Webb Weekly had a contest for children called “Marking Mummies,” as part of this year’s Halloween celebration. Mummies are an enduring symbol of this scary and ghoulish season. They have a long and interesting history that stretches back to ancient times and I will attempt to boil down some of the information about them since there is a raft of information about them.

According to the History.com website, a mummy is “a person or animal whose body has been dried or otherwise preserved after death.”

The practice of preserving mummies has been a part of various civilizations through the years that include, Incan, Australian aboriginal, Aztec, African, ancient European, and others. The most famous civilization they are associated with is the ancient Egyptian one.

The priests of ancient Egypt were probably the most accomplished practitioners of the art of mummification. Our popular image of mummies derives from them. Egypt’s arid climate made it easy to dry out and mummify a corpse, but the Egyptians routinely used a more elaborate process to ensure the dead experienced safe passage to the afterlife.

There was even a hierarchy of the quality of the mummification, depending on your station in life. The very poor may not have received mummification and those in higher stations of life received a mummification befitting their station in life, particularly royalty and the very wealth.

The mummification process for royalty and the wealthy often included:

• washing the body
• removing all organs except the heart and placing them in jars
• packing the body and organs in salt to remove moisture
• embalming the body with resins and essential oils such as myrrh, cassia, juniper oil, and cedar oil
• wrapping the embalmed corpse in several layers of linen

Ancient Egyptians of all walks of life mummified deceased family members, but the process wasn’t as elaborate for the poor.

The mummies of pharaohs were placed in elaborate stone tombs and sarcophaguses filled with everything they’d need for the afterlife such as vehicles, tools, food, wine, perfume, and household items. Some pharaohs were even buried with pets and servants.

The mummy of King Tut, discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, is probably the most well-known mummy and it was displayed at various museums across the world to large crowds.

A legend developed that because several members of Carter’s archaeological team suffered mysterious and unexplained deaths, that the Tut mummy was cursed. This helped to give rise to many stories and films in popular culture about the curse of such mummies.

They became a staple of fiction in the early 20th century beginning with Bram Stoker’s “The Jewel of the Seven Stars.” Their enduring reputation really got a jump-start with the 1932 horror film, “The Mummy,” starring Boris Karloff. This would begin a stream of horror films dealing with the subject that persists to this day, and most recently with the 2017 film, “The Mummy.”

There are a few modern day mummies on display. These include the mummified remains of British philosopher and economist, Jeremy Bentham, the Soviet Union’s first ruler, Vladimir Lenin and China’s Mao Tse Tung.

As you can see mummies have a long and interesting history and it is no wonder that they have become such as staple of the Halloween season.