Interactive · Seventy days
Mummification, Step by Step
Follow the embalmers through the seventy days, one step at a time.
Step 1 of 7 · Before it begins
A body for the afterlife
Anubis was the god of mummification, the afterlife and the dead. He is portrayed as a man with the head of a jackal or as a full jackal.
Preserving the body was an essential part of ancient Egyptian funerary belief. The body was needed to house the ba, a person’s spiritual side, and let the person live in the afterlife. Source: British Museum, “What is mummification?” notes for teachers
The clearest written account of mummification comes from Herodotus, a Greek historian who visited Egypt in about 450 BC. In the most elaborate and expensive mummifications, he records, the whole process took 70 days. Source: British Museum, “Ancient Egyptian mummification”