76 ELLIOT SMITH, Distribution of Mummification. 



cation and for the transmission of cultural influences ; 

 and it is not essential for our immediate purposes to 

 enquire which channel served to transmit each element 

 of Egyptian culture that made its influence felt in the 

 neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf at this period. For it 

 was a period of active maritime enterprise, especially on 

 the part of the Phoenicians, both in the Mediterranean 

 and the Southern Seas, and a time when the fluctuating 

 political fortunes of Egypt, Western Asia and the Soudan 

 produced a more intimate intermingling of the peoples, 

 so that they mutually influenced one another most pro- 

 foundly. 



Jt is important to remember that many of the features 

 of the embalmer's art as it is practiced in the far East 

 are modifications of the Egyptian method which were 

 first introduced in the region of the Upper Nile, so that 

 the East African Coast must have been the point of 

 departure for such methods. Other features, not only of 

 the method of embalming, but also of the associated 

 megalithic architecture, were equally distinctive of the 

 Phoenician region and may have been transmitted by 

 the Euphrates. 14 Other features again were distinctively 

 Babylonian. Of the former, the African influence, I 

 might refer to the use of the frame-like support for the 

 mummy, the custom of removing the head some 

 months after burial, and the sacrifice of wives and 

 servants. As to the Phoenician and Babylonian influences, 

 the use of honey might be cited, and the emphasis laid 

 upon "cedar" wood and "cedar" oil in mummification; 

 and the Phoenician adaptation of the New Empire type 

 of Theban tomb seen at Arvad and the analogous 



14 See, however, p. 69. At some future time I shall explain what an 

 important link is provided by the ancient culture of the Black Sea littoral 

 between Egypt and the civilizations of the Western Mediterranean on the 

 one hand and India on the other. 





