bitumen, and various aromatic gums. The body was swathed in bandages of
linen, while the face was sometimes gilded, or covered with a gold mask.
As this, which was the "most approved method" of embalming, was very
costly, the expense being equivalent probably to $1000 of our money, the
bodies of the poorer classes were simply "salted and dried," wrapped in
coarse mats, and laid in tiers in great trenches in the desert sands.

[Illustration: PROFILE OF RAMESES II. (From a photograph of the mummy.)]

Only a few years ago (in 1881) the mummies of Thothmes III., Seti I., and
Rameses II., together with those of nearly all of the other Pharaohs of
the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Dynasties, were
found in a secret cave near Thebes. It seems that, some time in the 12th
century B.C., a sudden alarm caused these bodies to be taken hastily from
the royal tombs of which we have spoken (see p. 31), and secreted in this
hidden chamber. When the danger had passed, the place of concealment had
evidently been forgotten; so the bodies were never restored to their
ancient tombs, but remained in this secret cavern to be discovered in our
own day.

The mummies were taken to the Boulak Museum, at Cairo, where they were
identified by means of the inscriptions upon the cases and wrappings.
Among others the body of Seti I. and that of Rameses II. were unbandaged
(1886), so that now we may look upon the faces of the greatest and most
renowned of the Pharaohs. The faces of both Seti and Rameses are so
remarkably preserved, that "were their subjects to return to earth to-day
they could not fail to recognize their old sovereigns." Both are strong
faces, of Semitic cast, that of Rameses bearing a striking resemblance to
that of his father Seti, and both closely resembling their portrait
statues and profiles. Professor Maspero, the director-general of the