— I'J — 
wound in a circular manner round the finger or toe, so that when 
the epidermis peels off it may not carry the nails with it. The 
impressions left by these pieces of string are visible in almost all 
cases, and it often happens that the string is left in position on 
one or two fingers or toes. In most cases, however, the string is 
removed after the body has been taken out of the salt-tank. In 
PI. XI there is shown a photograph of the fingers of one of these 
mummies exhibiting the impressions left by the string (figure 4) 
and the string is shown in situ on two toes of the foot in figure 5. 
In the latter the sharply cut edge of the cuticle is visible on the 
great toe, the epidermis forming a thimble, which has been cut 
with a knife and left in position to avoid the risk of pulling off 
the nail when the rest of the epidermis peels off. 
The packing- of the limbs. 
While the body is in the saline solution the skin and the lining 
of the body cavity become toughened by the action of the salt ; 
but the soft tissues under the skin in the limbs, back and neck 
are not exposed to the action of the preservative agent and soon 
become reduced to a soft pulpy mass, which is of a fluid or 
semifluid consistency. It was the practice of the embalmers in 
the time of the 21st dynasty to stuff into this pulpy mass large 
quantities of foreign materials so as to restore to the collapsed 
and shrunken members some semblance of the form and consist- 
ency they possessed during life. 
The hand (armed perhaps with some instrument such as that 
used for removing the brain) was passed through the opening (X) 
in the left flank into the body cavity (along the lines Y Y in 
figure 3) and a channel was forced downward into each thigh (TJ). 
This channel was an extensive cavity passing in front of the hip 
bone (os innominatum) and thigh bone (femur) and bounded in 
