Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick.

  • James Bonwick
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    37/474 (page 23)
    and licentious group adored in perfidious and licentious Homeric times. Pursuing the subject of Funeral Rites, as illustrative ot the Religion of the Egyptians, let us now direct attention to that remarkable system of preserving the body in vogue among that people, with a view to discover what, if any, religious ideas 'governed them in the performance of that act. The mummy process may be here described. Immediately upon the decease of a person, a sort of inquest appears to have been held. The neighbours, forty- two in number, had to determine whether the individual were worthy of the honours of embalming. None but criminals of the worst type, or men particularly obnoxious to the public, were debarred. If a man, his body was removed from the dwelling to the house of the embalmers; but the corpse of a female received attention at the home of friends, so nice was the sense of propriety with that refined race. The eviscerators, or Paraschistes, usually cut open the right side for the purpose of extraction, when the parts removed were deposited, with suitable provision, in the canopic jars previously mentioned, and confided to the care of the four genii of the dead. The cut was covered with a tin plate, on which the Eye of Horus, or other sym- bol, was depicted. As in the case of circumcision, with the Egyptians, the knife employed in embalming was of stone, not metal. This may be regarded as a siirvival of the so-called Stone Age. A split flint was the first knife. As the rite of circumcision is known to be of extreme antiquity in Egypt from the use of a flint by a priest, so the employ- ment of the same instrument in embalming equally indicates the age of the practice. Herodotus was wrong in speaking