Egypt's Tombs

 Author's Note: I wrote this piece when I got an idea to write it when we went to the Field Museum and thought it would be fun to learn about this topic. I am focusing on organization and sentence fluency.

Believing that there was another life after this one changed almost everything about how Egyptians prepared and buried their dead, from pharaohs to peasants. The preparation was so important, they even made special tools like a hooked device to pull people’s brains out their nose! An Egyptian must be very comforted to know that when you die, it is just the beginning of another life.

They even had people dedicating their hands to this work all their lives. The priests had to purify the body, prepare the body, embalm the body, and bury the body. The priests preparation of the deceased’s body played a crucial part in whether or not the person was allowed to go into the happy side of the afterlife. Depending on the status of the dead, the dead person was buried with ornaments, weapons, food and servants, to allow the deceased to continue in the next life. If you were rich, you could afford to be buried with your furniture, jewelry, pets, and sometimes your family! If you were a pharaoh, you could also have a pyramid built for you while you were alive so that when you died, you could have a grand end to your life. Having a pyramid built for yourself was a symbol of great power and wealth.

The dead also had to be mummified. The purpose of mummification was that when the time had come for them to be reunited with your body, their soul would be able to recognize its body to be able to live forever. To make the person worthy to go into the afterlife, it had to be prepared, purified, and embalmed. They even had people dedicating their hands to this work all their lives.

First, the priests purified the body with water. They then removed all the crucial internal organs -- lungs, liver, stomach and intestines. They left the heart in the body though so that the dead could travel to the spirit world. Next, a priest put each of the organs they pulled out in a canopic jar. Here comes the gross part. They used a hooked tool to pull the brain out through the deceased’s nose and then throw it away. Next, the priests covered the body in a special salt called natron to dehydrate the body and drain the blood out of the body. This dehydrating of the body took a while to happen, forty days. The priests then wrapped the body in natron-soaked cloth from head to toe, and finally decorate the mummy with designs and masks appropriate for what status the deceased had in life. The process went a snail-like pace, but was eventually finished.

The person couldn’t just be prepared for the afterlife, and couldn’t magically appear there. The pharaohs were then sent in a stationary boat which would symbolize their journey to the underworld. When the person got to the gates into the afterlife, a god would meet him there to make a decision of a lifetime -- to either send the person to the equivalent and heaven -- or hell.

The journey to the afterlife plays a key part in an Egyptian’s life and religion. The process for preparing someone for the afterlife is a long and tedious process, but to them, it’s worth it. Who knows, maybe they’re right and we should take our lives more seriously and do better deeds. If an Egyptian doesn’t live a good life and isn’t prepared for the underworld, he will suffer the consequences whether he wants to or not.