AND THEIR SUCCESS IN CULTIVATING CERTAIN ARTS. 57 



form, of even the dried and prepared body ; and, agreeably to 

 this knowledge, they invested the body in many successive 

 wrappers of linen and cotton cloth, which had been steeped 

 in antiseptic solutions, and placed it, thus secluded from the 

 air, and surrounded with bad conductors of heat, in a double 

 case of wood, afterwards deposited in a catacomb excavated 

 in the unchangeable rock. Accordingly, the mummies of 

 their Royal personages and Priests exist to the present day, 

 and frequently in a state as perfect as that in which they were 

 received from the embalmers, by the relations of the deceased. 

 A few years since, I had an opportunity of examining the 

 mummy of an Egyptian female of rank, contemporary, it is 

 probable, with Sesostris, which had been opened by Dr. 

 Granville, and found to be in the highest state of preserva- 

 tion. Still more recently, a mummy in the possession of the 

 Philosophical Society of Leeds has been unwrapped, and dis- 

 covered in an equally perfect condition, not only with the 

 limbs and flesh perfectly retaining their form and texture, but 

 with the features uninjured; whilst the hieroglyphic inscrip- 

 tions on the case, manifestly coeval with the embalming, de- 

 clare the body to be that of a priest who must have been con- 

 temporary with Moses, and who might therefore have witnessed 

 the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, about three thou- 

 sand three hundred years ago. 



Debased and ignoble must have been the ambition which 

 could thus devote so much labour and ingenuity, to so worth- 

 less an object as the body which the life has abandoned ; false 

 and irrational must have been the dogmas which could have 

 impelled the Egyptians to bestow, on insensate matter, a de- 

 gree of laborious solicitude and misapplied knowledge, which, 

 directed to worthy objects, might have refined and exalted 

 the minds of the living. It may be supposed, however, from 

 their almost wonderful accomplishment of this ambition, that 

 they were profoundly skilled in many branches of Physical 

 science; and that, without such skill, they could not have effect- 

 ed results so perfect and so extraordinary. But such was not 

 the fact : there is no evidence whatever of their possessing any 

 philosophical knowledge of the substances and principles they 

 employed ; any acquaintance with the causes of the effects, 

 produced by those means, in their operations, In a case of this 

 description the absence of evidence is equivalent to express in- 

 formation. From all that we know of the Egyptians, whether 

 as derived from the Greek authors, or from modern discoveries 

 in the antiquities of Egypt, it would appear, that, as regarded 

 the cultivation of the arts and the Physical sciences, they were 

 a nation of practised manipulators, mechanics, and workmen, 



