HE art of embalming is of very remote antiquity. The Midianite merchantmen who purchased Joseph of his brethren, had with them "spicery of balm and myrrh," which they were going to carry down into Egypt,* most probably for use in some process of this nature.

The patriarchs Jacob and Joseph, on their death, were embalmed; and the latter was put in a coffin,† or mummy chest.

These embalmed bodies were in the days of Herodotus prepared in three different ways, which he describes at considerable length in his history. Modern researches show that there were other agencies employed, besides those of which he makes mention. Of these, heat was perhaps the principal, and this was sometimes applied to such an extent that the bandages in which the bodies were enveloped, were completely carbonized, and present the appearance of tinder. In other cases, the heat appears to have been so intense, that the very bones were charred by it. In all instances, however, the process of embalming consisted in swathing the corpse in linen or cotton bandages, more than a thousand ells of which, Greaves tells us that he found upon a single mummy. These wrappers are of various degrees of quality, and consist sometimes of entire garments, at other times of remnants of household linen, or selvedges and fringes of various kinds. The bandages are frequently glued together by a bituminous substance, which appears to have been poured on them in a fluid state; and are so firmly compacted, that the operation of unrolling occupies a considerable time.

It is easy to imagine a variety of reasons for the mumminization of human bodies; but there is considerably more mystery connected with the embalmment of the inferior animals, such as the dog, the cat, the ibis, or the hawk. It is most probable, however, that it formed a necessary sequel to the reverence and adoration lavished upon these creatures when living, and was regarded, amongst other things, as a means of securing the favour of their living representatives. Diodorus assigns three reasons for the worship of animals in Egypt. He says that the gods were at first but few and feeble, and in order to escape persecution from mankind, they took refuge under the varied forms of animal life; but obtaining eventually the upper hand, they returned the favour, by exalting the creatures who had befriended them to the rank of deities. As a second reason, he assigns the fact of their having been used as standards in battle; and by aiding in the better discipline of the army, as well as in assisting to distinguish friend from foe, they were naturally reverenced by those who fought under them. † Genesis, 1. 2 and 26. Pyramidographia, 1646, p. 50, note d.

*Genesis, xxxvii. 25.

This attachment to the peculiar implements of their craft is very natural, and resembles that of the Chaldæans of old, who "sacrificed unto their nets, and burnt incense unto their drags." It has also a modern parallel in the conduct of the East India Company, who to please the native devotees in India, used annually to send their books and papers to be worshipped in this manner! The third reason, he says, originated in the assumed usefulness of the several animals, which led the Egyptians, out of gratitude, to pay them divine honours.

But none of the causes assigned by Diodorus, appear so satisfactory as that implied in the following extract from Proclus, which renders it tolerably certain that the worship of animals arose from some analogy, real or supposed, between the form, character, instincts, or other peculiarities of these different creatures, and the gods themselves, by which they became associated with, and typical of, the dii majores.

"In the same manner," says he, "as lovers gradually advance from that beauty which is apparent in sensible forms, to that which is divine; so the ancient priests, when they considered that there is a certain alliance and sympathy in natural things to each other, and of things manifest, to occult powers; and discovered that all things subsist in all, they fabricated a sacred science from this mutual sympathy and similarity. Thus they recognized things supreme in such as are subordinate; and the subordinate in the supreme; in the celestial regions, terrene properties subsisting in a causal and celestial manner; and in earth, celestial properties, but according to a terrene condition.

"For how shall we account for those plants called heliotropes, that is, attendants on the sun, moving in correspondence with the revolution of its orb; but selenitropes, or attendants of the moon, turning in exact conformity to her motion? It is because all things pray and hymn the leaders of their respective orders; but some intellectually, and others rationally-some in a natural, and others after a sensible manner. Hence the sunflower, as far as it is able, moves in a circular dance towards the sun; so that if any one could hear the pulsation made by its circuit in the air, he would perceive something composed by a sound of this kind in honour of its king, such as a plant is capable of framing."

On the 26th of July, 1836, I purchased at the sale of Egyptian Antiquities, collected by Mr. James Burton, jun., author of "Excerpta Hieroglyphica," four specimens of ibis mummies, and two of embalmed hawks.

The ibis mummies were said to have been brought from Memphis; and furnished the following facts:

No. 1 contained parts of the cranium, the thighbone and foot of a hawk! with a portion of the tendons

* Habakkuk, i. 16.

"At the annual feast of Suraswatee, all classes of Hindoos bow down to her, employing as her representatives or symbols, the several implements with which each gains his subsistence. The carpenter places his plane, saw, and chisel before him, and offers divine honours to them. The tailor, in like manner, worships the needle; the soldier, his sword and belt; the schoolmaster, his books, &c. Not to be behind-hand in so sapient a proceeding, the representatives of the Hon. Company get their own account books, stationery, records, and furniture worshipped in like manner, from year to year."-Madras Herald, 31st Oct. 1835.

History, lib. I. § ii. 32.

The Ibis was sacred to Thoth, Hermes or Mercury, who was generally delineated with the head and neck of this bird. Iamblichus* tells us, that the priests were under the special guardianship of this deity. "Hermes," he says, "the god who presides over language, was formerly very properly considered as common to all priests; and the power who presides over the true sciences concerning the gods, is one and the same in the whole of things. Hence our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of Hermes."

This will account for the statement of Dr. Clarke, that on the death of every priest, a mummy of one of these birds was deposited in the caves of Saccara, which Denon considers as the grand depôt for their remains.

"We find," says our French traveller, "in the desert of Saccara, many subterraneous caves where human mummies were deposited, and particularly a vast number of those of the ibis. These excavations consist of a long gallery divided into several branches, on each side of which are recesses about eight feet high, by ten square. In these are found the jars containing the Ibis mummies, arranged like bottles in a cellar. It is probable, that Memphis was the burial place of all the dead ibises from the temples, or found in different parts of Egypt." This last assertion is however scarcely to be reconciled with that of Herodotus, who says that they were taken to Hermopolis, which is not unlikely from the analogy which we have before hinted at.

Herodotus describes two varieties of the ibis, in the following words:-"One species of Ibis is entirely black; its beak is remarkably crooked; its legs as large as those of a crane, and in size it resembles the crexthis is the enemy of the serpents. § The second species

Though this account is sufficiently explicit, and its correctness, as regards the last of these varieties, has been satisfactorily proved by the examination of a great number of mummies brought from Egypt, it was once generally supposed that the Ibis Tantalus of Linnæus was referred to, instead of a much smaller bird, the Abou Hannes of Bruce; the Ibis religiosa of Cuvier.

It is now, however, very generally known that the latter was exclusively regarded as sacred by the old Egyptians, represented on their monuments, and embalmed with pious care for preservation in their sepulchral caves. Some individuals are well delineated in a painting, representing the mysteries of Isis, at Herculaneum, walking about the altar unmolested; and this circumstance has not escaped the notice of Biblical commentators, who conjecture that this bird might have been the "swallow" of the Psalmist, that harboured in the precincts of the Jewish temple.+

The feathers of the first Ibis which I examined, certainly resembled those of the Ibis Falcinellus or Green Ibis of Cuvier, though the legs and feet decidedly belonged to a different species. It is said, moreover, that no specimen of this kind has been found embalmed; but there seems little doubt that it is the first variety mentioned by Herodotus, as in size and build it resembles the corncrake or landrail, to which he compares it. It is also represented on the monuments of Egypt.-It had not been preserved with much attention. The head, sternum, legs and feet, with the owe its existence to the idea, that these reptiles, in order to fly, must be gifted with wings. But Mr. Ward, a Baptist missionary, stationed at Padang, in Sumatra, describes from ocular demonstration, a serpent which he saw, in January, 1834, fly from one tree to another, a distance of nearly 300 feet, by means of a rapid vibratory movement of the body; and he is not the only modern authority for this fact. It is therefore not unlikely, that serpents of a similar kind, sustained by those strong periodical currents of wind, common in warmer latitudes, may have sometimes entered Egypt, in the manner described by Herodotus. *Euterpe, II. 76. † Psalm lxxxiv. 3. D

flesh and plumage adhering to them, some of the vertebræ, the sheaths of the wing-feathers, and most of the others, being nearly all that remained. The viscera had disappeared, with the exception of an ovolenticular mass, about the size of half-a-crown, which proved on examination to be the gizzard. On steeping it in hot water, it resumed much of its original appearance; the tough inner skin being particularly perfect. On breaking it, I discovered a variety of foreign substances; too much bruised and broken to enable me to distinguish what they were, with the exception of a few blades of grass, fragments of the wing-cases of a beetle, a few small bits of wood, and a short end of thread, which may perhaps tend to confirm the remark of Cuvier as to the domestication of this bird.

The bird was enfolded in a stout wrapper of linen saturated with bituminous matter, and enclosed in others, apparently with little care or regularity. It did not appear to have been embalmed, as the sheaths of larvæ were plentifully found within; and the whole mass, though perfectly dry and free from what could be called a state of putrescence, gave out a disagreeable odour; which, however, on moistening some of the feathers with warm water, was overcome by a singular, but not unpleasant effluvium something like the smell of cochineal.

But on thoroughly boiling the fragments afterwards, the flesh, and especially the tendons and sinews returned to their original corruption, and became so offensive, that I was glad to bury them.

It did not appear that any conservative process had been adopted with reference to the specimen I am now describing, farther than the external application of seasoned bandages; the embalmers presuming on the desiccating character of the atmosphere, to which the mummy was to be subjected, and which was frequently sufficient to preserve entire and uninjured animal substances of the like nature. There are at present in the British Museum, two ducks, plucked and trussed, but in no other way prepared, which were taken from a tomb at Thebes, after the lapse of at least 2000 years, in a condition nearly similar to that in which they must have been deposited. In the beautiful story of Rizpah,* allusion appears to be made to this antiseptic property of a dry atmosphere; as decomposition does not appear to have taken place on the bodies of the seven sons of Saul, until "water dropped upon them out of heaven."

The second specimen which I examined, was simply wrapped in a dry mummy cloth, and contained the bones of an Ibis religiosa, as I found on comparing the head and back with a figure in Denon's " Egypt.' Considerable portions of earth were mingled with them, and they were thoroughly bleached, as if they had lain exposed to the atmosphere till the feathers and flesh fell from them. They were, consequently, I should presume, the remains of a bird that had died in some secluded spot, where they were not discovered till reduced to this condition; or had been first buried in the earth, and then removed to a more honourable sepulchre, as Herodotus tells us was the case with the sacred bulls which the Egyptians interred in the vicinity of their cities, leaving one and sometimes both horns by way of mark, protruding from the ground. Here they remained a stated time, till they began to putrefy,

*2 Sam. xxi, 10.

when a vessel appointed for the purpose was despatched from Prosopitis, an island in the Delta, in which were several cities. Atarbechis, one of these, in which was a temple to Venus, provided these vessels, and in them the bones were collected and transported to one appointed place, for burial.*

It is worthy of notice, as illustrative of the ridiculous height to which the Egyptians carried their superstitious veneration for this bird, that the very earth with which its holy bones had mingled should be thought worthy of preservation; as I think it must have been, from the fact of its occurrence in such quantities in this mummy, and from its retaining so distinctly the impression of the bandages, which must have consequently enveloped it in a soft state.

In this, as in the other specimen, I found considerable remains of the usual food of this bird in the form of two conglomerated masses of wheat, like that of the full ears in Joseph's dream-"rank and good." It may appear rather singular that this valuable grain should have been applied to such a purpose, did we not know that, as an article of human food, it had fallen into disrepute when Herodotus visited Egypt. "Wheat and barley," says he, "are common articles of food in other countries, but in Egypt are thought mean and disgraceful; the diet there consisting principally of a kind of corn, by some called "Olyra," and by others, "Zea."+ So little, indeed, were the uses

of wheat known in Ethiopia about this time, that the ambassadors whom Cambyses sent thither, in speaking of it as the customary food of the Persians, were obliged to describe its nature; and the Ethiopian king is recorded to have remarked contemptuously, that those who lived on such stuff might well die at fourscore; whilst his own people, whose fare was different, attained, customarily, the age of one hundred and twenty years.‡

Amongst this corn, I found two fragments of stone, swallowed possibly for the purpose of aiding digestion: one small and of lenticular form, white, vitreous, and semi-transparent; the other larger, amorphous, and containing the character and colours-black, white, and red-of the Egyptian syenite, and precisely similar to a piece of the Alexandrian pillar, falsely called Pompey's, now in my possession. This circumstance clearly proves the claim of the bird that had swallowed it, to be considered as a genuine denizen of the Nile valley.

The third of my Ibis mummies was bandaged with considerable care-the outer cloths having the appearance of being much carbonized. On unrolling the first layer, which was wound spirally around it from the feet to the head, I found three or four thicknesses of corded fringe, connected with the remnants of the fabric they originally ornamented, disposed with some regularity down the sides and front of the mummy. When these were removed, the next surface appeared covered with ravellings from the rough edges of another series of bandages; on displacing which, I discovered two bundles of feathers,-one of them crossed and re-crossed by a narrow slip of cloth, which held them together, and the other unfastened. They were all white, with black tips, very brittle, but otherwise well preserved, and belonging apparently to the Ibis religiosa.

Amongst these feathers a quantity of sand was observable; several leaves like those of the olive, which on burning crackled and threw out jets of gas, emitting a smell very like that of rank tobacco; and the shell of a small berry, brown, glossy, and of the size and form of a plum stone; a few pieces of delicately reticulated bark, and fragments of wood.

Although all these specimens were far from perfect,* they furnish matter for a variety of curious and interesting speculations. When we consider, indeed, that by the laws of Egypt the penalty of death was inflicted without mercy on those who destroyed an Ibis, even by accident, we may rather wonder that any perfect samples have come down to us, and can only account for it on the supposition that this bird was domesticated, as Cuvier has ingeniously surmised from the fact that the left humerus of one which he examined had been

*Perfect specimens, it would appear, are very rare indeed. Hasselquist exactly describes the usual character of these mummies. "In such urns," says he, "as have been well preserved, is found a piece of middling coarse sleasy linnen, artfully wound in foldings, and kept together by twine, which is obliquely wound over from the upper to the lower part. Within this linnen is preserved a quantity of dark grey ashes, mixed sometimes with a beak or bone of a bird. These ashes, covered with the linnen, are in the same conic form as the urn, and are commonly found packed close within it. It happens, sometimes, though very seldom, that they find in the urns a bird, in which the feathers, head, legs, and feet, and even the colours are so well preserved, as that one may know what kind of a bird it is."Voyage to Levant, 1766, p. 90.

fractured, and reduced, apparently by art, as it had grown well together.

The examination of my hawk mummies afforded few materials of interest. The first of them was so exceedingly rotten as to fall to dust if roughly handled. The projection, shaped to the form of the bird's head, contained nothing but a bundle of knotted cords, such as I have before mentioned. The other part still retained traces of the beautiful fret-work with which it

was originally ornamented. The outside wrappers were from their highly carbonized state detached without difficulty, though those at the back were firmly glued together. As I approached the body they became more compact, till I had cleared them all away, when I found the wing feathers strongly agglutinated with a bituminous matter, and forming a solid mass similar in size and form to a small herring.

On the right wing, and in front of the body were two pieces of hard clay or Nile mud, which might have been Scarabæi, though it would require no little ingenuity to prove the point, nor should I have referred to it at all, were it not well known that the hawk and the beetle were intimately associated,-both of them being regarded as symbols of the Sun. Some of the wrappers were of unusual fineness, but so blackened either by heat or moisture, as to fall to pieces under examination, and amongst them were some fragments of canvass, similar to that which has been patented within the last half century as a new invention!

On the right breast, held down by one of the quill feathers, was a small sprig of wood, which as far as I can ascertain, by comparison with a recent specimen, appears to be rosemary. This is the more probable as Pettigrew mentions the discovery of a slip of the same plant in the hand of a young human mummy which he examined, and is interesting, as proving the very early association of this shrub with the dead.

The second hawk mummy offered no peculiarity; the outer fret-work was unusually regular and beautiful. On removing it, I found a continuous spiral bandage rather carelessly whipped, and some pieces of cloth which had been more neatly run together, and the edges turned back and hemmed. The third layer consisted of ends and ravellings placed without any regularity; and the fourth, of very coarse binding of corded fringe. The feathers, which were not very numerous, were not barred as in the common kind of hawks, and were only distinguishable from those of the white Ibis, by a slight tinge of brown.

Milan, 1841. MADAM, As it is your Serene Highness's wish that I should communicate my numerous adventures and vicissitudes, for your amusement and the delectation of your maids of honour, I have much pleasure in complying;--but must request that your royal and taper fingers will become my amanuensis, and pen down what I shall relate ;-my existence dating from a period when even your princely ancestors were more celebrated for wielding the sword than the pen.

I will not fatigue your Serene Highness or myself with the origin or pedigree of my toiling ancestors, the silk-worms, though their genealogical tree may be considered a pretty extensive one, stretching over the vast and fertile plains of Lombardy, and, like many other noble and illustrious families, stripping all the branches for the exclusive consumption and profit of themselves.

My first sensation was being huddled, very unceremoniously, with a thousand other cocoons, in a sack, and deposited (with a jolt sufficient to pulverize our delicate natures) in a spinning manufactory near Brescia; the place was merely an open shed, but the pillars which supported the roof were garlanded with vines, the air was balmy which breathed around, and the view from it delicious, looking out upon the swelling hills that surround that city. By some chance the sack, in which I lay with my companions, was neg

lected for some days, and the heat of the place maturing the germs within their silken cradles, our vitality, or sylph, sprung into creation,-a swarm of pretty feathered spirits fluttered away at the very moment when the overseer laid his cruel hands upon the heap, to precipitate it into a scalding abyss. Nothing could exceed his rage and vexation, while he swore as many heathen and catholic oaths as an emperor could have done upon the escape of a handful of Carbonari.

Corpo di Bacco e beato Sant' Antonio!-I am ruined," he exclaimed; "these cocoons are every one burst, and the silk has lost half its value; Corpo di Diana!-che imbroglio:" all the women and children left their chaunting and came running and gaping, many of them not displeased with his disaster, as he was a severe taskmaster, and for the slightest fault would stop a portion of their scanty wages. "Ah! che seccatura che Diavolo! Per la Santissima," &c. &c. &c., was echoed around. "Return to your work, Bestie,' roared forth the enraged overseer, who detected the lurking smile issuing from their grinning white teeth," or by L'Osteria di Dio, I will put you all to stoppages." This threat sent them scampering to their wheels and reeking heaps, and the monotonous but pleasing old chaunt was taken up at intervals by the shrill voice of childhood, and the more mellowed one of girls and matrons.

دو

After a few moments of consideration, the wily over