Egyptians strong belief in gods and an afterlife led them to preserve the bodies of the dead.
They entombed the mummies with food, jewelleries, board games to help them on their long journeys and endless hours at eternity until their can return.
Ancient Egyptians had 750 gods to worship. The gods had human bodies and animal heads.
Re the sun-god was worshipped in the morning as scarab beetle, at noon as a hawk but his most powerful shape as ram-headed chief god Amun-Re.
It had been believed that Re travelled across the sky and at night he sank below the horizon to enter the caverns of the underworld.
Journey to the underworld
Their belief in the underworld was the main point in the Egyptian religion. Everybody had a mortal body and immortal soul, called ka. When they die that falcon-headed god Horus led the soul to Osiris, king of the underworld, for judgement.
Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the tombs, weighed the soul's heart against the Feather of Truth. Wicked souls were eaten by crocodile-headed Ammut, while good souls went to Osiris, who gave them eternal happiness.
During their life the people took great care of their bodies with bathing, ointment with perfumes and oils. They painted their faces, hands and feet. In death, they belief the souls, which might live forever, need beautiful bodies to live in. Therefore the highly sophisticated method of mummification was developed.
A dead person needed possessions in the afterlife. Therefore, all depending on the status of the corpse the right goods were buried with them. They were jewels, clothes, weapons, tools, food, drink, games, statues of horses, domestic animals, servants and a map of the underworld.
Mummies were often provided with a special funeral barge and painted green the colour of new growth, a sign of rebirth. The mummy was placed at the centre of the barge with a great canopy and female mourners at either side. The procession took them to the final resting place.
Mummification was expensive and only affordable by the rich. Ordinary people were buried in simple graves in the sand. The grieving family would put just a few simple necessities next to their bodies to be used in the underworld. The heat kept their bodies in near perfect preservation.
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