Manchester Memoirs, Vol. lix. (191 5), No. 10. 37 



when alive. A life-like stone statue was therefore made 

 to represent him. Magical means (p. 42) were adopted to 

 give life to the statue. Thus originated the belief that a 

 stone might become the dwelling of a living person ; and 

 that a person when dead may become converted into 

 stone. So insistent did this belief become that among 

 more uncultured people, who borrowed Egyptian prac- 

 tices but were unable to make portrait statues, a rudely- 

 shaped or even unhewn pillar of stone came to be 

 regarded as the dwelling of the deceased. 



Thus from being the mere device for the identifica- 

 tion of the deceased the stone statue degenerated among 

 less cultured people into an object even less like the dead 

 man than his own crudely-made mummy. But the funda- 

 mental idea remained and became the starting point for 

 that rich crop of petrifaction-myths and beliefs concerning 

 men and animals living in stones. 



Thus arose in Egypt, somewhere about 3000 B.C., the 

 nucleus of the "heliolithic" culture-complex — mummifica- 

 tion, megalithic architecture, and the making of idols, 

 three practices most intimately and genetically linked one 

 with the other. But it was the merest accident that the 

 people amongst whom these customs developed, should 

 also have been weavers of linen, workers in copper, wor- 

 shippers of the sun and serpent, and practitioners of 

 massage and circumcision. 



But it was not for another fifteen centuries that the 

 characteristic " heliolithic " culture-complex was com- 

 pleted by the addition of numerous other trivial customs, 

 like ear-piercing, tattooing and the use of the swastika, 

 none of which originated in Egypt, but happened to have 

 become " tacked on " to that distinctive culture before its 

 great world tour began. 



The earliest unquestionable evidence (89) of an attempt 



