Chapter XII: Front Matter (12)

EMBALMING (Gr. [Greek: balsamon], balsam; Ger. _Einbalsamiren_; Fr. _embaumement_), the art of preparing dead bodies, chiefly by the use of medicaments, in order to preserve them from putrefaction and the attacks of insects. The ancient Egyptians carried the art to great perfection, and embalmed not only human beings, but cats, crocodiles, ichneumons, and other sacred animals. It was at one time suggested that the origin of embalming in Egypt was to be traced to a want of fuel for the purpose of cremation, to the inadvisability or at some times impossibility of burial in a soil annually disturbed by the inundation of the Nile, and to the necessity, for sanitary reasons, of preventing the decomposition of the bodies of the dead when placed in open sepulchres. As, however, the corpses of the embalmed must have constituted but a small proportion of the aggregate mass of animal matter daily to be disposed of, the above explanation would in any case be far from satisfactory; and there is no doubt (see MUMMY) that embalming originated in the idea of preserving the body for a future life. According to W.H. Prescott, it was a belief in a resurrection of the body that led the ancient Peruvians to preserve the air-dried corpses of their dead with so much solicitude (see _Conquest of Peru_, bk. i. chap. iii.). And J.C. Prichard (_Egyptian Mythology_, p. 200) properly compared the Egyptian practice with the views which rendered "the Greeks and Romans so anxious to perform the usual rites of sepulture to their departed warriors, namely, ... that these solemnities expedited the journey of the soul to the appointed region, where it was to receive judgment for its former deeds, and to have its future doom fixed accordingly." It has been supposed by some that the discovery of the preservation of bodies interred in saline soils may have been the immediate origin of embalming in Egypt. In that country certain classes of the community were specially appointed for the practice of the art. Joseph, we are told in Gen. l. 2, "commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father."

Herodotus (ii. 86) gives an account of three of the methods of embalming followed by the Egyptians. The most expensive of these, which cost a talent of silver (L243: 15s.), was as follows. The brains were in part removed through the nostrils by means of a bent iron implement, and in part by the injection of drugs. The intestines having been drawn out through an incision in the left side, the abdomen was cleansed with palm-wine, and filled with myrrh, cassia and other materials, and the opening was sewed up. This done, the body was steeped seventy days in a solution of litron or natron.[1] Diodorus (i. 91) relates that the cutter ([Greek: paraschistes]) appointed to make the incision in the flank for the removal of the intestines, as soon as he had performed his office, was pursued with stones and curses by those about him, it being held by the Egyptians a detestable thing to commit any violence or inflict a wound on the body. After the steeping, the body was washed, and handed over to the swathers, a peculiar class of the lowest order of priests, called by Plutarch _cholchytae_, by whom it was bandaged in gummed cloth; it was then ready for the coffin. Mummies thus prepared were considered to represent Osiris. In another method of embalming, costing twenty-two minae (about L90), the abdomen was injected with "cedar-tree pitch" ([Greek: kedria]), which, as it would seem from Pliny (_Nat. Hist._ xvi. 21), was the liquid distillate of the pitch-pine. This is stated by Herodotus to have had a corrosive and solvent action on the viscera. After injection the body was steeped a certain number of days in natron; the contents of the abdomen were allowed to escape; and the process was then complete. The preparation of the bodies of the poorest consisted simply in placing them in natron for seventy days, after a previous rinsing of the abdomen with "syrmaea." The material principally used in the costlier modes of embalming appears to have been asphalt; wax was more rarely employed. In some cases embalming seems to have been effected by immersing the body in a bath of molten bitumen. Tanning also was resorted to. Occasionally the viscera, after treatment, were in part or wholly replaced in the body, together with wax figures of the four genii of Amenti. More commonly they were embalmed in a mixture of sand and asphalt, and buried in vases, or _canopi_, placed near the mummy, the abdomen being filled with chips and sawdust of cedar and a small quantity of natron. In one jar were placed the stomach and large intestine; in another, the small intestines; in a third, the lungs and heart; in a fourth, the gall-bladder and liver. Porphyry (_De abstinentia_, iv. 10) mentions a custom of enclosing the intestines in a box and consigning them to the Nile, after a prayer uttered by one of the embalmers, but his statement is regarded by Sir J.G. Wilkinson as unworthy of belief. The body of Nero's wife Poppaea, contrary to the usage of the Romans, was not burnt, but as customary among other nations with the bodies of potentates, was honoured with embalmment (see Tacitus, _Ann._ xvi. 6). The body of Alexander the Great is said to have been embalmed with honey (Statius, _Silv._ iii. 2. 117), and the same material was used to preserve the corpse of Agesipolis I. during its conveyance to Sparta for burial. Herodotus states (iii. 24) that the Ethiopians, in embalming, dried the body, rubbed it with gypsum (or chalk), and, having painted it, placed it in a block of some transparent substance. The Guanches, the aborigines of the Canaries, employed a mode of embalming similar to that of the Egyptians, filling the hollow caused by the removal of the viscera with salt and an absorbent vegetable powder (see Bory de Saint Vincent, _Essais sur les Iles Fortunees_, 1803, p. 495). Embalming was still in vogue among the Egyptians in the time of St Augustine, who says that they termed mummies _gabbarae_ (_Serm._ 120, cap. 12).

In modern times numerous methods of embalming have been practised. Dr Frederick Ruysch of Amsterdam (1665-1717) is said to have utilized alcohol for this purpose. By William Hunter essential oils, alcohol, cinnabar, camphor, saltpetre and pitch or rosin were employed, and the final desiccation of the body was effected by means of roasted gypsum placed in its coffin. J.P. Boudet (1778-1849) embalmed with tan, salt, asphalt and Peruvian bark, camphor, cinnamon and other aromatics and corrosive sublimate. The last-mentioned drug, chloride and sulphate of zinc, acetate and sulphate of alumina, and creasote and carbolic acid have all been recommended by various modern embalmers.

See MUMMY; Louis Penicher, _Traite des embaumements_ (Paris, 1669); S.
Blancard, _Anatomia reformata, et de balsamatione nova methodus_
(Lugd. Bat., 1695); Thomas Greenhill, _The Art of Embalming_ (London,
1705); J.N. Marjolin, _Manuel d'anatomie_ (Paris, 1810); Pettigrew,
_History of Mummies_ (London, 1834); Gannal, _Traite d'embaumements_
(Paris, 1838; 2nd ed., 1841); Magnus, _Das Einbalsamiren der Leichen_
(Brunsw., 1839); Sucquet, _Embaumement_ (Paris, 1872); Lessley,
_Embalming_ (Toledo, Ohio, 1884); Myers, _Textbook of Embalming_
(Springfield, Ohio, 1900); Rawlinson, _Herodotus_, vol. ii. p. 141; G.
Elliot Smith, _A Contribution to the Study of Mummification in Egypt_
(Cairo, 1906).

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Neutral carbonate of sodium, Na2CO3, found at the natron lakes in
the Libyan desert, and at El Hegs, in Upper Egypt.

EMBANKMENT, in engineering, a mound of earth or stone, usually narrow in comparison with its length, artificially raised above the prevailing level of the ground. Embankments serve for two main classes of purpose. On the one hand, they are used to preserve the level of railways, canals and roads, in cases where a valley or piece of low-lying ground has to be crossed. On the other, they are employed to stop or limit the flow of water, either constituting the retaining wells of reservoirs constructed in connexion with water-supply schemes, or protecting low-lying tracts of land from river floods or the encroachments of the sea. The word embankment has thus come to be used for the mass of material, faced and supported by a stone wall and protected by a parapet, placed along the banks of a river where it passes through a city, whether to guard against floods or to gain additional space. Such is the Thames Embankment in London, which carries a broad roadway, while under it runs the Underground railway. In this sense an embankment is distinguished from a quay, though the mechanical construction may be the same, the latter word being confined to places where ships are loaded and unloaded, thus differing from the French _quai_, which is used both of embankments and quays, e.g. the _Quais_ along the Seine at Paris.

EMBARGO (a Spanish word meaning "stoppage"), in international law, the detention by a state of vessels within its ports as a measure of public, as distinguished from private, utility. In practice it serves as a mode of coercing a weaker state. In the middle ages war, being regarded as a complete rupture between belligerent states, operated as a suspension of all respect for the person and property of private citizens; an article of Magna Carta (1215) provided that "... if there shall be found any such merchants in our land in the beginning of a war, they shall be attached, without damage to their bodies or goods, until it may be known unto us, or our Chief Justiciary, how our merchants are treated who happen to be in the country which is at war with us; and if ours be safe there, theirs shall be safe in our lands" (art. 48).

Embargoes in anticipation of war have long since fallen into disuse, and it is now customary on the outbreak of war for the belligerents even to grant a respite to the enemy's trading vessels to leave their ports at the outbreak of war, so that neither ship nor cargo is any longer exposed to embargo. This has been confirmed in one of the Hague Conventions of 1907 (convention relative to the status of enemy merchant ships at the outbreak of hostilities, Oct. 18, 1907), which provides that "when a merchant ship belonging to one of the belligerent powers is at the commencement of hostilities in an enemy port, _it is desirable_ that it should be allowed to depart freely, either immediately, or after a reasonable number of days of grace, and to proceed, after being furnished with a pass, direct to its port of destination, or any other port indicated" (art. 1). The next article of the same convention limits the option apparently granted by the use of the word "desirable," providing that "a merchant ship unable, owing to circumstances of _force majeure_, to leave the enemy port within the period contemplated (in the previous article), or which was not allowed to leave, _cannot_ be confiscated. The belligerent may only detain it, without compensation, but subject to the obligation of restoring it after the war, or requisition it on payment of compensation" (art. 2). (T. Ba.)

EMBASSY, the office of an ambassador, or, more generally, the mission on which an ambassador of one power is sent to another, or the body of official personages attached to such a mission, whether temporary or permanent. Hence "embassy" is often quite loosely used of any mission, diplomatic or otherwise. The word is also used of the official residence of an ambassador. "Embassy" was originally "ambassy," the form used in the 17th century, but by the time of Johnson considered quite obsolete. "Ambassy" is from the O. Fr. _ambassee_, derived through such forms as the Port. _ambassada_, Ital. _ambasciata_ from a lost Med. Lat. _ambactiata_, _ambactiare_, to go on a mission. (See further AMBASSADOR, EXTERRITORIALITY and DIPLOMACY.)

EMBER DAYS and EMBER WEEKS, the four seasons set apart by the Western Church for special prayer and fasting, and the ordination of clergy, known in the medieval Church as _quatuor tempora_, or _jejunia quatuor temporum_. The Ember weeks are the complete weeks next following Holy Cross day (September 14), St Lucy's day (December 13), the first Sunday in Lent and Whitsun day. The Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays of these weeks are the Ember days distinctively, the following Sundays being the days of ordination. These dates are given in the following memorial distich with a frank indifference to quantity and metre--

"Vult Crux, Lucia, Cinis, Charismata dia
Quod det vota pia quarta sequens feria."

The word has been derived from the A.S. _ymb-ren_, a circuit or revolution (from _ymb_, around, and _rennen_, to run); or by process of agglutination and phonetic decay, exemplified by the Ger. _quatember_, Dutch _quatertemper_ and Dan. _kvatember_, from the Lat. _quatuor tempora_. The occurrence of the Anglo-Saxon compounds _ymbren-tid_, _ymbren-wucan_, _ymbren-faestan_, _ymbren-dagas_ for Ember tide, weeks, fasts, days, favours the former derivation, which is also confirmed by the use of the word _imbren_ in the acts of the council of Aenham, A.D. 1009 ("jejunia quatuor tempora quae _imbren_ vocant"). It corresponds also with Pope Leo the Great's definition, "jejunia ecclesiastica per totius anni circulum distributa."

The observance of the Ember days is confined to the Western Church, and had its origin as an ecclesiastical ordinance in Rome. They were probably at first merely the fasts preparatory to the three great festivals of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. A fourth was subsequently added, for the sake of symmetry, to make them correspond with the four seasons, and they became known as the _jejunium vernum_, _aestivum_, _autumnale_ and _hiemale_, so that, to quote Pope Leo's words, "the law of abstinence might apply to every season of the year." An earlier mention of these fasts, as four in number--the first known--is in the writings of Philastrius, bishop of Brescia, in the middle of the 4th century. He also connects them with the great Christian festivals (_De haeres._ 119). In Leo's time, A.D. 440-461, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday were already the days of special observance. From Rome the Ember days gradually spread through the whole of Western Christendom. Uniformity of practice, however, was of somewhat slow growth. Neither in Gaul nor Spain do they seem to have been generally recognized much before the 8th century. Their introduction into Britain appears to have been earlier, dating from Augustine, A.D. 597, acting under the authority of Gregory the Great. The general period of the four fasts being roughly fixed, the precise date appears to have varied considerably, and in some cases to have lost its connexion with the festivals altogether. The _Ordo Romanus_ fixes the spring fast in the first week of March (then the first month); the summer fast in the second week of June; the autumnal fast in the third week of September; and the winter fast in the complete week next before Christmas eve. Other regulations prevailed in different countries, until the inconveniences arising from the want of uniformity led to the rule now observed being laid down under Pope Urban II. as the law of the church, in the councils of Piacenza and Clermont, A.D. 1095.

The present rule which fixes the ordination of clergy in the Ember weeks cannot be traced farther back than the time of Pope Gelasius, A.D. 492-496. In the early ages of the church ordinations took place at any season of the year whenever necessity required. Gelasius is stated by ritual writers to have been the first who limited them to these particular times, the special solemnity of the season being in all probability the cause of the selection. The rule once introduced commended itself to the mind of the church, and its observance spread. We find it laid down in the pontificate of Archbishop Ecgbert of York, A.D. 732-766, and referred to as a canonical rule in a capitulary of Charlemagne, and it was finally established as a law of the church in the pontificate of Gregory VII., c. 1085.

AUTHORITIES.--Muratori, _Dissert. de jejun. quat. temp._, c. vii.,
anecdot. tom. ii. p. 262; Bingham, _Antiq. of the Christ. Church_, bk.
iv. ch. vi. S 6, bk. xxi. ch. ii. SS 1-7; Binterin,
_Denkwurdigkeiten_, vol. v. part 2, pp. 133 ff.; Augusti, _Handbuch
der christlich. Archaol._ vol. i. p. 465, iii. p. 486. (E. V.)

EMBEZZLEMENT (A.-Fr. _embesilement_, from _beseler_ or _besillier_, to destroy), in English law, a peculiar form of theft, which is distinguished from the ordinary crime in two points:--(1) It is committed by a person who is in the position of clerk or servant to the owner of the property stolen; and (2) the property when stolen is in the possession of such clerk or servant. The definition of embezzlement as a special form of theft arose out of the difficulties caused by the legal doctrine that to constitute larceny the property must be taken out of the possession of the owner. Servants and others were thus able to steal with impunity goods entrusted to them by their masters. A statute of Henry VIII. (1529) was passed to meet this case; and it enacted that it should be felony in servants to convert to their own use caskets, jewels, money, goods or chattels delivered to them by their masters. "This act," says Sir J.F. Stephen (_General View of the Criminal Law of England_), "assisted by certain subtleties according to which the possession of the servant was taken under particular circumstances to be the possession of the master, so that the servant by converting the goods to his own use took them out of his own possession _qua_ servant (which was his master's possession) and put them into his own possession _qua_ thief (which was a felony), was considered sufficient for practical purposes for more than 200 years." In 1799 a clerk who had converted to his own use a cheque paid across the counter to him by a customer of his master was held to be not guilty of felony; and in the same year an act was passed, which, meeting the difficulty in such cases, enacted that if any clerk or servant, or any person employed as clerk or servant, should, by virtue of such employment, receive or take into his possession any money, bonds, bills, &c., for or in the name or on account of his employers, and should fraudulently embezzle the same, every such offender should be deemed to have stolen the same. The same definition is substantially repeated in a Consolidation Act passed in 1827. Numberless difficulties of interpretation arose under these acts, e.g. as to the meaning of "clerk or servant," as to the difference between theft and embezzlement, &c.

The law now in force, or the Larceny Act 1861, defines the offence thus (section 68):--"Whosoever, being a clerk or servant, or being employed for the purpose or in the capacity of a clerk or servant, shall fraudulently embezzle any chattel, money or valuable security which shall be delivered to or received or taken into possession by him for or in the name or on the account of his master or employer, or any part thereof, shall be deemed to have feloniously stolen the same from his master or employer, although such chattel, money or security was not received into the possession of such master or employer otherwise than by the actual possession of his clerk, servant or other person so employed, and being convicted thereof shall be liable, at the discretion of the court, to be kept in penal servitude for any time not exceeding fourteen years, and not less than three years," or imprisonment with or without hard labour for not more than two years. To constitute the offence thus described three things must concur:--(1) The offender must be a clerk or servant; (2) he must receive into his possession some chattel on behalf of his master; and (3) he must fraudulently embezzle the same. A clerk or servant has been defined to be a person bound either by an express contract of service or by conduct implying such a contract to obey the orders and submit to the control of his master in the transaction of the business which it is his duty as such clerk or servant to transact. (Stephen's _Digest of the Criminal Law_, Art. 309.)

The Larceny Act 1901, amending sections 75 and 76 of the Larceny Act 1861, also describes similar offences on the part of persons, not being clerks or servants, to which the name embezzlement is not uncommonly applied. The act makes the offence of fraudulently misappropriating property entrusted to a person by another, or received by him on behalf of another a misdemeanour punishable by penal servitude for a term not exceeding seven years, or to imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for a term not exceeding two years. So also trustees fraudulently disposing of trust property, and directors of companies fraudulently appropriating the company's property or keeping fraudulent accounts, or wilfully destroying books or publishing fraudulent statements, are misdemeanants punishable in the same way.

In the United States the law of embezzlement is founded mainly on the English statute passed in 1799, but the statutes of most states are so framed that larceny includes embezzlement. The latter is sometimes denominated statutory larceny. The punishment varies in the different states, otherwise there is little substantive difference in the laws of the two countries.

Statutes have been passed in some states providing that one indicted for larceny may be convicted of embezzlement. But it is doubtful whether such statutes are valid where the constitution of the state provides that the accused must be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against him. (See also LARCENY.)

EMBLEM (Gr. [Greek: emblema], something put in or inserted, from [Greek: emballein], to throw in), a word originally applied in Greek and Latin (_emblema_) to a raised or inlaid ornament on vases and other vessels, &c., and also to mosaic or tessellated work. It is in English confined to a symbolical representation of some object, particularly when used as a badge or heraldic device.

EMBLEMENTS (from O. Fr. _emblavence de bled_, i.e. corn sprung up above ground), a term applied in English law to the corn and other crops of the earth which are produced annually, not spontaneously, but by labour and industry. Emblements belong therefore to the class of _fructus industriales_, or "industrial growing crops" (Sale of Goods Act 1893, S 62). They include not only corn and grain of all kinds, but everything of an artificial and annual profit that is produced by labour and manuring, e.g. hemp, flax, hops, potatoes, artificial grasses like clover, but not fruit growing on trees, which come under the general rule _quicquid plantatur solo, solo cedit_. Emblements are included within the definition of goods in s. 62 of the Sale of Goods Act 1893. Where an estate of uncertain duration terminates unexpectedly by the death of the tenant, or some other event due to no fault of his own, the law gives to the personal representative the profits of crops of this nature as compensation for the tilling, manuring and sowing of the land. If the estate, although of uncertain duration, is determined by the tenant's own acts, the right to emblements does not arise. The right to emblements has become of no importance in England since 1851, when it was provided by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1851 (s. 1) that any tenant at rack-rent, whose lease was determined by the death or cesser of the estate, of a landlord entitled only for his life, or for any other uncertain interest, shall, instead of emblements, be entitled to hold the lands until the expiration of the current year of his tenancy. The right to emblements still exists, however, in favour of (a) a tenant not within the Landlord and Tenant Act 1851, whose estate determines by an event which could not be foreseen, (b) the executor, as against the heir of the owner in fee of land in his own occupation, (c) an execution creditor under a writ directing seizure of goods and chattels. A person entitled to emblements may enter upon the lands after the determination of the tenancy for the purpose of cutting and carrying away the crops. Emblements are liable to distress by the landlord for arrears of rent, or rent during the period of holding on under the act of 1851 (the Distress for Rent Act 1737; see Bullen on _Distress_, 4th ed., 1893).

The term "emblements" is unknown in _Scots law_, but the heir or representative of a life-rent tenant, a liferenter of lands, has an analogous right to reap the crop (on paying a proportion of the rent) and a right to recompense for labour in tilling the ground. The Landlord and Tenant Act 1851 (s. 1) was in force in _Ireland_ till 1860, when it was replaced by the Land Act 1860, which gave to the tenant an almost identical right to emblements (s. 34).

In the _United States_ the English common law of emblements has been generally preserved. In North Carolina there has been legislation on the lines of the English Landlord and Tenant Act 1851. In some states the tenant is entitled to compensation also from the person succeeding to the possession.

Under the French Code Civil, the outgoing tenant is entitled to
convenient housing for the consumption of his fodder and for the
harvests remaining to be got in (art. 1777). The same rule is in force
in Belgium (Code Civil, art. 1777); and in Holland (Civil Code, art.
1635) and Spain (art. 1578). Similar rights are secured to the tenant
under the German Civil Code (arts. 592 et seq.). French law is in
force in Mauritius. The common law of England and the Landlord and
Tenant Act 1851 (14 & 15 Vict., c. 25, s. 1) are in force in many of
the British colonies acquired by settlement. In other colonies they
have been recognized by statute (e.g. Victoria, Landlord and Tenant