When They Have Done This
They Give Back The Corpse At Once In That Condition Without Working
Upon It Any More.
The third kind of embalming, by which are prepared
the bodies of those who have less means, is as follows:
- They cleanse
out the belly with a purge and then keep the body for embalming during
the seventy days, and at once after that they give it back to the
bringers to carry away. The wives of men of rank when they die are not
given at once to be embalmed, nor such women as are very beautiful or
of greater regard than others, but on the third or fourth day after
their death (and not before) they are delivered to the embalmers. They
do so about this matter in order that the embalmers may not abuse
their women, for they say that one of them was taken once doing so to
the corpse of a woman lately dead, and his fellow-craftsman gave
information. Whenever any one, either of the Egyptians themselves or
of strangers, is found to have been carried off by a crocodile or
brought to his death by the river itself, the people of any city by
which he may have been cast up on land must embalm him and lay him out
in the fairest way they can and bury him in a sacred burial-place, nor
may any of his relations or friends besides touch him, but the priests
of the Nile themselves handle the corpse and bury it as that of one
who was something more than man.
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