398 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1/94. 



Sloanian mummy even lay in a box in the form of a sarcophagus, which was 

 made of a dark-brown hard wood, totally different from the sycamore, and ma- 

 nifestly of modern construction. How many other artificial restorations and 

 deceptions may have been practised in the several mummies which have been 

 brought into Europe, which have never been suspected, and may perhaps never 

 be detected, may well be admitted, when we consider how imperfect we are as 

 yet in our knowledge of this branch of Egyptian archaeology, which, as a spe- 

 cific problem, few have hitherto treated with the critical acumen it seems 

 to deserve. 



All the knowledge we have concerning the manner of preparing mummies is 

 derived from 2 sources, viz. (a) the examination of the mummies themselves ; 

 and (b) 2 classical passages in Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus ; Strabo and 

 other ancient authors having mentioned mummies only incidentally, and in very 

 few words. But unfortunately these 2 classical passages do not in the least 

 agree with the state of the mummies brought into Europe, which are in general 

 of 2 sorts, viz. (a) the hard compact ones, wholly indued with rosin, which hence 

 can be knocked into pieces ; (b) the soft ones, which yield to the pressure of the 

 hand, and are prepared with very little rosin, and often none at all, whose loose 

 bandages may be wound ofi^, and which contain in their cavities scarce any thing 

 but a vegetable mould, and particularly no idol whatever as far as I have been 

 able to learn. 



The front part of the latter is usually covered with a painted, and at times 

 gilt mask of cotton cloth ; and as they appear more variegated than the former, 

 and have no rosin in them yielding drugs for traffic, they are brought in much 

 greater nvimbers, and may be seen in many collections in Europe in a more 

 perfect state than the former, though often rendered so by restoration. The for- 

 mer, on the contrary, have for this very reason remained most of them in the 

 hands of druggists. Of this, viz. the former sort, were the 2 in the dis- 

 pensary of Crusius at Breslau, which Gryphius described in the year 1662, and 

 particularly the very valuable body of a mummy which was opened by the apo- 

 thecary Hertzog, at Gotha, in 1/15, and in which more idols, beetles, frogs (as 

 symbols of fertility), nilometers, &c. were found, than was ever, to the best of 

 my knowledge, known to have been contained in any other mummy whatever. 



But Herodotus, that very incjuisitive and credulous historian (as 1 of the most 

 learned and judicious antiquaries in England has named him), does not so much 

 as mention either of these sorts of mummies ; nor does he speak of the rosin, 

 or painted masks, though he expressly describes such painted integuments on the 

 ^Ethiopian mummies. Diodorus is equally silent as to the rosin, and the j)ainted 

 covering ; while on the other hand he advances some very strange assertions, 

 such as that the skill of the embalmers extended so far as perfectly to preserve 



