Chapter III

).]

[124: W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia".]

[125: "A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans," Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. I, No. 7, 1904.]

[126: Bancroft, _op. cit._ Vol. II, pp. 682 and 683.]

[127: _Op. cit._ p. 684.]

[128: _Ibid._]

[129: See J. Wilfrid Jackson, _op. cit. supra_.]

Summary.

In these pages I have ranged over a very wide field of speculation, groping in the dim shadows of the early history of civilization. I have been attempting to pick up a few of the threads which ultimately became woven into the texture of human beliefs and aspirations, and to suggest that the practice of mummification was the woof around which the web of civilization was intimately intertwined.

I have already explained how closely that practice was related to the origin and development of architecture, which Professor Lethaby has called the "matrix of civilization," and how nearly the ideas that grew up in explanation and in justification of the ritual of embalming were affected by the practice of agriculture, the second great pillar of support for the edifice of civilization. It has also been shown how far-reaching was the influence exerted by the needs of the embalmer, which impelled men, probably for the first time in history, to plan and carry out great expeditions by sea and land to obtain the necessary resins and the balsams, the wood and the spices. Incidentally also in course of time the practice of mummification came to exert a profound effect upon the means for the acquisition of a knowledge of medicine and all the sciences ancillary to it.

But I have devoted chief attention to the bearing of the ideas which developed out of the practice and ritual of embalming upon the spirit of man. It gave shape and substance to the belief in a future life; it was perhaps the most important factor in the development of a definite conception of the gods: it laid the foundation of the ideas which subsequently were built up into a theory of the soul: in fact, it was intimately connected with the birth of all those ideals and aspirations which are now included in the conception of religious belief and ritual. A multitude of other trains of thought were started amidst the intellectual ferment of the formulation of the earliest concrete system of biological theory. The idea of the properties and functions of water which had previously sprung up in connexion with the development of agriculture became crystallized into a more definite form as the result of the development of mummification, and this has played an obtrusive

## part in religion, in philosophy and in medicine ever since. Moreover its

influence has become embalmed for all time in many languages and in the ritual of every religion.

But it was a factor in the development not merely of religious beliefs, temples and ritual, but it was also very closely related to the origin of much of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular beliefs. The swastika and the thunderbolt, dragons and demons, totemism and the sky-world are all of them conceptions that were more or less closely connected with the matters I have been discussing.

The ideas which grew up in association with the practice of mummification were responsible for the development of the temple and its ritual and for a definite formulation of the conception of deities. But they were also responsible for originating a priesthood. For the resuscitation of the dead king, Osiris, and for the maintenance of his existence it was necessary for his successor, the reigning king, to perform the ritual of animation and the provision of food and drink. The king, therefore, was the first priest, and his functions were not primarily acts of worship but merely the necessary preliminaries for restoring life and consciousness to the dead seer so that he could consult him and secure his advice and help.

It was only when the number of temples became so great and their ritual so complex and elaborate as to make it a physical impossibility for the king to act in this capacity in all of them and on every occasion that he was compelled to delegate some of his priestly functions to others, either members of the royal family or high officials. In course of time certain individuals devoted themselves exclusively to these duties and became professional priests; but it is important to remember that at first it was the exclusive privilege of Horus, the reigning king, to intercede with Osiris, the dead king, on behalf of men, and that the earliest priesthood consisted of those individuals to whom he had delegated some of these duties.

In conclusion I should like to express in words what must be only too apparent to every reader of this statement. It claims to be nothing more than a contribution to the study of some of the most difficult problems in the history of human thought. For one so ill-equipped for a task of such a nature as I am to attempt it calls for a word of explanation. The clear light that recent research has shed upon the earliest literature in the world has done much to destroy the foundations upon which the theories propounded by scholars have been built up. It seemed to be worth while to attempt to read afresh the voluminous mass of old documents with the illumination of this new information.

The other reason for making such an attempt is that almost every modern scholar who has discussed the matters at issue has assumed that the fashionable doctrine of the independent development of human beliefs and practices was a safe basis upon which to construct his theories. At best it is an unproven and reckless speculation. I am convinced it is utterly false. Holding such views I have attempted to read the evidence afresh.

APPENDIX A.

On re-reading the discussion of the significance of the _ka_ I realize that, in striving after brevity and conciseness--to keep the size of my statement within the limits of the _Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, generously elastic though it is--I have left the argument in a rather nebulous form.

It must not be imagined that a concrete-minded people like the ancient Egyptians entertained highly abstract and ethereal ideas about "the soul". They recognized that all the expressions of consciousness and personality could cease during sleep; and at the same time the phenomena of dreams seemed to afford evidence that these absent elements of the individual's being were enjoying real experiences elsewhere. Thus there was an _alter ego_, identified by this matter-of-fact people with the twin (placenta) which was born with the child and was clearly concerned with its physical and intellectual nourishment--for it was obviously connected by its stalk to the embryo like a tree to its roots, and it seemed to be composed of blood, which was regarded as the vehicle of mind. But this intellectual "twin" kept pace in its growth with the physical body. When a statue was made to represent the latter the _ka_ could dwell in the real body or the statue.

The identification of the placenta with the moon helped the growth of the conception that this "birth-promoter" could not only bring about a re-birth in the life to come, but also facilitate a transference to the sky-world. The placenta had already been superintending the deceased's welfare upon earth and would continue to do so when he rejoined his _ka_ in the sky world.

The complexity of the conception is due to the fact that the simple early belief in "a double" was gradually elaborated, as one new idea after another became added to it, and rationalized to blend with the former complex in an increasingly involved synthesis. It was only when the elaborate scaffolding of material factors was cleared away that a more ethereal conception of "the soul" was sublimated.

APPENDIX B.

I should like to emphasize the fact that my protest (on p. 63) was directed against the claim that the custom of offering food and drink to the dead was inspired _primarily_ to prevent them from troubling the living. Its original purpose was to sustain and reanimate the dead; but, of course, when its real meaning was forgotten, it was explained in a great variety of ways by the people who made a practice of presenting offerings to the dead without really knowing why they did so.

Dr. Alan Gardiner himself has made a statement which casual readers (i.e., those who do not discriminate between the motive for the invention of a procedure and the reasons subsequently given for its continuance) might regard as a contradiction of my quotation from his writings on p. 62. Thus he says: "Any god could doubtless attack human beings, but savage and malicious deities, like Seth [Set], the murderer of Osiris, or Sakhmet, [Sekhet], the 'lady of pestilence' (_nb-t 'idw_), were doubtless most to be feared." [This attitude of the malignant goddesses is revealed in a most obtrusive form in the village deities of the Dravidians of Southern India.] "The dead were specially to be feared; nor was it only those dead who were unhappy or unburied that might torment the living, for the magician sometimes warns them that their tombs are endangered" (Article "Magic (Egyptian)," _Hastings' Encycl. Ethics and Religion_, p. 264).

But it is important to bear in mind, as the same scholar has explained elsewhere ["Life and Death (Egyptian)," _Hastings' Encycl._, p. 23]: "Nothing could be farther from the truth [than the statement that 'the funerary rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main precautionary measures serving to protect the living against the dead']; it is of fundamental importance to realize that the vast stores of wealth and thought expended by the Egyptians on their tombs--that wealth and that thought which created not only the pyramids, but also the practice of mummification and a very extensive funerary literature--were due to the anxiety of each member of the community with regard to his own individual future welfare, and not to feelings of respect, or fear, or duty felt towards the other dead."

It was only in response to certain binding obligations that the living observed all those costly and troublesome rules which were believed to insure the welfare of the deceased. But this recognition of the primary and real purpose of the food offerings as sustenance for the dead or the gods must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that there is widespread throughout the world a real fear of the dead and ghosts, and that in many places food-offerings are made for the specific purpose "of appeasing the fairies".

Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me that offerings of milk and porridge are made at the stone monuments in Scotland, and children carry meal in their pockets to protect themselves from the fairies. For the dead went to Fairyland.

Beliefs of a similar kind can be collected from most parts of the world: but the point I specially want to emphasize is that they are _secondary_ rationalizations of a custom which originally had an utterly different significance.

APPENDIX C.

Prof. Barton's statement (_supra_, p. 64) is typical of a widespread misapprehension, resulting from the confusion between sexual relations and the giving of life. At first primitive people did not realize that the manifestations of the sex instinct had anything whatever to do with reproduction. They were aware of the fact that women gave birth to children; and the organ concerned in this process was regarded as the giver of life, the creator. The apotheosis of these powers led to the conception of the first deity. But it was only secondarily that these life-giving attributes were brought into association with the sexual act and the masculine powers of fertilization. Much confusion has been created by those writers who see manifestations of the sexual factor and phallic ideas in every aspect of primitive religion, where in most cases only the power of life-giving plays a part.

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