Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- List of Figures
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MUMMIES
- 1 The background of the Manchester mummy project
- 2 Egyptian mummies: an overview
- PART II DIET, DISEASE AND DEATH IN ANCIENT EGYPT: DIAGNOSTIC AND INVESTIGATIVE TECHNIQUES
- PART III THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE IN ANCIENT EGYPT
- PART IV RESOURCES FOR STUDYING MUMMIES
- PART V THE FUTURE OF BIOMEDICAL AND SCIENTIFIC STUDIES IN EGYPTOLOGY
- References
- Index
2 - Egyptian mummies: an overview
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Plates
- List of Figures
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- PART I AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF MUMMIES
- 1 The background of the Manchester mummy project
- 2 Egyptian mummies: an overview
- PART II DIET, DISEASE AND DEATH IN ANCIENT EGYPT: DIAGNOSTIC AND INVESTIGATIVE TECHNIQUES
- PART III THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE IN ANCIENT EGYPT
- PART IV RESOURCES FOR STUDYING MUMMIES
- PART V THE FUTURE OF BIOMEDICAL AND SCIENTIFIC STUDIES IN EGYPTOLOGY
- References
- Index
Summary
Historical background
Mummification (the artificial preservation of the body after death) may have been practised in Egypt for more than 4,000 years, and perhaps developed as early as c. 4500 b.c., when Neolithic communities lived in scattered settlements in the Egyptian Delta and along the banks of the Nile. Gradually, these villages merged into larger groups, drawn together by the common need to develop irrigation systems, and eventually, the north and south were ruled as two separate kingdoms. Egyptologists describe this whole era (c. 5000 b.c.–3100 b.c.) as the Predynastic Period.
In c. 3100 b.c., a southern ruler conquered the northern kingdom, unified the two lands, and founded dynastic Egypt. Thousands of years later, an Egyptian priest, Manetho (323–245 b.c.), composed a chronicle of kings who ruled Egypt between c. 3100 b.c. and 332 b.c., and this king-list has survived in the writings of later historians. It divides the reigns of Egyptian kings into thirty dynasties and these, plus a thirty-first dynasty added by a later chronographer, form the basis for the modern chronology of ancient Egypt.
Contemporary historians arrange these dynasties into a series of major periods: the Archaic Period (c. 3100–c. 2686 b.c.), the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–c. 2181 b.c.), the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–1991 b.c.), the Middle Kingdom (1991–1786 b.c.), the Second Intermediate Period (1786–1567 b.c.), the New Kingdom (1567–1085 b.c.), the Third Intermediate Period (1085–668 b.c.), and the Late Period (664–332 b.c.).
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- Egyptian Mummies and Modern Science , pp. 10 - 18Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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