Read Ebook: 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 Smith Grafton Elliot

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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 and Enoch's 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 ; 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 has pointed out the unreliability of such inferences when unchecked by the consideration of elements of culture which are not so easily bartered or borrowed as bows and spears. He has insisted upon the fundamental importance of the study of social organisation as supplying the most stable and trustworthy 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 subsequent 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 influences to which it was subjected on the way, and the additions, subtractions and modifications which it underwent 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 consideration 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 bulk of the data that have accumulated compels me to omit a large mass of corroborative evidence of an ethnological nature; but no doubt there will be many opportunities 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 following abstract of a communication to be made to the Section of Anthropology:--

"After dealing with the evidence from the resemblances 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 prehistoric migrations, the distribution of certain peculiarly distinctive practices, such as mummification and the building of megalithic monuments, is made use of to confirm the reality of such wanderings of peoples.

"I have already 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 that no hypothesis of independent evolution can seriously be entertained in explanation of their geographical distribution. 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 meetings and elsewhere ; and endeavour to prove that the structure and the geographical 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 distribution 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.

The viscera, after removal, were thrown into the sea, as, according to Porphyry and Plutarch, it was the practice in Egypt at one time to cast them into the Nile.

Surely it is inconceivable that such people could have originated the idea or devised the means for practising an 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 , which is one requiring considerable skill and dexterity, and not the simpler operation through the nostrils which was devised later .

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 .

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!

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.

But it was not only the mere method of embalming, convincing and definite as it is, that establishes the derivation of the Papuan from the Egyptian procedure; but 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 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 possibility of such embalming, it took more than seventeen 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. How 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 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.

After Professor Myres, Dr. Haddon offered two criticisms. Firstly, the incisions in the feet and knees were not suggested by Egyptian practices, but were made for the strictly utilitarian purpose of draining the fluids from the body. I have dealt with this point already . 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. Moreover, the fact that originally I made use of the testimony of the mummies merely in support of evidence of other kinds 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" .

"Certain culture-heroes severally established themselves on certain islands, and they or their followers introduced a new cult which considerably modified the antecedent totemism," and taught "improved methods of cultivation and fishing" .

"An interesting parallel to these hero-cults of Torres Straits occurred also in Fiji. The people of Viti-Levu trace their descent from who drifted across the Big Ocean and taught to the people the cult associated with the large stone enclosures" .

In these islands the people were expert at carving stone idols and they had legends concerning certain "stones that once were men" . It is also significant 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 .

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 subsequent 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 ancient Egypt carrying its dead in boats across the sacred Nile" 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 expression of a definite survival amongst these simple people in the Far East of customs their remote ancestors had acquired, through many intermediaries no doubt, from the Egyptians of the ninth century B.C.

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 in the intervening 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 apparently 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 of a people who introduced megalithic ideas, sun-worship and phallism, and many other distinctive practices and traditions, not only gave me precisely the information I needed, but also directed my attention to the fact that the culture included also the practice of mummification. In the course of continuous discussions with him during the last four months a clear view of the whole 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 researches 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 ; but he has analysed the social organisation of Oceania in such a way that the various waves of immigration into the Pacific can be identified and with certainty be referred back to Indonesia . Many other scholars in the past have produced evidence 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 migrations west, south and east from the place where their curious assortment of customs and accomplishments became fortuitously associated one with the other .

I cannot claim that my colleagues in this campaign against what seems to us to be the utterly mistaken precepts 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 civilization, has been introduced from without by more cultured races, or fashioned in the conflict between races of different traditions and ideals.

My investigations, on the contrary, have been concerned 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 application 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 explanation of such achievements, unless we feebly confess that it is useless to attempt such enquiries.

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 when 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 additional 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, again, large pottery coffins, of an oblong, elliptical, or circular form, were used. Later on, when metal implements were invented , 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 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 construction, 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 .

What especially I want to emphasize here is that in Egypt is preserved every stage in the gradual transformation 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 development 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.

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 development defeated the very object that inspired it. The invention of the art of embalming was the logical outcome of the attempt to remedy this unexpected result.

As in the history of every similar happening elsewhere, 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 retained any likeness to the person as his friends knew him when alive. A life-like stone statue was therefore made to represent him. Magical means 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 practices 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 identification 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 fundamental 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--mummification, 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, worshippers 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 completed 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.

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 exemplified the two objects that the Ancient Egyptian embalmer 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.

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 were made. The evidence of extended burials, referred to the First Dynasty, which were found by Flinders Petrie at Tarkhan , may seem to contradict this: but there are reasons for believing that attempts at embalming were being made even at that time . It seems to be definitely proved that this change was not due to any foreign influence . At the time that it occurred there was a very considerable alien element in the population of Egypt; but the admixture took place long before the change in the position of the body was manifested. 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 straightening of the limbs--a process which it took centuries to complete. The analysis of the evidence by Mace is quite conclusive on this point .

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 life-like 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 mummification.

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.

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