“In the grotto of Tacoronté was the mummy of an old woman dried in the sitting posture like that of the Peruvian corpses.”
The mummies were wrapped in reddish goat skin, just as the shroud of Egyptian mummies was often of red linen.
From the same article, in which, as the above quotation states, the body was placed upon a stone for the purpose of the embalmer’s operations, I should like to call attention to the following statement of a curious custom which is found in the most diverse parts of the world, in most cases in association with the practice of mummification.
Tradition says that at his installation the new Mencey (or chief of a principality) is required to seat himself on a stone, cut in the form of a chair and covered with skins: one of his nearest relatives presents him with a sacred relic—the bone of the right arm of the chief of the reigning family (p. 107). I have already (supra) indicated the significance of this characteristic feature of the “heliolithic” culture.
Reutter ([63]) gives some additional information in reference to Guanche embalming. The incision was made in the lower part of the abdomen (in the flank). After the body had been treated with a saturated salt solution, the viscera were returned to the body. The orifices of the nose, mouth and eyes were “stopped with bitumen as was the Egyptian practice.” After packing the cavities of the body with aromatic plants the body was exposed either to the sun, or in a stove, to desiccate it.
During this operation, other embalmers repeatedly smeared the body with a kind of ointment, prepared by mixing certain fats, with powdered odoriferous plants, resin, pumice stone and absorbent substances (p. 139).
As in Egypt, according to Herodotus and Diodorus,—and my own observations have verified their account, at any rate so far as its chief feature is concerned—there was another method of embalming in which no abdominal incision was made, unless it was per rectum.
When this cheaper method was employed the corpse was dried in the sun and some corrosive liquid, called “cedria” in the case of the Egyptians, but in that of the Guanches supposed by Dr. Parcelly to be Euphorbia juice, was injected for the purpose of dissolving the intestines and thus facilitating the process of preservation by removing the chief seat of decomposition.
[It is important to recall the fact, to which I have already referred in this account, that in the islands of the Torres Straits also the same two alternative methods of evisceration, either through a flank incision or per rectum were in use.]