285 
Egyptian mummies. 
balmed ; and he has described several chemical operations to 
which he subjected them, in order to discover the nature of 
the ingredients employed by the Egyptian embalmers. The 
result of these experiments by no means settled the ques- 
tion they were intended to resolve. With regard to the 
anatomical state of the mummies examined .by him, the in- 
formation he has given us is very deficient. All he has said 
reduces itself to a repetition of the common adage “ dry as 
a mummy.'' Like Dr. Hadley, Blumenbach, and many 
subsequent writers, he came to the conclusion, that Egyptian 
mummies are invariably found in a state of aridity, without 
the least vestige of the soft parts or viscera, and are wholly 
deprived of humidity, in fact, that they are mere skele- 
tons enveloped in ‘‘ cerecloth." It will be seen, that such an 
opinion requires considerable modification. 
The next information of importance we possess on the 
subject of Egyptian mummies, is to be found in the third 
and fourth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society 
of Gottingen. Of two papers on the subject by Professor 
Heyne contained in those volumes, the first relates to the 
antiquity of mummies generally ; and the second gives a 
description of a mummy presented by the King of Denmark, 
to the Museum of the Royal Society of Gottingen, on which 
Professor Gmelin instituted various chemical experiments 
detailed in a separate paper, intended to throw some light on 
the art of embalming. Numerous as those experiments appear 
to have been, conducted, moreover, with great care and pre- 
cision, they nevertheless lead not to more satisfactory con- 
clusions, than the experiments of his predecessor Rouelle, 
between whose results and Gmelin's there exists considerable 
