“Macgillivray (“Voyage of the ‘Rattlesnake,’” Vol. II., 1852, p. 48) also refers to a mummy of a child in Darnley Island. Sketches of the two Miriam mummies in the Brisbane Museum will be found on Plate 94 of Edge Partington and Heape’s Ethnographical Album of the Pacific Islands, third series. [Compare also Plate 2, Figure 4, in Brockett’s “Voyage to Torres Straits,” Sydney, 1836]” (p. 137).
“On about the tenth day after death, when the hands and feet have become partially dried, the relatives, using a bamboo knife, remove the skin of the palms and soles, together with the nails, and then cut out the tongue, which is put into a bamboo clamp so that it may be kept straight while drying. These were presented to the widow, who henceforth wore them” (p. 138).
A great deal of further information in regard to this practice is given by Haddon and Myers in their important monograph. Among other things they call attention once more to the custom of preserving the skull in the Torres Straits Islands where mummification is practised. The use of masks and ceremonial dances to assist the performers so as the more realistically to play the part of the deceased is welcome confirmation of the conclusion drawn from geographical distribution that such practices were intimately related to mummification and form part of the ritual genetically linked to it.
Dr. Hamlyn-Harris, the Director of the Queensland Museum, gives an account ([27]) of the two mummies from the Torres Straits, which are now in Brisbane; and he adds further interesting information which he obtained from Mr. J. S. Bruce, of Murray Island, who was also one of Dr. Haddon’s informants. During my recent visit to Australia Dr. Hamlyn-Harris very kindly gave me every facility for examining these two mummies (as well as the Australian mummies in the Queensland Museum); and I also examined another specimen in the Macleay Museum of the University of Sydney. I am preparing a full report on all of these interesting specimens.
From the Torres Straits the practice of mummification spread to Australia, as Flower ([19]), Frazer ([22]), Howitt (see Hertz, [33]), Roth ([71]) and Hamlyn-Harris ([28]), among others, have described. Roth says “Desiccation is a form of disposal of the dead practised only in the case of very distinguished men. After being disembowelled and dried by fire the corpse is tied up and carried about for months.” ([71], p. 393). The mummy was painted with red ochre (Fraser, [22]).
In Roth’s photographs, as well as in the mummies which I have had the opportunity of examining, the embalming-incision was made in the characteristically Egyptian situation in the left flank. In one of the mummies in the Brisbane Museum (see [28], plate 6) the head is severely damaged. Examination of the specimen indicates that incisions had been deliberately made. Perhaps it was an attempt to remove the brain, which ended in destruction of the cranium.
A curious feature of Australian embalming is that the body was always flexed, and not extended as in the Torres Straits. At first I was inclined to believe that this may be due to the influence of the Early Egyptian (Second Dynasty) procedure ([89]), but a fuller consideration of the evidence leads me to the conclusion that the adoption of the flexed position is due to syncretism with local burial customs, which were being observed when the bringers of the “heliolithic” culture reached Australia. It is probable that the boomerang came from Egypt, viâ East Africa, India ([12]) and Indonesia at the same time.
Several curious burial customs which may be regarded as degradations of the practice of mummification occur in Australia, but the consideration of these I must defer for the present.
In the discussion on Flower’s memoir ([19]), Hyde Clarke justly emphasized “the importance of the demonstrations in reference to their bearings on the connection of the Australian populations with those of the main continents, and in the influence exerted in Australasia at a former time by a more highly cultivated race. This, to his mind, was the explanation of the relations of the higher culture, whether with regard to language, marriage and kindred, weapon names, or modes of culture, such as the mummies now described, the modes of incision, and form of burial. He did not consider these institutions, as some great authorities did, indigenous in Australia” ([19], p. 394).
Corroborative evidence is now accumulating ([70]), which will definitely establish the reality of the influence thus adumbrated by Clarke 37 years ago.