Mummification

“ I have been attempting to pick up a few of the threads which ultimately became woven into the texture of human beliefs and aspirations, and to suggest that the practice of mummification was the woof around which the web of civilization was intimately intertwined. ”

“ Successful mummification appears among better-class people in the New Empire for the first time and becomes a general custom in the Late Period. The processes of successful mummification necessitated the practical destruction of the body.
In the Middle Empire, which is the period under discussion, the process of mummification had reached a middle stage, and, while we are unable to explain exactly the causal relationship, it is clear that this advance in the treatment of the body accompanied a spread of the belief in the Osirian immortality. ”

“ There seemed no great difference in the conditions to which these mummies and the bodies of the XIIth dynasty people had been exposed. Yet no trace of mummy-cloth, dried skin, hair, or bitumen was ever met with in the earlier cemetery. Nor in the early burials that I opened at Ballas were any mummies found, and certainly most of the mummies known belong to the XVIIIth dynasty or later. Is it possible that mummification was confined to the upper classes until the great increase of wealth in the XVIIIth dynasty led to the wider adoption of the custom? ”

“ This is one of the reasons why they gave such importance to mummification.
Parts of this Chapter are very obscure. The translation has been made from the text on the mummy cloth of Thothmes III, supplemented by the Papyrus of Nu.
The only vignette we have is that of the Turin Papyrus, showing a mummy lying on the bed, and illumined by the rays of the sun.
1. , “to pass away, to disappear through corruption or decay.” Sometimes it seems to have an active sense: to let something pass away, to lose it. ”

“ In speaking of the relationship of the practice of mummification to the development of civilization, however, I have in mind not merely the influence it exerted upon the moulding of culture, but also the part played by the trend of philosophy in the world at large in determining the Egyptian's conceptions of the wider significance of embalming, and the reaction of these effects upon the current doctrines of the meaning of natural phenomena. ”

“ Outside Egypt mummification was practised amongst the ancient Peruvians, who took advantage of the desiccating atmosphere and salt soil of their caves for preserving the dead in good condition without any embalming process. ”

“ Among the prehistoric people are many female skeletons with a fractured right ulna sustained in warding off blows, and some of these women had died while still wearing splints. Circumcision is traceable on all the male bodies which are in a state to show its effects. The royal mummies furnish evidence of age at death as well as of health and physical character. A series of forty-four mummies of priests and priestesses of the XXIst Dynasty furnished the material for an important monograph. Earlier, the processes of mummification produced a skeleton merely clothed in a dry and shrunken skin. ”

“ The mummification of the body and the elaborate arrangements for protecting it and ministering to its wants were due to the belief that the continuance of the deceased’s existence had been secured by these preparations. But to make doubly certain, no device that would contribute to the attainment of this aim was neglected. Inscriptions were made on the walls of the tomb, on the sarcophagus and coffins, and on papyri to ensure the identification of the deceased king with Osiris, so that he might be made to share the god’s fate. ”

“ Hence, in recovering the history of Egyptian cultural development, we are really probing into the sources of the customs and beliefs of53 our own everyday life and experience. Thus we must regard mummification as something more than an eccentric practice that excites our curiosity. For it played a fundamental part in shaping the development of civilization, both its arts and crafts, as well as its most vital customs and beliefs. ”

“ This last statement then serves to explain the reason for the high state of preservation in the forms of mummification as exists in those countries like Egypt with their extremely hot and dry climates.
Exposure added to the temperature and the moisture relations adds greatly to the rapidity of the decomposition. A moist climate with a hot temperature and free exposure favors rapid decomposition. We notice that putrefaction progresses much more rapidly in the air than in the water and in the earth its progress is slower than in the water. ”

“ The ancient Egyptians, assured that a man’s ka or double shall revivify his body, took pains to guard the flesh from corruption, steeping the corpse in natron and stuffing it with spices. A body so prepared is called a mummy (q.v.) , and the custom was already of a hoary antiquity in 3200 B.C., when the oldest dated mummy we have was made. The bowels, removed in the process, were placed in jars over the corpse in the tomb, together with writing tablets, books, musical instruments, &c., of the dead. Cemeteries also remain full of mummies of crocodiles, cats, fish, cows and other sacred animals. ”

“ MUMMIES AND THEIR USE IN MEDICINE—THE UNICORN. Who first introduced mummies as medicinal agents is not known, but there is something particularly weird and gruesome in the idea of the ancient physician dosing a sick patient, with the remains of a predeceased fellowman, in order to restore him to health. The art of embalming was practised thousands of years before the Christian era, and was regarded as the greatest token of esteem that could be paid by the living to the dead. Pomet says there were two kinds of embalming practised by the ancient Egyptians. ”

“ More fearsome to approach is the row of unswathed mummies that follow. Here, in each coffin over which we bend, there is a face which stares at us—or else closes its eyes in order that it may not see us; and meagre shoulders and lean arms, and hands with overgrown nails that protrude from miserable rags. And each royal mummy that our lantern lights reserves for us a fresh surprise and the shudder of a different fear—they resemble one another so little. Some of them seem to laugh, showing their yellow teeth; others have an expression of infinite sadness and suffering. ”

“ I naturally had recourse to my hands to sustain my weight, but they found no better support; so that I sunk altogether among the broken mummies, with a crash of bones, rags, and wooden cases, which raised such a dust as kept me motionless for a quarter of an hour, waiting till it subsided again. I could not remove from the place, however, without increasing it, and every step I took I crushed a mummy in some part or other. Once I was conducted from such a place to another resembling it, through a passage of about twenty feet in length, and no wider than that a body could be forced through. ”

“ Not the feet of my mother, but those of the long-buried dead. Sick with repulsion and fear I looked up, and there bending over and peering into my eyes was the face, the fleshless, mouldering face of the foul and barely recognizable corpse! With a shriek of horror I rolled backwards, and, springing to my feet, prepared to fly. I glanced at the mummy. It was lying on the ground, stiff and still, every bandage in its place; whilst standing over it, a look of fiendish glee in its light, doglike eyes, was the figure of Anubis, lurid and menacing. ”

“ In some instances the mummy reposes in its original mummy-case, and sometimes in two or three mummy-cases, the whole enclosed in an enormous outer sarcophagus. In others, only the mummy case is left, the mummy having been destroyed or abstracted. Farther, some mummies are found in mummy-cases not their own, or in mummy-cases which have been altered and usurped for their use in ancient times. ”

“ In the fourth division the principal object is the coffin of the last-named mummy, with representations of various deities, including Nutpe, or the Abyss of Heaven, a female figure with a vase on her head; and linen wrappers from mummies of the Greek period. Having examined these human relics of remote antiquity, the visitor should pass at once to cases 63, 64, leaving the intermediate cases for future examination, where he will find scraps and fragments of the coffins, wrappers, and ornaments of various mummies. In the first division are fragments of the mask of mummy coffins ”

“ Miss Wragge was kneeling at the feet of the mummy when this happened. We three men all had our eyes riveted on what followed. Only the reader who by some remote chance may have witnessed a line of mummies, freshly laid from their tombs upon the sand, slowly stir and bend as the heat of the Egyptian sun warms their ancient bodies into the semblance of life, can form any conception of the ultimate horror we experienced when the silent figure before us moved in its grave of lead and sand. ”

“ Here, in chambers, or species of pits, worked into the rock, are found millions of mummies, piled upon each other, which appear to have been arranged with a certain symmetry, although many are now found displaced and broken.
“Near these deep pits, which served for a common sepulture for several families, we meet also with other smaller chambers, and some narrow cavities in form of niches, which were destined to hold one mummy only, or at most two. The grottoes of Thebes enclose a great number of mummies, better preserved than those in the caverns and pits of Saggârah. ”

“ It is really painful to think of these words as having fallen from the lips of what is now a resin-smelling lump of bones and hardened flesh, perhaps still unearthed, perhaps lying in some museum show-case, or perhaps kicked about in fragments over the hot sand of some tourist-crowded necropolis. Mummies are the most lifeless objects one could well imagine. It is impossible even for those whose imaginations are most powerful, to infuse life into a thing so utterly dead as an embalmed body ”

“ There is an indescribable and uncanny fascination in the sight of one of these old mummies,—the eyeless sockets, the painful cheekbone, the tight-drawn forehead; they look so human and unhuman at once, so awfully dead and yet somehow so suggestive of having been alive, that it stimulates a far greater curiosity to know what they did and thought and felt, than it is possible to feel about neighbors to-day. ”

“ On the impulse of the moment he had proclaimed this to be the long-lost mummy, and when a closer examination by the light of a lucifer match revealed the green hue of the coffin wood, he knew that he was right.
But what was the mummy in its ancient case doing in Mrs. Jasher's arbor? That was the mute question which the two young people asked themselves and each other, as they stood in the chilly moonlight, staring at the grotesque thing. The mummy had disappeared from the Sailor's Rest at Pierside some weeks ago, and now unexpectedly appeared in a lonely garden, surrounded by marshes. ”

“ Mummies.—The origin of the process of embalming has been variously accounted for. The real origin appears to be this: it was a part of the religious belief of the Egyptians that, as a reward of a well-spent and virtuous life, their bodies after death should exist and remain undecayed forever in their tombs, for we find in the "Book of the Dead" the following inscription placed over the spirits who have found favor in the eyes of the Great God: "The bodies which they have forsaken shall sleep forever in their sepulchres, while they rejoice in the presence of God most high." ”

“ As a general rule mummies which have been filled with bitumen and natron resemble black simulacra carved in ebony; corruption cannot attack them, but the appearance of life is wholly lacking; the bodies have not returned to the dust whence they came, but they have been petrified in a hideous shape, which one cannot contemplate without disgust and terror. In this case, the body, carefully prepared by [62] surer, longer, and more costly processes, had preserved the elasticity of the flesh, the grain of the skin, and almost its natural colour. ”

“ Persons familiar with the Great Portland Square Museum will know that certain of the tombs in the Etruscan room are used as receptacles for Egyptian mummies that have, for various reasons, never been put upon exhibition. Anyone who has peered under the partially raised lid of a huge sarcophagus and found within the rigid form of a mummy, will appreciate the feelings of the man on night duty amid surroundings so lugubrious. ”

“ Bangs? You're always talkin' about mummies. A mummy is a—a kind of an image, ain't it? I've seen pictures of 'em in them printed report things you get from that Washin'ton place. An image with funny scrabblin' and pictures, kind of, all over it. That's a mummy, ain't it, Mr. Bangs?”
“Why, not exactly, Primmie. A mummy is—”
He proceeded to tell her much concerning mummies. From that he went on to describe the finding of the particular mummy from whose finger the scarab had been taken. Miss Cash listened, her mouth and eyes opening wider and wider. ”

“ The ancient Egyptians had three ways of embalming their dead, and artists were particularly trained up for that purpose: the most costly method was practised only upon persons of high rank, of which sort are all the mummies that have remained entire to the present times: it was done by extracting the brains through the nostrils, and injecting a rich balm in their stead, then opening the belly and taking out the intestines, the cavity was washed with palm wine impregnated with spices, and filled with myrrh and other aromatics ”