402 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 17y4, 



for, namely, mummies of small children and embryos. Some of them are the 

 real mummies of Ibises, such as the one of Dr. Lettsom, and one of the 2 in 

 the Hamiltonian collection, in the British Museum, which had by decay been so 

 far laid open as to allow me plainly to distinguish in it the bill of an Ibis, and 

 other bones of a bird. These sacred birds, it is well known, were usually, after 

 having been swathed round with cotton bandages, placed in earthen urns, and 

 deposited in the catacombs appropriated to the Ibises. Sometimes, without 

 being stuck into an urn, they were prepared in the form of a puppet, yet so 

 that the head and bill projected at the top; one of this sort has been figured by 

 Count Caylus. And 3dly, the whole bird was frequently wrapped up in this 

 puppet form, and dressed in a mask, like one of the human species. 



But as the 2 others, viz. Dr. Garthshore's and the Sloanian, were externally 

 perfectly similar to the above-mentioned, I am led to conjecture that the manu- 

 facturers of mummies, who made them for sale, in order to save themselves the 

 trouble of preparing a bird, took a bone, or other solid part of a decayed 

 mummy, or indeed any thing that was nearest at hand, dressed it up as the 

 mummy of an Ibis, and tendered it for sale. Whoever recollects what a des- 

 picable set the Egyptian priests were, even in the time of Strabo, and how the 

 whole religious worship of the Egyptians was then already fallen into decay, will 

 not think this conjecture too gratuitous, or void of probability. 



Or shall we rather consider these puppets as the memento mori, which it is 

 well known the Egyptians were wont to introduce at table in their meals and 

 festivals. Herodotus says, that little wooden images were usually carried about 

 for this purpose, and I well recollect having seen such small wooden represen- 

 tations of mummies in the British Museum. Lucian also relates, as an eye- 

 witness, that in his time the dead bodies themselves were introduced at table. It 

 is easy to conceive how, during the long interval of near 700 years, before the 

 transition took place from the first simple idea to this disgusting practice, such 

 little mummies may at some period or other have formed the intermediate step. 



The author of the Recherches sur les Egyptiens seems unwilling to admit that 

 real mummies had ever been introduced at table: but his scepticism appears to be 

 no better founded than the contrary assertion of one of the most eminent physi- 

 cians of the last century, Casp. Hoffman, who in his once classical work de Med. 

 Officin. in the section of the Egyptian mummies, gravely relates, p. 642. " A Sax- 

 onibus audivi, nullum apud ipsos convivium transigi posse, sine mummei, uti ap- 

 pellant. Ita olim sine lasere, et hodie Indi sine asa fcEtida nihil comedunt. Hinc, 

 qui in ^gyptum eunt afFerre secum solent talia cadavera." And strange as this 

 qui pro quo between an Egyptian corpse and a particular kind of Brunswick strong 

 beer must appear, it is however a fact, that several more modern writers on 

 mummies have actually copied it out into their works with implicit confidence. 



