Jacob and Joseph were both embalmed in Egypt, but we do not read that it was ever practiced by the children of Israel (Gen. 50:2-3,26). The historians Herodotus and Diodorus describe the process of embalming in Egypt. There were several modes according to the rank of the deceased, or according to what the relatives could afford to pay. In short it may be said that the body lay in niter thirty days, for the purpose of drying up all its superfluous and noxious moisture, the brain and bowels being sometimes extracted; and then for forty days more it was anointed with gums and spices to preserve it. When this was complete it was wrapped round with many bandages, and finally put in a case somewhat resembling the person. In many museums Egyptian mummies may be seen, and the marvelous preservation of the body be attested.
Among the Jews the body was merely wrapped round with bandages with a quantity of spices enclosed. Asa was laid “in the bed which was filled with sweet odors and divers kinds of spices prepared by the apothecaries’ art” (2 Chron. 16:14). Nicodemus furnished “a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight,” and they wound the body of Jesus “in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury” (John 19:39-40).