[* 3 ] 
pitch, which had no aromatic fmell, and feemed 
in many refpeCts fimilar to the produce of the 
fir-tree. There mu ft undoubtedly therefore 
have been fome other refinous matter mixed with 
the cedriwn. 
The pitch of this Mummy was carefully diftilled ; 
but gave no other produce, than what might be ex- 
pected from a refinous body ; the caput mortumn, 
when burned and elixated, yielded a fixed alkali ; to 
this may be attributed the moifture, which the pitch, 
that was in contact with the fpine and thofe other 
parts which were moft burned, contracted on being 
broken and expofed to the air ; for this pitch had an 
alkaline tafte, and had been more than melted ; hav- 
ing been burned to a caput mortuurn. 
A great variety of experiments were made on this 
pitchy matter; the refult of them all tended to prove, 
that it had not the left refemblance to afpkaltus ; but 
was certainly a vegetable refinous fubftance. 
Monf. Rouelle , in the Memoirs of the Royal Aca- 
demy of Sciences for 1750, has given us a very ela- 
borate and ingenious treatife on embalming : wherein 
he has chemically analyfed the pitch of fix different 
Mummies. 
From his obfervations ; from what Pietro della 
Valle*, and Joannes Nardius -j- at the end of his edi- 
tion of Lucretius , have written on this head ; from 
* Viaggi di Pietro della Valle, Tom. 4. 
t Lucretius Joannis Nardii de Funeribus AEgyptiorum Ani- 
madverfio 50. p. 627. Thefe accounts of della Valle and Nar- 
dius are alfo to be met with in the 3d vol. of Athanaf. Kircher’s 
Oedipus Tgygpt. 
what 
