The word mummy is not Egyptian. It may come from Persian, which means asphalt or tar. Mummies get their name because the preserved bodies turn black with age. The people who first discovered the mummy saw it and thought that the Egyptian way to preserve the corpse was to soak it in tar. It turned out that their idea was wrong. It is entirely accidental that the earliest mummies in Egypt were probably never soaked in anything. As early as 5,000 years ago, before the rise of Egyptian pharaohs, people in the Nile Valley buried the dead naked in the sand near the desert edge of the valley because they were unwilling to turn the insufficient fertile land into a cemetery. Because the Egyptians buried the bodies only about one meter deep, after a period of time, the sand layer gradually drifted, and it was inevitable that some bodies would be exposed. These bodies were completely dried by hot sand, and normal decay did not happen at all. So hundreds of years ago, the skin, hair and appearance of the body looked amazing. These bodies are not mummies in technical terms, and many of them remain intact today. After 3 100 BC, Egyptian society became more and more organized under the rule of Pharaoh, and the religious belief in the afterlife actually developed into the worship of the dead. Devoted people gradually believe that the body should be properly preserved, which is even more necessary if the deceased wants to enter heaven. They believe that if any part of the body rots in the grave, that part will be lost forever. This may be why the statues made by the Egyptians to decorate the graves of their ancestors must have limbs. Once the preservation of the body becomes the core of the belief of rebirth after death, it is necessary for people to be buried in solid stone graves instead of sand after death, at least those who have the money to build stone graves will think so. Since the body is no longer buried in the sand, it is natural to replace the antiseptic effect of dry sand with another antiseptic method. As a result, a new industry of embalming has emerged, and embalmers also regard embalming as a secret recipe handed down from generation to generation. Egyptian embalmers used a natural rock salt called soda instead of sand to treat the corpse, that is, mixed powder of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate (that is, washing soda and baking powder that we use every day now). The role of soaking alkali is like sponge absorbing water, which can suck out the water of a corpse buried in soaking alkali powder. The embalmer washed the internal organs of the body with spices and various solvents, and finally wrapped the body with a shroud hundreds of meters long. Some precious and refined amulets are often sandwiched between layers of wrapped cloth to protect the dead and avoid being disturbed by monsters on the way to heaven. As far as we know, the earliest mummies were carefully preserved and then wrapped in cloth, which began around 2600 BC. During the period from 1085 BC to 945 BC, that is, during the period of 2 1 Pharaoh dynasty, the anti-corrosion technology reached its peak. Subsequently, the religious piety spirit was gradually replaced by the business attitude of taking advantage. Instead of trying to keep the body intact, the embalmer pays attention to the appearance of the mummy (a bit like a modern undertaker putting on makeup to let the dead see the body). The embalmer sealed the inside and outside of the corpse with thick rosin, and occasionally used honey, which only played a hidden role and could not inhibit the decomposition of the corpse. The embalmer also used strong-smelling spices to cover up the smell of the body that could not be dispersed. On the wooden box containing the mummy, he painted some vivid portraits and explained the past. The technique of making great efforts to keep the body intact in the past is out of fashion. So later mummies are often not well preserved, and Bree may only have bones. Until the first century BC, embalmers were still respected for their skills, and they could make a lot of money with their embalming skills. According to Diodorus Dorus, a Greek writer living in Egypt at that time, embalmers in the first century BC provided different services for embalming corpses. Dior Dorus said that the third class is the cheapest first class, and the price is quite reasonable, although there is no record of how much it costs; However, no matter how much it costs, I'm afraid most ancient Egyptians can't afford it. People and farmers who work for a living can bury the dead as long as they can find a place. The second-class charge is 20 meters, which is estimated to be about $3,000. First-class full-body corrosion protection costs an ancient coin, which is more than 10000 dollars when converted into current money. Most poor people can't afford to spend such a large sum of money to keep the bodies. They still bury the dead with sand. The corpses of these poor people have a lower degree of decay than those that have been artificially preserved. During the long years of Pharaoh's rule in Egypt, almost all graves were dug up by grave robbers, and only a little valuable things were buried and looted. These grave robbers have no religious fear of the dead. They not only open coffins, but also tear apart the shroud of mummies and take away valuable things hidden in layers of shroud. These desecrated and abandoned bodies were finally repackaged by the priest, but there was no way. From the appearance, it seems to be well preserved. In fact, many mummies have been photographed by X-ray fluoroscopy, which often shows that the wrapped cloth is full of rags and scattered bones. In more than 3000 years, many changes have taken place in the way ancient Egyptians made mummies. However, most scholars and experts believe that the anti-corrosion method reached its peak around 10 century BC. At that time, a first-class embalmer made mummies according to the following steps: first, a 10 cm incision was made on the left side of the abdomen of the corpse with a flint knife, from which all internal organs except the heart (which the embalmer and his customers thought was the root of feelings) were taken out, and then they were treated one by one with wine and spices containing myrrh and cinnamon. The embalmer also washed the abdominal cavity of the corpse with aromatic asphalt to decompose the residual soft tissue, and then prepared to take the brain. He used a hooked tool to penetrate into the skull from the nostril of the deceased, hooked off the brain marrow inside, and then poured aromatic asphalt and spices to rush out the residual tissue in the skull. After every part of the body was thoroughly cleaned, the embalmer buried all organs and the body in a pile of powder soaked in alkali (a mixture of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate) and drained the water. Bodies and organs should be buried in alkaline powder for about a month, and then washed with perfume and spices. Every step of embalming the corpse from beginning to end, the embalming personnel must be serious, such as wrapping every finger of the corpse from the beginning to prevent the nails from being damaged or falling off. Then, the antiseptic wrapped the dry viscera one by one with linen, put them back into the abdominal cavity (or put them in a clay pot or a stone pot alone) and filled the abdominal cavity with fillers such as sawdust, linen, tar or mud. After filling, the incision will be stitched immediately. Because soaking alkali damaged some hair, we need to mend some wigs, and with the real hair that hasn't been taken off, we need to put artificial eyes in our eyes. At this time, the remaining work is to restore the appearance of the body, which is also the most time-consuming, because it is not easy to restore the withered body to its original appearance. During this ancient plastic surgery, the embalmer carefully cut many tiny incisions in various parts of the body and filled the skin with linen fillers shaped according to the body contour, just like plastic surgeons injected silicone into the living in the 20th century. Even the face and neck of the corpse are as good as before, and the mouth is stuffed with linen to make the cheeks full. Finally, the antiseptic also acts as a makeup artist, using a colored clay called ochre to color the face and even the whole body of the deceased (the male deceased is dyed red and the female deceased is dyed yellow). You can wrap your body after dyeing. The embalmer wrapped the limbs of the corpse layer by layer with linen cloth coated with rosin, then wrapped the head and trunk, and finally wrapped the whole body. This parcel is slow and time-consuming. Now several mummies have been untied, and the total length of the cloth is more than two kilometers! The embalmer wrapped the body and made it into a mummy, which took about 70 days before and after. Follow the embalmer to return the mummy to undertaker. By this time, undertaker had probably prepared another human coffin to hold the mummy and built a grave. In a word, the Egyptians did their best, but the dead are immortal and can be among the gods.