Difference between revisions of "Embalming"

<p> '''Embalming.''' A process by which, dead bodies are preserved from decay. When Jacob died in Egypt, "Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father, for burial in Canaan." The process occupied forty days. Joseph also was himself embalmed, that his body might be carried with the children of [[Israel]] when they left Egypt for Palestine. &nbsp;Genesis 50:2-3; &nbsp;Genesis 50:26. It does not appear that the Hebrews practiced the mode of embalming of the Egyptians. Still some partial process was employed, tending to soothe surviving friends by arresting or delaying natural corruption. Thus Asa was laid in a bed "filled with sweet odors and divers kinds of spices prepared by the apothecaries' art." &nbsp;2 Chronicles 16:14. Also the women who had followed Jesus "bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him," &nbsp;Mark 16:1; &nbsp;Luke 23:56; and [[Nicodemus]] "brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes," and "wound" the body "in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury." &nbsp;John 19:39-40. In some instances, too, the later Jews embalmed a body in honey, after having covered it with wax. See ''Bissell, Bib. Antiq.'' </p>

<p> The art of preserving dead bodies from decay by means of antiseptic agents applied both externally and internally; although known to other people, <i> e. g </i> . the Peruvians, the art was chiefly practised among the Egyptians, and the practice of it dates back to 4000 B.C.; the thoroughness of the process depended on the money expended, but it usually involved the removal of the viscera, save the heart and kidneys, the extraction of the brain, the introduction of drugs to the cavities, and the pickling of the body in native carbonate of soda, and the wrapping of it in linen; experiments in embalming, more or less successful, have been made in recent times, and even still are. </p>

<p> '''''em''''' -'''''bam´ing''''' ( חנט , <i> '''''ḥānaṭ''''' </i> , "to spice"): Embalming. is mentioned in Scripture only in the cases of Jacob and Joseph (&nbsp;Genesis 50:2 f,26). It was a distinctly Egyptian invention and method of preserving the bodies of men and animals. Examples of it reach back to over 3,000 years ago. It prevailed to some extent among the peoples of Asia, and at a later period among the [[Greeks]] and Romans, but was in origin and use distinctly non-Israelitish. See Burial . </p>

<p> Embalming [BURIAL] </p>