Fifth Grade
Worksheets
How Did Ancient Egyptians Make Mummies?
You may have seen mummies in scary movies or as Halloween decorations. Mummies can't walk around and scare people like they do in movies. But mummies are real. In ancient Egypt, great care was taken with a dead body to make a mummy. How did they make mummies?
The mummification process took seventy days to make a mummy. First, the internal organs were removed. An iron hook was passed through the nose into the brain. The brain was thought to be of little use. After it was drained out through the nose, it was thrown away. The belly was cut open. The lungs, stomach, liver, and intestines were taken out. Sometimes, these internal organs were thrown into the river or buried. For important mummies, though, the organs were placed in special jars called canopic jars. The jars were kept near the mummy in the tomb. The heart was thought to be the seat of the soul. It was left inside the body. It would be weighed in the afterlife against the Feather of Truth.
