecrations have been rather more commercial.
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Pulverised Egyptian mummified bodies and bandages were used to produce a deep earthy brown pigment favoured by artists of the 19th century. ‘Mummy brown’ paint was commonly found in artist’s studios and was being produced as recently as 1964. Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones was so horrified upon discovering the origin of the pigment that he gave one tube of the paint a respectful burial in his garden.
Linen wrappings – presumably the least discoloured ones – were reportedly shredded and pulped for use in paper mills in the US in the mid-19th century. Around the same time, mummified bodies were burned as fuel for the railway system in Egypt. This practice was observed by Mark Twain, who reported that, because of the lack of trees in Egypt and the high price of coal, mummified bodies were “purchased by the ton or by the graveyard” to power locomotives.
Mummified humans were not the only victims. The remains of an estimated 180,000 mummified cats from near the site of Beni Hassan in Middle Egypt were shipped to the port of Liverpool in early 1890. Used as ballast on both the SS Pharos and SS Thebes, 19.5 tonnes of unwrapped felines (the linen bandages had been put to other uses) were sold to farmers as fertiliser, with a few being donated to a Liverpool museum.
In fact, the word ‘mummy’ is derived from mūmiyā, an Arabic/Persian term for a black mineral substance, often referred to as bitumen, which occurred naturally in Iran and was thought to have curative properties. This was likened to a black, resinous goo applied to the bodies of the ancient Egyptian dead – or at least to the bodies of those who could afford to have such an expensive concoction poured over them. Later recipes for the substance may have contained traces of bitumen, showing a certain circularity in the association.
Most alarmingly, the confusion between curative mineral and mummification resin led to the active acquisition and atomisation of ancient Egyptian corpses for consumption as medicine in the Middle Ages and later. Mumia was even sold as a treatment for sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis. Suffice to say that medicated cannibalism never really did anyone any good.
TRUE: ancient Egyptians placed curses on tombs
Almost all Egyptian tombs had two parts: a sealed section for the burial itself and an open area that was intended for the eternal commemoration of the deceased. There was a constant tension between keeping the burial secure and seeking attention from visitors.
In a culture that placed importance on the transformation of the deceased by material means, it was to be expected that the wealthy would invest considerable resources in the burial of their dead. It therefore comes as no surprise that the practice of robbery in elite cemeteries is known from the earliest periods.
One kind of deterrent was architectural – but another was metaphysical. Although commonly depicted in Gothic fiction and Hollywood films, actual evidence for curses placed on tombs is rather limited. Some texts concern the ritual integrity of the outer (open) part of the tomb and are concerned with preventing the reuse of valuable architectural elements – presumably because that would compromise the monumental presence of the deceased in the space where they hoped to be remembered.
However, a small number of tombs from around 2500 BC are inscribed with explicit threats to would-be stone robbers. A typical example warns: “As for anyone who will do anything evil against this [tomb]… the crocodile is against them in the water, the snake is against them on the land.”
These threats also appear on other monuments, warning anyone who might erase the name on a statue or stela (commemorative slab) that their action will have consequences. The belief seems to have been that retribution would come from a higher, divine power, not from the dead themselves. And curses do not generally relate to harm of the mummified body.
In various funerary texts, allusions are made to the dead prevailing over unspecified enemies. A particularly evocative example in a version of chapter 172 of the Book of the Dead asserts of the deceased: “Your fingers are picks of gold and their nails are knives of flint in the faces of those who would harm you.”
This rather chilling threat echoes examples of magic cast by the living against one’s enemies – threats that were largely uttered aloud. Curses against tomb robbers may have also been spoken and therefore only rarely entered the written record.
FALSE: traps were built into ancient Egyptian tombs to deter robbers
Egyptian tombs were intended to stand for eternity. The houses of the living were made from mud-bricks and, many of them standing on or near the Nile floodplain, frequently needed to be repaired or rebuilt. Elite tombs, however, were mostly cut from rock or built from stone, set back into or towards the cliffs. Such a tomb was commonly referred to as a ‘house of eternity’.
A small number of examples featured actively defensive architecture. Blind passages were constructed inside some pyramids to confuse would-be robbers. From the earliest tomb structures, built around 3000 BC, portcullis slabs were lowered after the burial, part of the mechanics of sealing the tomb.
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Deep shafts in many tombs in the Valley of the Kings served both a magical purpose – to connect the tomb to the Underworld – and acted as a practical way of protecting the inner parts of the tomb from the periodic flash floods that afflicted the valley.
None of these devices was designed to be triggered by intruders, despite what Hollywood might suggest. Rather, they were simply ways of keeping a burial safe. Tomb robbers were, however, clever – and may have acquired their knowledge of such security features by being members of the communities responsible for creating and closing burials. Many thieves simply tunnelled around obstructions, and expended great effort breaking into heavy stone sarcophagi.
Security precautions seem to have primarily consisted of policing burial grounds to deter robbers. This perhaps explains why an area such as the Valley of the Kings was considered an ideal royal cemetery: it was contained, and relatively easy to monitor.
The punishment for defiling the burial of a god-king was, unsurprisingly, severe: death by impalement on a wooden stake, the body subsequently burned to destroy any chance of an afterlife. Fear of not living on meant cremation was anathema to the ancient Egyptians.
TRUE: the plots of the most famous mummy movies date back to ancient times
Modern films about ancient mummies may seem to have been products of their times, betraying deep-seated colonial anxiety about the repercussions of disturbing ancient tombs and claiming the spoils in the name of science. Undoubtedly, the image of the animated mummy as a shuffling, unclean menace seems to date from the Victorian era – yet the inspiration for one of the major tropes in mummy fiction is much older.
The plot of the 1932 Universal Studios film The Mummy centres on the reanimation of an ancient Egyptian named Imhotep, played by Boris Karloff. The best known historical Imhotep was widely revered as a sage and healer and as the mastermind behind the first pyramid, built in the 26th century BC.
In the Karloff movie, Imhotep is brought back to life by an archaeologist – hungry for knowledge and ignorant of the potential consequences – who reads from an ancient scroll. This crucial plot point does in fact derive from an ancient source. A folk tale written down around two millennia ago, known today as the Tale of Setne Khaemwaset, was inspired by a real ancient person, Prince Khaemwaset, the fourth son of Ramesses II (the Great, reigned 1279–1213 BC).
The historical prince is known to have been something of an archaeologist himself, touring ancient monuments – including the pyramids – and adding identifying inscriptions. In the folk tale, his thirst for knowledge leads him in search of the Book of Thoth, which he finds buried in the tomb of an ancient prince. Possessing the book gets Khaemwaset into trouble, bringing the owner of the tomb (and the scroll) back to life.
More recent retellings – including the later 1959 Hammer film and the 1999 blockbuster, both also called The Mummy – hinge on the same plot point: reading forbidden knowledge from the Book of the Dead. Few viewers realise that the story is some 2,000 years old.
Campbell Price is curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, University of Manchester. His books include Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly! (Walker, April 2024), and Brief Histories: Ancient Egypt (Seven Dials, October 2024)
This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine