History of Embalming

We have not hesitated to include in this work the preceding observations, because they appeared to us necessary to rectify or complete the facts advanced by Herodotus, Diodorus Sicculus, Plutarch, Porphyrus, and many others. But the whole of these materials have need of new lights, drawn from researches made upon the spot. The scientific commission of Egypt felt the necessity of this, and several of its members applied themselves to personal examinations of the pyramids and caverns; and one of them, M. Rouyer, in his memoir on Egyptian embalming, traces us a history nearly complete. The following are the most interesting details:

The art of embalming is totally unknown at the present day in those places which gave it birth, and it has remained buried in profound forgetfulness, since Egypt, which, long the home of the sciences and the arts, has been overrun and successively ravaged by barbarian nations, who have destroyed all its institutions, political and religious.

“The historians, to whom we are indebted for all we know at the present time of the ancient wonders of Egypt, and who have written during the period when the Egyptians still possessed some of their customs, could alone transmit to us the ingenious secret of embalming; but their recitals prove, that they themselves possessed but an imperfect knowledge of it.”

All the ancient authors agree, in saying that the Egyptians made use of various aromatics to embalm the dead; that they employed for the rich, myrrh, (the resin of a species of Mimosa,) aloes, (the extracto-resinous juice of the Aloe perfoliata,) canella, (bark of the Laurus cinamomum,) and the cassia lignea, (bark of the Laurus cassia;) and for the poor, the cedria, (the fluid resin of the Pinus cedrus,) bitumen, (Bitumen judaicum, derived from the Dead sea,) and natrum, (a mixture of the carbonate, sulphate, and muriate of soda.)

“Although the recitals of Herodotus, and of Diodorus Sicculus, on embalming, are not very complete, and that some details appear inexact and improbable, as several of the French investigators have observed, however, on placing in convenient order what Herodotus relates on this subject, we shall soon perceive that he has described in a few lines almost the whole theory of embalming. The Egyptian embalmers knew how to distinguish from the other viscera, the liver, the spleen, and the kidneys, which they did not disturb; they had discovered the means of withdrawing the brain from the interior of the cranium without destroying the bones of the latter; they knew the action of the alkalies upon animal matter, since the time was strictly limited that the body could remain in contact with these substances; they were not ignorant of the property of balsams, and resins to protect the bodies from the larvæ of insects and mites; they were likewise aware of the necessity of enveloping the dried and embalmed bodies, in order to protect them from humidity, which would interfere with their preservation. These people had established invariable rules and a certain method for the process of embalming. We remark, in effect, that the labour of those who were charged with embalming the dead, consisted in two principal operations, very distinct: the first, to subtract from the interior of the corpse all that might become a cause of corruption during the time allotted to dry it; the second, to secure the body from any cause that might subsequently occasion its destruction.

“The odoriferous resins and bitumen not only preserved from destruction, but also kept at a distance, the worms and beetles which devour dead bodies. The embalmers, after having washed the bodies with that vineous liquor which Herodotus and Diodorus call palm wine, and having filled them with odoriferous resins or bitumen, they placed them in stoves, where, by means of a convenient heat, these resinous substances united intimately with the bodies, and these arrive in very little time, to that state of perfect desiccation in which we find them at the present day. This operation, of which no historian has spoken, was, without doubt, the principal and most important of embalming.

“The most noted grottoes and pyramids have been sacked by the Arabs. Also, in search of treasure, they have penetrated into the bosom of mountains, and descended into those vast and deep excavations, where they arrive only by long canals, with which some are encumbered. Here, in chambers, or species of pits, worked into the rock, are found millions of mummies, piled upon each other, which appear to have been arranged with a certain symmetry, although many are now found displaced and broken.

“Near these deep pits, which served for a common sepulture for several families, we meet also with other smaller chambers, and some narrow cavities in form of niches, which were destined to hold one mummy only, or at most two. The grottoes of Thebes enclose a great number of mummies, better preserved than those in the caverns and pits of Saggârah. It is particularly, near the ruins of Thebes, in the interior of the mountains which extend from the entrance of the valley of the Tomb of Kings, to Medynet Abou, that I have seen many entire and well preserved mummies.

“It would be impossible for me to estimate the prodigious number of those which I have found scattered and heaped in the sepulchral chambers, and in the multitude of caverns which exist in the interior of this mountain. I have developed and examined a great number of them, as much with the view of inquiring into their state, and examining the preparation, as with the hope of finding idols, papyrus, and other curious objects, that the most part of these mummies enclose beneath their envelopes. I have not remarked, what Maillet asserts, caverns specially destined to the sepulture of men, of women, and of infants; but I was surprised to find so few infant mummies in the tombs which I visited. These embalmed bodies, among which we meet with nearly an equal number of men and women, and which at first view appear to resemble each other, and to have been prepared in the same manner, differ, nevertheless, in the various substances which have been employed to embalm them, or in the arrangement and in the quality of the linen employed to envelope them.”

The Count de Caylus, and the celebrated chemist, Rouelle, have supposed that all the cloths that enveloped the mummies were of cotton; I have found a great number of them which were enveloped in linen bandages, of a much finer tissue than those of cotton, which are commonly found around mummies prepared with less care. The mummies of birds, particularly those of the Ibis, are also enveloped with linen bandages.

“On examining with attention and in detail some of the mummies found in the tombs, I have distinguished two principal classes: those in which they have made, on the left side above the groin, an incision about two and a half inches long, penetrating into the lower cavity of the belly; and those which have no incision whatever in any part of the body. In both classes, we find many mummies with the partition of the nose torn, and the ethmoidal bone entirely destroyed; but some of the last class have the spongy bones untouched, and the ethmoidal bone entire, which might make it appear that, sometimes the embalmers did not disturb the brain. The opening found in the side of most mummies, was doubtless made in all cases of select embalming, not only for the purpose of withdrawing the intestines, which are not found in any of these desiccated bodies, but also the better to clean the cavity of the belly, and to fill it with a greater quantity of aromatic and resinous substances, the volume of which contributed to preserve the body, at the same time that the strong odour of the resins kept off the insects and worms. This opening does not appear to me to have been sewn up, as Herodotus asserts; the borders have only been brought together, and are retained so by desiccation.

“1. Among the mummies with an incision in the left side, I distinguish those which have been desiccated by means of tanno-balsamic substances, and those that have been salted. The mummies that have been dried by means of astringent and balsamic substances, are filled as with a mixture of aromatic resins, and the others with asphaltum or pure bitumen.

“Mummies filled with aromatic resins are of an olive colour; the skin is dry and flexible, like tanned leather; it is rather contracted upon itself, and appears to form but one body with the fibres and the bones, the features of the face are recognizable, and appear to be the same as in the living state; the belly and chest are filled with a mixture of friable resins, soluble in part in spirits of wine: these resins possess no particular odour rendering them recognizable; but, thrown upon living coals, they shed a thick smoke and a strongly aromatic odour. These mummies are very dry, and easily unrolled and broken; they still preserve all their teeth, the hair of the head and eyebrows. Some of them have been gilded over the whole surface of the body; others are gilded only on the face, the natural parts, on the hands and on the feet; these gildings are common to a considerable number of mummies, which prevents me from partaking in the opinion of some travellers, who suppose that this kind of decoration was restricted to princes, and persons of a very distinguished rank.

“These mummies which have been prepared with great care, are unalterable so long as they are retained in a dry place; but, unbound, and exposed to the air, they promptly attract moisture, and after a few days shed a disagreeable odour.

“Mummies filled with pure bitumen, are of a black colour; the skin is hard and shining, as if it had been covered with a varnish, the features of the face are not altered; the belly, breast, and head, are filled with a resinous substance, black, hard, and with but little odour. This matter, which I have taken from the interior of many mummies, has presented the same physical characters, and has given, by chemical analysis, the same results as the Jew’s pitch of commerce. These sort of mummies, which are met with commonly enough in all caverns, are dry, heavy, without odour, difficult to unfold and to break. Almost all have the face, the natural parts, the hands, and the feet gilded; they appear to have been prepared with much care; they are very little susceptible of alteration, and do not attract the moisture of the air. The mummies with an incision in the left side, and which have been salted, are equally filled, the one with resinous substances, and the other with asphaltum. These two sorts differ but little from the preceding: the skin has also a blackish colour, but it is hard, smooth, and stretched like parchment; there is a space existing beneath it, and it is not glued against the bones; the resins and bitumen which have been injected into the belly and chest are less friable, and do not reserve any odour; the features of the face are somewhat altered, very little hair remains, which falls when touched. These two sorts of mummies exist in great numbers in all the caverns: when unwrapped and exposed to the air, they absorb moisture, and become covered with a light saline efflorescence, which I have ascertained to be sulphate of soda.

“2. Amongst those mummies without an incision in the left side, nor in any other part of the body, and from which the intestines have been withdrawn from the fundament, I also distinguish two sorts; those which have been salted, and then filled with a bituminous matter less pure than that which historians and naturalists call pisasphaltum; and those which have been only salted.

“The injections with cedria, or the surmaia for dissolving the intestines, according to Herodotus, could not produce this effect; it is much more reasonable to suppose that these injections were composed of natrum rendered caustic, which dissolved the viscera; and that after having emptied the intestines, the embalmers filled the belly with cedria, or with some other fluid resin which dried with the body.

“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.