Part 4

A number of interesting developments occurred at about this time to overcome these defects. In one case (=85=), found at Mêdum by Flinders Petrie, the superficial bandages were saturated with a paste of resin and soda, and the same material was applied to the surface of the wrappings, which, while still in a plastic condition, was very skilfully moulded to form a life-like statue. The resinous carapace thus built up set to form a covering of stony hardness. Special care was devoted to the modelling of the head (sometimes the face only) and the genitalia, no doubt to serve as the means of identifying the individual and indicating the sex respectively.

The hair (or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say, the wig) and the moustache were painted with a dark brown or black resinous mixture, and the pupils, eyelids and eyebrows were represented by painting with a mixture of malachite powder and resinous paste. In other cases, recently described by Junker (=40=), plaster was used for the same purpose as the resinous paste in Petrie’s mummy. In two of the four instances of this practice found by Junker, only the head was modelled.

The special importance assigned to the head is one of the outstanding features of ancient Egyptian statuary. It was exemplified in another way in the tombs of the early part of the Old Kingdom, as Junker has recalled in his memoir, by the construction of stone portrait-statues of the head only, which were made life-size and placed in the burial chamber alongside the mummy. It seems to me that Junker overlooks an essential, if not the, chief, reason for the special importance assigned to the head when he attributes it to the fact that the head contained the organs of sight, smell, hearing and taste. There can be no doubt that the head was modelled because it affords the chief means of recognising an individual. This portrayal of the features enabled any one, including the deceased’s own _ka_, to identify the owner. Every circumstance of the making and the use of these heads bears out this interpretation, and no one has explained these facts more lucidly than Junker himself.

[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been put into print a preliminary report has come to hand from Professor Reisner, to whom I am indebted for most of my information regarding these portrait heads—_Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin_, Boston, April, 1915.]

At a somewhat later period in the Old Kingdom the making of these so-called “substitution-heads” was discontinued, and it became the practice to make a statue of the whole man (of woman), which was placed above-ground in the megalithic _serdab_ within the _mastaba_ (see =94=). But even when the complete statue was made for the _serdab_ the head alone was the part that was modelled with any approach to realism. In other words, the importance of the head as the chief means of identification was still recognised. Moreover, this idea manifested itself throughout the whole history of Egyptian mummification, for as late as the first century of the Christian era a portrait of the deceased was placed in front of the face of the mummy.

Thus in course of time the original idea of converting the wrapped body itself into a portrait-statue of the deceased was temporarily[8] abandoned and the mummy was stowed away in the burial chamber at the bottom of a deep shaft, the better to protect it from desecration, while the portrait-statue was placed above ground, in a strong chamber (_serdab_), hidden in the _mastaba_ (=94=).

A certain magical value soon came to be attached to the statue in the _serdab_. It provided the body in which the _ka_ could become reincarnated, and the deceased, thus reconstituted by magical means, could pass through the small hole in the _serdab_ to enter the chapel of offerings and enjoy the food and the society of his friends there.

Dr. Alan Gardiner has kindly given me the following note in reference to this matter: “That statues in Egypt were meant to be efficient animate substitutes for the person or creature they portrayed has not been sufficiently emphasised hitherto. Over every statue or image were performed the rites of ‘opening the mouth’—magical passes made with a kind of metal chisel in front of the mouth. Besides the _up-ro_ ‘mouth opening,’ other words testify to the prevalence of the same idea; the word for ‘to fashion’ a statue (_ms_) is to all appearances identical with _ms_ ‘to give birth,’ and the term for the sculptor was _saʿnkh_, ‘he who causes to live.’”

As Blackman (=5=) has pointed out, the Pyramid Texts make it clear that libations were poured out and incense burnt before the statue or the mummy with the specific object of restoring to it the moisture and the odour respectively which the body had during life.

I have already indicated how, out of the conception of the possibility of bringing to life the stone portrait-statue, a series of curious customs were developed. Among peoples on a lower cultural plane, who were less skilled than the Egyptians in stone-carving, the making of a life-like statue was beyond their powers. Sometimes they made the attempt to represent the human form; in other cases crude representations of the breasts or suggestions of the genitalia were the only signs on a stone pillar to indicate that it was meant to represent a human statue: in many cases a simple uncarved block of stone was set up. But the idea that such a pillar, whether carved or not, was the dwelling of some deceased person, seized the imagination and spread far and wide. It is seen in the Pygmalion and Galatea story, and its converse in the tragic history of Lot’s wife. It is found throughout the Mediterranean area, the whole littoral of Southern Asia, Indonesia, the Pacific Islands and America, and can be regarded as definite evidence of the influence of the cult that developed in association with the practice of mummification.

It is necessary to emphasise that the making of portrait-statues was an outcome of the practice of mummification and an integral part of the cult associated with that burial custom. Hartland falls into grave error when he writes “where other peoples set up images of the deceased, those who practised desiccation or embalmment were enabled to keep the bodies themselves” (=32=, p. 418). It was precisely the people who embalmed or preserved the bodies of their dead who also made statues of them.

As these stones, according to such beliefs, could be made to hear and speak (=23=), they naturally became oracles. People were able to commune with and get advice and instruction from the kings and wise men who dwelt within these stone pillars. Thus it became the custom in many lands for meetings of special solemnity, such as those where important decisions had to be made, to be held at stone circles, where the members of the convention sat on the stones and communed with their ancestors, former rulers or wise men, who dwelt in the stones (or the grave) in the centre of the circle.

“Chardin, in his account of the stone circles he saw in Persia, mentions a tradition that they were used as places of assembly, each member of the council being seated on a stone; Homer, in his description of the shield of Achilles in the _Iliad_, speaks of the elders sitting in the place of justice upon stones in a circle; Plot, in his account of the Rollrich stones in Oxfordshire, says that Olaus Wormius, Saxo Grammaticus, Meursius, and many other early historians, concur in stating that it was the practice of the ancient Danes to elect their kings in stone circles, each member of the council being seated upon a stone; the tradition arising out of this custom, that these stones represent petrified giants, is widely spread in all countries where they occur, and Col. Forbes Leslie has shown that within the historic period, these circles were used in Scotland as places of justice” (Lane Fox, (=20=), p. 64). Is not our king crowned seated upon the Lia-fail, which is now in the coronation chair at Westminster? Such customs and beliefs are widespread also in India, Indonesia, and beyond, as W. J. Perry has pointed out. The practices still observed in the Khasia Hills in modern times clearly indicate the significance of this use of stone seats; and the custom can be found from the Canary Islands in the West (=26=) to Costa Rica in the East, encircling the whole globe (compare “_Man_,” May, 1915, p. 79).

I shall enter more fully into the consideration of the origin of the ideas associated with stone seats when Perry has published his important analysis of the significance of so curious a practice.

The converse of the belief in the bringing to life of stone statues—or perhaps it would be more correct to say, the complementary view that, if a stone can be converted into a living creature, the latter can also be transformed into stone—is found also wherever the parent belief is known to exist. As a rule it forms part of a complexly interwoven series of traditions concerning the creation, the deluge, the destruction of the “sons of men” by petrifaction, and the repeopling the earth by the incestuous intercourse of the “children of the gods.”

Perry, who has made a study of the geographical distribution and associations of these curiously-linked traditions, has clearly demonstrated that they form an integral part of the cultural equipment of the sun-worshipping, stone-using peoples.

In the foregoing statement I have endeavoured to indicate also their genetic connection with the ideas that sprang from the early practice of mummification in Egypt.

There are many other curious features of the early Egyptian practices which might have served as straws to indicate how the cultural current had flowed, if much more substantial proofs had not been available of the reality of the movement. The diffusion of such a distinctive object as the Egyptian head-rest, which used to be buried with mummies of the Pyramid Age, is an example. It occurs widely spread in Africa, Southern Asia, Indonesia and the Pacific.

But the use of beds as funerary biers is a much more distinctive custom. The believers in theories of the independent evolution of customs may say “is it not natural to expect that people who regarded death as a kind of sleep should have placed head-rests and beds in the graves of their dead?” But how would such ethnologists explain the use of a funerary bier on the part of people (such as many of the less cultured people who adopted this Egyptian custom) who do not themselves use beds?

The evidence afforded by the use of biers is, in fact, a most definite demonstration of the diffusion of customs. Although it is a familiar scene in ancient Egyptian pictures to find the mummy borne upon a bed—a custom which we know from Egyptian literature, no less than that of the Jews, Phœnicians, Greeks and Romans to have been actually observed—only one Egyptian cemetery, so far as I am aware—a proto-dynastic site, excavated by Flinders Petrie (=54=) at Tarkhan—has revealed corpses lying upon beds. But in a cemetery, some sixteen centuries later, excavated by Reisner in the Soudan (=62=), a similar practice was demonstrated. Garstang has recorded the observance of a similar custom further South (Meroe) at a later date.

These form useful connecting links with the region around the head-waters of the Nile, where even in modern times this practice has survived, and the mummified corpse of the king is placed upon a rough bier. I shall have occasion to point out later on that this curious practice spread from East Africa along the Asiatic littoral to Indonesia, Melanesia and Polynesia, thence to the American continent; and in most places was definitely associated with attempts at preservation of the corpse.

In many places along the whole course of the same great track, instead of a bed, a boat of some sort, usually a rough dug-out, was used. This practice also was observed in Egypt, where its symbolic purpose is clearly apparent.

Another distinctive feature of the burial customs in the same area was the idea that the grave represented the house in which the deceased was sleeping. How definitely this view was held by the proto-Egyptians is seen in their coffins, subterranean burial chambers, and the superstructures of their tombs, all three of which were originally represented as dwelling houses (see my memoir, =94=).

The Pyramid texts clearly explain the precise significance and origin of the hitherto mysterious and widespread custom of burning incense at the statue. For, as Blackman (=5=) has pointed out, the aim was by burning aromatic woods and resins thereby magically to restore to the “body” the odours of the living person.

It was therefore intimately related to the practice of mummification and genetically connected with it. It was part of the magical procedure for making the portrait-statue of the deceased (or later, in the time of the New Empire, the mummy itself) “an efficient animate substitute for the person” (Alan Gardiner).

A careful investigation of the geographical distribution of the custom of burning incense before the corpse and of the circumstances related to such a practice has convinced me that wherever it is found, even where no attempt is made to preserve the body, it can be regarded as an indication of the influence of the Egyptian custom of mummification. For apart from such an influence incense-burning is inexplicable. The attempt on the part of certain writers to explain the use of incense merely as a means of disguising the odours of putrefaction will not bear examination. It is an example of that kind of so-called psychological explanation which is opposed by all the ascertainable facts.

Beyond the borders of Egypt peoples who for a time adopted the custom of embalming and then for some reason, such as the failure to attain successful results or the adoption of conflicting beliefs or customs, allowed the practice to lapse, the simpler parts of the Egyptian funerary ritual often continued to be observed. The body was anointed with oil, perhaps packed in salt and aromatic plants, wrapped in linen or fine clothes, had incense burned before it, and was laid on a bed or special bier. All of these practices originated in Egypt and observance of any or all of them is to be regarded as a sure sign of the influence of the Egyptian custom of mummification. Among the more immediate neighbours of the Egyptians, such as the Jews, Greeks and Romans, the evidence for this is clear. Occasionally the full process of embalming was followed, even if it were only a temporary procedure preliminary to the observance of some other burial custom, such as cremation, perhaps inspired by ideas wholly foreign to those which prompted mummification. I need not enumerate instances of this curious syncretism of burial customs, numerous examples of which will be found in Reutter (=63=, pp. 144-147) and in Hastings’ Dictionary (=32=), as well as in the following pages.

At the very earliest period in Egypt from which historical records have come down to us (the time of the First Dynasty, 3200 B.C., or even earlier) “the king’s favourite title was ‘Horus,’ by which he identified himself as the successor of the great god [the hawk sun-god] who had once ruled over the kingdom ... [other symbols often appeared] side by side with Buto, the serpent-goddess of the northern capital. As [the king] felt himself still as primarily king of Upper Egypt, it was not until later that he wore the serpent of the North, the sacred uraeus, upon his forehead.” (Breasted, =6=, p. 38). “The sun-disc, with the outspread wings of the hawk, became the commonest symbol of their religion” (p. 54). But in the time of the Fourth Dynasty “the priests of Heliopolis now demanded that [the king, who had always been represented as the successor of the sun-god and had borne the title ‘Horus’] be the bodily son of Ré, who henceforth would appear on earth to become the father of the Pharaoh” (p. 122).

Now, when the Pharaoh thus became identified with the great sun-god Ré, his Pyramid-temple became the place of worship of the sun-god. Megalithic architecture thus became indissolubly connected with sun-worship, simply from the accident of the invention of the art of building in stone—of erecting stone tombs, which were also temples of offerings—by a people who happened to be sun-worshippers and whose ruler’s tomb became the shrine of the sun-god. I have already explained the close genetic connection between the practice of mummification and megalithic building.

The fact that the dominance of the sun-god Ré was attained in the northern capital, which was also the seat of serpent-worship, led to the association of the sun and the serpent.[9] From this purely fortuitous blending of the sun’s disc with the uraeus, often combined, especially in later times, with the wings of the Horus-hawk, a symbolism came into being which was destined to spread until it encircled the world, from Ireland to America. For an excellent example of this composite symbolism from America see Bancroft, (=3=), Vol. IV., p. 351. A more striking illustration of the completeness of the transference of a complex and wholly artificial design from Ancient Egypt to America could not be imagined. [For the full discussion of the original association of the sun and the serpent see Sethe’s important _Memoir_ (=74=).]

The chance circumstances which led to the linking together of all these incongruous elements—mummification, megalithic architecture, the idea of the king as son of the sun, sun and serpent worship and its curious symbolism—were created in Egypt, so that, wherever these peculiar customs or traditions make their appearance elsewhere in association the one with the other, it can confidently be regarded as a sure token of Egyptian influence, exerted directly or indirectly.

When certain modern ethnologists argue that it is the most natural thing in the world for primitive peoples to worship the sun as the obvious source of warmth and fertility, and therefore such worship can have no value as an indication of the contact of peoples, on general principles one might be prepared to admit the validity of the claim. But when it is realised that sun-worship, wherever it is found, is invariably associated with part (or the whole) of a large series of curiously incongruous customs and beliefs, it is no longer possible to regard the worship of the sun as having originated independently in several centres. Why should the sun-worshipper also worship the serpent and use a winged symbol, build megalithic monuments, mummify his dead, and practise a large series of fantastic tricks to which other peoples are not addicted? There is no inherent reason why a man who worships the sun should also tattoo his face, perforate his ears, practise circumcision, and make use of massage. In fact, until the time of the New Empire, the sun-worshipping Egyptian did not practise ear-piercing and tattooing, thereby illustrating the fact that originally these practices were not part of the cult, and that their eventual association with it was purely accidental. This only serves more definitely to confirm the view that it was the fortuitous association of a curious series of customs in Egypt at the time of the New Empire which supplied the cultural outfit of the “heliolithic” wanderers for their great migration.

In accordance with Egyptian beliefs “the sun was born every morning and sailed across the sky in a celestial barque, to arrive in the west and descend as an old man tottering into the grave” (Breasted, (=6=), p. 54).

The deceased might reach the west by being borne across in the sun-god’s barque: friendly spirits, the four sons of Horus, might bring him a craft on which he might float over: but by far the majority depended upon the services of a ferryman called “Turnface” (Breasted, p. 65).

In later times (Middle Kingdom) a model boat, fully equipped, was usually put in the tomb, “in order that the deceased might have no difficulty in crossing the waters to the happy isles.” “By the pyramid of Sesostris III., in the sands of the desert, there were even buried five large Nile boats, intended to carry the king and his house across these waters” (Breasted, p. 176).

At a later period “the triumph of a Theban family brought with it the supremacy of Amon.... His essential character and individuality had already been obliterated by the solar theology of the Middle Kingdom, when he had become Amon-Re, and with some attributes borrowed from his ithyphallic neighbour, Min of Coptos, he now rose to a unique and supreme position of unprecedented splendour” (=6=, p. 248). Thus there was added to this “heliolithic” complex of ideas the definitely phallic element: but one must confess that this aspect of the culture did not become obtrusive until it was planted in alien lands, where among the Phœnicians and the peoples of India the phallic aspect became more strongly emphasised. From time to time various writers have striven to demonstrate a phallic motive in almost every element of the culture now under consideration. What I want to make clear is that it was a late addition, which was relatively insignificant in the original home of the culture.

After this digression I must now return to the further consideration of the mummies themselves.

Direct examination of the mummified bodies does not, of course, afford any certain evidence of the application of oil or fat to the surface of the body. Large quantities of fatty material were often found in the mouth and the body cavity (=78=; =81= and =86=); and the surface of the body was often greasy; but, of course, the fatty materials in the skin itself might have afforded a sufficient explanation of this. Dr. Alan Gardiner, however, tells me that ancient Egyptian literature contains repeated references to the process of anointing the body with “oil of cedar,”[10] and great stress is laid upon this procedure as an essential element of the technique of embalming.[11]

Thus in the time of the decadence of the New Empire an Egyptian writer laments the loosening of Egypt’s hold on the Lebanons, because if no “oil of cedar” were obtainable it might become impossible any longer to embalm the dead.

Diodorus Siculus, writing many centuries later, says the body was “anointed with oil of cedar and other things for thirty days, and afterwards with myrrh, cinnamon, and other such like matters” (Pettigrew, =56=, p. 62). Thus there can be little doubt that it was an essential part of the Ancient Egyptian technique to anoint the body with oil.

Pettigrew (=56=, p. 62, and also p. 242) adduces cogent reasons in proof of the fact that the Egyptians (and in modern times the Capuchins, at Palermo) made use of heat to desiccate the body, probably in a stove.

It is quite clear, therefore, that the Ancient Egyptians realised the importance of desiccation as an essential element in the preservation of the body. Moreover, they were familiar with a number of different means of ensuring this end:—(1) by burial in dry sand; (2) by exposure to the sun’s rays; (3) by removing all the softer and more putrescible parts of the body; (4) possibly by massaging and squeezing out the juices from the body; (5) by the free use of alcohol (palm wine) and large quantities of powdered wood; and (6) by the aid of fire.

Dr. Alan Gardiner tells me that the most ancient Egyptian writings, such, for example, as the Pyramid texts, afford positive evidence that the Egyptians recognised the fact of the desiccation of the body in the process of embalming, for their scribes tell us, in the most definite manner, that the aim of the ceremony of offering libations was magically to restore to the body (as represented by the statue above ground) the fluids it had lost during embalming (Blackman, =5=).