How to See the British Museum in Four VisitsJerrold, Blanchard
History
How to See the British Museum in Four Visits
Jerrold, Blanchard
British Museum
As we explained when the visitor was in the Egyptian room, better
known as the Mummy room, up stairs, in the course of his second visit,
the ancient Egyptians, when they embalmed their dead, extracted the
viscera, and deposited them, apart from the body, in four vases, over
which the genii of the dead severally presided. Thus every mummy had,
properly, four sepulchral vases; and the collection arranged in the
saloon amply illustrates the varieties of ornament expended upon them.
As the visitor has probably forgotten the particular parts assigned
separately to the genii, it may be well to repeat here that Amset (who
is human-headed,) had the stomach and large intestines under his
especial protection Tuautmutf with his jackal-head presided over the
heart and lungs; Kebhsnuf, with the fierce head of the widely
worshipped hawk, took the gall, bladder, and liver, in charge; while
the baboon-headed Hapi reserved to himself the care of the small
intestines. There does not appear to have been any supernatural
protector of the brains, which, as we have noticed, were drawn through
the nose by the embalmer. These vases are of the most ancient times,
chiefly before the advent of Alexander, after which event the people
began to enclose the entrails of their dead in wax cloths, and
fastening to the various parts the appropriate genius, to have been
content to deposit them in the same case with the body. The vases
which the visitor is about to examine are carved in different
materials, the more costly and highly finished being of arragonite,
and the less important, in wood, stone, or clay. They are all
ornamented with appropriate inscriptions, consisting of exhortations
of the deities to the dead, or comforting syllables from the genii of
the intestines to the departed. The visitor will not care to examine
all these vases in detail, nor would any purpose be served were the
unscientific spectator to hover in this corner for a whole day; it is
sufficient for him to understand the passage these vases occupy in the
ancient history of Egypt, and to notice cursorily the degree of
excellence displayed in the manufacture of them. He will find the
hawk-head of Kebhsnuf in one direction, and the baboon-head of Hapi in
another, and from these pictorial revelations he will know what part
of a deceased Egyptian was deposited in each vase.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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