Scattered around the western shores of the African continent there are numerous ethnological features to suggest that it has been subjected to the influence of the megalithic culture spreading from the Mediterranean. But there is no spot in which this influence and its Egyptian derivation is more definitely and surely demonstrated than in the Canary Islands.
For the art of embalming was practised there in the truly Egyptian fashion; and it became a matter of some interest to discover whether or not the Nigerian customs were influenced in any way by the Guanche practices.
There can be little doubt that the practices on the Ivory Coast, to which reference has just been made, were either inspired by the Guanches or by the same influence which started embalming in the Canary Islands.
The information we possess in reference to the Canary Islands was collected by Bory de Saint Vincent (“Les Îles Fortunées,” 1811, p. 54) and has been summarized by many writers, especially Pettigrew, Haigh and Reutter.
From Miss Haigh’s account (=26=, p. 112) I make the following extracts:—
“When any person died they preserved the body in this manner; first, they carried it to a cave and stretched it on a flat stone, opened it and took out the bowels; then twice a day they washed the porous parts of the body with salt and water; afterwards they anointed it with a composition of sheep’s butter mixed with a powder made from the dust of decayed pine trees, and a sort of brushwood called “Bressos,” together with powdered pumice stone, and then dried it in the sun for fifteen days....
“When the body was thoroughly dried, and had become very light, it was wrapped in sheep skins or goat skins, girded tight with long leather thongs, and carried to one of the sepulchral grottoes, usually situated in the most inaccessible parts of the island.
“The bodies were either upright against the sides of the cavern, or side by side upon a kind of scaffolding made of branches of juniper, mocan, or other incorruptible wood.
“The knives for opening the body were made of sharp pieces of obsidian.
“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.