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A pickled man is called a mummy, and the mummies of many such rulers of Egypt are now in museums.
One of the Seven Wonders of the World was these mountains of stone called pyramids, which the kings built when they were alive, to be tombs for themselves when dead. Each king tried to build a bigger and better pyramid than the king before him. The largest pyramid was built by a king called Cheops, who died nearly three thousand years before Christ was born. It is said that it took one hundred thousand people ten years to build his tomb.
The outsides of the pyramids used to be smooth slanting walls, but people have taken out stone from the sides to build other buildings, so that now the outsides of the pyramids are as rough as piled-up heaps of stones and you can climb from stone to stone on up to the top. Cheops’s tomb and most of the other tombs or pyramids are of solid rock, with just a small room in the center, which was left for the body of the king and the things he had used when he was alive. The old Egyptians thought they must keep their furniture and other things around them, so that on the Judgment Day, when they should be awakened from their long sleep, they would be all ready to go on housekeeping. After Cheops’s body was put into the tomb the passageway leading to it was filled up tight with stone, and all traces of the opening were hidden so that no one could find it and steal his body away. But, nevertheless, some one did find it out, stole his mummy and all the things that had been left there for his use in the next World, and if his soul ever returns it will find nobody.
The ancient Egyptians worshiped fairy-tale gods and even animals. Bulls and beetles were sacred and they made mummies of them.
