When a pharaoh or someone died they used a process to preserve their body. At first they only did this with pharaohs because they thought that the soul would need the body after death. The only reason it was important for the pharaoh to live after death was so that he would still watch over Egypt. This is a more detailed description of the process to make a mummy.

PROCESS OF MUMMIFACATION

To embalm a body they put it in a wooden box and filled it with natron. Natron dried up the body, and made it shrink. Then it was wrapped up in about a couple hundred feet of linen. Here's the process that they used.

Once the person was dead they were taken to the workshop to start the embalming. They first shaved the body of facial hair (eyebrows, mustache, and beards). One person cut a line in the left of the abdomon, and ran out of the room (they thought it was wrong to harm the dead, so the person who cut the body had stuff thrown at them). Then they removed the four internal organs, the stomach, lungs, liver, and intestines. They left the heart because they thought that it served the brain's purpose. They also could have taken out the brain. Some ways that they did this was break the bone in back of the nose, cut the brain into small pieces, and pull it out. They also, took out an eye, and pulled the brain out through the muscle in back of the eye that leads to the brain. Sometimes they put a hole in the back of the head, and you know what they did. They covered the body with natron, and put packets of it into the holes they cut. This helped dry out the body, so the the moisture in the body won't make the body rot. Then they put the body on a slanted table so leftover or extra moisture could flow into a jar. They rubbed the body down with tree sap or resin to perserve the body. To keep the skin soft and smooth they rubbed the skin down with oils, gum, ceder oil, wax, and natron. They covered the body with jewelry, and sacred jewels. They were then wrapped in many layers of linen. Then they were covered with more jewelry, then a mask made of solid gold, and put into three coffins, and finally a sarcophagus.