Preserving a dead body was a widespread practice, common to many societies of the past. Perhaps the most well-known rituals belong to the ancient Egyptians, who kept corpses intact through a process called mummification. In fact, the procedure was so successful that we still can view the mummified body of an Egyptian today, over 3,000 years after their death, and get a good picture of what they looked like.
Ancient Egyptians loved life and believed in immortality. This motivated them to make early plans for their death. While this may seem contradictory, for Egyptians, it made perfect sense: They believed that life would continue after death and that they would still need their physical bodies. Thus, preserving bodies in as lifelike a way as possible was the goal of mummification, and essential to the continuation of life.
The Egyptians believed that the mummified body housed one's soul or spirit. If ...
