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DEAD WRONG

New meaning behind Ancient Egyptian mummification revealed as experts claim it wasn’t to preserve dead bodies

RESEARCHERS believe they have uncovered a new meaning behind Egyptian mummification that contradicts the widely-held view about why the process was performed.

While museums have long believed that the purpose of Egyptian mummification was to preserve a corpse after death, a new exhibition asserts that this is simply not true - or at least not the whole story.

While mummies were previously thought to preserve remains for the afterlife, the Manchester Museum's new exhibition Golden Mummies of Egypt hopes to communicate their purpose of divination
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While mummies were previously thought to preserve remains for the afterlife, the Manchester Museum's new exhibition Golden Mummies of Egypt hopes to communicate their purpose of divination

The Manchester Museum, a product of Manchester University in England, has pointed out this all-too-common misunderstanding as they stitch together their upcoming exhibition Golden Mummies of Egypt.

The exhibition will open early in 2023, Live Science reports.

Their findings include that Egyptians wanted to help guide their deceased loved ones "toward divinity," and not, as is popularly held, to keep their body intact for the afterlife.

Campbell Price, the Manchester Museum curator of Egypt and Sudan, said to the outlet: "It's a big 180."

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This reportedly began in the Victorian era, where researchers who had often seen fish salted in an effort to preserve them assumed the same about excavated mummies.

Price said: "The idea was that you preserve fish to eat at some future time.

"So, they assumed that what was being done to the human body was the same as the treatment for fish."

But, instead of merely using salt, Egyptians used natron, a natural substance made of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium chloride, and sodium sulfate, which could be found near bodies of water like the Nile, in their mummification rituals.

Natron was also used for "cleansing," according to Price, who said the substance saw use in "temple rituals," and used on the "statues of the gods."

Incense, featured in the nativity story of Jesus by way of frankincense and myrrh, were also gifts fit for the gods.

"Even the word for incense in ancient Egyptian was 'senetjer' and literally means 'to make divine,'" Price said.

"When you're burning incense in a temple, that's appropriate because that's the house of a god and makes the space divine.

"But then when you're using incense resins on the body, you're making the body divine and into a godly being. You're not necessarily preserving it."

Further misunderstanding about the Egyptians came with the idea that the dead needed their human bodies for a successful afterlife.

This was called a "biomedical obsession" by Price, the idea gathered from the fact that the Egyptians "(removed) the internal organs.

"Beginning in the third dynasty, the internal organs (lungs, stomach, liver and intestines) were removed, washed with palm wine and spices, and stored in four separate canopic jars made of limestone, calcite or clay," according to the Canadian Museum of History.

"Prior to this, the abdominal contents were removed, wrapped and buried in the floor of the tomb.

"However, the heart was left in the body because it was considered the centre of intelligence."

Still, curator Price suggests a more spiritual purpose than packaging the contents of the body for the afterlife.

"I think that actually has a somewhat deeper meaning…and is basically about turning the body into a divine statue because the dead person has been transformed."

Because mummies are often uncovered alongside a sarcophagus, or an adorned, stone coffin that somewhat resembles the dead themselves, Price's divinity theory bears more weight.

"In English, a mask is something that obscures your identification; a portrait reveals identity.

"Those objects, panels and masks give an idealized image to the divine form."

Read More on The US Sun

Read More on The US Sun

The exhibition will feature burial masks, sarcophagi, and panel portraits, supporting and communicating this idea of divination.

Golden Mummies of Egypt begins February 18, 2023, and a book has been published under the same name, meant to digest in tandem with the exhibition.

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