Mummies
Since Halloween is this week we are going to look at mummies.
So, what are mummies?
Simply, mummies are bodies that have been mummified. Mummification is a process by which soft tissues and organs are dried/frozen/treated with chemicals/kept away from air to keep them from decaying and decomposing. This can happen in natural environments or intentionally. Mummification was the primary form of body preparation for the dead in Egypt, and it first started there around 7,000 years ago. They would, often, remove the internal organs, placing them in jars, prepare the body with certain chemicals and wrap it in cloth, then place the entire body and organs in a sarcophagus/coffin, for burial. Especially in the case of pharaohs (kings & queens) the sarcophagus was made of gold and beautifully decorated. Sometimes, the servants or pets of the pharaoh would be killed and mummified and buried with them, as it was believed that whatever you were buried with went with you into the afterlife.
In modern culture, however, mummies have taken on a different context. Mummies are monsters. They are the source of content for scary movies and stories and Halloween costumes. Back in the mid-1800’s there started to arise legends and stories about Mummy Curses, which basically stated that anyone who disturbed the tomb of a mummy, especially a pharaoh, for any reason whatsoever, would be cursed with bad luck, sickness, or death. This was amplified in 1922, when the tomb of King Tut was discovered and opened, and several of the people who visited the tomb died shortly after. There is also myth and rumor that the Titanic sinking was caused by a mummy curse, and there are other stories of ships carrying mummies encountering extreme storms and one story of a man who was given a paperweight made out of a mummy’s hand having his house burn down and then flood.
There are some, very old, mummy tombs that do have curses inscribed on them, indicating that misfortune will come to anyone who disturbs them. However, for the most part, this is all just cultural paranoia and coincidence, and many of the deaths are either just coincidence or, possibly associated with ancient viruses that were disturbed when the tombs were opened.
Now, what does any of this have to do with the Bible? Well, first of all, the process of mummification is mentioned in the Bible, and two prominent Biblical characters were mummified. Both Jacob and Joseph were mummified, as that was the method of embalming and body preparation for the dead in Egypt, and Joseph was one of the highest ranking officials in Egypt.
Genesis 50:1-3 “Then Joseph fell on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days.”
Genesis 50:22-26 “So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father's house. Joseph lived 110 years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation. The children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were counted as Joseph's own. And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.”
However, what I really want to look at is the idea of Mummy Curses, or really curses in general.
A curse is: a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.
The Bible actually has many mentions of curses.
What we see is that, just like Mummy Curses fall on people who enter where they’re not supposed to, Biblical curses come when someone does something they’re not supposed to or goes somewhere they’re not supposed to.
We see in Galatians 3:10-14 a strong discussion about curses. “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”
This is referencing back to Deuteronomy 21:22-23 “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”
The idea here is that when sin entered the world, sin being anything that goes against God’s design and intended purpose for us, humanity fell under a curse, not a Mummy Curse, but a Sin Curse. We were no longer doing what we were meant to do or being who we were meant to be, and God requires perfection, as He is perfect, so the outlook was not good for us.
Everything became harder. Sickness, hatred, death, disease, destruction all entered the world. We were cursed, and in that curse we became separated from God and unable to regain the union and relationship that we had and are meant to have.
This is where Jesus and the verses in Galatians come in. We are told that, in addition to sin, the law is a curse. There were so many laws that had to be kept to try and regain our status and perfection that it was impossible, but if we were unable to keep all of the laws, we were doomed to a cursed existence. We were guilty, and in steps Jesus. He came, as one who was perfect, who kept all the law, but also as one who hadn’t sinned, who was not under a curse, either of sin or of the law, and He became a curse for us. Elsewhere in the Bible it says that He became sin. The one who was perfect, sinless, uncursed, became a curse and became sin in order that He might free us once and for all. He was innocent, yet suffered a punishment, hanging on a tree, willingly subjecting himself to the scorn of God in order that, rather than a curse, we could have a blessing.
The truth is that sin brings a curse on everyone who participates in it, and that’s everyone because all have sinned. When we fail to live up to our design and purpose, things don’t go the best for us, but Jesus provided a way to remove that curse from us forever. If we accept that, then, rather than being under a curse, we are under a beautiful blessing, and while we may still feel the effects of a cursed world, or feel the impact of sin when we choose, even though we have been saved from it, to embrace it, we are free forever.
There may not actually be any such thing as a Mummy Curse, but a Sin Curse exists. However, we have the way to break the curse, and just like the Egyptians believed that mummies would carry on into the afterlife, we can hope that, free from the curse of sin, we will live full and abundant lives, both here and eternally with God, free from the curse because of the sacrifice of Christ.
So, what are mummies?
Simply, mummies are bodies that have been mummified. Mummification is a process by which soft tissues and organs are dried/frozen/treated with chemicals/kept away from air to keep them from decaying and decomposing. This can happen in natural environments or intentionally. Mummification was the primary form of body preparation for the dead in Egypt, and it first started there around 7,000 years ago. They would, often, remove the internal organs, placing them in jars, prepare the body with certain chemicals and wrap it in cloth, then place the entire body and organs in a sarcophagus/coffin, for burial. Especially in the case of pharaohs (kings & queens) the sarcophagus was made of gold and beautifully decorated. Sometimes, the servants or pets of the pharaoh would be killed and mummified and buried with them, as it was believed that whatever you were buried with went with you into the afterlife.
In modern culture, however, mummies have taken on a different context. Mummies are monsters. They are the source of content for scary movies and stories and Halloween costumes. Back in the mid-1800’s there started to arise legends and stories about Mummy Curses, which basically stated that anyone who disturbed the tomb of a mummy, especially a pharaoh, for any reason whatsoever, would be cursed with bad luck, sickness, or death. This was amplified in 1922, when the tomb of King Tut was discovered and opened, and several of the people who visited the tomb died shortly after. There is also myth and rumor that the Titanic sinking was caused by a mummy curse, and there are other stories of ships carrying mummies encountering extreme storms and one story of a man who was given a paperweight made out of a mummy’s hand having his house burn down and then flood.
There are some, very old, mummy tombs that do have curses inscribed on them, indicating that misfortune will come to anyone who disturbs them. However, for the most part, this is all just cultural paranoia and coincidence, and many of the deaths are either just coincidence or, possibly associated with ancient viruses that were disturbed when the tombs were opened.
Now, what does any of this have to do with the Bible? Well, first of all, the process of mummification is mentioned in the Bible, and two prominent Biblical characters were mummified. Both Jacob and Joseph were mummified, as that was the method of embalming and body preparation for the dead in Egypt, and Joseph was one of the highest ranking officials in Egypt.
Genesis 50:1-3 “Then Joseph fell on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days.”
Genesis 50:22-26 “So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father's house. Joseph lived 110 years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation. The children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were counted as Joseph's own. And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.”
However, what I really want to look at is the idea of Mummy Curses, or really curses in general.
A curse is: a solemn utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something.
The Bible actually has many mentions of curses.
- Adam, and by default all of humanity, fell under a curse.
- Cain was under a curse.
- Canaan was under a curse.
- Balaam was asked to, and tried to, curse the nation of Israel.
What we see is that, just like Mummy Curses fall on people who enter where they’re not supposed to, Biblical curses come when someone does something they’re not supposed to or goes somewhere they’re not supposed to.
We see in Galatians 3:10-14 a strong discussion about curses. “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”
This is referencing back to Deuteronomy 21:22-23 “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”
The idea here is that when sin entered the world, sin being anything that goes against God’s design and intended purpose for us, humanity fell under a curse, not a Mummy Curse, but a Sin Curse. We were no longer doing what we were meant to do or being who we were meant to be, and God requires perfection, as He is perfect, so the outlook was not good for us.
Everything became harder. Sickness, hatred, death, disease, destruction all entered the world. We were cursed, and in that curse we became separated from God and unable to regain the union and relationship that we had and are meant to have.
This is where Jesus and the verses in Galatians come in. We are told that, in addition to sin, the law is a curse. There were so many laws that had to be kept to try and regain our status and perfection that it was impossible, but if we were unable to keep all of the laws, we were doomed to a cursed existence. We were guilty, and in steps Jesus. He came, as one who was perfect, who kept all the law, but also as one who hadn’t sinned, who was not under a curse, either of sin or of the law, and He became a curse for us. Elsewhere in the Bible it says that He became sin. The one who was perfect, sinless, uncursed, became a curse and became sin in order that He might free us once and for all. He was innocent, yet suffered a punishment, hanging on a tree, willingly subjecting himself to the scorn of God in order that, rather than a curse, we could have a blessing.
The truth is that sin brings a curse on everyone who participates in it, and that’s everyone because all have sinned. When we fail to live up to our design and purpose, things don’t go the best for us, but Jesus provided a way to remove that curse from us forever. If we accept that, then, rather than being under a curse, we are under a beautiful blessing, and while we may still feel the effects of a cursed world, or feel the impact of sin when we choose, even though we have been saved from it, to embrace it, we are free forever.
There may not actually be any such thing as a Mummy Curse, but a Sin Curse exists. However, we have the way to break the curse, and just like the Egyptians believed that mummies would carry on into the afterlife, we can hope that, free from the curse of sin, we will live full and abundant lives, both here and eternally with God, free from the curse because of the sacrifice of Christ.
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