all the members
preserved even the hair of the eyelids and eyebrows remains
undisturbed, and the whole appearance of the person is so unaltered
that every feature may be recognised.

Sir J. Gardener Wilkinson ("Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Egyptians") from whom I have quoted, says that:

"The extraction of the brain by the nostrils is proved by the
appearance of the mummies found in the tombs; and some of the crooked
instruments (always of bronze) supposed to have been used for this
purpose have been discovered at Thebes." The preservatives appear to
have been of two classes, bituminous and saline, consisting, in the
first class, of gums, resins, asphaltum, and pure bitumen, with,
doubtless, some astringent barks powders, etc. rubbed in. Mummies
prepared in this is way are known by their dry, yet flexible skins,
retracted and adherent to the bones; features, and hair, well
preserved and life-like. Those mummies filled with bitumen, have black
skins, hard and shining as if varnished, but with the features
perfect, having been prepared with great care, and even after ages
have elapsed, are but little susceptible to exposure.

Of the mummies of the second class (also filled with resins and
asphaltum), we must assume that their skins and flesh have been
subjected to sodaic or saline products; for Boitard, in a work
published at Paris in 1825, says that an injection is made with oil of
cedar and common salt, also, that they wash the corpse with nitre and
leave it to steep for seventy days, at the end of which time they
remove the intestines, which the injection has corroded, and replace
their loss by filling the cavity of the abdomen with nitre. This is
also borne out by Wilkinson, who says:

"On exposure to air they (the mummies) become covered with
efflorescence of sulphate of soda, and also readily absorb moisture
from the atmosphere."

It appears, also, that after the period of preparation (thirty, forty,
or seventy days, as fixed by various authors), the corpse was
relieved, in the first-class ones, of all the old saline, nitrous, or
resinous products, and re-filled with costly resins, aromatic spices,
and bitumen; which, says Monsieur Rouyer:

"Having styptic, absorbent, and balsamic qualities, would produce a
kind of tanning operation on the body, which would also, no doubt, be
heightened by the washing with palm wine."

He here broaches the ingenious and highly probable theory, that the
corpse, duri