DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5538#0025
THE EXPLORER IX EGYPT.
less than 420,000,000. But recent discoveries (') compel us to
assign 4700 instead of 2700 years for the observance of this
rite; which, calculated after the same rate, brings us to a
gigantic total of 731,000,000
of mummies. The majority
of these were, of course,
mere slaves and peasants,
rudely embalmed and buried
in common graves; but even
so, we may be very certain
that the time can never come
when quarried rock and
drifted sand shall have yield-
ed all the noble and wealthy
dead, and all their riches.
The Greek, the Roman, the
mediaeval Arab, the modern
Arab, the Copt, the Turk,
and the European archaeolo-
gist have ravaged the soil,
but the harvest is still un-
diminished; and although
" mummy was sold for bal-
sam" in Sir Thomas
Browne's day, and has been
exported for manure in our
own,(2) there are probably
at this moment more ancient Egyptians under the soil of
Egypt than there are living men and women above it.
It has been aptly said that all Egypt is but the facade of
an immense sepulchre. This is literally true; for the ter-
raced cliffs that hem in the Nile to east and west, and the
rocky bed of the desert beneath our feet, are everywhere
honey-combed with tombs. But this is not all. The very
towns in which those vanished generations lived their busy
lives, the houses .in which they dwelt, the temples in which
they worshipped, are as much entombed as their former in-
PRINCESS NESIKHONSUS WIG.
This curious object, now in the National
Egyptian Museum at Ghizeh, is one of
several similar wigs buried with the
mummy of Princess Xesikhonsu, a
royal ladyof the Twenty-first Dynasty,
whose mortal remains and personal
adornments were discovered in 1881,
in the famous vault of the Priest
Kings at Dayr-el-Bahari. Each wig
was enclosed in a little hamper of
plaited palm-fibre.
less than 420,000,000. But recent discoveries (') compel us to
assign 4700 instead of 2700 years for the observance of this
rite; which, calculated after the same rate, brings us to a
gigantic total of 731,000,000
of mummies. The majority
of these were, of course,
mere slaves and peasants,
rudely embalmed and buried
in common graves; but even
so, we may be very certain
that the time can never come
when quarried rock and
drifted sand shall have yield-
ed all the noble and wealthy
dead, and all their riches.
The Greek, the Roman, the
mediaeval Arab, the modern
Arab, the Copt, the Turk,
and the European archaeolo-
gist have ravaged the soil,
but the harvest is still un-
diminished; and although
" mummy was sold for bal-
sam" in Sir Thomas
Browne's day, and has been
exported for manure in our
own,(2) there are probably
at this moment more ancient Egyptians under the soil of
Egypt than there are living men and women above it.
It has been aptly said that all Egypt is but the facade of
an immense sepulchre. This is literally true; for the ter-
raced cliffs that hem in the Nile to east and west, and the
rocky bed of the desert beneath our feet, are everywhere
honey-combed with tombs. But this is not all. The very
towns in which those vanished generations lived their busy
lives, the houses .in which they dwelt, the temples in which
they worshipped, are as much entombed as their former in-
PRINCESS NESIKHONSUS WIG.
This curious object, now in the National
Egyptian Museum at Ghizeh, is one of
several similar wigs buried with the
mummy of Princess Xesikhonsu, a
royal ladyof the Twenty-first Dynasty,
whose mortal remains and personal
adornments were discovered in 1881,
in the famous vault of the Priest
Kings at Dayr-el-Bahari. Each wig
was enclosed in a little hamper of
plaited palm-fibre.