Whenever the word mummy is mentioned almost everybody thinks of Egypt
and the ancient embalmers, with their tedious processes and costly
ceremonials. The term does include the Egyptian prepared bodies, but it
does not exclude some found elsewhere. Indeed, in Washington, there will
be seen in close proximity, in the Smithsonian building, an exceedingly
dry company, made up of individuals from Alaska, Arizona, Mexico,
Kentucky, Peru, and Egypt.
Whoever has marked the tender solicitude with which the things around us
seem to beckon us in this way or in that will understand that even the
disposal of the dead has been influenced by such suggestions. Passing
through a dense forest one seems to hear the branches and undergrowth
say: “Come this way, pass along here, we are opening to make way for
you.” Well, it is so in every human art; natural objects supply the
materials, the tools, and suggest the simplest forms. There can be no
potters where there is no clay, no chipped arrow heads where there is
no stone to flake, no wood carving in the arctic regions where grows no
timber. Yet the good people in all these places have arts, they make
excellent baskets in which they carry water and boil their meat, polished
spearheads and axes of volcanic stone, and most delicate carvings in
ivory or antler.
As to the disposal of the dead in different regions and ages, all we
have space to say is that the voices of nature around each people have
told them how to perform this sad rite. In the frozen regions, where the
ground is never thawed, no graves are dug. By the seaside the primitive
fisherman is launched upon the wide expanse in his own canoe. In rocky
regions cairns and cists conceal the wasting form. On the soft prairie
mounds cover the dead out of sight. In those arid regions where the
rainfall does not affect the atmosphere to any extent the process of
desiccation takes place more rapidly than chemical changes. The water,
which forms the greater part of the human body, soon removes and leaves
but a few pounds of bones, dried flesh and skin. This may be called
natural mummification, the process of which is aided either by extreme
cold, extreme aridity, or preservative elements in the soil.
In the National Museum there is the body of a little boy, lying on his
back, his feet drawn up, and all sorts of curious relics hanging in the
case with him. The body was discovered in one of the cliff ruins of the
Cañon de Chelly, Arizona. The particular ruin referred to is on a benched
recess, seventy-five feet above the cañon, and extends backward about
thirty feet. The ancient Pueblo people, driven by some invading force,
constructed their cliff houses along only a part of this bench. About
fifty feet from the walls Mr. Thomas Kearn found a little oven-like
cist composed of angular bowlders laid in clay. The rooflet consisted
of sticks supporting stones and clay. At the bottom lay the little
child, and the remains of other burials, together with grave deposits.
Here, in this last resting place, the waters escaped so quickly and so
quietly from the body that even the form of life was not disturbed nor
any chemical changes awakened. So perfectly dried is this little fellow
that even the coatings of the eye remain. This is natural embalmment
by desiccation simply. In the Peabody Museum, at Cambridge, are dried
bodies from Mexico, preserved in the same manner. Around them were their
clothing and utensils, silent and patient watchers, waiting all these
centuries to give in evidence as to how those dead people dressed, ate,
drank, worked, and warred.
In the palmy days of our grandparents there was a desiccated body
discovered in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. This, also, has had the good
fortune, after many peregrinations, to find its way into the Smithsonian.
Now, Mammoth Cave is a damp place, but the earth accumulated on the floor
is in places full of nitrous and other preservative salts. Indeed, the
Kentucky cave subject may be called a natural pickle.
To Mr. William H. Dall we are indebted for bringing to light mummies
from the frozen regions. At the time of their discovery by the Russians,
the Aleuts of Unalashka had a process of mummification peculiar to
themselves. Mr. Dall informs us that they eviscerated the bodies of
those held in honor, removed the fatty matter, placed them for some
time in running water, and then lashed them into as compact a bundle as
possible. A line was placed around the neck and under the knees, to draw
them up to the chin. If any part stuck out, the bones were broken so
as to facilitate the consolidation. After this the body was thoroughly
dried and packed in a wooden crate, wrapped round and round with seal,
sea-otter, and other precious furs, enough to make a fashionable belle’s
head swim. Over these were wrapped coarser skins, waterproof cloth of
intestines, and fine grass mats. This crate was slung to upright poles,
or hung, like a wall-pocket, to a peg driven into a crevice in some cave.
In 1874 Captain E. Hennig, of the Alaska Commercial Company’s service,
found in a cave on the island of Kagamil, near Unalashka, a number of
these framed mummies, all but two of which the company presented to the
Smithsonian Institution.
The Egypt of America for mummies is Peru. Scarcely a museum in the world
is without its dried dogs, guinea pigs, parrots, and human beings wrapped
in costly cloths, and the last mentioned wearing the greatest profusion
of gold and silver jewelry. Along with these bodies are found corn,
beans, peanuts; pottery, gourds, and silver vases; pillows, haversacks
and masks; knives, war clubs and spearheads; needles, distaffs, spindles,
work-baskets and musical cradles. Thousands and thousands of the most
interesting things turn up, almost as expressive of ancient Peruvian life
as was the library of Sennacherib, exhumed by Layard at Kouyunjik, of
Assyrian life.
Beyond the care of the Peruvians and Bolivians in the clothing and
encysting of the dead, it is almost certain that they left them to the
atmosphere to manipulate. The work was done most effectually. Nothing
can be dryer than a Peruvian mummy. It is perfectly useless to dust the
cases containing them, and those who handle them are in a steady sneeze,
as though invisible spirits, filled with indignation, held impalpable
snuff-boxes to the nose. It is still more wonderful that insects have not
done their destructive work upon these bodies. The wrappings doubtless
were so securely made as to prevent their inroads, and must have
contained some substance to keep them away.
In the National Museum, finally, are two Egyptian mummies. It is hard to
tell how they got into such outlandish boxes and mountings. There they
stand, nailed and screwed into narrow, white boxes, side by side, with
mouths open, as if Pompeian convulsions had seized and embalmed them by
instantaneous mummification just as the curtain was falling on a grand
duet. Now, these two bodies were really embalmed (embalsamed); all the
other mummies were simply dried up.
The Egyptians, Peruvians, and perhaps the Alaskans preserved the bodies
as integral parts of the individual, that would be needed again. The
others simply dried up, their depositors cherishing no belief in the
resurrection of the body.