Captured at www.summum.org/mummification/modern.htm

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Unlike the mummification techniques used by ancient Egyptians, which left the dead shriveled, discolored, and ugly, Summum’s method is designed to keep you looking healthy and robust for millennia. The appeal may be to anyone who has labored to stay in shape. Why spend thousands of dollars in health club fees while you’re alive, then let everything go to pot just because you’ve died? Summum seems to encourage healthy living and physical fitness…. “I work out and eat right and take care of myself, and to just discard the body seems silly,” says Janet Greco, a nurse for the University of Utah Hospital.

But mummification is about more than the body, Corky Ra, founder of Summum, maintains. The mummified body can serve as a reference point for the disembodied spirit after death. It can prevent what may be considered “postmortem panic” and so enhance the odds of a favorable transition to a new life…