The Ancient Egyptians lived their whole life preparing for death. Their elaborate belief system meant that life after death held promises of wonders impossible in this world. Death, burial and mummification seemed a good, if not unusual place to start our study of Ancient Egypt.
We used these books for our study:
First we learnt about death and its importance in Ancient Egypt. We looked at all the things that remain from Ancient Egypt today and how they all revolved around the gods and the after life. We learnt about mummification:
And built our own paper mummies:
We mummified an apple and then took the decision to mummify a chicken. This wasn’t going to be any chicken. We got the local butcher on board and he managed to get hold of a whole chicken, head, feet and insides all present and untouched. It was a laying chicken which had reached the end of its natural life and was not destined for the table (my brother has been a passionate vegetarian all his life and my mum is mostly vegetarian with an utter love for animals.) Familial peer pressure would allow for no less!
Our wonderful butcher very kindly took out the insides for us, without damaging the chicken’s exterior at all. He laid out the innards for us to identify. We made canopic jars by painting baby food jars and sticking the appropriate god to each (which we got from an ancient Egyptian Toob play set). The innards were placed in those and sealed NEVER to be opened again!
We took the rest of the chicken home and followed instructions to mummify it.
- We cleaned it with alcohol. We used a cheap Vodka:
- We then dried him thoroughly:
- We made a mixture of salt and baking powder and filled the insides until full:
- We filled a bag full of the mixture and popped in the chicken, making sure he was fully covered:
Loving Gary’s face! The things he does in the name of education!!
- We left the mixture to dry out the chicken, changing it as it became damp. Once the mixture was continuously dry we removed the chicken, which by now was very arid and stiff:
- We wrapped it in strips of linen:
I’m really enjoying looking back at old photos of all we’ve done!
It works!!! Thanks so much…,whatever you did!
Sent from my iPad
You’re very welcome! Not sure what I did though….!
I don’t know how you manage to get me involved in all these things. “I’ll Love you forever” maybe. Lol
It’s such an easy promise to make, and it has the added benefit of working EVERY time!!
I’m such a sucker for you!!
Ha ha ha, we mummified a chicken too, but ours came from the grocery store, so it looked very different. That is AWESOME you got to mummify a whole one, now I wish we could have done that……
I don’t think my husband will wish that.
No Gary wasn’t overly impressed, especially as I made him change the bags of wet, very smelly mixture! I’m sure I had a reasonable excuse at the time, although recollection is a bit scarce….!
So, the post showed up again in my feed, so I’m reading it again. I got to change all the wet icky bags. I’m trying to decide if we’ll do this again when we get back to Egypt this coming year…….. I think we might, because I don’t know that the kids really remember it.
Enjoy!!
Yuck!!!
Yup!
I wasn’t brave enough to mummify a chicken…we stuck to apples and oranges. Pretty cool as well. I love your canopic jars. We tried to sculpt ours from clay, and it was a bit too tough for them at their age (3, 7 and 10 at the time). I think we will make them like you did if we do them again. It has been fun seeing your photos and projects.
I thought your canopic jars were far superior to mine! They were seriously good and all hand made from materials around at the time rather than a store bought jar!
That is a brave experiment. I am really curious, does it smell?
Yes, but only whilst the mixture is absorbing all the fluids from the chicken, and even then you only smell it as you change the mixture. Once dry there is no smell at all. HTH!
This is awesome. I can’t believe you did it. Thanks for linking up with Hobbies and Handicrafts
Gary can’t believe we did it either. It’s a great talking point at dinner parties….!
This is such an AMAZING activity!! I am totally going to try this for our Egypt study – so cool!
I featured this at TGIF this week here – http://www.livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com/2013/02/tgif-linky-party-61.html
Thanks for linking up and sharing your creativity! Hope to see you linked up again this week,
Beth =-)
Thanks so much! I’m thrilled!
Oh my goodness, this is amazing. You can’t get any more hands on than this. Every time I read your blog, I wish I was a homeschooler! (saw this post linked up from Creative Kids Culture hop)
That’s so weird, I thought you were a home schooler! I get your posts in my email box and I could have sworn you home schooled! Are you sure you don’t?? You do a lot of activities with your children for non- homeschooler! Good for you! I need to sit down now and recover!
I basically drive the girls nuts 🙂 I get some very wary looks when I say “I’ve been thinking…” or come home with a bag full of library books! I keep having to remind myself that they are not interested in another lesson, they’ve been in school all week. But I love doing things with them – soon, especially with my older one, I’ll be lucky for any time spent together!
When they’re older they will look back on a happy childhood full of memories of a mummy who wanted to spend time making those memories precious!
You actually mummified a chicken! I’m not as brave, even if it’s dead. 😉 Kids did a wonderful job! Thank you so much for linking at the Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #3.
It wasn’t quite as yucky as it might first appear, but I sure am glad my husband changed the mixture as it was a little niffy!
Oh my goodness! I am pinning this – what an incredible way to learn about mummification! I just read “River God” by Wilbur Smith (not a children’s book) but ancient Egypt has been on my mind because of it. Thanks for linking up to the Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop!
A bit niffy, but lots of fun!
You must be the coolest homeschool mom ever…and have the coolest butcher ever. 🙂
I keep telling the children they have a really cool mum, but alas they just give me that ‘who do you think you’re kidding’ look!
Pingback: Mystery of History: Lesson Eleven - Early Egyptians