ABSTRACT
XVIIITH TO XXTH DYNASTIES of the way in which the feat was performed.! An instrument was forced up the nostril and driven right through the ethmoid bone. Through this forced entrance into the cranial cavity the brain was removed piecemeal, probably by some small ladle-like instrument. In most cases the whole of the brain was removed, but in some mummies fragments of the brain or its membranes remained in the skull. The empty cavity was then packed with strips of linen soaked in resin. Such was the usual method, but in the mummy of Aahmosis, a different procedure had been resorted to. There is no distortion of the nose such as usually results from this operation, nor is the nasal septum damaged or in any way deflected. As the cranial cavity was tightly packed with linen right down to the foramen magnum, it seems incredible that this could have been accomplished through the nasal fossre without damage to the septum. Moreover, there is the curious and significant fact that the atlas vertebra is missing, and the upper surface of the axis and the neighbouring part of the occipital bone are thickly coated with resin, which must have been applied directly to the surface of the bones. This raises the possibility that through an incision on the left side of the neck the atlas vertebra was excised and the brain extracted through the foramen magnum, the cavity being packed through the same opening with resin-smeared linen, which has in its passage coated the axis and occipital bone. Such an operation would be one of great difficulty, and in spite of its apparent improbability, we are forced to accept it on the evidence adduced. In no other known instance in Egypt has this method of procedure been followed, and it
would seem to indicate that it was an experimental beginning to what afterwards became general-the removal of the brain and the substitution of resinous material for it in the brain-case.
