The Egyptian embalmers relied on the preservative properties of common salt, wine, aromatics, myrrh, cassia, etc. By the use of linen smeared with gum they excluded all putrefactive agencies. They understood the virtue of extreme dryness in the exercise of their antiseptic art. Some knowledge of anatomy was involved in the removal of the viscera, and much more in a particular method they followed in removing the brain.
In their various industries the Egyptians made use of gold, silver, bronze (which on analysis is found to consist of copper, tin, and a trace of lead, etc.), metallic iron and copper and their oxides, manganese, cobalt, alum, cinnabar, indigo, madder, brass, white lead, lampblack. There is clear evidence that they smelted iron ore as early as 3400 B.C. maintaining a blast by means of leather tread-bellows. They also contrived to temper the metal, and to make helmets, swords, lance-points, ploughs, tools, and other implements of iron. Besides metallurgy they practiced the arts of weaving, dyeing, distillation. They produced soap (from soda and oil), transparent and colored glass, enamel, and ceramics. They were skilled in the preparation of leather. They showed aptitude for painting, and for the other fine arts. They were expert builders, and possessed the engineering skill to erect obelisks weighing hundreds of tons. They cultivated numerous vegetables, grains, fruits, and flowers. They had many domestic animals. In seeking the satisfaction of their practical needs they laid the foundation of geometry, botany, chemistry (named, as some think, from the Egyptian Khem, the god of medicinal herbs), and other sciences. But their practical achievements far transcended their theoretical formulations. To all time they will be known as an artistic, noble, and religious people, who cherished their dead and would not allow that the good and beautiful and great should altogether pass away.
Excavations in Assyria and Babylonia, especially since 1843, have brought to our knowledge an ancient culture stretching back four or five thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era. The records of Assyria and Babylonia, like those of Egypt, are fragmentary and still in need of interpretation. Here again, however, it is the fundamental, the indispensable, the practical forms of knowledge that stand revealed rather than the theoretical, speculative, and purely intellectual.