volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Security of Mummies in the British Museums. 395
are placed in good adequately ventilated glass cases,
and are dusted and warmed and lighted, and no moth
or beetle or worm or " insect which gnaweth " can live
in the atmosphere of camphylene with which they are
surrounded. They are in no danger of being slowly
drowned in their cases by infiltration, no sudden waterflood
can overwhelm them ; and the chance of their
being burnt is a thousand times more remote than it
was in 'Egypt. There is no human enemy to attack
them and cut off their heads, or break up, wreck, befoul
or otherwise destroy or insult them ; and no wolf, jackal,
dog, or hyena can come to them to drag them about and
crush them with their jaws or rip them open with their
claws.
In preceding paragraphs I have shown clearly enough
that no tomb in Egypt, however skilfully and cunningly
constructed, has protected the mummy or mummies in
it against the ancient tomb-robber, and from wreckage
and mutilation at his hands. But it is impossible for
any mummy to be wrecked or mutilated in the British
Museum, cind no mummy in the National Collection has
ever been unroUed whilst there, or its contents disturbed.
The Trustees possess unroUed mummies and remains of
mummified Egjrptians, but these were presented to the
British Museum in the state in which they now are.
The remains of the mummified body (No. 6646) which
is presumably that of King Menkaura (Mycerinus) were
given by Colonel Howard Vyse in 1838. The skeletons
of Heni (No. 23,425) and Khati (No. 29,574) were
given by myself in 1896. The bitumenized mummy of
Ankhpakhart (No. 24,958), a priest of the second order
at Thebes, was unroUed by Dr. Birch at Stafford
House on July 15th, 1875, and was presented to the
British Museum by His Grace the Duke of Sutherland
in 1893. And all portions of mummies, heads, arms,
hands, feet, etc., in the Collection are- presentations.
The Collection includes a very large number of " Canopic "
jars, which at one time contained the mummified viscera
of dead EgjTptians, but they were empty when they
were acquired by the British Museum. A few years