With mighty bronze I sealed its entrance,
And I protected it with an incantation."

The "kingly oil" was evidently used with the idea of preserving the body
from decay. Salt also was used to preserve the dead, and Herodotus
says that the Babylonians buried in honey, which was also used by the
Egyptians. No doubt the Babylonian method was less perfect than the
Egyptian, but the comparison is an interesting one, when taken in
connection with the other points of resemblance mentioned above.

We find, then, that an analysis of the Egyptian language reveals a
Semitic element in it; that the early dynastic culture had certain
characteristics which were unknown to the Neolithic Egyptians but are
closely parallelled in early Babylonia; that there were two elements in
the Egyptian religion, one of which seems to have originally belonged to
the Neolithic people, while the other has a Semitic appearance; and that
there were two sets of burial customs in early Egypt, one, that of the
Neolithic people, the other evidently that of a conquering race, which
eventually prevailed over the former; these later rites were analogous
to those of the Babylonians and Assyrians, though differing from them
in points of detail. The conclusion is that the x or conquering race
was Semitic and brought to Egypt the Semitic elements in the Egyptian
religion and a culture originally derived from that of the Sumerian
inhabitants of Babylonia, the non-Semitic parent of all Semitic
civilizations.

The question now arises, how did this Semitic people reach Egypt? We
have the choice of two points of entry: First, Heliopolis in the North,
where the Semitic sun-worship took root, and, second, the Wadi Hamma-mat
in the South, north of Edfu, the southern centre of sun-worship, and