hand, prepared to immolate an ox, which lies bound at his feet. The first figure on the prow has his right arm extended, and appears to be watching the course of the vessel. The pilot, who, from his long white tunic, may be supposed to be a priest, is seated at the poop between the two oars, the mechanism for moving which is very curious. The oars and the pillars on which they move are crowned with the head of a hawk. The body of the vessel is of a green-colour, the extremities of a deep-blue tinge. Paints and frames, to serve in the representation of religious ceremonies, are lying on the vessel, and at the sides of the forepart are emblematical representations of the sacred eye, the eye of Osiris, which is also represented on the fore-part of the oars, surrounded by leaves of the lotus. The plank to descend from the vessel, and the pegs to fasten it, together with the club to drive them into the earth, are also on the deck. The male figures in the vessel have a red tinge of countenance, the women a yellow one, which corresponds with what is commonly seen in the ancient Egyptian paintings. It is to be observed that the priests, as well as the females, have their heads well covered with hair, which was permitted to grow during the term assigned for the mourning for the dead. This induced Signor Passalacqua to conceive the funeral ceremony here represented to be that of a priest, and the hieroglyphical inscription on the MS. reads, according to M. Champollion, "Grand-Prêtre." In the tomb, in which three coffins or cases, enclosed one within another, were found, these hieroglyphical symbols were seen marked upon each, together with the names of different divinities, to the worship of which, probably, the deceased had been particularly devoted. The papyri exhibited represented Osiris seated in judgment, supported by Isis and Nepthys, the wife and sister goddesses. Before the deity is placed the lotus, and over this the Four Genii of the Amenti*. Thoth, the Egyptian Mercury, is introducing the deceased (a priest apparently, from his habiliments and shaven head), and is prepared to record the judgment on a roll of papyrus, which he holds in one hand, whilst he is furnished with a style to accomplish this in the other. The deceased is in an imploring attitude, with his arms extended towards Osiris, and he is supported by a figure emblematical of Truth and Justice. Above the deceased are ranged, in two rows, the forty-two assessors, as described by Diodorus Siculus; and before the deceased is a balance, in which is being weighed the deeds and actions of his life. His heart is represented in a vase placed in one scale, and a feather, typical of truth, in the other. Anubis (the jackal-headed god, and one of the principal deities of the Amenti, and whose chief office appears to have been to superintend the departure of the soul) is regulating or directing the balance. Mr. Pettigrew now proceeded to make a few observations on some of the points named by Herodotus, as appertaining to the embalment, and *These are NETSONOF OF KEBHNSNOF, | and GIVER; and Mr. Wilkinson has therewith the hawk's head; SMOF, or SMAUTF, with the jackal's head; HAPEE, with the head of the cynocephalus, and AMSET with the human head. AMENTI OF AMUNTI, in Coptic, exactly corresponds with uns in Greek. It signifies both RECEIVER fore justly remarked, that it implies only a temporary abode. Now it must be recollected, that this corresponds with the idea of the Egyptians returning again to the earth after a short period. first drew the attention of his auditors to the extraction of the brain through the nostrils. This process, he remarked, would be found to be one of considerable difficulty; and Greenhill, who wrote a work on embalming, treats the extraction of the brain through the nostrils as "an amusing story of a thing impracticable and ridiculous." Mr. P. however, demonstrated the truth of the relation, by exhibiting a specimen of a Græco-Egyptian mummy, in which the process had been adopted in so complete a manner as not to leave even a vestige of any of the membranes surrounding the brain, which usually hold, with the greatest firmness, their attachments to the inside of the skull, and this was effectually accomplished without producing any disfigurement whatever of the external part of the nasal organ. It appears that an instrument must have been introduced up the external nares, made to pierce through the ethmoid-bone, and then by a rotatory motion, Mr. P. thinks, made to break down the surrounding parts of the frontal and sphenoid bones, so as to occasion an opening about the size of a crown-piece, through which the contents of the skull were extracted. Mr. P. has other examples in his possession; but he exhibited the Græco-Egyptian specimen as the most complete. Of the instrument with which this was effected, Mr. P. exhibited a drawing obtained from specimens in the Berlin Museum, and seen in Plate I., (p. 24,) figs. 1, 2. Their composition is of bronze. In those mummies in which the second mode of Herodotus was adopted, the brain was not extracted; and Mr. P. exhibited an instance to show that it had settled down into a cake-like mass, and had taken the form of the back part of the skull, being marked by the internal ridges of the crucial spine of the occipital bone, which also clearly showed that the position in which the mummy had been placed, was an horizontal one. After the brain had been extracted from the skull, it was customary to introduce a quantity of linen through the nostrils into the cavity; and in the mummy opened by Mr. Davidson, at the Royal Institution, in 1833, Mr. P. saw in this instance nine yards of linen, three inches in breadth, withdrawn from the head. In the head of a mummy brought from Thebes by Mr. Wilkinson, in which the brain had been extracted in the manner described, and the nostrils plugged up, Mr. P. found, in the cavity of the skull, a quantity of insects in various stages of maturity, and sufficiently perfect to admit of an accurate description and delineation of their several organs. These Mr. P. has figured in his History of Egyptian Mummies, and has named them Necrobia mumiarum and Dermestes pollinctus. They are species quite distinct from any to be met with in the cabinets of natural history, or in any published work. The Rev. W. F. Hope, the best entomologist of the day, has minutely examined them. He states the Necrobia mumiarum to be closely allied to the Necrobia rufipes of Fabricius; but he thinks it differs in colour. It is, however, not improbable but that the embalming-materials may have had some effect in producing the present colour of the insects; and Mr. Hope is of opinion that the natural colour of the insect was a violet or deep purple colour. The Dermestes pollinctus is also different from any known species of this insect. sembles in form the Dermestes domesticus of Siberia, described by It re Stevens. Mr. P. obtained from one skull nearly three hundred tolerably perfect insects. There were also abundant fragments; the perfect pupæ were not numerous, but the great quantity of empty cases showed that the greater part had arrived at the imago state some time after the process of embalming was completed. The head was not always filled with linen, for Mr. P. found in another specimen a large quantity of bituminous matter, and the same occurred in an instance to Dr. Mead. The Passing on to the mode of treating the body of the mummy, Mr. P. remarked, that the statement made by Herodotus as to the incision in the left flank had been clearly verified, and most mummies presented examples of that part of the process. By this incision the viscera, both of the chest, and belly, and pelvis, were extracted, and the cavities were filled sometimes with the dust of cedar or cassia wood (it is supposed), various aromatics (lumps of myrrh have been found), masses of pitch, and quantities of saline matter mixed with earthy substances. mummy of HORSEISI, unrolled by Mr. P. at the Royal College of Surgeons, in 1834, had a very large quantity of natrum and earth contained within it. The mummy of KANNOP, at the London University, was filled with the dust of some wood mixed with aromatics; and the mummy brought into this country by Dr. Perry, and described by him in his View of the Levant, &c., which has been unrolled by, and is in the possession of, Mr. P., had large quantities of pitchy matter in all the cavities of the body. The instrument with which the flank or ventral incision is made, has been stated by Diodorus Siculus to have been done with an Ethiopic stone. Passalacqua found some of pyromachous silex (according to Brogniart), and one of these is figured in Plate I., fig. 5; but in the collection of antiquities belonging to the University of Leyden, there is a knife of silex, which is supposed to have been, from its shape, capable of making the incision at one stroke. It is represented in Plate I., fig. 4. The intestines, liver, &c., were sometimes returned into the body, each portion or viscus being separately rolled up in bandages. In the mummy of Horseisi there were five distinct portions; these are preserved in the Hunterian Museum belonging to the college. In other instances the viscera have been found placed either upon the body or between the thighs and legs of the mummy; and in Mr. P.'s Græco-Egyptian mummy, he found the heart placed between the thighs, but not enveloped in any bandage. This was the only part from within the body that was preserved in this instance; and it is therefore probable that the other viscera were disposed of in the canopic vases which are so frequently found in the better kind of private tombs, but which did not come into this country with the mummy in question. Mr. P. observed, that it was evident some long cutting-instrument must have been introduced to extract the viscera, for he found in his Græco-Egyptian mummy, in which there was no flank-incision, an opening made close to the rectum, and through which all the pelvic, abdominal, and thoracic viscera had been dragged, that there were at the bottom of the neck in the chest, portions remaining of the wind-pipe, the large blood-vessels, &c., which presented in the most indisputable manner cut surfaces. These parts had been preserved in spirits, and were exhibited by Mr. P. on this occasion. The instrument by which Mr. P. conceives the intestines were in ordinary cases dragged out through the incision in the flank, is represented in Plate I. fig. 3, which is a representation taken from a specimen in the fine collection of Egyptian antiquities at Leyden. The edges of the incision in the flank, Mr. P. has never seen sewed together; they have been merely placed in apposition. According to Herodotus the application of the resinous matter which lies over the surface, and penetrates into the substance of the body of the mummy, takes place after the steeping of the body in the solution of natrum. This must, however, be an error, for it is clear that the salt, which Mr. P. has ascertained to be a fixed alkali composed of carbonate of soda, sulphate of soda, and muriate of soda, and of which large crystals are frequently found in the cavities of the mummified bodies, could not penetrate after the application of the pitchy matter. In this latter process it is clear that a considerable degree of heat must have been employed to promote the absorption of the resinous matter, and this was found in the Græco-Egyptian mummy to be effected in the most perfect manner, for the pitch had, along with aromatics, entered into the most minute cancelli of the bones; the vertebræ of the back were completely saturated with the substance. The epidermis or cuticle of the body is in all cases found to have been very carefully removed, which is most likely done at the time of the steeping in the solution of natrum, and from which previous process the pitchy matter would obtain a much more ready entrance. As the nails are attached to the epidermis, and as the object of the ancient Egyptians appears to have been to preserve, as entire as possible, the body of the individual submitted to this curious process, great care seems to have been taken to prevent their detachment. In several instances in Mr. P.'s possession, the cuticle has been cut off close to the root of the nail, and in some cases, where the whole of the cuticle has been taken away, by perhaps an advanced stage of putrefaction having ensued prior to the embalment, for in a climate of so elevated a temperature as that of Egypt, this decomposition must proceed very rapidly, he has found the nails tied on to the fingers. Upon the surface of the body it is not unusual to meet with some appearances of crystallization. On the Græco-Egyptian mummy there were so many crystals that Mr. P. was enabled to collect a sufficient quantity to be submitted to the analysis of Mr. Faraday. This talented chemist describes the crystallization as very perfect and acicular, and, from their appearance, he supposes them to be the result of sublimation; but when the substance is heated, it does not prove to be volatile. It fuses, and upon cooling concretes again, crystallizing the whole like spermaceti. It burns with a bright flame, and evidently abounds in carbon and hydrogen. It is not soluble in water, and has the odour when heated, of a fatty matter; but then alkali acts very feebly upon it, and dissolves only a very small portion. On the contrary, it is very soluble in alcohol, the solution being precipitated by water. The substance Mr. Faraday conjectured might probably be a result of slow action upon organic (perchance animal) matter; and has, perhaps, been assisted in its formation by heat. These crystals are quite different from those found on the body of the mummy opened at Leeds, which were ascertained |