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THE Mummy, which is the subject of the following pages, is the first article in Dr. Grew’s Catalogue of the rarities of the Royal Society. He informs us, that it was a present from Henry Duke of Norfolk; and was an entire one, taken out of the Royal Pyramids. He then proceeds to describe the manner, in which the several parts were wrapped up; but this he has not done exactly: as most of these very parts had evidently never been opened, till we examined them: and were then found in a very different state from that in which they are represented by him.
This Mummy had been greatly injured, before it came into our hands; the head had been taken off from the body; and the wrappers, with which they had been united, having been destroyed, the cavity of the thorax was found open towards the neck: and part of the upper crust, with the clavicles, having been also broken away, the heads of the ossa humeri presented themselves covered with a thin coat of pitch.
The feet also had been broken off from the legs; and were fixed, by wires, to the end of the wooden case in which the Mummy lay.
The outward painted covering, which reached from the upper part of the chest nearly to the bottom of the legs; had been removed and fastened on again by a great number of ordinary nails, driven up to the head into the substance of the Mummy. This had most probably been done by those, who had orders some years since to repair it; and by this, and by the manner in which they had fastened on the feet, they seem to have done their work in a most clumsy manner.
