CHAP. XVI. FINDING OF A DEAD BODY. 461 



mummies, and tlie manner in which the intes- 

 tines and other ])arts have been removed from 

 the interior. And such is tlie skill evinced in the 

 embahning process, that every medical man of 

 the present day, who witnesses the evidence de- 

 rived from an examination of the mummies, will- 

 ingly acquiesces in the praise due to the ability 

 and experience of the Egyptian embalmers.* 



Certain regulations respecting the bodies of 

 persons found dead were wisely established in 

 Egypt, which, by rendering the district or town in 

 the immediate vicinity responsible in some degree 

 for the accident, by fining it to the full cost of 

 the most expensive funeral, necessarily induced 

 those in authority to exercise a proper degree 

 of vigilance, and to exert their utmost efforts 

 to save any one who had fallen into the river, or 

 was otherwise exposed to the danger of his life. 

 From these too we may judge of the great respon- 

 sibility they w-ere under for the body of a person 

 found murdered within their jurisdiction. t 



" If a dead body," says Herodotus, " was acci- 

 dentally found, whether of an Egyptian or a 

 stranger, who had been taken by a crocodile, or 

 drowned in the river t, the town upon the terri- 

 tory of which it w^as discovered was obliged to 

 embalm it according to the most costly process, 



* Till lately some medical men doubted the possibility of their ex- 

 tracting the braiu through the nostril, and other parts of the process. 

 Jlde Pettigrew, p. 52. 



■\- In Vol. II. p. 36., I have shown how severe the Egyptian law 

 was towards any one who did not assist in protecting human life. 



X Ilerodot. i'i. 90. 



