Halloween Mummy Coloring Pages
Mummies are a Halloween favourite, but real ones are thousands of years old!
The ancient Egyptians wrapped their dead in long strips of linen so the body would last for the journey to the afterlife. Some mummies were even tucked inside painted coffins shaped like a person. You'll find simple preschool mummies, cute cartoon ones and a few more detailed pages below, so there's something here whether you like your mummies silly or spooky.
Fun Facts About Mummies
- Not every mummy was made on purpose. Ice, very dry sand or boggy ground can stop a body from breaking down, and nature does the rest. The most famous is Ötzi the Iceman, found in the Italian Alps in 1991 after about 5,300 years in the ice.
- Making an Egyptian mummy took about 70 days. The body was dried out with a salty powder called natron and then wrapped in layer after layer of linen, often with lucky charms called amulets tucked between the strips. Then it went into a decorated coffin and was laid in a tomb.
- Cats, birds and even crocodiles were mummified too. Some were gifts for the gods and some were pets sent along to keep their owners company. Some animals were even raised just for this, and archaeologists have found huge numbers of animal mummies in Egypt.
- The "Curse of the Pharaohs" is a spooky legend that says anyone who disturbs a pharaoh's tomb will be struck by bad luck or illness. The story took off after Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in 1922 and a few people connected to the dig died soon after. There's no evidence of a real curse, though. Archaeologists point to natural causes or old mould and bacteria in the sealed tomb.
- The Rosetta Stone, found in 1799, has the same message written three ways: in hieroglyphs, in an everyday Egyptian script called Demotic and in Ancient Greek. Scholars could already read the Greek, so it worked like an answer key. In 1822 Jean-François Champollion finally cracked the hieroglyphs, and the writing on tombs and coffins could be read again for the first time in centuries.