Category: Literacy

In our literacy class, we were learning about ancient Egyptian. So besides their amazing structure of the pyramid, there is a belief of afterlife for the wealthy people such Noble and Pharaoh, mummy. Mummification is a step for the god of death, Osiris, to judge on the person soul whether or not they are going to the afterlife which was believed to be much likely to the life on earth and that the soul would like to use the old body.  Therefore, while learning about the process of mummifying, we actually assigned to perform the steps of mummifying.

Here are the steps of mummifying.

1. Removal of the Brain: With long hooks, the brain is extracted through the nasal passage. The Egyptians didn’t think that the brain had any special use.
2. Organ Removal (Evisceration): A cut is made on the left side of the body, and the liver, lungs, and other organs are removed, dried out, and stored in sacred vessels called canopic jars. The heart is left in the body, because it will be needed to be weighed in judgment by Osiris.
3. Dehydration with Natron Crystals: Now the body must be dehydrated (have the liquids removed) to stop decay. A type of salt called natron is used. Natron crystals are packed around the body. The crystals absorb body fat and fluids and keep the body from decaying.9 After being treated for about 40 days, the corpse10 is washed and dried.
4. Stuffing: Because the body has lost much of its mass, resin11-stained clothes or bits of sawdust are used to pack the corpse, which by now has also lost its eyeballs. Pieces of cloth are stuffed in the eye sockets and painted black. At this point, the corpse’s lips and cheeks are painted.
5. Oiling the Body: This elaborate12 process includes massaging, perfuming, and anointing (blessing with oil) the corpse.
6. Coloring: After the nose and mouth are filled with cloth scraps to restore the shape of the face, the body is colored. Men are colored red; women are colored yellow. After the coloring, resin is poured into body cavities.13
7. Arrangement of the Body: Depending on which period of Egyptian history the deceased lived in, the arms are either placed to the side of the corpse, folded on its chest, or placed with hands on shoulders.
8. Wrapping: The body is wrapped in several layers of fine linen; and various body parts receive particular attention. This process takes two weeks, after which a resin is added to the bandages.
9. Funerary Mask: A mask, sometimes made entirely of gold, is fitted to the mummy’s body. Symbols of gods often adorned14 masks.
10. Burial of Waste: All materials used to prepare the corpse (such as natron and bloody linen) are placed in a jar and buried away from the mummy’s tomb.

Pictures coming soon…

This is a gender-related article that I wrote for my literacy class.

Should We Blame Our Ancestor?

“Boys, what is your opinion on girls keep getting these sports opportunity and you don’t,” asked Dominic Sharp the country director of the Liger Leadership Academy when he visits the gender equity exploration. No one answer.

The question then changed to, “Why do you think these opportunities are only available for girls?” Then one of us said, “That’s because back in the old days these opportunities were only for boys, so for gender equity, these kinds of opportunities are now opened up more to the girls.” After this discussion, I asked myself “Should we blame our ancestors for limiting  boy’s opportunities today?”

In many cultures, girls are defined as weak because they are often physically weaker than men Therefore, physical activities such as sports have been seen as masculine and only for males. For example according to the Football Association (FA), in 1921, the association bans women from playing on Football League grounds by the statement of  “…the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged.” Despite the fact that women have a long history in this sport, they are still seen as unsuitable for the game.

After half of a century, the FA finally lifted the ban, yet there is still lack of support for women in this field. Even though women are no longer banned, Regardless of the unban, for many countries like Cambodia, women are expected to be soft and gentle and sports are still sometimes taboo. Therefore sports are not under the category of what they are supposed to do. In fact, once a Cambodian girl hits puberty, they are sometimes forced to stay home and learn to do all the house chores and prepare to be a wife, which is known as “into the shade”. So there is no sport for women from family level up to nation degree. For instance, the most followed event in football, FIFA World Cup, wasn’t created for women until 1991 which is 61 years after the men tournament.

This outdated cultural belief not only limits women in sports but also education. In Cambodia, girls were not allowed to attend school until after French colonization. Boys were educated in pagodas and since girls cannot interact with monks, they were forbidden.

Even in contemporary Cambodia, some girls are still battling for higher education from their parent’s limitation. Once the girls reach high school, they have a high dropout chance due to many economic reasons, plus their parents perspective. So one of the most important reason is the parent’s mindset on how girls don’t need high education since they are going to be man’s wife one day. Thus, they force their daughter to quit school, help the family economically, and wait for the legal age to marry. Without education, women can’t really get into any high development field such as technology. Therefore, it has created the stereotype where this is not the field for women and women shouldn’t be in this field.

So, due to these opportunities limitation, right now there are so many more opportunities and encouragement in those fields for girls. For examples, in sport, there are many spots open up for girls to train and compete in a variety of tournament. For example is that there is an opportunity open up only for girls to play in a frisbee tournament in Philippine.

In education, there are many programs which giving girls full scholarship to many good universities. Moreover, there’s even world-class competition for girls in technology such as Technovation where they offer girls from all over the world the opportunity to learn the skills they need to emerge as tech entrepreneurs and leaders in a competition form.

From these girl’s opportunities, boys are actually feeling upset about it, and sometimes even complain that it’s not fair. However, if we look back into our history, we can see that girls have never had any opportunity that boys have up until the last century, in fact, they still not completely have those opportunities today.

So is this the fault of our ancestor? Maybe it is their fault for not fighting for the women right back in the day, but not at all. It’s actually the belief and mindsets which had developed since the birth of human raise which had waylaid them from denouncing for women right. Therefore, we should not blame our ancestor but instead, we should continue fighting for the gender equality in any field in around the world.