One thing which I learned about History is that, you should not just absorb historical facts. The interpretation of facts in the history and correlating to the problems in the present day world is more important. I am sure you are doing the same by seeing the artifacts of one of the greatest civilizations in the world.

I feel, slaves are not used during the ancient times (I think we dont find such slave concept in ancient roman and greek mythologies) . Probably, as you said, there might be prisoners of wars, who would have been used for the construction.

Btw, is there any concrete information available that there is no slaves used there. (because, in my school history books, i remember reading that pyramids were built by slaves)

I also remember, reading in few magazines, that “Bohar”, a tamil siddhar, who hail from china, travelled as far as Arabia. Siddhars are believed to have mastered art of preserving human body and prolonging life (kayakalpa).

Thanks Ganesh, Joe, Bharathi, Vamsi, Harish for the encouragement.

Joe, I’m not following the political situation here. I’ll see what I can find.

Harish, you’re right. Egyptians removed the 5 important organs – Liver, Heart, Kidney, stomach and intestines and put them in the canopic jars. They threw away everything else including the brain. Then they put back the heart and the kidney. Heart is important I’ll write later on that.

Enjoy the trip. Please keep writing!

One other thought I would like to share about the Egyptian beliefs and its similarities to the outside world. Last week I was reading the book “The Third Eye” by Tuesday Lobsang Rampa and in that he was describing the process of embalming bodies in Tibet. After the death, the body parts are taken away and kept in gold containers. Isn’t it similar to the mummification process? I guess the body parts are taken away before mummies are made. I was hearing about embalming in Tibet for the first time.