the other hand, the body is not there, and the head only is
found in the grave, generally placed apart on a brick, a heap of stones,
or a layer of cut flints. The forearms and the hands were subjected to
the same treatment as the head. In many cases no trace of them appears,
in others they are deposited by the side of the skull or scattered
about haphazard. Other mutilations are frequently met with; the ribs are
divided and piled up behind the body, the limbs are disjointed or the
body is entirely dismembered, and the fragments arranged upon the ground
or enclosed together in an earthenware chest.

These precautions were satisfactory in so far as they ensured the
better preservation of the more solid parts of the human frame, but the
Egyptians felt this result was obtained at too great a sacrifice. The
human organism thus deprived of all flesh was not only reduced to
half its bulk, but what remained had neither unity, consistency, nor
continuity. It was not even a perfect skeleton with its constituent
parts in their relative places, but a mere mass of bones with no
connecting links. This drawback, it is true, was remedied by the
artificial reconstruction in the tomb of the individual thus completely
dismembered in the course of the funeral ceremonies. The bones were laid
in their natural order; those of the feet at the bottom, then those
of the leg, trunk, and arms, and finally the skull itself. But the
superstitious fear inspired by the dead man, particularly of one thus
harshly handled, and particularly the apprehension that he might revenge
himself on his relatives for the treatment to which they had subjected
him, often induced them to make this restoration intentionally
incomplete. When they had reconstructed the entire skeleton, they
refrained from placing the head in position, or else they suppressed
one or all of the vertebras of the spine, so that the deceased should be
unable to rise and go forth to bite and harass the living. Having taken
this precaution, they nevertheless felt a doubt whether the soul could
really enjoy life so long as one half only of the body remained, and the
other was lost for ever: they therefore sought to discover the means
of preserving the fleshy parts in addition to the bony framework of the
body. It had been observed that when a corpse had been buried in the
desert, its skin, speedily desiccated and hardened, changed into a case
of blackish parchment beneath which the flesh slowly