mum my, mummia, mumy

[French momie, from Ital. mummia, from Pers. múmáyin = a mummy, from múm, móm = wax Sp. momi a; Arab. mûmia, from mûm =wax.] I. Ordinary Language : 1. In the same sense as II. 1. *2. A carca , dried flesh. "I would have been a mountain of mummy ." -Shakesp.: Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 5. 3. A liquor which distills from mummies; a liquor prepared from dead bodies, and formerly believed to have medicinal qualities. "Mummy is one of the most useful medicines commended and given by our physicians for falls and bruises." -Boyle : Works , ii. 451. 4. A preparation for magical purposes prepared from dead bodies. "The worms were hallow'd that did breed the silk; And it was dyed in mummy , which the skillful Conserved of maidens' hearts." Shakesp.: Othello , iii. 4. 5. A medicinal liquor generally. II. Technically : period in the under-world; the ka dwelt in the tomb with the mummied body, and, if this were destroyed or damaged, the ka suffered in like manner. Hence it was customary to deposit portrait statues of the wealthier Egyptians in their tombs to provide against the ka being left without a body. The Bulak Museum is very rich in these statues, while the British Museum has two statues of this description, from the tomb of Soti I., of the Nineteenth Dynasty. The Egyptian practice of mummification had a wide range in time. Mi A. B. Edwards ( Ency . Brit . (ed. 9th), xvii. 21) fixes its commencement at from 3800 to 4000 B. C., and Dr. Birch considers it to have continued till about A. D. 700. The ancient Peruvians practiced a kind of mummification; and the Guanches, the aborigines of the Canaries, employed a method of embalming similar to that of Egyptians, filling caused by the removal of the viscera with salt and an absorbent vegetable powder. 2. Hort .: A sort of wax used in grafting trees. 3. Paint.: A sort of brown bituminous pigment. To beat to a mummy: To thrash severely; to pound.