appeal to robbers; hence, most surviving mummies are 

 from this and later periods. 



Finally, a coat of molten resin (later bitumen) was 

 poured over the bandaged mummy to seal it. A woven 

 net of beads of faience was sometimes placed over the 

 outer bandages. Such a net may be seen on Harwa's 

 mummy, near his feet. Finally, the completed mummy 

 was placed into a shaped, wooden coffin. If the family 

 could afford it, several coffins might be nested inside 

 each other, along with the Canopic jars in their own 

 chest. In the XXllnd Dynasty and later, the inner cof- 

 fin was at times made of sheets of papyrus, glued 

 together and molded in mummy form, plastered and 

 painted elaborately, and lacquered, like the mummy of 

 Chenet-aa (fig. 9). Such coffins might be nested in an 

 outer wooden coffin, as in the case of Chenet-aa. Final- 

 ly, in the Ptolemaic-Roman periods (332-30 B.C., and 

 30 B.C.-A.D.300), the bandaged mummy was placed 

 within five pieces of cartonnage (molded from glued 

 and painted papyrus sheets) , with the face often gilded. 



Gaining the Afterlife 



After the relatives received the completed mummy and 

 the Canopic organs, these were taken to the tomb, 

 where the principal ritual was the Opening of the 

 Mouth, intended to restore life and movement to the 

 mummy and to give it a send-off to the realm of Osiris. 



This was the burial. A Book of the Dead papyrus roll 

 might accompany the deceased as a guide through the 

 Afterlife. In the late Old Kingdom, Osiris, originally a 

 vegetation deity, was introduced as Lord of the After- 

 life. What brought about this association was the story 

 of Osiris — he had been murdered by his wicked brother 

 Seth, then Isis had found his body and magically resur- 

 rected him. So Osiris, as a resurrected deity, came to 

 offer resurrection to all Egyptians. This meant a major 

 change, for in the Old Kingdom only royalty were 

 assured resurrection, and all others placed their hopes 

 in the king. This is why most tombs of Old Kingdom 

 nobles are found clustered around the royal pyramid. 

 The ordinary people in the Old Kingdom often re- 

 tained the Predynastic burial traditions, or slight mod- 

 ifications of them. 



With the introduction of Osiris, everyone could 

 be resurrected; but whether or not this occurred de- 

 pended on the sort of life that the deceased had led. A 

 two-step judgement had to be passed to gain access to 

 the realm of Osiris. The deceased was first questioned 

 by 42 assessors about his conduct during life. This took 

 place in the Hall of the Two Truths, so called because 

 two figures of the goddess Ma'at, Goddess of Justice, 

 oversaw the proceedings. Before each of the 42 asses- 

 sors, the deceased made a statement of innocence 

 regarding a category of wrongdoing. (See the Papyrus 



12. Scene of Sen-ned|em and his wife ly-nofret, in their tomb, at Deir el-Medinah. showing fields of the 

 Blessed West. 



Frank Yurco photo 



24 



