Chapter IV: Part 4

According to Maupetit the method of preservation is a most remarkable one. They pour from 75 to 300 grammes of mercury into the mouth! “It passes along the alimentary canal and suffices to produce mummification, the rapid desiccation of the organic tissues.” Then the body was stretched upon a thick bed of melted wax, wood ashes, cloth and cushions.

The great stream of “heliolithic” culture exerted a profound influence upon and played a large part in shaping the peculiar civilizations of China, Corea, and Japan. As the practice of embalming does not play an obtrusive part[15] in this influence, I do not propose (in the present communication) to enter upon the discussion of these matters, except to note in passing that the influence exerted by the “heliolithic” culture upon the Pacific coast of America may have been exerted partly by the East Asiatic-Aleutian route (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 Lorenz[16] (=43=, p. 22) records a similar practice in the neighbourhood of Doré Bay in North-West New Guinea. The corpse was tied to the rafter of the dwelling-house; and the practice of mixing the juices of decomposition with the food is in vogue also. The accounts given by D’Albertis (=1=) and other travellers show that analogous customs are found at other places in New Guinea. There can be no doubt that the practice spread along the north coast of the island and then around its eastern extremity to reach the islands of the Torres Straits, where the practice is seen in its fully developed form, as Flower (=19=), Haddon and Myers (=25=), and Hamlyn-Harris (=27=) have described.

As I have already referred to Papuan mummies earlier in this communication and at some future time intend to devote a special memoir to the full discussion of the methods of the Torres Straits embalmers, I shall not go into the matter in detail here. I should like, however, to call special attention to the admirable account given by Haddon and Myers (=25=) of the associated funeral rites.

In his memoir Flower described two interesting mummies, then in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, one “brought in 1872 from Darnley Island in Torres Strait by Mr. Charles Lemaistre, Captain of the French barque ‘Victorine,’ and the other, an Australian mummy, obtained in 1845 near Adelaide, by Sir George Grey.” By a curious and utterly incomprehensible act of vandalism these extremely rare and priceless ethnological specimens were deliberately destroyed by Sir William Flower, who naively explains his extraordinary action by the statement “as the skeleton will form a more instructive specimen when the dried and decaying integuments are removed I have had it cleaned” (p. 393)! He treated in the same manner the second mummy, the only example of its kind, so far as I am aware, in this country! His photographs show that these two specimens, so far from being “decaying,” were in a remarkably good state of preservation at the time he doomed them to destruction.

Captain Lemaistre found the Torres Strait mummy “in its grave, which consisted of a high straw and bamboo hut of round form: it was not lying down, but standing up on the stretcher” (=19=, p. 389). This is a close parallel to the African customs—mummification, burial in a house of round form, and fixing the corpse to a rough form of funeral bier, which is stood up in the house.

The skin was painted red, the scalp black. “The sockets of the eyes were filled with a dark brown substance, apparently a vegetable gum.... In this was imbedded a narrow oval piece of mother of pearl, pointed at each end, in the centre of the anterior surface of which is fixed a round mass of the same resinous substance, representing the pupil of the eye” (p. 301).

“Both nostrils had been distended.”

“In the right flank was a longitudinal incision, 3½ inches in length, extending between the last rib and the crest of the ilium. This had been very neatly closed by what is called in surgery the interrupted suture.... The whole of the pelvic, abdominal and thoracic viscera had been removed, and their place was occupied by four pieces of very soft wood.... Except the wound in the flank, there was no other opening or injury to the skin” (p. 391).

“Heads and bodies prepared in a similar way” are found in many museums, and afford an interesting illustration of the old Egyptian practice of paying special attention to the head. This is all the more instructive in view of the fact that it was common in certain regions, especially Mallicolo in the New Hebrides, to restore the features by means of clay and resinous paste, usually making use of the skull as a basis, but occasionally modelling the whole body,[17] the model including parts of the deceased’s skeleton (see Henry Balfour’s article, “Memorial Heads in the Pitt Rivers Museum,” _Man_, Vol. I., 1901, p. 65). These modelling-practices and especially the fact that they usually deal with the head (or even face) only afford an interesting confirmation of the Egyptian origin of these customs (_vide supra_, etc., =40=).

In the 6th volume of the reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, C. S. Myers and Haddon (=25=, pp. 129 and 135) give a detailed account of the funeral ceremonies from which I quote certain points. “As soon as death had occurred the women of the village started wailing. The corpse was placed on the ground on a mat in front of the house; the arms were placed close to the side; the great toes were tied together 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 manœuvres ending up with flexion of the arms and a bending of the head. This movement was said to indicate the rising and setting of the sun and to be symbolic of the life and death of man.

“Mourners then took the body and placed it upon a wooden framework, which stood upon four wooden supports at a little distance from the house of the deceased. The relatives then took large yams and placed them beside the body on the framework; they also hung large bunches of bananas upon the bamboos around. This was regarded as nourishment for the ghost, which was supposed to eat it at night-time (p. 135).

“In two or three days when the skin of the body had become loose the framework was taken up to the reef in a small canoe; the epidermis was then rubbed off and by means of a sharp shell a small incision was made in the side of the abdomen (in the right side, at least, in the case of women), whence the viscera were extracted.

“The perineum was incised in the males.”

From a study of all the literature regarding this custom, as well as the actual specimens now in Sydney and Brisbane, it is clear that the incision may be made either in the left or right flank or in the perineum, and that sex does not determine the site.

“The abdominal cavity was then filled up with pieces 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 (=1=) saw in Darnley Island the mummy of a man, who had been dead over a year, standing in the middle of the widow’s house attached to a kind of upright ladder of poles. They tint him from time to time with red chalk (ochre) and keep his skin soft by anointing it with coconut oil” (p. 137).

In the Berlin Museum für Volkerkunde there are mummies of two children, photographs of which, obtained from Professor von Luschan, are reproduced by Dr. Haddon. They were given to Dr. Bastian by the Rev. James Chamlers in 1880, having been obtained at Stephen’s Island. One of them is a small girl a few days old. The body is painted red all over, except the scalp and eyebrows, which are blackened. The other one was 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. 138).

“Macgillivray (“Voyage of the ‘Rattlesnake,’” Vol. II., 1852, p. 48) also refers to a mummy of a child in Darnley Island. Sketches of the two Miriam mummies in the Brisbane Museum will be found on Plate 94 of Edge Partington and Heape’s Ethnographical Album of the Pacific Islands, third series. [Compare also Plate 2, Figure 4, in Brockett’s “Voyage to Torres Straits,” Sydney, 1836]” (p. 137).

“On about the tenth day after death, when the hands and feet have become partially dried, the relatives, using a bamboo knife, remove the skin of the palms and soles, together with the nails, and then cut out the tongue, which is put into a bamboo clamp so that it may be kept straight while drying. These were presented to the widow, who henceforth wore them” (p. 138).

A great deal of further information in regard to this practice is given by Haddon and Myers in their important monograph. Among other things they call attention once more to the custom of preserving the skull in the Torres Straits Islands where mummification is practised. The use of masks and ceremonial dances to assist the performers so as the more realistically to play the part of the deceased is welcome confirmation of the conclusion drawn from geographical distribution that such practices 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 specimen indicates that incisions had been deliberately made. Perhaps it was an attempt to remove the brain, which ended in destruction of the cranium.

A curious feature of Australian embalming is that the body was always flexed, and not extended as in the Torres 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, _viâ_ 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 demonstrations in reference to their bearings on the connection of the Australian populations with those of the main continents, and in the influence exerted in Australasia at a former time by a more highly cultivated race. This, to his mind, was the explanation of the relations of the higher culture, whether with regard to language, marriage and kindred, weapon names, or modes of culture, such as the mummies now described, the modes of incision, and form of burial. He did not consider these institutions, as some great authorities did, indigenous in Australia” (=19=, p. 394).

Corroborative evidence is now accumulating (=70=), which will definitely establish the reality of the influence thus adumbrated by Clarke 37 years ago.

Frazer (=22=, p. 80) says the burial (in Australia) on a raised stage reminds him of the “towers of silence,” and adds:—“This novelty of a raised stage can scarcely be a thing which our blacks have invented for themselves since they came to Australia; and if it is a custom which 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, “corresponds to the Egyptian practice of mummification” (p. 81): 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 customs may be essentially a degraded and profoundly modified form of the ancient Egyptian funerary rites.

In his “Polynesian Researches” William Ellis (=15=) gives an interesting, though unfortunately too brief, account of the Tahitian practice of embalming. Among the poor and middle classes “methods of preservation were too expensive” to be used, but the body was “placed upon a sort of bier covered with the best native cloth” while awaiting burial (p. 399).

“The bodies of the dead, among the chiefs, were, however, in general preserved above ground: a temporary house or shed was erected for them, and they were placed on a kind of bier ... sometimes the moisture of the body was removed by pressing the different parts, drying it in the sun, and anointing it with fragrant oils. At other times, the intestines, brains, etcetera were removed: all moisture was extracted from the body, which was fixed in a sitting position during the day, and exposed to the sun, and, when placed horizontally at night was frequently turned over, that it might not remain long on the same 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 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 decomposition of the tissues. Afterwards the body was suitably dried or smoked, then it was dressed in its best clothes, its face painted red and black, and then the body was preserved indefinitely. A hole was made at the top of the hut, and by means of this they haul up the mummy. After it has been exposed in this way for a certain time, the body was withdrawn from the hole into the house, which was then carefully shut up and became taboo with all that it contained. Analogous customs are found in New Zealand and elsewhere in Oceania. A singularly strange custom is now in use in the New Hebrides and in the Solomon Islands. The father and son, for example, or the husband and wife, having just died, they smoke the head alone as in New Zealand, but they make (with bamboo covered with cloth) a mannikin, having roughly the human form; then they tattoo the whole of the surface; fastened upon each shoulder—and this is the strange part of it—is a piece of bamboo, to one of which they attach the father’s head and the other that of his son. [The account is not altogether intelligible here.] The heads are painted white and black. With reference to the placing of the body in a canoe, this is reserved for chiefs only. When a chief dies, messengers go in all directions, repeating “The sun is set.” This expression springs from the idea that the chief is a god, the supreme Sun-god.

These procedures afford a remarkably complete series of links with the “heliolithic” cult as practised elsewhere in the west and east. The account of the curious attachment of the heads to the shoulders of the dummy figure throw some light upon the custom (to which I have referred elsewhere in this communication) in Mallicolo (=61=, p. 138) and in America of representing human faces on the shoulders of such models. It is a remarkable fact that in certain of the Mallicolo figures the phallus is fixed to the girdle in a very curious manner, exactly analogous to that recently described and figured by Blackman from an Egyptian tomb of the Middle Kingdom at Meir.

Embalming was a method rarely employed in New Zealand.

“After the extraction of the softer parts, oil or salt was rubbed into the flesh, and the body was dried in the sun or over a fire; then the mummy was wrapped in cloth and hidden away.”

“In some parts of New Zealand the skeletons of mummified bodies are found in the crouching or sitting posture” (Macmillan Brown, =7=, p. 70).

In Schmidt’s _Jahrbücher der gesammten Medicin_, 1890, Bd. 226, p. 175, there is an abstract of an article on Samoa by P. Burzen in which, among other things, the three Egyptian operations of circumcision, massage and mummification are described as being practiced.

The embalming is done by women. After removing the viscera, which are buried or burnt, the eviscerated corpse is then soaked for two months in coconut oil, mixed with vegetable juices. When the body is fully treated and no more fluid escapes from it, the hair which had previously been cut off, is stuck on again with a resinous paste. The body cavity is packed with cloth 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 sacrificial practices and those of Mexico” (p. 275).

In their extensive migrations the carriers of the “heliolithic” culture took with them the custom of circumcision, 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 _Journ. Roy. Anthropol. 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 from the west along with or before the practice of circumcision 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, =11=). 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 manuscript _Kong-Fau_ contained detailed accounts of the operation. Piorry remarks, “it is clear that for us its development did not originate from the practices described in the books of Cong-tzée or the compilation of Susrata.”

From Rivers’ interesting account of massage in Melanesia (=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 certainly 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 relating 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 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 widespread, 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 of 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 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 comparison with the use of boats in the Egyptian funeral ceremonies. An instance is the boat found in the tomb of Amenophis II. (=81=). 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 platforms 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’ qualification 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 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 consideration 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 contrary, the views that I am setting forth in this communication 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 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 employed 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 monograph (=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 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 embalmed 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 Peruvians 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., M.S.—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 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 solicitude—by a simple process, however, that unlike the elaborate embalming of the Egyptians, consisted in exposing 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 substance 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 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.

Hrdlička has adduced positive evidence of the adoption 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 amazing 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 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 underlying 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, 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 preserving bodies used by the lord of Chalco,” which consisted 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 de Bourbourg uses the expression ‘C’est cette eau que tu as reçue 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 of 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 of course the Crocodile; see Budge, “The Egyptian Heaven and Hell,” Vol. 1, p. 159]. This is a most remarkable 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” (=61=, p. 138).

Reutter (=63=) gives a summary of information relating to the practice of embalming in the New World and particularly 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 Carolina, 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 in 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 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 inhabitants 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, “Étude Historique 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 pyramid, twenty to thirty feet high, in other cases simple mausolea 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, =10=), 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 II._).

In his account of the Araucanos of Southern Chile (_Journ. Roy. Anthr. 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 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 =61=, 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 preserving 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 corroborative evidence.

But the proof of the influence of the civilizations of the Old World on pre-Columbian America does not depend upon the evidence of one set of practices, however 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 indubitable. 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 independently 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, Wake (=103=, p. 383), describing the geographical distribution 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:—“Quetzalcoatl, the divine benefactor of the Mexicans, was an incarnation of the serpent-sun Tonacatlcoatl, who thus became the great father, as the female serpent Cihuacoatl 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 Quetzalcoatl, 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).