What To Do With The Heart - A Step-By-Step Guide To Egyptian Mummification For Kids - Part 6 of 12
Welcome to the next part of our Step-By-Step Guide To Egyptian Mummification For Kids. You can find out what's happened so far in our Mummification journey, here.
Welcome back Egyptian Embalmers! If you've correctly followed everything in our Step-By-Step Guide to Egyptian Mummification so far, you should now have yourself the dry, empty body of your recently dead Pharaoh (I know, I know; bawl, snivel, cry) and a big pile of their organs (that you’re keeping out of reach from the cat).
While your Pharaoh’s body dries out in a nice relaxing bath of natron salt for seventy days, let’s see what we can do with these organs.
Step 6 - What To Do With The Heart:
Why is the heart so important?
The Pharaoh’s heart is one of the most important parts of their body. It is thought to be the centre of an ancient Egyptian person’s thoughts and feelings. It’s where their personality, memories and intelligence comes from. The heart also keeps a record of all of the good and bad things an Egyptian person has done during their life. So, yeah, it’s a pretty important organ!
Weighing the heart
Before going to the afterlife, the Pharaoh will be judged by the gods to see if they were a good or bad person when they were alive. The Pharaoh’s heart will be weighed against the feather of Maat (also known as the feather of truth and justice). If the Pharaoh’s has led a good life, the heart will be lighter than the feather and they will be allowed to enter the afterlife. Yay!
But what if the Pharaoh has led a bad life? Then the heart will weigh heavier than the feather. This is bad news for the Pharaoh. Very bad news. Very, very bad news, in fact.
Caution, dear embalmers, because what happens next is pretty freaky.
The beast, Ammit
If the Pharaoh is judged to be bad, their heart would be chomped on by a terrifying creature called Ammit. If you’re wondering what makes this creature so frightening? Ammit is a giant crocodile. AND a giant lion. AND a giant hippo. All mixed into one huge, menacing, scare-fest of a creature! And to make matters worse, once their heart has been eaten, the Pharaoh would just go *poof!* and cease to exist! Eek!
So, long story short, without a well-preserved heart in the Pharaoh’s dead body, they don’t even have a chance of getting to the afterlife successfully. That’s where you come in, my Egyptian embalmer friend.
Leave the heart in the body
There are a couple of options here. You can keep it simple by leaving the heart in the body from the start. Just don’t touch it. Leave it in there when you pack out the Pharaoh’s body with rags and dunk them in the salt bath for seventy days. This is especially good if you’re a bit forgetful and would likely fail to recall where you left the heart if you removed it from the body.
Preserve the heart like the other organs
But if you want to be especially careful and make sure the heart is well preserved and fully in tact when it gets weighed against the feather of truth, you could embalm it like the rest of the body. Dry it out with natron salt. Maybe soak it in resin. And perhaps even wrap it up in linen bandages like a tiny heart mummy.
No matter how you decide to preserve it, always make sure to pop the heart back into the torso of the Pharaoh so it can get weighed.
Well done for completing step 6. But we can't rest yet! After all, we still have not one, not two, not three, but four other organs to preserve. This is going to keep us busy! It's a good job we've got this seventy day break while the Pharaoh dries out in a bath of salt, eh?
