is the opening a dead body, taking out the intestines, and filling the place with odoriferous and desiccative drugs and spices, to prevent its putrefying. The Egyptians excelled all other nations in the art of preserving bodies from corruption; for some that they have embalmed upwards of 2000 years ago, remain whole to this day; and are often brought into other countries as great curiosities. Their manner of embalming was thus: they scooped the brains with an iron scoop out at the nostrils, and threw in medicaments to fill up the vacuum: they also took out the entrails, and having filled the body with myrrh, cappa, and other spices, except frankincense, proper to dry up the humours, they pickled it in nitre, where it lay. Embalming lay soaking for 70 days. The body was then wrapped up in bandages of fine linen and gums, to make it stick like glue; and so was delivered to the kindred of the deceased, entire in all its features, the very hairs of the eye-lids being preserved. They used to keep the bodies of their ancestors, thus embalmed, in little houses magnificently adorned, and took great pleasure in beholding them, alive as it were, without any change in their size, features, or complexion. The Egyptians also embalmed birds, &c. The prices for embalming were different; the highest was a talent, the next 20 minae, and so decreasing to a very small matter: but they who had not wherewithal to answer this expense, contented themselves with infusing, by means of a syringe, through the fundament, a certain liquor extracted from the cedar; and, leaving it there, wrapped up the body in salt of nitre: the oil thus preyed upon the intestines, so that when they took it out, the intestines came away with it, dried, and not in the least purified: the body being enclosed in nitre, grew dry, and nothing remained besides the skin glued upon the bones.

The method of embalming used by the modern Egyptians, according to Maillet, is to wash the body several times with rose-water, which he elsewhere observes, is more fragrant in that country than with us; they afterwards perfume it with incense, aloes, and a quantity of other odours, of which they are by no means sparing; and then they bury the body in a winding sheet, made partly of silk and partly of cotton, and moistened, as is supposed, with some sweet-scented water or liquid perfume, though Maillet uses only the term moistened; this they cover with another cloth of unmixed cotton, to which they add one of the richest suits of clothes of the deceased. The expense, he says, on these occasions, is very great, though nothing like what the genuine embalming cost in former times.