presented to the School of Medicine seven crania, which are said 
to have come from M. de Morgan's excavations. If these crania 
really belong to members of the royal family, who are more likely 
than mere commoners to have been embalmed, they should be of 
decisive value in settling the problem whether or not mummifi- 
cation was practised in the Middle Empire. One of the seven 
crania can be at once excluded because it has been treated by the 
crude bitumen -process, which is distinctive of the Graeco-Roman 
period. The cranial cavity is filled with pitch which has been 
introduced via the nose through a perforation in the ethmoid bone : 
and the surface of the head is coated with layers of cloth soaked 
in bitumen. 
One of the others cannot be identified with any of those 
mentioned by M. de Morgan. 
The other five are labelled with the names of " King Hor," 
"Princess Noub-Hotep, " "Princess Ita, " "Princess Khnoumit" 
and "Princess Ita-ourt. " 
In his "iN ofe sur les Crânes de Dahchour^^ accompanying M. de 
Morgan's work, to which I have already referred. Dr. Fouquet 
gives a description of the first two of these five named crania and 
of four others which I have not seen. 
In the time of the new Empire and afterwards until the Roman 
period it was customary for embalmers to break through the roof 
of the nose, where this is formed by the ethmoid bone (PI. I, 
figures 1, 2 and 3), and remove the brain through the aperture 
thus made. If we could adduce evidence of such a practice in 
the Middle Empire it would settle once for all the question whether 
embalming were practised at that time. In describing one of his 
six specimens M. Fouquet makes the remarkable statement : — 
" L'ethmoïde a été détruit par les embaumeurs comme dans tous 
les autres crânes de cette série" (p. 150), although I have found 
this bone perfectly intact and unbroken in the cranium of King 
