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According to Herodotus, there are three ways to make mummies, the first is twice as expensive as the second, and the third is the cheapest, which can be used by low-level officials. The bodies of ordinary farmers are not preserved, but can only be preserved naturally in the dry Egyptian climate.
Herodotus, a Greek historian, witnessed the mummification process in Egypt in the fifth century BC. This classic material explains that there are three types of funeral ceremonies. The first category is the luxurious funeral ceremony. Porters first carried the body to a ferry moored on the Nile and transported it to the west bank. Then, under the guidance of a priest and accompanied by a funeral procession, the deceased was taken into a tent for antiseptic treatment.
There, the bodies were cleaned first, and then the antiseptic craftsmen began to operate in the monotonous songs sung by monks. The chief antiseptic craftsman wore a jackal mask. This may be because the deceased was just buried in the desert, and the jackals often sniffed at the graves, so the god Anubis appeared later. Like the jackals, he specially received the deceased.
Next up is the terrible knife-wielder. According to the ancient Greek historian Dior Dorus, this man made an incision on the left side of the abdomen of the deceased with an Ethiopian stone, leaving a plane about 5 inches long, and then fled the scene in despair. Others threw stones at him and abused him heartily, which was a symbolic punishment for his "violation of human body". At this time, other craftsmen took out most of the internal organs, embalmed them, put them into four stone vessels and buried them with the mummy. The brain of the deceased was also cleanly cut out. Only the heart remains in its original place, because people think that the heart is a place to keep conscience, and it will have to be weighed in the underworld. After the cavity in the chest and abdomen is washed with brown wine, it should be coated with liquid resin to prevent parasites from eating it.
About three quarters of the human body is water. How to dehydrate without damaging tissues is the secret of mummification industry. Modern scholars believe that dry caustic soda (a natural substance containing hydrocarbons and sodium chloride) absorbs water around the corpse, and it takes 35 to 40 days to absorb the water in the corpse. This time limit has been mentioned in the Bible Genesis. After Jacob died in Egypt, Yue Se "ordered the doctor who served him to smoke his father with spices ... and the routine of smoking the corpse was tomorrow, ..."
After dehydration, the body is filled with linen or sawdust by beauticians to restore its complete appearance. The beautician covered the abdominal incision with a small piece of gold, dyed fingernails and toenails with henna, braided the female deceased, and put jewelry on the deceased as eyes. You must be very careful when shaving your face, because the five senses are the main basis for distinguishing who the deceased is. After that, rub the fragrance on your body and apply liquid resin. Many mummy specimens can still smell this fragrance.
After these treatments, the original human body becomes empty and can be safely wrapped in linen. The winding process takes two weeks, and at least 1500 yards of linen tape is needed. Sometimes the outermost layer is wrapped in a pattern of contrasting colors.
The whole process of mummy processing lasted for 70 days. After completion, the most important part of the whole funeral ceremony, namely the symbolic "opening ceremony", will be held. It is said that by doing this, the dead can breathe, eat and drink and defend themselves in front of the underworld. In this ceremony, the mummy was lifted upright, and the priest stroked its face wrapped in cloth with a carpenter's axe and said, "You are still alive! You are still young! " . The last item is a banquet hosted by relatives and friends of the deceased to send the mummy to the underworld. The mummy will cross this dark world and finally reach the court of Osiris, the son of heaven and earth.
The body was mummified, but the living people expected the dead to "become" Osiris behind them: but it was far from easy to just reach Osiris. This journey requires the deceased to cross a terrible dark canyon. The devil will keep harassing his ferry. He must also pass through a gate by two fierce serpent ward. If all goes well, he will finally come to cold Russia. Osiris sat in the middle, flanked by 42 children. He will order the victim's heart to be weighed. The deceased also carried a scarab carved with precious stones as an amulet under the shroud, with a sentence engraved on it, which meant to ask the heart not to testify against its owner. Nevertheless, if one end of the balance in the heart of the deceased is found to be sinking because of the countless crimes of the deceased, the deceased will be immediately swallowed up by the crocodile-headed "ghost eater". The pardoned dead can move on and finally come to a wonderful paradise that looks like Egypt.
In order to make the dead feel comfortable behind them, the tomb is decorated with sculptures and paintings to show beautiful life scenes. There are also food, drinks, furniture and toiletries (including combs and razors) in the tomb. If you are a rich and powerful person, you should put gold in the grave. Obviously, the creed at that time was: "People can take away wealth when they die." In order to find these treasures, grave robbers dug holes as soon as they found the grave. Therefore, before 1600 BC, the emperors were buried in the "Valley of the Kings" west of Thebes, and their graves were secretly dug into limestone cliffs hundreds of feet deep. There was no one there, and scorpions were piled up. Even so, the grave was ransacked. Some mummies now on display in Cairo bear traces of rough treatment.
On the eve of the gradual disappearance of the custom of making mummies, the portrait of the mummy, the last and most outstanding flower, opened. The portrait was painted on a thin wooden board and the mummy's face was covered with a cloth. Many of these portraits are so lifelike that even the stubble on a young man's chin will not be missed. These portraits seem to say, "Look! I am here-I have defeated death! "
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