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 (82and85) 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 orkawas 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 developmentof 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 callscarnitura.]
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 asthecardinal 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 himwhen 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 3000B.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 attemptartificially 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 aflexedposition 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 mummificationwere 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 portrayalof the features enabled any one, including the deceased’s ownka, 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 megalithicserdabwithin themastaba(see94). But even when the complete statue was made for theserdabthe 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 themastaba(94).
A certain magical value soon came to be attached to the statue in theserdab. It provided the body in which thekacould become reincarnated, and the deceased, thus reconstituted by magical means, could pass through the small hole in theserdabto 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 theup-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 withms‘to give birth,’ and the term for the sculptor wassaʿnkh, ‘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 setup. 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 beingseated on a stone; Homer, in his description of the shield of Achilles in theIliad, 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 customwhich 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 widespreadcustom 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 ofthe 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, 3200B.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 architecturethus 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 importantMemoir(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 mightfloat 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 thebody cavity (78;81and86); 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 Egyptiansrealised 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 anacquisition 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 2600B.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 callattention (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. 483et 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 isfound “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 theserdabof themastabastatues 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 1800B.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 aboutsix months is also found; but it was the tongue and not the jaw which received special attention (25and27)].
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 theJournal 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.
InL’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 thoroughlysmoke-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 (seeReport 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 continentviâKordofan 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 inferencesas 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.,viâthe 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 itsEgyptian 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.
From Miss Haigh’s account (26, p. 112) I make the following extracts:—
“When any person died they preserved the body in this manner; first, they carried it to a cave and stretched it on a flat stone, opened it and took out the bowels; then twice a day they washed the porous parts of the body with salt and water; afterwards they anointed it with a composition of sheep’s butter mixed with a powder made from the dust of decayed pine trees, and a sort of brushwood called “Bressos,” together with powdered pumice stone, and then dried it in the sun for fifteen days....
“When the body was thoroughly dried, and had become very light, it was wrapped in sheep skins or goat skins, girded tight with long leather thongs, and carried to one of the sepulchral grottoes, usually situated in the most inaccessible parts of the island.
“The bodies were either upright against the sides of the cavern, or side by side upon a kind of scaffoldingmade of branches of juniper, mocan, or other incorruptible wood.
“The knives for opening the body were made of sharp pieces of obsidian.
“In the grotto of Tacoronté was the mummy of an old woman dried in the sitting posture like that of the Peruvian corpses.”
The mummies were wrapped in reddish goat skin, just as the shroud of Egyptian mummies was often of red linen.
From the same article, in which, as the above quotation states, the body was placed upon a stone for the purpose of the embalmer’s operations, I should like to call attention to the following statement of a curious custom which is found in the most diverse parts of the world, in most cases in association with the practice of mummification.
Tradition says that at his installation the new Mencey (or chief of a principality) is required to seat himself on a stone, cut in the form of a chair and covered with skins: one of his nearest relatives presents him with a sacred relic—the bone of the right arm of the chief of the reigning family (p. 107). I have already (supra) indicated the significance of this characteristic feature of the “heliolithic” culture.
Reutter (63) gives some additional information in reference to Guanche embalming. The incision was made in the lower part of the abdomen (in the flank). After the body had been treated with a saturated salt solution, the viscera were returned to the body. The orifices of the nose, mouth and eyes were “stopped with bitumen as was the Egyptian practice.” After packing the cavities of the body with aromatic plants the body was exposed either to the sun, or in a stove, to desiccate it.
During this operation, other embalmers repeatedly smeared the body with a kind of ointment, prepared by mixing certain fats, with powdered odoriferous plants, resin, pumice stone and absorbent substances (p. 139).
As in Egypt, according to Herodotus and Diodorus,—and my own observations have verified their account, at any rate so far as its chief feature is concerned—there was another method of embalming in which no abdominal incision was made, unless it was per rectum.
When this cheaper method was employed the corpse was dried in the sun and some corrosive liquid, called “cedria” in the case of the Egyptians, but in that of the Guanches supposed by Dr. Parcelly to be Euphorbia juice, was injected for the purpose of dissolving the intestines and thus facilitating the process of preservation by removing the chief seat of decomposition.
[It is important to recall the fact, to which I have already referred in this account, that in the islands of the Torres Straits also the same two alternative methods of evisceration, either through a flank incision or per rectum were in use.]
Most mummies, wrapped in goat skins, were buried in caves. But those of kings and princes were placed in coffins cut out of a solid log, and buried (head north) in the open, a monument of pyramidal form being erected above them.
It is important to bear in mind that both in East and West Africa and in the Canary Islands the technical procedures in the practice of mummification are those which were not adopted in Egypt until the time of the XXIst Dynasty. I have already called attention to this fact in my references to the Torres Straits mummies (vide supra), and to the inference that these extensive migrations of Egyptian influence could not have begun before the ninth centuryB.C.
(For more complete bibliographical references, see Pettigrew, (56), p. 233.)
The large series of identical procedures makes it absolutely certain that the method of embalming practised in the Canary Islands was derived from Egypt, and not earlier than 900B.C.
Reutter states (63, p. 137) that “the Carthaginians, as the result of long-continued commercial intercourse with Egypt, assimilated its civilization even to the extent of worshipping certain of the Egyptian gods and of accepting many of her ideas and beliefs as to a future life.”
“These reasons impelled them to practise the art of embalming and to represent the features of the dead upon their sarcophagi to enable the soul to refind its double.”
“Their burial chambers, for the most part not built up, but carved out of the rock, communicated with the exterior by a staircase. Above them were built mastabas or monuments to be utilised, as amongst the Egyptians, as offering-places” (p. 138).
“Even the inscriptions in the mortuary chambers were written in hieroglyphics, and their sarcophagi contained scarabs inscribed with invocations to the Egyptian gods, Ptah, Bes and Ra, &c.”
This reference is sufficient to indicate how the later (certainly not earlier than 900B.C.and probably some centuries later) Egyptian practices spread around the Mediterranean.
I do not propose (in the present communication) to discuss the influence and the manner of spread of the practice of mummification in Europe. Reutter gives certain information in reference to this subject. It will suffice to say that there is no evidence to show that mummification was widely adopted until comparativelylate times (New Empire and later) in the Mediterranean area, although certain effects of the Egyptian practice, such for example as “extended burial,” spread abroad many centuries earlier, appearing in most regions during the Eneolithic phase.
The procedures revealed in the Canary Islands bear no trace of the influence of Negro Africa to which I have called attention (supra) in the Soudan, Uganda, the Congo and the Niger. The details of the technique suggests the method employed in the XXIst Dynasty; and other features seem to point to the conclusion that the practice must have reached the Canary Islands from the Western Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar, not improbably through Phœnician channels.
[For a full critical discussion of all the literature relating to Egyptian influence in West Africa see Dahse, “Ein zweites Goldland Salomos,”Zeitsch. f. Ethn., 1911, p. 1. The mass of evidence collected in this memoir is entirely corroborative of the conclusions at which I have arrived from the study of mummification.]
With reference to Babylonia Langdon (32) states:—“Traces of embalming have not been found, but Herodotus says that the Babylonians preserved in honey. But a text has been discovered which mentions embalming with cedar oil (cited by Meissner,Wiener Zeitsch. f. Kunde des Morgenlandes, xii, 1898, p. 61). At any rate embalming is not characteristic of Babylonian burials and the custom may be due to Egyptian influence.”
There can, I think, be no doubt whatever as to the Egyptian origin of these instances of embalming in Babylonia. The mere fact of its sporadic occurrence in a country of which it is not characteristic clearly points to this conclusion, which is confirmed by the emphasis laid upon the use of oil of cedar—a definite indication ofthe Egyptian practice. The reference of Herodotus to the use of honey in Babylonia is also of peculiar interest, for it provides us with a connecting link between the Mediterranean area and India and Burma.
The extensive use of honey for the preservation of the body among the Greeks, Romans, Jews, and possibly also the Egyptians, is indicated by the frequent references to the practice in the classics, which have been summarised, with numerous quotations, by Pettigrew (56, pp. 85-87).
The employment of honey suggests the spread of Egyptian influence to Babyloniaviâthe Mediterranean and Syria, seeing that, so far as is known, such a method was used only on the Mediterranean littoral of Egypt, in Phœnicia and the Ægean.
Concerning the use of wax in the process of embalming, of which ancient Egyptian mummies, especially of the new Empire (86), afford numerous instances, Pettigrew (p. 87) remarks:—“The body of King Agesilaus was enveloped in wax and thus conveyed to Lacedæmon. This is confirmed by Cornelius Nepos, and also by Plutarch, who ascribe the adoption of wax to the want of honey for this purpose. Cicero reports the use of it by the Persians.”
In his account of the methods employed by the Scythians (living north of Thrace) for mummifying their kings, Herodotus tells us that the body was coated with wax, the abdomen opened, cleaned out and then filled with pounded stems, with perfumes, aniseed and wild celery seed and then stitched up. The important bearing of the practices described in the Black Sea littoral upon Indian and Burmese customs (vide infra) I must reserve for discussion at some later time.
It will be seen in the subsequent account that honey was in use for embalming in modern times in Burma.
In an article on Persian burial customs (32, p. 505) Dr. Louis H. Gray says: “Unfortunately our sole information on this subject [Ancient Persian rites] must thus far be gleaned from the meagre statements of the classics. If we may judge from the tombs of the Achæmenians, their bodies were not exposed as Zoroastrianism dictated; but it is by no means impossible that they were coated with wax, or even, as Jackson[13]also suggests (“Persia, Past and Present,” p. 235), ‘perhaps embalmed after the manner of the Egyptians.’”
In later times the Persians seem to have been influenced by the practices in vogue in Early Christian times in Egypt, before the coming of Islâm. Thus in Moll’s History (46, p. 545), the statement is made in reference to the Moslem burial customs in Persia; “if it [the corpse] is to be buried a great way off, it is put into a wooden coffin filled up with salt, lime and perfumes to preserve it; for they embalm their dead bodies no otherwise in Persia, nor do they ever embowel them, as with us.” That this is merely a degraded form of the Egyptian embalmer’s practice is shown by the fact that it is identical with the method used by the Copts in Egypt until the seventh, or perhaps even as late as the ninth centuryA.D., and in their case we know that it is a development from, or degradation of, the ancient practice.
This method seems also to have spread to India: for Mr. Crooke tells me that even at the present day several of the ascetic orders bury their dead in salt.
In Moll’s book the following curious statement also occurs, p. 474:—“Mummy, which is human flesh embalm’d that has lain in dry earth several ages, and become hard as horn, is frequently found in the sands of Chorassan, or the ancient Bactria, and some of the bodies are so little alter’d, ’tis said, that the features may be plainly distinguish’d.”