PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER.
The Migrations of Early Culture.
Published by the University of Manchester at
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS (JI. M. MclvECHXiE, Secretary)
12, LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON : 39, Paternoster Row
NEW YORK : 443-449, Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street
BOMBAY : 8, Hornby Road
CALCUTTA : 303, Bowbazar Street
MADRAS: 167, Mount Road
The
Migrations of Early Culture
A study of the Significance of the Geographical
Distribution of the Practice of Mummification
as Evidence of the Migrations of Peoples and
the Spread of certain Customs and Beliefs
BY
GRAFTON ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.,
Professor oj Anatomy in the University
MANCHESTER
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
12, LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD
LONGMANS, GREEN c^ CO.
London, New York, Bombay, etc.
1915
b /
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER PUBLICATIONS
No. CII.
PREFACE.
iges were crudely flung togetl
fate was contemplated for them other than that of publi-
cation in the proceedings of a scientific society, as an
appeal to ethnologists to recognise the error of their ways
and repent They were intended merely as a mass of
evidence to force scientific men to recognise and admit
that in former ages knowledge and culture spread in
much the same way as they are known to be diffused
to-day. The only difference is that the pace of migration
has become accelerated.
The re-publication in book form was suggested by the
Secretary of the Manchester University Press, who thought
that the matters discussed in these pages would appeal
to a much wider circle of readers than those who are
given to reading scientific journals.
The argument is compounded largely of extracts from
the writings of recognised authorities, and the author
does not agree with all the statements in the various
extracts he has quoted : this mode of presenting the case
has been adopted deliberately, with the object of demon-
strating that the generally admitted facts are capable of
a more natural and convincing explanation than that
VI PREFACE.
put forth ex cathedra by the majority of modern anthro-
pologists, one in fact more in accord with all that our
own experience and the facts of history teach us of
the effects of the contact of peoples and the spread of
knowledge.
Such a method of stating the argument necessarily
involves a considerable amount of repetition of statements
and phrases, which is apt to irritate the reader and offend
his sense of literary style.' In extenuation of this ad-
mitted defect it must be remembered that the brochure
was intended as a protest against the accusation of
artificiality and improbability so often launched against
the explanation suggested here : the cumulative effect of
corroboration was deliberately aimed at, by showing that
many investigations employing the most varied kinds of
data had independently arrived at identical conclusions
and often expressed them in similar phrases.
Only a very small fraction of the evidence is set forth
in the present work. Much of the most illuminating
information has only come to the author's knowledge
since this memoir was in the press ; and a vast amount of
the data, especially that relating to Europe, India and
China, is too intimately intertwined with the effects of
other cultures to be discussed and dissociated from them
in so limited a space as this.
Nor has any attempt been made to discuss the times
of the journeys, the duration of the intercourse, or the
PREFACE.
Vll
details of the goings and the comings of the ancient
mariners who distributed so curious an assortment of
varied cargoes to the coast-lines of the whole world —
literally " from China to Peru." They exerted an influence
upon the history of civilization and achieved marvels of
maritime daring that must be reckoned of greater account,
as they were so many ages earlier, than those of the more
notorious mediaeval European adventurers and buccaneers
who, impelled by similar motives, raided the Spanish
Main and the East Indies.
As the pages show, this book is reprinted from volume
59, part 2, of the " Memoirs and Proceedings of the
Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society," session
1914-15 ; and I am indebted to the Council of that body
for their kind permission to re-issue it in its present form.
G. ELLIOT SMITH.
THE UNIVERSITY,
MANCHESTER,
July,
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Map i. A rough chart of the geographical distribution
of certain customs, practices and traditions 2
Map 2. An attempt to represent roughly the areas
more directly affected by the " heliolithic "
culture-complex, with arrows to indicate
the hypothetical routes taken in the mi-
gration of the culture-bearers who were
responsible for its diffusion - 14
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10
X. On the Significance of the Geographical Distri-
bution of the Practice of Mummification. — A
Study of the Migrations of Peoples and the
Spread of certain Customs and Beliefs.
By Professor G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
(Read February 2jrd, 1915. Received for publication April 6th, 1915.)
In entering upon the discussion of the geographical
distribution of the practice of mummification I am con-
cerned not so much with the origin and technical pro-
cedures of this remarkable custom. This aspect of the
problem I have already considered in a series of memoirs
(75 to 89*). I have chosen mummification rather as the
most peculiar, and therefore the most distinctive and
obtrusive, element of a very intimately interwoven series
of strange customs, which became fortuitously linked one
with the other to form a definite culture-complex nearly
thirty centuries ago, and spread along the coastlines of a
great part of the world, stirring into new and distinctive
activity the sluggish uncultured peoples which in turn
were subjected to this exotic leaven.
If one looks into the journals of anthropology and
ethnology, there will be found amongst the vast collections
of information relating to man's activities a most sugges-
tive series of facts concerning the migrations of past ages
and the spread of peculiar customs and beliefs.
If a map of the world is taken and one plots out
(Map /.) the geographical distribution of such remarkable
1 These figures refer to the bibliography at the end.
July 7th, 1915.
2 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
1 \J
O 3
l!
v
. .ti
c v
.2 •£
"-u S
S 8
T3 >-
§ 1
8 I
.a £
"2 w
II
II
r ^ s
.
-
as
V
I §
CJD
s
o
•<
I
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 3
customs as the building of megalithic monuments (see
for example Lane Fox's [Pitt Rivers'] map, 2O), the
worship of the sun and the serpent (51 ; 103), the custom
of piercing the ears (see Park Harrison, 2p), tattooing (see
Miss Buckland, 10), the practice of circumcision, the
curious custom known as couvade, the practice of mas-
sage, the complex story of the creation, the deluge, the
petrifaction of human beings, the divine origin of kings
and a chosen people sprung from an incestuous union
(W. J. Perry), the use of the swastika-symbol (see Wilson's,
map, 105), the practice of cranial deformation, to mention
only a few of the many that might be enumerated, it will
be found that in most respects the areas in which this
extraordinary assortment of bizarre customs and beliefs
is found coincide one with the other. In some of the
series gaps occur, which probably are more often due to
lack of information on our part than to real absence of
the practice ; in other places one or other of the elements
of this complex culture-mixture has overflowed the com-
mon channel and broken into new territory. But con-
sidered in conjunction these data enable us definitely and
precisely to map out the route taken by this peculiarly
distinctive group of eccentricities of the human mind. If
each of them is considered alone there are many breaks
in the chain and many uncertainties as to the precise
course : but when taken together all of these gaps are
bridged. Moreover, in most areas there are traditions
of culture-heroes, who brought in some or all of these
customs at one and the same time and also introduced a
knowledge of agriculture and weaving.
So far as I am aware no one hitherto has called atten-
tion to the fact that the practice of mummification has
a geographical distribution exactly corresponding to the
area occupied by the curious assortment of other practices
4 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification,
just enumerated. Not only so, but in addition it is abund-
antly clear that the coincidence is not merely accidental.
It is due to the fact that in most regions the people who
introduced the habit of megalithic building and sun-
worship (a combination for which it is convenient to use
Professor Brockwell's distinctive term " heliolithic cul-
ture") also brought with them the practice of mummifica-
tion at the same time.
The custom of embalming the dead is in fact an
integral part of the "heliolithic culture," and perhaps, as
I shall endeavour to demonstrate, its most important
component. For this practice and the beliefs which
grew up in association with it were responsible for the
development of some of the chief elements of this culture-
complex, and incidentally of the bond of union with
other factors not so intimately connected, in the genetic
sense, with it.
Before plunging into the discussion of the evidence
provided by the practice of mummification, it will be
useful to consider for a moment the geographical distribu-
tion of the other components of the "heliolithic culture."
I need not say much about megalithic monuments, for I
have already considered their significance elsewhere (90
to 96) ; but I should like once more specifically to call
the attention of those who are obsessed by theories of
the independent evolution of such monuments, and who
scoff at Fergusson (17), to the memoirs of Lane Fox (20)
and Meadows Taylor (100). The latter emphasises in a
striking manner the remarkable identity of structure, not
only as concerns the variety and the general conception
of such monuments, but also as regards trivial and appar-
ently unessential details. With reference to "the opinion
of many," which has " been advanced as an hypothesis,
that the common instincts of humanity have suggested
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 5
common methods of sepulture," he justly remarks, " I own
this kind of vague generalisation does not satisfy me, in
the face of such exact points of similitude .... Such
can hardly have been the result of accident, or any
common human instinct" (p. 173)-
But it is not merely the identity of structure and the
geographical distribution (in most cases along continuous
coast-lines or related islands) that proves the common
origin of megalithic monuments. It is further strongly
corroborated by a remarkable series of beliefs, traditions
and practices, many of them quite meaningless and unin-
telligible to us, which are associated with such structures
wherever they are found. Stories of dwarfs and giants
(13), the belief in the indwelling of gods or great men in
the stones, the use of these structures in a particular
manner for certain special councils (20, pp. 64 and 65),
and the curious, and, to us, meaningless, practice of hang-
ing rags on trees in association with such monuments
(20, pp. 63 and 64). Iiv reference to the last of these
associated practices, Lane Fox remarks, " it is impossible
to believe that so singular a custom as this could have
arisen independently in all these countries."
In an important article on " Facts suggestive of pre-
historic intercourse between East and West" (Journ.
Anthr. Inst., Vol. 14, 1884, p. 227), Miss Buckland calls
attention to a remarkable series of identities of customs
and beliefs, and amongst them certain legends concerning
the petrification of dance maidens associated with stone
circles as far apart as Cornwall and Peru.
Taking all of these facts into consideration, it is to
me altogether inconceivable how any serious enquirer
who familiarises himself with the evidence can honestly
refuse to admit that the case for the spread of the inspira-
tion to erect megalithic monuments from one centre has
6 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
been proved by an overwhelming mass of precise and
irrefutable data. But this evidence does not stand alone.
It is linked with scores of other peculiar customs and
beliefs, the testimony of each of which, however imperfect
and unconvincing some scholars may consider it indi-
vidually, strengthens the whole case by cumulation ; and
when due consideration is given to the enormous com-
plexity and artificiality of the cultural structure com-
pounded of such fantastic elements, these are bound to
compel assent to their significance, as soon as the present
generation of ethnologists can learn to forget the meaning-
less fetish to which at present it bends the knee.
But suppose, for the sake of argument, we shut our
ears to the voice of common sense, and allow ourselves to
be hypnotised into the belief that some complex and
highly specialised instinct (i.e. precisely the type of in-
stinct which real psychologists — not the ethnological
variety — deny to mankind) impelled groups of men
scattered as far apart as Ireland, India and Peru inde-
pendently the one of the other to build mausolea of the
same type, to acquire similar beliefs regarding the petri-
faction of human beings, and many other extraordinary
things connected with such monuments, how is this
"psychological explanation" going to help us to explain
why the wives of the builders of these monuments,
whether in Africa, Asia or America, should have their
chins pricked and rubbed with charcoal, or why they
should circumcise their boys, or why they should have a
tradition of the deluge ? Does any theory of evolution
help in explaining these associations ? They are clearly
fortuitous associations of customs and beliefs, which have
no inherent relationship one to the other. They became
connected purely by chance in one definite locality, and
the fact that such incongruous customs reappear in asso-
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 7
ciation in distant parts of the globe is proof of the most
positive kind that the wanderings of peoples must have
brought this peculiar combination of freakish practices
from the centre where chance linked them together.
Because it was the fashion among a particular group
of megalith-builders to tattoo the chins of their women-
kind, the wanderers who carried abroad the one custom
also took the other : but there is no genetic or inherent
connection between megalith-building and chin-tattooing.
Such evidence is infinitely stronger and more con-
vincing than that afforded by one custom considered by
itself, because in the former case we are dealing with an
association which is definitely and obviously due to pure
chance, such as the so-called psychological method, how-
ever casuistical, is impotent to explain.
But the study of such a custom as tattooing, even
when considered alone, affords evidence that ought to
convince most reasonable people of the impossibility of it
having independently arisen in different, widely scattered,
localities. The data have been carefully collected and
discussed with clear insight and common sense by Miss
Buckland (10) in an admirable memoir, which I should
like to commend to all who still hold to the meaningless
dogma " of the similarity of the working of the human
mind " as an explanation of the identity of customs.
Tattooing is practised throughout the great •' heliolithic "
track. [Striking as Miss Buckland's map of distribution
is as a demonstration of this, if completed in the light of
our present information, it would be even more convincing,
for she has omitted Libya, which so far as we know at
present may possibly have been the centre of origin of
the curious practice.]
Tattooing of the chin in women is practised in
localities as far apart as Egypt, India, Japan, New
8 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
Guinea, New Zealand, Easter Island and North and
South America.
Miss Buckland rightly draws the conclusion that "the
wide distribution of this peculiar custom is of considerable
significance, especially as it 'follows so nearly in the line"
which she had " indicated in two previous papers (8 and
9) as suggestive of a pre-historic intercourse between the
two hemispheres. . . . When we find in India, Japan,
Egypt, New Guinea, New Zealand, Alaska, Greenland
and America, the custom of tattooing carried out in pre-
cisely the same manner and for the same ends, and when
in addition to this we find a similarity in other ornaments,
in weapons, in games, in modes of burial, and many other
customs, we think it may fairly be assumed that they all
derived these customs from a common source, or that at
some unknown period, some intercourse existed " (p. 326).
In the first of her memoirs (8) Miss Buckland calls
attention to " the curious connection between early wor-
ship of the serpent and a knowledge of metals," which is
of peculiar interest in this discussion, because the Proto-
Egyptians, who were serpent-worshippers (see Sethe, 74)>
had a knowledge of metals at a period when, so far as our
present knowledge goes, no other people had yet acquired
it. Referring to the ancient Indian Indra, the Chaldean
Ea and the Mexican Quetzacoatl, among other gods, Miss
Buckland remarks : — " The deities, kings and heroes who
are symbolised by the serpent are commonly described as
the pioneers of civilisation and the instructors of mankind
in the arts of agriculture and mining."
Further, in an interesting article en " Stimulants in
Use among Savages and among the Ancients" (9), she
tells us that " among aboriginal races in a line across the
Pacific, from Formosa on the West to Peru and Bolivia on
the East, a peculiar, and what would appear to civilised
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 9
races a disgusting mode of preparing fermented drinks,
prevails, the women being in all cases the chief manu-
facturers ; the material employed varying according to
the state of agriculture in the different localities, but the
mode of preparation remaining virtually the same" (9,
P- 213)-
If space permitted I should have liked to make
extensive quotations from Park Harrison's most conclusive
independent demonstration of the spread of culture along
the same great route, at which he arrived from the study
of the geographical distribution of the peculiar custom of
artificially distending the lobe of the ear (29). This
practice was not infrequent in Egypt (79) in the times of
the new Empire, a fact which Harrison seems to have over-
looked : but he records it amongst the Greeks, Hebrews,
Etruscans, Persians, in Bceotia, Zanzibar, Natal, Southern
India, Ceylon, Assam, Aracan, Burma, Laos, Nicobar
Islands, Nias, Borneo, China, Solomon Islands, Admiralty
Islands, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Pelew Islands,
Navigators Island, Fiji, Friendly Islands, Penrhyn, Society
Islands, Easter Island, Peru, Palenque, Mexico, Brazil
and Paraguay. This is an excellent and remarkably
complete [if he had used the data now available it might
have been made even more complete] mapping out of the
great " heliolithic " track.
The identity of geographical distribution is no mere
fortuitous coincidence.
It is of peculiar interest that Harrison is able to
demonstrate a linked association between this custom and
sun-worship in most of the localities enumerated. In the
figures illustrating his memoir other obvious associations
can be detected intimately binding it by manifold threads
into the very texture of the " heliolithic culture." If to
this we add the fact that in many localities the design
IO ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
tattooed on the skin was the sun, we further strengthen
the woof of the closely woven fabric that is gradually
taking shape.
To these forty-year-old demonstrations let me add
Wilson's interesting recent monograph on the swastika
(105), which independently tells the same story and
blazens the same great track around the world (see his
map). He further calls attention to the close geographical
association between the distribution of the swastika and
the spindle-whorl. By attributing the introduction of
weaving and the swastika into most localities where they
occur by the same culture-heroes he thereby adds the
swastika to the " heliolithic " outfit, for weaving already
belongs to it.
To these practices one might add a large series of
others of a character no less remarkable, such, for example,
as circumcision, the practice of massage (57> 67 and II),
the curious custom known as couvade, all of which are
distributed along the great "heliolithic" pathway and
belong to the great culture-complex which travelled
by it.
But there are several interesting bits of corroborative
evidence that I cannot refrain from mentioning.
One of the most carefully-investigated bonds of
cultural connection between the Eastern Mediterranean
in Phoenician times and pre-Columbian America (Tehuan-
tepec) has recently been put on record by Zelia Nuttall in
her memoir on ".a curious survival in Mexico of the use
of the Purpura shell-fish for dyeing " (50). After a very
thorough and critical analysis of all the facts of this truly
remarkable case of transmission of an extraordinary cus-
tom, Mrs. Nuttall justly concludes that " it seems almost
easier to believe that certain elements of an ancient
European culture were at one time, and perhaps once only,
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. n
actually transmitted by the traditional small band of ...
Mediterranean seafarers, than to explain how, under totally
different conditions of race and climate, the identical
ideas and customs should have arisen" (pp. 383 and 384).
Ncr does she leave us in any doubt as to the route taken
by the carriers of this practice. Found in association
with it, both in the Old and the New World, was the use
of conch-shell trumpets and pearls. The antiquity of
these usages is proved by their representation in pre-
Columbian pictures or, in the case of the pearls, the
finding of actual specimens in graves.
In Phoenician, Greek-, and later times these shell-
trumpets were extensively used in the Mediterranean :
" European travellers have found them in actual use in
East India, Japan and, by the Alfurs, in Ceram, the
Papuans of New Guinea, as well as in the South Sea
islands as far as New Zealand," and in many places in
America (p. 378). " In the Old and the New World alike,
are found, in the same close association, (i) the purple
industry and skill in weaving ; (2) the use of pearls and
conch-shell trumpets ; (3) the mining, working and traf-
ficking in copper, silver and gold ; (4) the tetrarchial
form of government ; (5) the conception of ' Four
Elements ' ; (6) the cyclical form of calendar. Those
scholars who assert that all of the foregoing must have
been developed independently will ever be confronted by
the persistent and unassailable fact that, throughout
America, the aborigines unanimously disclaim all share
in their production and assign their introduction to
strangers of superior culture from distant and unknown
parts" (p. 383).
Many other equally definite proofs might be cited of
the transmission of customs from the Old to the New
World, of which the instance reported by Tylor (102) is
12 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
the classical example2; but I know of no other which has
been so critically studied and so fully recorded as Mrs.
Nuttall's case.
But the difficulty may be raised — as in fact invariably
happens when these subjects come up for discussion — as
to the means of transmission. Rivers has explained what
does actually happen in the contact of peoples (68) and
how a small group of wanderers bringing the elements of
a higher culture can exert a profound and far-reaching
influence upon a large uncultured population (64 to 70).
Lane-Fox's [Pitt Rivers'] memoir " on Early Modes
of Navigation " (21) not only affords in itself an admirable
summary of the definite evidence for the spread of culture;
but is also doubly valuable to us, because incidentally it
illustrates also the actual means by which the migrations
of the culture-bearers took place. The survival into modern
times, upon the Hooghly and other Indian rivers, of boats
provided with the fantastic steering arrangement used
by the Ancient Egyptians 2000 years B.C., is in itself a
proof of ancient Egyptian influence in India ; and the
contemporary practice of representing eyes upon the bow
of the ship enables us to demonstrate a still wider exten-
sion of that influence, for in modern times that custom
has been recorded as far apart as Malta, India, China,
Oceania and the North- West American coast.
But there is no difficulty about the question of the
2 Tylor (" On the Game of Patolli, "/<""'«• Anthrop. Inst.,Vo\. VIII.,
1879, p. 128) cites another certain case of borrowing on the part of pre-
Columbian America from Asia. "Lot-backgammon as represented by tab,
pachisi, etc., ranges in the Old World from Egypt across Southern Asia to
Birma. As the fatolli of the Mexicans is a variety of lot-backgammon most
nearly approaching the Hindu pachisi, and perhaps like it passing into the
stage of dice-backgammon, its presence seems to prove that it had made its
way across from Asia. At any rate, it may lie reckoned among elements of
Asiatic culture traceable in the old Mexican civilization, the high develop-
ment of which . . . seems to be in large measure due to Asiatic influence."
Manchester Memoirs, VoL lix. (1915), No. 10. 13
transmission of such customs. Most scholars who have
mastered the early history of some particular area, in
many cases those who most resolutely deny even the
possibility of the wider spread of culture, frankly admit —
because it would stultify their own localised researches to
deny it — the intercourse of the particular people in which
they are interested and its neighbours. Merely by using
these links, forged by the reluctant hands of hostile wit-
nesses, it is possible to construct the whole chain needed
for such migrations as I postulate (see Map II.}.
No one who reads the evidence collected by such
writers as Ellis (15), de Quatrefages (60) and Percy Smith
(p8/ can doubt the fact of the extensive prehistoric mi-
grations throughout the Pacific Ocean along definitely
known routes. Even Joyce (whose otherwise excellent
summaries of the facts relating to American archaeology
have been emasculated by his refusal to admit the influence
of the Old World upon American culture) states that
migrations from India extended to Indonesia (and Mada-
gascar) and all the islands of the Pacific ; and even that
"it is likely that the coast of America was reached" (6l,
p. lip).4
There is no doubt as to the reality of the close
maritime intercourse between the Persian Gulf and India
from the eighth century B.C. (13 ; 14 ; 51 ; and 101) ; and of
course it is a historical fact that the Mediterranean littoral
and Egypt had been in intimate connexion with Baby-
lonia for some centuries before, and especially after, that
time.
In the face of this overwhelming mass of definite
3 See also 253; 7 ; 8 ; 9 ; IO ; 16 ; 20 ; 21 ; 24 ; 29 ; 30 ; 38 ; 48 ;
49 ; So; 51 ; 61 ; 73 ; 103 ; and 105.
4 For proof that it was reached see 3 ; 8 ; 9 ; IO ; 2O ; 21 ; 38 ; 49 ;
50 ; 51 ; 73 ; 102 ; 103 ; and 105.
14 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
Cu '""
S o
o "*•
s
l
8 °
is '"
13 §
'•J '£
O 2
S .to
y: ^
OJ v
5 "5
II
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 15
evidence of the reality not only of the spread of culture
and its carriers, but also of the ways and the means by
which it travelled, it will naturally be asked how it has
come to pass that there is even the shadow of a doubt as
to the migrations which distributed this " heliolithic " cul-
ture-complex so widely in the world. It cannot be ex-
plained by lack of knowledge, for most of the facts that I
have enumerated are taken bodily from the anthropo-
logical journals of forty or more years ago.
The explanation is to be found, I believe, in a curious
psychological process incidental to the intensive study of
an intricate problem. As knowledge increased and various
scholars attempted to define the means by (and the time
at) which the contacts of various peoples took place, diffi-
culties were revealed which, though really trivial, were
magnified into insuperable obstacles. All of these real
difficulties were created by mistaken ideas of the relative
chronology of the appearance of civilisation in various
centres, and especially by the failure to realise that
useful arts were often lost. For example, if on a certain
mainland A two practices, a and b — one of them, a, a
useful practice, say the making of pottery ; the other, b,
a useless custom, say the preservation of the corpse —
were developed, and a was at least as old, or preferably
definitely older than b, it seemed altogether inconceivable
to the ethnologist if an island B was influenced by the
culture of the mainland A, at some time after the practices
a and b were in vogue, that it might, under any conceiv-
able circumstances, fail to preserve the useful art a, even
though it might allow the utterly useless practice b to
lapse. Therefore it was argued that, if the later inhabitants
of B mummified their dead, but did not make pottery,
this was clear evidence that they could not have come
under the influence of A.
1 6 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
But the whole of the formidable series of obstacles
raised by this kind of argument has been entirely swept
away by Dr. Rivers, who has demonstrated how often
it has happened that a population has completely lost
some useful art which it once had, and even more often
clung to some useless practice (65).
The remarkable feature of the present state of the
discussion is that, in spite of Rivers' complete demolition
of these difficulties (65), most ethnologists do not seem to
realise that there is now a free scope for taking a clear
and common-sense view of the truth, unhindered by any
obstructions. It is characteristic of the history of scientific,
no less than of theological argument, that the immediate
effect of the destruction of the foundations of cherished
beliefs is to make their more fanatical votaries shout
their creed all the louder and more dogmatically, and
hurl anathemas at those who dissent.
This is the only explanation I can offer of the
remarkable presidential address delivered by Fewkes to
the Anthropological Society of Washington in 1912(18),
Keane's incoherent recklessness5 (41, pp. 140, 218, 219,
and 367 to 370), and the amazing criticisms which during
the last four years 1 have had annually to meet. There
is no attempt at argument, but mere dogmatic and often
irrelevant assertions. The constant appeal to the mean-
ingless phrase " the similarity of the working of the
5 Dr. Fewkes' discourse is essentially a farrago of meaningless verbiage.
Later on in this communication I shall give a characteristic sample of the
late Professor Keane's dialectic ; but the whole of the passages referred to
should be read by anyone who is inclined to cavil at my strictures upon such
expositions of modern ethnological doctrine. The obvious course for any
serious investigator to pursue is to ignore such superficial and illogical pre-
tensions: but the ethnological literature of this country and America is so
permeated with ideas such as Fewkes and Keane express, that it has become
necessary bluntly to expose the utter hollowness of their case.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 17
human mind"6 (18), as though it were a magical incan-
tation against logical induction, and harping on the so-
called "psychological argument" (41), which is directly
opposed to the teaching of psychology, are the only
excuses one can obtain from the " orthodox " ethnologist
for this obstinate refusal to face the issue. Of course it is
a historical fact that the discussions of the theory of
evolution inclined ethnologists during the last century
the more readily to accept the laisser faire attitude, and
put an end to all their difficulties by the pretence that
most cultures developed independently in situ. It is all
the more surprising that Huxley took some small part in
encouraging this lapse into superficiality and abuse of
the evolution conception, when it is recalled that, as Sir
Michael Foster tells us, the then President of the Ethno-
logical Society "made himself felt in many ways, not the
least by the severity with which he repressed the pre-
tensions of shallow persons who, taking advantage of the
glamour of the Darwinian doctrine, talked nonsense in
the name of anthropological science " (" Life and Letters
of Thomas Henry Huxley," Vol. I., p. 263).
It is a singular commentary on the attitude of the
" orthodox " school of ethnologists that, when pressed to
accept the obvious teaching of ethnological evidence, they
6 For if any sense whatever is to be attached to this phrase it implies
that man is endowed with instincts of a much more complex and highly
specialised kind than any insect or bird — instincts moreover which impel a
group of men to perform at the same epoch a very large series of peculiarly
complex, meaningless and fantastic acts that have no possible relationship
to the "struggle for existence," which is supposed to be responsible for the
fashioning of instincts.
But William McDougall tells us that the distinctive feature of human
instincts is that they are of "the most highly general type." "They
merely provide a basis for vaguely directed activities in response to vaguely
discriminated impressions from large classes of objects." (" Psychology,
the Study of Behaviour," p. 171.) There is nothing vague about the extra-
ordinary repertoire of the " heliolithic" cult !
1 8 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
should desert the strong intrenchments which the diffi-
culties of full and adequate explanation have afforded
them in the past, and take refuge behind the straw barri-
cades of imaginary psychological and biological analogies,
which they have hastily constructed for their own purposes,
and in flagrant defiance of all that the psychologist under-
stands by the phrase "working of the human mind," if
perchance he is ever driven to employ this expression, or
the meaning attached by the biologist to " evolution."
It is not sufficient proof of my thesis, however, merely
to expose the hollowness of the pretensions of one's
opponents, nor even to show the identity of geographical
distribution and the linking up of customs to form the
" heliolithic " culture-complex. Many writers have dimly
realised that some such spread of culture took place, but
by misunderstanding the nature of the factors that came
into play or the chronology of the movements they were
discussing (see especially Macmillan Brown's [7] and
Enoch's [16] books, to mention the latest, but by no means
the worst offenders), have brought discredit upon the
thesis I am endeavouring to demonstrate.
Another danger has arisen out of the revulsion against
Bastian's old idea of independent evolution by his fellow-
countrymen Frobenius, Graebner, Ankermann, Foy and
others, with the co-operation of the Austrian philologist,
Schmidt, and the Swiss ethnologist, Montandon (who has
summarised the views of the new school in the first part of
the new journal, Archives suisses d^Anthropologie generalc,
May, 1914, p. 113); for they have rushed to the other
extreme, and, relying mainly upon objects of " material
culture," have put forward a method of analysis and
postulated a series of migrations for which the evidence
is very, doubtful. Rivers (64) has pointed out the un-
reliability of such inferences when unchecked by the con-
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O- 19
sideration of elements of culture which are not so easily
bartered or borrowed as bows and spears. He has in-
sisted upon the fundamental importance of the study of
social organisation as supplying the most stable and trust-
worthy data for the analysis of a culture-complex and an
index of racial admixture. The study of such a practice
as mummification, the influence of which is deep-rooted in
the innermost beliefs of the people who resort to it, affords
data almost as reliable as Rivers' method ; for the subse-
quent account will make it abundantly clear that the
practice of embalming leaves its impress upon the burial
customs of a people long ages after other methods of
disposal of their dead have been adopted.
I have been led into this digression by attempting to
make it clear that the mere demonstration of the identity
of geographical distribution and the linking together of a
series of cultural elements by no means represents the
solution of the main problem.
What has still to be elucidated is the manner and the
place in which the complex fabric of the " heliolithic "
culture was woven, the precise epoch in which it began to
be spread abroad and the identity of its carriers, the in-
fluences to which it was subjected on the way, and the
additions, subtractions and modifications which it under-
went as the result.
Although I have now collected many of the data for
the elucidation of these points, the limited space at my
disposal compels me to defer for the present the con-
sideration of the most interesting aspect of the whole
problem, the identity of the early mariners who were the
distributors of so strange a cargo. It was this aspect of
the question which first led me into the controversy ; but
I shall be able to deal with it more conveniently when
the ethnological case has been stated. The enormous
2O ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
bulk of the data that have accumulated compels me to
omit a large mass of corroborative evidence of an ethno-
logical nature ; but no doubt there will be many oppor-
tunities in the near future for using up this reserve of
ammunition.
Before setting out for the meeting of the British
Association in Australia last year I submitted the follow-
ing abstract of a communication (96) to be made to the
Section of Anthropology : —
" After dealing with the evidence from the resem-
blances in the physical characteristics of widely separated
populations — such, for instance, as certain of the ancient
inhabitants of Western Asia on the one hand, and certain
Polynesians on the other — suggesting far-reaching pre-
historic migrations, the distribution of certain peculiarly
distinctive practices, such as mummification and the
building of megalithic monuments, is made use of to con-
firm the reality of such wanderings of peoples,
" I have already (at the Portsmouth, Dundee, and
Birmingham meetings) dealt with the problem as it
affects the Mediterranean littoral and Western Europe.
On the present occasion I propose to direct attention
mainly to the question of the spread of culture from the
centres of the ancient civilisations along the Southern
Asiatic coast and from there out into the Pacific. From
the examination of the evidence supplied by megalithic
monuments and distinctive burial customs, studied in the
light of the historical information relating to the influence
exerted by Arabia and India in the Far East, one can
argue by analogy as to the nature of migrations in the
even more remote past to explain the distribution of the
earliest peoples dwelling on the shores of the Pacific.
" Practices such as mummification and megalith-
building present so many peculiar and distinctive features
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. li.v. (1915), No. 1O. 21
that no hypothesis of independent evolution can seriously
be entertained in explanation of their geographical dis-
tribution. They must be regarded as evidence of the
diffusion of information, and the migrations of bearers of
it, from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Eastern
Mediterranean, step by step out into Polynesia, and even
perhaps beyond the Pacific to the American littoral/'
At that time it was my intention further to develop
the arguments from megalithic monuments which I had
laid before the Association at the three preceding meet-
ings and elsewhere (90; QI ; 92; 93; and especially 94) ;
and endeavour to prove that the structure and the geo-
graphical distribution of these curious memorials pointed
to the spread of a distinctive type of culture along the
Southern Asiatic littoral, through Indonesia and Oceania
to the American Continent The geographical distri-
bution of the practice of mummification was to have been
used merely as a means of corroboration of what I then
imagined to be the more complete megalithic record, and
of emphasizing the fact that Egypt had played some part
at least in originating these curiously linked customs.
But when I examined the mummy from Torres
Straits in the Macleay Museum (University of Sydney),
and studied the literature relating to the methods em-
ployed by the embalmers in that region (l ; 19 ; 25 ; and
27), I was convinced, from my knowledge of the technical
details used in mummification in ancient Egypt (see
especially 78 ; 86 and 87), that these Papuan mummies
supplied us with the most positive demonstration of the
Egyptian origin of the methods employed. Moreover,
as they revealed a series of very curious procedures, such
as were not invented in Egypt until the time of the New
Empire, and some of them not until the XX 1st Dynasty,
it was evident that the cultural wave which carried the
22 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
knowledge of these things to the Torres Straits could not
have started on its long course from Egypt before the
ninth century B.C., at the earliest.
The incision for eviscerating the body was made in
the flank, right or left, or in the perineum (19 ; 25) — the
two sites selected for making the embalming incision
in Egypt (78); the flank incision was made in the
precise situation (between costal margin and iliac crest)
which was distinctive of XXIst and XXI Ind Dynasty
methods in Egypt (86) ; and the wound was stitched up
in accordance with the method employed in the case of
the cheaper kinds of embalming at that period (78).
When the flank incision was not employed an opening
was made in the perineum, as was done in Egypt — the
second method mentioned by Herodotus — in the case of
less wealthy people (56, p. 46).
The viscera, after removal, were thrown into the sea,
as, according to Porphyry and Plutarch, it was the practice
in Egypt at one time (56, pp. 57 and 58) to cast them into
the Nile.
The body was painted with a mixture containing red-
ochre, the scalp was painted black, and artificial eyes were
inserted. These procedures were first adopted (in their
entirety) in Egypt during the XXIst Dynasty, although
the experiments leading up to the adoption of these
methods began in the XlXth.
Hut most remarkable of all, the curiously inexplicable
Egyptian procedure for removing the brain, which in
Egypt was not attempted until the XVIIIth Dynasty —
i.e., until its embalmers had had seventeen centuries
experience of their remarkable craft (78) — was also
followed by the savages of the Torres Straits (25 ; 27) !
Surely it is inconceivable that such people could have
originated the idea or devised the means for practising an
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 23
operation so devoid of meaning and so technically difficult
as this ! The interest of their technique is that the
Torres Straits operators followed the method originally
employed in Egypt (in the case of the mummy of the
Pharaoh Ahmes I. [86, p. 16]), which is one requiring
considerable skill and dexterity, and not the simpler
operation through the nostrils which was devised later (78).
The Darnley Islanders also made a circular incision
through the skin of each finger and toe, and having
scraped off the epidermis from the rest of the body, they
carefully peeled off these thimbles of skin, and presented
them to the deceased's widow (25 ; 27).
This practice is peculiarly interesting as an illustration
of the adoption of an ancient Egyptian custom in complete
ignorance of the purpose it was intended to serve. The
ancient Egyptian embalmers (and, again, those of the
XXIst Dynasty) made similar circular incisions around
fingers and toes, and also scraped off the rest of the
epidermis : but the aim of this strange procedure was to
prevent the general epidermis, as it was shed (which
occurred when the body was steeped for weeks in the
preservative brine bath), from carrying the finger- and
toe-nails with it (78). A thimble of skin was left on each
finger and toe to keep the nail in situ ; and to make it
doubly secure, it was tied on with string (78) or fixed
with a ring of gold or a silver glove (84).
In the Torres Straits method of embalming the brine
bath was not used ; so the scraping off of the epidermis
was wholly unnecessary. In addition, after following
precisely the preliminary steps of this aimless proceeding,
by deliberately and intentionally removing the skin-
thimbles and nails they defeated the very objects which
the Egyptians had in view when they invented this
operation !
24 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
An elaborate technical operation such as this which
serves no useful purpose and is wholly misunderstood by
its practitioners cannot have been invented by them. It
is another certain proof of the Egyptian origin of the
practice.
There is another feature of these Papuan mummies
which may or may not be explicable as the adoption of
Egyptian practices put to a modified, if not a wholly
different, use. Among the new methods introduced in
Egypt in the XX 1st Dynasty was a curious device for
restoring to the mummy something of the fulness of form
and outline it had lost during the process of preservation.
Through various incisions (which incidentally no doubt
allowed the liquid products of decomposition to escape)
foreign materials were packed under the skin of the
mummy (78; 87). These incisions were made between
the toes, sometimes at the knees, in the region of the
shoulders, and sometimes in other situations (78). In
the Papuan method of mummification " cuts were made
on the kneercaps and between the fingers and toes ; then
holes were pierced in the cuts with an arrow so as to
allow the liquids to drip from them" (Hamlyn-Harris,
27, p. 3). In one of the mummies in the Brisbane museum
there seem to be incisions also in the shoulders. The
situation of these openings suggests the view that the
idea of making them may (and I do not wish to put it
any more definitely) have been suggested by the
Egyptian XX 1st Dynastic practice. For, although the
incisions were made, in the latter case, for the purpose of
packing the limbs, incidentally they served for drainage
purposes.
But it was not only the mere method of embalming,
convincing and definite as it is, that establishes the deri-
vation of the Papuan from the Egyptian procedure ; but
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 25
also all the other funerary practices, and the beliefs
associated with them, that help to clinch the proof. The
special treatment of the head, the use of masks, the
making of stone idols, these and scores of other curious
customs (which have been described in detail in Haddon's
and Myers' admirable account [25]) might be cited.
When I called the attention of the Anthropological
Section to these facts and my interpretation of them at
the meeting of the British Association in Melbourne,
Professor J, L. Myres opened the discussion by adopting
a line of argument which, even after four years' experience
of controversies of the megalith-problem, utterly amazed
me. " What more natural than that people should want
to preserve their dead ? Or that in doing so they should
remove the more putrescible parts ? Would not the flank
be the natural place to choose for the purpose ? Is it not
a common practice for people to paint their dead with
red-ochre?" It is difficult to believe that such questions
were meant to be taken seriously. The claim that it is
quite a natural thing on the death of a near relative for
the survivors instinctively to remove his viscera, dry the
corpse over a fire, scrape off his epidermis, remove his
brain through a hole in the back of his neck, and then
paint the corpse red is a sample of casuistry not unworthy
of a mediaeval theologian. Yet this is the gratuitous
claim made at a scientific meeting! If Professor Myres
had known anything of the history of Anatomy he would
have realized that the problem of preserving the body
was one of extreme difficulty which for long ages had
exercised the most, civilized peoples, not only in antiquity,
but also in modern times. In Egypt, where the natural
conditions favouring the successful issue of attempts to
preserve the body were largely responsible for the possi-
bility of such embalming, it took more than seventeen
26 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
centuries of constant practice and experimentation to
reach the stage and to acquire the methods exemplified
in the Torres Straits mummies. In Egypt also a curious
combination of natural circumstances and racial customs
was responsible for the suggestion of the desirability and
the possibility artificially to preserve the corpse. 1 low did
the people of the Torres Straits acquire the knowledge
even of the possibility of such an attainment, not to
mention the absence of any inherent suggestion of its
desirability? For in the hot, damp atmosphere of such
places as Darnley Island the corpse would never have
been preserved by natural means, so that the suggestion
which stimulated the Egyptians to embark upon their
experimentation was lacking in the case of the Papuans.
But even if for some mysterious reasons these people had
been prompted to attempt to preserve their dead, during
the experimental stage they would have had to combat
these same unfavourable conditions. Is it at all probable
or even possible to conceive that under such exceptionally
difficult, not to say discouraging, circumstances they
would have persisted for long periods in their gruesome
experiments ; or have attained a more rapid success than
the more cultured peoples of Egypt and Europe, operating
under more favourable climatic conditions, and with the
help of a knowledge of chemistry and physics, were able
to achieve ? The suggestion is too preposterous to call
for serious consideration.
But if for the moment we assume that the Darnley
Islander instinctively arrived at the conclusion that it was
possible to preserve the dead, that he would rather like
to try it, and that by some mysterious inspiration the
technical means of attaining this object was vouchsafed
him, why, when the whole ventral surface of the body
was temptingly inviting him to operate by the simplest
MancJiester Memoirs, Vol. li\: (1915), No. IO. 27
and most direct means, did he restrict his choice to the
two most difficult sites for his incision ? We know why
the Egyptian made the opening in the left flank and in
other cases in the perineum ; but is it likely the Papuan,
once he had decided to cut the body, would have had
such a respect for the preservation of the integrity of the
front of the body as to impel him to choose a means of
procedure which added greatly, to the technical difficulty
of the operation ? We have the most positive evidence
that the Papuan had no such design, for it was his usual
procedure to cut the head off the trunk and pay little
further attention to the latter. Myres' contention will not
stand a moment's examination.
As to the use of red-ochre, which Myres rightly
claimed to be so widespread, no hint was given of the
possibility that it might be so extensively practised
simply because the Egyptian custom had spread far and
wide.
It is important to remember that the practice of
painting stone statues with red-ochre (obviously to make
them more life-like) was in vogue in Egypt before 3000
B.C.; and throughout the whole "heliolithic" area, wherever
the conception of human beings dwelling in stones, whether
carved or not, was adopted, the Egyptian practice of
applying red paint also came into vogue. But it was not
until more than twenty centuries later — i.e. when, for quite
definite reasons in the XX 1st Dynasty, the Egyptians
conceived the idea of converting the mummy itself into a
statue — that they introduced the procedure of painting
the mummy (the actual body), simply because it was
regarded as the statue (78).
After Professor Myres, Dr. Haddon offered two
criticisms. Firstly, the incisions in the feet and knees
were not suggested by Egyptian practices, but were
28 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
made for the strictly utilitarian purpose of draining the
fluids from the body. I have dealt with this point
already (vide supra]. His second objection was that
there were no links between Egypt and Papua to indicate
that the custom had spread. The present communication
is intended to dispose of that objection by demonstrating
not only the route by which, but also how, the practice
reached the Torres Straits after the long journey from
Egypt-
it will be noticed that this criticism leaves my main
arguments from the mummies quite untouched. More-
over, the fact that originally I made use of the testimony
of the mummies merely in support of evidence of other
kinds (the physical characters of the peoples and the
distribution of megalithic monuments) was completely
ignored by my critics.
But, as I have already remarked, it is not merely the
remarkable identity of so many of the peculiar features of
Papuan and Egyptian embalming that affords definite
evidence of the derivation of one from the other ; but in
addition, many of the ceremonies and practices, as well
as the traditions relating to the people who introduced
the custom of mummification, corroborate the fact that
immigrants from the west introduced these elements of
culture. In addition, they also suggest their affinities.
" A hero-cult, with masked performers and elaborate
dances, spread from the mainland of New Guinea to the
adjacent islands : part of this movement seems to have
been associated with a funeral ritual that emphasised a
life after death. . . . Most of the funeral ceremonies and
many sacred songs admittedly came from the west "
(Haddon, 25, p. 45).
" Certain culture-heroes severally established them-
selves on certain islands, and they or their followers
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 29
introduced a new cult which considerably modified the
antecedent totemism," and taught " improved methods of
cultivation and fishing" (p. 44).
" An interesting parallel to these hero-cults of Torres
Straits occurred also in Fiji. The people of Viti-Levu
trace their descent from [culture-heroes] who drifted across
the Big Ocean and taught to the people the cult associated
with the large stone enclosures" (p. 45).
In these islands the people were expert at carving
stone idols and they had legends concerning certain
"stones that once were men" (p. 11). It is also signifi-
cant that at the bier of a near relative, boys and girls, who
had arrived at the age of puberty, had their ears pierced
and their skin tattooed (p. 154).
Thus Haddon himself supplies so many precise tokens
of the "heliolithic " nature of the culture of the Torres
Straits.
These hints of migrations and the coming of strangers
bringing from the west curious practices and beliefs may
seem at first sight to add little to the evidence afforded
by the technique of the embalming process ; but the sub-
sequent discussion will make it plain that the association
of these particular procedures with mummification serves
to clinch the demonstration of the source from which
that practice was derived.
It is doubly interesting to obtain all this corroborative
evidence from the writings of Dr. Haddon, in view of the
fact, to which I have already referred, that he vigorously
protested against my contention that the embalmers of
the Torres Straits acquired their art, directly or indirectly,
from Egypt. For, in his graphic account of a burial
ceremony at Murray Islands, his confession that, as he
watched the funerary boat and the wailing women, his
" mind wandered back thousands of years, and called up
30 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
ancient Egypt carrying its dead in boats across the sacred
Nile'1 has a much deeper and more real significance than
he intended. The analogy which at once sprang to his
mind was not merely a chance resemblance, but the ex-
pression of a definite survival amongst these simple people
in the Ear East of customs their remote ancestors had
acquired, through many intermediaries no doubt, from
the Egyptians of the ninth century EC.
At the time when Dr. Haddon asked for the evidence
for the connection between Egypt and Papua, I was aware
only of the Burmese practices (vide infra] in the inter-
vening area, and the problem of establishing the means
by which the Egyptian custom actually spread seemed to
be a very formidable task.
But soon after my return from Australia all the links
in the cultural chain came to light. Mr. W. J. Perry, who
had been engaged in analysing the complex mixture of
cultures in Indonesia, kindly permitted me to read the
manuscript of the book he had written upon the subject.
With remarkable perspicuity he had unravelled the appar-
ently hopeless tangle into which the social organisation
of this ethnological cockpit has been involved by the
mixture of peoples and the conflict of diverse beliefs and
customs. His convincing demonstration of the fact that
there had been an immigration into Indonesia (from the
West) of a people who introduced megalithic ideas, sun-
worship and phallism, and many other distinctive practices
and traditions, not only gave me precisely the informa-
tion I needed, but also directed my attention to the fact
that the culture (for which, so he informed me, Professor
Brockwell, of Montreal, had suggested the distinctive
term " heliolithic ") included also the practice of mummi-
fication.- In the course of continuous discussions with
him during the last four months a clear view of the whole
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 31
problem and the means of solving most of its difficulties
emerged.
For Perry's work in this field, no less than for my
own, Rivers' illuminating and truly epoch-making re-
searches (64 to 70) have cleared the ground. Not only
has he removed from the path of investigators the
apparently insuperable obstacles to the demonstration of
the spread of cultures by showing how useful arts can be
lost (65) ; but he has analysed the social organisation of
Oceania in such a way that the various waves of immi-
gration into the Pacific can be identified and with cer-
o
tainty be referred back to Indonesia (69). Many other
scholars in the past have produced evidence (for example
2; 60; 6l and 98) to demonstrate that the Polynesians
came from Indonesia; but Rivers analysed and defined
the characteristic features of several streams of culture
which flowed from Indonesia into the Pacific. Perry
undertook the task of tracing these peoples through the
Indonesian maze and pushing back their origins to India.
In the present communication I shall attempt to sketch
in broad outline the process of the gradual accumulation
in Egypt and the neighbourhood of the cultural outfit of
these great wanderers, and to follow them in their migra-
tions west, south and east from the place where their
curious assortment of customs and accomplishments
became fortuitously associated one with the other (Map
n.\
I cannot claim that my colleagues in this campaign
against what seems to us to be the utterly mistaken pre-
cepts of modern ethnology see altogether eye to eye with
me. They have been dealing exclusively with more
primitive peoples amongst whom every new attainment,
in arts and crafts, in beliefs and social organisation, in
everything in fact that we regard as an element of civili-
32 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
zation, has been introduced from without by more cul-
tured races, or fashioned in the conflict between races of
different traditions and ideals.
My investigations, on the contrary, have been con-
cerned mainly with the actual invention of the elements
of civilization and with the people who created practically
all of its ingredients — the ideas, the implements and
methods of the arts and crafts which give expression to it.
Though superficially my attitude may seem to clash with
theirs, in that I am attempting to explain the primary
origin of some of the things, with which they are dealing
only as ready-made customs and beliefs that were handed
on from people to people, there is no real antagonism
between us.
It is obvious that there must be a limit to the appli-
cation of the borrowing-explanation ; and when we are
forced to consider the people who really invented things,
it is necessary to frame some working hypothesis in ex-
planation of such achievements, unless we feebly confess
that it is useless to attempt such enquiries.
In previous works (82 and 85) I have explained why
it must be something more than a mere coincidence that
in Egypt, where the operation of natural forces leads to
the preservation of the corpse when buried in the hot dry
sand, it should have become a cardinal tenet in the beliefs
of the people to strive after the preservation of the body
as the essential means of continuing an existence after
death. When death occurred the only difference that
could be detected between the corpse and the living
body was the absence of the vital spirit from the former.
[For the interpretation of the Egyptians' peculiar ideas
concerning death, see Alan Gardiner's important article
(23).] It was in a condition in some sense analogous to
sleep ; and the corpse, therefore, was placed in its "dwel-
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No, 10. 33
ling" in the soil lying in the attitude naturally assumed
by primitive people when sleeping. Its vital spirit or ka
was liberated from the body, but hovered round the
corpse so long as its tissues were preserved. It needed
food and all the other things that ministered to the wel-
fare and comfort of the living, not omitting the luxuries
and personal adornments which helped to make life
pleasant. Hence at all times graves became the objects
of plunder on the part of unscrupulous contemporaries ;
and so incidentally the knowledge was forthcoming from
time to time of the fate of the body in the grave.
The burial customs of the Proto-Egyptians, starting
from those common to the whole group of the Brown
Race in the Neolithic phase, first became differentiated
from the rest whet, special importance came to be attached
to the preservation of the actual tissues of the body.
It was this development, no doubt, that prompted
their more careful arrangements for the protection of the
corpse, and gradually led to the aggrandisement of the
tomb, the more abundant provision of food offerings and
funerary equipment in general.
Even in the earliest known Pre-dynastic period the
Proto-Egyptians were in the habit of loosely wrapping
their dead in linen — for the art of the weaver goes back
to that remote time in Egypt — and then protecting the
wrapped corpse from contact with the soil by an addi-
tional wrapping of goat-skin or matting.
Then, as the tomb became larger, to accommodate
the more abundant offerings, almost every conceivable
device was tried to protect the body from such contact
Instead of the goat-skin or matting, in many cases the
same result was obtained by lining the grave with series
of sticks, with slabs of wood, with pieces of unhewn stone,
or by lining the grave with mud-bricks. In other cases,
34 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
again, large pottery coffins, of an oblong, elliptical, or
circular form, were used. Later on, when metal imple-
ments were invented (90), and the skill to use them created
the crafts of the carpenter and stonemason, coffins of
wood or stone came into vogue. It is quite certain
that the coffin and sarcophagus were Egyptian inventions.
The mere fact of this extraordinary variety of means
and materials employed in Egypt, when in other countries
one definite method was adopted, is proof of the most
positive kind that these measures for lining the grave
were actually invented in Egypt. For the inventor tries
experiments : the borrower imitates one definite thing.
During this process of gradual evolution, which occupied
the whole of the Pre- and Proto-dynastic periods, the
practice of inhumation (in the strict sense of the term)
changed step by step into one of burial in a tomb. In
other words, instead of burial in the soil, the body came
to be lodged in a carefully constructed subterranean
chamber, which no longer was filled up with earth. The
further stages in this process of evolution of tomb con-
struction, the way in which the rock-cut tomb came into
existence, and the gradual development of the stone
superstructure and temple of offerings — all of these
matters have been summarised in some detail in my
article on the evolution of megalithic monuments (94).
What especially I want to emphasize here is that in
Egypt is preserved every stage in the gradual transfor-
mation of the burial customs from simple inhumation
into that associated with the fully-developed rock-cut
tomb and the stone temple. There can be no question
that the craft of the stonemason and the practice of
building megalithic monuments originated in Egypt. In
addition, I want to make it quite clear that there is the
most intimate genetic relationship between the develop-
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 35
ment of these megalithic practices and the origin of the
art of mummification.
For in course of time the early Egyptians came to
learn, no doubt again from the discoveries of their tomb-
robbers, that the fate of the corpse, after remaining for some
time in a roomy rock-cut tomb or stone coffin, was vastly
different from that which befell the body when simply
buried in the hot, dry, desiccating sand. In respect of
the former they acquired the idea which the Greeks many
centuries later embalmed in the word "sarcophagus,"
under the simple belief that the disappearance of the
flesh was due to the stone in some mysterious way
devouring it.7 [Certain modern archaeologists within re-
cent years have entertained an equally child-like, though
even less informed, view when they claimed the absence
of any trace of the flesh in certain stone sarcophagi as
evidence in favour of a fantastic belief that the Neolithic
people of the Mediterranean area were addicted to the
supposed practice which Italian archaeologists call searni-
tura.']
But by the time the discovery was made that bodies
placed in more sumptuous tombs were no longer pre-
served as they were apt to be when buried in the sand,
the idea of the necessity for the preservation of the body
as the essential condition for the attainment of a future
existence had become fixed in the minds of the people
and established by several centuries of belief as the
cardinal tenet of their faith. Thus the very measures
they had taken the more surely to guard -and preserve
the sacred remains of their dead had led to a result the
reverse of what had been intended.
7 It is a curious reflection that the idea of stone living which made such
a fantastic belief possible may itself have arisen from the Egyptian practices
about to be described.
36 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
The elaborate ritual that had grown up and the im-
posing architectural traditions were not abandoned when
this discovery was made. Even in these modern en-
lightened days human nature does not react in that way.
The cherished beliefs held by centuries of ancestors are
not renounced for any discovery of science. The ethno-
logist has not given up his objections to the idea of the
spread of culture, now that all the difficulties that mili-
tated against the acceptance of the common-sense view
have been removed ! Nor did the Egyptians of the Proto-
dynastic period revert to the practices of their early
ancestors and take to sand-burial again. They adopted
the only other alternative open to a people who retained
implicitly the belief in the necessity of preserving the
body, i.e., they set about attempting to attain by art what
nature unaided no longer secured, so long as they clung
to their custom of burying in large tombs. They en-
deavoured artificially to preserve the bodies of their dead.
This explains what I meant to imply when I said
that the megalithic idea and the incentive to mummify
the dead are genetically related, the one to the other.
The stone-tomb came into existence as a direct result of
the importance attached to the corpse. This develop-
ment defeated the very object that inspired it. The
invention of the art of embalming was the logical out-
come of the attempt to remedy this unexpected result.
As in the history of every similar happening else-
where, necessity, or what these simple-minded people
believed to be a necessity, was the " mother of invention."
In the course of the following discussion it will be
seen that the practice of mummification became linked up
in another way with what may be called the megalithic
traditions. The crudely-preserved body no longer re-
tained any likeness to the person as his friends knew him
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lir. (1915), No. 1O 37
when alive. A life-like stone statue was therefore made
to represent him. Magical means (p. 42) were adopted to
give life to the statue.. Thus originated the belief that a
stone might become the dwelling of a living person ; and
that a person when dead may become converted into
stone. So insistent did this belief become that among
more uncultured people, who borrowed Egyptian prac-
tices but were unable to make portrait statues, a rudely-
shaped or even unhewn pillar of stone came to be
regarded as the dwelling of the deceased.
Thus from being the mere device for the identifica-
tion of the deceased the stone statue degenerated among
less cultured people into an object even less like the dead
man than his own crudely-made mummy. But the funda-
mental idea remained and became the starting point for
that rich crop of petrifaction-myths and beliefs concerning
men and animals living in stones.
Thus arose in Egypt, somewhere about 3000 B.C., the
nucleus of the "heliolithic" culture-complex — mummifica-
tion, megalithic architecture, and the making of idols,
three practices most intimately and genetically linked one
with the other. But it was the merest accident that the
people amongst whom these customs developed, should
also have been weavers of linen, workers in copper, wor-
shippers of the sun and serpent, and practitioners of
massage and circumcision.
But it was not for another fifteen centuries that the
characteristic " heliolithic " culture-complex was com-
pleted by the addition of numerous other trivial customs,
like ear-piercing, tattooing and the use of the swastika,
none of which originated in Egypt, but happened to have
become " tacked on " to that distinctive culture before its
great world tour began.
The earliest unquestionable evidence (89) of an attempt
38 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
artificially to preserve the body was found in a rock-cut
tomb of the Second Dynasty, at Sakkara. It is important
to note that the body was lying in a flexed position upon
the left side, and was contained in a short wooden coffin,
modelled like a house. The limbs were wrapped separately
and large quantities of fine linen bandages had been
applied around all parts of the body, so as to mould the
wrapped mummy to a life-like form.
Thus in the earliest mummy — or, to be strictly
accurate, in the remains which exhibit the earliest
evidence of the attempt at embalming — we find exem-
plified the two objects that the Ancient Egyptian em-
balmer aimed at throughout the whole history of his craft,
viz., to preserve the actual tissues of the body, as well as
the form and likeness of the deceased as he was when alive.
From the first the embalmer realised the limitations
of his craftsmanship, i.e., that he was unable to make the
body itself lifelike. Hence he strove to preserve its tissues
and then to make use of its wrappings for the purpose of
fashioning a model or statue of the dead man. At first
this was done while the body was flexed in the traditional
manner. But soon the flexed position was gradually
abandoned. Perhaps this change was brought about
because it was easier to model the superficial form of a
wrapped body when extended ; and the greater success
of the results so obtained may have been sufficiently
important to have outweighed the restraining influence of
tradition. The change may have occurred all the more
readily at this time as beds were coming into use, and the
idea of placing the " sleeping " body on a bed may have
helped towards the process of extension.
But whatever view is taken of the explanation of the
change of the attitude of the body, it is certain that it
began soon after the first attempts at mummification
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 39
were made. The evidence of extended burials, referred
to the First Dynasty, which were found by Flinders
Petrie at Tarkhan (54), may seem to contradict this : but
there are reasons for believing that attempts at embalming
were being made even at that time (85). It seems to be
definitely proved that this change was not due to any
foreign influence (45). At the time that it occurred
there was a very considerable alien element in the popu-
lation of Egypt ; but the admixture took place long
before the change in the position of the body was mani-
fested. Perhaps the presence of a large foreign element
may have weakened the sway of Egyptian tradition ; but
the evidence seems definitely opposed to the inference
that it played any active part in the change of custom.
For the history of the gradual way in which the change
was slowly effected is certain proof of the causal factors
at work. There was no sudden adoption of the fully
extended position, but a slow and very gradual straighten-
ing of the limbs — a process which it took centuries to
complete. The analysis of the evidence by Mace is quite
conclusive on this point (45).
I am strongly of the opinion that there is a causal
relationship between this gradual extension of the body
and the measures for the reconstruction of a lifelike
model of the deceased, with the help of the mummy's
wrappings. In other words, the adoption of the extended
position was a direct result of the introduction of mummi-
fication.
At an early stage in the history of these changes it
seems to have been realised that the likeness of the
deceased which could be made of the wrapped mummy
lacked the exactness and precision demanded of a portrait.
Perhaps also there may have been some doubt as to the
durability of a statue made of linen.
4O ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
A number of interesting developments occurred at
about this time to overcome these defects. In one case
(85), found at Medum 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 model-
ling 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 mix-
ture 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 por-
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), Afo. 10. 41
trayal of the features enabled any one, including the
-^deceased's own ka, to identify the owner. Every circum-
stance 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 informa-
tion 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 dis-
continued, and it became the practice to make a statue of
the whole man (or 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 por-
trait 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 temporarily8 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).
s How insistent the desire was to make a statue of the mummy itself is
shown by the repeated attempts made in later times ; see the account of the
mummies of Amenophis III. (86) and of the rulers and priests of the XXIst
and XXIInd Dynasties (78 and 87).
42 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
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 dns*} is to all appearances identical
with ms 'to give birth,' and the term for the sculptor was
sdnkh, '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. A mong
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
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 43
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 mummi-
fication.
It is necessary to emphasise that the making of
portrait-statues was an outcome of the practice of mummi-
fication 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 embalm-
ment 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
44 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
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,
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 45
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 dis-
tinctive 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 ethno-
logists 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
46 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
which we know from Egyptian literature, no less than
that of the Jews, Phoenicians, 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 cen-
turies 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 defi-
nitely 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 v/ere
originally represented as dwelling houses (see my memoir,
94)-
The Pyramid texts clearly explain the precise signifi-
cance and origin of the hitherto mysterious and wide-
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 47
spread 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 sub-
stitute 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
48 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
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 com-
monest 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 Re, 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 Re, his Pyramid-temple became the
place of worship of the sun-god. Megalithic architecture
Mancliester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 49
thus became indissolubly connected with sun-worship, x
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 Re 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, 35 1. 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 discus-
sion of the original association of the sun and the serpent
see Sethe's important Memoir (74).]
The chance circumstances which Ted to the linking
together of all these incongruous elements — mummifica-
tion, 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 appear-
ance elsewhere in association the one with the other, it
can confidently be regarded as a sure token of Egyptian
influence, exerted directly or indirectly.
0 For an account of the geographical distribution of serpent-worship
and a remarkable demonstration of the intimacy of its association with
distinctive " heliolithic " ideas, see Wake, 103.
5O ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
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 princi-
ples 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 illus-
trating 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
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 51
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 Phoenicians and the peoples
of India the phallic aspect became more strongly empha-
sised. 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 rela-
tively 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
52 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
body cavity (78 ; 8l 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 obtain-
able 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, cinna-
mon, 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
10 Sir William Thiselton Dyer informs me that in all probability it was
not cedar but juniper that was obtained by the Ancient Egyptians from
Syria [and used for embalming]. The material to which reference is made
here would probably be identical with the modern 'huile de cade,' and be
obtained from juniperus excclsa.
I retain the term "oil of cedar" to facilitate the bibliographical refer-
ences, as all the archaeologists and historians invariably use this expression.
11 Since this memoir has been printed Dr. Alan Gardiner has published
a most luminous and important account of "The Tomb of Amenemhet"
(N. de'Garis Davies and Alan Gardiner, 1915), which throws a flood of light
upon Egyptian ideas concerning the matters discussed in this communication.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 53
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 ensur-
ing this end : — (i) 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 ; ($) 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 recog-
nised the fact of the desiccation of the body in the process
of embalming, for their scribes tell us, in the most definite
manner, that the aim of the ceremony of offering libations
was magically to restore to the body (as represented by
the statue above ground) the fluids it had lost during
embalming (Blackman, 5).
If then the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age recognised
the importance of restoring the fluids to reanimate the
mummy or its statue, it is quite clear they must have
appreciated the physical fact that their process of preser-
vation 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 mummi-
fication— (i) 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
54 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
acquisition of knowledge useful to them for the preserva-
tion both of their food and their dead relatives !
To the constituent elements of the " heliolithic " cul-
ture may now be added the practices of anointing with
oil or ungents, 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
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 55
attention (0 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 mummifi-
cation spread south into Nubia (39) and the Soudan.
According to Herodotus the ancient Macrobioi pre-
served 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 plaster12 is
an interesting survival of the practice described by Junker
in Egypt (vide supra), which seems to supply the explana-
tion 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 neighbour-
hood of the head-waters of the Nile.
In his article in Hastings' Dictionary (32, p. 418)
Hartland states that the practice of mummification is
1 '-' Mr. Ciooke has called my attention to a similar practice in India.
Leith (Journ. Anthr. Soc. of Bombay, Vol. I., 1886, pp. 39 and 40) stated
that the I\d$i KJianda contained an account of a Brahman who preserved
his mother's coipse. After having it preserved and wrapped he "coated the
whole with pure clay and finally deposited the corpse in a copper coffin."
56 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
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
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 57
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 know-
ledge of the belief that the deceased was supposed to be
able to talk and communicate with the living (2i).
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, prealablement embaume avec des herbes sccher
et de la cendre est couche 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
5 8 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
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 neigh-
bouring tribe, the Ibos, had burial rites which " recall
those of ancient Egypt." For instance, " among Ibos
embalming is still practised." Two methods of mummifi-
cation, 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, some-
times 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.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 59
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 tradi-
tions 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
via 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 infer-
60 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
ences as to racial movements across Africa were based
solely upon the distribution and methods of mummifica-
tion, I have become acquainted with remarkable confirma-
tion 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 delimi-
tation of the two spheres of influence from the east,
trans- and circum- African (i.e., via 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 memo-
rial, reappears again in Yoruba, in the North-West
Camerooris 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, intro-
duce 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
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 61
Egyptian derivation is more definitely and surely demon-
strated 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
lies Fortunees," 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
jDody 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
62 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
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 Tacoronte 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 quota-
tion 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 (sttpra) indi-
cated 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.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 63
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. Farcelly 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 pro-
cedures 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.
64 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
(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 accept-
ing 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 con-
tained 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 cer-
tain 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
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 65
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 Gib-
raltar, not improbably through Phoenician channels.
[For a full critical discussion of all the literature
relating to Egyptiait influence in West Africa see Dahse,
" Ein zweites Goldland Salomes," Zeitsch. f. Ethn., 1911,
p. i. 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, Weiner Zeitsch. f. Knnde
des Morgenlandes, xii, 1898, p. 61). At any rate em-
balming 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
66 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
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 via the Mediterranean
and Syria, seeing that, so far as is known, such a method
was used only on the Mediterranean littoral of Egypt, in
Phoenicia and the y£gean.
Concerning the use of wax in the process of embalm-
ing, of which ancient Egyptian mummies, especially of
the new Empire (86), afford numerous instances, Petti-
grew (p. 87) remarks: — "The body of King Agesilaus
was enveloped in wax and thus conveyed to Lacedaemon.
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.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 67
In an article on Persian burial customs (32, p. 505)
Dr. Louis H. Gray says : " Unfortunately our sole infor-
mation 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 Achaemenians,
their bodies were not exposed as Zoroastrianism dictated ;
but it is by no means impossible that they were coated
with wax, or even, as Jackson13 also suggests ("Persia,
Past and Present," p. 235), ' perhaps embalmed after the
manner of the Egyptians/ "
In later times the Persians seem to have been in-
fluenced by the practices in vogue in Early Christian times
in Egypt, before the coming of Islam. Thus in Moll's
History (46, p. 545), the statement is made in reference to
the Moslem burial customs in Persia; "if it [the corpse]
is to be buried a great way off, it is put into a wooden
coffin filled up with salt, lime and perfumes to preserve
it ; for they embalm their dead bodies no otherwise in
Persia, nor do they ever embowel them, as with us."
That this is merely a degraded form of the Egyptian
embalmer's practice is shown by the fact that it is
identical with the method used by the Copts in Egypt
until the seventh, or perhaps even as late as the ninth
century A.D., and in their case we know that it is a
development from, or degradation of, the ancient practice.
13 Jackson refers the suggestion to Curzon's " Persia and the Persian
Question,'"' 1892, where I find <Vol. II., pp. 74, 79, 80, 146, 178 and 192)
most conclusive evidence in proof of the fact that the body of Cyrus was
mummified and all the Egyptian rites were observed (see especially Mr. Cecil
Smith's note on p. 80). In Persia, under Darius (p. 182), the Egyptian
methods of tomb-construction were closely copied, not only in their general
plan, hut in minute details of their decoration (see p. 178)— also the bas-relief
of Cyrus wearing the Egyptian crown (p. 74). Cambyses even introduced
Egyptian workmen to carry out such work (p. 192).
There are reasons for believing that India also was in turn influenced by
4his direct transmission of Egyptian practices to Persia, but only after (per-
haps more than a century after) the Ethiopian modification of Egyptian
embalming had been adopted there.
68 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
This method seems also to have spread to India : for
Mr. Crooke tells me that even at the present day several
of the ascetic orders bury their dead in salt.
In Moll's book the following curious statement also
occurs, p. 474 : — " Mummy, which is human flesh embalm'd
that has lain in dry earth several ages, and become hard
as horn, is frequently found in the sands of Chorassan, or
the ancient Bactria, and some of the bodies are so little
alter'd, 'tis said, that the features may be plainly
distinguished. "
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 XlXth and
especially the XXIst Dynasties (78 and 86) 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 refer-
ences from Indian literature (see especially Journ. Antkr.
Soc. Bombay, Vol. I., 1886, p. 39) to bodies being " skilfully
embalmed with heavenly drugs and^te" [clarified butter].
The ancient Aryans used to disembowel the corpse
and fill the cavity with ghee (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 has
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 69
elucidated with remarkable precision the ways and means
of, as well as the impelling motives for, the great migra-
tion 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 900
B.C. ; hence it is probable the eighth century B.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 Phoenicians were embarking upon mari-
time 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 know-
ledge of the customs aud practices of Egypt and of the
whole Phoenician 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
Phoenicians had brought to Ethiopia. On some future
occasion I shall discuss the important part played by the
Phoenicians 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 Sabaea much of the materials used for
70 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
embalming, 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 Sabaeans from
the Arabian coast, possibly ferried along the African
shore by expert mariners from Oman and the Persian
Gulf, either the Phoenicians 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 informa-
tion on this subject (" La Mort et les Funerailles a
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 Egyptian
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), 7V0. 10. 71
models. The subterranean megalithic burial chamber in
association with an oblong mastaba-Vhx. 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 the mastaba. In some respects
this type of grave recalls those found in the Bahrein
Islands by Bent (4), which he compares with the Early
Phoenician 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 length-
ways 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 Dore 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
Sabaean or Phoenician immigrants, who were attracted
by the Rhodesian gold-fields. Randall-Maclver believed
that he found Chinese and Persian relics (no earlier than
the I4th or at earliest 131!! century) under the founda-
tions ; and recklessly jumped to the conclusion that the'
local Negroes had conceived and built these vast monu-
72 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribu'ion of Mummification.
ments ! 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 monu-
ments 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 bowel I'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.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 73
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 called dhamma,
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 of BOODH."
Then it was cremated.
This is a curious instance of the blending of the
custom of mummification with the later practice of cre-
mation, 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 avarietyof burial customs.
"Another method which I have known to be practised,
but not as common as the one above detailed, of em-
balming 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.
74 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
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 Lhasa and Tashilhumpo. 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 plat-
form, 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.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 75
[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 com-
pletely 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 in-
formation. Fortunately all this evidence supports and
substantiates the opinions I had previously arrived at
inductively. For it provides a complete series of con-
necting 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 XX 1st Dynasties
(respectively in the case of different procedures), the mi-
gration of people carrying the methods east could not
have left Egypt before the time of the XX 1st Dynasty,
say 900 B.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: — (i) via the Soudan, the headwaters of the Nile
and the Somali Coast, (2) by the Red Sea route, and (3)
from the Phoenician Coast down the Euphrates. No
doubt all three routes served as avenues for communi-
/6 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
cation and 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 Phoenicians, 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 pro-
foundly.
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
Phoenician 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 Phoenician and Babylonian influences,
the use of honey might be cited, and the emphasis laid
upon "cedar" wood and "cedar" oil in mummification;
and the Phoenician adaptation of the New Empire type
of Theban tomb seen at Arvad and the analogous
14 See. however, p. 69. At some future time I shall explain what an
important link is provided by the ancient culture of the Black Sea littoral
between Egypt and the civilizations of the Western Mediterranean on the
one hand and India on the other.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 77
sepulchres found in the Bahrein Islands (4). The Betsileo
tombs in Madagascar probably represent the same type
transferred viti Sabaea 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 im-
pedimenta 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) century B.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 Anuradhapura in Ceylon] were not
entirely without connection with the seven-storied
Ziggarats which were so striking a feature among the
buildings of Chaldaea. ... it would seem that in
this case also the Indians were borrowers of an idea "
(p. 70). The more precise and definite influence of
78 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
Babylonian 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 im-
ported in the course of trade with Babylonia " fi2, 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 800 B.C. As a matter of fact it is known
that many of them cannot be older than 600 B.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 century
B.C., spread to India partly via Babylonia and partly by
way of East Africa, somewhere between the close of the
eighth and the commencement of the sixth century B.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.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 79
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 land-
marks, 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, Phoenicia and Chaldea ; and this great cultural
wave impinged upon the Indian peninsula not before
the close of the eighth century B.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. Cases
So ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification,
from 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 mummi-
fication, 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 immigra-
tion. 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 im-
probable 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 follow-
ing 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 im-
portance. 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."
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. IO. 8 1
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 inhabi-
tants of Babylonia ; and, perhaps, even more with those
of Elam and the neighbouring countries.
" We shall see later that the Asuras and the Dra-
vidians 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,
82 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution oj Mummification.
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 Churn-
ing of the Ocean' (Ma/iab/iarata, Adi, Astika, p. xviii.),
which is but an allegorical description of sea-borne com-
merce in its early days " (pp. cit., p 58).
" In the Mahabharata, 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
(Makabkarata, 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, TirtJiayatra, p. ciii.). So also did
the Asura Panchajana, who lived in Patala, when he was
pursued by Krishna ( Vishnu Purana, 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 the Mahabharata, 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).
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 83
" The civilization of Burmah, and other Indo-Chinese
countries, is ascribed by legend and by the native his-
torians 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 the
Mahabharata, 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 about A.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 expedi-
tions 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 (/#., i., 448).
" Evidence brought forward by Mr. Kennedy
(/. R. A. S., April, 1898) shows that a great sea-borne
84 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
trade was carried on from Indian ports by Dravidian
merchants as early as the seventh century B.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,/. 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
century B.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 406 A.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, Ixxi,
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 85
Ixxii.). 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 (/#., i, Ixxx.). 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 (/&, I, Ixxxi., Ixxxii.). All
these ships appear to have been Indian and not Chinese.
" Fah Hian mentions that pirates were numerous in
those seas (/#., i, Ixxx.), 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 migra-
tion 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 fascinat-
ing work because the conclusions at which he arrived
from a study of the ancient literature of India is confirmed
86 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
by 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 century B.C.
Moreover the evidence which I have culled from
Oldham bears out the conclusions my own investiga-
tions 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 coinci-
dence that the period of the greatest maritime exploits of
the Phoenicians, in the course of which, according to many
authorities, they reached India or even further cast, 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 Phoe-
nicians, 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 Pacific before
cremation 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 the
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 87
transmission of the distinctive culture-complex can be
explained only by supposing that the same people who
brought if 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 (60 and 98),
all fit into one consecutive series, though each was
determined from different kinds of evidence and inde-
pendently 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 region
88 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
for 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 " helio-
lithic " 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 the
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 89
skull, 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 funeraires ne
peuvent pas etre celebres de suite apres la mort, mais
seulement a 1'expiration d'une periode plus on moins
longue " (p. 66) ; and regards mummification simply as a
specialised form of this rite which is almost universal
(p. 67) : — " il parait legitime de considerer la momifica-
tion comme un cas particulier et derive de la sepulture
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 com-
pelled less cultured people to desist from the complete
process.
I am in full agreement with Hertz when he says : — •
41 L'homologie entre la preservation artificielle du cadavre
et la simple exposition temporaire paraitra moins difficile
a admettre si Ton tient compte du fait qui sera mis en
lumiere plus bas : les ossements sees, residu de la decom-
position, 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 especially 39;, not to
mention untutored savage peoples, the measures taken for
9O ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
preserving the body may fail and the skeleton alone may
be spared. If this contention be conceded, the demon-
stration 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 ou nous sommes
places, il y a homologie rigoureuse entre 1'cxposition du
cadavre sur les branches d'un arbre, telle que la pratiquent
les tribus du centre de 1'Australie, ou a Tinte-neiir de la
maison des vivants, comme cela se rencontre chez certains
Papous et chez.quelques peuples Bantous, ou sur une
plateforme elevee a dessein, ainsi que le font en general
les Polynesians et de nombreuses tribus indiennes de
I'Amerique du Nerd, ou enfin 1'enterrement provisoire,
observe en particulier par la plupart des Indiens de
I'Amerique 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 pro-
cess of degradation. In his excellent bibliography, and
especially the illuminating footnotes, Hertz gives a number
of references to the practice cf 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, Bcgrabnisarten der Ameri-
kaner, p. 190). This seems to supply an important link
between the Eastern Asiatic littoral and the Aleutian
MancJ tester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. IO. 91
Islands, 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 mummifica-
tion, 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 part15 in this influence, I do not propose (in
the present communication) to enter upon the discussion
15 Reutter (63) quotes the statement from Tschirch ihat Neuhof has
described the embalming of bodies in Asia. IP. Borneo camphor, areca nut
and the wood of aloes and musk are used ; and in China camphor and
sandalwood.
92 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
of these matters, except to note in passing that the in-
fluence exerted by the " heliolithic " culture upon the
Pacific coast of America may have been exerted partly
by the East Asiatic- Aleutian route (see Map 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 Lorenz16(43, p 22) records a similar practice
in the neighbourhood of Dore 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 (I) 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.
10 For this and certain other references I have to thank my colleague
Professor S. J. Hickson, F.R.S. So far I have been unable to consult the
full reports of Lorenz's expedition.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. //>. (1915), No. 10. 93
In his memoir Flower described two interesting mum-
mies, 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 ethno-
logical 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 speci-
mens, 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 sub-
stance, 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."
•
94 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
" In the right flank was a longitudinal incision, 3!
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- 390-
"Heads and bodies prepared in a similar way " are
found in many museums, and afford an interesting illus-
tration 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 together
1 7 A curious feature of these models is the representation of faces on the
shoulders. Similar practices have been recorded in America (Bancroft, 3).
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 95
by 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
manoeuvres 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 sup-
ports 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.
11 The abdominal cavity was then filled up with pieces
96 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
of 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 (l) 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 fur 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 was
MancJiester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 97
a small girl two or three years of age treated in a similar
way ; the incision for embalming is on the left side 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.
" 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 Iladdon and Myers in their impor-
tant 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 practices
98 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
were 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 (see 28, plate 6) the
head is severely damaged. Examination of the speci-
men 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 Torres
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 99
Straits. 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, via
East 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 demon-
strations in reference to their bearings on the connection
of the Australian populations with those of the main con-
tinents, 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 which
IOO ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
some 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, 4( corresponds to the Egyptian practice of
mummification" (p. 8 1) : but, as Hertz (33 et 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 cus-
toms 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 fix^d 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 same
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 101
side. 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 of
io2 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
burial 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 decompo-
sition 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 sur-
face ; 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.
Mancliester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 103
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 attach-
ment 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
(6l, 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 <
Blackmail from an Egyptian tomb of the Middle King-
dom 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's Jahrbucher 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 mum-
mification 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 coco-nut 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 cloth
1O4 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
soaked 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 sacri-
ficial practices and those of Mexico" (p. 275).
In their extensive migrations the carriers of the
" heliolithic" culture took with them the custom of cir-
cumcision, and introduced it into most of the regions
where their influence spread. In some of the areas
affected by the "heliolithic" leaven the more primitive
operation of " incision " is found. This consists not of
removing the prepuce, but merely slitting up its dorsal
aspect (69, p. 432). It was the method employed in
Egypt in pre-dynastic times, when it was the custom to
hide the phallus in a leather sheath suspended from a
rope tied round the body. The practice of " incision "
and the use of the pudendal sheath persists in some parts
of Africa until the present day (see. Jo urn. Roy. AntJiropol.
Instit., 1913, p. 120).
Rivers claims that " the practice of incision arose in
Oceania as a modification of circumcision " (69, p. 436) :
but I think the possibility of it having been introduced
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 105
from the west along with or before the practice of circum-
cision needs to be considered.
Another remarkable practice which probably formed
part of the equipment of the heliolithic wanderers was
massage. It was employed by the Egyptians as early as
the Sixth Dynasty, as we know from the representations
of the operations in a Sakkara mastaba (Capart, n).
Piorry (57) has given an account of the wide range of the
practice of massage, from Egypt to India, China and
Tahiti, and the high state of efficiency attained in its use
in ancient times in India and China. The Chinese manu-
script Kong-Fau contained detailed accounts of the
operation. Piorry remarks, " it is clear that for us its
development did not originate from the practices des-
cribed in the books of Cong-tzee or the compilation of
Susrata."
From Rivers' interesting account of massage in Mela-
nesia (67) it is evident that the method must have an origin
common to it and the modern European practice, and
that it could not have arisen amongst a barbarous people
like the Melanesians, who have the most extraordinary
conceptions as to why and how it serves a therapeutic
purpose. Although we have no evidence to prove that
massage spread along with the heliolithic culture, the fact
that it has a similar geographical distribution, and cer-
tainly was extensively practised in Egypt long before
the great migration began, suggests that it may represent
another Egyptian element of that remarkable culture-
complex.
In his masterly analysis of the cultures of Oceania (69)
Rivers has given a useful summary of the evidence rela-
ting to the practice of preserving the body, and has drawn
certain inferences from these and other burial practices,
which I propose to examine. " In some cases, as in
io6 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
Tikopia, interment takes place either in the house or
within a structure representing a house, while in Tonga and
Samoa the bodies of chiefs are interred in vaults built of
stone. Often the body is buried in a canoe or in a hollowed
log of wood, which represents a canoe " (69, p. 269). From
the evidence to which reference has been made in the
course of the present memoir it is unnecessary to insist at
any length on the importance and obvious significance
of these facts. But I question the inference Rivers draws
(p. 270) from the burial in boats. He says "the practice
can be regarded as a result of the fact of migration, and
does not show that the use of a canoe was the practice of
the immigrants in their original home." The practice is
so wide-spread, however, and in Egypt and elsewhere had
such a deep-rooted significance that it is difficult to believe
this custom was not brought by the immigrants with them.
I am willing to admit that the special circumstances of the
people of Oceania naturally emphasized what may be
called the " boat-element " in the funerary ritual ; but the
association of the use of boats with burial is so curious
and constant a feature of the " heliolithic " culture where-
ever it manifests itself (vide supra] as hardly to have
arisen independently in different parts of the area of
distribution.
" A second mode or treatment is preservation of the
body, either in the house or on a stage often covered with
a roof. Some kind of mummification is usually practised
in these cases, by continual rubbing with oil, drying by
means of a fire, and puncture of the body to hasten the
disappearance of the products of decomposition."
" In some parts of Samoa there is a definite process of
embalming in which the viscera are removed and buried.
A body thus treated lies on a platform resting upon a
double canoe, and in many other places a canoe is used
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No 1O 107
as a receptacle for the body while it is undergoing the
process of mummification " (p. 269). This association of
the use of a canoe with a method of preservation
obviously Egyptian in origin naturally provokes com-
parison with the use of boats in the Egyptian funeral
ceremonies. An instance is the boat found in the tomb
of Amenophis II. (8l). The platform is probably a type
of bed found elsewhere in the region under consideration
(see, for instance, Roth's account of the Queensland
sleeping-platform) and represents the bier found so often
elsewhere (vide supra}. This is in no way inconsistent
with Rivers' view that "exposure of the dead on plat-
forms is only a survival of preservation in a house "
(P- 273)-
Earlier in this memoir I have explained why the
Egyptians came to attach special importance to the head,
and how the less cultured people of Africa, when faced
with the difficulties of preserving the body, saved the
skull (or in some cases the jaw). When it is recalled how
widespread this custom is in other parts of the "heliolithic
area," and how deep-rooted were the ideas which prompted
so curious a procedure, Rivers' independent inference in
regard to this matter is fully confirmed. " Many practices
become intelligible as elements of a single culture if we
suppose that a people imbued with the necessity for the
preservation of the body after death acquired .... the
further idea that the skull is the representative of the
body as a whole ; if they came to believe that the purpose
for which they had hitherto preserved the body could be
fulfilled as well if the head only were kept" (p. 273). This
is unquestionably true : but I dissent from Rivers' qualifi-
cation that this modification happened " perhaps in the
course of their wanderings towards Oceania," because it
has already been seen that it had occurred before the
io8 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
wanderers set out from the East African coast. There
is, of course, the possibility that Africa may have been
influenced by a cultural reflux from Indonesia, such as
has been demonstrated in the case of Madagascar ; but
there are reasons for believing that the facts under con-
sideration cannot be explained in this way.
In thus venturing upon criticisms of Rivers' great
monograph I should like especially to emphasize the fact
that these comments do not refer in any way to his attack
on the "orthodox" ethnological position. On the con-
trary, the views that I am setting forth in this communica-
tion represent a further extension of Rivers' own attitude
that the Oceanic cultures have been derived mainly from
contacts with other peoples. A series of practices which
he has hesitated to recognise as having been introduced,
but inclined to regard as local developments, I hold to
be part of the immigrant culture. The use of boats for
burial, the custom of regarding the head as an efficient
representative of the whole body and the practice of
"incision " as well as circumcision (69, p. 432) are examples'
of customs, which he regards as local developments in the
Pacific: but all three are equally distinctive of Ancient
Egypt and occur at widely separated localities along the
great " heliolithic " track. The linking-up of sun-worship
with all the other elements of the "heliolithic cult" also
compels me to question his limitation of such worship to
certain regions only in Oceania (69, p. 549) ; even though
I fully admit that the data used by Rivers are not sufficient
to justify any further inference than he has drawn from
them.
My aim is then, not an attempt to weaken Rivers'
general attitude, but enormously to strengthen it, by
demonstrating that each culture-complex was brought
into the Pacific in an even more complete form than
Manchester Memoirs, Vol.li.r. (1915), No. 1O. 109
he had postulated. Nor does my criticism affect his
hypothesis of a series of cultural waves into Oceania.
Here, again, I am prepared to go not only the whole way
with him, but even further, and to seek for additional
cultural influences which he has not yet defined.
Most modern writers who refer in any way to the
preserved bodies which have been found in vast numbers
in Peru and in other parts of America assume that these
bodies have been preserved not by embalming or any
other artificial method or mode of treatment, but simply
as the result of desiccation by the unaided forces of
nature. Although in the great majority of cases there are
no obvious signs of any artificial means having been em-
ployed to preserve the bodies, yet a not inconsiderable
number of examples have come to light to demonstrate
the reality of the practice of mummification in America
(3: 37 : 58". 63: and 106). Yarrow's classical mono-
graph (106) established the reality of the practice of
embalming in America quite conclusively. Moreover the
fact that practically every item of the multitude of
curiously distinctive practices found widespread in other
parts of the world, in the most intimate association with
methods of embalming certainly inspired by Egypt, puts
it beyond all reasonable doubt that the variety of American
practices for preserving the body is also to be attributed
to the same source.
In his book on the "History of the Conquest of Peru,"
Prescott makes the following statement : — " When an
Inca died (or, to use his own language, was called home
to the mansion of his father, the Sun) his obsequies were
celebrated with great pomp and solemnity. The bowels
were taken from the body and deposited in the Temple of
Tampu, about five leagues from the capital. A quantity
of his plate and jewels was buried with him, and a number
1 10 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
of his attendants and favourite concubines, amounting
sometimes, it is said, to a thousand, were immolated on
his tomb ....
"The body of the deceased Inca was skilfully em-
balmed and removed to the great Temple of the Sun at
Cuzco. There the Peruvian sovereign on entering the
awful sanctuary might behold the effigies of his royal
ancestors, ranged in opposite files — the men on the right
and their queens on the left of the great luminary which
blazed in refulgent gold on the walls of the temple. The
bodies, clothed in princely attire which they had been
accustomed to wear, were placed on chairs of gold, and
sat with their heads inclined downwards, their hands
placidly crossed over their bosoms, their countenances
exhibiting their natural dusky hue — less liable to change
than the fresher colouring of a European complexion —
and their hair of raven black, or silvered over with age,
according to the period at which they died. It seemed
like a company of solemn worshippers fixed in devotion,
so true were the forms and lineaments to life. The Peru-
vians were as successful as the Egyptians in the miserable
attempt to perpetuate the existence of the body beyond
the limits assigned to it by nature. [Note. — Ondegardo,
Rel. Prim., MS. — Garcilasso, Com. Real., parte i., lib. v.,
cap. xxix. The Peruvians secreted their mummies of
their sovereigns after the Conquest, that they might not
be profaned by the insults of the Spaniards. Ondegardo,
when corregidor of Cuzco, discovered five of them, three
males and two females. The former were the bodies of
Viracocha, of the great Tupac, Inca Yupanqui, and of his
son, Huayna Cupac. Garcilasso saw them in 1650. They
were dressed in their regal robes, with no insignia but the
llautu on their heads. They were in a sitting position,
and, to use his own expression, ' perfect as life, without so
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. ill
much as a hair of an eyebrow wanting.' As they were
carried through the streets, decently shrouded with a
mantle, the Indians threw themselves on their knees, in
sign of reverence, with many tears and groans, and were
still more touched as they beheld some of the Spaniards
themselves doffing their caps in token of respect to
departed royalty. (Ibid, ubi supra.} The bodies were
subsequently removed to Lima ; and Father Acosta, who
saw them there some twenty years later, speaks of them
as still in perfect preservation]" (58, pp. 19 and 20).
Later on in the same work Prescott, relying again
on the somewhat questionable authority of Garcilasso's
works, makes a statement which in some respects may
seem to be at variance with what I have just quoted : —
" It was this belief in the resurrection of the body
which led them to preserve the body with so much solici-
tude— by a simple process, however, that unlike the
elaborate embalming of the Egyptians, consisted in ex-
posing it to the action of the cold, exceedingly dry and
highly rarified atmosphere of the mountains. [Note. —
Such indeed seems to be the opinion of Garcilasso, though
some writers speak of resinous and other applications for
embalming the body. The appearance of the royal
mummies found at Cuzco, as reported both by Ondegardo
and Garcilasso, makes it probable that no foreign sub-
stance was employed for their preservation.] As they
believed that the occupations in the future world would
have great resemblance to those of the present, they
buried with the deceased noble some of his apparel, his
utensils, and frequently his treasures ; and completed the
gloomy ceremony by sacrificing his wives and favourite
domestics to bear him company and do him service in
the happy regions beyond the clouds. Vast mounds of
an irregular or more frequently oblong shape, penetrated
112 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
by galleries running at right angles to each other were
raised over the dead, whose dried bodies or mummies
have been found in considerable numbers, sometimes
erect, but more often in the sitting posture common to
the Indian tribes of both continents" (p. 54).
In the light of the information concerning the practices
in other parts of the world, which I have collected in the
present memoir, there can be no doubt of the substantial
accuracy of these reports, and that they refer to real
embalming and not to mere natural desiccation.
Hrcllicka has adduced positive evidence of the adop-
tion of embalming procedures (37).
In his report, "Culture of the Ancient Pueblos of the
Upper Gila River Region, New Mexico and Arizona,"
Walter Hough (36) publishes excellent photographs of
two mummies of babies, but he gives no information as to
the method of preservation.
There are four Peruvian mummies in the Anatomical
Museum in the University of Manchester, three of which
are adults, and one of them a baby. In only one of them
is there any positive evidence of artificial measures having
been adopted for the preservation of the body, and in
this case the condition of the mummy was a most amaz-
ing one. The body was clad in woollen garments in the
usual way, and was wearing a woollen peaked cap, the
apex of which was furnished with a bunch of feathers.
The body was placed in a sitting position, and a large
wound extending across the trunk had been covered with
cloth strongly impregnated with resinous material. The
legs were sharply flexed upon the body and the arms
were bound up in front. But to my intense amazement I
found the shoulder blades on the front of the chest, and
on examination found that the thorax was turned back
to front. As the head was already separate there was
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10. 113
nothing to show what position it originally occupied ; and
it seemed impossible to explain how it had been possible
to twist the vertebral column in the lumbar region as to
bring the thorax back to front. In order to solve this
mystery I removed the resin-impregnated cloth, which
was firmly fixed to the abdominal wound, and found that
the body had been cut right across the abdomen and
packed with wool after the viscera had been removed.
Then the abdomen and thorax had been stuck together
by means of the broad strip of cloth with resinous paste
as an adhesive. But for some reason which is not very
apparent, or probably through mere carelessness, the
thorax had been placed the wrong way round, and it had
become necessary, in order to restore some semblance of
life-like appearance to the monstrosity, forcibly to twist
the arms at the shoulder joints in order to get them into
the position above described. [Since this was written I
have learned that in certain American tribes it is the
custom to dress the corpse with a coat turned back to
front. This seems to suggest that the curious procedure
just described may have been dictated by the same under-
lying idea, whatever it may be.] In the cranium of this case
the remains of the desiccated brain were still present, and
although there was a quantity of brownish powder along
with it, the evidence was not sufficiently definite to say
whether or not any foreign material had been introduced
into the cranial cavity. In the case of the other three
bodies, as I have already mentioned, there was no evidence,
apart from the excellent state of preservation, to suggest
what measures had been taken to hinder the process of
decomposition.
In his account of the obsequies of the Aztec kings,
Bancroft (3, Vol. II., p. 603) tells us that "the body was
washed with aromatic water, extracted chiefly from trefoil,
1 14 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
and occasionally a process of embalming was resorted to.
The bowels were taken out and replaced by aromatic
substances." " The art was an ancient one, however,
dating from the Toltecs as usual, yet generally known
and practised throughout the whole country" (p. 604).
He then proceeds to describe " a curious mode of pre-
serving bodies used by the lord of Chalco," which con-
sisted of desiccation ; and adds a singularly interesting
reference to libations, not only curiously reminiscent of
the ancient Egyptian practice, but also described in
language which might be regarded as a paraphrase of the
Pyramid text expounded by Blackman (5). " Water was
then poured upon its [the mummy's] head with these
words : ' this is the water which thou usedst in this
world ' — Brasseur cle Bourbourg uses the expression
' C'est cette eau que tu as recue en venant au monde"'
(Bancroft, 3, Vol. II., p. 604).
It is altogether inconceivable that such a curious
practice, embodying so remarkable an idea, could by
chance have been invented independently in Egypt and
in America. This can be no mere coincidence, but proof
of the most definite kind of the derivation of these Toltec
and Aztec ideas from Egypt.
Bancroft further describes (3, p. 604 et seq.} a whole
series of other ritual observances, many cf which find
close parallels in the scenes depicted in the royal
Egyptian tombs of the New Empire.
I have already referred to Tylor's case (102) of the
adoption in toto by the Aztecs of the Japanese Buddhist's
story of the soul's wanderings in the spirit-land. In the
case recorded by Bancroft almost the same story is
reproduced, but with the characteristic Egyptian additions
relating to parts of the way guarded by a gigantic snake
and an alligator respectively [in the Egyptian ritual it is
Manchester fileiuoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 115
of course the Crocodile ; see Budge, " The Egyptian
Heaven and Hell," Vol. i, p. 159]. This is a most re-
markable example of syncretism between the Egyptian
ritual of the New Empire with Buddhist practices on the
distant shores of America. ,
As the connecting link between the Old and New
World, it may be noted that in Oceania "everywhere is
the belief that the soul after death must undertake a
journey, beset with various perils, to the abode of departed
spirits, which is usually represented as lying towards the
west" (6i,'p. 138)
Reutter (63) gives a summary of information relating
to the practice of embalming in the New World and par-
ticularly amongst the Incas. The custom of preserving
the body was not general in every case, for amongst
certain peoples only the bodies of kings and chiefs were
embalmed. The Indian tribes of Virginia, of North Caro-
lina, the Congarees of South Carolina, the Indians of the
North- West Coast, of Central America and those of Florida
practised this custom as well as the Incas. In Florida the
body was dried before a big fire, then it was clothed in
rich materials and afterwards it was placed irr a special
niche in a cave where the relatives and friends used to
come on special days and converse with the deceased.
According to Beverley (1722) the tribes of Virginia
practised embalming in the following way: — The skin
was incised from the head to the feet and the viscera as
well as the soft parts of the body were removed. To
prevent the skin from drying up and becoming brittle oil
and other fatty materials were applied to it. In Kentucky
when the body had been dried and filled with fine sand it
was wrapped in skins or in matting and buried either in a
cave or in a hut. In Colombia the inhabitants of Darien
used to remove the viscera and fill the body cavity with
Ii6 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
resin, afterwards they smoked the body and preserved it
in their houses reposing either in a hammock or in a
wooden coffin. The Muiscas, the Aleutians, the inhabi-
tants of Yucatan and Chiapa also embalmed the bodies of
their kings, of their chiefs, and of their priests by methods
similar to those just described, with modifications varying
from tribe to tribe. Reutter acknowledges as the source of
most of his information the memoirs of Bauwenns, entitled
"Inhumation et Cremation," and Parcelly, " Etude His-
torique et Critique des Embaumements " ; but most of it
has clearly been obtained from Yarrow's great monograph
(106). Alone amongst the people of the New World who
practised embalming the Incas employed it not only for
their kings, chiefs and priests, but also for the population
in general. These people were not confined to Peru, but
dwelt also in Bolivia, in Equador, as well as in a part of
Chili and of the Argentine. Mummified bodies were
placed in monuments called Chullpas. According to De
Morcoy these Chullpas were constructed of unbaked brick
and were sometimes built in the form of a truncated pyra-
mid, twenty to thirty feet high, in other cases simple mau-
solea of a* simple monolith. The burial chamber inside
them was square and as many as a dozen mummies might
be buried in a single one. The bodies were sharply flexed
and were placed in a sitting position. An interesting and
curious fact about these mummies, or at any rate those
from Upper Peru, was that all of them presented on the
forehead or on the occiput a circle composed of small
holes through the wall of the cranium, which had probably
been used for evacuating the brain and for the introduction
of preservative substances.
Yarrow (106) refers to the fact that the Indians of the
North-West coast and the Aleutian Islands also embalm
their dead. This, like the practice of tattooing (Buckland,
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. ILr. (1915), No. IO. 117
IO), serves to map out the possible alternative northern
route taken by the spread of culture from Asia to America
(vide supra the account of Aino embalming ; also Map //.).
In his account of the Araucanos of Southern Chile
(Journ. Roy. Authr. Inst., Vol. 39, 1909, p. 364) Latcham
describes how, when a person of importance dies of disease,
these people believe that some one must have poisoned
him. They " open the side of the deceased " and extract
the gall-bladder, so as to obtain from the bile contained
in it some clue as to the guilty person. "The corpse is
then hung in a wicker frame and under it a fire is kept
smouldering till such time as the perpetrator be found
and punished."
This confused jumble of practices suggestive of a
blending of the influences of Egyptian embalming and
Babylonian hepatoscopy is also obviously linked to the
customs of Oceania and Indonesia.
Scattered in certain protected localities along the
whole extent of the great " heliolithic" track the ancient
Egyptian [also Chaldean and Indian] practice of burial in
large urns or jars occurs. In America also it is found;
but, according to Yarrow, it is. restricted to certain people
of New Mexico and California, although similar urns have
been found in Nicaragua.
After the coming of the first great "heliolithic" wave,
Asiatic civilization did not cease to influence America.
There are innumerable signs of the later effects of
both Western and Eastern Asiatic developments. For
instance, there is the coming of the practice of cremation.
The fact that such burial customs are spread sporadically
in the islands of the Pacific suggests that the custom may
have been carried to America by the same route as the
main stream of the " heliolithic" cult ; but against this is
the evidence that cremation was practised especially on
Ii8 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains, and in Mexico
rather than in Peru. It seems more probable that the main
stream of the later wave of culture, of which cremation is
the most distinctive practice, took the northern route
skirting the eastern Asiatic littoral and then following the
line of the Aleutian Islands.
In the account of the method of mummification
adopted by the Virginian Indians (supra] it was seen that
the whole skin was removed and afterwards fitted on to
the skeleton again. Great care and skill had to be used
to prevent the skin shrinking. Apparently the difficulties
of this procedure led certain Indian tribes to give up the
attempt to prevent the skin shrinking. Thus the Jivaro
Indians of Ecuador, as well as certain tribes in the western
Amazon area, make a practice of preserving the head
only, and, after removing the skull, allowing the softer
tissues to shrink to a size not much bigger than a cricket
ball (44; 52, p. 252, and 6l, p. 288).
According to Page (52), who has described one of the
two Jivaro specimens now in the Manchester Museum,
desiccation by heat was the method of preservation. He
adds, '" Momea ' and ' Chancha ' are the names commonly
given to such specimens by the natives." Surely the
former must be a Spanish importation !
A comparison of this variety in the methods of pre-
serving the body in America with the series of similar
practices which I have been following from the African
shore, makes it abundantly plain that there can be no
doubt as to the source of the American inspiration to do
such extraordinary things. The remarkable burial ritual
and all the associated procedures afford strong corrobora-
tive evidence.
But the proof of the influence of the civilizations of
the Old World on pre-Columbian America does not
Manchester Memoirs ) Vol. li.v. (1915), No. 10. 119
depend upon the evidence of one set of practices, how-
ever complex, bizarre and distinctive they may be.
The positive demonstration that I have endeavoured
to build up in this communication depends upon the fact
that the whole of the complex structure of the "heliolithic"
culture, which was slowly built up in Egypt during the
course of the thirty centuries before 900 B.C., spread
to the east, acquiring on its way accretions from the
civilizations of the Mediterranean, Western Asia, Eastern
Africa, India, Eastern Asia and Indonesia and Oceania,
until it reached America. Like a potent ferment it
gradually began to leaven the vast and widespread
aboriginal culture of the Americas.
The rude megalithic architecture of America bears
obvious evidences of the same inspiration which prompted
that of the Old World ; and so far as the more sumptuous
edifices are concerned the primary stimulus of Egyptian
ideas, profoundly modified by Babylonian, and to a less
extent Indian and Eastern Asiatic, influences is indubi-
table. Comparison of the truncated pyramids of America,
of the Pacific, Eastern Asia and Indonesia with those of
ancient Chaldea, affords quite definite corroboration of
these views. It would be idle to pretend that so complex
a design and so strange a symbolism as the combination
of the sun's disc with the serpent and the greatly expanded
wings of a hawk, carved upon the lintel of the door of a
temple of the sun, could possibly have developed inde-
pendently in Ancient Egypt and in Mexico (see especially
Bancroft, 3, Vol. IV., p. 351).
But it is not merely the designs of the buildings and
their association with the practice of mummification (and
later, in Mexico, with cremation;, but the nature of the
cult of the temples and all the traditions associated with
them that add further corroboration. Thus, for example,
I2O ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
Wake (103, p. 383), describing the geographical distribu-
tion of serpent-worship (the intimate bond of which with
sun-worship and in fact the whole " heliolithic " cult was
forged in Egypt, as I have already explained), writes :—
" Ouetzalcoatl, the divine benefactor of the Mexicans,
was an incarnation of the serpent-sun Tonacatlcoatl, who
thus became the great father, as the female serpent Cihua-
coatl was the great mother, of the human race." " The
solar character of the serpent-god appears to be placed
beyond all doubt . . . The kings and priests of ancient
peoples claimed this divine origin, and ' children of the
sun ' was the title of the members of the sacred caste.
When the actual ancestral character of the deity is hidden
he is regarded as 'the father of his people' and their
divine benefactor. He is the introducer of agriculture,
the inventor of arts and sciences, and the civilizer of
mankind."
Writing of the Maya empire, Bancroft (3, Vol. V.,
p. 233) says: — "The Plumed Serpent, known in different
tongues as Quelzalcoatl, Gucumatz, and Cukulcan, was
the being who traditionally founded the new order of
things."
Even the most trivial features of the "heliolithic"
culture-complex make their appearance in America.
Thus, for example, Harrison tells us that : —
" The artificial enlargement of the lobe [of the ear]
appears originally to have been adopted in India for the
purpose of receiving a solar disc " (29, p. 193).
" The early Spanish historian mentioned that an
elaborate religious ceremony took place in the temple of
the Sun at Cuzco, on the occasion of boring the ears of
the young Peruvian nobles " (p. 196).
" The practice of enlarging the car lobes was con-
nected with Sun-worship" (p. 198).
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 121
So also in the case of circumcision, tattooing, and
almost every one of the curious customs I have enumer-
ated in the foregoing account. Then, again, all the
characteristic stories of the creation, the deluge, the
petrifaction of human beings and of spirits dwelling in
rocks, and of the origin of the chosen people from an
incestuous union make their appearance in Mexico, Peru
and elsewhere.
The peculiar Swastika symbol, associated with the
"heliolithic" cult by pure chance in the place of its origin,
which the people of Timor, in Indonesia, regard as the
ancient emblem of fire, the Son of the Sun, also appears
in America.
Even so bizarre a practice as the artificial deformation
of the head (48, pp. 515 to 519), which seems to have
originated in Armenia, became added to the repertoire
of the fantastic collection of tricks of the " heliolithic "
wanderers, and was adopted sporadically by numerous
isolated groups of people along the great migration route.
For some reason this strange idea " caught on " in America
to a greater extent than elsewhere and spread far and
wide throughout the greater part of the continent.
Many other curious customs might be cited as straws
that indicate clearly which way the stream of culture has
flowed. For instance Keane (42, p. 264) states that " like
the Burmese the Nicobarese place a piece of money in
the mouth of a corpse before burial to help it in the other
world"; and Hutchinson (38, p. 448) supplies the link
across the Pacific : — " Men, women and children [in
ancient Peru] had frequently a bit of copper between the
teeth, like the obolus which the pagan Romans used to
place in the mouth to pay ferry to the boatman Charon
for passage across the Styx."
This reference to Charon reminds us also of the wide-
122 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
spread custom, apparently originating in Egypt and
spread far and wide, right out into the Pacific and America,
of the association of a boat with the funerary ritual, to
ferry the mummy to the west.
Certain distinctive aspects of phallism in America
might also be mentioned as evidence of the influence of
Old World practices.
In the appendix (part I ) to his " Conquest of Mexico,"
Prescott (59) summarises fully and fairly the large and
highly suggestive mass of evidence available at the time
when he wrote in favour of the view that the pre-Colum-
bian civilization of Mexico and Peru had been inspired
from Asia. In view of the apparent conclusiveness of
his statement of the evidence it becomes a matter of some
interest and importance to enquire into the reasons which,
in the face of the apparently overwhelming testimony of
the facts he has summarised, restrained him from adopting
the obvious conclusion to which his whole argument
points.
Referring to the numerous islands of the Pacific as
one means of access of population to America, Prescott
quotes Cook's voyages to illustrate how easily the Poly-
nesians travelled from island to island hundreds of miles
apart, and adds, " it would be strange if these wandering
barks should not sometimes have been intercepted by the
great continent, which stretches across the globe, in un-
broken continuity, almost from pole to pole.
" Whence did the refinement of these more polished
races [of America] come? Was it only a higher develop-
ment of the same Indian character, which we see, in the
more northern latitudes, defying every attempt at per-
manent civilization? Was it engrafted on a race of
higher order in the scale originally, but self-instructed,
working its way upward by its own powers ? Was it, in
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 123
short, an indigenous civilization? or was it borrowed, in
some degree, from the nations of the Eastern world ? If
indigenous, how are we to explain the singular coincidence
with the East in institutions and opinions? If Oriental,
how shall we account for the great dissimilarity in
language, and for the ignorance of some of the most
simple and useful arts, which, once known, it would seem
scarcely possible should have been forgotten ? This is
the riddle of the Sphinx, which no (Edipus has yet had
the ingenuity to solve."
In the light of the facts brought together in the
present memoir, it requires no CEdipus to answer the
riddle. For the only two objections which Frescott raises
in opposition to the great mass of evidence he cites in
favour of the derivation of American civilization from the
Old World can easily be disposed of. Rivers has com-
pletely disposed of one by his demonstration of the fact
that people — moreover those on the direct route across
the Pacific to America — do actually "forget simple and
useful arts" (65) The other objection is equally easily
disposed of, when it is remembered that it requires only
a few people of higher culture to leaven a large mass
of lower culture with the elements of a higher civilization
(see also on this point, Rivers, 68). Moreover, if language
is made a test, the affinities of the various American
tribes one with the other would have to be denied. Thus,
the language difficulty cuts both ways. But when we
have disposed of his objections, the whole of his
admirable summary then becomes valid as an argument
in favour of the derivation of American culture from
Asia across the Pacific.
Since then it has become the fashion on the part of
most ethnologists either contemptuously to put aside the
probability or even the possibility of the derivation of
124 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
American civilization from the Old World (characteristic
examples of this attitude will be found in Fewkes' address,
18, and Keane's text-book, 41). On the other side the
discussion has been seriously compromised from time to
time by a wholly uncritical and often recklessly inexact
use of the evidence in support of the reality of the con-
tact, which has to some extent prejudiced the serious
discussion of the problem. Perhaps the least objection-
able of such unfortunate attempts are Macmillan Brown's
(7) and Enoch's books (16). The former has been led
astray by grotesque errors in chronology and the failure
to realize that useful arts can be lost. Enoch, on the
other hand, has collected a large series of interesting but
incompatible statements, and has made no serious attempt
to sift or assimilate them.
But from time to time serious students, proceeding
with the caution befitting the discussion of so difficult
a problem, have definitely expressed their adherence to
the view that elements of culture did spread across, or
around, the Pacific from Asia to America (8 ; 9; 10 ; 15;
20 ; 21 ; 29 ; 30 ; 38 ; 48 ; 49 ; 50 ; 51 ; 60 ; 73 ; 102 ; 103
and 105). Among modern demonstrations I would
especially call attention to the evidence collected by Dall
(73, p. 395), Cyrus Thomas (73, p. 396), Tylor (102) and
Zelia Nuttall (49 and 50), and of the older literature the
remarkable statement of Ellis (15,. p. 117). [In Mrs.
Nuttall's monograph (49) there is a great deal, especially in
the introductory part, to which serious objection must be
taken : but in spite of the strong bias in favour of
" psychological explanation " with which she started,
eventually she was compelled to admit the force of the
evidence for the spread of culture.]
For detailed statements concerning the discussions
of this problem in the past the reader is referred to
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 125
Bancroft's excellent summary (3), which also supplies a
wonderfully rich storehouse of facts and traditions wholly
corroborative of the conclusions at which I have arrived
in the present memoir.
I find it difficult to conceive how there could ever
have been any doubt about the matter on the part of
anyone who knows his " Bancroft."
It will naturally be asked, if the case in proof of the
actual diffusion of culture from Asia to America is so
overwhelmingly convincing, on what grounds is assent
refused ? One school (of which the most characteristic
utterance that I know of is Fewkes' presidential address,
18) refuses to discuss the evidence : with pontifical solem-
nity it lays down the dogma of independent evolution
as an infallible principle which it is almost sacrilege to
question. I can best illustrate the methods of the other
school of reactionaries by a sample of its dialectic.
No single incident in the discussion of the origin of
American civilization has given rise to greater consterna-
tion in the ranks of the "orthodox" ethnologists than
Tylor's statement (102) :—
" The conception of weighing in a spiritual balance in
the judgment of the dead, which makes its earliest appear-
ance in the Egyptian religion, wds traced thence into a
series of variants, serving to draw lines of intercourse
through the Vedic and Zoroastrian religions, extending
from Eastern Buddhism to Western Christendom. The
associated doctrine of the Bridge of the Dead, which
separates the good, who pass over, from the wicked, who
fall into the abyss, appears first in ancient Persian religion,
reaching in like manner to the extremities of Asia and
Europe. By these mythical beliefs historical ties are
practically constituted, connecting the great religions of
the world, and serving as lines along which their inter-
126 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
dependence is to be followed out. Evidence of the same
kind was brought forward in support of the theory, not
sufficiently recognised by writers on culture history, of the
Asiatic influences under which the pre-Columbian culture
of America took shape. In the religion of old Mexico
four great scenes in the journey of the soul in the land of
the dead are mentioned by early Spanish writers after
the conquest, and are depicted in a group in the Aztec
picture-writing known as the Vatican Codex. The four
scenes are, first, the crossing of the river ; second, the
fearful passage of the soul between the two mountains
which clash together ; third, the soul's climbing up the
mountain set with sharp obsidian knives ; fourth, the
dangers of the wind carrying such knives on its blast.
The Mexican pictures of these four scenes were compared
with more or less closely corresponding pictures repre-
senting scenes from the Buddhist hells or^purgatories as
depicted on Japanese temple scrolls. Here, first, the
river of death is shown, where the souls wade across ;
second, the souls have to pass between two huge iron
mountains, which are pushed together by two demons ;
third, the guilty souls climb the mountain of knives, whose
blades cut their hands and feet ; fourth, fierce blasts of
wind drive against their lacerated forms, the blades of
knives flying through the air. It was argued that the
appearance of analogues so close and complex of Buddhist
ideas in Mexico constituted a correspondence of so high
an order as to preclude any explanation except direct
transmission from one religion to another. The writer,
referring also to Humboldt's argument from the calendars
and mythic catastrophes in Mexico and Asia, and to the
correspondence in Bronze Age work and in games in
both regions, expressed the opinion that on these cumu-
lative proofs anthropologists might well feel justified in
MaiicJiester M emeus, Vol. li.v. (1915), No. 1O. 127
treating the nations of America as having reached their
level of culture under Asiatic influence."
One might have imagined that such an instance,
especially when backed with the authority18 of our greatest
anthropologist, who certainly has no bias in favour of the
views I am promulgating, would have carried conviction
to the mind of anyone willing to be convinced by precise
evidence. But not to Mr. Keane! In endeavouring to
whittle down the significance of this crucial case, he inci-
dentally illustrates the lengths of unreason to which this
school of ethnologists will push their argument, when
driven to formulate a reductio adabsurdum without realiz-
ing the magnitude of the absurdity their blind devotion to
a catch-word impels them to perpetrate.
In Keane's " Ethnology " (41, pp. 217-219) the follow-
ing passages are found : —
" It is further to be noticed that religious ideas, like
social usages, are easily transmitted from tribe to tribe,
from race to race. [Most of my critics base their opposi-
tion on a denial of these very assumptions ! ] Hence
resemblances in this order, where they arise, must rank
very low as ethnical tests. I f not the product of a common
cerebral structure, they can prove little beyond social
contact in remote or later times. A case in point is
[Tylor's statement, which I have just quoted].
" The parallelism is complete ; but the range of
thought is extremely limited — nothing but mountains and
knives, beside the river of death common to Egyptians,
Greeks, and all peoples endowed with a little imagination."
" Hence Prof. E. B. Tylor, who calls attention to the
points of resemblance, builds far too much on them when
he adduces them as convincing evidence of pre-Columbian
culture in America taking shape under Asiatic influences.
18 For the whole driving force of the so-called " psychological" ethno-
logists is really a reverence for authority and a meaningless cretd.
128 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
In the same place he refers to Humboldt's argument
based on the similarity of calendars and of mythical
catastrophes. But the ' mythical catastrophes/ floods and
the like, have long been discounted, while the Mexican
calendar, despite the authority of Humboldt's name,
presents no resemblance whatsoever to those of the
' Tibetan and Tartar tribes,' or to any other of the Asiatic
calendars with which it has been compared. 'There is
absolutely no similarity between the Tibetan calendar
and the primitive form of the American,' which, 'was not
intended as a year-count, but as a ritual and formulary,'
and whose signs ' had nothing to do with the signs of the
zodiac, as had all those of the Tibetan and Tartar calen-
dars' (D. G. Brinton, 'On various supposed Relations
between the American and Asian races,' from Memoirs of
the International Congress of Anthropology, Chicago,
p. 148). Regarding all such analogies as may exist
'between the culture and customs of Mexico and those of
China, Cambodia, Assyria, Chaldaea, and Asia Minor,'
Dr. Brinton asks pertinently, ' Are we, therefore, to trans-
port all these ancient peoples, or representatives of them,
into Mexico?' (ib. p. 147). So Lefevre, who regards as
' quite chimerical ' the attempts made to trace such re-
semblances to the Old World. ' If there are coincidences,
they are fortuitous, or they result from evolution, which
leads all the human group through the same stages and
by the same steps' ('Race and Language/ p. 185).
" Many far more inexplicable coincidencies than any
of those here referred to occur in different regions, where
not even contact can be suspected. Such is the strange
custom of Couvade, which is found to prevail among
peoples so widely separated as the Basques and Guiana
Indians, who could never have either directly or indirectly
in any way influenced each other " (34).
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10 129
It is surely unnecessary to comment at length upon
this quibbling, which is a fair sample of the kind of self-
destructive criticism one meets in ethnological discussions
nowadays. Talking of the " limitation of the range of
thought" when out of the unlimited possibilities for its
unhampered activities the human mind hit upon four
episodes of such a fantastic nature, Keane taxes the
credulity of his readers altogether too much when he
solemnly tries to persuade them that such ideas are the
most natural things in the world for mankind to imagine !
Surely it would have been better tactics frankly to
admit the identity of origin, and then, following the
example of Hough (35), minimize its importance by indi-
cating the variety of possible ways by which Asiatic
influence may have influenced America sporadically in
comparatively recent times.
But instead of this, Keane insisted upon pushing his
refusal to admit the most obvious inferences to the
extreme limit and invoked the practice of Couvade as the
coup de grace to the views he was criticizing. But it was
singularly unfortunate for his argument that he selected
Couvade. His dogmatic assertion that the two peoples
he selected are " so widely separated " that they could
" never have either directly or indirectly in any way
influenced one another" is entirely controverted by the
fact that, although Couvade is, or was, a wide-spread
custom, all the places where it occurred are either within
the main route of the great " heliolithic culture-wave " or
so near as easily to be within its sphere of influence.
Thus it is recorded among the Basques,19 in Africa, India,
the Nicobar Islands, Borneo, China, Peru, Mexico, Central
California, Brazil and Guiana. Instead of being a " knock-
10 Recent literature has thrown some doubt upon its occurrence in
Western Europe.
130 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mini unification.
out blow " to the view I am maintaining, the geographical
distribution of this singularly ludicrous practice is a very
welcome addition to the list of peculiar baggage which
the <l heliolithic " traveller carried with him in his wander-
ings, and a striking confirmation of the fact that in the
spread from its centre of origin this custom must have
travelled along the same route as the other practices we
are examining.
After the artificialities of Keane and Fewkes, it is a
satisfaction to turn back to the writings of the old eth-
nologists who lived in the days before the so-called
"psychological" and "evolutionary explanations" were
invented, and were content to accept the obvious inter-
pretation of the known facts.
More than eighty years ago, Ellis (15, p. 117) with,
remarkable insight explained the relationships of the
Polynesians and their wanderings, from Western Asia to
America, with a lucidity and defmiteness which must
excite the enthusiastic admiration of those familiar with
the fuller information now available. On p. 119 he
cites an interesting series of racial factors, usages and
beliefs in substantiation of the cultural link between the
Pacific Islands and America.
Quite apart from the mere evidence provided by the
arts, customs and beliefs in favour of the transmission of
certain of the essential elements of American civilization
from the Old World, there is a considerable amount of
evidence of another kind, consisting no doubt to a large
extent of mere scraps. For instance, there are not only
the stories of Chinese and Japanese junks arriving on
the American shore and of American traditions of the
coming of pale-faced bearded men from the east,20 but
-" It is quite possible this may refer to the relatively modern incursion
of Norsemen and other Europeans into America by the North Atlantic.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 131
there is also a certain amount of evidence from the
physical characters of the population themselves. It has
been raised as an objection by many people that if there
had been any considerable emigration of Polynesians into
America they would have left a much more definite trace
of their coming in the physical characters of the people
of America than is supposed the case. But this argument
does not necessarily carry very much weight, for the num-
ber of such Polynesians who reached America would
have been a mere drop in the ocean of the vast aboriginal
population of the Americas. Moreover, there is a certain
amount of evidence of the presence of people with Poly-
nesian traits in certain parts of the Pacific littoral. Von
Humboldt stated the people of Mexico and Peru had
much larger beards and moustaches than the rest of the
Indians. But there is a more striking instance in sub-
stantiation of the reality of this mixture of Pacific people
in America which raises the possibility that a certain
number of Melanesians, whose physical characters, being
more obtrusive by contrast than those of the Polynesians,
were more easily detected. In Allen's memoir (2, p. 47)
the following statements are found : —
" Sir Arthur Helps tells us in his ' History of Spanish
Conquest in America' that the Spaniards, when they first
visited Darien under Vasco Nunez, found there a race of
black men, whom they (gratuitously as it seems to me)
supposed to be descended from a cargo of shipwrecked
negroes ; this race was living distinct from the other races
and at enmity with them,"
and on page 48;
" Perhaps other black tribes may be discovered upon
a more careful enquiry, and if the theory of Crawford be
accepted, which represents the inhabitants of Polynesia
in Ante-historic times as being a great semi-civilized
132 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
nation who had made some progress in agriculture and
understood the use of gold and iron, were clothed ' with
a fabric made of the fibrous bark of plants which they
wove in the loom/ and had several domesticated animals,
a new and unexpected light may possibly be thrown upon
the origin of primitive American culture. It is certain
that massive ruins and remains of pyramidal structures
and terraced buildings closely analogous to those of India,
Java and Cambodia, as well as to those of Central America,
Mexico and Peru, exist in many islands of Polynesia,
such as the Ladrone Islands, Tahiti, Fiji, Easter Island
and the Sandwich Islands, and the customs of the Poly-
nesians are almost all of them found to exist also amongst
the American races."
" Perhaps here, then, we have the ' missing link ' be-
tween the Old World civilizations and the mysterious
civilizations of America."
SUMMARY.
Between 4000 B.C. and 900 B.C. a highly complex
culture compounded of a remarkable series of peculiar
elements, which were associated the one with the other
in Egypt largely by chance, became intimately interwoven
to form the curious texture of a cult which Brockwell has
labelled " heliolithic," in reference to the fact that it in-
cludes sun-worship, the custom of building megalithic
monuments, and certain extraordinary beliefs concerning
stones. An even more peculiar and distinctive feature,
genetically related to the development of megalithic
practices and the belief that human beings could dwell in
stones, is the custom of mummification.
The earliest known Egyptians (before 4000 B.C.)
practised weaving and agriculture, performed the opera-
tion of "incision" (the prototype of complete circum-
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. li.v. (1915), No. 1O. 133
cision), and probably were sun-worshippers. Long before
3400 B.C. they began to work copper and gold. By 3000
B.C. they had begun the practice of embalming, making
rock-cut tombs, stone superstructures and temples. By
the mere chance that the capital of the united Kingdom
of Egypt happened to be in the centre of serpent-worship
(and the curious symbolism associated with it — Sethe, 74),
the sun, serpent and Horus-hawk (the older symbol of
royalty) became blended in the symbol of sun-worship
and as the emblem of the king, who was regarded as the
son of the sun-god.
The peculiar beliefs regarding the possibility of ani-
mate beings dwelling in stone- statues (and later even in
uncarved columns), and of human beings becoming petri-
fied, developed out of the Egyptian practices of the
Pyramid Age (circa 2800 B.C.).
By 900 B.C. practically the whole of the complex
structure of the "heliolithic" culture had become built up
and definitely conventionalized in Egypt, with numerous
purely accidental additions from neighbouring countries.
The great migration of the " heliolithic" culture-com-
plex probably began shortly before 800 B.C. [Its influence
in the Mediterranean and in Europe, as also in China and
Japan, is merely mentioned incidentally in this communi-
cation.]
Passing to the east the culture-complex reached the
Persian Gulf strongly tainted with the influence of North
Syria and Asia Minor, and when it reached the west
coast of India and Ceylon, possibly as early as the end of
the eighth century B.C., it had been profoundly influenced
not only by these Mediterranean, Anatolian and es-
pecially Babylonian accretions, but even more profoundly
with Eastern African modifications. These Ethiopian
influences become more pronounced in Indonesia (no
134 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
doubt because in India and the west the disturbances
created by other cults have destroyed most of the evidence).
From Indonesia the " heliolithic" culture-complex
was carried far out into the Pacific and eventually reached
the American coast, where it bore fruit in the develop-
ment of the great civilizations on the Pacific littoral and
isthmus, whence it gradually leavened the bulk of the
vast aboriginal population of the Americas.
[When this communication was made to the Society
my sole object was to put together the scattered evidence
supplied by the practice of mummification, and other
customs associated with it, in substantiation of the fact
that the influence of ancient Egyptian civilization, or a
particular phase of it, had spread to the Far East and
America. Since then so much new information has come
to light, not only in confirmation of the main thesis, but
also defining the dates of a series of cultural waves, that
it will soon be possible, not only to sketch out in some
detail the routes taken by the series of ancient mariners
who spread abroad this peculiarly distinctive civilization,
but also to identify the adventurers and determine the
dates of their greatest exploits and the motives for most
of their enterprises. In collaboration with Mr. J. W. Perry
I hope soon to be ready to attempt that task.
I have deliberately refrained from referring to the
vexed question of totemism in this communication,
although it is obvious that it is closely connected with
the " heliolithic " culture. I have used the expression
" serpent worship " in several places where perhaps it
would have been more correct to refer to the serpent-
totem ; but so far from weakening, the consideration of
totemism will add to the strength and cogency of my
argument.
When I assigned (p. 65) a comparatively late date for
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 135
the extension of the " heliolithic " culture to the western
Mediterranean and beyond I was not aware that Siret
(L'Anthropologie, T. 20 and 21, 1909-10) had arrived at
the same conclusion.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY.*
1. D'ALBKRTIS, L. M. " New Guinea." London, 1880, Vol. I.
2. ALLEN, F. A. "The Original Range of the Papuan and
Negrillo Races." Joiirn. Anthropol. Ins/., Vol.8, 1878-9,
p. 38.
3. BANCROFT, H. H. " The Nalive Races of the Pacific States
of North America." London, 1875.
4. BENT, T. "The Bahrein Islands in the Persian Gulf."
Proc. R. Geograph. Soc , 1870, p. 13.
5. BLACKMAN, A. M. "The Significance of Incense and
Libations in Funerary and Temple Ritual." Zeitsch. f.
sEgvpt. Sprache, Bd. 50,
6. BREASTKD, J. H. "A History of Egypt." London, 1906.
7. BROWN, J. MACMII, LAN. " Maori and Polynesian." London,
1907.
8. BUCKLAND, A. W. " The Serpent in Connection with
Primitive Metallurgy." Journ. Anthropol. Inst., Vol 4,
1874-5, p. 60.
9. Ibid. "Ethnological Hints afforded by the Stimulants in
use among Savages and among the Ancients." Journ.
Anthropol. hist., Vol. 8, 1878-9, p. 239.
* Many other bibliographical references have been added in the text
while this memoir was in course of printing.
136 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
10. Ibid. "On Tattooing." Journ. AnthropoL Inst , Vol, 17,
1887-8, p. 318.
11. CAPART, J. " Une Rue de Tombeaux." Brussels, 1907.
12. CROOKK, W. " Northern India." 1907.
13. Ibid. " The Rude Stone Monuments of India," Proc.
Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club, Vol. XV., May, 1905,
p. 117.
14. DAVIDS, T. W. RHYS. " Buddhist India." London, 1911.
15. ELLIS, W. "Polynesian Researches." Vol. I., London,
1832.
16. ENOCH, C. R. "The Secret of the Pacific." London, 1912.
17. FERGUSSON, J. " Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries."
London, 1872.
18. FEWKKS, J. WALTER. "Great Stone Monuments in History
and Geography." Presidential Address delivered before
the Anthropological Society of Washington, February
2oth, 1912.
Ip. FLOWER, W. H. " Illustrations of the Mode of preserving
the Dead in Darnley Island and in South Australia."
Journ. AnthropoL Inst., Vol. 8, 1878-9, p. 389.
20. Fox, A. LANE. " Remarks on Mr. Hodder Westropp's
Paper on Cromlechs, with a Map of the World, shewing
the Distribution of Megalithic Monuments." Journ.
Ethnol. Soc., Vol. i, 1869, p. 59.
21. Ibid. " On Early Modes of Navigation." Journ. AnthropoL
InsL, Vol. 4, 1874-5, P- 389-
22. FRAZER, JOHN. "The Aborigines of New South Wales."
Sydney, 1892.
23. GARDINER, ALAN H. Article, " Life and Death." Hasting?
Dictionary of Religion and Ethics, 1915.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 137
24. GLAUMONT, M. " Usages, Moeurs, et Coutumes des Neo-
Caledoniens." Revue d'ethnologie, 1888, p. 73 —
Summary in Cartailhac's " Materiaux pour 1'histoire de
I'homme," Vol. 22, 1888, p. 507.
25. HADDON, A. C, and MVERS, C. S. "Reports of the Cam-
bridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits."
Funeral Ceremonies, Vol. VI., Cambridge, 1908, p. 126.
26. HAIGH (Miss). " Some Account of the Island of Teneriffe."
Trans. Eihnol. Soc., New Series, Vol. 7. 1869, p. 112.
27. HAMLYN-HARRIS, R. " Papuan Mummification." Memoirs
of the Queensland Museum, Vol. I., 27th Nov., 1912.
28. Ibid. "Mummification," loc. cit. supra.
29. HARRISON, J. PARK. "On the Artificial Enlargement of
the Earlobe." Journ. Anthropol. Inst., Vol. 2, 1872-3,
p. 190.
30. Ibid. " Note on Phoenician Characters from Sumatra/'
Journ. Anthropol. Inst., Vol. 4, 1874, p. 387.
31. HARTMAN, C. V. "Archaeological Researches in Costa
Rica." Stockholm, 1901 — a Review in Nature, March
i6th, 1905, p. 462.
32 HASTINGS' Dictionary of Religion and Ethics.
33. HERTZ, R. "Contribution a une Etude sur la Representa-
tion Collective de la Mort." L'Annee Sociologique,
1905-6, p. 48.
34- HODSON, T. C. "Funerary Rites and Eschatological
Beliefs of the Assam Hill Tribes." Third Internat.
Congress Hist. Religions, Oxford, 1908, Vol. i, p. 58.
35. HOUGH, W. "Oriental Influences in Mexico." American
Anthropologist, Vol. 2, 1900, p. 66.
138 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribiition of Mummification.
36. Ibid. "Culture of the Ancient Pueblos of the Upper Gila
River Region, New Mexico and Arizona." Bulletin 87,
Smithsonian Institution, 1914, p. 132.
37. HRDLICKA, A. "Some Results of Recent Anthropological
Exploration in Peru." Smithsonian Miscellaneous Col-
lections, Vol. 56, No. 1 6, 1911.
38. HUTCHINSON, T. J. " Anthropology of Prehistoric Peru."
Journ. Anthropol. Inst., Vol. 4, 1874-5, P- 43^-
39. JONES, F. WOOD. In Report on the Archce logical Survey
of Nubia for 1907-8, Vol. II., p. 194.
40. JUNKER, H. "Excavations of the Vienna Imperial Academy
of Sciences at the Pyramids of Gizah, 1914." Journ.
Egyptian Archaol., Vol. I., Oct., 1914, p. 250.
41. KEANE, A. H. "Ethnology." Cambridge, 1896.
42. Ibid. " Man, Past and Present." Cambridge. 1900.
43. LORENZ, H. A. " Eenige Maanden onder de Papoea's."
1905, p. 224.
44. LUBBOCK, J. ''Notes on the Macas Indians." Jcurn.
Anthropol. Inst., Vol. 3, 1873-4, p. 29.
45. MACE, A. C. " The Early Dynastic Cemeteries of Naga-
• ed-Der, Part II." 1909.
46. MOLL, HERMANN. " Modern History." Vol. I., Dublin,
1739-
47. MYERS, C. S. "Contributions to Egyptian Anthropology:
Tattling." Journ. Anthropol. Inst., Vol. XXXIII., 1903,
p. 82.
48. NADAILLAC DE. " L'Amerique Prehistorique." Paris, 1883.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 1O. 139
49. NUTTAI.L, ZKI.IA. " The Fundamental Principles of Old
and New World Civilizations," Archaeological and
Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1901, p. 602.
50. Ibid. " A curious Survival in Mexico of the Purpura Shell-
Fish for Dyeing." Putnam Anniversary Volume, 1909.
51. OLDHAM, C. F. "The Sun and the Serpent." London, 1905.
52. PAGE, H. " Post-mortem artificially-contracted Indian
Heads." Joitrn. Anat. and P/iys., Vol. 31, 1897, p. 252.
53. PARTINGTON, EDGE. " Ethnographical Album of the Pacific
Islands." 3rd series, August, 1898, p. 94,
54. PETRIE, W. M. FLINDERS. "Tarkhan." 1913 and 1914.
55. PERROT and CHIPIEZ. " History of Art in Phoenicia.''
London, 1885.
56. PETTIGREW, T. J. "A History of Egyptian Mummies."
London, 1834.
57. PIORRY. Article " Massage," in Dictionaire des Sciences
Medicates. 1819.
58. PRESCOTT, W. H. "Conquest of Peru."
59. Ibid. "Conquest of Mexico."
60- QUATRKFAGES, A. DE. " Hommes Fossiles et Hommes
Sauvages." Paris, 1884.
61. READ, C. H., JOYCE, T. A., and EDGE-PARTINGTON, J.
" Handbook of the Ethnological Collections " (British
Museum), 1910.
62. REISNEK, GEORGE A. Bulletin of the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts. Vol. XII., No. 69, April, 1914, p. 23.
140 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification.
63- REUTTER, L. "De 1'embaumement avant et apres Jesus-
Christ." Paris, 1912.
64. RIVERS, W. H. R. Presidential Address to Section H.
Report Brit. Assoc., Portsmouth, 1911, p. 490, or
Nature, 1911, Vol. LXXXVIL, p. 356.
65. Ibid. " The Disappearance of Useful Arts." Report Brit.
Assoc., 1912, p. 598 [Abstract of a memoir published
in Festsscrift Tilliignad Edvard IVestermarck, Helsing-
fon, 1912, p. 109].
66 Ibid. "Survival in Sociology." The Sociological Review,
October, 1913, p. 292.
67- Ibid. "Massage in Melanesia." Report of the ijth Inter-
national Congress of Medicine, London, August, 1913,
Section XXIII., History of Medicine.
68. Ibifl. "The Contact of Peoples." Essays and Studies
presented to William Ridgeway. Cambridge, p. 474.
69. Ibid. " The History of Melanesian Society." Cambridge,
1914, Vol. II.
70. Ibid. " Is Australian Culture Simple or Complex ? " Report
Brit. Assoc., 1914; also Man, 1914, p. 172.
71. ROTH, W. E. " North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin
No. 9, Burial Ceremonies and Disposal of the Dead."
Records of the Australian Museum, Sydney, Vol. VI.,
No. 5, 1907, p. 365.
72. ROSCOE, J. " Further Notes on the Manners and Customs
of the Baganda." Journal of the Anthropological Insti-
tute, Vol. XXXII. , 1902, p. 44
[Also his book entitled "The Baganda."]
73. SEMPLE, ELLEN C. " Influences of Geographic Environ-
ment on the basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-
Geography." London, 1911.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. 10 141
74. SETHF, KURT. " Zur altaegyptischen Sage vom Sonnen-
auge das in der Fremde war." Untersuchungen zur
Gesch. 11. Alter turns kunde Aeg.^ Bd. V.,Heft 3, 191 2, p. 10.
75. SMITH, G. ELLIOT. " On the Natural Preservation of the
Brain in the Ancient Egyptians." Journal of Anatomy
and Physiology, Vol. XXXVI., pp. 375-380. Two text
figures. 1902.
76- Ibid. " The physical characters of the mummy of the
Pharaoh Thothmosis IV." Annales du Service des
Antiquitls de VEgypte, 1904, [and in Carter and New-
berry's "Tomb of Thothmosis IV." London, 1908].
77. Ibid. "Report on four mummies of the XXI. dynasty."
Ibid., 1904.
78. Ibid. " A Contribution to the Study of Mummification in
Egypt." Memoires presentes a rinstitut Egyptien, Tome
V., Fascicule I., 1906, pp. i — 54, 19 plates.
79. Ibid. " An Account of the Mummy of a Priestess of Amen."
Annales du Service des Antiquites de fEgypte, 1906, pp.
1-28, 9 plates.
80. Ibid. " Report on the Unrolling of the Mummies of the
Kings Siptah, Seti II., Ramses IV., Ramses V., and
Ramses VI., in the Cairo Museum." Bulletin de flnstitut
Egyptien, $ Serie, T.I. pp. 45 a 67.
81. Ibid. " Report on the Unwrapping of the Mummy of
Menephtah." Annales du Service des Antiquilts, 1907.
82. Ibid. " Notes on Mummies." The Cairo Scientific Jour?ial,
February, 1908.
83. Ibid. "On the Mummies in the Tomb of Amenhotep II."
Bulletin de rinstitut Egyptien, $ Serie, Tome I., 1908.
142 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification,
84. Ibid. Account of the Mummies of Yuaa and Thuiu, in
Quibell's " Tomb of Yuaa and Thuiu." . Catalogue
General du Musee du Caire, 1908.
85. Ibid. "The History of Mummification in Egypt." Proc.
Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, 1910.
86. Ibid. " The Royal Mummies." Catalogue General des
Antiquites Egyptiennes du Musee du Caire, 1912.
87- Ibid. " Egyptian Mummies." Journal of Egyptian Archce-
ologv, Vol. I., Part III., July, 1914, p. 189.
88- Ibid. " Heart and Reins." Journal of the Manchester
Oriental Society, Vol. L, 1911, p. 41.
89. Ibid. "The Earliest Evidence of Attempts at Mummifi-
cation in Egypt." Report Brit. Assoc., 1912, p. 612.
90. Ibid. '• The Ancient Egyptians." London and New York,
1911.
91. Ibid. " The Influence of Egypt under the Ancient Empire."
Report Brit. Assoc., 1911; also Man, 1911, p. 176.
92. Ibid. " Megalithic Monuments and their Builders." Report
Brit. Assoc., 1912, p. 607; also A/an, 1912, p. 173.
93. Ibid. "The Origin of the Dolmen." Iteport Brit. Assoc,,
1913; also Man, 1913, p. 193.
94. Ibid. "The Evolution of the Rock-cut Tomb and the
Dolmen." Essays and Studies presented to William
Ridgeway. Cambridge, 1913, p. 493.
95. Ibid. " Report on the Physical Characters of the Ancient
Egyptians." Report Brit. Assoc.. 1914; also Man,
' 1914, p. 172.
Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (1915), No. IO 143
96. Ibid. " Early Racial Migrations and the Spread of Certain
Customs." Report Brit. Assoc., 1914; also Man, 1914,
P- 173-
97. Ibid. "The Rite of Circumcision." Journ. Manchester
Egy. and Oriental Soc., 1913, p. 75.
98. SMITH, PERCY. " Hawaiki." London, 3rd Edn., 1910.
99. TALBOT, P. AMAURY. "Some Ibibio Customs and Beliefs."
Journ. Ajrican Soc., 1914, p. 241.
100. TAYLOR, MEADOWS. "On Prehistoric Archaeology of
India." Journ. Ethnol. Soc., New Series, Vol. I.,
1868-9, p. 157.
101. THURSTON, E. "The Madras Presidency," 1913.
102. TYLOR, E. 13. " On the Diffusion of Mythical Beliefs as
Evidence in the History of Culture." Report Brit.
Assoc., 1894, p. 774.
103. WAKE, C. S. "Origin of Serpent Worship." Journ.
Anthtopol. Inst., Vol. 2, 1872-3.
104. WEEKS, J. H. " Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of
of the Upper Congo River." Journ. Roy. Anthropol.
Inst., Vol. XXXIX., 1909, pp. 450 and 451.
105. WILSON, THOMAS. "The Swastika." Report of Smithsonian
Ins tit u tion, 1896.
106. YARROW, H. C. "A further Contribution to the Study of
the North American Indians." ist Report, Bureau
Amer. Ethnol., Washington, iSSi.
^•"•H-hr expan(lai>(e
Smith, (Sir) Graf ton Elliot
The migrations of early
culture
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11