How the Egyptians Made Mummies

Getting a body ready for eternal life takes time. Priests and embalmers in 18th-Dynasty Egypt (c. 1550-1319 B.C.) generally spent 70 days preparing a pharaoh for burial. 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 slide show, Egyptologist Salima Ikram, one of the world's foremost experts on mummification, guides us through a "classic" mummification.