than those of a more recent date, exhibiting the lines and ridges for the attachment of the muscles with a degree of distinctness rarely if ever witnessed at the present day. But the most remarkable portion is the head, which is beautifully formed and of extraordinary size. The skeleton, which has been articulated, measures six feet two inches, and the interior of the coffin being only five feet four inches accounts for the disordered state in which the lower extremities were found, as they must necessarily have been doubled up so as to admit of being placed within it.
The body, which had been laid on its right side with the head to the south and its face turned towards the rising sun, had evidently been wrapped in the skin of some animal, the hair of which was soft and fine, resembling that of a sheep, or perhaps more nearly that of a goat, but not quite so long, and this skin had been originally fastened at the breast with a pin of horn or bone.
The weapons &c. found in this coffin consist of A. the head of a spear or javelin, formed of brass or some other composition of copper; it was much corroded, and had at the broad end two small rivets used to attach it to a shaft, which from the shortness of the rivets still remaining must have been broad and thin.
B. The flint head of a small javelin.
know, unique condition of the bones, preserved by tannin, and converted to the colour of ink, had resulted from the tannin and gallic acid which was in the green oak trunk that forms the coffin, and in its very thick bark. The conversion of the flesh into adipocire must have been occasioned by the ready admission of water through the line of junction of the lid with the body of the coffin, or through the hole cut in the bottom. The clay contained in contact with the body probably contained sufficient iron pyrites to afford the sulphate of iron, which uniting with the tannin and gallic acid, have formed, together with the water within the coffin, an ink of precisely the same materials as that in common use."
