ABSTRACT
OLD AND MIDDLE EMPIRES The outermost wrappings were saturated with resin, and the embalmers then moulded the mass carefully into shape, bestowing the minutest care to every detail of the form of the body. The details of the face, which is now somewhat distorted owing to the wrinkling of the linen and to the breakage of the nose in ancient times, are emphasised by paint, the eyes, eyebrows, and moustache being carefully traced. The resin-soaked linen set to form a carapace of stony hardness completely investing the whole head and body, and bulking it out to rather more than life-size. The generative organs are modelled with minute precision, and are so absolutely faithful to nature that it is hard to realise that they are merely represented by a linen and resin model. This mummy affords evidence that circumcision was practised. The body is lying in the fully extended position, which henceforth replaced the crouching attitude of earlier bodies, with the arms fully extended. The body-cavity is closely packed with resin-soaked linen.1 The head (which has been broken from the trunk) rattIes when shaken. Some free matter is therefore within the skull, but it is not possible to say whether this is desiccated brain or some artificial filling, though it is almost certainly the former.
