Jordan Kopy’s Spooky Egyptian Facts
Hi everyone, I’m Jordan Kopy, the author of the Theodora
Hendrix series. The second book in the series, Theodora Hendrix and the
Curious Case of the Cursed Beetle, was released on 7th October (and
is available wherever good books are sold)! As you might have guessed from the
title, this next instalment has an ancient Egyptian twist which sees Theodora
and her best friends Dexter and Sherman (a talking tarantula), coming face to
face with a terrible, unspeakable evil…
I’ve long had an interest in ancient civilizations, and
always found ancient Egypt to be one of the most fascinating. And so today, I’m
super excited to share some of my favorite spooky, strange and plain old interesting
facts about ancient Egypt – check these out!
1. We’ll start off with mummies, not only because they’re intriguing (and more than a little creepy), but because one of my favorite characters in the Theodora Hendrix series is a mummy name – well, Mummy: the ancient Egyptians believed that preserving the dead in a mummified state would allow their soul to exist in the afterlife. To achieve this, they used an embalming method which removed all moisture from the body, leaving behind a dried-out form which would not easily decay. The end-to-end process took seventy days![1]
2. Most of the body’s organs were removed prior to the embalming – including the brain! These were often mummified separately, then sealed in special containers and placed in the tomb with the mummy. However, the heart remained in the body, presumably because it was needed for the afterlife.[2]
3. Some mummies were used in medicine, their bodies ground up and mixed into topical ointments and the like. In some cases, the remnants were also ingested in an effort to take on the life of that spirit.[3]
4. When fully unwrapped, the bandages of an ancient Egyptian mummy could stretch for 1.6km (1 mile).[4]
5. While Egypt has made them famous, mummies did not actually originate there; some South Americans were mummifying peoples some 2,000 years in advance of the Egyptians.[5]
6. Moving along, did you know that the ancient Egyptians kept a variety of pets, ranging from elephants to baboons, crocodiles to tigers – and, of course, cats?[6]
7. Speaking of cats, they were a big deal in ancient Egypt – liked, a really big deal: beloved and even considered sacred, when a family’s cat died, every member of the household would shave off their eyebrows as a sign of mourning.[7]
8. As for the living people of ancient Egypt, after a long, hard day of work they were known to enjoy board games including “Senet”, a pastime dating back to 3500 BC.[8]
9. But getting back to dead people, in the early days of the ancient Egyptian empire, it was not uncommon for the servants of the recently deceased to be ritualistically murdered and buried along with their former masters in order to continue serving them in the afterlife.[9]
10. It’s rumoured that the dead – or perhaps I should say, undead – still inhabit some of ancient Egypt’s more holy burial places, especially the pyramids. In the pyramids of Giza, people have noted that they felt the presence of ghosts when wandering inside them, some of whom are said to be dressed as ancient Pharos. Others are said to be dressed in the attire of the early 20th century – explorers, perhaps, who got lost among the tombs. In fact, locals have occasionally reported hearing the faint sound of screaming come from them…How’s that for spooky?![10]
I hope you enjoyed reading these through these as much as I
enjoyed discovering them!
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