ntry
were originally kings, princes, princesses, noblemen, and priests, for
few but those high-born folks could afford to be so well preserved as
to last all this time; but it is very certain that none of them ever
imagined that, thousands of years after their death, they would be
carried away to countries never heard of in their day, and be gazed at
by people who wore chignons and high-top hats, and who were not born
until they had been dead three thousand years.

When we consider the care and skill with which the dead Egyptians used
to be embalmed and encased in their sarcophagi, it is not surprising
that their poor bodies have been so well preserved. At the head of
this article you see a mummy as it appears when it has been embalmed
and wrapped in its bandages. Here is the stand on which it is then
placed.

[Illustration]

Very often, when the body had been a king or some great personage, its
face was covered with a mask of thin gold, and its bandages were
ornamented with pictures and inscriptions.

[Illustration]

When this work of decoration was completed, it was placed in a coffin
which was made large enough to hold the stand.

This coffin was very handsomely ornamented, and then, in order to
make everything very secure indeed, it was enclosed in another or
exterior coffin, which was also decorated in the highest style known
to Egyptian artists.

[Illustration]

One would now suppose that this great king or priest was safe enough,
looking at the matter in an ordinary light. But the Egyptians did not
look at these matters in ordinary lights. Quite otherwise. They
intended the useless bodies of their grandees to be packed away so
that they should not be disturbed as long as the world lasted, little
dreaming of the Americans and Europeans who would come along, in a few
thousand years, and buy them for their museums.

So they put the mummy, with its stand and its two coffins, into a
great stone box called a sarcophagus, and this was fastened and
plastered up so as to seem like one solid rock.

Then, if the inmate had ever done anything wonderful (or sometimes, no
doubt, if he had not been famous for anything in particular), the
history of his great achievements, real or fancied, was sculptured on
the stone. These hieroglyphics have been deciphered in several
instances, and we have learned from them a great deal of Egyptian
history.

[Illustration]

Dead poor people, as well as kings and princes, were