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Making a Mummy Writing Sample APA2
Introduction to Criminology (CRM1300)
University of Ottawa
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MAKING A MUMMY
A P A W R I T I N G S A M P L E
By Steve Student
The ancient Egyptians believed that when a person died, their soul stayed with the body. For this reason, they felt it was important to preserve the body so the person’s soul could live forever. Many of these preserved bodies—what we call mummies—managed to stay intact for thousands of years. What did the Egyptians do to make this happen?
First, they had to remove all of the vital organs from inside the body, because they knew these would start to decay first. In his book, Mummy (1993), James Putnam explains that to remove the brain, the Egyptians pulled it through the nose with long hooks (p. 15). Sometimes, the body’s organs were placed in jars that would then be buried near the body (p. 14).
The next step was to give the body a series of treatments. To dry it, they covered it with a salt called natron that “left a corpse more flexible and lifelike than drying with hot sand” (Putnam, 1993, p. 14). They poured tree resin on the body to preserve it further, then rubbed it with oils and waxes to keep the skin from cracking.
Finally, they wrapped the body with linens that had been treated with oils, resins, wines and wax. All of these substances would either keep the body dry or fight bacteria (Maywell, 2001). Once the body was wrapped, it was ready to be buried.
From beginning to end, the whole process of preparing a mummy took 70 days. Even though they lived long before many of our modern inventions and chemicals came along, the ancient Egyptians seemed to know how to make the most of what they had.
References Maywell, H. (2001, October 30). Study unwraps ancient ‘recipe’ for mummies. Retrieved from news.nationalgeographic/news/2001/10/1030_digmummies.html Putnam, J. (1993). Mummy. New York: DK Publishing
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Making a Mummy Writing Sample APA2
Course: Introduction to Criminology (CRM1300)
University: University of Ottawa
