Description of an Egyptian mummy, presented to the Massachusetts General Hospital : with an account of the operation of embalming, in ancient and modern times / by John C. Warren.

  • Warren, John Collins, 1778-1856.
Date:
[1824?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Description of an Egyptian mummy, presented to the Massachusetts General Hospital : with an account of the operation of embalming, in ancient and modern times / by John C. Warren. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Jackson and Gorham, with myself, to open the cases, and ex- amine their contents; and afterwards the trustees of the Hos- pital, having received the donation, desired me to give a de- scription of it for the satisfaction of the public. The fresh- ness and fine state of preservation of every part, led some persons to suggest that it might be one of those fabricated mummies, of which we have heard. These suspicions induc- ed me to examine everything belonging to it with great care, that I might be able, if it proved genuine, to do justice to the gentleman who presented it, and to afford the Hospital the fair benefit of its exhibition. The results of this investiga- tion, together with two drawings made from the outer case, I now beg leave to send you, for publication in your Journal, if you find them likely to be in any way useful. It is a curious fact that the most perishable of substances, the flesh of man, should present itself to us as one of the most ancient remains of human art: for there is nothing which claims a higher antiquity than the mummies, not even the catacombs that enclose them, nor the pyramids in their neighbourhood. In the oldest and most venerable of books, the practice of embalming is more than once mentioned in the earlier periods of the history of the Israelites. This people, during their resi- dence in Egypt, naturally adopted the customs of that country. When Jacob died, Joseph commanded the physicians to em- balm him. The embalming required forty days, and the same space of time was uniformly required for this process by the Egyptian embalmers. Forty days were fulfilled for him, for so are fulfilled the days of those that are embalmed. Gen. c. 1. v. 3.: and in the same chapter it is said, that Joseph also was embalmed, and put in a coffin in Egypt, v. 26. Jacob died in the year before our Saviour 1689; that is 3512 years ago : and as the practice seems to have been well established at that period, it must have existed long before; and been an- terior to the time of the erection of the pyramids*. In truth, * If we adopt the account of Herodotus, the pyramids were built by suc- cessors of Sesostris : the first by Cheops, who was the fourth king from Se- sostris; and the second, lately opened by Belzoni, was built by Cephrenes, the successor of Cheops : and in this account Herodotus is supported by Di- odorus Siculus. Sesostris lived in the year 3032: so that the pyramids were erected scarcely one thousand years before the christian era; and many hundred years after the deaths of Jacob and Joseph: in regard to whom the practice of embalming is first mentioned in history. But Manetho