Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 35 



ment of these megalithic practices and the origin of the 

 art of mummification. 



For in course of time the early Egyptians came to 

 learn, no doubt again from the discoveries of their tomb- 

 robbers, that the fate of the corpse, after remaining for some 

 time in a roomy rock-cut tomb or stone coffin, was vastly 

 different from that which befell the body when simply 

 buried in the hot, dry, desiccating sand. In respect of 

 the former they acquired the idea which the Greeks many 

 centuries later embalmed in the word " sarcophagus," 

 under the simple belief that the disappearance of the 

 flesh was due to the stone in some mysterious way 

 devouring it. 7 [Certain modern archaeologists within re- 

 cent years have entertained an equally child-like, though 

 even less informed, view when they claimed the absence 

 of any trace of the flesh in certain stone sarcophagi as 

 evidence in favour of a fantastic belief that the Neolithic 

 people of the Mediterranean area were addicted to the 

 supposed practice which Italian archaeologists call scarni- 

 tura.] 



But by the time the discovery was made that bodies 

 placed in more sumptuous tombs were no longer pre- 

 served as they were apt to be when buried in the sand, 

 the idea of the necessity for the preservation of the body 

 as the essential condition for the attainment of a future 

 existence had become fixed in the minds of the people 

 and established by several centuries of belief as the 

 cardinal tenet of their faith. Thus the very measures 

 they had taken the more surely to guard and preserve 

 the sacred remains of their dead had led to a result the 

 reverse of what had been intended. 



7 It is a curious reflection that the idea of stone living which made such 

 a fantastic belief possible may itself have arisen from the Egyptian practices 

 about to be described. 



