The most expensive means of embalming was an elaborate process indeed. The abdominal cavity was opened and the viscera were removed from the body. These were carefully washed in palm wine, thoroughly dried and sprinkled with certain aromatic spices. The brains were withdrawn from the head and treated in this same fashion. These cavities were then dried and filled with a combination of bitumen, myrrh, cassia and various other expensive and astringent spices. The openings were then sewed up. A tank was prepared which was filled with a solution of soda, and the body was steeped in it for seventy days. After removal from this pickling solution the body was thoroughly dried in the hot sun and anointed with spicy compounds which had the two-fold purpose of imparting a fragrant odor to the mummy and of further preserving its structure. The process was completed when the body was wound with the strips of linen with which all students of Egyptology are so familiar. The cost of this type of embalming varied, of course, in each dynasty, but as a general average it would be in the neighborhood of $1500 in our modern currency. When we consider the disparity between our standard of money value and that of ancient Egypt, it can be seen that such a preparation was enormously expensive. A cheaper method of embalming consisted of dissolving the viscera by means of oil of cedar. The flesh also was dissolved with a caustic soda solution, and the skin shrunk tightly to the bones. This dessicated form was then wrapped in the traditional linen bandages. The cost of this process was in the neighborhood of $300 in the currency of our day. For the very poor, however, a cheaper form of preparation was used. The body was dumped into the tank of soda, where it was alternately saturated and dried for a period of seventy days. The pickled body was then handed over to the relatives, who wrapped it according to their own ability and means and arranged for burial at any convenient site. This process would cost in the neighborhood of $1.50 in our present standard of currency. It will be noted that the customary period of embalming was seventy days. A discrepancy has been fancied here between this ordinary custom and the embalming of Israel, as it is recorded in the fiftieth chapter of Genesis. The third verse of that chapter states, “And forty days were fulfilled for him, for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him three score and ten days.” The discrepancy, however, has been cleared up by the discovery of the fact that under the Hyksos Dynasties the period of the embalming was forty days instead of seventy, and the mourning of the dead was more important than the time used in preserving the body.