668 TKAJ^SACTIONS OF SECTION H. 



On these previous occasions I discussed the problems of the gradual 

 diffusion of Egypt's influence to the neighbouring parts of Africa, Asia, and 

 the Eastern Mediterranean Islands and Coasts, which began at a very early 

 historical period. To-day I am calling attention to a mass of evidence which 

 seems to prove that, towards the close of the period of the New Empire, or 

 perhaps even a little later, a great many of the most distinctive practices of 

 Egyptian civilisation suddenly appeared in more distant parts of the coastlines 

 of Africa, Europe, and Asia, and also i^i course of time in Oceania and 

 America ; and to suggest that the Phoenicians must have been the chief agents 

 in distributing this culture abroad. 



The Mediterranean has been the scene of so many conflicts between rival 

 cultures that it is a problem of enormous complexity and difficulty to decipher 

 the story of Egyptian influence in its much-scored palimpsest. 



For the purposes of my exposition it is easier to study its easterly spread, 

 where among less cultured peoples it blazened its track and left a record less 

 disturbed by subsequent developments than in the west. Mr. Perry, who is 

 to follow me, will indicate, however, that once the easterly cultural migration 

 has been studied the more complicated course of events in the west can be 

 deciphered also. 



The theses I propose to submit for consideration, then, are (o) that the 

 essential elements of the ancient civilisations of India, Further Asia, the Malay 

 Archipelago, Oceania, and America were brought in succession to each of these 

 places by mariners, whose Oriental migrations (on an extensive scale) began as 

 trading intercourse between the Eastern Mediterranean^ and India some time 

 about 800 B.C., and continued tor several centuries; (b) that the highly complex 

 and artificial culture which they spread abroad was derived mainly from 

 Egypt (not earlier than the XXIst Dynasty), but also included many important 

 accretions and modifications from the Phoenician world around the Eastern 

 Mediterranean, from East Africa (and the Soudan), Arabia and Babylonia; 

 (c) that, in addition to providing the leaven which stimulated the development 

 of the pre-Aryan civilisation of India, the cultural stream to Burma, Indonesia, 

 the eastern littoral of Asia and Oceania was in turn modified by Indian influ- 

 ences ; and, {d) that finally the stream, with many additions from Indonesia, 

 Melanesia, and Polynesia, as well as from China and Japan, continued for 

 many centuries to play upon the Pacific littoral of America, where it was 

 responsible for planting the germs of the remarkable Pre-Columbian civilisation. 



The reality of these migrations and this spread of culture is substantiated 

 (and dated) by the remarkable collection of extraordinary practices and 

 fantastic beliefs which these ancient mariners distributed along a well-defined 

 route from the Eastern Mediterranean to America. They were responsible 

 for stimulating the inhabitants of the coasts along a great i^art of their 

 extensive itinerary (a) to adopt the practice of mummification, characterised 

 by a variety of methods, but in every place with remarkable identities of 

 technique and associated ritual, including the use of incense and libations, 

 a funerary bier and boat, and certain peculiar views regarding the treatment 

 of the head, the practice of remodelling the features and the use of statues, 

 the possibility of bringing the dead to life, and the wanderings of the dead 

 and its adventures in the underworld; (b) to build a great variety of mega- 

 lithic monuments conforming to certain well-defined types, which present 

 essentially identical features throughout a considerable extent, or even the 

 whole, of the long itinerary, and in association with these monuments identical 

 traditions, beliefs and customs ; (c) to make idols, in connection with which 

 were associated ideas concerning the possibility of human beings or animals 

 living in stones, and of the petrifaction of men and women, the story of the 

 deluge, of the divine origin of kings, who are generally the children of the 

 sun or of the sky, and of the origin of the chosen people from incestuous 

 luiions ; (d) to worship the sun, and to adopt in reference to this deity a 

 complex and arbitrary symbolism, representing an incongruous grouping of a 

 serpent in conjunction with the sun's disc, equipped with a hawk's wings, 

 often associated also with serpent-worship, or in other cases the belief in a 

 relationship with or descent from serpents ; (c) to adopt the practices of 

 circumcision, tattooing, massage, piercing and distending the ear-lobules, 

 artificial deformation of the skull, and perhaps trephining, dental mutilations 



