© Robert Clark/National Geographic
Brilio.net/en - What's the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear or read "mummies"? Eerie creatures whose bodies are wrapped in linen, lurking in the darkness of a tomb? Or maybe living skeletal bodies which occupies the old mausoleums?
Well, maybe it remains a mystery how such creepy stories about mummies spread the nightmare worldwide; but this feature will help us learn that actually mummies are part of ancient (and mostly sacred) tradition of many civilizations rather than a ghastly legend.
How to make a mummy?
According to National Geographic, when Egyptian mummies enjoy the worlds most famous mummies status, civilizations around the world have found creative ways to preserve their dead.
Here are some of mummies occupying the world, including some you may not have heard of, and their strange path to pseudo-immortality.
1. Modern Mummies
People of some villages in Papua New Guinea still mummify their dead elders today. Dead bodies are placed in a hut, then they have it smoked until the skin and internal organs are dried. They theyre coated with red clay to preserve structural sturdiness, and finally they are placed in a jungle shrine.
Villagers often talk or consult their mummified ancestors, and even bring them to celebrations, as if they were alive.
2. Chiles Chinchorro Mummies
These are the oldest known created mummies in the world. Once, they were the Chinchoros, a fishing people who dwelled on the coast of what is now southern Peru and northern Chile about 9,000 years ago.
In the Chiles most famous Chinchorro cemetery, nestled between the cities of Arica and Cobija, lies the remains of these peoples, called the Black Mummies.
The hidden Black Mummies named after the layer of black manganese, an iron-like metal, that coats their bodies. Yet the most dreadful thing isnt in the color, but in how Chinchorros mummify their dead.
To create a Black Mummy, Chinchorro morticians cut off the body's head, arms and legs, scooped out the organs and flesh, and often emptied the brain through a hole in the skull. The skin was peeled away from the body to be reattached later (as if youre wearing your stockings). To finish the process, the mortician would shove hot coals into the emptied dead body to make it dry.
Lastly, the mortician re-built the body with sticks and animal hairs, then covered it in white ash. For final touch, they attached a handful of short black hair to the scalp, then painted the corpse with black manganese.
3. Bog Bodies
Besides leprechauns and mushroom rings sprites in many fairytales, Ireland has even stranger things hiding in its mysterious mists: the bog bodies.
Dead human bodies thrown into bogs of Ireland hundreds years ago are perfectly preserved by its hostile surroundings. Bogs contains very little oxygen, keeping the rotting bacteria away, allowing bog bodies preserved for centuries.
One of the most recent of Ireland's bog bodies was discovered in 2011 and the oldest bog body on record is 4,000 years old, which is 500 years older than King Tutankhamun of Egypt. Little did they know that their bodies would be preserved for centuries.
4. Typical Egyptian Mummies
The filmmakers favorite mummies are the Egyptian corpses. With their shelters in old pyramids and the tales of curses, they create the perfect setting for a Hollywood hit.
An Egyptian mummy embalming process takes 70 days. Firstly, priests (morticians) liquified the corpses brain and drained it through the nose. All internal organs were removed and placed in separate jars. Only the heart was left in the body, as Egyptians believed that the heart was integral to a person's being and intelligence.
Then the corpse was covered by natron (type of salt) to dry it, which was followed by the wrapping process that involved hundreds of yards of linen.
After it was completely wrapped from head to toe, the mummy was placed inside its embellished coffin, then placed in a tomb along with paintings or models of food or amulets and anything the person would need in the afterlife.
This type of mummification was so successful that now, thousands of years later, we're still learning from the bodies of long-dead Egyptians.
According to a Smithsonian website, the Egyptians believed that a body was the home for humans soul/spirit, hence had to be preserved. Once the body was destroyed, they believed that the spirit might be lost.
Even now, when the mysteries hidden in the mummys tomb slowly began to unfold, the research is far from over. A recent example, scientists are exploring King Tutankhamuns tomb when they spotted a clue to a secret tomb, which is believed to be an eternal home of Tuts mother (or mother-in-law?), the famed Queen Nefertiti.
(brl/tis)
