Research Paper On Mummification

The process of mummification is a very old procedure that aims to preserve the physical character of the deceased. Naturally mummification is associated to religious believes, since its dealing with death and afterlife, yet amazingly it is not specific to a single culture (1). Mummies can be the fruit of an intentional careful and arduous process involving many specialist, or accidental environmental condition that preserve the deceased human or animal body “The term is now generally applied to all human remains which retain their soft tissue, either by natural means or artificial preservation” (1). The term mummy is usually linked to ancient Egypt although as we shall see the process is present on every continent detachedly from Egypt.

Mummies in Christianity
We don’t really associate Christianity with mummies but the practice did exist for a short period of time. Mummies in Christianity are justified by the “incorruptibility of the saints” who even in the face of death miraculously defy the process of decomposition (2). The roman catholic insist in not referring to them as mummies, the main difference between ancient Egyptian mummies and catholic mummies reside in the process, the catholic maintain that there was no process use to preserve the body and only there holiness keep the body intact. This argument is not supported by
The biggest contrast between these mummies and the the ancient Egyptian mummy are the fact that these mummies are the result of natural mummification. In other word the coprs have been preserved due to their environment (air-tight crypt low in oxygen)(3). Another very important distinction between these mommy and Egyptian mommies is that these individual where murder victim, criminals and child contrary to ancient Egyptian mummies who where mostly rich individual that could afford the rather expensive process of