The Daily Comet

Object of Embalming in Egypt.

—A French chemist, M. Julian Fontenelle, in a discourse pronounced on occasion of the opening of an Egyptian mummy in the amphitheater of the Sorbonne, at Paris, has delivered an opinion respecting the cause of embalming in Egypt, that the Egyptians were led to it from physical necessity. During four months of every year the inundations of the Nile cover almost entirely the whole surface of Egypt which is under cultivation. Under the reign of Sesostris, for an extent of territory of about 2250 square leagues, according to D'Anville, there would be a population of 6222 persons per square league, which would present 350,000 deaths per annum. These corpses must be got rid of either burning or by interment; if the latter, they must be buried around the inhabited spots, or in those which were inundated by the Nile, and then the decomposition of those bodies would have been a source of destruction, and for burning there was an insufficiency of wood. But the soil of Egypt abounds in springs of natron, subcarbonate of soda—and this substance is perfectly antiseptic, the inhabitants were naturally led to preserve with it the corpses of the dead. In support of the opinion that sanatory views were the cause of embalmment down to the third century before the Christian era, when the practice was abandoned. M. Fontenelle observes, that during the whole of that period the plague was unknown in Egypt, where it is now endemic.