During the Old Kingdom in ancient Egypt, from 2575 to 2130 BCE, mummifying was a royal affair. There was one team of embalmers who worked for the pharaoh. They mummified only the pharaoh’s family members, courtiers, and officials who had been granted the special privilege of having their body preserved. Everyone below royalty would bury their family members in the desert. The dry sand would naturally dry out and mummify the body.
In fact, pre-Old Kingdom, that was how everyone was buried! And around this time, beliefs developed that a person’s spirit and personality needed a preserved, whole body. It was the only way for a person to be reborn into the afterlife. But when pharaohs and high officials started wanting to be buried in elaborate caskets and tombs, separating the bodies from the ground prevented natural mummification. So they developed techniques to allow royal bodies to be preserved then placed in their tombs, so their spirits could still recognize their bodies and be joyfully reborn.
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