Egyptian Dreams

[Sothis]

There`s something strange I read about long ago and it just popped into my mind.
I read that at the beginning of mummification a cut is made into the left flank
using an obsidian knife. So far so good, but then it was said that the one who hade made the incision was being thrown at with stones by the other mummifiers because violating a body was considered bad even if it was necessairy.
So the one who had carried out the incision was to be punished ritually in order to make good of his evil deed.

Is this story true and if so, was the poor guy at least allowed to wear some kind of protection ?

[Ranoferhotep]

Hi Sothis,

I’ve read about that to, but I believe it’s a story brought in to the world by Herodotus in his Histories. So we must take it “with a grain of salt” as we say here. In any case if it should be true, I suppose we can speak off a sort of “ritual punishment”. Mummifiers, lived separately, but they were the only ones who knew how to prepare the body for eternity. I don’t think they would been done harm on purpose.

[Osiris II]

There are records of it having been done, but it was purely traditional. No harm came to the "slitter". He was chased off the scene, and small pebbles were usually thrown at him. He was later re-united in the mummification process.
Evidently, it was in reaction to the malicious defacement of the body, which was considered to be a "horror", and only done by the lowest of the people working on the body.

[Ranoferhotep]