) The most magnificent was
bestowed on persons of distinguished rank, and the expense amounted to a
talent of silver, or three thousand French livres.(362)

Many hands were employed in this ceremony.(363) Some drew the brain
through the nostrils, by an instrument made for that purpose. Others
emptied the bowels and intestines, by cutting a hole in the side, with an
Ethiopian stone that was as sharp as a razor; after which the cavities
were filled with perfumes and various odoriferous drugs. As this
evacuation (which was necessarily attended with some dissections) seemed
in some measure cruel and inhuman, the persons employed fled as soon as
the operation was over, and were pursued with stones by the standers-by.
But those who embalmed the body were honourably treated. They filled it
with myrrh, cinnamon, and all sorts of spices. After a certain time, the
body was swathed in lawn fillets, which were glued together with a kind of
very thin gum, and then crusted over with the most exquisite perfumes. By
this means, it is said, that the entire figure of the body, the very
lineaments of the face, and even the hairs on the lids and eye-brows were
preserved in their natural perfection. The body, thus embalmed, was
delivered to the relations, who shut it up in a kind of open chest, fitted
exactly to the size of the corpse; then they placed it upright against the
wall, either in their sepulchres (if they had any) or in their houses.
These embalmed bodies are what we now call Mummies, which are still
brought from Egypt, and are found in the cabinets of the curious. This
shows the care which the Egyptians took of their dead. Their gratitude to
their deceased relations was immortal. Children, by seeing the bodies of
their ancestors thus preserved, recalled to mind those virtues for which
the public had honoured them; and were excited to a love of those laws
which such excellent persons had left for their security. We find that
part of these ceremonies were performed in the funeral honours paid to
Joseph in Egypt.

I have said that the public recognised the virtues of deceased persons,
because that, before they could be admitted into the sacred asylum of the
tomb, they underwent a solemn trial. And this circumstance in the Egyptian
funerals, is one of the most remarkable to be found in ancient history.

It was a consolation among the heathens, to a dying man, to leave a good
name behind him; and they imagined that this is the only