Lecture II. Egyptian Religion. 25
it have been met with before the age of the Fourth and Fifth
Dynasties, if, indeed, any have been met with at all.
But, as we shall see hereafter, the practice of mummification
was closely bound up with a belief in the resurrection of the dead.
The absence of it accordingly implies that this belief was either
non-existent, or, at all events, did not as yet occupy a prominent
place in the Egyptian creed. Like embalming, it must have been
introduced by the Pharaonic Egyptians; it was not until the older
races of the country had been absorbed by their conquerors that
mummification became general, along with the religious ideas
that were connected with it. Before the age of the Eighteenth
Dynasty it seems to have been practically confined to the court
and the official priesthood. [025]
On the other hand, one at least of the prehistoric races appears
to have practised secondary burial. The skeletons discovered in
its graves have been mutilated in an extraordinary manner. The
skull, the legs, the arms, the feet, and the hands have been found
dissevered from the trunk; even the backbone itself is sometimes
broken into separate portions; and there are cases in which the
whole skeleton is a mere heap of dismembered bones. But, in
spite of this dismemberment, the greatest care has been taken
to preserve the separate fragments, which are often placed side
by side. An explanation of the dismemberment has been sought
in cannibalism, but cannibals do not take the trouble to collect
the bones of their victims and bury them with all the marks of
respect; moreover, the bones have not been gnawed except in one
or two examples, where wild beasts rather than man must have
been at work. It seems evident, therefore, that the race whose
dismembered remains have thus been found in so many of the
prehistoric cemeteries of Egypt, allowed the bodies of the dead
to remain unburied until the flesh had been stripped from their
bones by the birds and beasts of prey, and that it was only when
this had been done that the sun-bleached bones were consigned
to the tomb. Similar practices still prevail in certain parts of