Mummies+25


 * Mummies Extended response

In the process of making a mummy, there are some, gross, gooey and yucky steps required. Read at your own risk!

Step 1: The article states that you would go to the "Beautiful House" in Egypt (where you would go to to have a mummy made). You have to take out the organs of the body, the dead persons stomach, lungs, and others were pretty easy to get out, slash a hole on one side of the body and pull them out! The important organs were put into canopic jars. Every one of the canopic jars has a neat miniature statue of a god on the top to protect the part inside. Then, the insides of the body gets washed with wine! Time for the hard part, to get the brain you can't just take a stone, bach the skull and pull the brain out! They used a long wire with a little spoon on the end to get the gray muck out. The wire goes up the nose, higher and higher, then little by little, they get out brain bits.

Step 2: Now this next step, took 70 days to accomplish! The mummy makers would take this substance called natron and cover the body with it. This helpful salt soaked up the water from the body, it even had some antiseptic which helped kill bacteria! After the body had been given its "salt bath", the body was painted with a substance from trees and plants called resin. Next, a mixture of oil, wax, and even more natron was rubbed onto the skin. The inside filled with sand, pieces of cloth, sawdust, and plumped it up like a pillow! Time for the best part!

Step 3: This part took 15 days! That's how long it took to wrap a mummy! They lay the layer, apply glue, other layer, more glue, other layer, more glue. Some mummies had over 20 layers of bandages. An average mummy would have enough linen to cover a basketball court! Every one finger, every one toe was wrapped separately.

Step 4: Into the coffin! The Egyptians got really fancy with coffins. An average person would have one inner (that one the body is in) and one outer (where the inner is put). Pharoahs got the royal treatment! Multiple inner coffins studded with jewels, encased in a amazingly painted wooden coffin. Finally! The whole thing was placed in a sarcophagus (a carved stone outer coffin). Talk about protection!

The mummies are really well protected from the sun, sand, wind, and others (take it there are like 4 coffins). Even though they were protected from the elements, they were not protected from robbers who wanted to steal the mummies treasures. You can have some things, but not everything!

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