they wanted to researve the body for when the spirit returned, the spirit would know which one is his because they are ussualy seperated in different tombs or rooms....

The aim of mummification was not to preserve a person’s body as it had been in life but to create a new body that could last for eternity. The Ancient Egyptians believed that a person was made up of a number of physical and non-physical elements. The body was the physical part. The ka and ba, together with a person’s name and their shadow, were the non-physical parts. Mummification was intended to create a body that could continue to house a person’s ka and ba. The ka was a ‘life force’ sustained by the consumption of food and drink. In the afterlife it also required nourishment to survive. Food offerings left by the living at the tombs of their ancestors sustained the ka. Depictions of offerings on coffins, tomb walls, or other burial objects magically fulfilled the same function. The most important characteristic of the ba was its ability to move. It could leave the body and travel through the worlds of the living and of the dead, enabling the dead to participate in both. It was believed that the ba needed to return to the body regularly in order to survive. Particular attention was paid to the external appearance of a mummy to enable the ba to recognise its own body and return to it safely. The body, a combination of ka, ba, name and shadow, was thought to make a person complete in this life and in the next. The dead could only fully enjoy eternal life if all the different parts survived.

The Egyptians mummified the body so that when the bodies spirit returned..know as the Kah and the Bah (sp?), it would recognize the body...It was for egyptians to mummified their dead in order to secure an after life.

The ancient egyptians wanted the dead to have a good afterlife. What else could it be? They did put all the dead guy's belongings into the dead guy's tomb. And they made the coffin look like the dead guy. So yeah.

The motivation for the Egyptians to mummify their dead most likely came from earlier periods before the Old Kingdom. During these times, villages on the Nile would bury their dead in what was then dusy, savannah-like land off of the flood plain and away from the dwellings. In these places, the bodies were very well preserved. It is from this that the Egyptians likely came to the conclusion that preservation of dead bodies was important. So, it most likely was not just an accident.