Egypt Facts: Ancient Egypt Burial

When any person died, all the women of the house left the body and ran out into the streets, wailing, and throwing dust upon their heads. Their friends and relatives joined them as they went, and if the deceased was a person of quality, others accompanied them out of respect. Having thus advertised the death, they returned home and sent the body to the embalmers. During the entire period of its absence they kept up an ostentatious show of grief, sitting unwashed and unshaven, in soiled and torn garments, singing dirges and making lamentation.

After the body was restored to them, if they wished to delay its burial, they placed it in a movable wooden closet standing against the wall of the prineipal room in the house. Here, morning and evening, the members of the family came to weep over and embrace it, making offerings to the gods in its behalf. Occasionally it was brought out to join in festivities given in its honor (p. 42). The time having come to entomb it, an imposing procession was formed, in the midst of which the mummy was drawn upright on a sledge to the sacred lake adjoining every large city.

At this point forty-two chosen officials — emblematical of the forty-two judges in the court of Osiris — formed a semicircle around the mummy, and formal inquiries were made as to its past life and character. If no accusation was heard, an enloginm was pronouneed, and the body was passed over the lake. If, however, an evil life was proven, tho lake could not be crossed, and the distressed friends were compelled to leave the body of their disgraced relative unburied, or to carry it home, and wait till their gifts and devotions, united to the prayers of the priesthood, should pacify the gods. Every Egyptian, the king included, was subjected to the "trial of the dead," and to be refused interment was the greatest possible dishonor. The best security a creditor could have was a mortgage on the mummies of his debtor's ancestors. If the debt were not paid, the delinquent forfeited his own burial and that of his entire family.

The mummies of the poorer classes were deposited in pits in the plain or in recesses cut in the rock, and then closed up with masonry ; those of the lowest orders were wrapped in coarse cloth mats, or a bundle of palin-sticks, and buried in the earth or huddled into the general repository. Various articles were placed in the tombs, especially images of the deceased person, and utensils connected with his profession or trade (p. 38). Among the higher classes these objects were often of great value, and included elegant vases, jewelry, and important papyri.