This is one of the most beautiful mummies
that, actually, I discovered at Saqqara only few months ago.
We went inside the burial chamber and we found this mummy completely by accident.
The tomb is dated to the Old Kingdom, about 4200 years ago.
But I never expected to discover inside the Old Kingdom tomb
a typical Late Period mummy.
It's very important to talk about mummification to explain really what happened.
When the deceased die, they take his body to wash.
And after the washing they began to open the stomach
they take all the viscera of the king,
everything inside his stomach they picked out.
And they put it on natron to dry.
And after that they covered them with linen and they put them inside [abacks].
After that they leaved the heart in the body,
because the heart is a place of knowledge,
it gives knowledge to the deceased in the afterlife.
But they take the brain, because if you leave the brain inside the mummy, t
he brain can be damaged.
And this why they go through the nose
and they insert some thin material inside
and they take the brain out.
After that they take the body and they closed everything open
in the body of the deceased like his nose,
like areas inside here.
And after that they completely clean and wash the body,
completely with wine that was made of dates.
And they put the wine made of dates inside the body.
Why did they do all of that?
Why the Egyptians mummified the body like this?
Because they believed in the afterlife.
They believed, they had to preserve the body for a long time,
because this time inside the tomb is for the eternal life.
The Egyptians did all of this because of their belief in the afterlife.
And that's why building a tomb,
mummification built Ancient Egypt.