MUMMIES.
Much doubt exists regarding the derivation of the word mummy. Bochard, Menage, Vossius, attributed it to the Arabic noun mum, meaning wax. Salmasius derives it from mumia, a body embalmed and aromatized. The Persian word múmiyà, means bitumen or mineral pitch. Abd-Allatif, an Arabian physician, describes mummy as a substance flowing from the tops of the mountains, and which mixing with the water that streamed down, coagulates like mineral pitch.
Many are the opinions relating to the custom of embalming men and various animals in ancient Egypt. By some it has been considered a superstitious practice, by others the result of affection. To keep the remains of those we loved upon earth free from the destructive power of death, and preserving in some degree those forms that once flitted before us and around us in all the enjoyments of life, is a natural, one might almost say an instinctive, sentiment;—preserving those fond remains upon earth, exempted from the painful sight of beholding them committed to the earth—earth to earth—for ever! How different must have been the feelings of the relatives of the departed, when leaving the body reposing in the tomb, still preserving the form of its mortal coil—still in the world—where all we loved might be visited and spoken to in the language of affection and regret—how different must have been these feelings when compared to those that compress the respiration and check our utterance, after seeing that body separated from us, and leaving a chasm around us deeper still than the grave. We are, however, to seek in this practice other motives. The wisdom of the theocratic government of ancient Egypt was most admirable, and not founded upon mortal affections and dislikes. The sovereign priesthood had to attend to concerns of greater magnitude. The first inhabitants of Egypt, migrating most probably from the upper regions of Ethiopia, had to colonize an unhealthy region, to struggle with swamps and marshes, and destroy myriads of animals, whose decomposition added to the dangers they had to encounter when settling in such an unhealthy land. Pestilence, no doubt, as in after times, frequently desolated the infant kingdom. Their priests, in whose temples were recorded in mystic legends all the science of the age, must have applied their experience and their judgment to meet the evil, and surmount it, were it possible. The ideas of corruption are closely connected with those of putrescency; and putrescency has ever been considered the chief source and focus of pestilential maladies. To avoid corruption and putrescence, then, became one of the most important Hygienic studies; and, like Moses, who had received his early education in Egypt, its priesthood enforced salutary laws as the injunction of the Creator; nor was the task as difficult as it might have proved in a more extensive and more diversified region. The population resided in a land of no very great extent; their climate did not vary according to prominent topographical circumstances; and the produce of the soil, as regarded alimentary substances, admitted of little variety. Thus it became easy to establish salutary institutions to regulate the mode of living of the obedient people, who looked upon the commands of their sainted legislators as dictates from the eternal throne.
Impressed with the conviction of the immortality of the soul, the Egyptian priesthood imagined, or, at any rate, endeavoured to persuade the multitude that the immortal part of our being was retained within its earthly house so long as the corporal form could be preserved entire, and if (which is most probable) they believed in the resurrection of the soul either in its human form or that of some other animal, this doctrine may be easily accounted for as founded upon reason, and grateful to the sensitive feelings. A belief in the transmigration of souls naturally led to the desire of retaining them as long as it was possible in their former abodes; and the lines of Virgil—
Animamque sepulchro,
Condimus,
would seem to warrant this belief amongst the ancients. St. Augustine clearly tells us that the Egyptians did believe in a resurrection.
Amongst other prophylactic means to resist epidemic diseases the embalming of the dead must naturally have occurred to the sacred college as one of the most effectual means of checking or preventing contagion. Not only was man submitted to this process, but every animal, domestic or obnoxious, was equally preserved. It may be said, if destruction was rendered a prudent step, why were not these bodies consumed by fire? The reason appears to me obvious. It was necessary to check the consumption of animal food; therefore were various animals considered sacred, and not allowed to be immolated for the use of the multitude; other animals were considered noxious, and as such their use was forbidden. Religion thus stamped them with the irrevocable dye of holiness or corruption. Mystic characters were traced upon their remains. The sanctity of these animals sometimes varied in different districts, and the ibis was venerated where the serpent was disregarded. When we contemplate the thousands of crocodiles in the caverns of Samoun, the myriads of the ibis in the desert of Hermopolis, Antinoë, Memphis,—when we behold even the eggs that were destined to perpetuate their race thus preserved,—had not these animals been thus respected, they would have become the food of the inhabitants, and, both from their abundance and their unwholesome qualities, have added to the frequent scourges that desolated the land.
Here again we find that this anomaly was unavoidable: those myriads of animals, from the nature of the climate and the soil would have increased to such numbers as to overrun the land. What was to be done? Had they been considered edible, most unquestionably they would have been devoured as food; it therefore became necessary to destroy and embalm them: this destruction was no doubt inculcated as a religious duty; otherwise, how should we find even to the present day, such numbers of these creatures, preserved through the lapse of ages, with their very eggs,—another proof that even their incubation was checked. Placed between the desolate desert and the sea, numerous must have been the races of animals who sought refuge in this wondrous region; and, as Lagasquie observes, in the Necropolis of Alexandria and Memphis, at Arsinoë, Charaounah, Achmin, Beni-Hacan, Samoun, Hermopolis, Thebes, and in innumerable hypogean monuments, we find the remains of thousands—nay of millions—of ibises, crocodiles, cats, rats, dogs, jackals, wolves, monkeys, serpents, nay, fishes of various kinds. Passalacqua found at Thebes numbers of birds, rats, mice, toads, adders, beetles and flies, all embalmed together. Nay, Herodotus informs us that the animals considered sacred in one city, were held in abhorrence in others, a difference of opinion that not unfrequently occasioned bitter hostilities. Thus the Ombites fought with the Tentyrites on account of the sparrowhawks, and the Cynopolitans waged war with the Oxyrhynchites from disputes about dogs and pikes. These schisms no doubt arose from priestly ambition, each temple claiming its especial shrine of adoration, for whatever might have been the original motive that led to those theological practices, there is no doubt but all these animals were to a certain degree typical of the good and evil propensities of the various deities, as manifested in their several habits, whence they were selected in the symbols and attributes of the sovereign powers. Abbé Banier endeavours to prove that the bull was the symbol of Osiris and Isis, and that these divinities were themselves symbolic of the sun and moon. Thus the worship of the bull, Mnévis and Apis. The inhabitants of Mendes adored the god Pan, and worshipped him under the figure of a goat, and Mercury is represented with the head of a dog, the most intelligent of animals. Thus in time people lost sight of the origin of the worship, and transferred their adoration to the symbols, as many Roman Catholics transfer their worship of the saints to their wooden images.