664 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H, 



Recently eight life-size portrait heads of a princess and the courtiers of the court 

 of Chephren have been found in the mastabas at Gizeh constituting the royal 

 cemetery of the IV. dynasty (17, xiii.). The cartonnage busts, presumably"^ of 

 the deceased, represented as c<arried in funeral processions of the Middle Empire 

 (r/. e.g., Stele C 15 in the Louvre), are probably a development of the same 

 idea. Similar expressions of belief occur in Negro Africa, the examples being 

 too numerous and the resemblances too exact for this to be due to any other 

 cause than actual borrowing. 



I am indebted to Messrs. Torday and Joyce for the information that the 

 Tofoke in the neighbourhood of the Stanley Falls make a grave which in 

 principle and form comes extreriiely close to the ancient Egyptian. A circular 

 pit is dug, about 6 feet in diameter and 8 feet in depth; about 2 feet from the 

 floor is a horizontal passage, about 15 feet in length, and of sufficient size to 

 allow the body to be pushed along it; at the end of the passage is a vertical 

 shaft, not more than 1 foot in diameter, reaching to the surface of the ground. 

 The grave is lined with mats, and the body is pushed into the horizontal 

 passage; the main shaft is filled in, but the smaller shaft, being destined for 

 the passage of the soul, is merely covered with branches and a little earth. 

 Over the grave a conical mound is erected, and on this a shed; here are put 

 food and certain property of the deceased after the mound has been covered 

 with charcoal. A similar tomb, but without the special shaft for the soul and 

 hence even more closely resembling the Egyptian mastaba grave, has been 

 figured by Froebenius (6. PI- i-)- The body, apparently tightly covered with 

 wrappings and with vessels for offerings near it, lay in a lateral chamber at the 

 bottom of the pit. The mouth of the pit was covered by a mud dome, on the 

 top of which there was a pot, the whole having a hut built over it. A small 

 aperture on the western side of the dome gave access to the shaft. 



In the Pyramids the parts of the mastaba tomb underwent special treatment ; 

 in the Meydum pyramid a sloping passage takes the place of the shaft, the 

 passage probably being reminiscent of the sloping stairway of the proto- 

 dynastic mastaba. The so-called ' trial passage ' near the Great Pj'ramid, as 

 well as the passages within it, seem reminiscent of a tomb with two sloping 

 passages running in the same vertical plane and meeting at an obtuse angle. 

 This type, which may be called the double sloping passage tomb, is also found 

 in Negro Africa, namely in Lovrer Senegal and Northern Hausaland. between 13° 

 and 18° N. ' First . . . passages were dug under the earth and, at their coin- 

 cidence, the gallerv was enlarged, as the first sketch of a building with an oval- 

 shaped dome. This dome was panelled and strengthened with wood from the 

 Borassus palm. This domed underground vault contained the dead man and a 

 good many things besides. . . . The Eastern hole was filled in, but the 

 Western one was sealed with boards and only opened yearly to receive fresh 

 offerings. A second and very strong dome, to which a covered passage gave 

 access from the west, was raised on the surface exactly over the roof of the 

 grave-chamber proper . . . and the mound was piled high over the whole. . . . 

 The entrance to the grave itself, which was opened but once a year for the 

 insertion of the autumnal offering, was covered with planks laid horizontallv. 

 But on all other occasions the priests held intercourse with the dead in the 

 upper chamber' (6. i. 25, 26). 



Offerings made at the grave, and worship performed there, are so inex- 

 tricably interwoven that they may be considered together. It is probably true 

 to say that every Negro tribe has ancestor worship in some form or another, 

 and at some time makes offerings at the ancestral graves; but the following 

 instance from New Calabar is so suggestive of ancient Egyptian influence, 

 and mimics the supernumerary heads and cartonnage busts (already cited) 

 so closely, that it does not seem necessary to give any other example. The 

 duen-fuhara is a carved and painted image representing the head and shoulders 

 of tbe deceased. This is brought by night in solemn procession to the 

 dead man's village a year after his death, and deposited for eight days in 

 charge of someone of importance in the community. On the eighth day goats 

 and fowls are sacrificed by the eldest son of the deceased before the dven- 

 fuhara, which is sprinkled with the blood. After a mimic battle in which the sons 

 of the deceased are opposed by the men of the house in which the image was 

 deposited, the latter yield, and the diirv-fnhnrn is carried in solemn procession 



