Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 67 



In an article on Persian burial customs (32, p. 505) 

 Dr. Louis H. Gray says : " Unfortunately our sole infor- 

 mation on this subject [Ancient Persian rites] must thus 

 far be gleaned from the meagre statements of the classics. 

 If we may judge from the tombs of the Achaemenians, 

 their bodies were not exposed as Zoroastrianism dictated ; 

 but it is by no means impossible that they were coated 

 with wax, or even, as Jackson 13 also suggests ("Persia, 

 Past and Present," p. 235), l perhaps embalmed after the 

 manner of the Egyptians.' " 



In later times the Persians seem to have been in- 

 fluenced by the practices in vogue in Early Christian times 

 in Egypt, before the coming of Islam. Thus in Moll's 

 History (46, p. 545), the statement is made in reference to 

 the Moslem burial customs in Persia ; " if it [the corpse] 

 is to be buried a great way off, it is put into a wooden 

 coffin filled up with salt, lime and perfumes to preserve 

 it ; for they embalm their dead bodies no otherwise in 

 Persia, nor do they ever embowel them, as with us." 

 That this is merely a degraded form of the Egyptian 

 embalmer's practice is shown by the fact that it is 

 identical with the method used by the Copts in Egypt 

 until the seventh, or perhaps even as late as the ninth 

 century A.D., and in their case we know that it is a 

 development from, or degradation of, the ancient practice. 



13 Jackson refers the suggestion to Curzon's " Persia and the Persian 

 Question," 1892, where I find (Vol. II., pp. 74, 79, 80, 146, 178 and 192) 

 most conclusive evidence in proof of the fact that the body of Cyrus was 

 mummified and all the Egyptian rites were observed (see especially Mr. Cecil 

 Smith's note on p. 80). In Persia, under Darius (p. 182), the Egyptian 

 methods of tomb-construction were closely copied, not only in their general 

 plan, but in minute details of their decoration (see p. 178) — also the bas-relief 

 of Cyrus wearing the Egyptian crown (p. 74). Cambyses even introduced 

 Egyptian workmen to carry out such work (p. 192). 



There are reasons for believing that India also was in turn influenced by 

 this direct transmission of Egyptian practices to Persia, but only after (per- 

 haps more than a century after) the Ethiopian modification of Egyptian 

 embalming had been adopted there. 



