Institut Egyptien <al-Qāhira> [Hrsg.]: Mémoires présentés à l'Institut Egyptien (5.1908)

A CONTRIBUTION

to the

STUDY OF MUMMIFICATION IN EGYPT

with special reference to the measures
adopted du ring the time of the 21st dynasty for moulding the form

of the body

BY

G. ELLIOT SMITH

When we consider how much o£ our information concerning
the ancient Egyptians has been derived £rom the study of tombs,
and recall the vast numbers o£ graves that have been opened
within récent years it is very suprising to find that so little
accurate knowledge has been gained concerning the treatment of
the body itself, which is presumably the chief object in the tomb
and the raison d'être of ail the furniture and pictorial art.

ISTevertheless it is a fact that since Pettigrew,1 seventy two
years ago, published his remarkable monograph, which is a very
complète record of ail the facts relating to Egyptian mummies
ascertained or perhaps, considering the state of knowledge, ascer-
tainable, at that time, not only has very little been added to
our store of information on this subject, but most writers have
forgotten or neglected the solid foundation of established facts
which he so laboriously gathered together. In making this
statement I am not unmindful of the vast amount that has been
written during the last seventy years upon the subject of mum-
mies and the ancient practice of embalming : but it is no exag-
geration to state that in almost every case modem writers who
have given us a small scrap of new information have at the same

i Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, F.R.S., A Mlstory of Egyptian Mummies, and an
Account of the Worship and Embalming of the Sacred Animais by the Egyptians; icith
Remarias on the funeral Cérémonies of Biffèrent Nations, etc. London, 1834.