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How Were Egyptian Mummies Made?

Egyptian embalmers removed the brain, usually through the nose, took out the internal organs through a cut in the left side of the abdomen, and dried the body by packing it in natron, a natural salt, for about 40 days. They then cleaned it, anointed it with oils and resins and wrapped it in many layers of linen; the whole process took about 70 days. The heart was usually left in place. The fullest ancient description is by the Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 400s BC and described three methods at three prices.

What Herodotus describes

Herodotus (Histories 2.86–88) says families were shown painted wooden models of bodies and chose between three methods. In the most expensive, the embalmers drew out the brain through the nostrils with a bent iron hook and dissolved the rest with drugs; they opened the side with a sharp Ethiopian stone, removed the organs, washed the cavity with palm wine and spices, filled it with myrrh, cassia and other spices, and sewed it up. The body was then covered in natron for seventy days, washed and wrapped in strips of fine linen smeared with gum, and returned to the family in a man-shaped wooden case.

The cheaper methods skipped the incision: one injected cedar oil to dissolve the organs before the natron, and the cheapest simply cleansed the intestines and dried the body.

What science has added

CT scans of mummies confirm brain removal through the nose, often through a hole punched in the ethmoid bone, and incisions in the left flank. They also show that Herodotus’ seventy days was the whole process rather than the time in natron: Egyptian sources point to about forty days of drying within a seventy-day period of embalming and ritual. Experiments in modern times, including a full mummification of a human body donor in 1994, showed that natron dries a body thoroughly in that time.

The organs were dried separately and, for much of Egyptian history, placed in four canopic jars; in some later periods they were wrapped and put back inside the body. The heart, which Egyptians believed would be weighed in the afterlife, was normally left in place. Chemical analysis of embalming residues has identified resins, oils, beeswax and bitumen, some brought from far outside Egypt.

How old the practice is

The earliest Egyptian bodies were preserved by accident, dried by the hot sand of desert graves before 3000 BC. Deliberate mummification developed over the following centuries and reached its most elaborate form in the New Kingdom (about 1550–1070 BC). It continued into the Roman period, when mummies were often given painted portrait panels over the face.

What most scholars accept, and what stays contested

Frequently asked questions

How long did mummification take?

About 70 days in total, of which roughly 40 were spent drying the body in natron.

Why did they remove the brain?

It decays quickly and Egyptians did not regard it as important; the heart, seen as the seat of thought and judged in the afterlife, was left in the body.

What is natron?

A natural mixture of salts, mainly sodium carbonate and bicarbonate, collected from dry lake beds such as the Wadi Natrun. It draws water out of the body.

Who described mummification in ancient times?

The Greek historian Herodotus, in Book 2 of his Histories (written in the 400s BC), and later Diodorus Siculus.

Sources and further reading