Stuck at home with your kids thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic? Have no fear! Ma Bender’s Backwoods Homeschool has a project for you that will keep you busy for at least 35 days! Today, you are going to learn how to mummify a body, Ancient Egyptian style!
Last year my children and I enjoyed learning about Egyptian Hieroglyphs from Dr. Bob Brier’s course, Decoding the Secrets of Egyptian Hieroglyphs by The Great Courses. We also learned that Dr. Brier had done research into the mummification techniques of ancient Egypt and written a book about it. And once we heard that, it was ON LIKE DONKEY KONG! We were going to try to mummify a body, ancient Egypt style!
The first thing we needed was a body. While we do raise farm animals for various purposes, it was not a butcher run at the farm, so we settled on a cornish game hen from the supermarket. Before we could think about mummifying the body, we would need canopic jars for the organs of the deceased. Since we live off-grid and were trying to drop this “Old Skool”, we were going to make our own canopic jars and fire them in a kiln pit. This is especially awesome for you newly-found-homeschoolers-who-need-to-keep-your-kids-busy, because it involves having your kids dig a DEEP FUCKING PIT!! Then they are going to line this pit with smooth, flat rocks (this part is optional, but it will help retain heat in your kiln pit). You are going to need low-fire clay and shape your canopic jars. You will need to make four jars (see link above), and they can be either the ornate or simple style.
Line the pit with smooth, flat rocks to retain heat. 
Make a BIG FIRE.
We found it was best to put an oven rack in our kiln pit to keep our pottery safe from the collapsing firewood. You are going to fill your pit with straw, your rack with unfired clay pottery, more straw, and a SHIT TON of firewood, and light that bitch ablaze. Our first fire did not get hot enough and our pottery cracked badly. We had to redo the pit a second time and try again. Use a LOT of wood. Light that sucker up! Fire that clay!
Our second firing was not perfect, but *almost* perfect! There was still a bit of cracking and warping, but with a coat of paint and the proper hieroglyphic inscriptions, totally acceptable for our “pharaoh”.
Fired canopic jars! 
Add paint and hieroglyphs. 
Beautiful! 
Next comes the preparation of the body. The ancient Egyptians used natron, a.k.a. sodium decahydrate, naturally found on the banks of the Nile river (Na2CO3·10H2O). You can buy “Washing Soda” at the hardware store to approximate this. NOT baking soda. NOT borax. You need this one:
You are going to pack the body of the pharaoh with this, INSIDE and out.
The pharaoh’s body will now sit in this vessel of salt for 35 days. It will not smell. We kept our pharaoh, Kipmoses I, in our pantry in this glass vessel during the time he was “curing”. The salt did have a funky smell when we cleaned off the pharaoh, but the results were amazing!
The pharaoh was completely mummified!
All that was left was to write a scroll with the appropriate spells from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, pop the giblets vital organs into their canopic jars, anoint the pharaoh’s mummified body with oils and wrap him in bandages.
Now, we didn’t actually get around to building a pyramid, but we did fashion a golden sarcophagus for Pharaoh Kipmoses I, complete with proper inscription, and buried him behind the sheep shack.
Future archeologists are going to be so damn confused by our compound!
Happy mummification to you all!
