Some account of two mummies of the Egyptian ibis : one of which was in a remarkably perfect state / by John Pearson.

  • Pearson, John, 1758-1826.
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some account of two mummies of the Egyptian ibis : one of which was in a remarkably perfect state / by John Pearson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    from the catacombs at Thebes, in as imperfect and decayed a condition as those which have been procured from Saccara. I have been favoured with the permission to unroll another mummy of the Ibis, also sent from Thebes by Major Hayes, which had been embalmed in a different manner from that I have already described. The cloth which surrounded it was of a coarser texture, and had not been so thoroughly imbued with bitumen, nor was the roller continued down to the body of the bird ; for, when I had removed as much of the bandage as reduced the mummy to about ^ of its original bulk, I found that, instead of circular bands, it was wrapped in several different portions of coarse linen cloth, each of them large enough to contain the whole Ibis. This Ibis was in a decayed state, and had so little coherence, that its several parts separated on handling it: there was a small portion of the neck, with wliite plumage upon it, remaining, but neither the head, the bill, nor any remains of them, could be discovered. The feathers of this bird are of a dark brown colour, in some parts tipped with white; the neck and the tail have a white plumage, and as much of the tail as could be preserved dis- played the tufted appearance delineated in the engraving of M. Cuvier. Two species of the Ibis, the black and the white, have been noticed by Herodotus,'^ Aristotle,''|' and Pliny but Plu- tarch has only mentioned the white Ibis.§ Aristotle and Pliny have contended that the black Ibis was found only at Damietta, (Pelusium,) and that, in all the other parts of Egypt, the white Ibis only was seen. Whether the two birds which I • Euterpe. t Animalium, lib. ix. c, xxvii. J C. Plinii Kat. Hist. lib. x. c. xxx. § De hide et Osiride.