i6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Thus propitiation of the man just dead leads to propitiation of his 

 preserved body or a preserved part of it ; and the ghost is supposed 

 to be present in the part as in the whole. 



Any one asked to imagine a transition from worship of the pre- 

 served body, or a preserved part of it, to idol-worshij), would prob- 

 bly fail ; but transitions, such as imagination does not suggest, actually 

 occur. 



The object worshiped is sometimes a figure of the deceased, made 

 partly of his remains and partly of other substances. Landa says the 

 Yucatanese 



*' cut off the heads of the ancient lords of Oocom, when they died, and, as if to 

 cook them, cleared them from flesh ; they then sawed off half of the top of the 

 head, leaving the anterior part with the jawbones and teeth, and to these half- 

 skulls they joined what they wanted in flesh with a certain cement, and made 

 them as like as possible to those to whom they belonged ; and they kept them 

 along with the statues and the ashes. All were kept in the oratories of their 

 houses beside their idols, and were greatly reverenced and assiduously cared 

 for. On all their festivals they offered them food." ... In other cases they 

 "made for their fathers wooden statues," left "the occiput hoUow," put in 

 ashes of the burnt body, and attached "the skin of the occiput off the corpse." 



The Mexicans had a different method of joining some of the de- 

 ceased's substance with an effigy of him. When a dead lord had 

 been burned, says Camargo, " they carefully collected the ashes, and, 

 after having kneaded them with human blood, they made of them 

 an image of the deceased, which was kept in memory of him." And 

 from Camargo we also learn that images of the dead were wor- 

 shiped. 



A transitional combination partially unlike in kind occurs : some- 

 times the ashes are contained in a man-shaped receptacle of clay. Of 

 the Yucatanese the writer above quoted states that 



" The bodies of lords and people of high position were burned. The ashes 

 were put in large urns and temples erected over them. ... In the case of great 

 lords the ashes were placed in hollow clay statues.." 



And in yet other cases there is worship of the relics joined with the 

 representative figure, not by inclusion but only by proximity. Thus 

 the Mexicans, according to Gomara 



" closed the box [in which some hair and the teeth of the deceased king were 

 present] and placed above it a wooden flgure shaped and adorned like the de- 

 ceased." Then they "made great offerings, and placed them where he was 

 burnt, and before the box and figure." 



Lastly may be named the practice of the Egyptians, who, as their 

 frescoes show, often worshij^ed the mummy, not as exposed to view, 

 but as inclosed in a case shaped and painted to represent the dead man. 



