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.

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    of the brain being drawn down by the passage of the nostrils, since we find the brain in a dried state within the skull. According to the wealth of the family or the estimation in which friends held the deceased, so was the mode of embalming. It might be done for a few shillings, or might cost hundreds of pounds. Sometimes the body, after being dried by a current of hot air, was first put in palm wine with an admixture of drugs, and afterwards for seventy days in natron ; but oftener the wine was dispensed with. The natron, from the natron lakes, was not common nitre, which dries up the fibre. The rich added to this natron soaking, thirty days’ steeping in oil of cedar, myrrh, cinnamon bark, etc. Poor people were content with a modest pickling in salt, or the use of bitumen, which was plentiful and cheap in Egypt, being the product of the terebinth tree of the desert. The cavity of the chest might be filled with bitumen. The cheapest mode was the soaking in a preparation of salt, cassia and senna, for seventy days, though many were salted only. Those bodies with which bitumen was used were black, heavy, hairless, and difficult to break. Salted ones were dry, white, light, elastic, easily broken, without features or hair; but there was formed much adipocere, a fatty matter which is soluble in alcohol. In some cases the features were thoroughly preserved, the complexion was retained, and the flesh adhered to the bones. In other processes, the flesh did not adhere, the skin was like parch- ment, the face disfigured, and the body elastic. The nails and sexual parts are sometimes found gilded over. The arms are generally laid across the breast, as with the old Knights Templars; and for the same reason, per- haps, a reverence for the Cross. When not desirable or able to keep the features, some in later times had- a masque