In studying the easterly migration of the custom of mummification it is quite certain that the main stream of the wanderers who carried the knowledge to the east must have set out from the East African coast, because a whole series of modifications of the Egyptian method which were introduced in the Soudan and further south are also found in Indonesia, Polynesia and America. A curious feature of Egyptian embalming in the XIXth and especially the XXIst Dynasties (78and86) was the use of butter for packing the mummy. Among the Baganda, according to Roscoe, special importance came to be attached to this practice. Mr. Crooke has given me references from Indian literature (see especiallyJourn. Anthr. Soc. Bombay, Vol. I., 1886, p. 39) to bodies being “skilfully embalmed with heavenly drugs andghee” [clarified butter].
The ancient Aryans used to disembowel the corpse and fill the cavity withghee(Mitra, “Indo-Aryans,” London, 1881, Vol. I., p. 135), as was done in the case of the mummy of the famous Pharaoh Meneptah (86).
The peculiarly Mediterranean modifications also spread east and it seems most likely that in this case the route from Syria down the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf was taken.
[Since this has been in print further investigation haselucidated with remarkable precision the ways and means of, as well as the impelling motives for, the great migration to the East. This calls for some modification of the foregoing (as well as many of the subsequent) paragraphs. It has been seen that the great wave of culture carried east and west from Egypt the distinctive method of embalming that came into full use somewhere about 900B.C.; hence it is probable the eighth centuryB.C.witnessed the commencement of the series of expeditions, which probably extended over many centuries. It can be no mere chance that the period indicated coincides with the time when the Phœnicians were embarking upon maritime enterprises on a much greater and more daring scale than the world had known until then, in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, in the Red Sea and beyond. In the course of their trading expeditions to the Bab-el-Mandeb these Levantine mariners brought to that region a fuller knowledge of the customs and practices of Egypt and of the whole Phœnician world in the Mediterranean. It was probably in this way and not by the Euphrates route that the culture of the Levant reached the Persian Gulf and India.
The easterly migration of culture which set out from the region of the Bab-el-Mandeb conveyed not only the Ethiopian modifications of Egyptian practices, but also the Egyptian and Mediterranean contributions which the Phœnicians had brought to Ethiopia. On some future occasion I shall discuss the important part played by the Phœnicians in these expeditions to the Far East.]
It is unfortunate that practically nothing is known of the practice of mummification on the Southern coast of Arabia. Bent tells us that the Southern Arabians preserved their dead. Moreover, as the Egyptians obtained from Sabæa much of the materials used forembalming, it is not unlikely that the Arabs may also have learned the use of these preservatives.
In support of this suggestion I might refer to the evidence from Madagascar. It is well known that this island was colonised in ancient times by people from the neighbourhood of the Bab-el-Mandeb, probably Galla-people from the Somali coast as well as Sabæans from the Arabian coast, possibly ferried along the African shore by expert mariners from Oman and the Persian Gulf, either the Phœnicians themselves or their kinsmen. A more numerous element came from the distant Malay Archipelago. Either or both of these racial elements may have introduced the practice of mummification into Madagascar.
In his “History on Madagascar” (1838, Vol. I, p, 243) Ellis says there “was no regular embalming,” but the “body was preserved for a time by the use of large quantities of gum benzoin, or other powdered aromatic gums.” This method is strongly suggestive of South Arabian influence.
Hartland says “the Betsileo [and other Madagascar tribes] dry the corpse in the air, the fluids being assisted to escape” (32, p. 418).
Grandidier, however, gives us more precise information on this subject (“La Mort et les Funerailles à Madagascar,”L’Anthropologie, T. 23, 1912, p. 329). According to him the Betsileo open the body of the dead and remove all the viscera, which they throw into a lake: among the Merina the entrails are removed only in the cases of their sovereigns or members of the royal family.
The practice of mummification amongst the Betsileo is of peculiar interest because the embalmed bodies are buried in stone tombs obviously inspired by Egyptianmodels. The subterranean megalithic burial chamber in association with an oblongmastaba-like superstructure at once recalls the distinctive features of the Egyptian tomb. But there is a curious feature suggestive of Babylonian influence, namely, the situation of the temple of offerings on the top of themastaba. In some respects this type of grave recalls those found in the Bahrein Islands by Bent (4), which he compares with the Early Phœnician tombs at Arvad (55). There can be no question that the latter were copied from Theban tombs of the New Empire (vide supra).
This seems to point quite clearly to the fact that the Betsileo burial practices were inspired by Egyptian models, possibly modified by Southern Arabian influences.
In Hall’s “Great Zimbabwe” (1905, pp. 94 and 95), it is stated that “the Baduma, who live in Gutu’s country, and also the Barotse, still embalm, or, rather, dry the bodies of their chiefs, and also the dead of certain families, though generally the bodies are buried lengthways on their right side, facing the sun. The body is placed in the hut on a bier made of poles near a large fire, and continually turned until the body is dry. Then it is wrapped up in a blanket and hung from the roof” [as is done in the Doré Bay region in New Guinea].
There has been considerable controversy as to the origin of the vast stone monuments in this region. The writer from whom I have just quoted, with many others, believed the Zimbabwe ruins to be the work of Early Sabæan or Phœnician immigrants, who were attracted by the Rhodesian gold-fields. Randall-MacIver believed that he found Chinese and Persian relics (no earlier than the 14th or at earliest 13th century) under the foundations; and recklessly jumped to the conclusion that the local Negroes had conceived and built these vast monuments!The idea of any savage people, and especially Negroes, planning such structures and undertaking the enormous labour of their construction is surely too ludicrous to be considered seriously. Even if these monuments were built no earlier than five or six centuries ago, that does not invalidate the hypothesis that they were inspired by the models of some old civilization. Is it necessary to expound the whole theory of survivals to make this point clear? The whole of this memoir is concerned with the persistence in outlying corners of the world of strange practices whose inventors passed away twenty-eight centuries and more ago, and whose country has forgotten them and their works for more than a thousand years. [My friend, W. J. Perry, is collecting other evidence which proves quite definitely that the Zimbabwe culture was “heliolithic.”]
In Moll’s History (46) the following passage occurs in an account of the customs of Ceylon, p. 430, “when a person of condition dies his corps is laid out and wash’d, and being cover’d with a linnen-cloath, is carried out upon a bier to some high place and burnt: but if he was an officer who belong’d to the court, the corps is not burnt till the king gives orders for it, which is sometimes a great while after. In this case his friends hollow the body of a tree, and having bowell’d and embalm’d the corps, they put it in, filling the hollow up with pepper, and having made it as close as possible, they bury the corpse in some room of the house till the king orders it to be burnt.”
“As for the poorer people, they usually wrap them up in mats and bury them.”
This traveller’s tale would not call for serious attention if it were not confirmed by modern accounts of an analogous practice in Burma and the neighbourhood.
In his “Himalayan Journal” Sir Joseph Hooker described how the Khasias temporarily embalm their dead in honey before cremating them.
Pettigrew (56, p. 245) quotes Captain Coke’s account of the embalming of a Burman priest. The body, as witnessed by him, was lying exposed to public view upon a stage constructed of bamboos. This is the bier which is so invariably associated with mummification.
“The entrails of the deceased (who had been dead upwards of a month) had been taken out a few hours after death by means of an incision in the stomach, and the vacuum being filled with honey and spices the opening was sewed up. The whole body was then covered over with a slight coating of resinous substance calleddhamma, and wax, to preserve it from the air, after which it was richly overlaid with gold leaf, thus giving the body the appearance of one of the finely moulded images so common in the temples of the worshippers ofBoodh.”
Then it was cremated.
This is a curious instance of the blending of the custom of mummification with the later practice of cremation, which was inspired by entirely different ideals. Throughout the whole area in which Egyptian methods of embalming were adopted there are found numerous instances of such syncretism with a variety of burial customs.
“Another method which I have known to be practised, but not as common as the one above detailed, of embalming bodies in the Burman country, is by forcing two hollow bamboos through the soles of the feet, up the legs and into the body of the deceased; then by dint of pressing and squeezing the fluid is carried off through the bamboos into the ground.”
This practice is an important link between the Egyptian and the Indonesian methods.
In his article on Thibetan burial customs (32, p. 511), Waddell informs us that preservation of the entire body by embalming seems to be restricted to the sovereign Grand Lamas of Lhāsa and Tāshilhumpo. “The body is embalmed by salting, and, clad in the robes of the deceased and surrounded by his personal implements of worship, is placed, in the attitude of a seated Buddha, within a gilded copper sarcophagus in one of the rooms of the palace: it is then worshipped as a divinity.”
There are many points of interest in this practice, which, considered in conjunction with the methods practised in Burma, Ceylon and Persia just mentioned, clearly indicate not only the sources and the routes taken by this knowledge of embalming in its spread from Egypt, but also how the burial rites of a variety of peoples can become intimately blended and intermingled one with another.
In Captain T. H. Lewins’ book on “The Wild Tribes of South-Eastern India” (London, 1870, p. 274) I find the following statement:—“Among the Dhun and Khorn clans the body is placed in a coffin made of a hollow tree trunk, with holes in the bottom. This is placed on a lofty platform and left to dry in the sun. The dried body is afterwards rammed into an earthern vase and buried; the head is cut off and preserved. Another clan sheathe their dead in pith; the corpse is then placed on a platform, under which a slow fire is kept up until the body is dried. The corpse is then kept for six months ... it is then buried. The Howlong clan hang the body up to the house-beams for seven days, during which time the dead man’s wife has to sit underneath spinning.”
These interesting records are of considerable value in establishing connexions between East Africa and regions further east, which will be discussed in the following pages.
[In my search for information concerning the practice of embalming in India, where by inference I was convinced it must have had some vogue in ancient times, I completely overlooked the important memoir by Mr. W. Crooke on “Primitive Rites of Disposal of the Dead, with Special Reference to India” (Journ. Anthrop. Inst., Vol. XXIX, 1899, p. 272). Since the rest of this article has been in print Mr. Crooke has kindly called my attention to his memoir and given me a lot of other valuable information. Fortunately all this evidence supports and substantiates the opinions I had previously arrived at inductively. For it provides a complete series of connecting links between the western and eastern portions of the chain I am reconstructing. It is too bulky to insert here and too important merely to summarise, so that I must postpone fuller discussion of this Indian evidence until some future time.]
If it is admitted that the custom of mummification as it is practised, for example, in the islands of the Torres Straits was derived from Egypt, however remotely and indirectly, it is clear that, as the technique includes a number of curious features which were not introduced in Egypt before the XVIIIth, XXth and XXIst Dynasties (respectively in the case of different procedures), the migration of people carrying the methods east could not have left Egypt before the time of the XXIst Dynasty, say 900B.C.as the earliest possible date. At this time Egypt was in very close relationship with the Soudan and Western Asia; and it is obvious that the Egyptian practices may have reached the Persian Gulf by three routes:—(1)viâthe Soudan, the head-waters of the Nile and the Somali Coast, (2) by the Red Sea route, and (3) from the Phœnician Coast down the Euphrates. No doubt all three routes served as avenues for communicationand for the transmission of cultural influences; and it is not essential for our immediate purposes to enquire which channel served to transmit each element of Egyptian culture that made its influence felt in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf at this period. For it was a period of active maritime enterprise, especially on the part of the Phœnicians, both in the Mediterranean and the Southern Seas, and a time when the fluctuating political fortunes of Egypt, Western Asia and the Soudan produced a more intimate intermingling of the peoples, so that they mutually influenced one another most profoundly.
It is important to remember that many of the features of the embalmer’s art as it is practiced in the far East are modifications of the Egyptian method which were first introduced in the region of the Upper Nile, so that the East African Coast must have been the point of departure for such methods. Other features, not only of the method of embalming, but also of the associated megalithic architecture, were equally distinctive of the Phœnician region and may have been transmitted by the Euphrates.[14]Other features again were distinctively Babylonian. Of the former, the African influence, I might refer to the use of the frame-like support for the mummy, the custom of removing the head some months after burial, and the sacrifice of wives and servants. As to the Phœnician and Babylonian influences, the use of honey might be cited, and the emphasis laid upon “cedar” wood and “cedar” oil in mummification; and the Phœnician adaptation of the New Empire type of Theban tomb seen at Arvad and the analogoussepulchres found in the Bahrein Islands (4) The Betsileo tombs in Madagascar probably represent the same type transferredviâSabæa down the East African coast.
As to the means by which the customs of the dwellers around the Persian Gulf were communicated to the peoples of India and Ceylon there is a considerable mass of evidence. The fact that mummification, the building of megalithic monuments of the recognised Mediterranean types, sun- and serpent-worship and all the other impedimenta of the “heliolithic” culture made their appearance in India in pre-Aryan times affords positive evidence of the reality of the intercourse. I have already referred to the adoption in India of the curiously eccentric method of steering river-boats found in Middle Kingdom Egyptian tombs; and the custom of representing eyes on the prow of the boat are further illustrations of the spread of distinctive practices. According to Rhys Davids (14, p. 116) “it may now be accepted as a working hypothesis that sea-going merchants [mostly Dravidians, not Aryans], availing themselves of the monsoons, were in the habit, at the beginning of the seventh (and perhaps at the end of the eighth) centuryB.C., of trading from ports on the South-West of India to Babylon, then a great mercantile emporium.” He adduces evidence which clearly demonstrates that the written scripts of India, Ceylon and Burma were in this way derived from “the pre-Semitic race now called Akkadians.” “It seems almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that [the] curious buildings [at Anurādhapura in Ceylon] were not entirely without connection with the seven-storied Ziggarats which were so striking a feature among the buildings of Chaldæa.... it would seem that in this case also the Indians were borrowers of an idea” (p. 70). The more precise and definite influence ofBabylonian models further east removes any doubt as to the part it played. Crooke speaks of the Southern Dravidians as a maritime people, who placed in their burial mounds “bronze articles which were probably imported in the course of trade with Babylonia” (12, p. 29). “They were probably the builders of the remarkable series of rude stone monuments which crown the hills in the Nilgiri range and the plateau of the Deccan” (p. 28). The most ancient stone monuments in Southern India contain objects which go to prove that they were built at the earliest just before the introduction of iron-working. Thus, if the knowledge of iron-working came from Europe, these monuments could not have been built much before 800B.C.As a matter of fact it is known that many of them cannot be older than 600B.C.(Crooke,13, p. 129). All of these facts agree in supporting the view that the influence of Egypt, which, so far as the matters under consideration are concerned, came into operation not earlier than the eighth centuryB.C., spread to India partlyviâBabylonia and partly by way of East Africa, somewhere between the close of the eighth and the commencement of the sixth centuryB.C.
The monuments to which I have just been referring were not, in my opinion, directly inspired by Egypt, but indirectly. The North Syrian and the adjoining territories adopted the Egyptian burial customs at an earlier period and the finished type of holed dolmen was probably developed and survived in that region long after its Egyptian prototype had become a thing of the past. The real types that have come down to our times are found in the Caucasus, between the Black Sea and the Caspian. The Indian dolmens were certainly imitations of these models. But in respect of other buildings the Indians directly adopted Babylonian and Egyptian types.I have already referred to the former. Many of the Dravidian temples are so precisely modelled on the plan of the Theban temples of the New Empire that to question the source of the inspiration of the former is impossible.
“Fergusson first called attention to the striking similarity in general arrangement and conception between the great South Indian temples and those of ancient Egypt.... The gopurams or gate-towers, which in the later more ornate examples are decorated from the base to the summit with sculptures of the Hindu Pantheon, increase in size with the size of the walled quadrangles, the outer ones becoming imposing landmarks, which are visible for miles around, and are strikingly similar to the pylons of Egyptian temples” (Thurston,101, pp. 158 and 161). Thus in the matter of its early buildings India has clearly been influenced by Egypt, Phœnicia and Chaldea; and this great cultural wave impinged upon the Indian peninsula not before the close of the eighth centuryB.C.
It is important also to remember that it reached India just (perhaps not more than a century) before another wave of a very different culture poured down from the north, and introduced, among other things, the practice of cremation.
For our immediate purpose this is unfortunate, because that practice is inspired by ideas utterly opposed to those underlying the custom of embalming, and naturally destroyed most, though by no means all, traces of the latter. That the practice of embalming did actually reach India from the west is known not merely because evidence of unmistakably Egyptian technique is found further east, but also because in India and Ceylon there are definite traces of the custom, to which reference has already been made in the foregoing pages. Casesfrom Persia, Ceylon, India, Burma and Thibet were cited in proof of the survival of elements of the embalming process or ritual, even when the Brahmanical and Buddhist burial practices had been adopted.
From the foregoing account there can be no doubt that the people of India did at one time practice mummification, at any rate in the case of their chiefs. They also acquired a knowledge of the arts and crafts, as the result of the influence exerted by the rich stream of culture which brought the attainments of the great western civilizations to India before the Ayran immigration. The bringers of this new culture mingled their blood with the aboriginal pre-Dravidian population and the result was the Dravidians. It is not at all improbable that the resultant Dravidian civilization had reached a higher plane than that of the Aryas, who entered the country after them.
In Oldham’s interesting and suggestive brochure (51, pp. 53-55), which, in spite of Crooke’s drastic criticism, seems to me to be a valuable contribution to a knowledge of the questions under discussion, the following passages occur:—
“The Asuras, Dasyus, or Nagas, with whom the Aryas came into contact, on approaching the borders of India, were no savage aboriginal tribes, but a civilized people who had cities and castles. Some of these are said in the Veda to have been built of stone.
“It would seem, indeed, as if the Asuras had reached a higher degree of civilization than their Aryan rivals. Some of their cities were places of considerable importance. And, in addition to this, wealth and luxury, the use of magic, superior architectural skill, and ability to restore the dead to life, were ascribed to the Asuras by Brahmanical writers.”
The “ability to restore the dead to life” is probably a reference to the Egyptian ritual of “the opening of the mouth,” which of course is an integral part of the funerary procedure incidental to the practice of mummification.
“The Nagas occupy a very prominent position in connection with Indian astronomy, and this is not likely to have been assigned to them, by their Brahmanical rivals, without good reason. Probably this and other branches of science were brought, by the Asuras, from their ancient home in the countries between the Kaspian and the Persian Gulf.
“The close relationship between the Indian and the Chaldean astronomical systems has been frequently noticed.
“The sun-worship of the Asuras; their holding sacred the Naga or hooded serpent, sometimes represented with many heads; their deification of kings and ancestors; their veneration of the cedar; their religious dances; their sacrificial rights; their communication with the deities through the medium of inspired prophets; their occasional tendency towards democratic institutions; their use of tribal emblems or totems—and many of their social customs; seem to connect them with that very early civilization—Turanian or otherwise—which we find amongst so many of the peoples of extreme antiquity. They had, in fact, much in common with the early inhabitants of Babylonia; and, perhaps, even more with those of Elam and the neighbouring countries.
“We shall see later that the Asuras and the Dravidians were, apparently, the same people.”
“Not only were the Asuras or Nagas a civilized people, but they were a maritime power. Holding both banks of the great river Indus, they must have had access to the sea from a very early period. Their kinship, too,with the serpent-worshipping people of ancient Media, and the neighbouring countries, which has already been referred to, must have led to a very early development of trade with the Persian Gulf.
“The Asuras were actively engaged in ‘The Churning of the Ocean’ (Mahabharata,Adi,Astika, p. xviii.), which is but an allegorical description of sea-borne commerce in its early days” (op. cit., p. 58).
“In theMahabharata, the ocean is described as the habitation of the Nagas and the residence of the Asuras; it is also said to be the refuge of the defeated Asuras (Mahabharata,Adi,Astika, p. xxii.). This was no doubt because marauding bands of this people retreated to their ships after an unsuccessful raid. Thus we find that on the death of Vrita, his followers took refuge in the sea (Mahabharata,Vana,Tirthayatra, p. ciii.). So also did the Asura Panchajana, who lived in Patala, when he was pursued by Krishna (Vishnu Parana, v., xxi., 526). And so did the Danavas when defeated by the Devas at the churning of the ocean (Mahabharata,Adi,Astika, p. xix.).”
“An ancient legend, given in theMahabharata, relates how Kadru, mother of the serpents, compelled Garuda to convey her sons across the sea into a beautiful country in a distant region, which was inhabited by Nagas. After encountering a violent storm and great heat, the sons of Karur were landed in the country of Ramaniaka, on the Malabar coast.”
“This territory had been occupied previously by a fierce Asura named Lavana (Mahabharata,Adi,Astika, p. xxvii.). So there had been a still earlier colonization by the same race.”
“Naga chiefs are frequently mentioned as ruling countries in or under the sea” (p. 61).
“The civilization of Burmah, and other Indo-Chinese countries, is ascribed by legend and by the native historians to invaders from India. And these are connected with the Naga People of Magadha, and of the north and west of India. The ancient navigators, too, who carried the Brahmanical and Buddhist religions, the worship of the Naga, and the Sanscrit or Pali language to Java, Sumatra, and even to distant Celebes, were Indian people. And they were, doubtless, descendants of those Asura dwellers in the ocean, which are mentioned in theMahabharata, and have already been referred to” (p. 166).
“Another proof of the ancient connection of these islands with India is that the Javan era is the Saka-kala, which is so well known, and is still in use in parts of Western India and in the Himalaya. According to a Javan tradition an expedition from India, led by a son of the king of Kujrat (Gujrat), arrived on the west coast of the island aboutA.D.603. A settlement was founded, and the town of Mendan Kamalan was built. Other Hindus followed, and a great trade was established with the ports of India and other countries (Raffles, Hist. Java, ii., 83). There is however no reason to suppose that this was the first arrival of Indian voyagers in the Archipelago.
“Traditions still remain in Western India of expeditions to Java. A Guzerati proverb runs thus: ‘He who goes to Java never comes back; but if he does return, his descendants, for seven generations, live at ease’ (Bombay Gazetter, i., 402). The bards in Marwar have a legend that Bhoj raja, the great puar chief of Ujaini, in anger drove away his son Chandrabhan, who sailed to Java (Ib., i., 448).
“Evidence brought forward by Mr. Kennedy (J. R. A. S., April, 1898) shows that a great sea-bornetrade was carried on from Indian ports by Dravidian merchants as early as the seventh centuryB.C.The beginnings of Dravidian navigation, however, were probably much earlier than this.
“We have seen that the sea-borne commerce of the Solar or Naga tribes of Western India had become important at a very early period. Of this the legend of ‘the churning of the ocean’ already referred to is an allegorical description, but we have no detailed account of ocean voyages until a much later period. Sakya Buddha himself, however, refers to such voyages. He says: ‘Long ago ocean going merchants were wont to plunge forth upon the sea, taking with them a shore-sighting bird. When the ship was out of sight of land they would set the shore-sighting bird free. And it would go to the east and to the south and to the west and to the north and to the intermediate points and rise aloft. If on the horizon it caught sight of land, thither it would go. But if not then it would come back to the ship again’ (Rhys Davids,J. R. A. S., April, 1899, 432).
“It will be observed that this mode of finding the position of the ship at sea, which recalls the sending out of the birds from the Ark, is said to have been the custom ‘long ago.’ It would seem therefore, that in the fifth centuryB.C.other and probably more scientific methods were in use. It would also appear that the navigation of the ocean was even then an ancient institution.
“In the time of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Fah Hian (about 406A.D.) there was a regular and evidently old-established trade between India and China and with the islands of the Archipelago.
“Fah Hian sailed from Tamalitti, or Tamralipti, at the mouth of the Ganges, in a great merchant ship, and in fourteen days reached Ceylon (Fo-Kwo-ki, Beal.,I, lxxi,lxxii.). From thence he sailed in a great ship which carried about two hundred men, and which was navigated by observing the sun, moon and stars. In this ship Fah Hian reached Ye-po-ti (probably Java) in which country heretics and Brahmans flourished, but the law of Buddha was not much known (Ib.,I, lxxx.). Here the pilgrim embarked for China on board another ship carrying two hundred men, amongst whom were Brahmans. These proposed to treat the sramana as Jonah was treated, and for the same reason, but some of those on board took his part. At length when their provisions were nearly exhausted, they reached China (Ib.,I, lxxxi., lxxxii.). All these ships appear to have been Indian and not Chinese.
“Fah Hian mentions that pirates were numerous in those seas (Ib.,I, lxxx.), which shows that the commerce must have been considerable” (p. 171).
“It seems in the highest degree improbable that this close connection between the Sun and the serpent could have originated, independently, in countries so far apart as China and the West of Africa, or India and Peru. And it seems scarcely possible that, in addition to this, the same forms of worship of these deities, and the same ritual, could have arisen, spontaneously, amongst each of these far distant peoples. The alternative appears to be that the combined worship of the Sun and serpent-gods must have spread from a common centre, by the migration of, or communication with, the people who claimed Solar descent.
“So universally was the Naga held sacred, that it would seem to have been the earliest totem of the people who claimed descent from the Sun-god” (p. 183).
I have quoted so extensively from Oldham’s fascinating work because the conclusions at which he arrived from a study of the ancient literature of India is confirmedby evidence derived from utterly different sources, not only from India itself but also from other countries. For, scattered throughout the length and breadth of India, are to be found thousands of indications (in traditions, beliefs, customs, social organisation and material relics) that the complete “heliolithic” culture had reached India not later than the beginning of the seventh centuryB.C.
Moreover the evidence which I have culled from Oldham bears out the conclusions my own investigations lead up to, namely, that the “heliolithic” culture spread from India to Malaysia soon after it reached India itself. It is surely something more than a mere coincidence that the period of the greatest maritime exploits of the Phœnicians, in the course of which, according to many authorities, they reached India or even further east, should coincide with that of the great pre-Aryan maritime race of India, whose great expeditions, as the above quotations indicate, were primarily for purposes of commerce between the Persian Gulf and the West Coast of India. There is gradually accumulating a considerable mass of evidence to suggest that, if the Asuras were not themselves Phœnicians, they acquired their maritime skill from these famous sailors and traders. The same hardy mariners who brought the new knowledge and practices from the Persian Gulf to India and Ceylon also carried it further, to Burma and Indonesia.
That this is so is clearly shown by the fact that these customs spread to Indonesia and the Pacificbeforecremation was introduced; and it has been indicated above that the introduction of the practice of cremation into India may have taken place within a century of the arrival of the “heliolithic” civilization there. Hence it is obvious that the latter must have spread to the far east soon after it reached India; and the completeness of thetransmission of the distinctive culture-complex can be explained only by supposing that the same people who brought it to India also carried it further east.
All the other evidence at our disposal is in full harmony with this view. The advancing wave of western culture swept past India into Indonesia, carrying into the isles of the Pacific and on to the American littoral the products of the older civilizations at first almost, but not altogether, untainted by Indian influence; but for centuries afterwards, as this same ferment gradually leavened the vast bulk of India, the stream of western culture continued to percolate eastwards and carried with it in succession the influence of the Brahmanical, Buddhist and, within in a more restricted area, Mahometan cults.
It is an interesting confirmation of the general accuracy of the scheme that has now been sketched out that the dates at which the influence of Egypt began to be exerted in the east, that to which Rhys Davids assigns the definite influencing of India by Babylonia, that at which India influenced Malaysia, and finally that assigned by students of the Polynesian problem to the inauguration of the great Indonesian migration into the Pacific (60and98), all fit into one consecutive series, though each was determined from different kinds of evidence and independently of the rest.
It is not my intention to discuss the evidence for the coming of the “heliolithic” culture to Indonesia, for the complex problems of this region have been analysed and interpreted in a masterly fashion by W. J. Perry in a book which is shortly to be published. The form which my present communication has assumed is largely the outcome of the reading of Perry’s manuscript and of discussions with him of the new lines of investigation which it suggested; and I am satisfied to leave this regionfor him to elucidate in detail. It will suffice to say here that the traditions of the inhabitants of the various islands of Malaysia, no less than their heterogeneous customs and beliefs, provided him with very precise evidence in demonstration of the complex constitution of the “heliolithic” culture, and of the fact that it was brought to the islands by an immigration from the west.
There is less need for me to analyse the vast literature relating to the burial practices in the islands of the Malay Archipelago since this useful service has already been accomplished by Hertz (33). Although I dissent from the main contention in his interpretation of the facts, his accurate record is none the less valuable on that account—perhaps indeed it is more useful, as it certainly cannot be accused of bias in favour of the views I am expounding.
A great variety of burial customs, in most respects closely analogous to the practices of the Naga tribes of India, is found in Indonesia;—exposing the dead on trees or platforms, burial in hollow trees, smoking and other methods of preservation, temporary burial, and cremation.
Apart from the definite evidence of preservation of the dead found in scattered islands from one end of the Archipelago to the other, there are much more generally diffused practices which are unquestionably derived from the former custom of mummification.
In the account of mummification as practised in the more savage African tribes, it was seen that the practice was restricted in most cases to the bodies of kings; and even then the failure to preserve the body in a permanent manner compelled these peoples to modify the Egyptian methods. Realising that the corpse, even when preserved as efficiently as they were able to perform the work of embalming, would undergo a process of disintegration within a few months, it became the practice to rescue theskull, to which special importance was attached (for the definite reasons explained by the early Egyptian evidence).
In his survey Hertz (33, p. 66) calls attention to the widespread custom of temporary burial throughout Indonesia, but, instead of recognising that such procedures have come into vogue as a degradation of the full rites incidental to mummification, he regards it as part of a widespread “notion que les derniers rites funéraires ne peuvent pas être célébrés de suite après la mort, mais seulement à l’expiration d’une période plus on moins longue” (p. 66); and regards mummification simply as a specialised form of this rite which is almost universal (p. 67):—“il paraît légitime de considérer la momification comme un cas particulier et dérivé de la sépulture provisoire.” (p. 69). This is a remarkable inversion of the true explanation. For the enormous mass of evidence which is now available makes it quite certain that the practice of temporary burial was adopted only when failure (or the risk of failure) to preserve the body compelled less cultured people to desist from the complete process.
I am in full agreement with Hertz when he says:—“L’homologie entre la préservation artificielle du cadavre et la simple exposition temporaire paraîtra moins difficile à admettre si l’on tient compte du fait qui sera mis en lumière plus bas: les ossements secs, résidu de la décomposition, constituent pour le mort un corps incorruptible, absolument comme la momie.” (p. 69). But does not this entirely bear out my contention? It is quite inconceivable that the practice of mummification could have been derived from the custom of preparing the skeleton; but the reverse is quite a natural transition, for even in the hands of skilled embalmers (see especially39), not to mention untutored savage peoples, the measures taken forpreserving the body may fail and the skeleton alone may be spared. If this contention be conceded, the demonstration given by Hertz of the remarkable geographical distribution of customs of temporary burial affords a most valuable confirmation of the general scheme of the present communication. “Au point de vue où, nous sommes placés, il y a homologie rigoureuse entre l’exposition du cadavre sur les branches d’un arbre, telle que la pratiquent les tribus du centre de l’Australie, ou à l’intèrieur de la maison des vivants, comme cela se rencontre chez certains Papous et chez quelques peuples Bantous, ou sur une plateforme élevée à dessein, ainsi que le font en général les Polynésiens et de nombreuses tribus indiennes de l’Amérique du Nord, ou enfin l’enterrement provisoire, observé en particulier par la plupart des Indiens de l’Amérique du Sud” (p. 67). There can be no doubt whatever of the justice of this “homology,” for in every one of the areas mentioned these customs exist side by side with the practice of mummification; and in many cases there is definite evidence to show that the other methods of treatment have been derived from it by a process of degradation. In his excellent bibliography, and especially the illuminating footnotes, Hertz gives a number of references to the practice of desiccation by smoking or simple forms of embalming, which had escaped me in my search for information on these matters. He refers especially to further instances of such practices in Australia, New Guinea, various parts of West Africa, Madagascar and America (p. 68).
An interesting reference in the same note (p. 68, footnote 5) is to the practice of simple embalming among the Ainos of Sakhalin (Preuss,Begräbnisarten der Amerikaner, p. 190). This seems to supply an important link between the Eastern Asiatic littoral and the AleutianIslands, where mummification is practised. In Saghalien, according to St. John (“The Ainos,”Journ. Anthropol. Inst., Vol. II., 1873, p. 253), “when the chief of a tribe or village died, his body was laid out on a table close to the door of his hut; his entrails were then removed, and daily for twelve months his wife and daughters wash him thoroughly. He is allowed ... to dry in the sun.”
In a recent article on the customs of the people of Laos (G. Maupetit, “Moeurs laotiennes,”Bull. et Mem. de la Soc. d’ Anthropol. de Paris, 1913), an account is given of the practice of mummification in this far south-eastern corner of the Asiatic mainland. Cremation is the regular means adopted for disposal of the dead: but it is also “the Laotian’s ideal to be able to preserve the corpse in his house, for as long a time as possible, before incinerating it: in the same way the Siamese and Chinese keep their dead in the house for several months, often for several years” (p. 549).
According to Maupetit the method of preservation is a most remarkable one. They pour from 75 to 300 grammes of mercury into the mouth! “It passes along the alimentary canal and suffices to produce mummification, the rapid desiccation of the organic tissues.” Then the body was stretched upon a thick bed of melted wax, wood ashes, cloth and cushions.
The great stream of “heliolithic” culture exerted a profound influence upon and played a large part in shaping the peculiar civilizations of China, Corea, and Japan. As the practice of embalming does not play an obtrusive part[15]in this influence, I do not propose (in the present communication) to enter upon the discussionof these matters, except to note in passing that the influence exerted by the “heliolithic” culture upon the Pacific coast of America may have been exerted partly by the East Asiatic-Aleutian route (seeMap II.).
The disgusting practice of collecting the fluids which drip from the putrefying corpse and mixing them with the food for the living occurs in Indonesia, in New Guinea and the neighbouring islands, in Melanesia, Polynesia and in Madagascar (for the bibliographical references see Hertz, p. 83, footnote 3).
The Indonesian methods of preserving the dead are found in Seram (W. J. Perry), and the report recently published by Lorenz[16](43, p. 22) records a similar practice in the neighbourhood of Doré Bay in North-West New Guinea. The corpse was tied to the rafter of the dwelling-house; and the practice of mixing the juices of decomposition with the food is in vogue also. The accounts given by D’Albertis (1) and other travellers show that analogous customs are found at other places in New Guinea. There can be no doubt that the practice spread along the north coast of the island and then around its eastern extremity to reach the islands of the Torres Straits, where the practice is seen in its fully developed form, as Flower (19), Haddon and Myers (25), and Hamlyn-Harris (27) have described.
As I have already referred to Papuan mummies earlier in this communication and at some future time intend to devote a special memoir to the full discussion of the methods of the Torres Straits embalmers, I shall not go into the matter in detail here. I should like, however, to call special attention to the admirable account given by Haddon and Myers (25) of the associated funeral rites.
In his memoir Flower described two interesting mummies, then in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, one “brought in 1872 from Darnley Island in Torres Strait by Mr. Charles Lemaistre, Captain of the French barque ‘Victorine,’ and the other, an Australian mummy, obtained in 1845 near Adelaide, by Sir George Grey.” By a curious and utterly incomprehensible act of vandalism these extremely rare and priceless ethnological specimens were deliberately destroyed by Sir William Flower, who naively explains his extraordinary action by the statement “as the skeleton will form a more instructive specimen when the dried and decaying integuments are removed I have had it cleaned” (p. 393)! He treated in the same manner the second mummy, the only example of its kind, so far as I am aware, in this country! His photographs show that these two specimens, so far from being “decaying,” were in a remarkably good state of preservation at the time he doomed them to destruction.
Captain Lemaistre found the Torres Strait mummy “in its grave, which consisted of a high straw and bamboo hut of round form: it was not lying down, but standing up on the stretcher” (19, p. 389). This is a close parallel to the African customs—mummification, burial in a house of round form, and fixing the corpse to a rough form of funeral bier, which is stood up in the house.
The skin was painted red, the scalp black. “The sockets of the eyes were filled with a dark brown substance, apparently a vegetable gum.... In this was imbedded a narrow oval piece of mother of pearl, pointed at each end, in the centre of the anterior surface of which is fixed a round mass of the same resinous substance, representing the pupil of the eye” (p. 301).
“Both nostrils had been distended.”
“In the right flank was a longitudinal incision, 3½ inches in length, extending between the last rib and the crest of the ilium. This had been very neatly closed by what is called in surgery the interrupted suture.... The whole of the pelvic, abdominal and thoracic viscera had been removed, and their place was occupied by four pieces of very soft wood.... Except the wound in the flank, there was no other opening or injury to the skin” (p. 391).
“Heads and bodies prepared in a similar way” are found in many museums, and afford an interesting illustration of the old Egyptian practice of paying special attention to the head. This is all the more instructive in view of the fact that it was common in certain regions, especially Mallicolo in the New Hebrides, to restore the features by means of clay and resinous paste, usually making use of the skull as a basis, but occasionally modelling the whole body,[17]the model including parts of the deceased’s skeleton (see Henry Balfour’s article, “Memorial Heads in the Pitt Rivers Museum,”Man, Vol. I., 1901, p. 65). These modelling-practices and especially the fact that they usually deal with the head (or even face) only afford an interesting confirmation of the Egyptian origin of these customs (vide supra, etc.,40).
In the 6th volume of the reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, C. S. Myers and Haddon (25, pp. 129 and 135) give a detailed account of the funeral ceremonies from which I quote certain points. “As soon as death had occurred the women of the village started wailing. The corpse was placed on the ground on a mat in front of the house; the arms were placed close to the side; the great toes were tied togetherby a string; the hair of the head and face was cut off and thrown away; the length of the nose was then measured with a piece of wax, which was preserved by a female relative for subsequent use in making a wax mask for the prepared skull. The dead man’s bow and arrow and his stone-headed club were laid beside him” (p. 129). The Egyptian analogies in all of these procedures is quite obvious.
“Five men wearing masks performed a series of manœuvres ending up with flexion of the arms and a bending of the head. This movement was said to indicate the rising and setting of the sun and to be symbolic of the life and death of man.
“Mourners then took the body and placed it upon a wooden framework, which stood upon four wooden supports at a little distance from the house of the deceased. The relatives then took large yams and placed them beside the body on the framework; they also hung large bunches of bananas upon the bamboos around. This was regarded as nourishment for the ghost, which was supposed to eat it at night-time (p. 135).
“In two or three days when the skin of the body had become loose the framework was taken up to the reef in a small canoe; the epidermis was then rubbed off and by means of a sharp shell a small incision was made in the side of the abdomen (in the right side, at least, in the case of women), whence the viscera were extracted.
“The perineum was incised in the males.”
From a study of all the literature regarding this custom, as well as the actual specimens now in Sydney and Brisbane, it is clear that the incision may be made either in the left or right flank or in the perineum, and that sex does not determine the site.
“The abdominal cavity was then filled up with piecesof Nipa palm; the viscera were thrown into the sea and the incision closed by means of fine fish line. An arrow was used to remove the brain, partly by way of the foramen magnum and partly through a small slit which was made in the back of the neck. The ‘strong skin’ of the brain (the dura mater) was first cut and then the ‘soft skin’ was pulled out.
“The body was then brought back to the island and was placed in a sitting position upon a stone; the entire body was then painted with a mixture of red earth and sea water. The head, body and limbs were then lashed to the framework with string and a small stick was affixed to the lower jaw to keep it from drooping. The framework, with its burden, was fastened vertically to two posts set up in the rear of the house, and it was protected from public view by a screen of coconut leaves. The body was then gently rubbed down and holes were made with the point of an arrow so that the juices might escape. A fire was always kept alight beneath the body, ‘by-n-by meat swell up’ (p. 136).
“D’Albertis (1) saw in Darnley Island the mummy of a man, who had been dead over a year, standing in the middle of the widow’s house attached to a kind of upright ladder of poles. They tint him from time to time with red chalk (ochre) and keep his skin soft by anointing it with coconut oil” (p. 137).
In the Berlin Museum für Volkerkunde there are mummies of two children, photographs of which, obtained from Professor von Luschan, are reproduced by Dr. Haddon. They were given to Dr. Bastian by the Rev. James Chamlers in 1880, having been obtained at Stephen’s Island. One of them is a small girl a few days old. The body is painted red all over, except the scalp and eyebrows, which are blackened. The other one wasa small girl two or three years of age treated in a similar way; the incision for embalming is on theleftside and has been sewn up.
“In 1845 Jukes saw on the lap of a woman of Darnley Island the body of a child a few months old which seemed to have been dead for some time. It was stretched on a framework of sticks and smeared over with a thick red pigment, which dressing she was engaged in renewing. (“Voyage of the ‘Fly,’” Vol. I., 1847, p. 246)” (p. 138).
“Macgillivray (“Voyage of the ‘Rattlesnake,’” Vol. II., 1852, p. 48) also refers to a mummy of a child in Darnley Island. Sketches of the two Miriam mummies in the Brisbane Museum will be found on Plate 94 of Edge Partington and Heape’s Ethnographical Album of the Pacific Islands, third series. [Compare also Plate 2, Figure 4, in Brockett’s “Voyage to Torres Straits,” Sydney, 1836]” (p. 137).
“On about the tenth day after death, when the hands and feet have become partially dried, the relatives, using a bamboo knife, remove the skin of the palms and soles, together with the nails, and then cut out the tongue, which is put into a bamboo clamp so that it may be kept straight while drying. These were presented to the widow, who henceforth wore them” (p. 138).
A great deal of further information in regard to this practice is given by Haddon and Myers in their important monograph. Among other things they call attention once more to the custom of preserving the skull in the Torres Straits Islands where mummification is practised. The use of masks and ceremonial dances to assist the performers so as the more realistically to play the part of the deceased is welcome confirmation of the conclusion drawn from geographical distribution that such practiceswere intimately related to mummification and form part of the ritual genetically linked to it.
Dr. Hamlyn-Harris, the Director of the Queensland Museum, gives an account (27) of the two mummies from the Torres Straits, which are now in Brisbane; and he adds further interesting information which he obtained from Mr. J. S. Bruce, of Murray Island, who was also one of Dr. Haddon’s informants. During my recent visit to Australia Dr. Hamlyn-Harris very kindly gave me every facility for examining these two mummies (as well as the Australian mummies in the Queensland Museum); and I also examined another specimen in the Macleay Museum of the University of Sydney. I am preparing a full report on all of these interesting specimens.
From the Torres Straits the practice of mummification spread to Australia, as Flower (19), Frazer (22), Howitt (see Hertz,33), Roth (71) and Hamlyn-Harris (28), among others, have described. Roth says “Desiccation is a form of disposal of the dead practised only in the case of very distinguished men. After being disembowelled and dried by fire the corpse is tied up and carried about for months.” (71, p. 393). The mummy was painted with red ochre (Fraser,22).
In Roth’s photographs, as well as in the mummies which I have had the opportunity of examining, the embalming-incision was made in the characteristically Egyptian situation in the left flank. In one of the mummies in the Brisbane Museum (see28, plate 6) the head is severely damaged. Examination of the specimen indicates that incisions had been deliberately made. Perhaps it was an attempt to remove the brain, which ended in destruction of the cranium.
A curious feature of Australian embalming is that the body was always flexed, and not extended as in the TorresStraits. At first I was inclined to believe that this may be due to the influence of the Early Egyptian (Second Dynasty) procedure (89), but a fuller consideration of the evidence leads me to the conclusion that the adoption of the flexed position is due to syncretism with local burial customs, which were being observed when the bringers of the “heliolithic” culture reached Australia. It is probable that the boomerang came from Egypt,viâEast Africa, India (12) and Indonesia at the same time.
Several curious burial customs which may be regarded as degradations of the practice of mummification occur in Australia, but the consideration of these I must defer for the present.
In the discussion on Flower’s memoir (19), Hyde Clarke justly emphasized “the importance of the demonstrations in reference to their bearings on the connection of the Australian populations with those of the main continents, and in the influence exerted in Australasia at a former time by a more highly cultivated race. This, to his mind, was the explanation of the relations of the higher culture, whether with regard to language, marriage and kindred, weapon names, or modes of culture, such as the mummies now described, the modes of incision, and form of burial. He did not consider these institutions, as some great authorities did, indigenous in Australia” (19, p. 394).
Corroborative evidence is now accumulating (70), which will definitely establish the reality of the influence thus adumbrated by Clarke 37 years ago.
Frazer (22, p. 80) says the burial (in Australia) on a raised stage reminds him of the “towers of silence,” and adds:—“This novelty of a raised stage can scarcely be a thing which our blacks have invented for themselves since they came to Australia; and if it is a custom whichsome portion of their ancestors brought with them into this country, I would argue from it that these ancestors were once in contact with, or rather formed part of, a race which had beliefs similar to those of the Persians; such beliefs are not readily adopted by strangers; they belong to a race.” Frazer proceeds to contrast this practice with the other Australian custom of desiccation, which, he says, “corresponds to the Egyptian practice of mummification” (p. 81): but, as Hertz (33et supra) has pointed out, they were inspired by the same fundamental idea, however much the present practitioners of the two methods may fail to realize this in their beliefs and traditions. The interesting suggestion emerges from these considerations that the peculiar Persian burial customs may be essentially a degraded and profoundly modified form of the ancient Egyptian funerary rites.
In his “Polynesian Researches” William Ellis (15) gives an interesting, though unfortunately too brief, account of the Tahitian practice of embalming. Among the poor and middle classes “methods of preservation were too expensive” to be used, but the body was “placed upon a sort of bier covered with the best native cloth” while awaiting burial (p. 399).
“The bodies of the dead, among the chiefs, were, however, in general preserved above ground: a temporary house or shed was erected for them, and they were placed on a kind of bier ... sometimes the moisture of the body was removed by pressing the different parts, drying it in the sun, and anointing it with fragrant oils. At other times, the intestines, brains, etcetera were removed: all moisture was extracted from the body, which was fixed in a sitting position during the day, and exposed to the sun, and, when placed horizontally at night was frequently turned over, that it might not remain long on the sameside. The inside was then filled with cloth saturated with perfumed oils, which were also injected into other parts of the body, and carefully rubbed over the outside every day” (pp. 400 and 401).
“It was then clothed, and fixed in a sitting posture; a small altar was erected before it, and offerings of fruit, food and flowers, were daily presented by the relatives, or the priests appointed to attend the body. In this state it was preserved several months, and when it decayed, the skull was carefully kept by the family, while the other bones etc. were buried within the precincts of the family temple” (p. 401).
Ellis makes the significant comment:—“It is singular that the practice of preserving the bodies of their dead by the process of embalming, which has been thought to indicate a high degree of civilization, and which was carried to such perfection by one of the most celebrated nations of antiquity, some thousand years ago, should be found to prevail among this people.” The whole of the circumstances attending the practice of this custom, and the curious ritual and the behaviour of the mourners, as described by Ellis, no less than the details of the process, in fact afford the most positive evidence of its derivation from Egypt.
Ellis says “it is also practiced by other distant nations of the Pacific, and on some of the coasts washed by its waters.” “In some of the islands they dried the bodies, and, wrapping them in numerous folds of cloth, suspended them from the roofs of their dwelling-houses” (p. 406).
Ellis notes the remarkable points of identity between the Tahitian account of the deluge and not only the Hebrew but also those of the Mexicans and Peruvians and many other peoples (p. 394).
In Glaumont’s summary (24, p. 517) five modes ofburial are described as being practised in New Caledonia. The first is burial in the flexed position; 2nd, extended burial in caves; 3rd, exposure of the body in trees or on the mountains; 4th, mummification; 5th, the body erect or reposing in a dug-out canoe. With regard to the method of embalming, this is practised only in the case of a chief. The body of a chief soon after death was covered with pricks into which were introduced the juices of certain plants with the object of preventing decomposition of the tissues. Afterwards the body was suitably dried or smoked, then it was dressed in its best clothes, its face painted red and black, and then the body was preserved indefinitely. A hole was made at the top of the hut, and by means of this they haul up the mummy. After it has been exposed in this way for a certain time, the body was withdrawn from the hole into the house, which was then carefully shut up and became taboo with all that it contained. Analogous customs are found in New Zealand and elsewhere in Oceania. A singularly strange custom is now in use in the New Hebrides and in the Solomon Islands. The father and son, for example, or the husband and wife, having just died, they smoke the head alone as in New Zealand, but they make (with bamboo covered with cloth) a mannikin, having roughly the human form; then they tattoo the whole of the surface; fastened upon each shoulder—and this is the strange part of it—is a piece of bamboo, to one of which they attach the father’s head and the other that of his son. [The account is not altogether intelligible here.] The heads are painted white and black. With reference to the placing of the body in a canoe, this is reserved for chiefs only. When a chief dies, messengers go in all directions, repeating “The sun is set.” This expression springs from the idea that the chief is a god, the supreme Sun-god.
These procedures afford a remarkably complete series of links with the “heliolithic” cult as practised elsewhere in the west and east. The account of the curious attachment of the heads to the shoulders of the dummy figure throw some light upon the custom (to which I have referred elsewhere in this communication) in Mallicolo (61, p. 138) and in America of representing human faces on the shoulders of such models. It is a remarkable fact that in certain of the Mallicolo figures the phallus is fixed to the girdle in a very curious manner, exactly analogous to that recently described and figured by Blackman from an Egyptian tomb of the Middle Kingdom at Meir.
Embalming was a method rarely employed in New Zealand.
“After the extraction of the softer parts, oil or salt was rubbed into the flesh, and the body was dried in the sun or over a fire; then the mummy was wrapped in cloth and hidden away.”
“In some parts of New Zealand the skeletons of mummified bodies are found in the crouching or sitting posture” (Macmillan Brown,7, p. 70).
In Schmidt’sJahrbücher der gesammten Medicin, 1890, Bd. 226, p. 175, there is an abstract of an article on Samoa by P. Burzen in which, among other things, the three Egyptian operations of circumcision, massage and mummification are described as being practiced.
The embalming is done by women. After removing the viscera, which are buried or burnt, the eviscerated corpse is then soaked for two months in coconut oil, mixed with vegetable juices. When the body is fully treated and no more fluid escapes from it, the hair which had previously been cut off, is stuck on again with a resinous paste. The body cavity is packed with clothsoaked in vegetable oil and resinous materials: then the mummy is wrapped up with bandages, the head and hands being left exposed.
The body so prepared is put in a special place where it is preserved indefinitely.
“In Pitcairn Island 1,400 miles due west of Easter Island carved stone pillars or images of a somewhat similar character to those of Easter Island” are found (Enoch,16, p. 274).
“Another 1,400 miles to the north-west takes us to Tahiti. The natives of Tahiti buried their chiefs in temples; their embalmed bodies, after being exposed, were interred in a couching position. Mention is made of a pyramidal stone structure, on which were the actual altars, which stood at the farther end of one of the squares.”
“There are many close analogies between the sacrificial practices and those of Mexico” (p. 275).