Fifth Grade
Worksheets
Why 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. Beautiful tombs were built as homes for the mummies of special people like the pharaohs or rulers of Egypt. Why did those long-ago Egyptians go to so much trouble to make mummies?
Back then, people thought that the dead would live again in the "afterlife." But to live again, the body must be kept safe for the dead person. People thought if the body was destroyed, the dead person's spirit would have nowhere to live.
