these factors came into operation before the time of the
First Dynasty. They were responsible for impelling the Proto-Egyptians
not only to invent the wooden coffin, the stone sarcophagus, the
rock-cut tomb, and to begin building in stone, but also to devise
measures for the artificial preservation of the body.

But in addition to stimulating the development of the first real
architecture and the art of mummification other equally far-reaching
results in the region of ideas and beliefs grew out of these practices.

From the outset the Egyptian embalmer was clearly inspired by two
ideals: (a) to preserve the actual tissues of the body with a minimum
disturbance of its superficial appearance; and (b) to preserve a
likeness of the deceased as he was in life. At first it was naturally
attempted to make this simulacrum of the body itself if it were
possible, or alternatively, when this ideal was found to be
unattainable, from its wrappings or by means of a portrait statue. It
was soon recognized that it was beyond the powers of the early embalmer
to succeed in mummifying the body itself so as to retain a recognizable
likeness to the man when alive: although from time to time such attempts
were repeatedly made,[24] until the period of the XXI Dynasty, when the
operator clearly was convinced that he had at last achieved what his
predecessors, for perhaps twenty-five centuries, had been trying in vain
to do.

[23: _Op. cit. supra_.]

[24: See my volume on "The Royal Mummies," General Catalogue of the
Cairo Museum.]

Early Mummies.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth,
representing a restoration of the early mummy found at Medum by Prof.
Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in
London]

In the earliest known (Second Dynasty) examples of Egyptian attempts at
mummification[25] the corpse was swathed in a large series of bandages,
which were moulded into shape to represent the form of the body. In a
later (probably Fifth Dynasty) mummy, found in 1892 by Professor
Flinders Petrie at Medum, the superficial bandages had been impregnated
with a resinous paste, which while still plastic was moulded into the
form of the body, special care being bestowed upon the modelling of the
face[26] and the organs of reproduction, so as to leave no room for
doubt as to the identity and the sex. Professor Junker has described[27]
an interesting series of variations of these pract