Chris and Naomi welcomed us into the Hands on History Museum, they’d opened especially for us! We hung up our coats and stored our packed lunches before heading into the museum classroom for our first learning session.

Session one- Mummification

The ancient Egyptians lived 5000 up to 2000 years ago.
They developed a clever way to stop the bodies of the dead from rotting away called mummification. Chris, helped by Jake and Reuben demonstrate the mummification process to us with lots of fantastic visual aids.

 

We helped to wash the body.

 

We removed the organs …. some to be kept and others were disguarded.

The heart ❤️ remained in the body as the Ancient Egyptians thought that was where all a persons thinking and feelings were done. We especially loved to find out that the brain was removed by cracking the scull and pulling it out with a hook through the nose. urgh 😝

 

We then discovered that covering the body with a salt called Natron for forty days, helped to dry out the extra water in the body.

 

After 40 days, the skin on our Mummy had dried out so we had to wash the body and rub the body in oil.

We stuffed the body with sawdust and cloth to help the body keeps its shape.

 

We Placed some of the organs in canopic jars (which we are making for our Museum) the canopic jars are decorated with the four sons of Horus and buried with the body to take into the after Life.

 

Amongst the linen bandages that the mummy was wrapped in, they placed a scroll from the book of the bead, amulets and Jewellery so that he would be well prepared in the afterlife.

A death mask (like the ones we are making ) was placed upon the face so the body could breathe, see and hear in the afterlife.

 

Finally, Anubis weighed the persons heart against the feather of truth in the weighing of the heart ceremony to see if the person had led a good life and would move into the afterlife happily.

 

 

We we are pleased to say that Jake had been a very good Pharoah and his heart was lighter than the feather!