Like many modern people, the ancient Egyptians believed in life after death. In their religion, the afterlife was a place very similar to life on earth; as a result, they began to develop the process of embalming, or mummification, in order to preserve the dead. They wanted their dead, loved-one to look the same in the afterlife as he/she did on earth. This was important so that the ka, or the soul, could find the body in the afterlife. Mummification was a ritual enacted for over 3,000 years in