50 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification. 



When certain modern ethnologists argue that it is the 

 most natural thing in the world for primitive peoples to 

 worship the sun as the obvious source of warmth and 

 fertility, and therefore such worship can have no value as 

 an indication of the contact of peoples, on general princi- 

 ples one might be prepared to admit the validity of the 

 claim. But when it is realised that sun-worship, wherever 

 it is found, is invariably associated with part (or the whole) 

 of a large series of curiously incongruous customs and 

 beliefs, it is no longer possible to regard the worship of 

 the sun as having originated independently in several 

 centres. Why should the sun-worshipper also worship 

 the serpent and use a winged symbol, build megalithic 

 monuments, mummify his dead, and practise a large series 

 of fantastic tricks to which other peoples are not addicted ? 

 There is no inherent reason why a man who worships the 

 sun should also tattoo his face, perforate his ears, practise 

 circumcision, and make use of massage. In fact, until the 

 time of the New Empire, the sun-worshipping Egyptian 

 did not practise ear-piercing and tattooing, thereby illus- 

 trating the fact that originally these practices were not 

 part of the cult, and that their eventual association with it 

 was purely accidental. This only serves more definitely to 

 confirm the view that it was the fortuitous association of 

 a curious series of customs in Egypt at the time of the 

 New Empire which supplied the cultural outfit of the 

 "heliolithic" wanderers for their great migration. 



In accordance with Egyptian beliefs " the sun was 

 born every morning and sailed across the sky in a celestial 

 barque, to arrive in the west and descend as an old man 

 tottering into the grave" (Breasted, 6, p. 54). 



The deceased might reach the west by being borne 

 across in the sun -god's barque : friendly spirits, the four 

 sons of Horus, might bring him a craft on which he might 



