Why did ancient Babylonians, Sumerians, and Greeks usually use only surface treatments on the dead?

Ancient Babylonians, Sumerians, and Greeks generally utilized only surface treatments—such as anointing the body with perfumes, spices, and unguents—rather than invasive embalming procedures because their cultural and religious attitudes toward death differed significantly from those of the ancient Egyptians.12

For the Mesopotamian cultures (Sumerian and Babylonian), death was viewed with grimness and lacked the promise of a positive afterlife. Because they did not believe in the physical resurrection of the body or the necessity of reuniting the soul with the physical form, there was no theological incentive to preserve the corpse. Their approach to death was spiritual rather than anatomical, and they did not attempt to preserve bodies, often viewing the dead with fear.31

Similarly, while the Greeks held their heroes in high regard, their use of surface treatments was primarily intended to minimize putrefaction during the necessary days of mourning before final rites. Unlike the Egyptians, who practiced complex cavity embalming to ensure the soul could return to a preserved body for immortality, these societies generally viewed such preservation as unnecessary or inconsistent with their funerary customs.213