Part 5

If then the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age recognised the importance of restoring the fluids to reanimate the mummy or its statue, it is quite clear they must have appreciated the physical fact that their process of preservation was largely a matter of desiccation.

It is a point of some interest and importance to note in this connection that the essential processes of mummification—(1) salting, (2) evisceration, (3) drying, and (4) smoking (or even cooking)—are identical with those adopted for the preservation of meat, and (5) the use of honey is analogous to the means taken to preserve fruit. In fact, the term used by Herodotus for the first stage of the Egyptian process of mummification is the term used for salting fish. It would be instructive to enquire in what measure these two needs of primitive man in North-East Africa mutually influenced one another, and led to an acquisition of knowledge useful to them for the preservation both of their food and their dead relatives!

To the constituent elements of the “heliolithic” culture may now be added the practices of anointing with oil or unguents, the burning of incense and the offering of libations, all derived from the ritual of embalming.

In considering the southern extension of Egyptian influence it must be remembered that as early “as 2600 B.C. the Egyptian had already begun the exploitation of the Upper Nile and had been led in military force as far as the present Province of Dongola” (=62=, p. 23). For several centuries Nubia and the Soudan were left very much to themselves. Then during the time of the Middle Kingdom Egypt once more exerted a powerful influence to the South. At the close of that period Egypt was overrun by the Hyksos.

At Kerma, near the Third Cataract, Reisner has recently unearthed a cemetery which he refers to the Hyksos Period (=62=, p. 23). “The burial customs are revolting in their barbarity. On a carved bed in the middle of a big circular pit the chief personage lies on his right side with his head east. Under his head is a wooden pillow: between his legs a sword or dagger. Around the bed lie a varying number of bodies, male and female, all contracted on the right side, head east. Among them are the pots and pans, the cosmetic jars, the stools, and other objects. Over the whole burial is spread a great ox-hide. It is clear they were all buried at once. The men and women round about must have been sacrificed so that their spirits might accompany the chief to the other world.... I could not escape the belief that they had been buried alive” (=62=). These funerary practices supply a most important link in the chain which I am endeavouring to forge. I would especially call attention (1) to the fact of the sacrifice of the chief’s (? wives and) servants and (2) to the burial of the chief himself on a bed.

We know that the Egyptian practice of mummification spread south into Nubia (=39=) and the Soudan.

According to Herodotus the ancient Macrobioi preserved the bodies of their dead by drying: then they covered them with plaster, painted them to look like living men, and set them up in their houses for a year. For a fuller account of this practice and much more instructive information for comparison see Ridgeway’s “Early Age of Greece,” Vol. I., p. 483 _et seq._

Numerous references in the classical writers lead us to believe that a similar custom of keeping the mummy in the house of the relatives for a longer or shorter period may have been in vogue in Egypt. Throughout the widespread area in which mummification was practised—from Africa to America—a precisely similar practice is found among many peoples.

The custom of covering the mummies with plaster[12] is an interesting survival of the practice described by Junker in Egypt (_vide supra_), which seems to supply the explanation of the curious measures adopted for modelling the face in Melanesia.

Even at the present day, centuries after the art of the embalmer disappeared from Egypt, mummification is being attempted by certain people dwelling in the neighbourhood of the head-waters of the Nile.

In his article in Hastings’ Dictionary (=32=, p. 418) Hartland states that the practice of mummification is found “more or less throughout the west of Africa: among the Niamniam of the Upper Nile basin the bodies of chiefs, and among the Baganda the kings, are preserved, and the custom is found also among the Warundi in German East Africa (Frobenius); and in British Central Africa the corpse is rubbed with boiled maize (Werner).”

Roscoe (=72=, p. 105), in his book on the Baganda, describes the process of embalming the king’s body. As in Egypt, the body was disembowelled; and the bowels were washed in beer, just as the Egyptians, according to Herodotus and Diodorus, are said to have done with palm-wine. The viscera were spread out in the sun to dry and were then returned to the body, as was done in Egypt at the time of the XXIst Dynasty. The body was then dried and washed with beer.

So far as we are aware, the Egyptians never sacrificed any human beings at their funerals, although they often placed in the _serdab_ of the _mastaba_ statues of the deceased’s wife, family and servants, to ensure him their presence and the comforts of a home in his new form of existence.

In the quotations from Reisner’s report, it has just been seen that he found some burials made about 1800 B.C., in which servants appear to have been sacrificed.

In the case of the Baganda, Roscoe describes the killing of the king’s wives and attendants at his funeral.

Roscoe further describes (in his book) the body of the chief as being laid on a bed or framework of plantain trees (p. 117).

At the end of five months the head was removed from the mummy and the jaw-bone was removed, cleaned, and then buried, and a large conical thatched temple was built over the jaw. [In the islands of the Torres Straits the same curious custom of rescuing the head after about six months is also found; but it was the tongue and not the jaw which received special attention (=25= and =27=)].

In Egypt, where the practice of mummification was most successful, special treatment of the head was not necessary, except occasionally in Ptolemaic times (=39=), when carelessness on the part of the embalmer led to disastrous results and it became necessary to “fake” a body for attachment to the separated head. But as the Baganda were unable to make a mummy which would last, they adopted these special measures with regard to the skull. Originally special importance was attached to the head, primarily (_vide supra_) as a means of identifying the deceased. But when the practice of preservation spread to uncultured people, whose efforts at embalming were ineffectual, the idea was transferred to the skull, the reason for the special treatment of the head probably being forgotten. Why such peculiar honour should be devoted to the jaw can only be surmised from our knowledge of the belief that the deceased was supposed to be able to talk and communicate with the living (=21=).

In his article in the _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_ (=72=, p. 44) Roscoe give some further particulars. Four men and four women were clubbed to death at the funeral ceremony of the king.

The body was wrapped in strips of bark cloth and each finger and toe was wrapped separately.

In _L’Anthropologie_ (T. 21, 1910, p. 53) Poutrin says of the burial customs of the M’Baka people of French Congo “le corps, préalablement embaumé avec des herbes sécher et de la cendre est couché sur un lit.”

Weeks (=104=, pp. 450 and 451) gives an account of the burial customs of the Bangala of the Upper Congo. “They took out the entrails and buried them, placed the corpse on a frame, lit a fire under it, and thoroughly smoke-dried it.” “The dried body was tied in a mat, put in a roughly made hut.” “Coffins were often made out of old canoes.” “Poorer folk were rubbed with oil and red camwood powder, bound round with cloth and tied up in a mat.”

One of the most remarkable instances of the survival of burial practices strangely reminiscent of those of ancient Egypt has been described by Mr. Amaury Talbot (=99=). Among the Ibibio people living in the extreme south-west corner of Nigeria, bordering on the Gulf of Guinea, he found that both the Ibibios and a neighbouring tribe, the Ibos, had burial rites which “recall those of ancient Egypt.” For instance, “among Ibos embalming is still practised.” Two methods of mummification, in which the evisceration of the corpse takes place, are practised.

For the grave “a wide-mouthed pit” was dug and “from the bottom of this an underground passage, sometimes thirty feet long, led into a square chamber with no other outlet. In this the dead body was laid, and, after the bearers had returned to the light of day, stones were set over the pit mouth and earth strewn over all.” Further, in the case of the Ibibios, “in some prominent spot near the town arbour-like erections are raised as memorials, and furnished with the favourite property of the dead man. At the back or side of these is placed what we always called a little ‘Ka’ house, with window or door, into the central chamber, provided, as in ancient Egypt, for the abode of the dead man’s Ka or double. Figures of the Chief, with favourite wives and slaves, may also be seen—counterparts of the Ushabtiu.”

From the photographs illustrating Mr. Talbot’s article many other remarkable points of resemblance to ancient Egyptian practices are to be noted.

The snake and the sun constitute the obtrusive features of the crude design painted in the funeral shrine. The fact that so many features of the Egyptian burial practices should have been retained (and in association with many other elements of the “heliolithic” culture) in this distant spot, on the other side of the continent, raises the question whether or not its proximity to the Atlantic littoral may not be a contributory factor in the survival. They may have been spared by the remoteness of the retreat and the relative freedom from disturbance, to which nearer localities in the heart of the continent may have been subjected. But, on the other hand, there is the possibility that the spread of culture around the coast may have brought these Egyptian practices to Old Calabar. In the next few pages it will be seen that such a possibility is not so unlikely as it may appear at first sight.

But the fact that it was the custom among the Ibibio to bury the wives of the king with his mummy suggests a truly African, as distinct from purely Egyptian, influence, and makes it probable that the custom spread across the continent. This view is further supported by the traditions of the people themselves, no less than by the physical features of their crania (see _Report British Association_, 1912, p. 613).

As the people of the Ivory Coast (_vide infra_) practice a method of embalming which is clearly Egyptian and untainted by these African influences, it is clear that the two streams of Nilotic culture, one across the continent _viâ_ Kordofan and Lake Chad and the other around the coasts of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, after reaching the West Coast must have met somewhere between the mouth of the Niger and the Ivory Coast.

[Since writing the above paragraphs, in which inferences as to racial movements across Africa were based solely upon the distribution and methods of mummification, I have become acquainted with remarkable confirmation of these views from two different sources. Frobenius, in his book “The Voice of Africa,” 1913 (see especially the map on p. 449, Vol. II.), makes an identical delimitation of the two spheres of influence from the east, trans- and circum-African (_i.e._, _viâ_ the Mediterranean) respectively.

Sir Harry Johnston (“A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa,” _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._, 1913, p. 384) supplies even more precise and definite confirmation of the route taken by the Egyptian culture-migration across Kordofan to Lake Chad, thence to the Niger basin and “all parts of West Africa.”

He adds further (pp. 412 and 413):—“Stone worship and the use of stone in building and sepulture extend from North Africa southwards across the desert region to Senegambia (sporadically) and the northern parts of the Sudan, and to Somaliland. The superstitious use of stone in connection with religion, burial and after-death memorial, reappears again in Yoruba, in the North-West Cameroons and adjoining Calabar region (Ekir-land).”]

For the purpose of embalming the bodies of their dead “the Baoule of the Ivory Coast remove the intestines, wash them with palm wine or European alcohol, introduce alcohol and salt into the body cavity, afterwards replacing the intestines and stitching up the opening.” (Clozel and Villamur, quoted by Hartland, (=32=), p. 418.)

Scattered around the western shores of the African continent there are numerous ethnological features to suggest that it has been subjected to the influence of the megalithic culture spreading from the Mediterranean. But there is no spot in which this influence and its Egyptian derivation is more definitely and surely demonstrated than in the Canary Islands.

For the art of embalming was practised there in the truly Egyptian fashion; and it became a matter of some interest to discover whether or not the Nigerian customs were influenced in any way by the Guanche practices.

There can be little doubt that the practices on the Ivory Coast, to which reference has just been made, were either inspired by the Guanches or by the same influence which started embalming in the Canary Islands.

The information we possess in reference to the Canary Islands was collected by Bory de Saint Vincent (“Les Îles Fortunées,” 1811, p. 54) and has been summarized by many writers, especially Pettigrew, Haigh and Reutter.

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 scaffolding made 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 century B.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 900 B.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 900 B.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 comparatively late 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 of the 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 Babylonia _viâ_ the 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.’”