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The Egyptian Cult of the Dead

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In every culture and every age, humanity has wrestled with the concept of death, staring across that
unknowable brink and wondering what may be found on the other side. Myth and folklore, religion and
spirituality have all attempted to answer the riddle of death, and in every culture, extensive funerary
traditions have grown up to prepare the dead for their final journey into the unknown. Perhaps the most
famous of these funerary traditions is that found in ancient Egypt. Join Michelle as she explores the
ancient Egyptian funerary tradition in this article.
The ancient Egyptians believed that a persons survival in the Afterlife was linked to the survival of his
body in the physical world. Because the preservation of the body was so crucial to their belief system,
the ancient Egyptians developed a complicated process known as mummification. Originally reserved
only for the royalty, mummification was an exceptionally costly and time-consuming process. However,
the mummies that resulted are so well preserved that many remain in exceptional condition even today,
millennia after their creation.
In the period of the Old Kingdom, only Pharaohs were accorded the rite of mummification. Their
mummies were interred in elaborate tombs known as mastabas (despite common misconceptions, no
mummies were ever found buried inside the Pyramids at Giza). The Pharaohs were buried with every
conceivable item that they might need in the Afterlife: chariots, beds, jewelry, weapons even games to
pass the time. They were also given servants to help them in the otherworld. These took the form of
ushabti, little statues, each with its own name, that the dead Pharaoh could call upon to help him with
any chores he might be asked to do once he crossed over into the realm of the gods.
It was believed that the passage from this world to the next was a difficult one, often fraught with
danger. And so the walls of the Pharaohs tomb were elaborately painted and carved with prayers,
scenes and passages from myth, and even maps to help him find his way. These funerary writings,
which offered spells for warding off harm in the Afterlife as well as advice on what paths to seek in the
otherworld, are collectively known as the Pyramid Texts, and they were the first written version of what
is now called The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
By about the Middle Kingdom, mummification became more widespread. In addition to Pharaoh and
members of his immediate family, various government officials and even certain wealthy citizens could
afford to be mummified. This took the cult of the dead to whole new levels, and the Pyramid Texts,
once scribed only on the walls of the Pharaohs tomb, began to be written directly inside the coffin for
the dead man to see them. This was a little more manageable than paying dozens of scribes and artisans
to incise the prayers, letter by letter, into the stone walls of a tomb. Eventually, the spells came to be
written on amulets and bits of papyrus that were wrapped right with the bandages of the mummy. These
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make up the final portion of what has come down to us as The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
The Flesh and the Spirit
An entire priesthood was dedicated to the process of mummification, and a veritable zoo of animal-
headed gods oversaw various steps and tools used in the process. The most memorable of these is the
jackal-headed god Anubis, a guide and guardian of the dead. Anubis was the mortician of the gods, and
he is frequently depicted bending over a mummy and applying its wrappings. Since jackals are
scavengers who eat the dead, their association with corpses make them perfect animals for Anubis.
In addition to Anubis, countless other gods and goddesses were associated at some level with the cult of
the dead. The goddess Neith was said to be the weaver of the mummys linen wrappings. The scorpion
goddess Serket watched over certain parts of the dead mans body. The sister-wife of Seth, Nephthys,
was a goddess of the underworld, and the dying-and-rising god Osiris was lord of the realm of the
Afterlife.
In a country as hot as Egypt, preserving a corpse for even a few weeks is a daunting task, let alone
finding a process that will preserve a corpse for a couple thousand years. But the preservation of the
body was crucial to the Egyptian view of the afterlife. The mummy was not only considered the vessel
of the Ka, or body-soul, which remained in the tomb and was fed upon the energy of offerings from
priests and family members, but the condition of the physical body reflected upon the immortal spirit-
body that the deceased achieved in the afterlife. Unless his physical body were safe and whole, his spirit
could not be healthy and whole in the otherworld. Even the Ba, that portion of the soul that the
Egyptians believed flew forth from the corpse in the shape of a bird, was thought to return to the
physical body once in a while.
Since corpse preservation was so integral to their religious beliefs, the process the ancient Egyptians hit
upon was naturally considered sacred, and each step was a ritual in its own right carried out by special
mortician-priests. The steps of mummification, as well as the prayers and rituals that accompanied it,
were elaborate and very strict, and they could not be deviated from if the whole venture was to be a
success.
It took seventy days to completely mummify a body. This included packing the corpse with natron and
allowing this salt-like substance to naturally dehydrate the body over a period of forty days. After the
natron had dried the body out, it was removed, and the limbs were packed with clay or sand. The body
itself was stuffed with resin-soaked linen as well as a number of expensive aromatic agents, including
cinnamon and myrrh. The body was further treated with perfumes and ointments. Beeswax was
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liberally used. The Coptic word for wax was mum and this may have inspired the term mummy.
After all of these preparations, the treated corpse was wrapped in finely woven linen strips. Each finger
and each toe were wrapped individually, then each limb, then the whole was bound tightly together. In
all, no less than 1000 square yards of linen strips were used to wrap a mummy. There was magickal
significance to the direction in which the wrappings went, and so the mortician priests had to be very
careful as they bound the mummy for its trip into the Afterlife.
Because the soft tissues decay rapidly and these will quickly spoil a corpse, the internal organs had to
be removed. The lungs, liver, and other viscera were all preserved separately from the body. Each organ
had its own guardian deity and there were prayers and rites that attended the preservation of each. For
the main organs, there were four canopic jars, each topped with the head of a different guardian deity.
These jars were usually stored in a small shrine close to the body, and four goddesses stood around this
shrine, further insuring the protection of the vital organs.
The heart of the mummy was very important, for it was the heart that measured a mans worthiness in
the Afterlife. Once a person had made the transition to the otherworld, he would come to a hall of
judges. A set of scales stood in this hall, and usually Anubis stood by this along with Thoth, the scribe
of the gods. Anubis and Thoth would weigh the persons heart against an ostrich feather, which
symbolized truth. If the heart was heavier than the ostrich feather, the dead man was deemed unworthy,
and his soul was fed to Ammit, the Devourer.
To help insure that the dead man would pass this test, his own heart was often removed and preserved
separately, and an amulet, known as a heart-scarab, was put in its place. The heart-scarab was inscribed
with prayers that declared the mans innocence and worthiness of a special place in the Afterlife. When
he got to the hall of judgment and the gods asked him for his heart, he would simply hand them this
amulet in its place. Even if he had not lived a perfect life, with the help of the heart-scarab, he would be
judged worthy.
While the ancient Egyptians placed high value upon the heart, the brain of the mummy was viewed as
disposable. Usually as the first step in the process of mummification, the brain was removed in pieces
with the help of a long-handled spoon-shaped instrument that was inserted in through the nostrils and
forced up past the nasal cavities. The skull had to remain intact, as did the face, because the face was
very important to the dead man. The face was his identity, and in addition to preserving it as well as
possible on his physical body, an ornate representation of the face was usually crafted from precious
metals in the form of a funerary mask. Perhaps the most famous Egyptian funerary mask is the mask
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found with the boy-king Tutankhamen, a beautiful work done completely in gold.
Amulets and fetishes of all kinds were placed on and within the body, and certain ones had to be
inserted in the mummys wrappings at various points in the proceedings. Prayers were said over the
corpse during the entire process, and these prayers and ceremonies continued right up until the
mummys interment in its tomb, culminating in the Opening of the Mouth ceremony which
symbolically enabled the mummy to eat and breathe in the Afterlife.
The House of Eternity
After the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, the mummy was placed in the tomb with all the possessions
the person had prized in life. In ancient Egypt, tombs were known as the Houses of Eternity, and it
was believed that the dead person carried on a kind of shadow-life once sealed in the tomb.
The aforementioned Ka, or body-soul, was believed to live on in its House of Eternity, and regular
offerings had to be made in order to keep the Ka fed. If it was not properly sustained with offerings,
there was a chance that the Ka might leave the tomb and, vampire-like, seek sustenance among the
living. The feasts offered up to the Ka were sumptuous and costly. The Liturgy of Funerary Offerings
gives extensive lists of proper offerings, including bread and beer, meat and other delicacies.
While numerous priests were employed specifically to make offerings to the dead, the family of the
deceased was also expected to regularly make offerings. However, the places of burial were located far
away from human habitation, usually in the desert hills of the West. Making the trip down to the tomb
could be time-consuming not to mention dangerous. Despite its high order of civilization, ancient
Egypt was surrounded by wild country. Travel on along the Nile held risks of attacks from crocodiles
and hippopotami, while the desert lands on the outskirts of human civilizations were the hunting
grounds of fierce lions, leopards, and other wild beasts.
So that the family of the deceased did not have to make the perilous journey out to the tomb more than
once or twice a year, a compromise was achieved. The deceased was represented in the family home
with a memorial stela and offerings were made directly to this. The memorial stela was a rectangular
slab of stone, rounded on top just like our traditional tombstone. Carved with images of the gods, the
stela showed the dead man being accepted among the company of the gods. Beneath the picture, the
stela was incised with offertory prayers for the deceased. Over all of this was a winged solar disc, the
symbol of the Egyptian sun god, Ra.
For the Egyptians, the sun in its many guises represented the concept of death and rebirth. By placing
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the sun disc on their memorials for the dead, the Egyptians were expressing their hope that the soul of
their departed loved one would, like the sun, be eternally renewed. This was the goal of the entire
funerary process: rebirth in a new and better life.
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