Mummification & the Preserved Body
They preserved the body so the soul would always have a home to return to.
Also: mummification · mummy · embalming · natron · canopic jars · wabet · preserved body
Because Egyptians believed a person's spirit-parts needed the body to return to, they developed elaborate methods of preserving the dead: drying the body with natron, removing certain organs (kept in jars or returned), wrapping it in linen, and equipping it with amulets. A well-preserved body, ritually reactivated, let the ka and ba live on. Techniques and quality varied greatly by period and the family's means.
In short
The Egyptian practice of artificially preserving the body after death so that it could serve as the eternal home and anchor for the deceased's ka, ba, and identity in the afterlife.
Where it’s found
Archaeological and funerary record from the Old Kingdom onward; embalming rituals (e.g. later embalming-ritual papyri); Herodotus Book II (Greek)
Read it in the Egyptian texts
The passages in our corpus where this idea is discussed — each opens in our reader with the Egyptian transliteration and the English translation side by side.
How the idea developed across Egypt
Deliberate mummification develops across the Old Kingdom; classic techniques (natron desiccation, organ removal, canopic jars) are refined through the Middle and New Kingdoms and reach a technical peak in the Third Intermediate Period; declines in the Greco-Roman era as practices change. Herodotus famously describes embalming (a Greek source, used critically).
Herodotus's account of embalming is a Greek outsider source and not fully reliable; present technique-claims from the archaeological/Egyptological record, not from Herodotus alone.