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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    pasteboard. But this is covered with a thin cement, upon which figures are drawn. Over the covering are the bandelettes, crossing the breast, terminating, perhaps, in ornaments of yellow curled leather, Leather bands, with stamped or embossed ends, do not occur before the twentieth dynasty. Now and then a beautiful network of coloured beads is put over the wraps. One refers to the network of bugles, or elongated beads, as symbolizing the net by which the several members of the body of Osiris were fished out of the Nile, Sandals were not forgotten. In the Cairo Museum the writer saw an elegant pair, on the soles of which were painted the triumph of the soul’s adversaries, with the hieroglyphical legend of “May thy foes be under thy sandals!” In the Ritual we read, “washed and clad in clean linen, with white sandals on his feet, and anointed with a perfumed unguent or pomatum, and making an offering of bread, drink, oxen, geese, and burning incense.” Finger nails were protected by thread, and sometimes even a sort of silver glove was worn. A gold funeral crown was regarded as the symbol of purification, and is described in chapter 19 of the Ritual. In each coffin were hypo- cephali. If not stone, they were circular disks of linen covered with cement, and inscribed with figures and letters, according to chapter 162 of the Ritual. These pillows were called “ rest for the dead,” and were amulets for the restoration of vital heat. A triangle represented equili- brium or rest. The ornamentation was often very profuse; gold, and even gems, not being spared. The pectoral plates, or uta, were of various shapes; they were a boat, a scarabeus or sacred beetle, a heart, a triangle, or other symbolic figure. Most of them are two or three inches long, by half an inch thick, of stone, steatite, etc. The writer saw one of circular