PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 663 



washed in beer, dried, and then replaced (18, 105), while among the Banvoro 

 (3, 316) and the Makaraka (9, i. 297, ii. 361) other methods were adopted" It 

 seems a_ far cry from the mummies of Egypt to the .smoke-dried corpses of 

 Jiquatona, and it is not difficult to see that ancestor worship might easily give 

 rise to attempts to preserve the body when everyday experience would sugTest 

 desiccation or smoking, but there are certain Congo tribes whose practici" do 

 suggest an actual link with Egypt. Among the Wambunda of Stanley Pool the 

 body IS placed in the squatting posture, the limbs are tightly flexed on the body 

 and tied in that position, the whole being packed with a large quantity of 

 spongy moss which is kept in situ by bandages. A gentle fire is kept up round 

 the body for two or three months, after which it is rolled in native cloths and 

 buried (1, fasc. u. 176). The latter part of this ceremony hints that the 

 attempts to preserve the corpse may have been imposed on an older habit of 

 speedy burial ; such an imposition could only have come from without. 



Among the Wangata an important person of either sex is buried in a massive 

 coffin with a lid carved to represent the deceased {1, i. fasc. ii. ISO). It is diffi- 

 cult not to believe that here is an echo of the Egyptian mimimy case. If this 

 be so. may not the practice of a tribe near Lake Leopold II., who after a rough 

 preparation of the body roll it in native cloth and place it in a canoe-shaped 

 coffin (1, fasc. ii. 175), be regarded as connected with the funerary boats of 

 Egyptian burial ceremony? Since the anthropoid coffin was unknown before the 

 XL dynasty, it follows that the northern influence must have been exerted 

 after this period. Egypt's first great expansion (after the Pyramid builders) 

 dates from the XII. dynasty, when Egyptian and Negro were in intimate 

 contact at the Second Cataract, as shown by the celebrated decree of Senu- 

 sert III. Further, about this time special importance seems to have been attri- 

 buted to the funerary voyage on the Nile, indeed almost all the models of 

 funerary boats in our collections are of this period. 



_ If these facts be accepted as evidence of the date at which EgyiJtian ideas 

 influenced Equatorial Africa, there are other customs which seem to indicate 

 that this was not the only period of such cultural drift. The coffins of the 

 III. and IV. dynasties were often large rectangular boxes designed and painted 

 to represent houses. Now the Mayumbe roll the body of a dead chief in layers 

 of cloth and place it in an enormous wooden coffin of rectangular shape, the" top 

 of which is carved to present a homestead (1, i. fasc. ii. 177). Again, the 

 funeral ceremonial of the Ndolo seems reminiscent of this period. Immediately 

 after death th'e Ndolo prepare the body, painting it red, touching up the e.ye- 

 brows with charcoal, and propping it up with open eyes and mouth on a high 

 seat in the very posture of the ka statues of the Pyramid-builders, i.e. seated 

 with the forearms and hands upon the thighs, a position which I venture to say 

 no Negro would adopt. The body remains here for a day, while more or less 

 continual drumming and dancing goes on, and is then buri'ed (1, i. fasc. ii. 176). 

 If 1 have not laid too much stress on the XII. dynasty liaison, it would 

 seem that the cultural drift originating the Ndolo custo'm was earlier than that 

 affecting the Wangata and the ]\Iayumbe. Professor Elliot Smith tells me that 

 in Egypt bodies were not deliberately painted red before the XXI. dynasty, but 

 it is possible that the Ndolo confused the dead body with the effigy and— for 

 the time of its exposure— treated it as the Egyptians treated their wooden 

 statues from an early date onwards. Nor must it be forgotten that at the 

 present day the Bari paint themselves red. 



An Egyptian mastaba tomb consists of (i) a tomb chapel, which may or may 

 not lead to a series of chambers. There may or may not be a serd'ah. The 

 tomb chapel is distinguished by the false door" which is placed on the west wall 

 and faces east. Behind the false door is (ii) a pit. The burial may be at the 

 bottom of the pit or (iii) in a recess at the side. The recess may Fengthen out 

 into a passage with (iv) a chamber at the end. The form of 'the t"omb was 

 to a very great extent the expression of the Egyptian belief that the soul, or 

 souls, of the deceased visited the body in the tomb chamber, coming in and out 

 by the .qhaft of the pit, and indocd the XVIIT. dynasty papyrus of the priest 

 Nebqcd represents the human-headed &<7-soul descending the shaft to visit the 

 mummy (13, PI. iv.). These beliefs also led to the burial of supernumerary 

 stone heads to which the soul might attach itself should the body iperish 



