Utilizing their “digital unwrapping” technique, the team ultimately determined that this 'golden boy' mummy was armed with 49 amulets, several in the shape of body parts such as the heart and the tongue. The mummified body was sitting in the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, untouched since its discovery in 1916. To acquire additional insight into this practice of adornment, three researchers recently turned to the mummified body of a wealthy teenage boy from 2,300 years ago. Read More: The Mummification Process: How Ancient Egyptians Preserved Bodies for the Afterlife
The items' abilities to protect the dead depended not only on their shape, size, material and decoration, but also on their placement. That said, this trip to the afterlife was far from simple or straightforward, featuring an arduous final journey and judgment, where only those who were deemed worthy were allowed to forge ahead.Īs such, specialists say that the living attempted to aid the deceased through this transition by decorating their bodies with protective amulets and talismans. The ancient Egyptians approached death as a transition to another world, whereupon the spirit would separate from the mummified body of the deceased and proceed toward a perfect form of the deceased’s previous life.
