Abstract
ANCIENT Egypt always exercises an intense fascination for the student of the past, particularly as its written records are amplified by its “human documents” in the shape of mummies. This interest has, during the past few years, been intensified by the valuable series of anatomical studies on mummified remains which have issued from the Government School of Medicine at Cairo under the auspices of Prof. Elliot Smith. Not the least important of these is from the pen of Mr. W. A. Schmidt,1 who has investigated mummified material of different epochs from the chemical and biological point of view. Some of the mummies he worked with carry us back to prehistoric periods, 6000 years ago, before the art of embalming as practised in later times was known to the inhabitants of the Nile valley.
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References
"Chemische und biologische Untersuchungen von ägyptischen Mumierr material, nebst Betrachtungen über das Einbalsamierungsverfah en der alter Agypter". (Publishrd in Max Verworn's Zeitsch. f. allg. Physiol., vol. vii., pp. 360–392, 1907).
"Chitin in the Carapace of the Pterygotus osiliensis from the Silurian Rocks of Oesel" (Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. lxxvi., B, pp. 398–400, 1905).
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HALLIBURTON, W. Prehistoric Chemistry . Nature 77, 465 (1908). https://doi.org/10.1038/077465a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/077465a0
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