— 45 — 
vénération for their dead should désire to préserve the body itself 
from corruption is quite intelligible to ail men ; but it is not so 
easy to understand how it came to pass that thèse Egyptians, who 
are said to have lield the body in such great respect as to havé 
regarded it almost as sacred, should have resorted to such digust- 
ing manipulations as packing the limbs with mud, involving as 
it did the destruction o£ a large part o£ the body and resulting, 
at best, in little better than a caricature o£ the deceased. 
It is quite beyond my province to attempt to explain this 
apparent paradox — to reconcile thèse wanton mutilations and the 
making o£ thèse sham restorations with the belief in the sincerity 
o£ the Egyptians sacred respect £or the dead body. I am, however, 
persuaded to give an explanation suggested to me by Dr. George 
A. Reisner (in charge of the Hearst Egyptological Expédition o£ 
the University o£ Cali£ornia) ; not because I can prétend to express 
any opinion on its merits, but because I have been able to obtain 
information regarding certain practices unknown to Dr. Reisner 
when he suggested that I should look for them in support of his 
hypothesis. 
At certain periods of their history the ancient Egyptians were 
accustomed to place in the tomb of their dead a statue representing 
the deceased, so that when the perishable body should have lost 
ail likeness to the person in life the statue would remain as a 
dwelling for the Ka or " double. " Thèse statues were painted 
red in the case of men, and yellow in women. 
Dr. Reisner made the suggestion that ail the elaborate measures 
taken to restore the integrity of the skin and to préserve the 
form of the body might be explained on the supposition that the 
embalmers of the 21st dynasty aimed at making the body itself 
take the place of the statue : in other words the corpse was 
preserved and fashioned so as to retain some resemblance to the 
deceased and be the home of the Ka. It was perhaps for the 
