216 
ornament, composed of three straps of red leather (See Plate 
I), containing the names of two kings then reigning ; it is 
obvious that the deceased was once what we call the royal 
minister of finances, or chancellor of the exchequer. At 
what time may this so distinguished person of Egyptian 
biography have lived ? Of what age may that costly mummy 
coffin in Leeds and those dies be, which have preserved 
for us during so many revolutions of the Sun, such an 
extraordinary monument of the arts and the science of the 
ancient world ? 
The question, to which king the defunct was a minister, is 
answered by two different cartouches, or royal rings, found 
upon the above stamped leather ornament of the mummy 
itself, one of which is a sacred, or titular, the other a 
vulgar name. Both names are to be found on innumerable 
Egyptian monuments, particularly on the so-called Table of 
Abydos, now in the British Museum, which contains a list of 
all Pharaohs reigning successively from Menes, the first king, 
down to the last king of Manetho's XVIIIth dynasty. The 
first cartouche, which is the second from the end on the 
Table of Abydos, is followed commonly by the vulgar name 
" Osiinandya" (Osimantwa, or Osimanphtha). The other 
name in question corresponds with the last cartouche on the 
Table of Abydos, and with the last king of Manetho's 
XVIIIth dynasty, the son of Osimanphtha, called Ramses 
Meiamun. He was the famous Sesostris, — the author of a 
great number of temples, chapels, statues, and hypogeunis, in 
Egypt and Xubia, — who conquered, in the lapse of nine years, 
a large part of Asia. Osimanphtha and Ramses ruled one 
after the other. Although Osimanphtha ruled previous to 
his son Ramses, yet according to Manetho, both these kings 
also reigned simultaneously during sixty-eight years, after the 
father Osimanphtha had governed five years alone. Hence it 
will be perceived how it came to pass that the decoration of 
