MUMMY

(Arab, mumia; from mum, tear.) The name given to the dead bodies of men or animals which are by any means preserved in a dry state from the proce of putrefaction. Mummies have usually been divided into two cla es, natural and artificial; the former arising from peculiar conditions of soil and atmosphere, which permit the drying of the animal ti ues to be effected with such rapidity that the body is preserved; the latter embracing the various means that have been employed from the earliest ages to preserve dead bodies from corruption. Of the former, or natural cla of mummies, some well-known instances are to be found in the vaults of several Continental churches, particularly at Strasburg, Toulouse, nnd Bordeaux. The art of embalming owes its origin to the extreme veneration with which the ancient Egyptians regarded the corpses of their relatives, and was practised with such sucuit, at the lapse of 3000 years, the mummies found in the numerous catacombs of Egypt are still objects of admiration. But it was not to the dead bodies of the human species alone that the ancient Egyptians restricted their reverence they; practised embalming also on all the animals which their religion held sacred, and of these upwards of fifty different species have been found embalmed. The art of embalming was practised also, to a considerable extent, by the ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans, though it never attained such celebrity or perfection among them as among the people from whom it was borrowed. It was also adopted as a national custom by the Guanches, the ancient inhabitants of the Canary Islands, a full account of which Is to be found in the E ai sur les Isles Fortunies, by M. Bory de St. Vincent. The account which Hero dot us has left us of the Egyptian proce of embalming is so minute, and has, besides, been so [s. 797]