Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/54

38 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.

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.