Page:Key to Easy Latin Stories for beginners.djvu/27

 hearing this, kept it secret, but when the boys kept repeating the same word, he told the king, and by his order brought them into his presence. Now, bread is called ‘becos’ in the Phrygian language. Therefore the Phrygians were considered the most ancient of all people by the Egyptians.  

70.Among the Egyptians the art of medicine is distributed as follows. There is one doctor for every disease, nor does one and the same (doctor) cure several kinds of diseases. There are also among them some doctors for the eyes, others for the head, others for the teetl, others for hidden diseases.

71.Lamentations and burials are ordained as follows. When a man of any house dies, all the women of that house smear their head, or even their very faces, with mud, and then, having left the corpse at home, they run themselves through the city groaning, and with them all their relations. The men groan in another place. These things having been done, they carry out the corpse for embalming.

72.Now certain men practise the art of embalming. When the corpse is brought, they first extract the brain through the nostrils with an iron. Then, after extracting the entrails, they wash the body with wine, and again cleanse it with pounded perfumes. Then they fill the body with myrrh, cassia, and other perfumes, with the exception of frankincense. These things having been thus done, they pickle the body for seventy days, for it is not lawful (to do so) longer. When the seventy days have been completed, they wash the corpse and cover it with clothes. Then the relations make a box in the shape of a man; they put the corpse into this box, and leave it in a tomb, placing it against the wall. 