Nor does the testimony of Diodorus, that Attica was originally an Egyptian colony[88], seem to be here of any weight.
The inscription of the Mummy might indeed admit of Kircherian, or such like conjectures, were the Mummy itself of the antiquity pretended by Kircher. Cambyses, the conqueror of Egypt, partly exiled, and partly killed the priests; from which fact Kircher confidently deduces as consequences, the total abolition of the sacred rites, and from that the ceasing to embalm bodies. He again appeals to a passage of Herodotus[89], which, upon his word alone, others have as confidently quoted. Nay, a certain pedant went so far as to pretend, that the Egyptian custom of painting their dead, upon the varnished linnen of the Mummies, ceased with the epoch of Cyrus[90].
But Herodotus says not a word, either of the total abolition of the sacred rites, or of the abolition of the custom of preserving the dead from putrefaction, after the time of Cambyses; nor does Diodorus Siculus give any such hint: we may, on the contrary, from his account of the funeral rites of the Egyptians, rather conclude, that this custom prevailed even in his time; that is to say, when Egypt was changed into a Roman province.
Hence it cannot be demonstrated that our Mummy was embalmed before the Persian conquest.—But supposing it to be of that date, is it a necessary consequence that a body preserved in the Egyptian manner, or even taken care of by their priests, should be marked with Egyptian words?
Perhaps it is the body of some naturalised Ionian or Carian. We know that Pythagoras entered into the Egyptian confession; nay, even consented to be circumcised[91], in order to shorten his way to the mysteries of their priests. The Carians themselves observed the sacred solemnities of Isis, and even went so far in their superstition, as to mangle their faces during the sacrifices offered to that deity[92].
Change the letter ι, in the inscription, into the diphthong ει, and you have a Greek word: such negligences are often to be met with in Greek marbles[93], and still more in Greek manuscripts; and with the same termination it is to be found on a gem, and signifies, “FAREWELL”[94], which was the usual ejaculation addressed by the living to the deceased; the same we meet with on ancient epitaphs[95]; public decrees[96]; and of letters it was the final conclusion[97].