About Mummies by Ralph Lewis FRC (1973).pdf

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MUMMIES
Copyright,
1973
By the Supreme Grand
Lodge
of
A.M.O.R.C., Inc,
San Jose,
California
All Rights
Reserved
COVER:
A coffin containing the mummy
of Usermontu, a priest, 630 B.C.
IAI
ROSICRUCIAN
PRES5,
L TD.,
SAN J05E
~~
'G\
LITHO IN
U. S. A.
G·206
776
Ralph.
M.
Lewis,
F.R.C.
Director,
Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum
San
J
ose, California
95191
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SAN
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dV(embe't:
American Association of Museums
Egyptian Exploration
Society
Patron Smithsonian Institution
Fondation Egyptologique
LC.O.M.
Reine Elisabeth
Con:1uL'tant:1:
Dr. John Snyder, Assyriologist
Dr.
Max Guilmot, Egyptologist
(Collcction arranged
under Technical
Direction
of
Dr. Georg Steindorff
and
Dr. Etiennc Drioton)
The
Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum
al so
houses
a gallery of
Sumerian,
Babylonian, and Assyrian antiquities.
4
Why Mummies?
Mummies
are
human
or animal
bodies that have been
mummilied, that
is,
preserved
against otherwise natural
disintegration. But there
was a
reason
why
this
practice
with
humans
was
pursued,
especially
to
such a
degree of
perfection
as
in
ancient Egypt.
The principal motivation
for such embalming
were
religious concepts. The
Egyptians
embalmed
the dead because they believed that the perfect
soul would
return to its body
after death.
The body, then,
would
once
again
be
animated.
Consequently, the
Egyptians
took great pains to preserve the body
against any
influences
which
might destroy it.
This idea
of
the
necessity
for
preserving
the body
gradu-
ally
evolved into
a complex
theology
over
the thousands of
years of the Egyptian civilization. The
Egyptians
called
the soul BA
and
his double KA. This double,
or
KA, has
been interpreted in
many ways as,
for
example,
to mean the
self
or the
personalitq.
The
Egyptians
did not
wish
this
relationship between BA
and
KA to be lost in the
world
beyond the
grave.
To
avoid such a
rupture it
was
thought
necessary to keep the body
as complete and perfect as
pos-
sible.
We can
see,
therefore, that the
very
first belief
in
immortality
or
life
after
death began
with
the
Egyptians.
The
word
mummy is of Arabic origino It means bitumen,
or
"bitumenized
being." Bitumen
is a
mineral
substance,
as
asphalt, that ,vas used in the
embalming
process.
Early Burials
The
earliest
burials by the Egyptians
are
of the period
called
predynastic,
that is, of
a
time before
a
chronological
record of the kings
of
Egypt. Near the pyramid
of
Seneferu,
a
number
of
these
predynastic
burials have been found
which
date back thousands
of years
B.e. These earliest
graves in
the Nile
Valley
consisted of
shallow
hollows. They
were dug in
sandy and shingly ground
just beyond the mud
5

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