Unnecessary
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0The ancient Egyptian afterlife must have been quite a sight. With functioning bodies and little to no brain matter in their skulls, what could those folks possibly get up to? Probably just watch TV, I guess.
Ancient Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife are a complicated affair but we know a ton about it and there are some key points. The most important point: preservation of the physical body was paramount. The next life was seen as a continuation of the first in many ways, though a vastly improved version of it. Many things from the physical world, including precious objects, material wealth, and the body were seen as being able to carry on into the spiritual realm with the deceased. During the mummification process, the “important” organs were removed from the corpse and placed in canopic jars. This was done for most of the major organs except the heart, which, being the most important part of an individual, was typically left inside the body. Organs seen as performing no higher function, such as the kidneys and the brain, were simply discarded.
By preserving these crucial parts that make up a human body, the Egyptians hoped to offer the deceased a second chance at life. Passing into the second world without one’s organs and without a well preserved and cared for body would make the journey and ultimate destination impossible and missing out on this new and improved life was seen as a tragedy.
It was this new life and the treacherous journey that precedes it that lead ancient Egyptian society to keep such meticulous records of their methods and to pursue mummification with such passion. After death, the spirit was thought to pass through a series of trials and, without a good working body, this journey would be the end of the deceased’s spirit as it was considered to be a very difficult and terrifying passage. To help with the journey, the more wealthy patrons of the embalmers would receive spells and amulets that would help to ward off these many dangers. Finally, a priest would perform the opening of the mouth ceremony, where his chanting and prayers would restore the senses to the body, an important final step. In the end, what it all lead up to was a meeting with the scales of judgment. The spirit would have to justify their time on earth to the gods in the underworld while placing their heart on the scales opposite the Feather of Truth. If the heart weighed more than the feather, the spirit would be devoured by the terrible beast, Ammit. If the not, the deceased would pass into the the throne room of Osiris and be lead into the afterlife.
The next world was conceptualized as being much like the normal waking life of the people of Egypt, though there was no evil, no sickness, the poor had money, and the crocodiles serve delicious cocktail drinks instead of trying to chew your legs off.
Maybe I made that last one up.
Either way, death was seen as an important part of one’s journey, so crucial, in fact, that vast sums of wealth were spent on just preparing corpses for this specific purpose. We can’t really prove or disprove that the Egyptian afterlife exists, but many of these well preserved bodies have achieved an immortality of a different kind.
Some people try to leave behind a legend, to have their names in the history books, or to leave a legacy for for their children. As for me, I think I’ll just have myself properly mummified in the hopes that some people in the future will find the desiccated husk of my body and use it for all kinds of weird experiments.
Maybe one enterprising individual will write some jokes about it. Maybe another will move my lower jaw up and down and speak in a ridiculous voice making it look like it’s my corpse that’s talking.
Now that’s a legacy.
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If I remember correctly, the Egyptians thought that the brain did nothing but secrete mucus. In unrelated news, Egyptian Snot Factory would be a terrible band name.
Actually, the idea that the ancient Egyptians always thought the brain to be of no importance is something of a modern myth. Mummified specimens from certain eras show evidence of brain removal, but the ancient Egyptians were around for a heck of a long time and went through many cultural changes over time. Some specimens from over 3000 years ago showed no evidence of brain removal at all, even though the Egyptians of that time would have possessed the knowledge and the ability to carry out such a procedure (they’d done it before!)
Improvements in MRI and other scanning equipment has shown that some specimens were preserved with the brain left inside the body, not removed through the nose. This suggests it was considered at that time to be of similar importance to the heart, which was also left inside the body.
The mass of the human brain is mostly composed of water (percentage estimates vary). During mummification, the body is dessicated to inhibit decomposition and aid preservation. As a result, the brain loses most of its mass and becomes much smaller, falling into the back of the skull and leaving a whole lot of empty space behind. For this reason, scientists used to think that the skull cavity was empty, and that the brain had been removed. All the other important organs were stored in jars after removal; there was no jar for the brain, therefore it wasn’t important.
Sources (and fascinating related reading/watching):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17646432
(warning – the video link is over an hour long! It is a recent UK documentary program about mummification called “Mummifying Alan”. In 2010 an English man named Alan who suffered from terminal lung cancer responded to an advert placed in the papers by a documentary team. He passed away in 2011 and, with the consent of his family, a team of scientists set to work mummifying him based on evidence, theories and estimations of the processes used by the ancient Egyptians to mummify Tutankhamun. The video is V rated on youtube because it pretty graphically shows the whole process, so don’t watch it you have a delicate stomach!)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2052037/Mummifying-Alan-How-did-Alan-Billis-wife-Jan-feel-finally-seeing-Tutan-Alan.html (news article about the documentary)
forgot to actually include the link to the documentary, haha. Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3DgY8KDIJUoXY
Someone once told me that the Egyptians believed that the brain was unnecessary in the Afterlife because it so dominated our actions in this life.
This person also once ate a box of oatmeal. Not the oats. Just the box.
From what I’ve researched Egyptians thought the brain was actually just stuffing. One source online says “The ancient Egyptians didn’t regard the brain as being in control of people’s thoughts, knowledge, and emotions; these were considered to be a function of the heart. When a person felt sad, excited, or angry they noticed that it was the heartbeat that changes, and this was why the Egyptians thought that the heart was in control of thoughts and emotions. The heart was also considered the seat of wisdom and knowledge, which was why the heart was weighed against the feather of Ma’at.”
*starts to sing the Scarecrow’s song from “The Wizard of Oz”*
“….if I oonnnlllyyy had a brain!…”
…
My apologies, that was for some reason the first thing that came to my mind…
Anyways, of course the Egyptians where a little crazy,
they worshiped CATS for crying out loud!
I mean c’mon who in their right mind would follow a cat’s orders!?
Those Egyptian gods must have their work cut out for them. They would have to babysit a bunch of braindead pharaohs.
Well they did take the brain out of the nose so there was no actual brain to preserve, unless it was a puzzle and you were suppose to put it back together in the afterlife
Well how the hell are they supposed to solve it?
Maybe one enterprising individual will write some jokes about it. Maybe another will move my lower jaw up and down and speak in a ridiculous voice making it look like it’s my corpse that’s talking.
That’s an idea…perhaps something more interesting was really going on during the “examination” in a certain Poe story that I previously always dismissed as distinctly third-rate.
http://books.eserver.org/fiction/poe/some_words.html
I have to wonder how they saw people suffer head trauma and go through personality changes or lose motor functions and not make the connection. There had to be industrial accidents while building the pyramids, right?
The effects of brain damage were barely figured out in 1848.
Without a brain there’d be no pacemaker for the heart, so it wouldn’t work, nor would any other “important” organ.
This is assuming they had any knowledge of anatomy.
Who needs that filling?
Poke a hole and drain it out.
Only when you’re dead.
I know that this is a bit late, but I actually saw a thing on Discovery the other day about mummification and they found out recently that the Egyptians did not actually remove the brain; rather, the brain just simply shrunk and settled to the back of the head from just sitting around for a few thousand years.
It was a Curiosity special, it was really awesome. A man volunteered his dead body to be mummified to see if scientists have the ancient secret formula for it.
The ancient Egyptians actually, believed that the mind resided inside of the heart, and not the brain.
One explanation of a theoretical reason, is that when you get excited (a mental state) your heart rate speeds up.
According to Psychonauts, debrained people desire only TV and hackey-sack.