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talossiannights t1_ixdzqkk wrote

I think the headline and article might have been worded in misleading ways. Yes, the purpose of mummification was to prepare the deceased body for the afterlife, but there are specifics of Egyptian theology, which I will not delve into because I am not an Egyptologist, that required the body to be preserved. Mummification took 70 days and highly specialized knowledge to perform properly. Other cultures have developed less time- and labor-intensive ways of “preparing the deceased for the afterlife” and Egyptian embalmers wouldn’t have done all this work for no reason.

Edit to add: it’s probably fair to say that preparing the deceased for the afterlife was the end goal, not preservation for its own sake. But it was still significant for the deceased person’s remains to be recognizable.

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black_brook t1_ixe4cp6 wrote

Pre-scientific cultures did not distinguish between the symbolic / metaphorical and practical / physical the way we do. To say the reason wasn't this practical thing but instead was this symbolic thing is a modern failure to understand that. One doesn't preclude the other and even treating them as separable is questionable.

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MediumLong2 t1_ixf565j wrote

I think it's a little rude to call them pre-science. They had amazing engineers that could build giant pyramids and move heavy blocks of stone really high up off the ground via a clever system of ramps, pulleys, and possibly slave labor.

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Politirotica t1_ixf78cc wrote

>and possibly slave labor.

I thought the modern understanding was that they most likely weren't slaves?

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Stillcant t1_ixegenc wrote

Can you expand or provide evidence for this? It seems counterintuitive, implying less sophisticated thought, though people were just as intelligent

Wondering how you / anyone could know

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Rylovix t1_ixeluxv wrote

The implication has nothing to do with intelligence. Many religions have believed that the metaphysical is intertwined with the physical world in tangible ways. A perfect example of this is the Greeks. They saw their pantheon as human shaped arbiters but also as vast forces of nature, like war or the seasons. It was a way to relate nature to ourselves, give it a human face that people can petition to for some semblance of control and order in their lives. But specifically they believed that they could speak directly to the gods and the gods could manifest on earth. In this way they did not draw hard lines between the physical and metaphysical, more like lines of who gets where and how.

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BlahjeBlah t1_ixedtc0 wrote

Pre-scientific? What does that even mean? You don’t think Egyptians practiced science?

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wegqg t1_ixeem6b wrote

If you're asking if they followed the scientific method then no.

Pre-scientific communities did not delineate between physical and metaphysical.

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BlahjeBlah t1_ixezx5k wrote

You don’t think they came up with ideas, tested them, and then verified the outcome?

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__SPIDERMAN___ t1_ixf7cy9 wrote

How could you possibly know that? I'd say the fact that they built what they did is more evidence for science based thinking than anything..

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[deleted] t1_ixef9pu wrote

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[deleted] t1_ixejo6l wrote

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[deleted] t1_ixeohbz wrote

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MadRoboticist t1_ixetk3j wrote

Yeah, the Egyptians believed in reincarnation and that they were eventually going to need their bodies again which seems to me would make preservation an essential goal of the mummification process. I don't really understand how they are coming to this conclusion without presenting any new findings; especially given the claim that egyptologists have apparently been very wrong about a central component of Egyptian society for decades.

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Rare_Basil_243 t1_ixegld3 wrote

Yes, i think this distinction is only a surprise to people who didn't have very much knowledge of Egyptology in the first place. This quote from the article tracks with how ka statues have been found serving the same purpose as sarcophagi in housing the dead person's ka:

>  "I think that actually has a somewhat deeper meaning…and is basically about turning the body into a divine statue because the dead person has been transformed."

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dogsent t1_ixf3hd8 wrote

Yes, the headline was misleading and the article lacked substance. My superficial knowledge suggests that mummification was part of an elaborate set of incantations and rituals somewhat described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

This short video gives a brief description of what the funerary process was about. Mummification was just one element. https://youtu.be/1yv_MXNYbAo

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