EMBALMING. Embalming is the art of pre serving bodies by the use of medicaments. Two ancient kinds of embalming are mentioned in Scripture, the Egyptian and the Jewish.
i. Ancient Egyptian embalming is twice spoken of ; Jacob and Joseph having died and been em balmed in Egypt. Before noticing what is said respecting them, we must speak of the Egyptian practice.
1. The feeling which led the Egyptians to em balm the dead probably sprang from their belief in the future reunion of the soul with the body. Such a reunion is distinctly spoken of in the Book of the Dead (Lepsius, Todtenbuch, ch. 89 and passim), and obscure as is the subject, probably on account of, the obscurity of the details of the Egyptian belief, the statements are sufficiently positive to make this general conclusion certain. This conviction would naturally make the Egyptians anxious to preserve the bodies of the dead, and would occa sion the invention of their famous art of embalming, which was applied not only to men hut also to the sacred animals. While tracing the art to this feel ing, we might suppose that it was more readily received by a people which probably shared the mysterious reverence for the dead which charac terizes a certain portion of our race, some nations of which practise or have practised a kind of em balming, without, as far as we can trace, any idea of the resurrection of the body.* But it must be observed that the art is confined to the ancient Egyptians and nations which may be supposed with probability to have borrowed it from them, save only the Guanches and the ancient Peruvians, and even their use of this custom, when we recol lect the legend of the island Atlantis and the American picture-writing and pyramids, may indi cate something more than a common descent.
The immediate origin of the Egyptian methods of embalming has been ingeniously conjectured to have been the discovery that bodies buried in the sand of Egypt were preserved by the natron with which it is impregnated.
During the period to which most of the mummies of certain date belong, which commences with the ISth dynasty and extends to the overthrow of paganism, various kinds of embalming were used, according to the outlay made by the relations of the deceased. But it is probable that in earlier
times there was greater simplicity. The portion of a mummy found in the Third Pyramid, which was almost certainly that of a king (the size leaves no doubt as to the sex), or at least of some one of the blood royal, is in a very coarse cloth, so that it has been supposed to be the remains of an Arab workman left here when the pyramid was rifled, but incorrectly, as the mummy-spices are to he traced by sight and smell. Herodotus describes three methods of embalming, according to cost, be ginning with the most costly (ii. 85-89), and Dio dorus Siculus mentions the same number (i. 9 ); but as it is impossible to class all mummies that have been examined under some one of these, instead of discussing the passages we prefer giving the main results of modern examinations. Mr. Pettigrew, in his History of Egyptian Mummies, while acknow ledging the faultiness of the statement of Herodotus yet mainly follows it, though quoting the scientific classification of M. Rouyer in the Description de (2d ed. vi. pp. 46r-489). In his remarks on the different kinds of mummies, the former is evidently in want of materials for the description of any but the most costly, for he fully illustrates the first kind from known specimens ; but in speaking of the second, he cites only two, and of the third, not one, only alluding to the statements of modern tra vellers. He depends mainly upon the examinations of mummies brought to Europe, which are gene rally of the more costly kinds, which were painted with mythological subjects, or otherwise adorned, whereas M. Rouyer describes what he observed in Egypt itself. His classification is as follows :— (I.) Mummies having an incision in the left flank for the removal of the viscera.