Both, besides the linnen bandages, of a Barracan-texture, rolled innumerable times around the bodies, are wrapt up in several (and, according to an observation made in England[78], in three) kinds of coarser linnen; which, by particular bandages of the girdle-kind, is fastened in such a manner as to involve even the smallest prominence of the face. The first covering is a nice bit of linnen, slightly tinged with a certain ground, much gilt, decked with various figures, and with a painted one of the deceased.
On the Mummy marked with the inscription, this figure represents a man, who died in the flower of life, with a thin curled beard, not as represented by Kircher, like an old man with a long pointed one. The colour of the face and hands is brown: the head encircled with gilt diadems, marked with the sockets of jewels. From the gold chain, painted around the neck, a sort of medal hangs down, marked with various characters, crescents, &c. and this over-reaches the neck of a bird, that of a hawk perhaps, as on the breasts of other Mummies[79]. In the right hand of the figure is a dish filled with a red stuff, which being like that used by the sacrificers[80], the deceased may be supposed to have been a priest. The first and last finger of the left hand have rings; and in the hand itself there is something round, of a dark-brown colour; which, as Della Valle pretends, is a well-known fruit. The feet and legs are bare, with sandals; the strings of which appearing between the great toes, are, with a slip, fastened on the foot itself.
The inscription, above-mentioned, is beneath the breast.
The second Mummy is the still more refined figure of a young woman. Among a great many medals, seemingly gilt, and other figures, there are certain birds, and quadrupeds something analogous to lions; and towards the extremities of the body there is an ox, perhaps an apis: Down from one of the neck-chains hangs a gilt image of the sun. She has ear-rings, and double bracelets on both her arms: rings on each hand, and on every finger of the left one, but two on the first: whereas the right hand has but two: with this hand she holds, like Isis, a small gilt vessel, of the Greek Spondeion-kind, which was a symbol of the fertility of the Nile, when held by the goddess[81]. In the left hand there is a sort of fruit, like an ear of corn, of a greenish cast. The leaden seals, mentioned by Della Valle, still remain on the first Mummy.
Compare this description with that in his travels[82], and you’ll find the Mummies of the royal cabinet to be the same with those, which were taken out of a deep well or cave, covered with sand, and sold to this celebrated traveller by an Egyptian; and I believe they were purchased from his heirs at Rome, though in the manuscript catalogue, joined to that cabinet of antiquities, there is not the least hint of any such purchase.
I have no design to attempt an explication of the ornaments and figures; some remarks of that kind having already been made by Della Valle. The following observations concern only the inscription.
The Egyptians, we know, employed a double character in expressing themselves[83], the sacred and the vulgar: the first was what is called hieroglyphick; the other contained the characters of their national language, and this is commonly said to be lost. All we know is confined to the twenty-five letters of their alphabet.[84] Della Valle seems inclined to give an instance of the contrary, in that inscription; which Kircher, pushing his conjectures still farther, endeavours to lay down as a foundation for a new scheme of his; and to support it by two other remains of the same kind. For, he attempts to prove[85], that the dialect was the only difference between the old Egyptian and Greek tongue. According to his talent of finding what no body looks for, he makes free with some ancient historical accounts; upon which he obtrudes a fictitious sense, in order to make them tally with his scheme.
Herodotus, according to him, tells us, that King Psammetichus desired some Greeks, who were perfect masters of their language, to go over to Egypt, in order to instruct his people in the purity of the tongue. Hence he concludes, that there was but one language in both countries. But that Greek historian[86] gives an account entirely opposite: he tells us, that Psammetichus, having received some services from the Carians and Ionians, permitted them to settle in Egypt, for the instruction of youth in the Greek language, in order to bring up interpreters.
There is no solidity in the rest of the Kircherian arguments; such as those deduced from the frequent voyages of the Greek sages into Egypt, and the mutual commerce between the two nations; which have not even the strength of conjectures. For the very skill of Democritus, in the sacred tongue of the Babylonians and Egyptians[87], proves only, that the travelling sages learned the languages of the nations they conversed with.