and roles; health and disease; inventions; language;
literature; metallurgy; migration and population
movements; military; mining, quarrying, and salt
making; natural disasters; numbers and counting; oc-
cupations; religion and cosmology; roads and bridg-es; sacred sites; seafaring and navigation; settlement
patterns; ships and shipbuilding; social organization;
storage and preservation; textiles and needlework;
trade and exchange; war and conquest; weights and
measures; writing.Th e mode of embalming, according to the most perfect
process, is the following: Th ey take fi rst a crooked piece
of iron, and with it draw out the brain through the
nostrils, thus getting rid of a portion, while the skull
is cleared of the rest by rinsing with drugs; next they
make a cut along the fl ank with a sharp Ethiopian stone,
and take out the whole contents of the abdomen, which
they then cleanse, washing it thoroughly with palm
wine, and again frequently with an infusion of pounded
aromatics. After this they fi ll the cavity with the purest
bruised myrrh, with cassia, and every other sort of
spicery except frankincense, and sew up the opening.
Th en the body is placed in natrum for seventy days,
and covered entirely over. After the expiration of that
space of time, which must not be exceeded, the body is
washed, and wrapped round, from head to foot, with
bandages of fi ne linen cloth, smeared over with gum,
which is used generally by the Egyptians in the place of
glue, and in this state it is given back to the relations,
who enclose it in a wooden case which they have had
made for the purpose, shaped into the fi gure of a man.
Th en fastening the case, they place it in a sepulchral
chamber, upright against the wall. Such is the most
costly way of embalming the dead.If persons wish to avoid expense, and choose the second
process, the following is the method pursued: Syringes
are fi lled with oil made from the cedar-tree, which is
then, without any incision or disemboweling, injected
into the abdomen. Th e passage by which it might be
likely to return is stopped, and the body laid in natrum
the prescribed number of days. At the end of the time
the cedar-oil is allowed to make its escape; and such is
its power that it brings with it the whole stomach and
intestines in a liquid state. Th e natrum meanwhile has
dissolved the fl esh, and so nothing is left of the dead
body but the skin and the bones. It is returned in this
condition to the relatives, without any further trouble
being bestowed upon it.
Th e third method of embalming, which is practiced
in the case of the poorer classes, is to clear out the
intestines with a clyster, and let the body lie in natrum
the seventy days, after which it is at once given to those
who come to fetch it away.From: Internet History Sourcebooks.
Available online. URL: http://www.
fordham.edu/halsall/. Herodotus, “Mummifi cation,” from
Th e Histories (ca. 440 b.c.e.) EgyptArchimedes to Dositheus, greeting: Formerly I sent to
you the studies which I had fi nished up to that time
together with the demonstrations, which were to show
that a segment bounded by a straight line and a conic
section is four-thirds of the triangle on the same base
as the segment and of the same height. Since that time
certain propositions as yet undemonstrated have come
to my mind, and I have undertaken to work them out.
Th ese are: 1. Th e surface of any sphere is four timesthe surface of its greatest circle; 2. Th e surface of any
segment of a sphere is equal to the surface of that circle
the radius of which equals the straight line drawn from
the vertex of the segment to the circumference of the
circle which serves as the base of the segment; 3. Th at a
cylinder with a base equal to the great circle of a given
sphere, and a height equal to the diameter of the sphere
contains half the volume of that sphere and its surface
is equal to half the surface of that sphere.Archimedes, Letter to Dositheus (ca. 220 b.c.e.)
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