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It is not unusual to find mummy-cases smeared with bitumen; there is a mummy of a priestess in the next gallery which is completely coated with bitumen excepting the gilded face. Now, this bitumen was put on for a purpose for the purpose of obliterating the inscriptions and thus concealing the identity of the deceased from the robbers and desecrators of tombs.
The stone mummy-cases were yet more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster or hard black basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved with hieroglyphics, and modelled to the shape of the body like the inner wooden cases.
In a long, narrow room apart hung the portraits, waiting to be attached to the upper end of the mummy-cases of those lately deceased, and still in the hands of embalmers. Here, too, most of the lamps were out, and the upper end of the room was already dark. Only in the middle, where the best pictures were on show, the lights had been renewed.
As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may answer the purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a nine-days wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the indestructibility of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a like purpose in imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly be accepted by the intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light of all the facts herein given.
The regular statuesque features, broad brow, well-rounded chin, and dusky complexion were the exact counterpart of the innumerable statues, mummy-cases, and pictures which adorned the walls of the apartment. The thing was beyond all coincidence. The man must be an Egyptian. The national angularity of the shoulders and narrowness of the hips were alone sufficient to identify him.
The earliest Greek travellers who went to Egypt, when that country was finally opened up to the outside world, must have noticed the strange picture scrolls everywhere to be seen there on the temple walls, on obelisks, on statues, and mummy-cases, as well as on papyrus rolls, which were obviously intended to serve the purpose of handing down records of events to future generations.
Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English "dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial, says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers, which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if the ground had been recently sown with seed."
The ancient Greek practice of burning the dead had died out under the Antonines. Of old, the objects used to deck the pyre had also been on show here; now there was nothing to be seen but what related to interment or entombment. Side by side with the marble sarcophagus, or those of coarser stone, were wooden coffins and mummy-cases, with a place at the head for the portrait of the deceased.
In a long, narrow room apart hung the portraits, waiting to be attached to the upper end of the mummy-cases of those lately deceased, and still in the hands of embalmers. Here, too, most of the lamps were out, and the upper end of the room was already dark. Only in the middle, where the best pictures were on show, the lights had been renewed.
At the end of two years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome were laid. Dr.
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