JOURNAL, OF PROCEEDIXGS. XIU 



bers of the pupa^ of some Dipterous insects, certainly of three dif- 

 ferent species, if not more. 



Mr. Hope made some observations upon the great age of these 

 insects, which might probably be estimated, at 3000 years. 



Mr. Pettigrevv stated that although the period of embalment was 

 involved in great obscurity and extended over a very considerable 

 space of time, yet he considered the skull, from the occipital cavity 

 of which the Necrohice and Dermestes had been taken, to be of the 

 Graeco-Egyptian sera, and the hair of which, contrary to the assertion 

 of the Count de Caylus, was in fine preservation and of considerable 

 length, there being three plaited portions turned up from behind 

 over the skull, precisely in the way the Egyptians of the present 

 day wear their hair, and which, as his daughter informed him, hap- 

 pened also to be the fashion of the present day in this country. He 

 also observed that, from the great number of insects which he had 

 extracted from the skulls of two mummies, the process of embalm- 

 ing must have been a very tedious one. In some mummies, how- 

 ever, no insects were discovered, as in the one recently opened at 

 the College of Surgeons. The same gentleman also exhibited two 

 funereal breast-tablets of mummies, from the collection of Samuel 

 Rogers, Esq., the celebrated poet, upon both of which were sculp- 

 tured the sacred Scarabaeus. One of them, which had been brought 

 to England by Belzoni, was composed of black basalt, and carved 

 in alto-relievo ; it measures four inches in length and three in 

 breadth. The Scarabaeus is represented in the centre of a boat, 

 at the extremity of which are represented the goddesses Isis and 

 Nephthys, and on the reverse is an hieroglyphical inscription, ar- 

 ranged so as to correspond with the outline of the beetle, and at 

 the extremities of the boat are placed figures of the goddess Isis. 

 It is represented in Mr. Pettigrew's work, plate VIII. fig. 1 and 2. 

 The other tablet was composed of common pottery, being orna- 

 mented with similar representations to those upon the foregoing 

 and is figured upon the same plate, fig. 3. 



Mr. VVestvvood observed, with reference to the great age of the 

 insects in question, that the circumstance of so many of them being 

 found dead in their preparatory stages (although in a situation per- 

 fectly congenial to their habits) seemed sufficient to prove that they 

 must have been deposited in the head of the mummy during the 

 operation of embalment, and killed by the ultimate process, instead 

 of making their way to the body of the mummy at a more recent 

 period, as miglit, perhaps, be imagined to be the case from the 

 known oeconomy of some of the species. 



