The Mummy Who Would Be King

Getting a body ready for eternal life takes time. Priests and embalmers during the 18th Dynasty (c. 1550-1319 B.C.) generally spent 70 days preparing a pharaoh for burial—from the first cleansing of the corpse through the final rites before the tomb. Of course, the bodies of the poor didn't get such royal treatment, and techniques of mummification varied over the 3,000 years it was practiced. In this audio slide show, Egyptologist Salima Ikram, one of the world's foremost experts on mummification, guides us through the steps of a "classic" mummification like those performed on 18th-Dynasty pharaohs. To click to launch the audio slide show.—Susan K. Lewis and David Levin

The Mummy Who Would Be King