Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 100

Because Egyptians believed the ka (soul) reunited with the body in the tomb, the body had to be painstakingly preserved through mummification. Here are the three basic steps of mummification:

1 Remove the body’s organs, preserving the important ones in jars.

2 Dry the corpse (because moisture causes decay).

3 Wrap the body with layers of linen bandages.

Embalming priests extracted the organs through a slit in the stomach, dried the body for 70 days with natron (baking soda and salt), and then bandaged it up.

Incense, jewels, and herbs were often tucked neatly between the layers of bandages — mummy clothes that didn’t go out of fashion for 3,000 years.