Most ordinary ancient Egyptians were probably buried in the desert. Their relatives would wrap their body in a simple cloth and bury it with some everyday objects and food. Nobles and very wealthy people were often buried in tombs that we call ‘mastabas’.

The methods of embalming, or treating the dead body, that the ancient Egyptians used is called mummification. The earliest mummies from prehistoric times probably were accidental. By chance, dry sand and air (since Egypt has almost no measurable rainfall) preserved some bodies buried in shallow pits dug into the sand.

What we would refer to as a soul was to them a combination of three separate aspects – the Ba (Soul or Personality), Ka (Life-force), and Akh (Spirit). The other important components were the Ren (name) and the Shuyet (shadow).

Not everyone was mummified The mummy – an eviscerated, dried and bandaged corpse – has become a defining Egyptian artefact. Yet mummification was an expensive and time-consuming process, reserved for the more wealthy members of society. The vast majority of Egypt’s dead were buried in simple pits in the desert.

However, in the Middle Kingdom, peasants had good quite relationship with the pharaoh because the pharaoh gave more rights to the peasants. At that time, peasants were allowed to mummify their bodies after death.

Egyptians stopped making mummies between the fourth and seventh century AD, when many Egyptians became Christians. But it’s estimated that, over a 3000-year period, more than 70 million mummies were made in Egypt.

Appeasing the gods, preserving the body and providing funerary equipment ensured admission into the afterlife. The journey to the afterlife is described in the Book of the Dead, a funerary text used for over 1500 years between c. 1600 BC and 100 AD, known to the Ancient Egyptians as the ‘Spells of Coming Forth by Day’.

Hatshepsut