The First Wrapping

Egyptian tradition credits Anubis with the first embalming: when Osiris was killed, the sources describe Anubis preparing the body, and mummification follows as a repetition of that act. Embalmers worked under his name for three thousand years, and the texts they recited put him in the room. It is a striking piece of religious design — an entire craft, with its salts and linen and seventy days, presented as the re-enactment of one mythical event. Every wrapped body in Egypt was, in the telling, being treated exactly as Osiris had been.