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



59 



The snake and the sun constitute the obtrusive 

 features of the crude design painted in the funeral shrine. 

 The fact that so many features of the Egyptian burial 

 practices should have been retained (and in association 

 with many other elements of the " heliolithic " culture) in 

 this distant spot, on the other side of the continent, 

 raises the question whether or not its proximity to the 

 Atlantic littoral may not be a contributory factor in the 

 survival. They may have been spared by the remoteness 

 of the retreat and the relative freedom from disturbance, 

 to which nearer localities in the heart of the continent 

 may have been subjected. But, on the other hand, there 

 is the possibility that the spread of culture around the 

 coast may have brought these Egyptian practices to Old 

 Calabar. In the next few pages it will be seen that such 

 a possibility is not so unlikely as it may appear at first 

 si^ht. 



But the fact that it was the custom among the Ibibio 

 to bury the wives of the king with his mummy suggests a 

 truly African, as distinct from purely Egyptian, influence, 

 and makes it probable that the custom spread across the 

 continent. This view is further supported by the tradi- 

 tions of the people themselves, no less than by the physical 

 features of their crania (see Report British Association, 

 1912, p. 613). 



As the people of the Ivory Coast {vide infra) practice 

 a method of embalming which is clearly Egyptian and 

 untainted by these African influences, it is clear that the 

 two streams of Nilotic culture, one across the continent 

 via Kordofan and Lake Chad and the other around the 

 coasts of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, after reaching 

 the West Coast must have met somewhere between the 

 mouth of the Niger and the Ivory Coast. 



[Since writing the above paragraphs, in which infer- 



