Since the beginning, human societies have faced the problem of what to do with dead bodies. The many different ways in which bodies are disposed is often seen as a reflection of the religious beliefs of that society. Often the disposal of dead bodies is accompanied by special ceremonies or rituals.
In his book Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, Pascal Boyer writes:
“Dead people, like vegetables, can be pickled or preserved. You can also abandon them to the beasts of the field, burn them like rubbish or bury them like treasure. From embalming to cremation, all sorts of techniques are used to do something to the corpse. But the point is, something must be done. This is a constant and has been so for a long time.”
In some cases, dead bodies are preserved through the intentional or natural process of mummification. Mummification is the result of the full or partial preservation of soft tissues. Following death, soft tissues begin to disintegrate due to bacterial growth and cell disintegration. Mummification interrupts or stops this disintegration process.
Artificial Mummification
Many cultures around the world have developed techniques to forestall decomposition. In an article in Discover, Nathaniel Scharping writes:
“For many of these peoples, mummification preserved the perceived connection between the physical body and the immortal soul—just as they needed each other in life, so too were soul and body linked in the afterlife.”
Nathaniel Scharping also writes:
“In many cultures, mummification was also a status symbol. Preparing a body took significant time and effort, which meant the process wasn’t available to just anyone. Receiving such lavish treatment signaled to others that you were revered and admired.”
Mention the word mummy to many people and they will associate it with Egypt. In the ancient Egyptian cult of the dead, which centered primarily around the pharaohs (rulers) and nobility, the survival of the dead person’s body was important because this body would be resurrected in the afterworld. The body would be embalmed, dried in natron, wrapped in linen, covered with resin, and then placed in one or more ornamental coffins.
In her book An Introduction to the Archaeology of Egypt, Kathryn Bard reports:
“It was believed that there were three elements of a person’s existence in the afterlife: the ba, ka, and akh, which have no real equivalent in Judeo-Christian and Muslim beliefs.”
The ka is sometimes translated as “life force” or personality; ba is often translated as “soul”; and akh is similar to “spirit.” With regard to ka and ba, Lorna Oakes and Lucia Gahlin, in their book Ancient Egypt, report:
“It is probably best to leave them untranslated, because it is very difficult to be sure exactly what these terms meant to the ancient Egyptians, and a word such as ‘soul’ has connotations that would have been unfamiliar to them.”
The ba is a manifestation of a person’s will after death and travels between the tomb and the afterlife. Kathryn Bard writes:
“For the ba to exist the body of the deceased had to be preserved, which was the ideological reason for mummification.”
The Egyptian embalming process began by first removing the brains. This was generally done by inserting a hook-like implement through the nose and then pulling the brains out. In his book Mummy: The Inside Story, John Taylor describes what happens next:
“Next, the embalmer made an incision on the left side of the abdomen. Through this almost all of the internal organs were removed. The corpse was then covered with natron, a natural compound of salts, which—over a period of about forty days—absorbed all the bodily fluids.”
Once the body was dried, it would be wrapped in linen, a cloth made from flax and which was the most common fabric in ancient Egypt.
Deliberate mummification is also found outside of Egypt, most notably in South America. The Chinchorro, a hunting, gathering, and fishing group who lived in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile and southern Peru, also engaged in a form of mummification. In an article in Current World Archaeology, Nicholas Bartos reports:
“Mummies were carefully constructed, often by removing and replacing internal organs with plant fibre and animal hair or by disarticulating, treating, and reassembling the body and limbs of the deceased. A variety of pigments and ashes were also used, and, in some cases, the flesh of the dead was removed and substituted for mud and clay.”
Another form of deliberate preservation of bodies can be found in more modern times when bodies, particularly those of political and religious leaders, were placed in sealed coffins so that their remains could be viewed long after their death. In Russia, for example, the body of Vladimir Lenin has been on public display since 1924.
Natural Mummification
Under certain conditions, bodies may become mummified due to natural conditions rather than any human attempt at preservation. One example of this are the bog bodies of Northern Europe. The unusual conditions of the bog generally mean that the skin and internal organs remain, while the acid in the peat has dissolved the bones. Some of these bog bodies appeared to have been human sacrifices or perhaps people who were executed.
At the time of his death, Clonycavan Man was about 25 years of age and he stood about 5 feet 9 inches tall. He was killed by a series of blows to the head, probably by an ax. There are also suggestions that he was disemboweled. The bog where the body was found would have been on the border between two kingdoms at about 300 BCE.
Freezing may also result in the preservation of dead bodies. In 1993, a German couple hiking in the Tyrolean Alps found a body near the Similaun glacier. The find of this well-preserved Copper Age man has been well-covered in the news media and he has been dubbed the Ice Man, Similaun Man, and Ötzi. This was not a deliberate burial, but a murder victim who had simply frozen on the mountain after death.
In the Altai mountains of Siberia, a number of ancient tombs, known as Pazyryk from the local word for burial mound, have resulted in frozen bodies from the fifth to third centuries BCE. Christopher Catling and Paul Bahn, in their book The Complete Practical Encyclopedia of Archaeology, explain:
“The secret to the preservation of the contents of the tombs lies in the fact that warm, moist summer air was trapped in the chamber at the time of burial. This warm air rose, and the moisture condensed on the stones in the shaft, trickled back down and saturated the corpse and grave goods.”
In the winter, the moisture froze and the thick mound of earth over the tomb kept the ice cold enough so that it didn’t thaw. In other words, the tomb formed a type of icebox which resulted in frozen mummies.
Self-Mummification
There are some Buddhist monks who attempted to obtain divinity through a self-mummification process. Self-mummification begins by surviving solely on a diet of tree bark, pine needles, berries, and nuts for up to a decade. This diet, which involves slow self-starvation, eliminates body fat and builds up chemical compounds in the body which are toxic to the bacteria associated with decomposition.