98 



NA TURE 



[November 30, 1893 



scarabs, figures, hearts, and so on, which are found in 

 tombs. The names and figures of forty-six gods are next 

 identified, and after them twenty-eight sacred animals. 

 There are some interesting notes on coffins, followed by 

 accounts of pyramids, mastabas, and tombs. A chapter 

 contains particulars of Egyptian writing ; and after some 

 minor articles the book concludes with two lists, one of 

 common hieroglyphic signs, and one of the determina- 

 tives most frequently observed. As the determinative is 

 always .'.he beginner's surest guide, this last list will pro- 

 bably be taken first by many readers. The scope and 

 probable usefulness of this remarkably complete treatise 

 will have been gathered from the above summary. 



We now turn back to the middle of the volume. Dr. 

 Budge cannot decide whether the art of mummifying was 

 known to the aboriginal inhabitants of the lower Nile 

 valley, or was imported from Asia by the first Aryan 

 settlers. He speaks of the venerable stele of Shera, a 

 dignity of the court of Sent, the fifth king of the second 

 dynasty, whose date is placed at about B.C. 4000. This 

 monument is preserved at Oxford, but Dr. Budge ought 

 to have mentioned here that a portion of it is in the Gizeh 

 Museum. The French cataloguer of that collection omits 

 all mention of the Oxford stele. So they are even ; but 

 each portion gives different items of information. On 

 this monument Shera prays the gods "to grant sepul- 

 chral meals," from which Dr. Budge infers " that the art 

 of elaborate sepulture had reached a high pitch of per- 

 fection in those early times." He notes incidentally that 

 a redaction was made in the reign of this king Sent of a 

 medical papyrus, from which it is clear that the Egyptians 

 were already possessed of anatomical knowledge sufficient 

 to enable them to preserve the human body as a mummy 

 or otherwise. Manetho, the Ptolemaic chronicler, ex- 

 pressly states that Teta, the second king of Egypt, wrote 

 a book on anatomy, and also studied the properties of 

 drugs. His mother, Shesh, invented a hair-wash. Al- 

 though, then, some form of mummifying must have been 

 in use at a very early period, it does not follow that it 

 was always practised. Bodies were sometimes preserved 

 in honey, as, for example, that of Alexander the Great; and 

 Dr. Budge quotes a gruesome story from Abel el Latif, 

 about the body of a child found in a jar of honey. The 

 body of Mycerinus, now in the British Museum, seems to 

 have been wrapped in cere-cloth — if the Egyptians had 

 honey, they also had wax. Skeletons of this ancient 

 period usually fall to pieces when exposed to the air. 

 The oldest mummy, strictly so called, which has been 

 identified, is that of Seker-em-sa-f, B.C. 3200, a king of the 

 sixth dynasty, which is now at Gizeh. A few fragments 

 of the mummy of Unas, of the fifth dynasty, are in the 

 same collection — part of the skull, only, and a hand. As 

 to mummy cloth, Dr. Budge corrects a prevalent error. 

 Almost all the older writers asserted that mummies were 

 wrapped in cotton. Jomard thought linen was also used ; 

 but a learned Fellow of the Royal Society, having obtained, 

 in 1834, four hundred specimens of bandages, ascertained 

 that they were all of linen. A piece of fine texture was 

 found to have five hundred and forty threads to the inch 

 in the warp, and one hundred and ten in the woof. 

 Nobody who has seen the wrappings, of a delicate salmon 

 colour, which were in the coffin of Thothmes III., can 

 forget that they were as fine as the finest lady's handker- 

 NO. 1257, VOL. 49] 



chief of the present day. Dr. Budge's views on the sub- 

 ject of pyramids will not tally with those of numerous 

 very worthy persons now, we may hope, of a more 

 reasonable mind. In Cairo, a very short time ago, the 

 only book on pyramids to be had by tourists was that of 

 the late Scottish Astronomer Royal, which was written to 

 prove that the Great Pyramid was erected to embody the 

 truths of revealed religion. Dr. Petrie's book was no- 

 where to be seen. Now all is changed. Messrs. Cook 

 and Son employed Dr. Budge to write a little book on the 

 Nile voyage, a copy of which is in the hands of every 

 tourist, and the pyramid inch and the great passage 

 theory have become curiosities of history. Dr. Budge 

 says briefly, " the royal tombs of the early dynasties were 

 built in the form of pyramids, and they are, to all intents 

 and purposes, merely mastabas." 



ESKIMO LIFE. 

 Eskimo Life. By Fridtjof Nansen.1 Translated by W.. 

 Archer. 350 pp. (London : Longmans, Green and 

 Co., 1893.) 



WHEN Dr. Nansen reached the west coast of Green- 

 land, after his memorable journey across the 

 continent, he found that the last ship of the year had 

 left for Europe, although he had altered his plans and 

 steered for Godthaab instead of the more northerly 

 Christianshaab, partly in order to avoid being detained in 

 the country during the winter. He was, however, com- 

 pelled to spend the winter among the Eskimos, and his 

 observations and reflections on the character and every- 

 day life of the race are embodied in the book before us.. 



Dr. Nansen admits the impossibility of attaining a 

 complete and thorough knowledge of so peculiar a 

 people in so short a time as one winter, but his own 

 experiences and impressions have been supplemented 

 by reference to the writings of all the most competent 

 authorities — the Egedes, Crantz, Rink, Holm, and others. 



The early history of the Greenland Eskimo is obscure,, 

 and anything like certainty dates back no further than 

 172 1, when Hans Egede, the Norwegian missionary, took 

 his wife and children, and settled on the west coast with a 

 view of improving and civilising the native race. From 

 that time to the present, however, the history of the 

 people is well known, and a study of this period affords 

 one of the best examples of the development and changes 

 which so-called lower races undergo, when subjected to 

 the influence of western European civilisation. 



The first part of Dr. Nansen's book is concerned with 

 the daily life of the modern civilised Greenlander, and the 

 chapters on the kaiak, or skin-boat, and the weapons 

 used in hunting the seal and other characteristic game of 

 the Arctic seas are excellent. 



It is interesting to note that this section of the Eskimo 

 race use the throwing-stick, which enables them to throw 

 the harpoon and bird-dart with greater force and accuracy 

 than with the unaided arm alone. This instrument is 

 only met with among two or three races of men, so widely 

 separated from each other as to preclude the idea of a 

 common origin of the invention. 



The character and social life of the people is portrayed 

 in three or four of the succeeding chapters. ^Little 



