AN ACCOUNT OF A MUMMY, IN The Royal Cabinet of Antiquities at Dresden.

Among the Egyptian Mummies of the royal cabinet, there are two preserved perfectly entire, and not in the least damaged, viz. the bodies of a man and woman. The former, among all those that were brought into, and publickly known in Europe, is perhaps the only one of its kind; on account of an inscription thereon, which none of those who have written on Mummies, except Della Valle alone, discovered on those bodies; and Kircher, among all the drawings of Mummies communicated to him, and published in his Oedipus, has but one, (the same which Della Valle had been possessed of,) with an inscription; though his wooden cut[76] is as faulty as all the copies made afterwards[77]. On that Mummy there are these letters ΕΥ✠ΥΧΙ.

This same inscription is on the royal Mummy, of which I propose to give a brief account, and in examining which I have employed all my attention, that I might be certain of its being genuine, and not drawn by a modern hand from the inscription of Della Valle: for ’tis well known, that those bodies frequently pass through the hands of Jews. But the letters are evidently drawn with the same blackish colour with which the face, hands, and feet are stained. The first letter on our Mummy has the form of a large Greek ϵ, expressed by Della Valle with an E angular, the other not being usual in printing-presses.

All the four Mummies of the royal cabinet being bought at Rome, I proposed to examine whether the Mummy with the inscription, was that which Della Valle was possessed of, and found that both the entire royal Mummies were exact resemblances of those described by him.

Both, besides the linnen bandages, of a Barracan-texture, rolled innumerable times around the bodies, are wrapt up in several (and, according to an observation made in England[78], in three) kinds of coarser linnen; which, by particular bandages of the girdle-kind, is fastened in such a manner as to involve even the smallest prominence of the face. The first covering is a nice bit of linnen, slightly tinged with a certain ground, much gilt, decked with various figures, and with a painted one of the deceased.

On the Mummy marked with the inscription, this figure represents a man, who died in the flower of life, with a thin curled beard, not as represented by Kircher, like an old man with a long pointed one. The colour of the face and hands is brown: the head encircled with gilt diadems, marked with the sockets of jewels. From the gold chain, painted around the neck, a sort of medal hangs down, marked with various characters, crescents, &c. and this over-reaches the neck of a bird, that of a hawk perhaps, as on the breasts of other Mummies[79]. In the right hand of the figure is a dish filled with a red stuff, which being like that used by the sacrificers[80], the deceased may be supposed to have been a priest. The first and last finger of the left hand have rings; and in the hand itself there is something round, of a dark-brown colour; which, as Della Valle pretends, is a well-known fruit. The feet and legs are bare, with sandals; the strings of which appearing between the great toes, are, with a slip, fastened on the foot itself.

The inscription, above-mentioned, is beneath the breast.

The second Mummy is the still more refined figure of a young woman. Among a great many medals, seemingly gilt, and other figures, there are certain birds, and quadrupeds something analogous to lions; and towards the extremities of the body there is an ox, perhaps an apis: Down from one of the neck-chains hangs a gilt image of the sun. She has ear-rings, and double bracelets on both her arms: rings on each hand, and on every finger of the left one, but two on the first: whereas the right hand has but two: with this hand she holds, like Isis, a small gilt vessel, of the Greek Spondeion-kind, which was a symbol of the fertility of the Nile, when held by the goddess[81]. In the left hand there is a sort of fruit, like an ear of corn, of a greenish cast. The leaden seals, mentioned by Della Valle, still remain on the first Mummy.

Compare this description with that in his travels[82], and you’ll find the Mummies of the royal cabinet to be the same with those, which were taken out of a deep well or cave, covered with sand, and sold to this celebrated traveller by an Egyptian; and I believe they were purchased from his heirs at Rome, though in the manuscript catalogue, joined to that cabinet of antiquities, there is not the least hint of any such purchase.

I have no design to attempt an explication of the ornaments and figures; some remarks of that kind having already been made by Della Valle. The following observations concern only the inscription.

The Egyptians, we know, employed a double character in expressing themselves[83], the sacred and the vulgar: the first was what is called hieroglyphick; the other contained the characters of their national language, and this is commonly said to be lost. All we know is confined to the twenty-five letters of their alphabet.[84] Della Valle seems inclined to give an instance of the contrary, in that inscription; which Kircher, pushing his conjectures still farther, endeavours to lay down as a foundation for a new scheme of his; and to support it by two other remains of the same kind. For, he attempts to prove[85], that the dialect was the only difference between the old Egyptian and Greek tongue. According to his talent of finding what no body looks for, he makes free with some ancient historical accounts; upon which he obtrudes a fictitious sense, in order to make them tally with his scheme.

Herodotus, according to him, tells us, that King Psammetichus desired some Greeks, who were perfect masters of their language, to go over to Egypt, in order to instruct his people in the purity of the tongue. Hence he concludes, that there was but one language in both countries. But that Greek historian[86] gives an account entirely opposite: he tells us, that Psammetichus, having received some services from the Carians and Ionians, permitted them to settle in Egypt, for the instruction of youth in the Greek language, in order to bring up interpreters.

There is no solidity in the rest of the Kircherian arguments; such as those deduced from the frequent voyages of the Greek sages into Egypt, and the mutual commerce between the two nations; which have not even the strength of conjectures. For the very skill of Democritus, in the sacred tongue of the Babylonians and Egyptians[87], proves only, that the travelling sages learned the languages of the nations they conversed with.

Nor does the testimony of Diodorus, that Attica was originally an Egyptian colony[88], seem to be here of any weight.

The inscription of the Mummy might indeed admit of Kircherian, or such like conjectures, were the Mummy itself of the antiquity pretended by Kircher. Cambyses, the conqueror of Egypt, partly exiled, and partly killed the priests; from which fact Kircher confidently deduces as consequences, the total abolition of the sacred rites, and from that the ceasing to embalm bodies. He again appeals to a passage of Herodotus[89], which, upon his word alone, others have as confidently quoted. Nay, a certain pedant went so far as to pretend, that the Egyptian custom of painting their dead, upon the varnished linnen of the Mummies, ceased with the epoch of Cyrus[90].

But Herodotus says not a word, either of the total abolition of the sacred rites, or of the abolition of the custom of preserving the dead from putrefaction, after the time of Cambyses; nor does Diodorus Siculus give any such hint: we may, on the contrary, from his account of the funeral rites of the Egyptians, rather conclude, that this custom prevailed even in his time; that is to say, when Egypt was changed into a Roman province.

Hence it cannot be demonstrated that our Mummy was embalmed before the Persian conquest.—But supposing it to be of that date, is it a necessary consequence that a body preserved in the Egyptian manner, or even taken care of by their priests, should be marked with Egyptian words?

Perhaps it is the body of some naturalised Ionian or Carian. We know that Pythagoras entered into the Egyptian confession; nay, even consented to be circumcised[91], in order to shorten his way to the mysteries of their priests. The Carians themselves observed the sacred solemnities of Isis, and even went so far in their superstition, as to mangle their faces during the sacrifices offered to that deity[92].

Change the letter ι, in the inscription, into the diphthong ει, and you have a Greek word: such negligences are often to be met with in Greek marbles[93], and still more in Greek manuscripts; and with the same termination it is to be found on a gem, and signifies, “FAREWELL”[94], which was the usual ejaculation addressed by the living to the deceased; the same we meet with on ancient epitaphs[95]; public decrees[96]; and of letters it was the final conclusion[97].

There is on an ancient epitaph the word ΕΥΨΥΧΙ[98]; the form of the Ψ on ancient stones and manuscripts is exactly the same[99] with the third letter of ΕΥ✠ΥΧΙ, which was perhaps confounded with it.

But supposing the Mummy to be of later times, the adoption of a Greek word becomes yet easier. The round form of the ϵ might be something suspicious, with regard to its pretended antiquity; that form being never found on the gems or coins before Augustus[100]. But this suspicion becomes of no weight, by supposing that the Egyptians continued their embalming, even after the time of that Emperor.

However, the word cannot be an Egyptian one, being inconsistent with the remains of that ancient tongue in the modern Coptick, as well as with their manner of writing; which was from the right to the left, as the Etrurians did[101]; whereas the word in question (like some Egyptian characters[102],) is traced from the left to the right. As for the inscription discovered by Maillet[103], no interpreter has yet been found. The Grecians, on the contrary, wrote in the occidental manner, for six hundred years before the christian æra, witness the Sigæan inscription, which is said to be of that date[104].

What has been said relates also to an inscription upon a piece of stone[105], with Egyptian figures, communicated to Kircher by Carolo Vintimiglia, a Palerman patrician. The letters ΙΤΙΨΙΧΙ are two words, and signify, “Let the soul come.” This stone has met with the same fate as the gem engraved with the head of Ptolomæus Philopator: for here an Egyptian has joined two random figures, and there the inscription may be of a Greek hand. The litterati know what little change it wants to be orthographical.