The body becomes at last little more than a skeleton, with a covering of
yellow skin which accentuates the anatomical, details, but the head, on
the other hand, still preserves, where the operations have been properly
conducted, its natural form. The cheeks have fallen in slightly, the
lips and the fleshy parts of the nose have become thinner and more
drawn than during life, but the general expression of the face remains
unaltered.

[Illustration: 008.jpg THE MANUFACTURE AND PAINTING OF THE CARTONNAGE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Rosellini.

A mask of pitch was placed over the visage to preserve it, above
which was adjusted first a piece of linen and then a series of bands
impregnated with resin, which increased the size of the head to twofold
its ordinary bulk. The trunk and limbs were bound round with a first
covering of some pliable soft stuff, warm to the touch. Coarsely
powdered natron was scattered here and there over the body as an
additional preservative. Packets placed between the legs, the arms and
the hips, and in the eviscerated abdomen, contained the heart, spleen,
the dried brain, the hair, and the cuttings of the beard and nails. In
those days the hair had a special magical virtue: by burning it while
uttering certain incantations, one might acquire an almost limitless
power over the person to whom it had belonged. The ernbalmers,
therefore, took care to place with the mummy such portions of the hair
as they had been obliged to cut off, so as to remove them out of the way
of the perverse ingenuity of the sorcerers.

[Illustration: 009.jpg WRAPPING OF THE MUMMY, UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE
"MAN OF THE ROLL"]