Mummy,is a body that has been preserved through natural or artificial means. The most famous, detailed and complicated are from Egypt. The ancient Egyptians mummified their dead because they believed the body had to be preserved for use in the afterlife. The famous mummies are probably those if Ramses II and Tutankhamen, pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

Mummification is the process of slowly drying a dead body to stop to from rotting. In ancient Egypt, the process took about 70 days. Embalming priests removed the liver, lungs, stomach and intestines and stored them in four special little coffins called canopic jars. Later, these were placed in the tomb beside the mummy. The priests also removed the brain, but left the heart to be weighed by the god Anubis. They washed the corpse in palm wine and covered it with a natural salt called natron to absorb the moisture.

After 40 days, embalmers rubbed the skin with oil, packed the body with spices, linen, sawdust and sand to reshape it, and wrapped it in layer upon layer of linen bandages that had been soaked in resin. They placed magic spells and good luck charms between the strips. Finally, they sealed the mummy in its case.