Ancient Egyptian funerary rituals centered on the belief in resurrection, achieved primarily through mummification throughout the Pharaonic period to preserve the body for the afterlife.  Greeks, encountering this practice, adopted aspects, though retaining their own beliefs about incarnation and avoiding bodily mutilation.  Later, Romans also embraced Egyptian funerary practices, leading to mummification becoming more widespread, commercially driven, and a status symbol rather than solely a religious act. Specialized embalmers and "givers of water" conducted these services. The Ptolemaic and Roman periods saw mummification expand beyond the elite, resulting in overcrowded tombs and reuse of older ones, as evidenced by discoveries at Deir el-Madineh and the Valley of the Queens.  Mummification techniques evolved from simple desiccation in sand during the Predynastic period (5000-3200 BC), where bodies were wrapped in linen and buried in shallow graves, to the removal of internal organs starting in the Fourth Dynasty, initially for royalty, using natron and later canopic jars.  Subsequent techniques involved hollowing the body and stuffing it with resin-soaked linen, with facial features painted green, a color associated with resurrection.  In the Old Kingdom, methods included wrapping in linen bandages, sometimes with plaster to maintain the body's shape.