dow), is making numerous offerings to the divinity (vases, a goose, loaves of bread, cakes, fruit, etc.). A boat floats on the Nile, to convey the deceased and his mother. The boat is being towed, a pilot standing in the prow directs the movement, and holds the ropes which are attached to four jackals of Anubis and three hawks with human heads. Below, a second boat with three rowers is transporting the offerings. Glass-case A (380) from the same excavation at Deir-el-Bahari. Although rather less well preserved than the previous coffincase, this one is covered with beautiful paintings in brilliant colours (on a golden-yellow ground, figures in green, black and red) representing a whole series of scenes of funeral ritual.

MUMMIFICATION.

I do not intend to give a full account of the various methods of embalming in successive dynasties, as a volume would be required for that purpose ». Thus begins the chapter that the late Sir Armand Ruffer has written on the Methods of Embalming, in his interesting Histological Studies on the Egyptian Mummy, and in reality no exhaustive work on this subject exists In consequence, the facts summarised here may be regarded as being in the main correct, but with the reservation that the methods of embalming varied in different periods. In this account I cannot do better than follow closely that given by Professor Elliot Smith, A. Lucas, and Sir Armand Ruffer. Among classical writers, two have left us fairly detailed descriptions of the process of mummification: HERODOTUs, History, Book II, and DIODORUS OF SICILY, Bibliothecae Hist., I, 91. Their conclusions must be accepted with caution and controlled according to the results of the researches that savants, chemists, and histologists have made and are continuing to make on the mummies themselves. For those whom the subject specially interests I draw attention to the very rich bibliography at the end of the chapter.

We do not know exactly the epoch at which the Egyptians began to practice mummification, but it seems certain that the custom was already well established in the fifth Dynasty (cir. B. C. 2700). It is true that there are numerous examples of wellpreserved bodies dating from the earlier part of the Ancient Empire and from pre-dynastic times, but their wonderful state of preservation is the result of a natural process of dessication,

Mummification was probably an invention of the Osirian cult. The priests of Osiris taught that the body of man was sacred and not to be abandoned to the beasts of the desert, because the bright and regenerated envelope of the purified spirit would spring from it. A very sad destiny was reserved for the soul that was deprived of its double, its unique support, its mummy. Most of the mummies that have been examined date from between the 17th Dynasty and the beginning of the sixth century A. D., for until the end of that century, Christians did not think that mummification was opposed to the principles of the new religion.

In the 18th and 19th dynasties the methods adopted aimed chiefly at the preservation of the tissues of the body itself. At the beginning of the 21st dynasty, embalmers introduced the practice of restoring to the shrunken and distorted body the form which it had in great part lost during the early stages of the embalming process, and for this purpose, linen, sawdust, earth, sand, and various other materials were packed under the skin. At a later period, the embalmers abandoned this extraordinary practice and devoted their chief attention to imitating the form of the body by means of wrappings and bandages rather than by packing the body itself. The result was a rapid deterioration in the manner of preserving the body, and, at the same time, a greater elaboration in the art of bandaging which attained its perfection in Ptolemaic times. In the later Roman period, this art declined and when the use of pitch was discarded in Christian times, the embalmers returned to the use of common salt, which probably was the earliest substance employed for the preservation of the body.

According to Herodotus, three different methods of embalming were practised. In the first, which was the most expensive, the brain and viscera were removed, the body-cavities were washed with palm-wine and filled with myrrh, cassia, and other spices, and the body was then placed in a bath of « natron » for seventy days, at the end of which time it was removed from the bath, washed, and wrapped in linen bandages, which were fastened together with gum. The bands of linen might attain a width of 20 cm. and a length of 4000 metres. In the Ptolemaic and Roman epochs, especially, the bandaging was very complicated, not to say artistic. In the second method of mummification oil of cedar was injected into the body, which was then placed in the "( natron» bath. The third method, which was the cheapest and only used for the very poor, consisted in rinsing the abdomen with « syrmaea ›

(radish-juice and salted water) and then soaking the body in natron for the prescribed number of days.

Some controversy has taken place with regard to the chemical constitution of the inorganic material that Herodotus says was natron. Natron is the natural soda found in Egypt, and is essentially a mixture of sodium carbonate, sodium chloride, and sodium sulphate in varying proportions. According to Mr. Lucas the inorganic substances used by embalmers were chiefly natron and common salt. Professor Schmidt is of the opinion that the inorganic material used for mummifying was not natron but common salt. Mr. Lucas does not deny that natron used, but considers that it was only used for packing, as, for instance, in the mouth, in which case it was mixed with fat, e. g. butter, to form a paste. One point alone is certain, namely, that the mummifying process took a very long time.

was

Before Pettigrew's researches no significance was attached to the assertions made by Herodotus regarding the extraction of the brain through the nostrils with a crooked piece of iron. Nevertheless it is true that the embalmer passed an instrument through the nasal cavity, broke the ethmoid bone, and thus opened the brain cavity. In most cases, no trace, or very little, of the brain or its membranes is found in the brain cavity ; sometimes the cranium contains a small quantity of resin and strips of linen, whereas the cranial cavity of others is completely filled with resin and linen. In mummies of the Graeco-Roman period the cranium often contains a certain amount of pitch.

An embalming incision was made in the left lumbar region, extending from the iliac crest, (about 2 or 3 cm. behind the anterior superior spine) to the costal margin. The body cavity having been thus opened, the intestines, liver, spleen, kidneys, stomach and pelvis viscera were completely removed. In most cases, the heart was left in the thorax attached to the great blood-vessels. The viscera were then washed and steeped in palm-wine, when both the body itself and the organs taken from it, were placed, it is said, in the saline bath, described by Herodotus. The viscera, removed from the salt bath, were then thickly sprinkled with a coarse sawdust of various aromatic woods, and, while still flexible, were moulded into shape and wrapped in linen. At certain epochs the viscera wrapped as they were in linen and swathed in a complicated bandage were placed in a box divided into four compartments, or into alabaster or terra-cotta jars, called Canopic jars, the stoppers of which were representations of, or surmounted by a figure of

the divinity supposed to protect the contents: Amset, Hapi, Duamutef, Kebehsenuf, the four sons of Horus (fig. 59). The body cavity was then stuffed with sawdust, or with myrrh, cassia, or other spices. At other epochs the viscera were replaced in the body cavity, and it was then customary to place with some of the organs certain wax or pottery models of the children of Horus. Flowers and other vegetable substances, especially onions, are often found among the wrappings on the surface of the body or under the mummy, and sometimes burial-scenes are also represented on the wrappings (See p. 166, fig. 74). A conventional death-mask was placed in a position corresponding

with the face of the dead; this was sometimes made of cartonnage, at other times of wood or plaster. During the Roman epoch, between A. D. 50 and 150, the mode was introduced of placing within the bandages a most remarkable portrait painted in encaustic on a tablet of wood to represent the face of the deceased.

The art of embalming reached its height in the twenty-first Dynasty. At that period, the process was costly in the extreme, and an elaborate mummification of a body cost about 700 pounds sterling in the modern value of currency. The simplest process adopted by the poor always ran into an expense of at least 10 pounds sterling.

It seems certain that among the materials employed for packing the body of the dead were common salt, natron, real re

sin, oleo-resins, balsams, gum-resins, gums, natural and artificial pitch, but not bitumen. << I have never found bitumen in any mummy said the late Sir A. Ruffer, « and my experience extends from Prehistoric to Coptic times ». Mr. Lucas had already come to the same conclusion.

The process of embalming took place in establishments ad hoc, each directed by a specialist called choachytes who had under his orders a number of priests and priestesses, sculptors, carpenters, spinners and porters. Each establishment was divided into three sections; the first, accessible to the public, where the different types of sarcophagi were exposed; the second was used as an operating-room for the mummification; and the third consisted of shops and laboratories, where unguents, balsams, herbs, and aromatic essences, etc., were prepared.

Lastly it may be pointed out that our knowledge of the process of mummification is very incomplete, and that many of the statements found in popular works on Egyptology require modifying.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. PETTIGREW T. J., History of Egyptian_Mummies, etc., London, 1834; FOUQUET, Note pour servir à l'histoire de l'embaumement en Egypte. Communication faite à l'Institut Egyptien dans la séance du 6 Mars 1895. Le Caire, 1896; Professor ELLIOT SMITH, A contribution to the study of Mummification in Egypt, Mémoires présentés à l'Institut Egyptien, T. V, p. I, Caire, 1906; and various other reports and accounts in the Bull. de l'Inst. Egypt., 1907, 1908; Cairo Scient. Journ., 1908; Annales de Service des Antiquités, 1903, 1905, 1907, comp. also « The Royal Mummy in Catalogue general du Musé du Caire; A. LUCAS, Preservative Materials used by the Ancient Egyptians in Embalming, Cairo, Nation. Print. Press, 1911; Sir MARC ARMAND RUFFER, Remarks on the Histology and pathological Anatomy of the Egyptian Mummy, Cairo, Scientific Journal, no 40, 1910; Histological Studies on Egyptian Mummies, Mémoires présentés à l'Institut Egypt., Cairo, 1911; M. A. RUF. FER and A. RIETTI, Notes on two Egyptian Mummies dating from the Persian Occupation of Egypt, Bull. Soc. Arch. d'Alex., n.o 14; ŘEUTTER L., De l'Embaumement avant et après Jésus-Christ, cp. Compte-rendu par JEQUIER dans Le Sphinx ›, XV, 206; L. REUTTER has written on the same subject in La Revue Scientifique du 9 Septembre 1916; LEWIS SPENCE, Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt, London, 1916; BUDGE E. A. W., The Mummy: Chapters on Egyptian funeral Archaeology, Heffer and Sons, Cambridge.

ROOM 9.

1. Fragment of the door of a tomb of a personage of the Ancient Empire.

2. The god Horus, the elder, under the form of a hawk in a naos. He wears on his head the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The naos has a double frieze formed by a double epistyle decorated with the solar disc between two uraei. From Denderah.