The Egyptian Book of the dead by P. Le Page Renouf and Edouard Naville

Breeze_, or _that I may have enjoyment_. The oldest meaning of the word _artery_, ἀρτηρία, in Hippocrates, Aristotle and the earlier Latin writers is _wind-pipe_, and, in the plural, _air-ducts_. But, even when the word was also applied to what we call arteries, these were supposed to convey _air_ whilst the veins conveyed _blood_. “Sanguis per venas in omne corpus diffunditur et spiritus per arterias” is the classic doctrine in Cicero (_de Natura Deorum_, 2, 55). Pliny says (_Nat. Hist._, XI, 89), “arteriae carent sensu: nam et sanguine.” This error is corrected by Galen, who has a treatise on the question “Whether Blood is _naturally_ (κὰτα φύσιν) contained in the arteries?” The error of the ancients arose from the arteries always being found empty after death. The blood flowing from a wound inflicted upon them was inferred to have been intruded into them by the rupture of the veins. The Egyptian doctrine of the ‘arteries’ ⁂⁂⁂ (Coptic ϩⲁⲛⲙⲟⲩⲧ) in the head, by means of which air is conveyed to all parts of the person, was first found by M. Chabas in the _Berlin Medical papyrus_. The passage of the Book of the Dead on which this note is written is no doubt the earliest allusion to the doctrine.