Mummification Practiced in Bronze Age Britain

ScrAPES#9: Mummification Practiced in Bronze Age Britain

by Sindya N. Bhanoo

October 5, 2015

Ever heard of Ancient Egypt and their beliefs and superstitions? Egypt believed in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Recently, Dr. Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum in London, discovered ancient mummification in the bronze age of Britain; expanding from 2200 B.C. to 750 B.C. He assumed that Ancient Britons' might have buried their dead in peat bogs (A bog is a mire that accumulates peat, a deposit of dead plant material), and extracted human organs after death through evisceration. Dr. Booth also assumed that people probably displayed the dead mummies in the living society; to make a claim that they "owned" something, either a land or property. 

 This article is extremely interesting to me because my family and I are superstitious, sometimes my mom goes overboard with it. Our superstitions are not the typical American one's where; if you walk under a ladder you will get bad luck, opening an umbrella in a house is bad luck, knock on wood, wishbones, or simply Friday the 13th. Personally, I believe and SOME superstitions but mostly I do not because some people depend on it. I the contrary, I believe in God, depend him, not beliefs. This article also interest me because the afterlife is a very mysterious yet dangerous place. You do not know where you are going to end up. There might not even be a heaven or earth, MIGHT. Sometimes I overthink to myself if there is, but I try not to. I make claims that maybe after we die we would just be stuck in a dream that we cannot get out of. Or resurrection. I question Ancient Egypt, Ancient Briton, and other places that have practiced mummification, whether or not they do it because they believe that their loved ones will be with them. Is it safe for the body and soul to be mummified?

Mummification effects the environment because it is one of the many "beliefs" or non-beliefs that relates to the nonliving. For example, nowadays people bury the dead or cremate them. People think that the "proper" way to handle the dead is by burying them in a cemetery (yes that may be true). And some assume that cremation is the devil's work. No it is not because in ancient or pass times the dead used to be burned, in the belief of setting the soul free. If the practice of mummification became an epidemic around the world including the United States? What would happen? 

Resources:

• Mummification Practiced in Bronze Age Britain 
• Ancient Egyptian Civilization