EMBALM
174
EMBALM
Swathing a Mummy. (From the Egyptian Monuments.;
ty of the bandaging has been the subject of great ad- miration. The strips were very closely bound, and all directions were adopted that could carrj' out this object. Pettigrew is of opinion that they were cer- tainly applied wet. Various amulets and personal or- naments are found upon mummies and in their wrap- pings ; the former were thought to be of use to tlie soul in its wanderings, and they were placed with the body from the belief in the relation between the two after death. "U'itli these matters, and the other par- ticulars of Egyptian mummies, we have little to do, as our object is to show how for the Jewish burial-usages maj' have been derived from Egypt. The bod}' in the cases of most of the richer mummies, when bandaged, has been covered with what has been termed by the French a cnrtonage, formed of layers of cloth, plaster- ed with lime on the inside. The shape is that of a
I'liLntiiig the Cartomiru' or Mummy-case. Monuments.)
(From the
body of which the arms and legs are not distinguish- al)le. In this shape every dead person who had, if we may believe Diodorus, l)een judged by a particular court to be worthy of the honor of burial, was consid- ered to have the form of Osiris, and was called by his name. It seems more probable, however, that the tri- ])unal spoken of was that of Amenti, " the hidden," the Egyptian Hades, and that the practice of eml>alming was universal. The cartonnrje of the more costly mum- mies is generally lieautifully painted with subjects con- nected with Amenti. IMummies of this class are in- closed in one or even two wooden cases, either of syca- more, or, rarely, of cedar. The mummies of royal and ver}' wealthy persons were placed in an outer stone case, within whicli there was a wooden case, and, prob- al)ly, sometimes two such cases. See IMummy. It would seem that the features of the face, as well as the other parts of the body, were covered over witli the bandaLce, and that it was only through tliis, and latter- ly through the coffin, whicli commonly todk the form of the features, that these could be recognisei
The Mummy's Head, as sfen at an open panel of tlie Coffin. (From the Monuments.)
II. Ilebrceo-Erjypiian. — The records of the embalm- ing of Jacob and Joseph are very brief. In the former case we read, "And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father : and the physi- cians embalmed Israel. And forty days were fulfilled for him ; for so are fulfilled the days of embalming : and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days" (Gen. 1, 2, 3). Of Joseph we are only told that " they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt" (ver. 26). It should be remarked, that in Joseph's case the embalming must have been thorough, as Moses at the Exodus carried his body into Canaan. The motive of embalming in these instances was evi- dently that the strong desire of these patriarchs to be buried in the Land of Promise might be complied with, although, had this not been so, respect would probably have led to the same result. That the phj'sicians were employed hy Joseph to embalm his father may mean no more than the usual embalmers, who must have had medical and surgical knowledge, but it is not unlikeh' that the kings and high of- ficers were embalmed hy household physicians. The periods of forty days for embalming, and sev- enty for mourning, are not easily reconciled with the statement of Herodotus, who specifies seventy days as the time that the body remained in natron. Hengstenlierg {Egyjit and the Books of Moses, p. 6'j) attempts to reconcile this discrepancy by sup- 'Y' posing that the seventy days of Herodotus include the whole time of embalming, and not that of steeping in natron only. But the differences in detail which characterize the descriptions of He- rodotus and Diodorus, and the impossibility of rec- onciling these descriptions in all points with the results of scientific observation, lead to the natural conclusion that, if these descriptions are correct in themselves, thej' do not include every method of embalming which was practised, and that, conse- quentl}', any discrepancies between them and the Bi- ble narrative cannot fairly be attributed to a want of accurac}' in the latter. Perhaps the periods va- ried in different ages, or the forty days may not in- clude the time of steeping m natron. Diodorus Sic- ulus, who, having visited Egypt, is scarcely likely to have been in error in a matter necessarilj' well known, speaks of the anointing of the body at first with oil of cedar and other things for above thirty or forty days (^i(t>' yiiinag 7r\tiovQ rwv rptciKoi'Ta ; some MSS. TtnaapaKovTa). This period would correspond verj' well with the forty days mentioned in Genesis, whicli are literally "the days of spicing," and indicate that the latter denoted the most essential period of em- balming. Or, if the same period as the seventy days of Herodotus be meant by Diodorus, then there would appear to have been a change. It may be worth no- ticing, that Herodotus, when first mentioning the steep- ing in natron, speaks of seventy days as the extreme time to which it might be lawfully prolonged (^i/^ifoag ifScoixijKovra • TrXiirvag ck rovrtojv oiiK i^tan rapixtv-