volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

384 The Natural Enemies of Mummies.
of the VIth dynasty at Sakkarah I have seen mummy
chambers half full of water, due to infiltration and leakage
and the cofhns and mummies in them were reduced to
a sodden mass. The mummies of the Xllth dynasty
which I bought with their coffins at Asyut were full
of dry rot, and collapsed into masses of dust and bones
when we attempted to lift them out of their coffins to
pack them. All mummies, except those which were
dipped in bitumen, were subject to the attacks of worms
and moths. In some of the tombs of the late period
at Aswan I have seen skeletons from which every bandage
and every particle of flesh had been eaten by the ants ;
and in some of the large caverns in the hills of Western
Thebes I have seen dried bodies being eaten by myriads
of smaU beetles.
The mummies which the tomb-robber held to be of
least value were those which were made after the XXVIth
dynasty. These, except in rare cases, were not prepared
with sweet unguents and precious oils and myrrh
and spices and expensive drugs,
In many mummies' only the skull
but with bitumen.
and belly are found
to be filled with bitumen,' but in others it is quite clear
that the whole
penetrated the
body was
flesh and
soaked in bitumen, which
discoloured the bones. A
body which had been so treated became a black, hard,
heavy and shapeless mass, and very difficult to break
up. It is clear that few would deck their dead with
jewellery and costly amulets when it was decided that
they were to be steeped in bitumen, and as the tombrobber
discovered this fact very soon, he left bitumenized
bodies severely alone. But this treatment with bitumen
did not preserve mummies from wreckage and annihilation.
On the contrary, it became the direct cause of
the destruction of tens of thousands of them, for the
bitumen taken from them yielded far larger profit to
the tomb-breaker than the jewellery and amulets which
decorated the mummies made with unguents and myrrh.
The reason of this is not far to seek : bitumen was used
' This fact was known to "Abd al-Latif (ed. de Sacy, p. 200) in
the twelfth century.