42 . JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



Birch, of the British Museum, says the early embalmers in their 

 practice depended on salt, wax and wine. In the middle empire 

 naphtha and bitumen were used, and later, as the art declined, 

 cheaper substances were relied on. The time of embalming oc- 

 cupied about 70 days, which were spent by the family as days of 

 fasting and mourning. After the antiseptic preparations were 

 finished, a plate on which was engraved the mystical eye was placed 

 on the body; amulets were strung upon the neck; and, as the 

 heart was the seat of life, the sacred scarabseus, with special signs 

 and ceremonies, was placed over the heart. The body was then 

 enwrapped in six or seven hundred yards of linen, on the outer ban- 

 dage of which a scribe wrote the name of the deceased, sometim^ 

 adding his age at death, and the year of the King's reign when death 

 happened, and the mummy was then ready to be encased. The 

 cost of embalming, according to Herodotus, was from $100 to 

 $1,200. 



Not the least singular of the charms for adornment of the dead 

 was the sacred beetle, the scarabseus, placed over the region of the 

 heart. In Egyptian its name was kheper, a word supposed to be 

 derived from khepra, " to become," and it was made the emblem of 

 earthly life and of the changes of man in the life to come. The 

 original of these singular adornments, the common black beetle of 

 Egypt, lays its eggs on the brink of the Nile, surrounds them with 

 dirt, rolls the ball up the steep river bank beyond reach of the inun- 

 dation, to the edge of the desert, and, leaving them to mature in the 

 heat of the sun to perpetuate its race, dies in peace at its appointed 

 time. This industrious little creature the Egyptian priests choose as 

 their emblem of creative power and of immortality. It was made a 

 hieroglyphic sign, meaning "to be" and "to transform." Miss 

 Edwards says : — "His portrait was multiplied a millionfold, sculptu- 

 " red over the portals of temples, engraved on gems, moulded in 

 "pottery, painted on sarcophagi and the walls of tombs, worn by the 

 " living, buried with the dead." 



The scarab is the symbol of duration, and to wear one was a 

 preservative from death. Around this primary idea a thousand 

 conceits clustered, and as charms they were used without hmit. 

 Scarabs or conventional representations of them, scaraeboids, were 

 cut out of schists and many other materials, and of all sizes. They 

 were glazed and colored in a variety of ways, according to the fashion 



