The difference here is between body and soul. As far as I'm understanding it. Preserving body meant to transfer both into afterlife, body intact and soul too. The new thesis is, it was just meant to preserve the soul, the body isn't needed in afterlife. That's a big difference in belief and religion.

Pre-Astronautics will be happy to hear about it.

What doesn't make sense to me here is, why take all the organs out if the body doesn't matter, just the spirit?

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I'd like to see what some other egyptologists have to say about this. This seems like a pretty wild claim to make seemingly without any new information. Also, this doesn't seem consistent with certain other things. Like embalmers eventually learning to remove the organs for better preservation of the bodies. And later dynasties adjusting their processes for better preservation after discovering mummies of plundered pharaohs' tombs.

Additionally, since pharaohs were the incarnation of the god Horus on earth, guiding the deceased to divinity doesn't really ring true.

Pre-scientific cultures did not distinguish between the symbolic / metaphorical and practical / physical the way we do. To say the reason wasn't this practical thing but instead was this symbolic thing is a modern failure to understand that. One doesn't preclude the other and even treating them as separable is questionable.

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That wasn’t my point, my point was that the body was being preserved so it wouldn’t decay when going to the afterlife

If we're operating on the idea that all the other items left in the tomb were to bring into the afterlife, then why wouldn't the believe the body could be brought as well?

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It's a complete 360!! This changes everything!!

I think the headline and article might have been worded in misleading ways. Yes, the purpose of mummification was to prepare the deceased body for the afterlife, but there are specifics of Egyptian theology, which I will not delve into because I am not an Egyptologist, that required the body to be preserved. Mummification took 70 days and highly specialized knowledge to perform properly. Other cultures have developed less time- and labor-intensive ways of “preparing the deceased for the afterlife” and Egyptian embalmers wouldn’t have done all this work for no reason.

Edit to add: it’s probably fair to say that preparing the deceased for the afterlife was the end goal, not preservation for its own sake. But it was still significant for the deceased person’s remains to be recognizable.

While it is true that the preservation could just be a byproduct of some very specific rituals, these rituals are still laid out to act the exact same as preservation. Could it not just be that it’s both?

I think it isn't a 180 simply because we were all taught about how basically every other part of the ritual, their tombs, etc. revolved around making their afterlife experience easier / better in some way shape or form

So learning that they may have mummified the bodies for the sake of that person's afterlife, with preservation being a byproduct, isn't really a huge revelation. It's neat and definitely different than what we all thought, but it's more like a 90, not a 180, if that makes sense

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Isn't it? If the purpose isn't to "preserve the body for the afterlife," and is instead to guide the soul, and the preservation of the body is just a coincidental byproduct of their rituals, I would say that's a pretty significant 180.

This must be a great time to be an Egyptologist

I thought it was supposed to preserve the body for the afterlife? That’s what I was taught in school so this isn’t a 180 to me.

I think to say this applied to all mummies everywhere is as irresponsible as saying all Americans like Hot dogs

It surely could have applied to some.....but others probably not

Is this actually new information? I had a picture book about mummies as a kid that detailed all the weird ceremonial bullshit that was part of the process and how keeping the organs in jars instead of throwing them out was so the deceased could still use them in the afterlife because that was somehow part of the process of getting to heaven.

If kids are being taught that it’s all about preservation these days, that’s a damn shame. They’re missing out on all the cool stuff.

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I don't see how that contradicts mummification for preservation. Like, literally why not both? They weren't accidentally doing everything you're supposed to do to preserve people.

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It was to prepare them for the afterlife.

It'll be interesting to see what other Egyptologists have to say on the matter.