When it rained for forty days and forty nights, that was a bridge between one world and another. The old world was closing down, and a new one coming into being. When Moses spent forty days atop Mount Sinai, he too journeyed to a new world: he left the terrestrial sphere, and entered a transcendent one. And, according to the Egyptians, that was precisely the point of embalming someone: it was to prepare the dead for a journey between worlds. The dead could be “healed,” if the body could be preserved—for the spirit would ultimately ride that body on an odyssey to another world.
