The Ka, the Ba and the Body Embalmed

(Above) A simple predynastic grave, the body buried in a pit beneath a mound. The body was naturally desiccated by the hot, dry desert sands.

(Above right) Early evidence of mummification: a human arm. from the tomb of King Djer at Abydos, u'ilh linen wrappings and four bracelets.

‘This Unas has come.. .His cvo wings having grown as those of a falcon, feathered as those of a hawk, his ba having brought him, his magic having equipped him. You shall open your place among the stars in the sky.'

Pyramid Texts, 245,250-53

When we visit the pyramids we walk on ancient graveyards. The pyramids and their temples, and the burials of kings, nobles and commoners, express the unique ancient Egyptian idea of death. Death is a ritual process for the living and the Egyptians marked their pas. sage into the hereafter perhaps more than other ancient societies. For them death was nor the end, but just one of the transformations in life’s natural cycle. The final change in status depended on the first duty in the housekeeping of death - the treatment of the corpse.

During life the body was called khet or iru -‘form’, ‘appearance’; the corpse was khat. Transformed into a mummy, it was sah, a word whose root is also used for ‘to be noble’. Mummification was not so much the preservation of the body as it had been during life, but the transfiguration of the corpse into a new body ‘filled with magic’, a simulacrum or statue in wrappings and resin.

The origins of mummification

It is often stated that mummification was inspired by simple predynastic pit burials in which the body was naturally desiccated by contact with the desert sands. As time went on graves became more elaborate, separating the body from the sand. Ironically, these measures promoted decay instead of preservation. The first steps towards mummification - wrapping the body in linen - coincide with the development of tomb superstructures, just after the rise of the Egjqitian state. An arm with bandages and wearing four bracelets, dating to the 1st dynasty, was found in the tomb of Djer at Abydos.

In fact, mummification may have stemmed from a practice diametrically opposite to preventing the body’s decay. Petrie found evidence which suggested to him that as early as predynastic times certain people were prepared for death’s passage by allowing the body to decompose, with the skeletal parts