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 CONTENTS vii

Liberalism 592 Liberals and Politics • Laissez-Faire

Romanticism 594 Conservative Origins • Romantic Literature and
Painting • Romantic Music
Stirrings of Revolt 598 Liberal Revolts in Spain, Portugal, and Italy •
Stirrings in Germany • Cracks in the Congress of Europe: The Greek Revolt •
The Decembrist Revolt in Russia • France: The Bourbon Restoration and the
Revolution of 1830
Other Liberal Assaults on the Old Order 610 Independence for
Belgium • Liberal Successes in Switzerland
Nationalist Dreams 612 Revolt in Poland • Uprisings in Italy and
Spain • German Nationalism in Central Europe
Crisis and Compromise in Great Britain 617 Religious and Electoral
Reform • The Reform Bill of 1832 • Chartism and the Repeal of the Corn Laws
Conclusion 623

16 The Revolutions of 1848 626

Revolutionary Mobilization 627 The February Revolution in France •
Revolution in the German States • Revolution in the Habsburg Lands •
Revolution in the Italian States
The Elusive Search for Revolutionary Consensus 639 Crisis in
France • The Frankfurt Parliament
Counter-Revolution 644 Counter-Revolution in Habsburg Central
Europe • Prussian-Austrian Rivalry • The Counter-Revolution in the Italian
States • The Agony of the French Second Republic
The Legacy of 1848 652

PART FIVE T
 he Age of Mass Politics
17 The Era of National Unification 661
The Political Unification of Italy 662 Leadership for Italian Unification •
Alliances and Warfare to Further Italian Unification • Garibaldi and
the Liberation of Southern Italy • Italy Unified • Limits to Unification •
Italian Politics • The Rise of Italian Nationalism
The Unification of Germany 672 William I, Bismarck, and the
Resolution of the Constitutional Crisis • Alliances and Warfare to Establish
Prussian Leadership • The North German Confederation • The Franco-
Prussian War and German Unification • Nationalist versus Internationalist
Movements • William II and German Nationalism
viii CONTENTS

National Awakenings in the Habsburg Lands 685 Diversity

and Cohesion in the Habsburg Empire • Repression of Nationalism in the
Habsburg Empire • Political Crisis and Foreign Policy Disasters • Creation
of the Dual Monarchy • Ethnic Tensions and Nationalist Movements in the
Dual Monarchy
Conclusion 693

18 Three Powers in the Age of Liberalism:

Parliamentary Britain, Tsarist Russia,
and Republican France 696
The Crimean War 697
Victorian Britain 701 The Victorian Consensus • Victorian
Political Life • The Reform Bill of 1867 • Other Victorian Reforms • Mass
Politics Come to Britain • Irish Home Rule • New Contours in British
Political Life
Tsarist Russia 714 Stirrings of Reform in Russia • The Emancipation
of the Serfs • The Expansion of the Russian Empire • Nihilists and
Populists • Alexander III’s Empire • Unrest, Reform, and Revolution •
Lenin and the Bolsheviks • The Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) •
The Revolution of 1905
France: Second Empire and Third Republic 733
The Authoritarian Empire • Economic Growth • The “Liberal Empire” •
The Franco-Prussian War and the Siege of Paris • The Paris Commune
Republican France 741 Monarchists and Republicans • The Third
Republic • General Boulanger and Captain Dreyfus • The Radical Republic
Conclusion 747

19 Rapid Industrialization and Its Challenges,

1870–1914 750
The Second Industrial Revolution 752 New Technology and
Scientific Discoveries • The Electric and Chemical Revolutions • Regional
Variations • Travel and Communications • Further Scientific Discoveries: “A
Boundless Future” and Its Uncertainties
Social Change 765 Demographic Boom • Improving Standards of Living •
Migration and Emigration • The Changing World of Work • Industrialization
and the Working-Class Family • Teeming Cities • Social Mobility
Cultural Changes: Education and Religion 780 Education •
The Decline of Religious Practice
The Consumer Explosion 785 The New Leisure • Sports in Mass Society
Conclusion 788
 Contents ix

20 Political and Cultural Responses to a Rapidly

Changing World 792
State Social Reform 793 The Trade Union Movement • Socialists •
Christian Socialism • Anarchists • Syndicalists • The Quest for Women’s Rights
Cultural Ferment 807 Realism • Impressionism • Social Theorists’
Analyses of Industrial Society • Nietzsche’s Embrace of the Irrational •
Freud and the Study of the Irrational • Avant-Garde Artists and Writers and
the Rapid Pace of Modern Life • The Avant-Garde’s Break with Rationalism
Conclusion 823

21 The Age of Europe an Imperialism 826

From Colonialism to Imperialism 827 A Colonial Legacy
The “New Imperialism” and the Scramble for Africa 830 British
and French Imperial Rivalry • Germany and Italy Become Imperial Powers •
Standoff in the Sudan: The Fashoda Affair • The British in South Africa and
the Boer War
The European Powers in Asia 842 India, Southeast Asia, and China •
Japan and China: Contrasting Experiences • The United States in Asia
Domination of Indigenous Peoples 849 Social Darwinism •
Technological Domination and Indigenous Subversion • Imperial Economies •
Colonial Administrations
Assessing the Goals of European Imperialism 860 The “Civilizing
Mission” • The Economic Rationale • Imperialism and Nationalism
Conclusion 866

PART SIX Cataclysm

22 The Great War 873
Entangling Alliances 874 Irreconcilable Hatreds • The Alliance System •
Germany Risks Being Surrounded • Anglo-German Rivalry • British-French
Rapprochement • The First Moroccan Crisis (1905)
The Europe of Two Armed Camps, 1905–1914: Great Powers
and their Allies 882 The Balkan Tinderbox • Instability in Turkey • The
Bosnian Crisis of 1908 • The Second Moroccan Crisis (1911) • The Balkan Wars
The Final Crisis 889 Assassination in Sarajevo • The Ultimatum •
The Schlieffen Plan • “A Jolly Little War”
The Outbreak of War 895
x Contents

The Changing Nature of War 899 Trench Warfare • War in the Air
and on the Seas • The Home Front in a Time of Total War
The War Rages On 905 The Eastern Front • The War in the Middle
East, Africa, and the Far East • The War in the Colonies and Colonials in
the Conflict in Europe • The Western Front • Futility and Stalemate • Soldiers
and Civilians
The Final Stages of the War 920 The United States Enters the
War • Russia Withdraws from the War • Offensives and Mutinies • The
German Spring Offensive • The Fourteen Points and Peace
The Impact of the War 929

23 Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union 934

War and Revolution 935 Russia at War • The February Revolution •
The Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet • The Army • The
Revolution Spreads • Lenin’s Return • The July Days • The Kornilov Affair
The October Revolution 948 The Peace of Brest-Litovsk
Civil War 952
The Soviet Union 956 Democratic Centralism • The New Economic Policy

24 The Elusive Search for Stability in the 1920s

The End of the War 965 Revolution in Germany and Hungary • The
964

Treaty of Versailles • Independent Poland • Settlements in Eastern Europe

National and Ethnic Challenges 978 The National Question and the
Successor States • Colonial and National Questions • Ireland
Economic and Social Instability 987 Social Turmoil • The Left and
the Origins of the Welfare State
Political Instability 993 Germany’s Fragile Weimar Republic • The
Established Democracies: Britain and France
Artists and Intellectuals in the Waste Land 999

25 The Europe of Economic Depression

and Dictatorship 1006
Economies in Crisis 1007 The Great Depression • Gradual European
Economic Revival
The Dynamics of Fascism 1013 Mussolini and Fascism in Italy •
Hitler and the Rise of the Nazis in Germany • Right-Wing Authoritarian
Movements in Central and Eastern Europe • Fascism in Austria • The
Popular Front in France against the Far Right • Fascism in the Low
Countries and Britain
 Contents xi

Hitler’s Third Reich 1032 The Collapse of the Weimar Republic •

The Nazi State • Hitler’s New Reich and the Jews • Hitler’s Foreign Policy •
The Führer and the Duce • Remilitarization and Rearmament
The Soviet Union under Stalin 1044 Five-Year Plans • Soviet
Culture • “Darkness at Noon”: Stalin’s Purges
The Spanish Civil War 1053 Social and Political Instability • The
Struggle between Loyalists and Nationalists
Conclusion 1058

26 World War II 1062

The Coming of World War II 1063 The Axis • German Aggression
and British and French Appeasement • The Unholy Alliance
The War in Europe Begins 1071 The German Invasion of Poland •
The “Phony War” • The War in the Frozen North • The Fall of France •
The Battle of Britain
A Global War 1077 Organizing Total War • Hitler’s Allies • The German
Invasion of Russia • Japan’s Attack on the United States
Hitler’s Europe 1086 The Nazi “New European Order” • The
“Final Solution” • Collaboration • Resistance • Against Hitler in
Germany • Germany on the Defensive • The War in North Africa •
Hitler’s Russian Disaster
The Tide Turns 1101 The Big Three • The Allied Invasion of Italy •
Germany’s Balkan Allies • The D-Day Invasion of France
Allied Victory 1108 Victory in Europe • The Defeat of Japan
Conclusion 1113

PART SEVEN E
 urope in the
Post-War Era

27 Rebuilding Divided Europe 1122

In the Wake of Devastation 1123 The Potsdam Conference •
The United Nations and Cold War Alliances • Confronting Turmoil and
Collaborators • Punishing Collaborators
Economic Recovery, Prosperity, and Cooperation 1131
Economic Cooperation • The Post-War Baby Boom • The Green Revolution •
Welfare States
Post-War Politics in the West 1140
xii Contents

Political Realignments 1142 Divided Germany • Eastern Europe

under the Soviet Shadow • The Soviet Union and Its Satellites in the
Post-War Era • Post-Stalin Soviet Union
Changing Contours of Life 1150 Intellectual Currents in the Post-War
Era • Advances for Women • Catholicism in Post-War Europe • An Urban
World • Living Better • Oil and the Global Economy
Conclusion 1157

28 The Cold War and the End of European Empires

Cold War 1161 The Korean War (1950–1953) • Stirrings in Eastern
1160

Europe • Soviet–Western Tensions • Sino-Soviet Rivalry • The Brezhnev Era •

Nuclear Weapons and Superpower Tensions
Decolonization 1172 Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia •
Britain and the Middle East • The Suez Canal Crisis • French Decolonization •
The Fight for Independence in Algeria • Decolonization in Sub-Saharan Africa
Conclusion 1187

29 Transitions to Democracy and the Collapse

of Communism 1190
Politics in a Changing Western World 1192 Student Protests
Challenge Gaullist France • Shifts in Western European Politics after
1968 • The Transition to Democracy in Southern Europe
Religious and Ethnic Conflicts 1200
The Fall of Communism 1202 Resistance to Soviet Domination •
The Gorbachev Era • Transition to Parliamentary Government in Poland
and Hungary • The Collapse of the Berlin Wall and of East German
Communism • The “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia • Revolutions in
Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania • The Collapse of the Soviet Union • The
Disintegration of Yugoslavia • Challenges in the Post-Communist World
Conclusion 1229

30 Global Challenges: The War Against Terror

and the Uncertainties of a New Age 1232
Creating a Single Europe 1233 The Origins of the European Union •
Creating a Single Market • Backlash against a European Identity • Europe
and the United States
Globalization 1240 Opposition to Globalization
Massive Immigration to Europe 1242 Growing Immigration •
Regional Ethic Political Tensions
 Contents xiii

Terrorism 1248 European Responses to U.S. Policy • Continuing

Conflict in the Middle East
The Return of Right-Wing Populism and Authoritarianism 1252
Poland and Hungary • Xenophobic Populism Elsewhere in Europe
The Russian Challenge 1256
Conclusion 1258

Further Readings A1
Credits A25
Index A31
 Maps

France before and after 1789 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470

Expansion of Revolutionary France, 1792–1799 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
The Counter-Revolution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
The Empire of Napoleon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
The Industrial Revolution in Europe, 1815–1860. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
Europe after the Congress of Vienna, 1815. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
The Birth of Belgium, 1831–1839. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611
Major Revolutions, 1848–1849 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .628
The Unification of Italy, 1859–1870. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 667
The Unification of Germany, 1866–1871 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 676
Nationalities in the Habsburg Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 686
The Crimean War, 1853–1856. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 700
The Expansion of Russia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721
Areas of Industrial Concentration, 1870–1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759
Colonial Empires until 1880. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 831
Imperialism in Africa circa 1914. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 834
South Africa, 1800–1910. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 840
India and the Far East Before 1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 843
Europe in 1914. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 877
The Balkans, 1914. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 884
The German Advance, 1914. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 897
The Western Front, 1914–1917 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 906
The Eastern, Italian, and Balkan Fronts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 907
The German Offensive, 1918. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 926
The Russian Civil War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 953
The Soviet Republics, 1922–1939. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 957
Territorial Settlements After World War I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 971
Dictatorships in Europe, 1932–1937. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1014
The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1055
German, Italian, Hungarian, and Soviet Expansion, 1935–1939. . . . . . . . . . 1067
xiv
 Maps xv

The German and Italian Advance, 1939–1942. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1073

The Japanese Advance and Allied Counteroffensive, 1941–1945. . . . . . . . . . 1085
Hitler’s Europe, 1942. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1087
The Defeat of Germany, 1942–1945. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1102
Post-War Territorial Settlements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1126
Decolonization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1184
The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,
1989–1993. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1203
The Disintegration of Yugoslavia, 1995. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1223
Members of the European Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1234
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Preface

I
am very pleased to present the fourth edition of A History of Modern Europe.
We cannot understand the events and challenges of the present in Europe and
elsewhere without understanding the past, and I hope students will find this
book a helpful tool in this important endeavor.
Today, Europe confronts three daunting challenges. First, organizations like
al-Qa’ida and the Islamic State have given rise to a new kind of warfare: that
against terrorism. Second, the murderous civil war in Syria, instability in much of
the Middle East and parts of Africa, and the wrenching poverty on both continents
have generated a constant flow of refugees and immigrants hoping to reach Europe
in order to find a better life. Thousands have perished in the Mediterranean in this
effort. For centuries, Europe sent waves of emigrants to other parts of the world,
particularly North and South America. Now the pattern has been reversed. Refu-
gees and immigrants, both those arriving over the past decade and those decades
earlier, have added to the religious and cultural complexity of European states.
Third, right-wing ultra-nationalist populism, often closely tied to hostility to
the arrival of refugees and immigrants, has gained strength in many, if not most,
European countries. This is sadly true in the United States, as well, where the
resurgence of white supremacist groups can be seen, especially after the election
of Donald Trump as president in 2016. Here, too, continuities with the European
past are clear. To some extent, Europe seems to be reliving the xenophobia and
ultra-nationalism of the 1920s and 1930s, without, hopefully, the same absolutely
catastrophic consequences of a world war. As the global economic crisis that began
in 2008 underscored, the interconnections of economies, nations, and societies
around the world could not be clearer.
Today more than ever, the history of Europe cannot be understood without
attention to Europe’s interaction with cultures in the rest of the world. Europeans,
to be sure, have for centuries learned from Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and
American cultures. At the same time, through commercial contact, conquest, and
intellectual, religious, and political influence, as well as, finally, decolonization, the
European powers and cultures have affected the histories of non-Western peoples.
Our fourth edition also more specifically places questions of race and of racism
in their long, sad history in the European context. This also becomes especially
crucial in the chapters that consider colonialism and, in particular, the “new
imperialism” that marked the period from the mid-1880s until the outbreak of

xvii
xviii Preface

World War I in 1914, in the Great War itself, and the experience of Europe and
colonial peoples in the post-war period. A History of Modern Europe makes it
possible to put recent events and challenges in Europe in the context of changes
and continuities with the past.
Europe’s colonial and imperial empires were forged by military supremacy and
one-sided murderous wars against indigenous peoples. To be sure, the dynamism
of European trade, settlement, and conquest has had great impact, most notably
on Asia, Africa, and the Americas, but also on the history of European peoples.
Here, too, history provides its lessons. Unlike the Spanish Empire, trade was the
basis of the burgeoning English Empire. The Spanish Empire reflected the com-
bination of the absolutism of the Spanish monarchy and the determination to
convert—by force if necessary—the indigenous populations to Catholicism. In
sharp contrast, many settlers came to the North American English colonies in
search of religious freedom. And, again in contrast to the building of the Spanish
Empire a century earlier, the English colonists sought not to convert the indig-
enous peoples to Christianity, but rather to push them out of colonial areas of
settlement. While the Spanish colonies in general reflected state centralization,
their English counterparts evolved in a pattern of decentralization that would
culminate in the federalist structure of the United States, achieved by the
successful War of Independence from British rule (1775–1783). In this new edition,
British domination in India also receives more well-deserved attention.
Our fourth edition also emphasizes the role of warfare in European history of
the societies of the continent since the Middle Ages. In 1922, the Russian Com-
munist Leon Trotsky in a speech described war as “a great locomotive of history.”
Quite conceivably, wars have been a motor for change in Europe even more than
revolutions, although the two have often been connected (as in the cases of the
French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917). While discussing
dynastic rivalries and nationalism, the fourth edition describes and analyzes how
wars themselves have often generated political and social change. For example,
French financial and military contributions to the American War of Independence
further accentuated the financial crisis of the monarchy of France, helping to spark
the French Revolution. Later, French armies of military conscripts that replaced
the professional armies of the age of aristocracy contributed to the emergence of
nationalism in Britain and France in the eighteenth century. The defeat of the
Russian army by the Japanese in 1905 brought political concessions that helped
prepare the way for the Russian Revolution of 1917. The German, Austro-Hungarian,
Ottoman, and Russian Empires disappeared in the wake of World War I and
World War II; the economic and social impact of these wars generated polit-
ical instability, facilitating the emergence of fascism and communism. World
War I and the role played by colonized peoples gave impetus to movements
for independence and nationalist insurgents within the British, French, and
Dutch Empires that would ultimately be successful, transforming the world in
which we live.
 Preface xix

The growth of strong, centralized states helped shape modern Europe, and
warfare was a major component of this essential history. Medieval Europe was
a maze of overlapping political and judicial authorities. In 1500, virtually all
Europeans defined themselves in terms of family, village, town, neighborhood, and
religious solidarities. Over the next three centuries, dynastic states consolidated
and extended their territories while increasing the reach of their effective author-
ity over their own people. Portugal, Spain, England (and later as Great Britain),
France, the Netherlands, and Russia built vast empires that reached into other
continents. Ever larger and more powerful armies, navies, and the wars they fought
were a crucial part of this story, too. By the early nineteenth century, the European
Great Powers had emerged, their military forces ready for battle.
With the rise of nationalism in the wake of the French Revolution and the
Napoleonic era, demands of ethnic groups for national states encouraged the
unification of Italy and Germany and stirred unrest among Croats, Hungarians,
Romanians, and other ethnic groups who were anxious for their own national
states. The emergence of parliamentary rule in these new states proved to be no
easy matter after World War I. In this fourth edition we devote more coverage to
the long, fascinating history of East Central and Eastern Europe, adding to our
coverage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the early modern period
up until the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.
In Russia, the quest for democracy continues, even more than a quarter of a
century since the fall of communism. President Vladimir Putin has consolidated
his personal power, and that of the oligarchy that supports him. Several of his
most outspoken opponents have perished in unexplained circumstances. Putin
has aggressively worked to expand Russian interests as he defines them, annexing
Crimea and supporting violent Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. The Baltic
states, with sizable Russian minorities, have reason to be afraid. Putin’s Russia has
emerged as a rival of the United States, well after the end of the Cold War.
To make room for this new material, and to help make this book a better
teaching tool, some of the chapters have been reduced in length. There are other
changes, as well. As part of a beautiful new full-color design, the maps have been
significantly improved and new illustrations have been added. The final chapter
has been brought up to date with considerable attention given to the major
challenges Europe now must confront. To take one important example, with the
initiation of a new single currency within the European Union, Europe entered a
new era. But “Brexit”—the shocking vote in Great Britain for a departure from the
European Union—represents a serious challenge to the survival of that institution.
The fourth edition also boasts new resources for students and instructors. The
text is available for the first time in an affordable ebook format. Whether in print
or electronic form, students will find at the end of each chapter new materials for
review, including key terms and names, study questions, and descriptive chronol-
ogies. Instructors may find expanded versions of these chronologies—with more
than could fit on the limited space in these pages—available as printable handouts
xx Preface

online. Instructors will also find a brand-new test bank, including multiple-choice
and short answer questions, and a set of art slides to present the illustrations and
maps in the classroom.
For those teaching the Advanced Placement European History course, a brand-
new Course Planning and Pacing Guide by Shawna Resnick (Lake Brantley High
School) gives clear advice to use this text and other online resources to prepare
students for the recently redesigned AP course. Further, the test bank includes
questions designed to prepare students for the variety of questions on the AP
European History test, including multiple-choice questions inviting students to
analyze primary source excerpts and sample Document-Based Questions (DBQs).
We retain a narrative framework with the goals of both analyzing the central
themes of the European experience and telling a long, wonderful story, full of
triumphs and tragedies. Each chapter can be read as part of a larger, intercon-
nected story. We stress the dynamics of economic, social, political, and cultural
change, but within the context of the amazing diversity of Europe. The history
of modern Europe and its influence in the world presents extraordinary char-
acters, well known and little known. The text brings the past to life, presenting
portraits of men and women who have played major roles in European history: reli-
gious reformers such as Martin Luther and Jean Calvin; Queen Elizabeth I, who
solidified the English throne, and Maria Theresa, who preserved the Habsburg
monarchy; King Louis XIV of France and Tsar Peter the Great, two monarchs
whose reigns exemplified the emergence of absolutism in the seventeenth century;
great thinkers like Sir Isaac Newton and Voltaire; Napoleon, perhaps the heir to
the French Revolution, but also possibly a despot who betrayed it and was perhaps
even an originator of total war. Inevitably, we describe and analyze the rise of Adolf
Hitler, examining the sources of his growing popularity in Germany in the wake
of World War I, and that of Joseph Stalin and his totalitarian communist state and
murderous purges. However, we also enthusiastically focus on the experiences of
ordinary men and women who made their own histories and who play a major part
in the story of economic, political, and cultural change—in revolution and in war.
The causes and effects of economic change are another significant, related
thread that weaves through the history of modern Europe. The expansion of
commerce in the early modern period, which owed much to new means of raising
investment capital and obtaining credit, transformed life in both Western and
Eastern Europe. It also directly led to European imperialism in South Asia, Asia,
and Africa. The Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the eighteenth
century and spread to continental Europe in the nineteenth, depended on a rise
in population and thus of agricultural production, but also manifested significant
continuities with the past. As essential as were inventions, the Industrial Revolu-
tion also drew on ways of work that had been in place for centuries, transforming
the ways Europeans worked and lived. It also changed warfare. New weapons were
even more murderous. This, too, is inextricable from the histories of World War I
and World War II, which killed millions of people.
 Preface xxi

The place of religion in the history of Europe since the Middle Ages remains
another significant theme. Like politics, religion has also been a significant factor
in the lives of Europeans and, at times, in the quest for freedom in the modern
world. Catholicism was a unifying force in the Middle Ages; for centuries,
European popular culture was based on religious belief. But religious differ-
ences and rivalries have also been a frequent cause of wars, for example, after the
Reformation in the early sixteenth century, states extended their authority over
religion, while religious minorities demanded the right to practice their own religion.
Moreover, imperial missionaries carried their religions into Africa and Asia in the
aggressive quest for converts. Spanish conquerors forced indigenous populations in
the Americas to convert to Christianity. Religious (as well as racial and cultural)
intolerance has scarred the European experience, ranging from the expulsion of
Jews and Muslims from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century through the
Wars of Religion (covered in Chapter 4), to Louis XIV’s abrogation of religious
toleration for Protestants in 1685, to the horror of the Nazi Holocaust during
World War II. Religious conflict in Northern Ireland and the bloody civil war and
atrocities perpetrated in Bosnia in the 1990s recall the ravaging of Central Europe
during the Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648. Today, small extremist groups acting
in the name of Islam—but condemned by the overwhelming majority of people
who do practice that faith—have been responsible for terrorist attacks in Great
Britain, France, Spain, Belgium, and Germany.
Understanding European history is now even more crucial to understanding
the contemporary world. Chapter 30 emphasizes significant—and indeed, in
some cases, dangerous—changes that have occurred very recently in Europe.
These include the threat of terrorism and the resurgence of an aggressive populism
that targets immigrants and refugees. One can clearly see continuities between
the xenophobia and racism that characterized the period between World War I
and World War II and the revival of racist populism and the rise of aggressive
right-wing movements and indeed political parties in many European countries
today. The return of Russian nationalism and the determination of President
Vladimir Putin to reestablish his country as a dominant power offers striking,
challenging parallels with the past.
The political, religious, economic, and cultural concerns that affect Europe
and the world today can best be addressed by examining their roots and develop-
ment in the past. As globalization continues to transform Europe and the world, it
becomes even more relevant and exciting to study the continent’s rich and complex
history. The fourth edition of A History of Modern Europe is presented with this in
mind. As we contemplate not only exhilarating triumphs and tragedies that have
been an essential part of modern European history, we should also come to grips
with the daunting challenges that now confront the continent, and the world.
Acknowledgments

T
he history of A History of Modern Europe began in the mid-1980s, when
Don Lamm, chairman and president of W. W. Norton and Company,
who helped make Norton a unique publisher, proposed that I undertake
such a project. Steve Forman brilliantly edited the first three editions. I owe my
friends Don and Steve so much. Justin Cahill has been a remarkable editor of this
fourth edition and it has been a great pleasure working with him, as well as with
Rachel Taylor and Rosy Lum. Stacey Davis of Evergreen College offered absolutely
invaluable suggestions for this edition.
This edition benefits from Jillian Burr’s superb full-color design, Agnieszka
Czapski’s talents in photo editing, and Caitlin Moran and Stephen Sajdak’s coor-
dination of these and other puzzle pieces coming together into a beautiful whole.
The fourth edition also boasts, for the first time, a set of digital resources; thanks
to Carson Russell and Lexi Malakhoff for coordinating these with contributions
from Shawn Holderby (Mansfield University), John Mazis (Hamline University),
and Matthew Unangst (Jacksonville University). Finally, thanks to Jenna Barry
and Christina Magoulis for their concerted efforts to bring this book into the
hands of students taking the AP European History course, and to Shawna Resnick
(Lake Brantley High School) and Chris Freiler (Hinsdale Township High School)
for preparing excellent resources to support these teachers and students.
Thanks to fourth edition reviewers David Caraway (Keystone School),
Brian Cowan (McGill University), Karen Macfarlane (Trent University), Aitana
Guia (California State University, Fullerton), Ronald Kroeze (Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam), Alyssa Sepinwall (California State University, San Marcos), Nancy
Schick (Los Alamos High School), Ken Schneider (Indian Hill High School),
Lenore Schneider (New Canaan High School), Robert Wade (John Paul II High
School), Vlad Solomon (University of Manitoba), David Stiles (University of
Toronto), and Sarah Summers (Wilfrid Laurier University).
Finally, thanks to colleagues and friends who provided advice and sugges-
tions for this edition. These include Paul Freedman, Vladimir Alexandrov, Adam
Kożuchowski, Edwin Thoen, Jim Collins, Stijn Vissers, Wayne Te Brake, Ted Weeks,
Piotr Bajda, Endre Sashalmi, Andrzej Kamiński, Rachel Chrastil, Jim Boyden,
Robert Schwartz, Steve Pincus, Frank Snowden, Vlad Solomon, Ronald Kroeze, Brian
Cowan, Sarah Summers, David Stiles, Rachel Johnston-White, Francesca Trivellato,

xxiii
xxiv Acknowledgments

Mathieu Fruleux, Eric Jennngs, Victoria Johnson, Andriy Zayarnyuk, Tyler Stovall,
and Noel Lenski.
Histories have their own histories. Carol Merriman very ably edited every
chapter in draft for the first three editions, and my other books as well. She loved
history. A great deal of work over the decades made A History of Modern Europe
part of our lives. I began working on the first edition before our children Laura
and Chris were born. It then inevitably became part of their lives, too. Carol passed
away suddenly in December 2016. As in history, unanticipated events can occur
that dramatically change much of everything. This was our case. Laura, Chris,
and I have been fortunate to have many friends in so many places in the United
States and France who have helped us so much. Listing more than a few of them
would overly lengthen the acknowledgements for this fourth edition. But I want to
mention and thank in particular Phil Kalberer, Dave Bushnell, Chrisje Brouwer,
Rachel Chrastil, Steve Shirley, Joe Malloure, Jim Read, Steve Pincus, Sue Stokes,
Ben Kiernan, Glenda Gilmour, Jessica Honigberg, Hugh Eastwood, Jim and
Claudia Klee, Jerry and Roberta Lohla, Janet McCarty and Billy Lieserson, Sven
Wanegffelen, Chris Johnson, David Bell, Joe Fronczak, Thomas Forster, Charles
Keith, Eric Fruleux, Mathieu Fruleux, Jean Sion, William and Ng Claveyrolat,
Dominique Kalifa, Jeanne Innes, Victoria Johnson, Mathieu Fruleux, Hervé and
Françoise Parain, and Élodie Parain. As before, this edition is dedicated to Laura
Merriman and to Chris Merriman, and now also in memory of Carol Merriman.

Balazuc, France,
August 15, 2018
Other documents randomly have
different content
Darnley Island the corpse would never have been preserved by
natural means, so that the suggestion which stimulated the
Egyptians to embark upon their experimentation was lacking in the
case of the Papuans. But even if for some mysterious reasons these
people had been prompted to attempt to preserve their dead, during
the experimental stage they would have had to combat these same
unfavourable conditions. Is it at all probable or even possible to
conceive that under such exceptionally difficult, not to say
discouraging, circumstances they would have persisted for long
periods in their gruesome experiments; or have attained a more
rapid success than the more cultured peoples of Egypt and Europe,
operating under more favourable climatic conditions, and with the
help of a knowledge of chemistry and physics, were able to achieve?
The suggestion is too preposterous to call for serious consideration.
But if for the moment we assume that the Darnley Islander
instinctively arrived at the conclusion that it was possible to preserve
the dead, that he would rather like to try it, and that by some
mysterious inspiration the technical means of attaining this object
was vouchsafed him, why, when the whole ventral surface of the
body was temptingly inviting him to operate by the simplest and
most direct means, did he restrict his choice to the two most difficult
sites for his incision? We know why the Egyptian made the opening
in the left flank and in other cases in the perineum; but is it likely
the Papuan, once he had decided to cut the body, would have had
such a respect for the preservation of the integrity of the front of the
body as to impel him to choose a means of procedure which added
greatly to the technical difficulty of the operation? We have the most
positive evidence that the Papuan had no such design, for it was his
usual procedure to cut the head off the trunk and pay little further
attention to the latter. Myres’ contention will not stand a moment’s
examination.
As to the use of red-ochre, which Myres rightly claimed to be so
widespread, no hint was given of the possibility that it might be so
extensively practised simply because the Egyptian custom had
spread far and wide.
 It is important to remember that the practice of painting stone
statues with red-ochre (obviously to make them more life-like) was
in vogue in Egypt before 3000 b.c.; and throughout the whole
“heliolithic” area, wherever the conception of human beings dwelling
in stones, whether carved or not, was adopted, the Egyptian practice
of applying red paint also came into vogue. But it was not until more
than twenty centuries later—i.e. when, for quite definite reasons in
the XXIst Dynasty, the Egyptians conceived the idea of converting
the mummy itself into a statue—that they introduced the procedure
of painting the mummy (the actual body), simply because it was
regarded as the statue (78).
After Professor Myres, Dr. Haddon offered two criticisms. Firstly,
the incisions in the feet and knees were not suggested by Egyptian
practices, but were made for the strictly utilitarian purpose of
draining the fluids from the body. I have dealt with this point already
(vide supra). His second objection was that there were no links
between Egypt and Papua to indicate that the custom had spread.
The present communication is intended to dispose of that objection
by demonstrating not only the route by which, but also how, the
practice reached the Torres Straits after the long journey from Egypt.
It will be noticed that this criticism leaves my main arguments
from the mummies quite untouched. Moreover, the fact that
originally I made use of the testimony of the mummies merely in
support of evidence of other kinds (the physical characters of the
peoples and the distribution of megalithic monuments) was
completely ignored by my critics.
But, as I have already remarked, it is not merely the remarkable
identity of so many of the peculiar features of Papuan and Egyptian
embalming that affords definite evidence of the derivation of one
from the other; but in addition, many of the ceremonies and
practices, as well as the traditions relating to the people who
introduced the custom of mummification, corroborate the fact that
immigrants from the west introduced these elements of culture. In
addition, they also suggest their affinities.
 “A hero-cult, with masked performers and elaborate dances,
spread from the mainland of New Guinea to the adjacent islands:
part of this movement seems to have been associated with a funeral
ritual that emphasised a life after death.... Most of the funeral
ceremonies and many sacred songs admittedly came from the west”
(Haddon, 25, p. 45).
“Certain culture-heroes severally established themselves on certain
islands, and they or their followers introduced a new cult which
considerably modified the antecedent totemism,” and taught
“improved methods of cultivation and fishing” (p. 44).
“An interesting parallel to these hero-cults of Torres Straits
occurred also in Fiji. The people of Viti-Levu trace their descent from
[culture-heroes] who drifted across the Big Ocean and taught to the
people the cult associated with the large stone enclosures” (p. 45).
In these islands the people were expert at carving stone idols and
they had legends concerning certain “stones that once were men”
(p. 11). It is also significant that at the bier of a near relative, boys
and girls, who had arrived at the age of puberty, had their ears
pierced and their skin tattooed (p. 154).
Thus Haddon himself supplies so many precise tokens of the
“heliolithic” nature of the culture of the Torres Straits.
These hints of migrations and the coming of strangers bringing
from the west curious practices and beliefs may seem at first sight to
add little to the evidence afforded by the technique of the
embalming process; but the subsequent discussion will make it plain
that the association of these particular procedures with
mummification serves to clinch the demonstration of the source from
which that practice was derived.
It is doubly interesting to obtain all this corroborative evidence
from the writings of Dr. Haddon, in view of the fact, to which I have
already referred, that he vigorously protested against my contention
that the embalmers of the Torres Straits acquired their art, directly
or indirectly, from Egypt. For, in his graphic account of a burial
ceremony at Murray Islands, his confession that, as he watched the
funerary boat and the wailing women, his “mind wandered back
thousands of years, and called up ancient Egypt carrying its dead in
boats across the sacred Nile” has a much deeper and more real
significance than he intended. The analogy which at once sprang to
his mind was not merely a chance resemblance, but the expression
of a definite survival amongst these simple people in the Far East of
customs their remote ancestors had acquired, through many
intermediaries no doubt, from the Egyptians of the ninth century b.c.
At the time when Dr. Haddon asked for the evidence for the
connection between Egypt and Papua, I was aware only of the
Burmese practices (vide infra) in the intervening area, and the
problem of establishing the means by which the Egyptian custom
actually spread seemed to be a very formidable task.
But soon after my return from Australia all the links in the cultural
chain came to light. Mr. W. J. Perry, who had been engaged in
analysing the complex mixture of cultures in Indonesia, kindly
permitted me to read the manuscript of the book he had written
upon the subject. With remarkable perspicuity he had unravelled the
apparently hopeless tangle into which the social organisation of this
ethnological cockpit has been involved by the mixture of peoples and
the conflict of diverse beliefs and customs. His convincing
demonstration of the fact that there had been an immigration into
Indonesia (from the West) of a people who introduced megalithic
ideas, sun-worship and phallism, and many other distinctive
practices and traditions, not only gave me precisely the information I
needed, but also directed my attention to the fact that the culture
(for which, so he informed me, Professor Brockwell, of Montreal, had
suggested the distinctive term “heliolithic”) included also the practice
of mummification. In the course of continuous discussions with him
during the last four months a clear view of the whole problem and
the means of solving most of its difficulties emerged.
For Perry’s work in this field, no less than for my own, Rivers’
illuminating and truly epoch-making researches (64 to 70) have
cleared the ground. Not only has he removed from the path of
investigators the apparently insuperable obstacles to the
demonstration of the spread of cultures by showing how useful arts
can be lost (65); but he has analysed the social organisation of
Oceania in such a way that the various waves of immigration into
the Pacific can be identified and with certainty be referred back to
Indonesia (69). Many other scholars in the past have produced
evidence (for example 2; 60; 61 and 98) to demonstrate that the
Polynesians came from Indonesia; but Rivers analysed and defined
the characteristic features of several streams of culture which flowed
from Indonesia into the Pacific. Perry undertook the task of tracing
these peoples through the Indonesian maze and pushing back their
origins to India. In the present communication I shall attempt to
sketch in broad outline the process of the gradual accumulation in
Egypt and the neighbourhood of the cultural outfit of these great
wanderers, and to follow them in their migrations west, south and
east from the place where their curious assortment of customs and
accomplishments became fortuitously associated one with the other
(Map II.).
I cannot claim that my colleagues in this campaign against what
seems to us to be the utterly mistaken precepts of modern
ethnology see altogether eye to eye with me. They have been
dealing exclusively with more primitive peoples amongst whom every
new attainment, in arts and crafts, in beliefs and social organisation,
in everything in fact that we regard as an element of civilization, has
been introduced from without by more cultured races, or fashioned
in the conflict between races of different traditions and ideals.
My investigations, on the contrary, have been concerned mainly
with the actual invention of the elements of civilization and with the
people who created practically all of its ingredients—the ideas, the
implements and methods of the arts and crafts which give
expression to it. Though superficially my attitude may seem to clash
with theirs, in that I am attempting to explain the primary origin of
some of the things, with which they are dealing only as ready-made
customs and beliefs that were handed on from people to people,
there is no real antagonism between us.
It is obvious that there must be a limit to the application of the
borrowing-explanation; and when we are forced to consider the
people who really invented things, it is necessary to frame some
working hypothesis in explanation of such achievements, unless we
feebly confess that it is useless to attempt such enquiries.
In previous works (82 and 85) I have explained why it must be
something more than a mere coincidence that in Egypt, where the
operation of natural forces leads to the preservation of the corpse
when buried in the hot dry sand, it should have become a cardinal
tenet in the beliefs of the people to strive after the preservation of
the body as the essential means of continuing an existence after
death. When death occurred the only difference that could be
detected between the corpse and the living body was the absence of
the vital spirit from the former. [For the interpretation of the
Egyptians’ peculiar ideas concerning death, see Alan Gardiner’s,
important article (23).] It was in a condition in some sense
analogous to sleep; and the corpse, therefore, was placed in its
“dwelling” in the soil lying in the attitude naturally assumed, by
primitive people when sleeping. Its vital spirit or ka was liberated
from the body, but hovered round the corpse so long as its tissues
were preserved. It needed food and all the other things that
ministered to the welfare and comfort of the living, not omitting the
luxuries and personal adornments which helped to make life
pleasant. Hence at all times graves became the objects of plunder
on the part of unscrupulous contemporaries; and so incidentally the
knowledge was forthcoming from time to time of the fate of the
body in the grave.
The burial customs of the Proto-Egyptians, starting from those
common to the whole group of the Brown Race in the Neolithic
phase, first became differentiated from the rest when special
importance came to be attached to the preservation of the actual
tissues of the body.
 It was this development, no doubt, that prompted, their more
careful arrangements for the protection of the corpse, and gradually
led to the aggrandisement of the tomb, the more abundant provision
of food offerings and funerary equipment in general.
Even in the earliest known Pre-dynastic period the Proto-Egyptians
were in the habit of loosely wrapping their dead in linen—for the art
of the weaver goes back to that remote time in Egypt—and then
protecting the wrapped corpse from contact with the soil by an
additional wrapping of goat-skin or matting.
Then, as the tomb became larger, to accommodate the more
abundant offerings, almost every conceivable device was tried to
protect the body from such contact. Instead of the goat-skin or
matting, in many cases the same result was obtained by lining the
grave with series of sticks, with slabs of wood, with pieces of
unhewn stone, or by lining the grave with mud-bricks. In other
cases, again, large pottery coffins, of an oblong, elliptical, or circular
form, were used. Later on, when metal implements were invented
(90), and the skill to use them created the crafts of the carpenter
and stonemason, coffins of wood or stone came into vogue. It is
quite certain that the coffin and sarcophagus were Egyptian
inventions. The mere fact of this extraordinary variety of means and
materials employed in Egypt, when in other countries one definite
method was adopted, is proof of the most positive kind that these
measures for lining the grave were actually invented in Egypt. For
the inventor tries experiments: the borrower imitates one definite
thing. During this process of gradual evolution, which occupied the
whole of the Pre- and Proto-dynastic periods, the practice of
inhumation (in the strict sense of the term) changed step by step
into one of burial in a tomb. In other words, instead of burial in the
soil, the body came to be lodged in a carefully constructed
subterranean chamber, which no longer was filled up with earth. The
further stages in this process of evolution of tomb construction, the
way in which the rock-cut tomb came into existence, and the gradual
development of the stone superstructure and temple of offerings—all
of these matters have been summarised in some detail in my article
on the evolution of megalithic monuments (94).
What especially I want to emphasize here is that in Egypt is
preserved every stage in the gradual transformation of the burial
customs from simple inhumation into that associated with the fully-
developed rock-cut tomb and the stone temple. There can be no
question that the craft of the stonemason and the practice of
building megalithic monuments originated in Egypt. In addition, I
want to make it quite clear that there is the most intimate genetic
relationship between the development of these megalithic practices
and the origin of the art of mummification.
For in course of time the early Egyptians came to learn, no doubt
again from the discoveries of their tomb-robbers, that the fate of the
corpse, after remaining for some time in a roomy rock-cut tomb or
stone coffin, was vastly different from that which befell the body
when simply buried in the hot, dry, desiccating sand. In respect of
the former they acquired the idea which the Greeks many centuries
later embalmed in the word “sarcophagus” under the simple belief
that the disappearance of the flesh was due to the stone in some
mysterious way devouring it.[7] [Certain modern archæologists
within recent years have entertained an equally child-like, though
even less informed, view when they claimed the absence of any
trace of the flesh in certain stone sarcophagi as evidence in favour of
a fantastic belief that the Neolithic people of the Mediterranean area
were addicted to the supposed practice which Italian archæologists
call scarnitura.]
But by the time the discovery was made that bodies placed in
more sumptuous tombs were no longer preserved as they were apt
to be when buried in the sand, the idea of the necessity for the
preservation of the body as the essential condition for the
attainment of a future existence had become fixed in the minds of
the people and established by several centuries of belief as the
cardinal tenet of their faith. Thus the very measures they had taken
the more surely to guard and preserve the sacred remains of their
dead had led to a result the reverse of what had been intended.
The elaborate ritual that had grown up and the imposing
architectural traditions were not abandoned when this discovery was
made. Even in these modern enlightened days human nature does
not react in that way. The cherished beliefs held by centuries of
ancestors are not renounced for any discovery of science. The
ethnologist has not given up his objections to the idea of the spread
of culture, now that all the difficulties that militated against the
acceptance of the common-sense view have been removed! Nor did
the Egyptians of the Proto-dynastic period revert to the practices of
their early ancestors and take to sand-burial again. They adopted
the only other alternative open to a people who retained implicitly
the belief in the necessity of preserving the body, i.e., they set about
attempting to attain by art what nature unaided no longer secured,
so long as they clung to their custom of burying in large tombs.
They endeavoured artificially to preserve the bodies of their dead.
This explains what I meant to imply when I said that the
megalithic idea and the incentive to mummify the dead are
genetically related, the one to the other. The stone-tomb came into
existence as a direct result of the importance attached to the corpse.
This development defeated the very object that inspired it. The
invention of the art of embalming was the logical outcome of the
attempt to remedy this unexpected result.
As in the history of every similar happening elsewhere, necessity,
or what these simple-minded people believed to be a necessity, was
the “mother of invention.”
In the course of the following discussion it will be seen that the
practice of mummification became linked up in another way with
what may be called the megalithic traditions. The crudely-preserved
body no longer retained any likeness to the person as his friends
knew him when alive. A life-like stone statue was therefore made to
represent him. Magical means (p. 42) were adopted to give life to
the statue. Thus originated the belief that a stone might become the
dwelling of a living person; and that a person when dead may
become converted into stone. So insistent did this belief become
that among more uncultured people, who borrowed Egyptian
practices but were unable to make portrait statues, a rudely-shaped
or even unhewn pillar of stone came to be regarded as the dwelling
of the deceased.
Thus from being the mere device for the identification of the
deceased the stone statue degenerated among less cultured people
into an object even less like the dead man than his own crudely-
made mummy. But the fundamental idea remained and became the
starting point for that rich crop of petrifaction-myths and beliefs
concerning men and animals living in stones.
Thus arose in Egypt, somewhere about 3000 b.c., the nucleus of
the “heliolithic” culture-complex—mummification, megalithic
architecture, and the making of idols, three practices most intimately
and genetically linked one with the other. But it was the merest
accident that the people amongst whom these customs developed,
should also have been weavers of linen, workers in copper,
worshippers of the sun and serpent, and practitioners of massage
and circumcision.
But it was not for another fifteen centuries that the characteristic
“heliolithic” culture-complex was completed by the addition of
numerous other trivial customs, like ear-piercing, tattooing and the
use of the swastika, none of which originated in Egypt, but
happened to have become “tacked on” to that distinctive culture
before its great world tour began.
The earliest unquestionable evidence (89) of an attempt artificially
to preserve the body was found in a rock-cut tomb of the Second
Dynasty, at Sakkara. It is important to note that the body was lying
in a flexed position upon the left side, and was contained in a short
wooden coffin, modelled like a house. The limbs were wrapped
separately and large quantities of fine linen bandages had been
applied around all parts of the body, so as to mould the wrapped
mummy to a life-like form.
 Thus in the earliest mummy—or, to be strictly accurate, in the
remains which exhibit the earliest evidence of the attempt at
embalming—we find exemplified the two objects that the Ancient
Egyptian embalmer aimed at throughout the whole history of his
craft, viz., to preserve the actual tissues of the body, as well as the
form and likeness of the deceased as he was when alive.
From the first the embalmer realised the limitations of his
craftsmanship, i.e., that he was unable to make the body itself life-
like. Hence he strove to preserve its tissues and then to make use of
its wrappings for the purpose of fashioning a model or statue of the
dead man. At first this was done while the body was flexed in the
traditional manner. But soon the flexed position was gradually
abandoned. Perhaps this change was brought about because it was
easier to model the superficial form of a wrapped body when
extended; and the greater success of the results so obtained may
have been sufficiently important to have outweighed the restraining
influence of tradition. The change may have occurred all the more
readily at this time as beds were coming into use, and the idea of
placing the “sleeping” body on a bed may have helped towards the
process of extension.
But whatever view is taken of the explanation of the change of the
attitude of the body, it is certain that it began soon after the first
attempts at mummification were made. The evidence of extended
burials, referred to the First Dynasty, which were found by Flinders
Petrie at Tarkhan (54), may seem to contradict this: but there are
reasons for believing that attempts at embalming were being made
even at that time (85). It seems to be definitely proved that this
change was not due to any foreign influence (45). At the time that it
occurred there was a very considerable alien element in the
population of Egypt; but the admixture took place long before the
change in the position of the body was manifested. Perhaps the
presence of a large foreign element may have weakened the sway of
Egyptian tradition; but the evidence seems definitely opposed to the
inference that it played any active part in the change of custom. For
the history of the gradual way in which the change was slowly
effected is certain proof of the causal factors at work. There was no
sudden adoption of the fully extended position, but a slow and very
gradual straightening of the limbs—a process which it took centuries
to complete. The analysis of the evidence by Mace is quite
conclusive on this point (45).
I am strongly of the opinion that there is a causal relationship
between this gradual extension of the body and the measures for
the reconstruction of a life-like model of the deceased, with the help
of the mummy’s wrappings. In other words, the adoption of the
extended position was a direct result of the introduction of
mummification.
At an early stage in the history of these changes it seems to have
been realised that the likeness of the deceased which could be made
of the wrapped mummy lacked the exactness and precision
demanded of a portrait Perhaps also there may have been some
doubt as to the durability of a statue made of linen.
A number of interesting developments occurred at about this time
to overcome these defects. In one case (85), found at Mêdum by
Flinders Petrie, the superficial bandages were saturated with a paste
of resin and soda, and the same material was applied to the surface
of the wrappings, which, while still in a plastic condition, was very
skilfully moulded to form a life-like statue. The resinous carapace
thus built up set to form a covering of stony hardness. Special care
was devoted to the modelling of the head (sometimes the face only)
and the genitalia, no doubt to serve as the means of identifying the
individual and indicating the sex respectively.
The hair (or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say, the wig)
and the moustache were painted with a dark brown or black
resinous mixture, and the pupils, eyelids and eyebrows were
represented by painting with a mixture of malachite powder and
resinous paste. In other cases, recently described by Junker (40),
plaster was used for the same purpose as the resinous paste in
Petrie’s mummy. In two of the four instances of this practice found
by Junker, only the head was modelled.
 The special importance assigned to the head is one of the
outstanding features of ancient Egyptian statuary. It was exemplified
in another way in the tombs of the early part of the Old Kingdom, as
Junker has recalled in his memoir, by the construction of stone
portrait-statues of the head only, which were made life-size and
placed in the burial chamber alongside the mummy. It seems to me
that Junker overlooks an essential, if not the, chief, reason for the
special importance assigned to the head when he attributes it to the
fact that the head contained the organs of sight, smell, hearing and
taste. There can be no doubt that the head was modelled because it
affords the chief means of recognising an individual. This portrayal
of the features enabled any one, including the deceased’s own ka, to
identify the owner. Every circumstance of the making and the use of
these heads bears out this interpretation, and no one has explained
these facts more lucidly than Junker himself.
[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been put into print a
preliminary report has come to hand from Professor Reisner, to
whom I am indebted for most of my information regarding these
portrait heads—Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, Boston, April, 1915.]
At a somewhat later period in the Old Kingdom the making of
these so-called “substitution-heads” was discontinued, and it
became the practice to make a statue of the whole man (of woman),
which was placed above-ground in the megalithic serdab within the
mastaba (see 94). But even when the complete statue was made for
the serdab the head alone was the part that was modelled with any
approach to realism. In other words, the importance of the head as
the chief means of identification was still recognised. Moreover, this
idea manifested itself throughout the whole history of Egyptian
mummification, for as late as the first century of the Christian era a
portrait of the deceased was placed in front of the face of the
mummy.
Thus in course of time the original idea of converting the wrapped
body itself into a portrait-statue of the deceased was temporarily[8]
abandoned and the mummy was stowed away in the burial chamber
at the bottom of a deep shaft, the better to protect it from
desecration, while the portrait-statue was placed above ground, in a
strong chamber (serdab), hidden in the mastaba (94).
A certain magical value soon came to be attached to the statue in
the serdab. It provided the body in which the ka could become
reincarnated, and the deceased, thus reconstituted by magical
means, could pass through the small hole in the serdab to enter the
chapel of offerings and enjoy the food and the society of his friends
there.
Dr. Alan Gardiner has kindly given me the following note in
reference to this matter: “That statues in Egypt were meant to be
efficient animate substitutes for the person or creature they
portrayed has not been sufficiently emphasised hitherto. Over every
statue or image were performed the rites of ‘opening the mouth’—
magical passes made with a kind of metal chisel in front of the
mouth. Besides the up-ro ‘mouth opening,’ other words testify to the
prevalence of the same idea; the word for ‘to fashion’ a statue (ms)
is to all appearances identical with ms ‘to give birth,’ and the term
for the sculptor was saʿnkh, ‘he who causes to live.’”
As Blackman (5) has pointed out, the Pyramid Texts make it clear
that libations were poured out and incense burnt before the statue
or the mummy with the specific object of restoring to it the moisture
and the odour respectively which the body had during life.
I have already indicated how, out of the conception of the
possibility of bringing to life the stone portrait-statue, a series of
curious customs were developed. Among peoples on a lower cultural
plane, who were less skilled than the Egyptians in stone-carving, the
making of a life-like statue was beyond their powers. Sometimes
they made the attempt to represent the human form; in other cases
crude representations of the breasts or suggestions of the genitalia
were the only signs on a stone pillar to indicate that it was meant to
represent a human statue: in many cases a simple uncarved block of
stone was set up. But the idea that such a pillar, whether carved or
not, was the dwelling of some deceased person, seized the
imagination and spread far and wide. It is seen in the Pygmalion and
Galatea story, and its converse in the tragic history of Lot’s wife. It is
found throughout the Mediterranean area, the whole littoral of
Southern Asia, Indonesia, the Pacific Islands and America, and can
be regarded as definite evidence of the influence of the cult that
developed in association with the practice of mummification.
It is necessary to emphasise that the making of portrait-statues
was an outcome of the practice of mummification and an integral
part of the cult associated with that burial custom. Hartland falls into
grave error when he writes “where other peoples set up images of
the deceased, those who practised desiccation or embalmment were
enabled to keep the bodies themselves” (32, p. 418). It was
precisely the people who embalmed or preserved the bodies of their
dead who also made statues of them.
As these stones, according to such beliefs, could be made to hear
and speak (23), they naturally became oracles. People were able to
commune with and get advice and instruction from the kings and
wise men who dwelt within these stone pillars. Thus it became the
custom in many lands for meetings of special solemnity, such as
those where important decisions had to be made, to be held at
stone circles, where the members of the convention sat on the
stones and communed with their ancestors, former rulers or wise
men, who dwelt in the stones (or the grave) in the centre of the
circle.
“Chardin, in his account of the stone circles he saw in Persia,
mentions a tradition that they were used as places of assembly, each
member of the council being seated on a stone; Homer, in his
description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad, speaks of the elders
sitting in the place of justice upon stones in a circle; Plot, in his
account of the Rollrich stones in Oxfordshire, says that Olaus
Wormius, Saxo Grammaticus, Meursius, and many other early
historians, concur in stating that it was the practice of the ancient
Danes to elect their kings in stone circles, each member of the
council being seated upon a stone; the tradition arising out of this
custom, that these stones represent petrified giants, is widely spread
in all countries where they occur, and Col. Forbes Leslie has shown
that within the historic period, these circles were used in Scotland as
places of justice” (Lane Fox, (20), p. 64). Is not our king crowned
seated upon the Lia-fail, which is now in the coronation chair at
Westminster? Such customs and beliefs are widespread also in India,
Indonesia, and beyond, as W. J. Perry has pointed out. The practices
still observed in the Khasia Hills in modern times clearly indicate the
significance of this use of stone seats; and the custom can be found
from the Canary Islands in the West (26) to Costa Rica in the East,
encircling the whole globe (compare “Man,” May, 1915, p. 79).
I shall enter more fully into the consideration of the origin of the
ideas associated with stone seats when Perry has published his
important analysis of the significance of so curious a practice.
The converse of the belief in the bringing to life of stone statues—
or perhaps it would be more correct to say, the complementary view
that, if a stone can be converted into a living creature, the latter can
also be transformed into stone—is found also wherever the parent
belief is known to exist. As a rule it forms part of a complexly
interwoven series of traditions concerning the creation, the deluge,
the destruction of the “sons of men” by petrifaction, and the
repeopling the earth by the incestuous intercourse of the “children of
the gods.”
Perry, who has made a study of the geographical distribution and
associations of these curiously-linked traditions, has clearly
demonstrated that they form an integral part of the cultural
equipment of the sun-worshipping, stone-using peoples.
In the foregoing statement I have endeavoured to indicate also
their genetic connection with the ideas that sprang from the early
practice of mummification in Egypt.
There are many other curious features of the early Egyptian
practices which might have served as straws to indicate how the
cultural current had flowed, if much more substantial proofs had not
been available of the reality of the movement. The diffusion of such
a distinctive object as the Egyptian head-rest, which used to be
buried with mummies of the Pyramid Age, is an example. It occurs
widely spread in Africa, Southern Asia, Indonesia and the Pacific.
But the use of beds as funerary biers is a much more distinctive
custom. The believers in theories of the independent evolution of
customs may say “is it not natural to expect that people who
regarded death as a kind of sleep should have placed head-rests and
beds in the graves of their dead?” But how would such ethnologists
explain the use of a funerary bier on the part of people (such as
many of the less cultured people who adopted this Egyptian custom)
who do not themselves use beds?
The evidence afforded by the use of biers is, in fact, a most
definite demonstration of the diffusion of customs. Although it is a
familiar scene in ancient Egyptian pictures to find the mummy borne
upon a bed—a custom which we know from Egyptian literature, no
less than that of the Jews, Phœnicians, Greeks and Romans to have
been actually observed—only one Egyptian cemetery, so far as I am
aware—a proto-dynastic site, excavated by Flinders Petrie (54) at
Tarkhan—has revealed corpses lying upon beds. But in a cemetery,
some sixteen centuries later, excavated by Reisner in the Soudan
(62), a similar practice was demonstrated. Garstang has recorded
the observance of a similar custom further South (Meroe) at a later
date.
These form useful connecting links with the region around the
head-waters of the Nile, where even in modern times this practice
has survived, and the mummified corpse of the king is placed upon a
rough bier. I shall have occasion to point out later on that this
curious practice spread from East Africa along the Asiatic littoral to
Indonesia, Melanesia and Polynesia, thence to the American
continent; and in most places was definitely associated with
attempts at preservation of the corpse.
In many places along the whole course of the same great track,
instead of a bed, a boat of some sort, usually a rough dug-out, was
used. This practice also was observed in Egypt, where its symbolic
purpose is clearly apparent.
Another distinctive feature of the burial customs in the same area
was the idea that the grave represented the house in which the
deceased was sleeping. How definitely this view was held by the
proto-Egyptians is seen in their coffins, subterranean burial
chambers, and the superstructures of their tombs, all three of which
were originally represented as dwelling houses (see my memoir, 94).
The Pyramid texts clearly explain the precise significance and
origin of the hitherto mysterious and widespread custom of burning
incense at the statue. For, as Blackman (5) has pointed out, the aim
was by burning aromatic woods and resins thereby magically to
restore to the “body” the odours of the living person.
It was therefore intimately related to the practice of
mummification and genetically connected with it. It was part of the
magical procedure for making the portrait-statue of the deceased (or
later, in the time of the New Empire, the mummy itself) “an efficient
animate substitute for the person” (Alan Gardiner).
A careful investigation of the geographical distribution of the
custom of burning incense before the corpse and of the
circumstances related to such a practice has convinced me that
wherever it is found, even where no attempt is made to preserve the
body, it can be regarded as an indication of the influence of the
Egyptian custom of mummification. For apart from such an influence
incense-burning is inexplicable. The attempt on the part of certain
writers to explain the use of incense merely as a means of disguising
the odours of putrefaction will not bear examination. It is an
example of that kind of so-called psychological explanation which is
opposed by all the ascertainable facts.
Beyond the borders of Egypt peoples who for a time adopted the
custom of embalming and then for some reason, such as the failure
to attain successful results or the adoption of conflicting beliefs or
customs, allowed the practice to lapse, the simpler parts of the
Egyptian funerary ritual often continued to be observed. The body
was anointed with oil, perhaps packed in salt and aromatic plants,
wrapped in linen or fine clothes, had incense burned before it, and
was laid on a bed or special bier. All of these practices originated in
Egypt and observance of any or all of them is to be regarded as a
sure sign of the influence of the Egyptian custom of mummification.
Among the more immediate neighbours of the Egyptians, such as
the Jews, Greeks and Romans, the evidence for this is clear.
Occasionally the full process of embalming was followed, even if it
were only a temporary procedure preliminary to the observance of
some other burial custom, such as cremation, perhaps inspired by
ideas wholly foreign to those which prompted mummification. I need
not enumerate instances of this curious syncretism of burial
customs, numerous examples of which will be found in Reutter (63,
pp. 144-147) and in Hastings’ Dictionary (32), as well as in the
following pages.
At the very earliest period in Egypt from which historical records
have come down to us (the time of the First Dynasty, 3200 b.c., or
even earlier) “the king’s favourite title was ‘Horus,’ by which he
identified himself as the successor of the great god [the hawk sun-
god] who had once ruled over the kingdom ... [other symbols often
appeared] side by side with Buto, the serpent-goddess of the
northern capital. As [the king] felt himself still as primarily king of
Upper Egypt, it was not until later that he wore the serpent of the
North, the sacred uraeus, upon his forehead.” (Breasted, 6, p. 38).
“The sun-disc, with the outspread wings of the hawk, became the
commonest symbol of their religion” (p. 54). But in the time of the
Fourth Dynasty “the priests of Heliopolis now demanded that [the
king, who had always been represented as the successor of the sun-
god and had borne the title ‘Horus’] be the bodily son of Ré, who
henceforth would appear on earth to become the father of the
Pharaoh” (p. 122).
Now, when the Pharaoh thus became identified with the great
sun-god Ré, his Pyramid-temple became the place of worship of the
sun-god. Megalithic architecture thus became indissolubly connected
with sun-worship, simply from the accident of the invention of the
art of building in stone—of erecting stone tombs, which were also
temples of offerings—by a people who happened to be sun-
worshippers and whose ruler’s tomb became the shrine of the sun-
god. I have already explained the close genetic connection between
the practice of mummification and megalithic building.
The fact that the dominance of the sun-god Ré was attained in the
northern capital, which was also the seat of serpent-worship, led to
the association of the sun and the serpent.[9] From this purely
fortuitous blending of the sun’s disc with the uraeus, often
combined, especially in later times, with the wings of the Horus-
hawk, a symbolism came into being which was destined to spread
until it encircled the world, from Ireland to America. For an excellent
example of this composite symbolism from America see Bancroft,
(3), Vol. IV., p. 351. A more striking illustration of the completeness
of the transference of a complex and wholly artificial design from
Ancient Egypt to America could not be imagined. [For the full
discussion of the original association of the sun and the serpent see
Sethe’s important Memoir (74).]
The chance circumstances which led to the linking together of all
these incongruous elements—mummification, megalithic
architecture, the idea of the king as son of the sun, sun and serpent
worship and its curious symbolism—were created in Egypt, so that,
wherever these peculiar customs or traditions make their appearance
elsewhere in association the one with the other, it can confidently be
regarded as a sure token of Egyptian influence, exerted directly or
indirectly.
When certain modern ethnologists argue that it is the most natural
thing in the world for primitive peoples to worship the sun as the
obvious source of warmth and fertility, and therefore such worship
can have no value as an indication of the contact of peoples, on
general principles one might be prepared to admit the validity of the
claim. But when it is realised that sun-worship, wherever it is found,
is invariably associated with part (or the whole) of a large series of
curiously incongruous customs and beliefs, it is no longer possible to
regard the worship of the sun as having originated independently in
several centres. Why should the sun-worshipper also worship the
serpent and use a winged symbol, build megalithic monuments,
mummify his dead, and practise a large series of fantastic tricks to
which other peoples are not addicted? There is no inherent reason
why a man who worships the sun should also tattoo his face,
perforate his ears, practise circumcision, and make use of massage.
In fact, until the time of the New Empire, the sun-worshipping
Egyptian did not practise ear-piercing and tattooing, thereby
illustrating the fact that originally these practices were not part of
the cult, and that their eventual association with it was purely
accidental. This only serves more definitely to confirm the view that
it was the fortuitous association of a curious series of customs in
Egypt at the time of the New Empire which supplied the cultural
outfit of the “heliolithic” wanderers for their great migration.
In accordance with Egyptian beliefs “the sun was born every
morning and sailed across the sky in a celestial barque, to arrive in
the west and descend as an old man tottering into the grave”
(Breasted, (6), p. 54).
The deceased might reach the west by being borne across in the
sun-god’s barque: friendly spirits, the four sons of Horus, might
bring him a craft on which he might float over: but by far the
majority depended upon the services of a ferryman called “Turnface”
(Breasted, p. 65).
In later times (Middle Kingdom) a model boat, fully equipped, was
usually put in the tomb, “in order that the deceased might have no
difficulty in crossing the waters to the happy isles.” “By the pyramid
of Sesostris III., in the sands of the desert, there were even buried
five large Nile boats, intended to carry the king and his house across
these waters” (Breasted, p. 176).
At a later period “the triumph of a Theban family brought with it
the supremacy of Amon.... His essential character and individuality
had already been obliterated by the solar theology of the Middle
Kingdom, when he had become Amon-Re, and with some attributes
borrowed from his ithyphallic neighbour, Min of Coptos, he now rose
to a unique and supreme position of unprecedented splendour” (6,
p. 248). Thus there was added to this “heliolithic” complex of ideas
the definitely phallic element: but one must confess that this aspect
of the culture did not become obtrusive until it was planted in alien
lands, where among the Phœnicians and the peoples of India the
phallic aspect became more strongly emphasised. From time to time
various writers have striven to demonstrate a phallic motive in
almost every element of the culture now under consideration. What I
want to make clear is that it was a late addition, which was relatively
insignificant in the original home of the culture.
After this digression I must now return to the further consideration
of the mummies themselves.
Direct examination of the mummified bodies does not, of course,
afford any certain evidence of the application of oil or fat to the
surface of the body. Large quantities of fatty material were often
found in the mouth and the body cavity (78; 81 and 86); and the
surface of the body was often greasy; but, of course, the fatty
materials in the skin itself might have afforded a sufficient
explanation of this. Dr. Alan Gardiner, however, tells me that ancient
Egyptian literature contains repeated references to the process of
anointing the body with “oil of cedar,”[10] and great stress is laid
upon this procedure as an essential element of the technique of
embalming.[11]
Thus in the time of the decadence of the New Empire an Egyptian
writer laments the loosening of Egypt’s hold on the Lebanons,
because if no “oil of cedar” were obtainable it might become
impossible any longer to embalm the dead.
Diodorus Siculus, writing many centuries later, says the body was
“anointed with oil of cedar and other things for thirty days, and
afterwards with myrrh, cinnamon, and other such like matters”
(Pettigrew, 56, p. 62). Thus there can be little doubt that it was an
essential part of the Ancient Egyptian technique to anoint the body
with oil.
Pettigrew (56, p. 62, and also p. 242) adduces cogent reasons in
proof of the fact that the Egyptians (and in modern times the
Capuchins, at Palermo) made use of heat to desiccate the body,
probably in a stove.
It is quite clear, therefore, that the Ancient Egyptians realised the
importance of desiccation as an essential element in the preservation
of the body. Moreover, they were familiar with a number of different
means of ensuring this end:—(1) by burial in dry sand; (2) by
exposure to the sun’s rays; (3) by removing all the softer and more
putrescible parts of the body; (4) possibly by massaging and
squeezing out the juices from the body; (5) by the free use of
alcohol (palm wine) and large quantities of powdered wood; and (6)
by the aid of fire.
Dr. Alan Gardiner tells me that the most ancient Egyptian writings,
such, for example, as the Pyramid texts, afford positive evidence
that the Egyptians recognised the fact of the desiccation of the body
in the process of embalming, for their scribes tell us, in the most
definite manner, that the aim of the ceremony of offering libations
was magically to restore to the body (as represented by the statue
above ground) the fluids it had lost during embalming (Blackman,
5).
If then the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age recognised the
importance of restoring the fluids to reanimate the mummy or its
statue, it is quite clear they must have appreciated the physical fact
that their process of preservation was largely a matter of
desiccation.
It is a point of some interest and importance to note in this
connection that the essential processes of mummification—(1)
salting, (2) evisceration, (3) drying, and (4) smoking (or even
cooking)—are identical with those adopted for the preservation of
meat, and (5) the use of honey is analogous to the means taken to
preserve fruit. In fact, the term used by Herodotus for the first stage
of the Egyptian process of mummification is the term used for
salting fish. It would be instructive to enquire in what measure these
two needs of primitive man in North-East Africa mutually influenced
one another, and led to an acquisition of knowledge useful to them
for the preservation both of their food and their dead relatives!
To the constituent elements of the “heliolithic” culture may now be
added the practices of anointing with oil or unguents, the burning of
incense and the offering of libations, all derived from the ritual of
embalming.
In considering the southern extension of Egyptian influence it
must be remembered that as early “as 2600 b.c. the Egyptian had
already begun the exploitation of the Upper Nile and had been led in
military force as far as the present Province of Dongola” (62, p. 23).
For several centuries Nubia and the Soudan were left very much to
themselves. Then during the time of the Middle Kingdom Egypt once
more exerted a powerful influence to the South. At the close of that
period Egypt was overrun by the Hyksos.
At Kerma, near the Third Cataract, Reisner has recently unearthed
a cemetery which he refers to the Hyksos Period (62, p. 23). “The
burial customs are revolting in their barbarity. On a carved bed in
the middle of a big circular pit the chief personage lies on his right
side with his head east. Under his head is a wooden pillow: between
his legs a sword or dagger. Around the bed lie a varying number of
bodies, male and female, all contracted on the right side, head east.
Among them are the pots and pans, the cosmetic jars, the stools,
and other objects. Over the whole burial is spread a great ox-hide. It
is clear they were all buried at once. The men and women round
about must have been sacrificed so that their spirits might
accompany the chief to the other world.... I could not escape the
belief that they had been buried alive” (62). These funerary
practices supply a most important link in the chain which I am
endeavouring to forge. I would especially call attention (1) to the
fact of the sacrifice of the chief’s (? wives and) servants and (2) to
the burial of the chief himself on a bed.
We know that the Egyptian practice of mummification spread
south into Nubia (39) and the Soudan.
According to Herodotus the ancient Macrobioi preserved the
bodies of their dead by drying: then they covered them with plaster,
painted them to look like living men, and set them up in their houses
for a year. For a fuller account of this practice and much more
instructive information for comparison see Ridgeway’s “Early Age of
Greece,” Vol. I., p. 483 et seq.
Numerous references in the classical writers lead us to believe that
a similar custom of keeping the mummy in the house of the relatives
for a longer or shorter period may have been in vogue in Egypt.
Throughout the widespread area in which mummification was
practised—from Africa to America—a precisely similar practice is
found among many peoples.
The custom of covering the mummies with plaster[12] is an
interesting survival of the practice described by Junker in Egypt (vide
supra), which seems to supply the explanation of the curious
measures adopted for modelling the face in Melanesia.
Even at the present day, centuries after the art of the embalmer
disappeared from Egypt, mummification is being attempted by
certain people dwelling in the neighbourhood of the head-waters of
the Nile.
In his article in Hastings’ Dictionary (32, p. 418) Hartland states
that the practice of mummification is found “more or less throughout
the west of Africa: among the Niamniam of the Upper Nile basin the
bodies of chiefs, and among the Baganda the kings, are preserved,
and the custom is found also among the Warundi in German East
Africa (Frobenius); and in British Central Africa the corpse is rubbed
with boiled maize (Werner).”
 Roscoe (72, p. 105), in his book on the Baganda, describes the
process of embalming the king’s body. As in Egypt, the body was
disembowelled; and the bowels were washed in beer, just as the
Egyptians, according to Herodotus and Diodorus, are said to have
done with palm-wine. The viscera were spread out in the sun to dry
and were then returned to the body, as was done in Egypt at the
time of the XXIst Dynasty. The body was then dried and washed
with beer.
So far as we are aware, the Egyptians never sacrificed any human
beings at their funerals, although they often placed in the serdab of
the mastaba statues of the deceased’s wife, family and servants, to
ensure him their presence and the comforts of a home in his new
form of existence.
In the quotations from Reisner’s report, it has just been seen that
he found some burials made about 1800 b.c., in which servants
appear to have been sacrificed.
In the case of the Baganda, Roscoe describes the killing of the
king’s wives and attendants at his funeral.
Roscoe further describes (in his book) the body of the chief as
being laid on a bed or framework of plantain trees (p. 117).
At the end of five months the head was removed from the
mummy and the jaw-bone was removed, cleaned, and then buried,
and a large conical thatched temple was built over the jaw. [In the
islands of the Torres Straits the same curious custom of rescuing the
head after about six months is also found; but it was the tongue and
not the jaw which received special attention (25 and 27)].
In Egypt, where the practice of mummification was most
successful, special treatment of the head was not necessary, except
occasionally in Ptolemaic times (39), when carelessness on the part
of the embalmer led to disastrous results and it became necessary to
“fake” a body for attachment to the separated head. But as the
Baganda were unable to make a mummy which would last, they
adopted these special measures with regard to the skull. Originally
special importance was attached to the head, primarily (vide supra)
as a means of identifying the deceased. But when the practice of
preservation spread to uncultured people, whose efforts at
embalming were ineffectual, the idea was transferred to the skull,
the reason for the special treatment of the head probably being
forgotten. Why such peculiar honour should be devoted to the jaw
can only be surmised from our knowledge of the belief that the
deceased was supposed to be able to talk and communicate with the
living (21).
In his article in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute (72, p.
44) Roscoe give some further particulars. Four men and four women
were clubbed to death at the funeral ceremony of the king.
The body was wrapped in strips of bark cloth and each finger and
toe was wrapped separately.
In L’Anthropologie (T. 21, 1910, p. 53) Poutrin says of the burial
customs of the M’Baka people of French Congo “le corps,
préalablement embaumé avec des herbes sécher et de la cendre est
couché sur un lit.”
Weeks (104, pp. 450 and 451) gives an account of the burial
customs of the Bangala of the Upper Congo. “They took out the
entrails and buried them, placed the corpse on a frame, lit a fire
under it, and thoroughly smoke-dried it.” “The dried body was tied in
a mat, put in a roughly made hut.” “Coffins were often made out of
old canoes.” “Poorer folk were rubbed with oil and red camwood
powder, bound round with cloth and tied up in a mat.”
One of the most remarkable instances of the survival of burial
practices strangely reminiscent of those of ancient Egypt has been
described by Mr. Amaury Talbot (99). Among the Ibibio people living
in the extreme south-west corner of Nigeria, bordering on the Gulf of
Guinea, he found that both the Ibibios and a neighbouring tribe, the
Ibos, had burial rites which “recall those of ancient Egypt.” For
instance, “among Ibos embalming is still practised.” Two methods of
mummification, in which the evisceration of the corpse takes place,
are practised.
For the grave “a wide-mouthed pit” was dug and “from the bottom
of this an underground passage, sometimes thirty feet long, led into
a square chamber with no other outlet. In this the dead body was
laid, and, after the bearers had returned to the light of day, stones
were set over the pit mouth and earth strewn over all.” Further, in
the case of the Ibibios, “in some prominent spot near the town
arbour-like erections are raised as memorials, and furnished with the
favourite property of the dead man. At the back or side of these is
placed what we always called a little ‘Ka’ house, with window or
door, into the central chamber, provided, as in ancient Egypt, for the
abode of the dead man’s Ka or double. Figures of the Chief, with
favourite wives and slaves, may also be seen—counterparts of the
Ushabtiu.”
From the photographs illustrating Mr. Talbot’s article many other
remarkable points of resemblance to ancient Egyptian practices are
to be noted.
The snake and the sun constitute the obtrusive features of the
crude design painted in the funeral shrine. The fact that so many
features of the Egyptian burial practices should have been retained
(and in association with many other elements of the “heliolithic”
culture) in this distant spot, on the other side of the continent, raises
the question whether or not its proximity to the Atlantic littoral may
not be a contributory factor in the survival. They may have been
spared by the remoteness of the retreat and the relative freedom
from disturbance, to which nearer localities in the heart of the
continent may have been subjected. But, on the other hand, there is
the possibility that the spread of culture around the coast may have
brought these Egyptian practices to Old Calabar. In the next few
pages it will be seen that such a possibility is not so unlikely as it
may appear at first sight.
But the fact that it was the custom among the Ibibio to bury the
wives of the king with his mummy suggests a truly African, as
distinct from purely Egyptian, influence, and makes it probable that
the custom spread across the continent. This view is further
supported by the traditions of the people themselves, no less than
by the physical features of their crania (see Report British
Association, 1912, p. 613).
As the people of the Ivory Coast (vide infra) practice a method of
embalming which is clearly Egyptian and untainted by these African
influences, it is clear that the two streams of Nilotic culture, one
across the continent viâ Kordofan and Lake Chad and the other
around the coasts of the Mediterranean and Atlantic, after reaching
the West Coast must have met somewhere between the mouth of
the Niger and the Ivory Coast.
[Since writing the above paragraphs, in which inferences as to
racial movements across Africa were based solely upon the
distribution and methods of mummification, I have become
acquainted with remarkable confirmation of these views from two
different sources. Frobenius, in his book “The Voice of Africa,” 1913
(see especially the map on p. 449, Vol. II.), makes an identical
delimitation of the two spheres of influence from the east, trans- and
circum-African (i.e., viâ the Mediterranean) respectively.
Sir Harry Johnston (“A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa,” Journ.
Roy. Anthr. Inst., 1913, p. 384) supplies even more precise and
definite confirmation of the route taken by the Egyptian culture-
migration across Kordofan to Lake Chad, thence to the Niger basin
and “all parts of West Africa.”
He adds further (pp. 412 and 413):—“Stone worship and the use
of stone in building and sepulture extend from North Africa
southwards across the desert region to Senegambia (sporadically)
and the northern parts of the Sudan, and to Somaliland. The
superstitious use of stone in connection with religion, burial and
after-death memorial, reappears again in Yoruba, in the North-West
Cameroons and adjoining Calabar region (Ekir-land).”]
 For the purpose of embalming the bodies of their dead “the
Baoule of the Ivory Coast remove the intestines, wash them with
palm wine or European alcohol, introduce alcohol and salt into the
body cavity, afterwards replacing the intestines and stitching up the
opening.” (Clozel and Villamur, quoted by Hartland, (32), p. 418.)
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....
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