t. The
mode of embalming depended on the rank and position of the deceased.
There were three modes of embalming; the first is said to have cost a
talent of silver (about $1,250); the second, 22 minae ($300); the third
was extremely cheap. The process is thus described by Herodotus;--"In
Egypt certain persons are appointed by law to exercise this art as
their peculiar business, and when a dead body is brought them they
produce patterns of mummies in wood, imitated in painting. In
preparing the body according to the most expensive mode, they commence
by extracting the brain from the nostrils by a curved hook, partly
cleansing the head by these means, and partly by pouring in certain
drugs; then making an incision in the side with a sharp Ethiopian
stone (black flint), they draw out the intestines through the
aperture. Having cleansed and washed them with palm wine, they cover
them with pounded aromatics, and afterwards filling the cavity with
powder of pure myrrh, cassia, and other fragrant substances,
frankincense excepted, they sew it up again. This being done, they
salt the body, keeping it in natron during seventy days, to which
period they are strictly confined. When the seventy days are over,
they wash the body, and wrap it up entirely in bands of fine linen
smeared on the inner side with gum. The relatives then take away the
body, and have a wooden case made in the form of a man, in which they
deposit it; and when fastened up they keep it in a room in their
house, placing it upright against the wall. (This style of mummy was
supposed to represent the deceased in the form of Osiris.) This is the
most costly mode of embalming.

"For those who choose the middle kind, on account of the expense, they
prepare the body as follows:--They fill syringes with oil of cedar,
and inject this into the abdomen without making any incision or
removing the bowels; and, taking care that the liquid shall not
escape, they keep it in salt during the specified number of days. The
cedar-oil is then taken out, and such is its strength that it brings
with it the bowels and all the inside in a state of dissolution. The
natron also dissolves the flesh, so that nothing remains but the skin
and bones. This process being over, they restore the body without any
further operation.

"The third kind of embalming is only adapted for the poor. In this
they merely cleanse the body by an injection of syrmaea, and salt it
during seventy days, after whi