24 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification. 



An elaborate technical operation such as this which 

 serves no useful purpose and is wholly misunderstood by 

 its practitioners cannot have been invented by them. It 

 is another certain proof of the Egyptian origin of the 

 practice. 



There is another feature of these Papuan mummies 

 which may or may not be explicable as the adoption of 

 Egyptian practices put to a modified, if not a wholly 

 different, use. Among the new methods introduced in 

 Egypt in the XX 1st Dynasty was a curious device for 

 restoring to the mummy something of the fulness of form 

 and outline it had lost during the process of preservation. 

 Through various incisions (which incidentally no doubt 

 allowed the liquid products of decomposition to escape) 

 foreign materials were packed under the skin of the 

 mummy (78; 87). These incisions were made between 

 the toes, sometimes at the knees, in the region of the 

 shoulders, and sometimes in other situations (78). In 

 the Papuan method of mummification "cuts were made 

 on the knee-caps and between the fingers and toes ; then 

 holes were pierced in the cuts with an arrow so as to 

 allow the liquids to drip from them" (Hamlyn-Harris, 

 27, p. 3). In one of the mummies in the Brisbane museum 

 there seem to be incisions also in the shoulders. The 

 situation of these openings suggests the view that the 

 idea of making them may (and I do not wish to put it 

 any more definitely) have been suggested by the 

 Egyptian XX 1st Dynastic practice. For, although the 

 incisions were made, in the latter case, for the purpose of 

 packing the limbs, incidentally they served for drainage 

 purposes. 



But it was not only the mere method of embalming, 

 convincing and definite as it is, that establishes the deri- 

 vation of the Papuan from the Egyptian procedure ; but 



