Ancient Egypt: Travels Beyond the Grave - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 200

Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences
Mummy wrappings have had a long and curious “afterlife.” Much prized in the Middle
Ages for their medicinal powers, they were ground up or reduced to paste by apothecar-
ies. In the nineteenth century, a reddish-brown mummy paste, made by grinding the whole
mummy along with its wrappings, was used by artists for painting shadows. When the
steam engine came to a coal-less and mostly treeless Egypt, it was reported, perhaps too
luridly, that mummies provided the fires that stoked the steam engines.
WHAT IS THE TOPIC OF THE DEAD?
Tomb paintings depict life as the deceased lived it; others serve as picture guides to the af-
terlife to come: what will be encountered there, what choices lie before the deceased, and
how he (and she) is to respond to the challenges of Osiris and the other gods and demons.
These were to be spoken responses. The last stage of mummification was the ceremony
that opened the mouth. Often done in the presence of the grieving family, with servants and
priests in attendance, mouth-opening prepared the dead to eat, drink, and speak in the after-
life. The ceremony proceeded with priests or embalmers reading from a scroll that offered
prayers to the gods, information as to where to go for the weighing of the soul, and in-
struction in proper behavior in the afterlife. This scroll, The Book of the Dead , was often
included in the furnishings of the tomb, and its words were also inscribed on the chamber
that housed the sarcophagus. Two of its most famous passages begin,
I rise up…out of the Hidden Land. May my mouth be given unto me that I may speak
therewith in the presence of the Great God…Homage to thee, Osiris, Lord of Eternity,
King of the Gods, whose names are manifold, Whose forms are holy, Thou being of
hidden form in the temples, whose Ka is holy… [157]
Thus, with the body mummified, the tomb decorated and filled with provisions for the
next world, with readings from the Book of the Dead completed, the recently departed is
ready for a journey to the afterlife and its promise of eternity in the kingdom of Osiris. The
doors to the tomb are sealed. And a curse can now be affixed to the seals:
Listen all of you! The priest of Hathor will beat twice any one of you who enters this
tomb or does harm to it. The gods will confront him because I am honored by his Lord.
The gods will not allow anything to happen to me. Anyone who does anything bad to
my tomb, then [the] crocodile, [the] Hippopotamus and the lion will eat him. [158]