G. ELLIOT SMITH.

THE UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER, _July, 1915_.

_LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS._

Map 1. A rough chart of the geographical distribution of certain customs,

practices and traditions

Map 2. An attempt to represent roughly the areas more directly affected

by the “heliolithic” culture-complex, with arrows to indicate the

hypothetical routes taken in the migration of the culture-bearers who

were responsible for its diffusion

_Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. =10=._

X. On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of the Practice

of Mummification.—A Study of the Migrations of Peoples and the Spread of

certain Customs and Beliefs.

By Professor G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.

(_Read February 23rd, 1915. Received for publication April 6th, 1915._)

In entering upon the discussion of the geographical distribution

of the practice of mummification I am concerned not so much with

the origin and technical procedures of this remarkable custom. This

aspect of the problem I have already considered in a series of memoirs

(=75= to =89=[1]). I have chosen mummification rather as the most

peculiar, and therefore the most distinctive and obtrusive, element of

a very intimately interwoven series of strange customs, which became

fortuitously linked one with the other to form a definite culture-complex

nearly thirty centuries ago, and spread along the coast-lines of a

great part of the world, stirring into new and distinctive activity the

sluggish uncultured peoples which in turn were subjected to this exotic

leaven.

If one looks into the journals of anthropology and ethnology, there will

be found amongst the vast collections of information relating to man’s

activities a most suggestive series of facts concerning the migrations of

past ages and the spread of peculiar customs and beliefs.

[Illustration: _Map 1._—A rough chart of the geographical distribution

of certain customs, practices and traditions. [None of these areas of

distribution is complete. The map shows merely the data referred to in

this memoir or in the literature quoted in it.]]

If a map of the world is taken and one plots out (_Map I._) the

geographical distribution of such remarkable customs as the building

of megalithic monuments (see for example Lane Fox’s [Pitt Rivers’]

map, =20=), the worship of the sun and the serpent (=51=; =103=), the

custom of piercing the ears (see Park Harrison, =29=), tattooing (see

Miss Buckland, =10=), the practice of circumcision, the curious custom

known as couvade, the practice of massage, the complex story of the

creation, the deluge, the petrifaction of human beings, the divine origin

of kings and a chosen people sprung from an incestuous union (W. J.

Perry), the use of the swastika-symbol (see Wilson’s map, =105=), the

practice of cranial deformation, to mention only a few of the many that

might be enumerated, it will be found that in most respects the areas

in which this extraordinary assortment of bizarre customs and beliefs

is found coincide one with the other. In some of the series gaps occur,

which probably are more often due to lack of information on our part

than to real absence of the practice; in other places one or other of

the elements of this complex culture-mixture has overflowed the common

channel and broken into new territory. But considered in conjunction

these data enable us definitely and precisely to map out the route taken

by this peculiarly distinctive group of eccentricities of the human

mind. If each of them is considered alone there are many breaks in the

chain and many uncertainties as to the precise course: but when taken

together all of these gaps are bridged. Moreover, in most areas there are

traditions of culture-heroes, who brought in some or all of these customs

at one and the same time and also introduced a knowledge of agriculture

and weaving.

So far as I am aware no one hitherto has called attention to the fact

that the practice of mummification has a geographical distribution

exactly corresponding to the area occupied by the curious assortment of

other practices just enumerated. Not only so, but in addition it is

abundantly clear that the coincidence is not merely accidental. It is

due to the fact that in most regions the people who introduced the habit

of megalithic building and sun-worship (a combination for which it is

convenient to use Professor Brockwell’s distinctive term “heliolithic

culture”) also brought with them the practice of mummification at the

same time.

The custom of embalming the dead is in fact an integral part of the

“heliolithic culture,” and perhaps, as I shall endeavour to demonstrate,

its most important component. For this practice and the beliefs which

grew up in association with it were responsible for the development of

some of the chief elements of this culture-complex, and incidentally of

the bond of union with other factors not so intimately connected, in the

genetic sense, with it.

Before plunging into the discussion of the evidence provided by the

practice of mummification, it will be useful to consider for a moment the

geographical distribution of the other components of the “heliolithic

culture.” I need not say much about megalithic monuments, for I have

already considered their significance elsewhere (=90= to =96=); but I

should like once more specifically to call the attention of those who

are obsessed by theories of the independent evolution of such monuments,

and who scoff at Fergusson (=17=), to the memoirs of Lane Fox (=20=) and

Meadows Taylor (=100=). The latter emphasises in a striking manner the

remarkable identity of structure, not only as concerns the variety and

the general conception of such monuments, but also as regards trivial and

apparently unessential details. With reference to “the opinion of many,”

which has “been advanced as an hypothesis, that the common instincts of

humanity have suggested common methods of sepulture,” he justly remarks,

“I own this kind of vague generalisation does not satisfy me, in the face

of such exact points of similitude.... Such can hardly have been the

result of accident, or any common human instinct” (p. 173).

But it is not merely the identity of structure and the geographical

distribution (in most cases along continuous coast-lines or related

islands) that proves the common origin of megalithic monuments. It

is further strongly corroborated by a remarkable series of beliefs,

traditions and practices, many of them quite meaningless and

unintelligible to us, which are associated with such structures wherever

they are found. Stories of dwarfs and giants (=13=), the belief in

the indwelling of gods or great men in the stones, the use of these

structures in a particular manner for certain special councils (=20=, pp.

64 and 65), and the curious, and, to us, meaningless, practice of hanging

rags on trees in association with such monuments (=20=, pp. 63 and 64).

In reference to the last of these associated practices, Lane Fox remarks,

“it is impossible to believe that so singular a custom as this could have

arisen independently in all these countries.”

In an important article on “Facts suggestive of prehistoric intercourse

between East and West” (_Journ. Anthr. Inst._, Vol. 14, 1884, p. 227),

Miss Buckland calls attention to a remarkable series of identities of

customs and beliefs, and amongst them certain legends concerning the

petrification of _dance maidens_ associated with stone circles as far

apart as Cornwall and Peru.

Taking all of these facts into consideration, it is to me altogether

inconceivable how any serious enquirer who familiarises himself with the

evidence can honestly refuse to admit that the case for the spread of

the inspiration to erect megalithic monuments from one centre has been

proved by an overwhelming mass of precise and irrefutable data. But this

evidence does not stand alone. It is linked with scores of other peculiar

customs and beliefs, the testimony of each of which, however imperfect

and unconvincing some scholars may consider it individually, strengthens

the whole case by cumulation; and when due consideration is given to

the enormous complexity and artificiality of the cultural structure

compounded of such fantastic elements, these are bound to compel assent

to their significance, as soon as the present generation of ethnologists

can learn to forget the meaningless fetish to which at present it bends

the knee.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, we shut our ears to the voice of

common sense, and allow ourselves to be hypnotised into the belief that

some complex and highly specialised instinct (_i.e._ precisely the type

of instinct which real psychologists—not the ethnological variety—deny

to mankind) impelled groups of men scattered as far apart as Ireland,

India and Peru independently the one of the other to build mausolea of

the same type, to acquire similar beliefs regarding the petrifaction of

human beings, and many other extraordinary things connected with such

monuments, how is this “psychological explanation” going to help us to

explain why the wives of the builders of these monuments, whether in

Africa, Asia or America, should have their chins pricked and rubbed with

charcoal, or why they should circumcise their boys, or why they should

have a tradition of the deluge? Does any theory of evolution help in

explaining these associations? They are clearly fortuitous associations

of customs and beliefs, which have no inherent relationship one to the

other. They became connected purely by chance in one definite locality,

and the fact that such incongruous customs reappear in association in

distant parts of the globe is proof of the most positive kind that the

wanderings of peoples must have brought this peculiar combination of

freakish practices from the centre where chance linked them together.

Because it was the fashion among a particular group of megalith-builders

to tattoo the chins of their womenkind, the wanderers who carried abroad

the one custom also took the other: but there is no genetic or inherent

connection between megalith-building and chin-tattooing.

Such evidence is infinitely stronger and more convincing than that

afforded by one custom considered by itself, because in the former case

we are dealing with an association which is definitely and obviously

due to pure chance, such as the so-called psychological method, however

casuistical, is impotent to explain.

But the study of such a custom as tattooing, even when considered alone,

affords evidence that ought to convince most reasonable people of the

impossibility of it having independently arisen in different, widely

scattered, localities. The data have been carefully collected and

discussed with clear insight and common sense by Miss Buckland (=10=)

in an admirable memoir, which I should like to commend to all who still

hold to the meaningless dogma “of the similarity of the working of the

human mind” as an explanation of the identity of customs. Tattooing

is practised throughout the great “heliolithic” track. [Striking as

Miss Buckland’s map of distribution is as a demonstration of this, if

completed in the light of our present information, it would be even more

convincing, for she has omitted Libya, which so far as we know at present

may possibly have been the centre of origin of the curious practice.]

Tattooing of the chin in women is practised in localities as far apart as

Egypt, India, Japan, New Guinea, New Zealand, Easter Island and North

and South America.

Miss Buckland rightly draws the conclusion that “the wide distribution of

this peculiar custom is of considerable significance, especially as it

follows so nearly in the line” which she had “indicated in two previous

papers (=8= and =9=) as suggestive of a prehistoric intercourse between

the two hemispheres.... When we find in India, Japan, Egypt, New Guinea,

New Zealand, Alaska, Greenland and America, the custom of tattooing

carried out in precisely the same manner and for the same ends, and when

in addition to this we find a similarity in other ornaments, in weapons,

in games, in modes of burial, and many other customs, we think it may

fairly be assumed that they all derived these customs from a common

source, or that at some unknown period, some intercourse existed” (p.

326).

In the first of her memoirs (=8=) Miss Buckland calls attention to “the

curious connection between early worship of the serpent and a knowledge

of metals,” which is of peculiar interest in this discussion, because the

Proto-Egyptians, who were serpent-worshippers (_see_ Sethe, =74=), had

a knowledge of metals at a period when, so far as our present knowledge

goes, no other people had yet acquired it. Referring to the ancient

Indian Indra, the Chaldean Ea and the Mexican Quetzalcoatl, among other

gods, Miss Buckland remarks:—“The deities, kings and heroes who are

symbolised by the serpent are commonly described as the pioneers of

civilisation and the instructors of mankind in the arts of agriculture

and mining.”

Further, in an interesting article on “Stimulants in Use among Savages

and among the Ancients” (=9=), she tells us that “among aboriginal races

in a line across the Pacific, from Formosa on the West to Peru and

Bolivia on the East, a peculiar, and what would appear to civilised

races a disgusting mode of preparing fermented drinks, prevails,

the women being in all cases the chief manufacturers; the material

employed varying according to the state of agriculture in the different

localities, but the mode of preparation remaining virtually the same”

(=9=, p. 213).

If space permitted I should have liked to make extensive quotations from

Park Harrison’s most conclusive independent demonstration of the spread

of culture along the same great route, at which he arrived from the study

of the geographical distribution of the peculiar custom of artificially

distending the lobe of the ear (=29=). This practice was not infrequent

in Egypt (=79=) in the times of the new Empire, a fact which Harrison

seems to have overlooked: but he records it amongst the Greeks, Hebrews,

Etruscans, Persians, in Bœotia, Zanzibar, Natal, Southern India, Ceylon,

Assam, Aracan, Burma, Laos, Nicobar Islands, Nias, Borneo, China, Solomon

Islands, Admiralty Islands, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Pelew Islands,

Navigators Island, Fiji, Friendly Islands, Penrhyn, Society Islands,

Easter Island, Peru, Palenque, Mexico, Brazil and Paraguay. This is an

excellent and remarkably complete [if he had used the data now available

it might have been made even more complete] mapping out of the great

“heliolithic” track.

The identity of geographical distribution is no mere fortuitous

coincidence.

It is of peculiar interest that Harrison is able to demonstrate a linked

association between this custom and sun-worship in most of the localities

enumerated. In the figures illustrating his memoir other obvious

associations can be detected intimately binding it by manifold threads

into the very texture of the “heliolithic culture.” If to this we add the

fact that in many localities the design tattooed on the skin was the

sun, we further strengthen the woof of the closely woven fabric that is

gradually taking shape.

To these forty-year-old demonstrations let me add Wilson’s interesting

recent monograph on the swastika (=105=), which independently tells the

same story and blazens the same great track around the world (see his

map). He further calls attention to the close geographical association

between the distribution of the swastika and the spindle-whorl. By

attributing the introduction of weaving and the swastika into most

localities where they occur by the same culture-heroes he thereby adds

the swastika to the “heliolithic” outfit, for weaving already belongs to

it.

To these practices one might add a large series of others of a character

no less remarkable, such, for example, as circumcision, the practice of

massage (=57=, =67= and =11=), the curious custom known as _couvade_, all

of which are distributed along the great “heliolithic” pathway and belong

to the great culture-complex which travelled by it.

But there are several interesting bits of corroborative evidence that I

cannot refrain from mentioning.

One of the most carefully-investigated bonds of cultural connection

between the Eastern Mediterranean in Phœnician times and pre-Columbian

America (Tehuantepec) has recently been put on record by Zelia Nuttall

in her memoir on “a curious survival in Mexico of the use of the Purpura

shell-fish for dyeing” (=50=). After a very thorough and critical

analysis of all the facts of this truly remarkable case of transmission

of an extraordinary custom, Mrs. Nuttall justly concludes that “it seems

almost easier to believe that certain elements of an ancient European

culture were at one time, and perhaps once only, actually transmitted

by the traditional small band of ... Mediterranean seafarers, than to

explain how, under totally different conditions of race and climate, the

identical ideas and customs should have arisen” (pp. 383 and 384). Nor

does she leave us in any doubt as to the route taken by the carriers of

this practice. Found in association with it, both in the Old and the New

World, was the use of conch-shell trumpets and pearls. The antiquity of

these usages is proved by their representation in pre-Columbian pictures

or, in the case of the pearls, the finding of actual specimens in graves.

In Phœnician Greek, and later times these shell-trumpets were extensively

used in the Mediterranean: “European travellers have found them in actual

use in East India, Japan and, by the Alfurs, in Ceram, the Papuans of New

Guinea, as well as in the South Sea islands as far as New Zealand,” and

in many places in America (p. 378). “In the Old and the New World alike,

are found, in the same close association, (1) the purple industry and

skill in weaving; (2) the use of pearls and conch-shell trumpets; (3)

the mining, working and trafficking in copper, silver and gold; (4) the

tetrarchial form of government; (5) the conception of ‘Four Elements’;

(6) the cyclical form of calendar. Those scholars who assert that all

of the foregoing must have been developed independently will ever be

confronted by the persistent and unassailable fact that, throughout

America, the aborigines unanimously disclaim all share in their

production and assign their introduction to strangers of superior-culture

from distant and unknown parts” (p. 383).

Many other equally definite proofs might be cited of the transmission of

customs from the Old to the New World, of which the instance reported by

Tylor (=102=) is the classical example[2]; but I know of no other which

has been so critically studied and so fully recorded as Mrs. Nuttall’s

case.

But the difficulty may be raised—as in fact invariably happens when these

subjects come up for discussion—as to the means of transmission. Rivers

has explained what does actually happen in the contact of peoples (=68=)

and how a small group of wanderers bringing the elements of a higher

culture can exert a profound and far-reaching influence upon a large

uncultured population (=64= to =70=).

Lane-Fox’s [Pitt Rivers’] memoir “on Early Modes of Navigation” (=21=)

not only affords in itself an admirable summary of the definite evidence

for the spread of culture; but is also doubly valuable to us, because

incidentally it illustrates also the actual means by which the migrations

of the culture-bearers took place. The survival into modern times,

upon the Hooghly and other Indian rivers, of boats provided with the

fantastic steering arrangement used by the Ancient Egyptians 2000 years

B.C., is in itself a proof of ancient Egyptian influence in India; and

the contemporary practice of representing eyes upon the bow of the ship

enables us to demonstrate a still wider extension of that influence, for

in modern times that custom has been recorded as far apart as Malta,

India, China, Oceania and the North-West American coast.

But there is no difficulty about the question of the transmission of

such customs. Most scholars who have mastered the early history of some

particular area, in many cases those who most resolutely deny even the

possibility of the wider spread of culture, frankly admit—because it

would stultify their own localised researches to deny it—the intercourse

of the particular people in which they are interested and its neighbours.

Merely by using these links, forged by the reluctant hands of hostile

witnesses, it is possible to construct the whole chain needed for such

migrations as I postulate (see _Map II_.)

No one who reads the evidence collected by such writers as Ellis (=15=),

de Quatrefages (=60=) and Percy Smith (=98=)[3] can doubt the fact of

the extensive prehistoric migrations throughout the Pacific Ocean along

definitely known routes. Even Joyce (whose otherwise excellent summaries

of the facts relating to American archæology have been emasculated by his

refusal to admit the influence of the Old World upon American culture)

states that migrations from India extended to Indonesia (and Madagascar)

and all the islands of the Pacific; and even that “it is likely that the

coast of America was reached” (=61=, p. 119).[4]

There is no doubt as to the reality of the close maritime intercourse

between the Persian Gulf and India from the eighth century B.C. (=13=;

=14=; =51=; and =101=); and of course it is a historical fact that the

Mediterranean littoral and Egypt had been in intimate connexion with

Babylonia for some centuries before, and especially after, that time.

[Illustration: _Map 2._—An attempt to represent roughly the areas more

directly affected by the “heliolithic” culture-complex, with arrows

to indicate the hypothetical routes taken in the migrations of the

culture-bearers who were responsible for its diffusion.]

In the face of this overwhelming mass of definite evidence of the reality

not only of the spread of culture and its carriers, but also of the

ways and the means by which it travelled, it will naturally be asked

how it has come to pass that there is even the shadow of a doubt as to

the migrations which distributed this “heliolithic” culture-complex

so widely in the world. It cannot be explained by lack of knowledge,

for most of the facts that I have enumerated are taken bodily from the

anthropological journals of forty or more years ago.

The explanation is to be found, I believe, in a curious psychological

process incidental to the intensive study of an intricate problem.

As knowledge increased and various scholars attempted to define the

means by (and the time at) which the contacts of various peoples took

place, difficulties were revealed which, though really trivial, were

magnified into insuperable obstacles. All of these real difficulties were

created by mistaken ideas of the relative chronology of the appearance

of civilisation in various centres, and especially by the failure to

realise that useful arts were often lost. For example, if on a certain

mainland _A_ two practices, _a_ and _b_—one of them, _a_, a useful

practice, say the making of pottery; the other, _b_, a useless custom,

say the preservation of the corpse—were developed, and _a_ was at least

as old, or preferably definitely older than _b_, it seemed altogether

inconceivable to the ethnologist if an island _B_ was influenced by the

culture of the mainland _A_, at some time after the practices _a_ and _b_

were in vogue, that it might, under any conceivable circumstances, fail

to preserve the useful art _a_, even though it might allow the utterly

useless practice _b_ to lapse. Therefore it was argued that, if the later

inhabitants of _B_ mummified their dead, but did not make pottery, this

was clear evidence that they could not have come under the influence of

_A_.

But the whole of the formidable series of obstacles raised by this

kind of argument has been entirely swept away by Dr. Rivers, who has

demonstrated how often it has happened that a population has completely

lost some useful art which it once had, and even more often clung to some

useless practice (=65=).

The remarkable feature of the present state of the discussion is that,

in spite of Rivers’ complete demolition of these difficulties (=65=),

most ethnologists do not seem to realise that there is now a free scope

for taking a clear and common-sense view of the truth, unhindered by

any obstructions. It is characteristic of the history of scientific,

no less than of theological argument, that the immediate effect of the

destruction of the foundations of cherished beliefs is to make their

more fanatical votaries shout their creed all the louder and more

dogmatically, and hurl anathemas at those who dissent.

This is the only explanation I can offer of the remarkable presidential

address delivered by Fewkes to the Anthropological Society of Washington

in 1912 (=18=), Keane’s incoherent recklessness[5] (=41=, pp. 140, 218,

219, and 367 to 370), and the amazing criticisms which during the last

four years I have had annually to meet. There is no attempt at argument,

but mere dogmatic and often irrelevant assertions. The constant appeal

to the meaningless phrase “the similarity of the working of the human

mind”[6] (=18=), as though it were a magical incantation against logical

induction, and harping on the so-called “psychological argument” (=41=),

which is directly opposed to the teaching of psychology, are the only

excuses one can obtain from the “orthodox” ethnologist for this obstinate

refusal to face the issue. Of course it is a historical fact that the

discussions of the theory of evolution inclined ethnologists during the

last century the more readily to accept the _laisser faire_ attitude, and

put an end to all their difficulties by the pretence that most cultures

developed independently _in situ_. It is all the more surprising that

Huxley took some small part in encouraging this lapse into superficiality

and abuse of the evolution conception, when it is recalled that, as Sir

Michael Foster tells us, the then President of the Ethnological Society

“made himself felt in many ways, not the least by the severity with which

he repressed the pretensions of shallow persons who, taking advantage of

the glamour of the Darwinian doctrine, talked nonsense in the name of

anthropological science” (“Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley,” Vol.

I., p. 263).

It is a singular commentary on the attitude of the “orthodox” school

of ethnologists that, when pressed to accept the obvious teaching of

ethnological evidence, they should desert the strong intrenchments

which the difficulties of full and adequate explanation have afforded

them in the past, and take refuge behind the straw barricades of

imaginary psychological and biological analogies, which they have hastily

constructed for their own purposes, and in flagrant defiance of all that

the psychologist understands by the phrase “working of the human mind,”

if perchance he is ever driven to employ this expression, or the meaning

attached by the biologist to “evolution.”

It is not sufficient proof of my thesis, however, merely to expose the

hollowness of the pretensions of one’s opponents, nor even to show the

identity of geographical distribution and the linking up of customs to

form the “heliolithic” culture-complex. Many writers have dimly realised

that some such spread of culture took place, but by misunderstanding

the nature of the factors that came into play or the chronology of

the movements they were discussing (see especially Macmillan Brown’s

(=7=) and Enoch’s (=16=) books, to mention the latest, but by no means

the worst offenders), have brought discredit upon the thesis I am

endeavouring to demonstrate.

Another danger has arisen out of the revulsion against Bastian’s old

idea of independent evolution by his fellow-countrymen Frobenius,

Graebner, Ankermann, Foy and others, with the co-operation of the

Austrian philologist, Schmidt, and the Swiss ethnologist, Montandon

(who has summarised the views of the new school in the first part of

the new journal, _Archives suisses d’Anthropologie générale_, May,

1914, p. 113); for they have rushed to the other extreme, and, relying

mainly upon objects of “material culture,” have put forward a method of

analysis and postulated a series of migrations for which the evidence

is very doubtful. Rivers (=64=) has pointed out the unreliability of

such inferences when unchecked by the consideration of elements of

culture which are not so easily bartered or borrowed as bows and spears.

He has insisted upon the fundamental importance of the study of social

organisation as supplying the most stable and trustworthy data for the

analysis of a culture-complex and an index of racial admixture. The

study of such a practice as mummification, the influence of which is

deep-rooted in the innermost beliefs of the people who resort to it,

affords data almost as reliable as Rivers’ method; for the subsequent

account will make it abundantly clear that the practice of embalming

leaves its impress upon the burial customs of a people long ages after

other methods of disposal of their dead have been adopted.

I have been led into this digression by attempting to make it clear that

the mere demonstration of the identity of geographical distribution

and the linking together of a series of cultural elements by no means

represents the solution of the main problem.

What has still to be elucidated is the manner and the place in which the

complex fabric of the “heliolithic” culture was woven, the precise epoch

in which it began to be spread abroad and the identity of its carriers,

the influences to which it was subjected on the way, and the additions,

subtractions and modifications which it underwent as the result.

Although I have now collected many of the data for the elucidation of

these points, the limited space at my disposal compels me to defer for

the present the consideration of the most interesting aspect of the whole

problem, the identity of the early mariners who were the distributors

of so strange a cargo. It was this aspect of the question which first

led me into the controversy; but I shall be able to deal with it more

conveniently when the ethnological case has been stated. The enormous

bulk of the data that have accumulated compels me to omit a large mass of

corroborative evidence of an ethnological nature; but no doubt there will

be many opportunities in the near future for using up this reserve of

ammunition.

Before setting out for the meeting of the British Association in

Australia last year I submitted the following abstract of a communication

(=96=) to be made to the Section of Anthropology:—

“After dealing with the evidence from the resemblances in the physical

characteristics of widely separated populations—such, for instance, as

certain of the ancient inhabitants of Western Asia on the one hand, and

certain Polynesians on the other—suggesting far-reaching prehistoric

migrations, the distribution of certain peculiarly distinctive practices,

such as mummification and the building of megalithic monuments, is made

use of to confirm the reality of such wanderings of peoples.

“I have already (at the Portsmouth, Dundee, and Birmingham meetings)

dealt with the problem as it affects the Mediterranean littoral and

Western Europe. On the present occasion I propose to direct attention

mainly to the question of the spread of culture from the centres of the

ancient civilisations along the Southern Asiatic coast and from there

out into the Pacific. From the examination of the evidence supplied by

megalithic monuments and distinctive burial customs, studied in the light

of the historical information relating to the influence exerted by Arabia

and India in the Far East, one can argue by analogy as to the nature of

migrations in the even more remote past to explain the distribution of

the earliest peoples dwelling on the shores of the Pacific.

“Practices such as mummification and megalith-building present so many

peculiar and distinctive features that no hypothesis of independent

evolution can seriously be entertained in explanation of their

geographical distribution. They must be regarded as evidence of the

diffusion of information, and the migrations of bearers of it, from

somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Eastern Mediterranean, step by step

out into Polynesia, and even perhaps beyond the Pacific to the American

littoral.”

At that time it was my intention further to develop the arguments from

megalithic monuments which I had laid before the Association at the three

preceding meetings and elsewhere (=90=; =91=; =92=; =93=; and especially

=94=); and endeavour to prove that the structure and the geographical

distribution of these curious memorials pointed to the spread of a

distinctive type of culture along the Southern Asiatic littoral, through

Indonesia and Oceania to the American Continent. The geographical

distribution of the practice of mummification was to have been used

merely as a means of corroboration of what I then imagined to be the more

complete megalithic record, and of emphasizing the fact that Egypt had

played some part at least in originating these curiously linked customs.

But when I examined the mummy from Torres Straits in the Macleay Museum

(University of Sydney), and studied the literature relating to the

methods employed by the embalmers in that region (=1=; =19=; =25=; and

=27=), I was convinced, from my knowledge of the technical details

used in mummification in ancient Egypt (see especially =78=; =86= and

=87=), that these Papuan mummies supplied us with the most positive

demonstration of the Egyptian origin of the methods employed. Moreover,

as they revealed a series of very curious procedures, such as were not

invented in Egypt until the time of the New Empire, and some of them not

until the XXIst Dynasty, it was evident that the cultural wave which

carried the knowledge of these things to the Torres Straits could not

have started on its long course from Egypt before the ninth century B.C.,

at the earliest.

The incision for eviscerating the body was made in the flank, right or

left, or in the perineum (=19=; =25=)—the two sites selected for making

the embalming incision in Egypt (=78=); the flank incision was made in

the precise situation (between costal margin and iliac crest) which was

distinctive of XXIst and XXIInd Dynasty methods in Egypt (=86=); and the

wound was stitched up in accordance with the method employed in the case

of the cheaper kinds of embalming at that period (=78=). When the flank

incision was not employed an opening was made in the perineum, as was

done in Egypt—the second method mentioned by Herodotus—in the case of

less wealthy people (=56=, p. 46).

The viscera, after removal, were thrown into the sea, as, according to

Porphyry and Plutarch, it was the practice in Egypt at one time (=56=,

pp. 57 and 58) to cast them into the Nile.

The body was painted with a mixture containing red-ochre, the scalp was

painted black, and artificial eyes were inserted. These procedures were

first adopted (in their entirety) in Egypt during the XXIst Dynasty,

although the experiments leading up to the adoption of these methods

began in the XIXth.

But most remarkable of all, the curiously inexplicable Egyptian procedure

for removing the brain, which in Egypt was not attempted until the

XVIIIth Dynasty—_i.e._, until its embalmers had had seventeen centuries

experience of their remarkable craft (=78=)—was also followed by the

savages of the Torres Straits (=25=; =27=)!

Surely it is inconceivable that such people could have originated the

idea or devised the means for practising an operation so devoid of

meaning and so technically difficult as this! The interest of their

technique is that the Torres Straits operators followed the method

originally employed in Egypt (in the case of the mummy of the Pharaoh

Ahmes I. [=86=, p. 16]), which is one requiring considerable skill and

dexterity, and not the simpler operation through the nostrils which was

devised later (=78=).

The Darnley Islanders also made a circular incision through the skin

of each finger and toe, and having scraped off the epidermis from the

rest of the body, they carefully peeled off these thimbles of skin, and

presented them to the deceased’s widow (=25=; =27=).

This practice is peculiarly interesting as an illustration of the

adoption of an ancient Egyptian custom in complete ignorance of the

purpose it was intended to serve. The ancient Egyptian embalmers (and,

again, those of the XXIst Dynasty) made similar circular incisions around

fingers and toes, and also scraped off the rest of the epidermis: but the

aim of this strange procedure was to prevent the general epidermis, as

it was shed (which occurred when the body was steeped for weeks in the

preservative brine bath), from carrying the finger- and toe-nails with

it (=78=). A thimble of skin was left on each finger and toe to keep the

nail _in situ_; and to make it doubly secure, it was tied on with string

(=78=) or fixed with a ring of gold or a silver glove (=84=).

In the Torres Straits method of embalming the brine bath was not

used; so the scraping off of the epidermis was wholly unnecessary. In

addition, after following precisely the preliminary steps of this aimless

proceeding, by deliberately and intentionally removing the skin-thimbles

and nails they defeated the very objects which the Egyptians had in view

when they invented this operation!

An elaborate technical operation such as this which serves no useful

purpose and is wholly misunderstood by its practitioners cannot have been

invented by them. It is another certain proof of the Egyptian origin of

the practice.

There is another feature of these Papuan mummies which may or may not be

explicable as the adoption of Egyptian practices put to a modified, if

not a wholly different, use. Among the new methods introduced in Egypt

in the XXIst Dynasty was a curious device for restoring to the mummy

something of the fulness of form and outline it had lost during the

process of preservation. Through various incisions (which incidentally

no doubt allowed the liquid products of decomposition to escape) foreign

materials were packed under the skin of the mummy (=78=; =87=). These

incisions were made between the toes, sometimes at the knees, in the

region of the shoulders, and sometimes in other situations (=78=). In

the Papuan method of mummification “cuts were made on the knee-caps and

between the fingers and toes; then holes were pierced in the cuts with an

arrow so as to allow the liquids to drip from them” (Hamlyn-Harris, =27=,

p. 3). In one of the mummies in the Brisbane museum there seem to be

incisions also in the shoulders. The situation of these openings suggests

the view that the idea of making them _may_ (and I do not wish to put it

any more definitely) have been suggested by the Egyptian XXIst Dynastic

practice. For, although the incisions were made, in the latter case, for

the purpose of packing the limbs, incidentally they served for drainage

purposes.

But it was not only the mere method of embalming, convincing and definite

as it is, that establishes the derivation of the Papuan from the

Egyptian procedure; but also all the other funerary practices, and the

beliefs associated with them, that help to clinch the proof. The special

treatment of the head, the use of masks, the making of stone idols, these

and scores of other curious customs (which have been described in detail

in Haddon’s and Myers’ admirable account [=25=]) might be cited.

When I called the attention of the Anthropological Section to these

facts and my interpretation of them at the meeting of the British

Association in Melbourne, Professor J. L. Myres opened the discussion

by adopting a line of argument which, even after four years’ experience

of controversies of the megalith-problem, utterly amazed me. “What

more natural than that people should want to preserve their dead? Or

that in doing so they should remove the more putrescible parts? Would

not the flank be the natural place to choose for the purpose? Is it

not a common practice for people to paint their dead with red-ochre?”

It is difficult to believe that such questions were meant to be taken

seriously. The claim that it is quite a natural thing on the death of

a near relative for the survivors instinctively to remove his viscera,

dry the corpse over a fire, scrape off his epidermis, remove his brain

through a hole in the back of his neck, and then paint the corpse red is

a sample of casuistry not unworthy of a mediæval theologian. Yet this is

the gratuitous claim made at a scientific meeting! If Professor Myres

had known anything of the history of Anatomy he would have realized

that the problem of preserving the body was one of extreme difficulty

which for long ages had exercised the most civilized peoples, not only

in antiquity, but also in modern times. In Egypt, where the natural

conditions favouring the successful issue of attempts to preserve the

body were largely responsible for the possibility of such embalming,

it took more than seventeen centuries of constant practice and

experimentation to reach the stage and to acquire the methods exemplified

in the Torres Straits mummies. In Egypt also a curious combination

of natural circumstances and racial customs was responsible for the

suggestion of the desirability and the possibility artificially to

preserve the corpse. How did the people of the Torres Straits acquire the

knowledge even of the possibility of such an attainment, not to mention

the absence of any inherent suggestion of its desirability? For in the

hot, damp atmosphere of such places as Darnley Island the corpse would

never have been preserved by natural means, so that the suggestion which

stimulated the Egyptians to embark upon their experimentation was lacking

in the case of the Papuans. But even if for some mysterious reasons these

people had been prompted to attempt to preserve their dead, during the

experimental stage they would have had to combat these same unfavourable

conditions. Is it at all probable or even possible to conceive that under

such exceptionally difficult, not to say discouraging, circumstances they

would have persisted for long periods in their gruesome experiments; or

have attained a more rapid success than the more cultured peoples of

Egypt and Europe, operating under more favourable climatic conditions,

and with the help of a knowledge of chemistry and physics, were able

to achieve? The suggestion is too preposterous to call for serious

consideration.

But if for the moment we assume that the Darnley Islander instinctively

arrived at the conclusion that it was possible to preserve the dead, that

he would rather like to try it, and that by some mysterious inspiration

the technical means of attaining this object was vouchsafed him, why,

when the whole ventral surface of the body was temptingly inviting him

to operate by the simplest and most direct means, did he restrict his

choice to the two most difficult sites for his incision? We know why the

Egyptian made the opening in the left flank and in other cases in the

perineum; but is it likely the Papuan, once he had decided to cut the

body, would have had such a respect for the preservation of the integrity

of the front of the body as to impel him to choose a means of procedure

which added greatly to the technical difficulty of the operation? We have

the most positive evidence that the Papuan had no such design, for it was

his usual procedure to cut the head off the trunk and pay little further

attention to the latter. Myres’ contention will not stand a moment’s

examination.

As to the use of red-ochre, which Myres rightly claimed to be so

widespread, no hint was given of the possibility that it might be so

extensively practised simply because the Egyptian custom had spread far

and wide.

It is important to remember that the practice of painting stone statues

with red-ochre (obviously to make them more life-like) was in vogue in

Egypt before 3000 B.C.; and throughout the whole “heliolithic” area,

wherever the conception of human beings dwelling in stones, whether

carved or not, was adopted, the Egyptian practice of applying red paint

also came into vogue. But it was not until more than twenty centuries

later—_i.e._ when, for quite definite reasons in the XXIst Dynasty,

the Egyptians conceived the idea of converting the mummy itself into a

statue—that they introduced the procedure of painting the mummy (the

actual body), simply because it was regarded as the statue (=78=).

After Professor Myres, Dr. Haddon offered two criticisms. Firstly, the

incisions in the feet and knees were not suggested by Egyptian practices,

but were made for the strictly utilitarian purpose of draining the

fluids from the body. I have dealt with this point already (_vide

supra_). His second objection was that there were no links between

Egypt and Papua to indicate that the custom had spread. The present

communication is intended to dispose of that objection by demonstrating

not only the route by which, but also how, the practice reached the

Torres Straits after the long journey from Egypt.

It will be noticed that this criticism leaves my main arguments from the

mummies quite untouched. Moreover, the fact that originally I made use

of the testimony of the mummies merely in support of evidence of other

kinds (the physical characters of the peoples and the distribution of

megalithic monuments) was completely ignored by my critics.

But, as I have already remarked, it is not merely the remarkable identity

of so many of the peculiar features of Papuan and Egyptian embalming that

affords definite evidence of the derivation of one from the other; but in

addition, many of the ceremonies and practices, as well as the traditions

relating to the people who introduced the custom of mummification,

corroborate the fact that immigrants from the west introduced these

elements of culture. In addition, they also suggest their affinities.

“A hero-cult, with masked performers and elaborate dances, spread from

the mainland of New Guinea to the adjacent islands: part of this movement

seems to have been associated with a funeral ritual that emphasised a

life after death.... Most of the funeral ceremonies and many sacred songs

admittedly came from the west” (Haddon, =25=, p. 45).

“Certain culture-heroes severally established themselves on certain

islands, and they or their followers introduced a new cult which

considerably modified the antecedent totemism,” and taught “improved

methods of cultivation and fishing” (p. 44).

“An interesting parallel to these hero-cults of Torres Straits occurred

also in Fiji. The people of Viti-Levu trace their descent from

[culture-heroes] who drifted across the Big Ocean and taught to the

people the cult associated with the large stone enclosures” (p. 45).

In these islands the people were expert at carving stone idols and they

had legends concerning certain “stones that once were men” (p. 11). It is

also significant that at the bier of a near relative, boys and girls, who

had arrived at the age of puberty, had their ears pierced and their skin

tattooed (p. 154).

Thus Haddon himself supplies so many precise tokens of the “heliolithic”

nature of the culture of the Torres Straits.

These hints of migrations and the coming of strangers bringing from the

west curious practices and beliefs may seem at first sight to add little

to the evidence afforded by the technique of the embalming process;

but the subsequent discussion will make it plain that the association

of these particular procedures with mummification serves to clinch the

demonstration of the source from which that practice was derived.

It is doubly interesting to obtain all this corroborative evidence

from the writings of Dr. Haddon, in view of the fact, to which I have

already referred, that he vigorously protested against my contention

that the embalmers of the Torres Straits acquired their art, directly or

indirectly, from Egypt. For, in his graphic account of a burial ceremony

at Murray Islands, his confession that, as he watched the funerary boat

and the wailing women, his “mind wandered back thousands of years, and

called up ancient Egypt carrying its dead in boats across the sacred

Nile” has a much deeper and more real significance than he intended.

The analogy which at once sprang to his mind was not merely a chance

resemblance, but the expression of a definite survival amongst these

simple people in the Far East of customs their remote ancestors had

acquired, through many intermediaries no doubt, from the Egyptians of the

ninth century B.C.

At the time when Dr. Haddon asked for the evidence for the connection

between Egypt and Papua, I was aware only of the Burmese practices (_vide

infra_) in the intervening area, and the problem of establishing the

means by which the Egyptian custom actually spread seemed to be a very

formidable task.

But soon after my return from Australia all the links in the cultural

chain came to light. Mr. W. J. Perry, who had been engaged in analysing

the complex mixture of cultures in Indonesia, kindly permitted me to

read the manuscript of the book he had written upon the subject. With

remarkable perspicuity he had unravelled the apparently hopeless tangle

into which the social organisation of this ethnological cockpit has been

involved by the mixture of peoples and the conflict of diverse beliefs

and customs. His convincing demonstration of the fact that there had been

an immigration into Indonesia (from the West) of a people who introduced

megalithic ideas, sun-worship and phallism, and many other distinctive

practices and traditions, not only gave me precisely the information

I needed, but also directed my attention to the fact that the culture

(for which, so he informed me, Professor Brockwell, of Montreal, had

suggested the distinctive term “heliolithic”) included also the practice

of mummification. In the course of continuous discussions with him during

the last four months a clear view of the whole problem and the means of

solving most of its difficulties emerged.

For Perry’s work in this field, no less than for my own, Rivers’

illuminating and truly epoch-making researches (=64= to =70=)

have cleared the ground. Not only has he removed from the path of

investigators the apparently insuperable obstacles to the demonstration

of the spread of cultures by showing how useful arts can be lost (=65=);

but he has analysed the social organisation of Oceania in such a way

that the various waves of immigration into the Pacific can be identified

and with certainty be referred back to Indonesia (=69=). Many other

scholars in the past have produced evidence (for example =2=; =60=;

=61= and =98=) to demonstrate that the Polynesians came from Indonesia;

but Rivers analysed and defined the characteristic features of several

streams of culture which flowed from Indonesia into the Pacific. Perry

undertook the task of tracing these peoples through the Indonesian maze

and pushing back their origins to India. In the present communication

I shall attempt to sketch in broad outline the process of the gradual

accumulation in Egypt and the neighbourhood of the cultural outfit of

these great wanderers, and to follow them in their migrations west, south

and east from the place where their curious assortment of customs and

accomplishments became fortuitously associated one with the other (_Map

II._).

I cannot claim that my colleagues in this campaign against what seems to

us to be the utterly mistaken precepts of modern ethnology see altogether

eye to eye with me. They have been dealing exclusively with more

primitive peoples amongst whom every new attainment, in arts and crafts,

in beliefs and social organisation, in everything in fact that we regard

as an element of civilization, has been introduced from without by more

cultured races, or fashioned in the conflict between races of different

traditions and ideals.

My investigations, on the contrary, have been concerned mainly with the

actual invention of the elements of civilization and with the people who

created practically all of its ingredients—the ideas, the implements

and methods of the arts and crafts which give expression to it. Though

superficially my attitude may seem to clash with theirs, in that I am

attempting to explain the primary origin of some of the things, with

which they are dealing only as ready-made customs and beliefs that were

handed on from people to people, there is no real antagonism between us.

It is obvious that there must be a limit to the application of the

borrowing-explanation; and when we are forced to consider the people who

really invented things, it is necessary to frame some working hypothesis

in explanation of such achievements, unless we feebly confess that it is

useless to attempt such enquiries.

In previous works (=82= and =85=) I have explained why it must be

something more than a mere coincidence that in Egypt, where the operation

of natural forces leads to the preservation of the corpse when buried

in the hot dry sand, it should have become a cardinal tenet in the

beliefs of the people to strive after the preservation of the body as

the essential means of continuing an existence after death. When death

occurred the only difference that could be detected between the corpse

and the living body was the absence of the vital spirit from the former.

[For the interpretation of the Egyptians’ peculiar ideas concerning

death, see Alan Gardiner’s, important article (=23=).] It was in a

condition in some sense analogous to sleep; and the corpse, therefore,

was placed in its “dwelling” in the soil lying in the attitude naturally

assumed, by primitive people when sleeping. Its vital spirit or _ka_ was

liberated from the body, but hovered round the corpse so long as its

tissues were preserved. It needed food and all the other things that

ministered to the welfare and comfort of the living, not omitting the

luxuries and personal adornments which helped to make life pleasant.

Hence at all times graves became the objects of plunder on the part

of unscrupulous contemporaries; and so incidentally the knowledge was

forthcoming from time to time of the fate of the body in the grave.

The burial customs of the Proto-Egyptians, starting from those common to

the whole group of the Brown Race in the Neolithic phase, first became

differentiated from the rest when special importance came to be attached

to the preservation of the actual tissues of the body.

It was this development, no doubt, that prompted, their more careful

arrangements for the protection of the corpse, and gradually led to the

aggrandisement of the tomb, the more abundant provision of food offerings

and funerary equipment in general.

Even in the earliest known Pre-dynastic period the Proto-Egyptians were

in the habit of loosely wrapping their dead in linen—for the art of the

weaver goes back to that remote time in Egypt—and then protecting the

wrapped corpse from contact with the soil by an additional wrapping of

goat-skin or matting.

Then, as the tomb became larger, to accommodate the more abundant

offerings, almost every conceivable device was tried to protect the body

from such contact. Instead of the goat-skin or matting, in many cases the

same result was obtained by lining the grave with series of sticks, with

slabs of wood, with pieces of unhewn stone, or by lining the grave with

mud-bricks. In other cases, again, large pottery coffins, of an oblong,

elliptical, or circular form, were used. Later on, when metal implements

were invented (=90=), and the skill to use them created the crafts of

the carpenter and stonemason, coffins of wood or stone came into vogue.

It is quite certain that the coffin and sarcophagus were Egyptian

inventions. The mere fact of this extraordinary variety of means and

materials employed in Egypt, when in other countries one definite method

was adopted, is proof of the most positive kind that these measures

for lining the grave were actually invented in Egypt. For the inventor

tries experiments: the borrower imitates one definite thing. During this

process of gradual evolution, which occupied the whole of the Pre- and

Proto-dynastic periods, the practice of inhumation (in the strict sense

of the term) changed step by step into one of burial in a tomb. In other

words, instead of burial in the soil, the body came to be lodged in a

carefully constructed subterranean chamber, which no longer was filled

up with earth. The further stages in this process of evolution of tomb

construction, the way in which the rock-cut tomb came into existence,

and the gradual development of the stone superstructure and temple of

offerings—all of these matters have been summarised in some detail in my

article on the evolution of megalithic monuments (=94=).

What especially I want to emphasize here is that in Egypt is preserved

every stage in the gradual transformation of the burial customs from

simple inhumation into that associated with the fully-developed rock-cut

tomb and the stone temple. There can be no question that the craft of the

stonemason and the practice of building megalithic monuments originated

in Egypt. In addition, I want to make it quite clear that there is the

most intimate genetic relationship between the development of these

megalithic practices and the origin of the art of mummification.

For in course of time the early Egyptians came to learn, no doubt

again from the discoveries of their tomb-robbers, that the fate of the

corpse, after remaining for some time in a roomy rock-cut tomb or stone

coffin, was vastly different from that which befell the body when simply

buried in the hot, dry, desiccating sand. In respect of the former they

acquired the idea which the Greeks many centuries later embalmed in the

word “sarcophagus” under the simple belief that the disappearance of

the flesh was due to the stone in some mysterious way devouring it.[7]

[Certain modern archæologists within recent years have entertained an

equally child-like, though even less informed, view when they claimed

the absence of any trace of the flesh in certain stone sarcophagi as

evidence in favour of a fantastic belief that the Neolithic people of the

Mediterranean area were addicted to the supposed practice which Italian

archæologists call _scarnitura_.]

But by the time the discovery was made that bodies placed in more

sumptuous tombs were no longer preserved as they were apt to be when

buried in the sand, the idea of the necessity for the preservation of the

body as the essential condition for the attainment of a future existence

had become fixed in the minds of the people and established by several

centuries of belief as _the_ cardinal tenet of their faith. Thus the very

measures they had taken the more surely to guard and preserve the sacred

remains of their dead had led to a result the reverse of what had been

intended.

The elaborate ritual that had grown up and the imposing architectural

traditions were not abandoned when this discovery was made. Even in these

modern enlightened days human nature does not react in that way. The

cherished beliefs held by centuries of ancestors are not renounced for

any discovery of science. The ethnologist has not given up his objections

to the idea of the spread of culture, now that all the difficulties that

militated against the acceptance of the common-sense view have been

removed! Nor did the Egyptians of the Proto-dynastic period revert to

the practices of their early ancestors and take to sand-burial again.

They adopted the only other alternative open to a people who retained

implicitly the belief in the necessity of preserving the body, _i.e._,

they set about attempting to attain by art what nature unaided no longer

secured, so long as they clung to their custom of burying in large tombs.

They endeavoured artificially to preserve the bodies of their dead.

This explains what I meant to imply when I said that the megalithic idea

and the incentive to mummify the dead are genetically related, the one

to the other. The stone-tomb came into existence as a direct result of

the importance attached to the corpse. This development defeated the very

object that inspired it. The invention of the art of embalming was the

logical outcome of the attempt to remedy this unexpected result.

As in the history of every similar happening elsewhere, necessity, or

what these simple-minded people believed to be a necessity, was the

“mother of invention.”

In the course of the following discussion it will be seen that the

practice of mummification became linked up in another way with what

may be called the megalithic traditions. The crudely-preserved body no

longer retained any likeness to the person as his friends knew him when

alive. A life-like stone statue was therefore made to represent him.

Magical means (p. 42) were adopted to give life to the statue. Thus

originated the belief that a stone might become the dwelling of a living

person; and that a person when dead may become converted into stone. So

insistent did this belief become that among more uncultured people, who

borrowed Egyptian practices but were unable to make portrait statues, a

rudely-shaped or even unhewn pillar of stone came to be regarded as the

dwelling of the deceased.

Thus from being the mere device for the identification of the deceased

the stone statue degenerated among less cultured people into an object

even less like the dead man than his own crudely-made mummy. But the

fundamental idea remained and became the starting point for that rich

crop of petrifaction-myths and beliefs concerning men and animals living

in stones.

Thus arose in Egypt, somewhere about 3000 B.C., the nucleus of the

“heliolithic” culture-complex—mummification, megalithic architecture,

and the making of idols, three practices most intimately and genetically

linked one with the other. But it was the merest accident that the people

amongst whom these customs developed, should also have been weavers

of linen, workers in copper, worshippers of the sun and serpent, and

practitioners of massage and circumcision.

But it was not for another fifteen centuries that the characteristic

“heliolithic” culture-complex was completed by the addition of numerous

other trivial customs, like ear-piercing, tattooing and the use of the

swastika, none of which originated in Egypt, but happened to have become

“tacked on” to that distinctive culture before its great world tour began.

The earliest unquestionable evidence (=89=) of an attempt artificially

to preserve the body was found in a rock-cut tomb of the Second Dynasty,

at Sakkara. It is important to note that the body was lying in a _flexed_

position upon the left side, and was contained in a short wooden coffin,

modelled like a house. The limbs were wrapped separately and large

quantities of fine linen bandages had been applied around all parts of

the body, so as to mould the wrapped mummy to a life-like form.

Thus in the earliest mummy—or, to be strictly accurate, in the remains

which exhibit the earliest evidence of the attempt at embalming—we find

exemplified the two objects that the Ancient Egyptian embalmer aimed at

throughout the whole history of his craft, viz., to preserve the actual

tissues of the body, as well as the form and likeness of the deceased as

he was when alive.

From the first the embalmer realised the limitations of his

craftsmanship, _i.e._, that he was unable to make the body itself

life-like. Hence he strove to preserve its tissues and then to make use

of its wrappings for the purpose of fashioning a model or statue of

the dead man. At first this was done while the body was flexed in the

traditional manner. But soon the flexed position was gradually abandoned.

Perhaps this change was brought about because it was easier to model the

superficial form of a wrapped body when extended; and the greater success

of the results so obtained may have been sufficiently important to have

outweighed the restraining influence of tradition. The change may have

occurred all the more readily at this time as beds were coming into use,

and the idea of placing the “sleeping” body on a bed may have helped

towards the process of extension.

But whatever view is taken of the explanation of the change of the

attitude of the body, it is certain that it began soon after the first

attempts at mummification were made. The evidence of extended burials,

referred to the First Dynasty, which were found by Flinders Petrie at

Tarkhan (=54=), may seem to contradict this: but there are reasons for

believing that attempts at embalming were being made even at that time

(=85=). It seems to be definitely proved that this change was not due

to any foreign influence (=45=). At the time that it occurred there was

a very considerable alien element in the population of Egypt; but the

admixture took place long before the change in the position of the body

was manifested. Perhaps the presence of a large foreign element may

have weakened the sway of Egyptian tradition; but the evidence seems

definitely opposed to the inference that it played any active part in the

change of custom. For the history of the gradual way in which the change

was slowly effected is certain proof of the causal factors at work. There

was no sudden adoption of the fully extended position, but a slow and

very gradual straightening of the limbs—a process which it took centuries

to complete. The analysis of the evidence by Mace is quite conclusive on

this point (=45=).

I am strongly of the opinion that there is a causal relationship

between this gradual extension of the body and the measures for the

reconstruction of a life-like model of the deceased, with the help of the

mummy’s wrappings. In other words, the adoption of the extended position

was a direct result of the introduction of mummification.

At an early stage in the history of these changes it seems to have been

realised that the likeness of the deceased which could be made of the

wrapped mummy lacked the exactness and precision demanded of a portrait

Perhaps also there may have been some doubt as to the durability of a

statue made of linen.

A number of interesting developments occurred at about this time to

overcome these defects. In one case (=85=), found at Mêdum by Flinders

Petrie, the superficial bandages were saturated with a paste of resin and

soda, and the same material was applied to the surface of the wrappings,

which, while still in a plastic condition, was very skilfully moulded to

form a life-like statue. The resinous carapace thus built up set to form

a covering of stony hardness. Special care was devoted to the modelling

of the head (sometimes the face only) and the genitalia, no doubt to

serve as the means of identifying the individual and indicating the sex

respectively.

The hair (or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say, the wig) and the

moustache were painted with a dark brown or black resinous mixture, and

the pupils, eyelids and eyebrows were represented by painting with a

mixture of malachite powder and resinous paste. In other cases, recently

described by Junker (=40=), plaster was used for the same purpose as the

resinous paste in Petrie’s mummy. In two of the four instances of this

practice found by Junker, only the head was modelled.

The special importance assigned to the head is one of the outstanding

features of ancient Egyptian statuary. It was exemplified in another

way in the tombs of the early part of the Old Kingdom, as Junker has

recalled in his memoir, by the construction of stone portrait-statues of

the head only, which were made life-size and placed in the burial chamber

alongside the mummy. It seems to me that Junker overlooks an essential,

if not the, chief, reason for the special importance assigned to the head

when he attributes it to the fact that the head contained the organs of

sight, smell, hearing and taste. There can be no doubt that the head was

modelled because it affords the chief means of recognising an individual.

This portrayal of the features enabled any one, including the deceased’s

own _ka_, to identify the owner. Every circumstance of the making and

the use of these heads bears out this interpretation, and no one has

explained these facts more lucidly than Junker himself.

[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been put into print a preliminary

report has come to hand from Professor Reisner, to whom I am indebted for

most of my information regarding these portrait heads—_Museum of Fine

Arts Bulletin_, Boston, April, 1915.]

At a somewhat later period in the Old Kingdom the making of these

so-called “substitution-heads” was discontinued, and it became the

practice to make a statue of the whole man (of woman), which was placed

above-ground in the megalithic _serdab_ within the _mastaba_ (see

=94=). But even when the complete statue was made for the _serdab_

the head alone was the part that was modelled with any approach to

realism. In other words, the importance of the head as the chief means

of identification was still recognised. Moreover, this idea manifested

itself throughout the whole history of Egyptian mummification, for as

late as the first century of the Christian era a portrait of the deceased

was placed in front of the face of the mummy.

Thus in course of time the original idea of converting the wrapped

body itself into a portrait-statue of the deceased was temporarily[8]

abandoned and the mummy was stowed away in the burial chamber at the

bottom of a deep shaft, the better to protect it from desecration,

while the portrait-statue was placed above ground, in a strong chamber

(_serdab_), hidden in the _mastaba_ (=94=).

A certain magical value soon came to be attached to the statue in

the _serdab_. It provided the body in which the _ka_ could become

reincarnated, and the deceased, thus reconstituted by magical means,

could pass through the small hole in the _serdab_ to enter the chapel of

offerings and enjoy the food and the society of his friends there.

Dr. Alan Gardiner has kindly given me the following note in reference

to this matter: “That statues in Egypt were meant to be efficient

animate substitutes for the person or creature they portrayed has not

been sufficiently emphasised hitherto. Over every statue or image were

performed the rites of ‘opening the mouth’—magical passes made with a

kind of metal chisel in front of the mouth. Besides the _up-ro_ ‘mouth

opening,’ other words testify to the prevalence of the same idea; the

word for ‘to fashion’ a statue (_ms_) is to all appearances identical

with _ms_ ‘to give birth,’ and the term for the sculptor was _saʿnkh_,

‘he who causes to live.’”

As Blackman (=5=) has pointed out, the Pyramid Texts make it clear that

libations were poured out and incense burnt before the statue or the

mummy with the specific object of restoring to it the moisture and the

odour respectively which the body had during life.

I have already indicated how, out of the conception of the possibility of

bringing to life the stone portrait-statue, a series of curious customs

were developed. Among peoples on a lower cultural plane, who were less

skilled than the Egyptians in stone-carving, the making of a life-like

statue was beyond their powers. Sometimes they made the attempt to

represent the human form; in other cases crude representations of the

breasts or suggestions of the genitalia were the only signs on a stone

pillar to indicate that it was meant to represent a human statue: in many

cases a simple uncarved block of stone was set up. But the idea that

such a pillar, whether carved or not, was the dwelling of some deceased

person, seized the imagination and spread far and wide. It is seen in

the Pygmalion and Galatea story, and its converse in the tragic history

of Lot’s wife. It is found throughout the Mediterranean area, the whole

littoral of Southern Asia, Indonesia, the Pacific Islands and America,

and can be regarded as definite evidence of the influence of the cult

that developed in association with the practice of mummification.

It is necessary to emphasise that the making of portrait-statues was an

outcome of the practice of mummification and an integral part of the

cult associated with that burial custom. Hartland falls into grave error

when he writes “where other peoples set up images of the deceased, those

who practised desiccation or embalmment were enabled to keep the bodies

themselves” (=32=, p. 418). It was precisely the people who embalmed or

preserved the bodies of their dead who also made statues of them.

As these stones, according to such beliefs, could be made to hear and

speak (=23=), they naturally became oracles. People were able to commune

with and get advice and instruction from the kings and wise men who dwelt

within these stone pillars. Thus it became the custom in many lands for

meetings of special solemnity, such as those where important decisions

had to be made, to be held at stone circles, where the members of the

convention sat on the stones and communed with their ancestors, former

rulers or wise men, who dwelt in the stones (or the grave) in the centre

of the circle.

“Chardin, in his account of the stone circles he saw in Persia, mentions

a tradition that they were used as places of assembly, each member of the

council being seated on a stone; Homer, in his description of the shield

of Achilles in the _Iliad_, speaks of the elders sitting in the place of

justice upon stones in a circle; Plot, in his account of the Rollrich

stones in Oxfordshire, says that Olaus Wormius, Saxo Grammaticus,

Meursius, and many other early historians, concur in stating that it was

the practice of the ancient Danes to elect their kings in stone circles,

each member of the council being seated upon a stone; the tradition

arising out of this custom, that these stones represent petrified

giants, is widely spread in all countries where they occur, and Col.

Forbes Leslie has shown that within the historic period, these circles

were used in Scotland as places of justice” (Lane Fox, (=20=), p. 64).

Is not our king crowned seated upon the Lia-fail, which is now in the

coronation chair at Westminster? Such customs and beliefs are widespread

also in India, Indonesia, and beyond, as W. J. Perry has pointed out.

The practices still observed in the Khasia Hills in modern times clearly

indicate the significance of this use of stone seats; and the custom can

be found from the Canary Islands in the West (=26=) to Costa Rica in the

East, encircling the whole globe (compare “_Man_,” May, 1915, p. 79).

I shall enter more fully into the consideration of the origin of the

ideas associated with stone seats when Perry has published his important

analysis of the significance of so curious a practice.

The converse of the belief in the bringing to life of stone statues—or

perhaps it would be more correct to say, the complementary view that,

if a stone can be converted into a living creature, the latter can also

be transformed into stone—is found also wherever the parent belief is

known to exist. As a rule it forms part of a complexly interwoven series

of traditions concerning the creation, the deluge, the destruction of

the “sons of men” by petrifaction, and the repeopling the earth by the

incestuous intercourse of the “children of the gods.”

Perry, who has made a study of the geographical distribution and

associations of these curiously-linked traditions, has clearly

demonstrated that they form an integral part of the cultural equipment of

the sun-worshipping, stone-using peoples.

In the foregoing statement I have endeavoured to indicate also their

genetic connection with the ideas that sprang from the early practice of

mummification in Egypt.

There are many other curious features of the early Egyptian practices

which might have served as straws to indicate how the cultural current

had flowed, if much more substantial proofs had not been available of

the reality of the movement. The diffusion of such a distinctive object

as the Egyptian head-rest, which used to be buried with mummies of the

Pyramid Age, is an example. It occurs widely spread in Africa, Southern

Asia, Indonesia and the Pacific.

But the use of beds as funerary biers is a much more distinctive custom.

The believers in theories of the independent evolution of customs may say

“is it not natural to expect that people who regarded death as a kind

of sleep should have placed head-rests and beds in the graves of their

dead?” But how would such ethnologists explain the use of a funerary

bier on the part of people (such as many of the less cultured people who

adopted this Egyptian custom) who do not themselves use beds?

The evidence afforded by the use of biers is, in fact, a most definite

demonstration of the diffusion of customs. Although it is a familiar

scene in ancient Egyptian pictures to find the mummy borne upon a bed—a

custom which we know from Egyptian literature, no less than that of the

Jews, Phœnicians, Greeks and Romans to have been actually observed—only

one Egyptian cemetery, so far as I am aware—a proto-dynastic site,

excavated by Flinders Petrie (=54=) at Tarkhan—has revealed corpses lying

upon beds. But in a cemetery, some sixteen centuries later, excavated

by Reisner in the Soudan (=62=), a similar practice was demonstrated.

Garstang has recorded the observance of a similar custom further South

(Meroe) at a later date.

These form useful connecting links with the region around the head-waters

of the Nile, where even in modern times this practice has survived, and

the mummified corpse of the king is placed upon a rough bier. I shall

have occasion to point out later on that this curious practice spread

from East Africa along the Asiatic littoral to Indonesia, Melanesia and

Polynesia, thence to the American continent; and in most places was

definitely associated with attempts at preservation of the corpse.

In many places along the whole course of the same great track, instead

of a bed, a boat of some sort, usually a rough dug-out, was used. This

practice also was observed in Egypt, where its symbolic purpose is

clearly apparent.

Another distinctive feature of the burial customs in the same area was

the idea that the grave represented the house in which the deceased

was sleeping. How definitely this view was held by the proto-Egyptians

is seen in their coffins, subterranean burial chambers, and the

superstructures of their tombs, all three of which were originally

represented as dwelling houses (see my memoir, =94=).

The Pyramid texts clearly explain the precise significance and origin of

the hitherto mysterious and widespread custom of burning incense at the

statue. For, as Blackman (=5=) has pointed out, the aim was by burning

aromatic woods and resins thereby magically to restore to the “body” the

odours of the living person.

It was therefore intimately related to the practice of mummification and

genetically connected with it. It was part of the magical procedure for

making the portrait-statue of the deceased (or later, in the time of the

New Empire, the mummy itself) “an efficient animate substitute for the

person” (Alan Gardiner).

A careful investigation of the geographical distribution of the custom

of burning incense before the corpse and of the circumstances related to

such a practice has convinced me that wherever it is found, even where no

attempt is made to preserve the body, it can be regarded as an indication

of the influence of the Egyptian custom of mummification. For apart from

such an influence incense-burning is inexplicable. The attempt on the

part of certain writers to explain the use of incense merely as a means

of disguising the odours of putrefaction will not bear examination. It is

an example of that kind of so-called psychological explanation which is

opposed by all the ascertainable facts.

Beyond the borders of Egypt peoples who for a time adopted the custom

of embalming and then for some reason, such as the failure to attain

successful results or the adoption of conflicting beliefs or customs,

allowed the practice to lapse, the simpler parts of the Egyptian funerary

ritual often continued to be observed. The body was anointed with oil,

perhaps packed in salt and aromatic plants, wrapped in linen or fine

clothes, had incense burned before it, and was laid on a bed or special

bier. All of these practices originated in Egypt and observance of any

or all of them is to be regarded as a sure sign of the influence of the

Egyptian custom of mummification. Among the more immediate neighbours

of the Egyptians, such as the Jews, Greeks and Romans, the evidence for

this is clear. Occasionally the full process of embalming was followed,

even if it were only a temporary procedure preliminary to the observance

of some other burial custom, such as cremation, perhaps inspired by

ideas wholly foreign to those which prompted mummification. I need

not enumerate instances of this curious syncretism of burial customs,

numerous examples of which will be found in Reutter (=63=, pp. 144-147)

and in Hastings’ Dictionary (=32=), as well as in the following pages.

At the very earliest period in Egypt from which historical records have

come down to us (the time of the First Dynasty, 3200 B.C., or even

earlier) “the king’s favourite title was ‘Horus,’ by which he identified

himself as the successor of the great god [the hawk sun-god] who had once

ruled over the kingdom ... [other symbols often appeared] side by side

with Buto, the serpent-goddess of the northern capital. As [the king]

felt himself still as primarily king of Upper Egypt, it was not until

later that he wore the serpent of the North, the sacred uraeus, upon his

forehead.” (Breasted, =6=, p. 38). “The sun-disc, with the outspread

wings of the hawk, became the commonest symbol of their religion” (p.

54). But in the time of the Fourth Dynasty “the priests of Heliopolis now

demanded that [the king, who had always been represented as the successor

of the sun-god and had borne the title ‘Horus’] be the bodily son of Ré,

who henceforth would appear on earth to become the father of the Pharaoh”

(p. 122).

Now, when the Pharaoh thus became identified with the great sun-god Ré,

his Pyramid-temple became the place of worship of the sun-god. Megalithic

architecture thus became indissolubly connected with sun-worship,

simply from the accident of the invention of the art of building in

stone—of erecting stone tombs, which were also temples of offerings—by a

people who happened to be sun-worshippers and whose ruler’s tomb became

the shrine of the sun-god. I have already explained the close genetic

connection between the practice of mummification and megalithic building.

The fact that the dominance of the sun-god Ré was attained in the

northern capital, which was also the seat of serpent-worship, led to the

association of the sun and the serpent.[9] From this purely fortuitous

blending of the sun’s disc with the uraeus, often combined, especially

in later times, with the wings of the Horus-hawk, a symbolism came into

being which was destined to spread until it encircled the world, from

Ireland to America. For an excellent example of this composite symbolism

from America see Bancroft, (=3=), Vol. IV., p. 351. A more striking

illustration of the completeness of the transference of a complex and

wholly artificial design from Ancient Egypt to America could not be

imagined. [For the full discussion of the original association of the sun

and the serpent see Sethe’s important _Memoir_ (=74=).]

The chance circumstances which led to the linking together of all these

incongruous elements—mummification, megalithic architecture, the idea

of the king as son of the sun, sun and serpent worship and its curious

symbolism—were created in Egypt, so that, wherever these peculiar customs

or traditions make their appearance elsewhere in association the one with

the other, it can confidently be regarded as a sure token of Egyptian

influence, exerted directly or indirectly.

When certain modern ethnologists argue that it is the most natural thing

in the world for primitive peoples to worship the sun as the obvious

source of warmth and fertility, and therefore such worship can have no

value as an indication of the contact of peoples, on general principles

one might be prepared to admit the validity of the claim. But when it is

realised that sun-worship, wherever it is found, is invariably associated

with part (or the whole) of a large series of curiously incongruous

customs and beliefs, it is no longer possible to regard the worship of

the sun as having originated independently in several centres. Why should

the sun-worshipper also worship the serpent and use a winged symbol,

build megalithic monuments, mummify his dead, and practise a large series

of fantastic tricks to which other peoples are not addicted? There is no

inherent reason why a man who worships the sun should also tattoo his

face, perforate his ears, practise circumcision, and make use of massage.

In fact, until the time of the New Empire, the sun-worshipping Egyptian

did not practise ear-piercing and tattooing, thereby illustrating the

fact that originally these practices were not part of the cult, and that

their eventual association with it was purely accidental. This only

serves more definitely to confirm the view that it was the fortuitous

association of a curious series of customs in Egypt at the time of the

New Empire which supplied the cultural outfit of the “heliolithic”

wanderers for their great migration.

In accordance with Egyptian beliefs “the sun was born every morning and

sailed across the sky in a celestial barque, to arrive in the west and

descend as an old man tottering into the grave” (Breasted, (=6=), p. 54).

The deceased might reach the west by being borne across in the sun-god’s

barque: friendly spirits, the four sons of Horus, might bring him a craft

on which he might float over: but by far the majority depended upon the

services of a ferryman called “Turnface” (Breasted, p. 65).

In later times (Middle Kingdom) a model boat, fully equipped, was usually

put in the tomb, “in order that the deceased might have no difficulty in

crossing the waters to the happy isles.” “By the pyramid of Sesostris

III., in the sands of the desert, there were even buried five large Nile

boats, intended to carry the king and his house across these waters”

(Breasted, p. 176).

At a later period “the triumph of a Theban family brought with it the

supremacy of Amon.... His essential character and individuality had

already been obliterated by the solar theology of the Middle Kingdom,

when he had become Amon-Re, and with some attributes borrowed from

his ithyphallic neighbour, Min of Coptos, he now rose to a unique and

supreme position of unprecedented splendour” (=6=, p. 248). Thus there

was added to this “heliolithic” complex of ideas the definitely phallic

element: but one must confess that this aspect of the culture did not

become obtrusive until it was planted in alien lands, where among the

Phœnicians and the peoples of India the phallic aspect became more

strongly emphasised. From time to time various writers have striven to

demonstrate a phallic motive in almost every element of the culture now

under consideration. What I want to make clear is that it was a late

addition, which was relatively insignificant in the original home of the

culture.

After this digression I must now return to the further consideration of

the mummies themselves.

Direct examination of the mummified bodies does not, of course, afford

any certain evidence of the application of oil or fat to the surface of

the body. Large quantities of fatty material were often found in the

mouth and the body cavity (=78=; =81= and =86=); and the surface of the

body was often greasy; but, of course, the fatty materials in the skin

itself might have afforded a sufficient explanation of this. Dr. Alan

Gardiner, however, tells me that ancient Egyptian literature contains

repeated references to the process of anointing the body with “oil of

cedar,”[10] and great stress is laid upon this procedure as an essential

element of the technique of embalming.[11]

Thus in the time of the decadence of the New Empire an Egyptian writer

laments the loosening of Egypt’s hold on the Lebanons, because if no “oil

of cedar” were obtainable it might become impossible any longer to embalm

the dead.

Diodorus Siculus, writing many centuries later, says the body was

“anointed with oil of cedar and other things for thirty days, and

afterwards with myrrh, cinnamon, and other such like matters” (Pettigrew,

=56=, p. 62). Thus there can be little doubt that it was an essential

part of the Ancient Egyptian technique to anoint the body with oil.

Pettigrew (=56=, p. 62, and also p. 242) adduces cogent reasons in proof

of the fact that the Egyptians (and in modern times the Capuchins, at

Palermo) made use of heat to desiccate the body, probably in a stove.

It is quite clear, therefore, that the Ancient Egyptians realised the

importance of desiccation as an essential element in the preservation of

the body. Moreover, they were familiar with a number of different means

of ensuring this end:—(1) by burial in dry sand; (2) by exposure to the

sun’s rays; (3) by removing all the softer and more putrescible parts of

the body; (4) possibly by massaging and squeezing out the juices from the

body; (5) by the free use of alcohol (palm wine) and large quantities of

powdered wood; and (6) by the aid of fire.

Dr. Alan Gardiner tells me that the most ancient Egyptian writings,

such, for example, as the Pyramid texts, afford positive evidence that

the Egyptians recognised the fact of the desiccation of the body in the

process of embalming, for their scribes tell us, in the most definite

manner, that the aim of the ceremony of offering libations was magically

to restore to the body (as represented by the statue above ground) the

fluids it had lost during embalming (Blackman, =5=).

If then the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age recognised the importance of

restoring the fluids to reanimate the mummy or its statue, it is quite

clear they must have appreciated the physical fact that their process of

preservation was largely a matter of desiccation.

It is a point of some interest and importance to note in this connection

that the essential processes of mummification—(1) salting, (2)

evisceration, (3) drying, and (4) smoking (or even cooking)—are identical

with those adopted for the preservation of meat, and (5) the use of honey

is analogous to the means taken to preserve fruit. In fact, the term used

by Herodotus for the first stage of the Egyptian process of mummification

is the term used for salting fish. It would be instructive to enquire

in what measure these two needs of primitive man in North-East Africa

mutually influenced one another, and led to an acquisition of knowledge

useful to them for the preservation both of their food and their dead

relatives!

To the constituent elements of the “heliolithic” culture may now be added

the practices of anointing with oil or unguents, the burning of incense

and the offering of libations, all derived from the ritual of embalming.

In considering the southern extension of Egyptian influence it must be

remembered that as early “as 2600 B.C. the Egyptian had already begun the

exploitation of the Upper Nile and had been led in military force as far

as the present Province of Dongola” (=62=, p. 23). For several centuries

Nubia and the Soudan were left very much to themselves. Then during the

time of the Middle Kingdom Egypt once more exerted a powerful influence

to the South. At the close of that period Egypt was overrun by the Hyksos.

At Kerma, near the Third Cataract, Reisner has recently unearthed a

cemetery which he refers to the Hyksos Period (=62=, p. 23). “The burial

customs are revolting in their barbarity. On a carved bed in the middle

of a big circular pit the chief personage lies on his right side with his

head east. Under his head is a wooden pillow: between his legs a sword or

dagger. Around the bed lie a varying number of bodies, male and female,

all contracted on the right side, head east. Among them are the pots and

pans, the cosmetic jars, the stools, and other objects. Over the whole

burial is spread a great ox-hide. It is clear they were all buried at

once. The men and women round about must have been sacrificed so that

their spirits might accompany the chief to the other world.... I could

not escape the belief that they had been buried alive” (=62=). These

funerary practices supply a most important link in the chain which I am

endeavouring to forge. I would especially call attention (1) to the fact

of the sacrifice of the chief’s (? wives and) servants and (2) to the

burial of the chief himself on a bed.

We know that the Egyptian practice of mummification spread south into

Nubia (=39=) and the Soudan.

According to Herodotus the ancient Macrobioi preserved the bodies of

their dead by drying: then they covered them with plaster, painted them

to look like living men, and set them up in their houses for a year. For

a fuller account of this practice and much more instructive information

for comparison see Ridgeway’s “Early Age of Greece,” Vol. I., p. 483 _et

seq._

Numerous references in the classical writers lead us to believe that a

similar custom of keeping the mummy in the house of the relatives for

a longer or shorter period may have been in vogue in Egypt. Throughout

the widespread area in which mummification was practised—from Africa to

America—a precisely similar practice is found among many peoples.

The custom of covering the mummies with plaster[12] is an interesting

survival of the practice described by Junker in Egypt (_vide supra_),

which seems to supply the explanation of the curious measures adopted for

modelling the face in Melanesia.

Even at the present day, centuries after the art of the embalmer

disappeared from Egypt, mummification is being attempted by certain

people dwelling in the neighbourhood of the head-waters of the Nile.

In his article in Hastings’ Dictionary (=32=, p. 418) Hartland states

that the practice of mummification is found “more or less throughout the

west of Africa: among the Niamniam of the Upper Nile basin the bodies of

chiefs, and among the Baganda the kings, are preserved, and the custom is

found also among the Warundi in German East Africa (Frobenius); and in

British Central Africa the corpse is rubbed with boiled maize (Werner).”

Roscoe (=72=, p. 105), in his book on the Baganda, describes the process

of embalming the king’s body. As in Egypt, the body was disembowelled;

and the bowels were washed in beer, just as the Egyptians, according to

Herodotus and Diodorus, are said to have done with palm-wine. The viscera

were spread out in the sun to dry and were then returned to the body, as

was done in Egypt at the time of the XXIst Dynasty. The body was then

dried and washed with beer.

So far as we are aware, the Egyptians never sacrificed any human beings

at their funerals, although they often placed in the _serdab_ of the

_mastaba_ statues of the deceased’s wife, family and servants, to

ensure him their presence and the comforts of a home in his new form of

existence.

In the quotations from Reisner’s report, it has just been seen that he

found some burials made about 1800 B.C., in which servants appear to have

been sacrificed.

In the case of the Baganda, Roscoe describes the killing of the king’s

wives and attendants at his funeral.

Roscoe further describes (in his book) the body of the chief as being

laid on a bed or framework of plantain trees (p. 117).

At the end of five months the head was removed from the mummy and the

jaw-bone was removed, cleaned, and then buried, and a large conical

thatched temple was built over the jaw. [In the islands of the Torres

Straits the same curious custom of rescuing the head after about six

months is also found; but it was the tongue and not the jaw which

received special attention (=25= and =27=)].

In Egypt, where the practice of mummification was most successful,

special treatment of the head was not necessary, except occasionally in

Ptolemaic times (=39=), when carelessness on the part of the embalmer

led to disastrous results and it became necessary to “fake” a body for

attachment to the separated head. But as the Baganda were unable to make

a mummy which would last, they adopted these special measures with regard

to the skull. Originally special importance was attached to the head,

primarily (_vide supra_) as a means of identifying the deceased. But when

the practice of preservation spread to uncultured people, whose efforts

at embalming were ineffectual, the idea was transferred to the skull, the

reason for the special treatment of the head probably being forgotten.

Why such peculiar honour should be devoted to the jaw can only be

surmised from our knowledge of the belief that the deceased was supposed

to be able to talk and communicate with the living (=21=).

In his article in the _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_ (=72=,

p. 44) Roscoe give some further particulars. Four men and four women were

clubbed to death at the funeral ceremony of the king.

The body was wrapped in strips of bark cloth and each finger and toe was

wrapped separately.

In _L’Anthropologie_ (T. 21, 1910, p. 53) Poutrin says of the burial

customs of the M’Baka people of French Congo “le corps, préalablement

embaumé avec des herbes sécher et de la cendre est couché sur un lit.”

Weeks (=104=, pp. 450 and 451) gives an account of the burial customs of

the Bangala of the Upper Congo. “They took out the entrails and buried

them, placed the corpse on a frame, lit a fire under it, and thoroughly

smoke-dried it.” “The dried body was tied in a mat, put in a roughly made

hut.” “Coffins were often made out of old canoes.” “Poorer folk were

rubbed with oil and red camwood powder, bound round with cloth and tied

up in a mat.”

One of the most remarkable instances of the survival of burial practices

strangely reminiscent of those of ancient Egypt has been described by

Mr. Amaury Talbot (=99=). Among the Ibibio people living in the extreme

south-west corner of Nigeria, bordering on the Gulf of Guinea, he found

that both the Ibibios and a neighbouring tribe, the Ibos, had burial

rites which “recall those of ancient Egypt.” For instance, “among Ibos

embalming is still practised.” Two methods of mummification, in which the

evisceration of the corpse takes place, are practised.

For the grave “a wide-mouthed pit” was dug and “from the bottom of this

an underground passage, sometimes thirty feet long, led into a square

chamber with no other outlet. In this the dead body was laid, and, after

the bearers had returned to the light of day, stones were set over

the pit mouth and earth strewn over all.” Further, in the case of the

Ibibios, “in some prominent spot near the town arbour-like erections are

raised as memorials, and furnished with the favourite property of the

dead man. At the back or side of these is placed what we always called

a little ‘Ka’ house, with window or door, into the central chamber,

provided, as in ancient Egypt, for the abode of the dead man’s Ka or

double. Figures of the Chief, with favourite wives and slaves, may also

be seen—counterparts of the Ushabtiu.”

From the photographs illustrating Mr. Talbot’s article many other

remarkable points of resemblance to ancient Egyptian practices are to be

noted.

The snake and the sun constitute the obtrusive features of the crude

design painted in the funeral shrine. The fact that so many features

of the Egyptian burial practices should have been retained (and in

association with many other elements of the “heliolithic” culture)

in this distant spot, on the other side of the continent, raises the

question whether or not its proximity to the Atlantic littoral may not

be a contributory factor in the survival. They may have been spared by

the remoteness of the retreat and the relative freedom from disturbance,

to which nearer localities in the heart of the continent may have been

subjected. But, on the other hand, there is the possibility that the

spread of culture around the coast may have brought these Egyptian

practices to Old Calabar. In the next few pages it will be seen that such

a possibility is not so unlikely as it may appear at first sight.

But the fact that it was the custom among the Ibibio to bury the wives of

the king with his mummy suggests a truly African, as distinct from purely

Egyptian, influence, and makes it probable that the custom spread across

the continent. This view is further supported by the traditions of the

people themselves, no less than by the physical features of their crania

(see _Report British Association_, 1912, p. 613).

As the people of the Ivory Coast (_vide infra_) practice a method of

embalming which is clearly Egyptian and untainted by these African

influences, it is clear that the two streams of Nilotic culture, one

across the continent _viâ_ Kordofan and Lake Chad and the other around

the coasts of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, after reaching the West

Coast must have met somewhere between the mouth of the Niger and the

Ivory Coast.

[Since writing the above paragraphs, in which inferences as to racial

movements across Africa were based solely upon the distribution and

methods of mummification, I have become acquainted with remarkable

confirmation of these views from two different sources. Frobenius, in

his book “The Voice of Africa,” 1913 (see especially the map on p.

449, Vol. II.), makes an identical delimitation of the two spheres of

influence from the east, trans- and circum-African (_i.e._, _viâ_ the

Mediterranean) respectively.

Sir Harry Johnston (“A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa,” _Journ. Roy.

Anthr. Inst._, 1913, p. 384) supplies even more precise and definite

confirmation of the route taken by the Egyptian culture-migration across

Kordofan to Lake Chad, thence to the Niger basin and “all parts of West

Africa.”

He adds further (pp. 412 and 413):—“Stone worship and the use of stone

in building and sepulture extend from North Africa southwards across

the desert region to Senegambia (sporadically) and the northern parts

of the Sudan, and to Somaliland. The superstitious use of stone in

connection with religion, burial and after-death memorial, reappears

again in Yoruba, in the North-West Cameroons and adjoining Calabar region

(Ekir-land).”]

For the purpose of embalming the bodies of their dead “the Baoule of the

Ivory Coast remove the intestines, wash them with palm wine or European

alcohol, introduce alcohol and salt into the body cavity, afterwards

replacing the intestines and stitching up the opening.” (Clozel and

Villamur, quoted by Hartland, (=32=), p. 418.)

Scattered around the western shores of the African continent there are

numerous ethnological features to suggest that it has been subjected to

the influence of the megalithic culture spreading from the Mediterranean.

But there is no spot in which this influence and its Egyptian derivation

is more definitely and surely demonstrated than in the Canary Islands.

For the art of embalming was practised there in the truly Egyptian

fashion; and it became a matter of some interest to discover whether

or not the Nigerian customs were influenced in any way by the Guanche

practices.

There can be little doubt that the practices on the Ivory Coast, to which

reference has just been made, were either inspired by the Guanches or by

the same influence which started embalming in the Canary Islands.

The information we possess in reference to the Canary Islands was

collected by Bory de Saint Vincent (“Les Îles Fortunées,” 1811, p. 54)

and has been summarized by many writers, especially Pettigrew, Haigh and

Reutter.