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Egyptian And Roman Burial Rites

Term Paper Title Egyptian And Roman Burial Rites
# of Words 671
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) 2.68

Egyptian and Roman Burial Rites

         Egyptian and Roman burial rites differ in many ways.  In the

ways that they were buried.  Egyptians were mostly mummified,

while Romans were buried in tombs.  The people who had these

extravagant burials were mostly members of the upper class. There

is a special process that both, the Egyptians and Romans, went

through to bury a person.  

         When a noble or a family member of an Egyptian family died,

their body had to be prepared for burial.  The dead body was taken

to the embalmer’s workshop.  First it was eviscerated by means of

an incision in the abdomen.  Then, it was dehydrated with dry

natron, or soda, and aromatic resins for seventy days.  The body

was laid straight, hands folded on the chest, and bandaged.  Over

the first layer of wrappings, funerary jewelry was laid.  Further

bandaging, with the aid of linen pads to fill out the shape,

completed the mummy.


        When a member of a Roman family died, they observed all

the properties before they were cremated.  The covered the dead

body with leaves and fronted it with cypresses.  Cremation was

stopped after AD 100, perhaps because of the spread of

Christianity.

        After cremation was stopped, Romans turned to tombs.  A  

large Roman tomb was an earth mound surrounded by a ring of

masonry, rising to a considerable height.  They also put dead

bodies in smaller tombs.  These smaller tombs were usually

underground, though there is sometimes and upper story, built of

brick.


        The Egyptian mortuary chapel was usually a pair of T with the

burial chamber beneath the end of a long hall.  The transverse hall

in front was decorated with paintings displaying scenes from the

daily life of the dead body.  The long corridor leading to the

entrance of  the burial pit was normally reserved for funerary

scenes.  In the chapel, there was rituals texts intended to ensure the

welfare of the body in the after life.


         Frequently, the Egyptian tomb walls contained hierogl...

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