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.
talossiannights t1_ixdzqkk wrote
Reply to Ancient Egyptian mummification was never intended to preserve bodies by IslandChillin
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.