56 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification. 



found "more or less throughout the west of Africa : among 

 the Niamniam of the Upper Nile basin the bodies of 

 chiefs, and among the Baganda the kings, are preserved, 

 and the custom is found also among the Warundi in 

 German East Africa (Frobenius) ; and in British Central 

 Africa the corpse is rubbed with boiled maize (Werner)." 



Roscoe (72, p. 105), in his book on the Baganda, 

 describes the process of embalming the king's body. As 

 in Egypt, the body was disembowelled ; and the bowels 

 were washed in beer, just as the Egyptians, according to 

 Herodotus and Diodorus, are said to have done with 

 palm-wine. The viscera were spread out in the sun to 

 dry and were then returned to the body, as was done in 

 Egypt at the time of the XX 1st Dynasty. The body 

 was then dried and washed with beer. 



So far as we are aware, the Egyptians never sacrificed 

 any human beings at their funerals, although they often 

 placed in the serdab of the mastaba statues of the 

 deceased's wife, family and servants, to ensure him their 

 presence and the comforts of a home in his new form of 

 existence. 



In the quotations from Reisner's report, it has just 

 been seen that he found some burials made about 1800 

 B.C., in which servants appear to have been sacrificed. 



In the case of the Baganda, Roscoe describes the 

 killing of the king's wives and attendants at his funeral. 



Roscoe further describes (in his book) the body of the 

 chief as being laid on a bed or framework of plantain 

 trees (p. 1 17). 



At the end of five months the head was removed 

 from the mummy and the jaw-bone was removed, cleaned, 

 and then buried, and a large conical thatched temple was 

 built over the jaw. [In the islands of the Torres Straits 

 the same curious custom of rescuing the head after about 





