Shocking secrets revealed in a thousand-year-old mummy
A mummy wrapped in gold in Egypt has revealed many secrets of ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptians believed that gold was the color of the gods. That is why they covered the bodies of the dead with gold leaves so that the deceased would have divine qualities in the next life.
In January 2023, archaeologists excavated tombs in the ancient necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo, where they found the mummy of a man named Hekasheps.
This gold-plated mummy dates back 2300 years and was buried in a stone sarcophagus and covered with limestone. It is being said that this mummy has been found in the best preserved condition of all the mummies discovered so far. With this discovery, archaeologists have found a lot of information about ancient Egypt and mummification.
According to a report in The Conversation, archaeologists took a lot of help from the books of the Greek historian Herodotus to understand this process of mummification. In the 5th century BC, Herodotus described in detail the process of preserving the bodies of the dead by the Egyptians.
Why did the ancient Egyptians mummify the dead?
In ancient Egypt, people believed that if the body was not preserved, the soul would wander the world and harm people. They believed that the soul returned to the body after death. So the Egyptians developed the technique of mummification to preserve the body for the soul for a long time.
The earliest techniques of post-mortem examination, practiced in Egypt 3,100 years ago, involved wrapping the bodies in strips of linen soaked in resin. During that time, the Egyptians left the entrails in the body, which caused the mummies of that time to decompose quickly. But later mummification techniques were much more advanced.
Scientists are trying to extract a variety of information from the mummy of Hexaphus. By studying its skeleton and teeth, it is possible to learn where it grew up, what its diet was, what its health was like, and how it died.
