FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS with carvings and some with heads which may have been likenesses of those who lay within.

It costs much to die now* It must have cost more then. The expense of making a first-class mummy was twelve hundred dollars, and the money of that day was worth ten times what it is now. The caskets, which were more expensive than any of the coffins we have to-day, were incased in great sarcophagi of stone or wood, a single one of which must have cost a fortune.

I have asked the archaeologists why the Egyptians made their mummies. Their reply is that the desire for mum¬ mification came from the religion of the ancient Egyptians, who believed in the transmigration of souls. They thought that the spirit wandered about for several thousand years after death and then came back to the home it had upon earth. For this reason it was desirable to keep the body intact, for every one looked to his mummihood as his only chance of re-creation hereafter.

When the art of embalming began no one knows, but it certainly dates back to the building of the Pyramids. We know that when Jacob died in Egypt, his son Joseph had him embalmed and the Bible says it took forty days to do the job properly. It also relates that when Joseph died the Egyptians embalmed him and put him away in a coffin. Herodotus, who was one of the best travel writers of all times, describes how embalming was done and tells the details of mummy-making. He says the art was car¬ ried on by a special guild, whose members were appointed by the government and who had to work at fixed prices. The bodies were mummified in three different ways. By the first and most costly method, the brains were extracted through the nose by means of an iron probe, and the 99