on some Egyptian Mummies. 385 
If vve reflect during how many centuries, and through what 
a variety of revolutions, the Egyptians have used the practice 
of mummifying their dead bodies, it will naturally occur that 
we are not to expect in all mummies a similar characteristic 
formation of the teeth, any more than we are to look for a 
similar characteristic national form in their productions of art. 
This peculiar structure of the teeth was not observed in the 
two mummies I examined in the British Museum, neither does 
it exist in our Gottingen mummy. A detached skull of a 
mummy in the Museum, prepared with rosin, and which bore 
great resemblance to the abovementioned in its general form, 
and especially in the narrowness of the poll, had unfortunately 
the crowns of the teeth so much mutilated as to afford no 
manner of information concerning this circumstance. 
The above observation however appears, at all events, to be 
well worth attending to, as it may hereafter prove a criterion 
for determining the period at which any given mummy has 
been prepared. 
But what interested me most in Mr. Symmo'ns’s mummy 
was the mask, to the two sides of which pieces of the bandages, 
with which the whole of the exterior integuments had been 
fastened to the corpse, still adhered. The inner part of this 
mask was sycamore wood, its outside being shaped, by means 
of a thick coat of plaster, in bas-relief, into the form of a face, 
the surface of which seemed to have been stained with natural 
colours, which time had now considerably blended and ob- 
scured. Having, however, with Mr. Symmons's leave, taken 
this mask, together with some other very interesting pieces of 
his mummy, with me to Gottingen, I there steeped it in warm 
water, and carefully separated all the parts of it. B}^ this means 
mdccxciv. B b 
