We have seen in a former chapter that the Egyptians believed one to be composed of three parts: his earthly body, his soul, or ba, and his ka, the ghostlike phantom that grew up with him in life and after death experienced the same needs that he had known while living. All three parts were essential to the existence of any one of them. On this account the Egyptians made every effort to perpetuate the body and to provide necessities for the ka, lest the soul should wither up and be no more. Granting the truth of these beliefs, all that the Nile dwellers did in consequence of a faith in them was logical and natural. When an Egyptian was ill, a physician and one skilled in magic were summoned. They did what they could to restore him. When their efforts failed, they usually discovered that from his birth it had been decreed that he would meet with an early death, and in this ingenious way they maintained their influence unimpaired. Upon the death of a relative, all the women of the house rushed into the street with disheveled hair, shouting loud lamentations. In this way their loss was made public. Then they returned and the body was sent to the embalmer. Three methods of embalming were commonly employed. The most costly method involved seventy days and absorbed perhaps the total income of the year, unless the family was wealthy. The second was less costly and required less time; finally there was a comparatively inexpensive method which had to satisfy the poor. The vital organs and those parts of the body hardest to preserve were removed. This was strictly necessary according to later Egyptian ideas, yet so dreadful did they regard any mutilation of the body that the men who performed this task were intensely hated and considered as unclean. They were not allowed to mingle with other classes, nor could one rise out of his class. When they had done their work, they were stoned away from the house. The body was now put into a bath of chemicals to remain for many days. When at last it was taken out, it was filled with linen and sweet smelling powders and made to look as lifelike as possible. Then it was wrapped in linen bands, the quality of the linen used depending upon the purse of the family. "Each separate limb of the deceased was dedicated to a particular divinity by the aid of holy oils, charms and sentences; a specially prepared cloth was wrapped round each muscle, every drug and bandage owed its origin to some divinity, and the confusion of sounds, of disguised figures, and of various perfumes, had a stupefying effect on those who visited this chamber. It need not be said that the whole embalming establishment and its neighborhood was enveloped in a cloud of powerful resinous fumes, of sweet attar, of lasting musk, and of pungent spices."