And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.
Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. In ancient Egypt, where the state of civilization was so greatly advanced, the medical profession was subdivided into a variety of departments, almost every disease being under the care of a separate class of practitioners, as in western Europe. They were as the sacerdotal order, and a number of them were attached to every high family, such as Joseph's was (Hengstenberg, 'Egypt and Books of Moses,' p. 67). The embalmers were in later times a class by themselves, who performed the double office of apothecaries and undertakers. х haaropª'iym (H7495), the physicians, is often confounded with rªpaa'iym (H7497), 'giants,' 'the dead.'] There were three different ways of embalming, according to the rank and resources of the family ordering it; and as in the case of Jacob, who was connected with the most distinguished personage in the kingdom, it would be performed on the most sumptuous scale, we shall confine our account to this highest mode.
The first step in the process was the extraction of the brain, through the nostrils, by means of a curved iron probe, and the substitution of various drugs into the emptied head; then an incision was made in the side with a sharp Ethiopian flint, in order that the intestines might be drawn out, and the cavity filled with myrrh, cassia, and spices of almost every sort (Genesis 37:25), except frankincense. After sewing it up again, they kept the body in natrum (alkali) for 70 days, and then wrapped it up entirely with bands of fine linen, smeared with gum, and laid it in a wooden case, made in the shape of a man, which they placed upright against the wall. This was the first class, 'the Osiris style' of embalming. It cost one talent = 250 British pounds; the second type cost twenty-two minae = 60 British pounds; and the third type cost a very trifling expense. The operation, on all these scales, was performed by a particular class of professional persons; and at Thebes, in later times, there was one quarter of the city wholly devoted to the preparation of the necessary implements. One of the most curious parts of the performance was, that the paraschistes, or dissector, whose duty it was to make an incision in the body, ran away as soon as it was done, amid the bitter execration of those present, who pelted him with stones, in testimony of their abhorrence of one who could inflict injury on the person of a human creature, either alive or dead.