in a solution of litron or natron.[1] Diodorus (i. 91) relates that the cutter (παρασχίστης) appointed to make the incision in the flank for the removal of the intestines, as soon as he had performed his office, was pursued with stones and curses by those about him, it being held by the Egyptians a detestable thing to commit any violence or inflict a wound on the body. After the steeping, the body was washed, and handed over to the swathers, a peculiar class of the lowest order of priests, called by Plutarch cholchytae, by whom it was bandaged in gummed cloth; it was then ready for the coffin. Mummies thus prepared were considered to represent Osiris. In another method of embalming, costing twenty-two minae (about £90), the abdomen was injected with “cedar-tree pitch” (κεδρία), which, as it would seem from Pliny (Nat. Hist. xvi. 21), was the liquid distillate of the pitch-pine. This is stated by Herodotus to have had a corrosive and solvent action on the viscera. After injection the body was steeped a certain number of days in natron; the contents of the abdomen were allowed to escape; and the process was then complete. The preparation of the bodies of the poorest consisted simply in placing them in natron for seventy days, after a previous rinsing of the abdomen with “syrmaea.” The material principally used in the costlier modes of embalming appears to have been asphalt; wax was more rarely employed. In some cases embalming seems to have been effected by immersing the body in a bath of molten bitumen. Tanning also was resorted to. Occasionally the viscera, after treatment, were in part or wholly replaced in the body, together with wax figures of the four genii of Amenti. More commonly they were embalmed in a mixture of sand and asphalt, and buried in vases, or canopi, placed near the mummy, the abdomen being filled with chips and sawdust of cedar and a small quantity of natron. In one jar were placed the stomach and large intestine; in another, the small intestines; in a third, the lungs and heart; in a fourth, the gall-bladder and liver. Porphyry (De abstinentia, iv. 10) mentions a custom of enclosing the intestines in a box and consigning them to the Nile, after a prayer uttered by one of the embalmers, but his statement is regarded by Sir J. G. Wilkinson as unworthy of belief. The body of Nero’s wife Poppaea, contrary to the usage of the Romans, was not burnt, but as customary among other nations with the bodies of potentates, was honoured with embalmment (see Tacitus, Ann. xvi. 6). The body of Alexander the Great is said to have been embalmed with honey (Statius, Silv. iii. 2. 117), and the same material was used to preserve the corpse of Agesipolis I. during its conveyance to Sparta for burial. Herodotus states (iii. 24) that the Ethiopians, in embalming, dried the body, rubbed it with gypsum (or chalk), and, having painted it, placed it in a block of some transparent substance. The Guanches, the aborigines of the Canaries, employed a mode of embalming similar to that of the Egyptians, filling the hollow caused by the removal of the viscera with salt and an absorbent vegetable powder (see Bory de Saint Vincent, Essais sur les Îles Fortunées, 1803, p. 495). Embalming was still in vogue among the Egyptians in the time of St Augustine, who says that they termed mummies gabbarae (Serm. 120, cap. 12).
In modern times numerous methods of embalming have been practised. Dr Frederick Ruysch of Amsterdam (1665–1717) is said to have utilized alcohol for this purpose. By William Hunter essential oils, alcohol, cinnabar, camphor, saltpetre and pitch or rosin were employed, and the final desiccation of the body was effected by means of roasted gypsum placed in its coffin. J. P. Boudet (1778–1849) embalmed with tan, salt, asphalt and Peruvian bark, camphor, cinnamon and other aromatics and corrosive sublimate. The last-mentioned drug, chloride and sulphate of zinc, acetate and sulphate of alumina, and creasote and carbolic acid have all been recommended by various modern embalmers.
See Mummy; Louis Penicher, Traité des embaumements (Paris, 1669); S. Blancard, Anatomia reformata, et de balsamatione nova methodus (Lugd. Bat., 1695); Thomas Greenhill, The Art of Embalming (London, 1705); J. N. Marjolin, Manuel d’anatomie (Paris, 1810); Pettigrew, History of Mummies (London, 1834); Gannal, Traité d’embaumements (Paris, 1838; 2nd ed., 1841); Magnus, Das Einbalsamiren der Leichen (Brunsw., 1839); Sucquet, Embaumement (Paris, 1872); Lessley, Embalming (Toledo, Ohio, 1884); Myers, Textbook of Embalming (Springfield, Ohio, 1900); Rawlinson, Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 141; G. Elliot Smith, A Contribution to the Study of Mummification in Egypt (Cairo, 1906).
EMBANKMENT, in engineering, a mound of earth or stone,
usually narrow in comparison with its length, artificially raised
above the prevailing level of the ground. Embankments serve
for two main classes of purpose. On the one hand, they are used
to preserve the level of railways, canals and roads, in cases where
a valley or piece of low-lying ground has to be crossed. On the
other, they are employed to stop or limit the flow of water,
either constituting the retaining wells of reservoirs constructed
in connexion with water-supply schemes, or protecting low-lying
tracts of land from river floods or the encroachments of the sea.
The word embankment has thus come to be used for the mass of
material, faced and supported by a stone wall and protected by
a parapet, placed along the banks of a river where it passes
through a city, whether to guard against floods or to gain
additional space. Such is the Thames Embankment in London,
which carries a broad roadway, while under it runs the Underground
railway. In this sense an embankment is distinguished
from a quay, though the mechanical construction may be the
same, the latter word being confined to places where ships are
loaded and unloaded, thus differing from the French quai,
which is used both of embankments and quays, e.g. the Quais
along the Seine at Paris.
EMBARGO (a Spanish word meaning “stoppage”), in international
law, the detention by a state of vessels within its ports
as a measure of public, as distinguished from private, utility.
In practice it serves as a mode of coercing a weaker state. In
the middle ages war, being regarded as a complete rupture
between belligerent states, operated as a suspension of all respect
for the person and property of private citizens; an article of
Magna Carta (1215) provided that “... if there shall be found
any such merchants in our land in the beginning of a war, they
shall be attached, without damage to their bodies or goods,
until it may be known unto us, or our Chief Justiciary, how our
merchants are treated who happen to be in the country which
is at war with us; and if ours be safe there, theirs shall be safe
in our lands” (art. 48).
Embargoes in anticipation of war have long since fallen into disuse, and it is now customary on the outbreak of war for the belligerents even to grant a respite to the enemy’s trading vessels to leave their ports at the outbreak of war, so that neither ship nor cargo is any longer exposed to embargo. This has been confirmed in one of the Hague Conventions of 1907 (convention relative to the status of enemy merchant ships at the outbreak of hostilities, Oct. 18, 1907), which provides that “when a merchant ship belonging to one of the belligerent powers is at the commencement of hostilities in an enemy port, it is desirable that it should be allowed to depart freely, either immediately, or after a reasonable number of days of grace, and to proceed, after being furnished with a pass, direct to its port of destination, or any other port indicated” (art. 1). The next article of the same convention limits the option apparently granted by the use of the word “desirable,” providing that “a merchant ship unable, owing to circumstances of force majeure, to leave the enemy port within the period contemplated (in the previous article), or which was not allowed to leave, cannot be confiscated. The belligerent may only detain it, without compensation, but subject to the obligation of restoring it after the war, or requisition it on payment of compensation” (art. 2). (T. Ba.)
EMBASSY, the office of an ambassador, or, more generally,
the mission on which an ambassador of one power is sent to
another, or the body of official personages attached to such a
mission, whether temporary or permanent. Hence “embassy”
is often quite loosely used of any mission, diplomatic or otherwise.
The word is also used of the official residence of an
ambassador. “Embassy” was originally “ambassy,” the form
- ↑ Neutral carbonate of sodium, Na2CO3, found at the natron lakes in the Libyan desert, and at El Hegs, in Upper Egypt.
