How Do the Empirical Findings Stand Up?

The heart was noted as intact in only 21 of 80 individuals where this organ's disposition was recorded. Only one case was the heart possibly sewn back into place. And in one other case was a heart scarab present, presumably to replace the removed heart. Heart retention predominates in the small number of samples we have from the middle and new kingdoms. But then as time goes on it is outnumbered by heart removals in the third intermediate period, the late period, and the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.