MUMMY GARLANDS. 317 



Professor Dickson, Professor Lawson, Professor Balfour, Mr. J. C. 

 Mansell-Pleydell, Mr. W. P. Hieru, Mr. Boulger, Mr. Cliiircliill, and 

 Dr. Braithwaite. 



MUMMY GARLANDS. 



While Egyptologists of every nationality are congratulating 

 themselves and each other upon the safety of the Boolak Museum, 

 it will not be amiss to note that a priceless addition had been 

 made to the treasures of that famous collection shortly before the 

 breaking out of the late rebellion. Several of the royal mummies 

 discovered last year at Dayr-el-Baharee were, it will be remem- 

 bered, found garlanded with flowers, those flowers being for the 

 most part in as perfect preservation as the specimen plants in a 

 " Hortus Siccus." M. Arthur Rhone, in a recent letter to Le 

 Temps, has described the extremely curious way in which these 

 garlands are woven. They consist of the petals and sepals of 

 various flowers, detached from their stems, and enclosed each in a 

 folded leaf of either the Egyptian willow (Salix Safsaf), or Mimu- 

 sojjs Kummel, Bruce. The floral ornaments thus devised were then 

 aiTanged in rows (the points being all set one way) and connected 

 by means of a thread of date -leaf fibre woven in a kind of chain 

 stitch. The whole resembles a coarse " edging " of vegetable lace- 

 work. Among the flowers thus preserved are Delphinium orientalis, 

 Nymphcea ccerulea or X. Lotus, Seshania (Egyptiaca, and Oarthamus 

 tinctorius, so largely employed as a dye by the ancient inhabitants 

 of the Nile valley. The dried fruit, as well as the dried yellow 

 blossom of the Acacia nilotica is likewise present ; and mention is 

 also made of the blossom of a species of water-melon now extinct. 

 The foregoing are all interwoven in the garlands in which the 

 mummy of Amen-hotep I. was elaborately swathed. With others 

 of the royal mummies were found fine detached specimens of both 

 kinds of lotus, the blue and the white, with stems, blossoms, and 

 seed-pods complete. Still more interesting is it to learn that upon 

 the mummy of the priest Nebsooni, maternal grandfather of King 

 Pinotem II. (XXIst Dynasty), there was found a specimen of the 

 lichen known to botanists as the Parmelia furfuracea. This plant 

 is indigenous to the islands of the Greek Archipelago, whence it 

 must have been brought to Egypt at, or before, the period of the 

 Her-Hor Dynasty (b.c. 1100 or b.c. 1200). Under the Arabic 

 name of " Kheba," it is sold by the native druggists in Cau'o to 

 this day. These frail relics of many a vanished spring have been 

 arranged for the Boolak Museum with exquisite skill by that 

 eminent traveller and botanist Dr. Schweinfiirth. Classified, 

 mounted, and, so to say, illustrated by modern examples of the 

 same flowers and plants, they fill eleven cases — a collection 

 absolutely unique, and likely ever to remain so. The hues 

 of these Old World flowers are said to be as brilliant as those 

 of their modern prototypes ; and, but for the labels which show 

 them to be three thousand years apart, no ordinary observer could 

 distinguish between those which were buried with the Pharaohs 

 and those which were gathered and dried only a few months ago. 

 — 'Academy,' Sept. 23nl, 1881. 



