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In the Egyptian religion the idea of resurrection
was deeply rooted. The Ba and the Ka left the body temporarlily at the
moment od death and then returned to it. The Ba was the carrier of eternal
energies, the Ka represented a kind of custodian spirit. Although it was
born with the people, it survived them. When thay returned it was
necessary that they found the ancient body, that’s why it mustn’t rot.
Moreover the mummified body represented Osiride, the god of the dead. Only
he had the power to give life to the dead person. The Egyptians soon
realized that the embalming wasn’t perfed if they didn’t remove the flabby
parts and the entrails. The most difficult operation was the extraction of
the brain, as there mustn’t be any visible wounds. It’s not know when the
famous hooks were used for the first time. Professor Sudholf, born in
Francoforte was an anothomist, director of the Institute of Medecine, had
demonstrated that only one curved hook was necessary to let the cerebral
material come out. (Picture 1).
In 1908 he experimented a hook, lightly curved, of about thirthy
centimeters, given to him by a collector from Berlin, on the corpse of an
unknown suicide. Sudhoff pubblished the results three years later: “the
breaking through of the cribosa lamina, he wrote, wasn’t difficult; it was
as easing the breakingof the lamina perpendicularis, moreover the complete
destruction of the nasal carities. The penetration of the cronical cavity
provoked the splitting of the tentorio and of all the membrane parts,
knocking with the pointor with the curved part of the hook; then the
cerebral material was stirred which was already a bit macerated. We then
put the body in the prone position: in fifteen, twenty minutes, stimulated
lightely from the hook the brain came out”. It was easier to remove the
inner organs. (Picture 2).
Diodoro clarifies what Erodoto describes: “That cutting line was masked on
the left side of the body, the meat was then cut with an ethiopian stone.
This could be ossidiana, present on the banks of the Nile (the superiore
course). The ossidiana is a characteristic in the front Asia, a volcanic
glass used mostly to make blades, arrow points and scrapers. It owes, it’s
said, its name to the roman Obsius, who found it in Ethiopia. Karl Sudhoff
has carefully re-construeted the work of the Egyptian embalmers-surgeons
the diaphragm was opened from the bottom part, the bronchuses or the
trachea was cut to liberate the lungs, the same thing was done with the
aorta. The operator introduced the right arm in the abdominal opening, he
removed the intestine bowels, then he emptied the chest cavity. The
perforation of the diaphragm permitted to remove the lungs and the big
vessels. It’s sure that up to 1070 – 945 BC, the liver the lungs, the
stomach and other bowels were kept in the canopy. Horo’s fous children had
to keep them (Picture 6): Amset the liver, Hapi the lungs,
Duamutef the
stomach and Kebehsenuef the other bowels. According to modern anatomy,
each internal organ could be removed in two ways: the first one – a few
days after the death, as the decomposition process began, it was possible
to remove all the entrails with the hands. “But” the professor Sudhoff
objects”, a stage of ratting so advanced that it rendered possible the
breaking of the diaphragm with a hand, the manual removal of the trachea
and of the aorta, the digital perforation would have made illusory any
hope to identify the single organs, now rotten, broken and destroyed”. The
second way: those who made the dissecting of the corpse, must have used a
knife with a hook for a blade (so me bronze ones have been found in the
excavations; as long as a hand of average size, they have a sharp point
and folded on a side, the rest of the blade is obtuse). Grasping it, the
surgeon could immerse his arm. The handle of the object ends and a scalpal:
it could also be used to scrape. It was impossible to invent a better
bistoury for this kind of operation. All this was part of a consecrated
ritual. The executors weren’t professional surgeons, but priests, the
so-called priests of Ut, the same ones that then went ahead in the
embalming process. Opposite to Sudhoff, according to whom the corpses were
immersed in liscivia of sodium, today science affirms that the corpses
were dry treated (covered with dry sodium, a natural mixture of carbonate,
bicarbonate, chloride and sodium sulphate) (Picture 4). Going on for
thirty-five days, this treatment eliminated from the tissues every liquid
trace. The technique of the dehydration is prooved only by the fact that
anatomy tables on which it could be practised, have reached us, of tubs
for the dehydrating liscivia instead we have no information. After this
kind of chemical treatment the body appeared quite battered. That’s why
the embalmers used any kind of cosmethics to embalmers used any kind of
cosmethics to embellish the corpse: the pointed hands, feet and hair with
henna (which the Egyptians called puker), a red-brounish pigment extract
from the thorny tree of the borages. The other parts of the body that
weren’t covered in bandages were painted with red ochre (men) and with
yellow achre (women). The priests of Ut provided about levelling the
hollow parts (belly, breasts, buttocks) with stuffings of cloths immersed
in a sticky mass, with glue, sawdust or hay. The artificial eyes had to
resemble as close as possibile to the real ones. Then the actual embalming
began: wine, oils, fats, resins and honey had to remove any unpleasant
odour from the corpse (Picture 3). Only two papyruses describe it, kept
respectively in the museum in Cairo and in the Louvre. In ieratic
characters, they copy a more ancient original one. Unfortunately they are
both incomplete and they don’t give any technique details on the embalming,
to which we can go back beginning from the ritual clements (which,
themselves, form a third papyrus: a book with the ritual of the embalming
of the Api bulls). The cairota papyrus was studied by the Egyptologist
Ellio Smith, who during his activity had examined thousands of mummies. He
made surveys on about twenty five thousand skulls searching for bone
deformations; on other divehundred he found the paradentosi, professor
Smith, with his colleague Warren R. Daeson, on the base of the cairota
papyrus, has formed twelve indications on how to embelm a corpse:
1) How the prjest of Ut must use incense for the head of the mummy
2) How to get a vase and use the ointments in it to open the mouth: a
serven must oil the whole body to the feet, except the head.
3) A complete obscure indication: it refers to another unction and
mentions “Oro’s sons; evidently connected to the inner organs embalmed
separately
4) How to rub with grease “Horus’s sons” back.
5) Other indications on how to grease and to bandage the back and how to
introduce medicine in the skull;
6) Cover in gold the nails and wrap the fingers in linens from Sais.
7) Anubis (during the ceremonies he was represented by a priest), director
of the mysteries and embalmer, protagonist of the ceremonies.
8) A long text indicates how to embalm and wrap the corpse We so know the
single magic names given to the bandages destined to cover each part of
the head, for example of what kind was and the name of the long bandages
destined to the ears, the nostrils, the cheeks, the eyebrows, the mouth,
the chin and the nape. A strip two fingers wide will keep together the
bandages that urap the head, on which abundant fluid oil will be poured.
(Picture 5).
9) Ho w to treat the head further with incense and fat and to introduce
among the bondages certain aromas.
10) Particular indications on how to grease and wrap the hands. The use of
an ointment made equally from “amu” flowers, of resin of Koptos and of
natron. The bandages are identified with gods and fodesses (a decoration
on the papyrus shows different divinities: they bring bandages to the
mummy that rests on a settee).
11) A similar text that describe the bandages: little figures of
divinities, of whom the hands are wrapped.
12) Indication to grease and wrap the arms, the feet and the legs. The
mummifying process didn’t last under three months. Seventeen days were
necessary only for the bandagin, we find this information on two papyruses
discovered at half of the last century by the Scottish lawyer Alexander
Henry Plind in a private Teban tomb of the Twenty-eighth dynsaty. In
Western Tebe, he unburied an entire series of papyruses, later called
Plind. One of them describes the mummification of a man, the other of a
woman. The two documents affirm that the head was mummified for seven days;
the internal organs for four days; two days for the arms and two for the
legs: one day for the back and one for the chest. From a text in the Plind
papyrus number one.
The great Iside, mother of the god, directs the sepulchral of N (the dead
person’s name, title and descent followed). Two hundred and six jars of
fat have been cooked, as it’s done for the sacred animals. You’ve been
rubbed with Horo’s balsam, who is the owner of the lavoratory; Shesmw with
his fingers has wrapped the divine bandage to keep in the god’s and the
goddess’s pod your body. Anubis, the embalmer, has filled your skull with
resin, with the god’s grains, with cedar oil, with tender ox fat and
cinnamon oil. All you limbs are wrapped in myhrr. In the sacred bandages
your body has been wrapped. Come out and look at the winter sun of the
twenty-sixth day of Farmuti. (The fourth winter moth, that lasts from
january 5th to February 15th).
Seventy days have passed from the death. One or two days after the
mournful event they had begun to clean and dehydrate (lenght fifty-two
days); seventeen to preserve and mummify. So the mummy was put in the
coffin by the priests of UT. The corpse, that had become Osiridie, was
watched for other three days and nights. Then the moment arrived to carry
the sovereign to his burial.
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