History of Embalming / and of Preparations in Anatomy, Pathology, and Natural History; Including an Account of a New Process for Embalming

by J.-N. Gannal

“The salted mummies, which are filled with pisasphaltum, no longer retain any recognizable feature: not only have all the cavities of the body been filled with this bitumen, but the surface is also covered with it. This matter has so penetrated the skin, the muscles, and the bones, that it forms with them but one and the same mass.

“On examining these mummies, we are led to believe that the bituminous matter has been injected very hot, and that the bodies have been plunged into a kettle containing bitumen in liquifaction. These mummies, the most common and numerous of all those we meet with in the caverns, are black, hard, heavy, of a penetrating and disagreeable odour; they are very difficult to break; they have no longer either hair or eyebrows, none have been found gilded. Some of them only have the palm of the hands, the soles of the feet, the nails of the fingers and toes tinged with red, with this same colour used by the natives of Egypt of the present day, to stain the palms of the hand and soles of the feet, (the henna, or Lawsonia inermis.) The bituminous matter which I have taken from them, is greasy to the touch, less black, and less friable than asphaltum; it communicates to every thing that touches it, a strong and penetrating odour; it is only imperfectly soluble in alcohol; thrown upon living coals it sheds a thick smoke, and disagreeable odour; distilled, it yields an abundant oil, thick, of a brown colour, and fetid odour. These are the species of mummies which the Arabs, and inhabitants of the vicinity of the plain of Saggârah, formerly sold to Europeans, and which became an article of commerce for the use of medicine and painting, or as objects of antiquity; those filled with Jew’s pitch were preferred, since it is to this matter, which had for a long time remained in the body, they attributed formerly such marvellous medicinal properties; this substance, which was named balm of mummy, was subsequently in great request among the oil painters; it is on this account, that at first the mummy filled with bitumen was the only kind known in France. They are very little exposed to alteration; exposed to humidity, they become covered with a slight saline efflorescence with a base of soda. Mummies which have been only salted and dried, are generally more badly preserved than those in which are found resins and bitumen.

“Many varieties are met with in these last sort of mummies; but it appears that this is due to the want of care and negligence of the embalmers in their preparation. Some, still entire, have the skin dry, white, smooth, and stretched like parchment; they are light, inodorous, and easily broken; others have the skin equally white, but a little supple; having been less dried, they have assumed a fatty state. We find also in these mummies, masses of that fatty, yellowish matter, which naturalists call adipocere. The features of the face are entirely destroyed, the eyebrows and hair have fallen; the bones become detached from their ligaments without any effort, they are as white and clean as those of a skeleton prepared for the study of osteology; the cloth which envelopes them, tears, and falls to pieces at the slightest touch. These sort of mummies, commonly found in particular caves, contain a considerable quantity of saline substance, which I have ascertained to consist almost entirely of sulphate of soda. The various species of mummies of which I have just spoken, are swarthed with an art which it would be difficult to imitate. Numerous linen bandages, several metres in length compose their envelope; they are applied one over the other, to the number of fifteen or twenty thicknesses, and thus make several revolutions, first around each member, then around the whole body; they are so compact, and interlaced with so much address and skill, that they appear to have endeavoured by this means, to render to these bodies, considerably reduced by desiccation, their original form and natural thickness.

“All the mummies are enveloped nearly in the same manner; there is no other difference than the number of the bandages which surround them, and the quality of the linen, the tissue of which is more or less fine, according as the embalming was more or less precious. The body embalmed, is at first covered with a narrow chemise, we find only one large bandage enveloping the whole body. The head is covered with a piece of square linen cloth, of a very fine texture, the centre of which forms a species of mask; five or six are thus found sometimes applied one upon the other; the last being generally painted or gilded, and represents the figure of the person embalmed. Each part of the body is separately enveloped by several bandages impregnated with resin. The legs brought together, and the arms crossed upon the chest, are fixed in this position by other bandages which envelope the whole body. These latter, generally loaded with hieroglyphical figures, and fixed by long fillets which traverse each other with much art and symmetry, finish the envelope.

“Immediately after these first bands, are found various idols in gold, bronze, varnished terra cotta, wood, gilded or painted, rolls of papyri manuscripts, and many other objects which have no relation to the religion of these people, but which appear to be only souvenirs of objects cherished during life. It was in one of these mummies, placed in the bottom of a cave of the interior of the mountain, (behind the Memnonium temple of the plain of Thebes,) that I found a voluminous papyrus, which will be found engraved in the work. (Vide the plates 61, 62, 63, 64 and 65, of the second vol. of the plates of antiquities, and the description of the Hypogees of the city of Thebes.) This papyrus was rolled upon itself, and had been placed between the thighs of the patient, immediately after the first bandages of linen; this male mummy, the trunk of which was broken, did not appear to me to have been embalmed in a first rate manner; it had been enveloped in an ordinary linen cloth, and had been filled with asphaltum: the nails of the toes had alone been gilded.

“Almost all the mummies which are found in the subterranean caverns, which can yet be penetrated, are thus enveloped with linen bandages, with a painted masque on the face. It is rare to find any enclosed in cases, of which some wrecks only remain at the present day. These cases, which served doubtless, only for the rich, or for persons of distinction, were double; those in which the mummies were deposited, were made of a kind of carton or pasteboard, composed of many pieces glued together; this case was subsequently enclosed in a second, constructed of the wood of sycamore or cedar.”

It results, if we are not mistaken, from the analogy of so many carefully made observations, a consequence to which we might not have arrived by long continued reasoning: simple embalming might have been practised among the Egyptians from the earliest period of their civilization, without a very exact knowledge of the laws of preservation of animal matter, and before the other arts were far advanced. A description of the Plain of Mummies by M. de Maillet, will give to this opinion, already so firmly established, the value of a demonstrated truth.

“Opposite the borough of Manof, looking towards the west, is situated the Plain of Mummies—approximated to the north by the southern pyramids, which are a continuation of the cemetery which the inhabitants of Memphis had on this side—a plain famous, from the number of mummies which have been taken of late from the subterranean caverns which exist beneath these sands, and by the still greater numbers of the embalmed bodies which it encloses. This plain is circular and level, and may be about four leagues in breadth or diameter, so that it is certain that it is more than twelve leagues in circumference. Its base is a very flat rock, which was formerly covered by the waters of the sea, and which is covered at present with five or six feet of sand. It is in this rock that those who did not possess the means of building pyramids to enclose their bodies after death, secured a repose which we know that the Egyptians held of great consequence, and found a less difficult art of making asylums, which they were persuaded would be sheltered from the fury and impiety of men, and would secure to them the return of their souls to the same bodies, in case that their tombs should not be violated. With this view, they chose at first a place in this plain, where it was necessary to commence by taking away seven or eight feet of moveable sand. After having emptied a circumscribed space, and perfectly cleaned it, they commenced penetrating the rock by a hole of a foot and a half or two feet in diameter; and after having attained the depth of about five or six feet, they laboured to enlarge the hole and form a chamber in the rock. It was by this hole that the body descended to be deposited in these tombs; after which, they so accurately covered the opening with a stone, as not to admit either light or sand.

“In these chambers, formed in the rock, and to a considerable extent, they had hollowed out many niches in which were placed the bodies of the heads of families for whom these sepulchres were destined. These niches were made vertically. The bodies were thus placed upright in the cases which enclosed them, and from whence, in latter times, they have taken such great numbers. These cases are made of sycamore, which never rots, and consist of only two pieces. The first, in which the body is enclosed, is very deep, and excavated with great labour; the second serves as a cover, and fits the coffin perfectly. Some of these cases have been found with glass eyes, through which, without uncovering them, may be seen the body of the mummy enclosed. Others have been met with double, that is to say, one case enclosed within another, which leads to the belief that the first doubtless, contained the body of some person of distinction. It is, however, very rare to find a body enclosed in a costly case, because the Arabs who discover them, never fail to break to pieces these kind of bodies in search of golden idols, in which, indeed, they are often successful. They afterwards replace the body in a common case, where idols of any value are seldom found. Some time ago, the master of Saccara, a village in the vicinity of the Plain of Mummies, investigated the openings of some of these subterranean sepulchres, and as he is a firm friend of mine, he presented me with various curiosities, a great number of mummies, images in wood, and inscriptions of a hieroglyphical and unknown character, which had been found there.

“In one of these chambers they found, for example, the case and the mummy of a woman, before which was a wooden figure of a young boy on his knees, with one finger on his lips, and in the other hand holding a chaffing dish, resting on his head, and in which there had doubtless been perfume. This young man was marked on the stomach with some hieroglyphic characters; they broke it to pieces to see if it contained gold. They found in the mummy, which they opened for the same reason, a little vase a foot long, containing the same balm which they use for preserving the body from corruption. I took to pieces another female mummy, of which the Sieur Bagarry made me a present. The opening was made in the house of the Capuchin fathers of this city; and they had the imprudence to cut the fillets with scissors; these bands, of considerable length and breadth, were not only charged from one end to the other with hieroglyphic figures, but they also discovered beneath certain unknown characters, traced from right to left and forming a species of verse. Indeed, they remarked the same termination in several little consecutive lines. It consisted most probably, of the eulogium of this person, written in the language which was in use, in his time, in Egypt. However this may be, these bandages taken to pieces, were immediately pillaged by some pedlars, who were present with me at the opening of this mummy; there was only left for me a small portion, which I have since sent to France: none of the Savans have been able to decipher them. This mummy held the right hand applied to his stomach, and under this hand were held instrumental cords perfectly preserved; whence I concluded that it was the body of a person who played upon some instrument, or who, at least, had been addicted to music. I am persuaded that, if each mummy was examined with the same care, some sign of this nature would be occasionally met with.