Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/391

Rh preserved all its freshness. This information is specially interesting, as the fact that some of the masks bear the impress of European features may possibly indicate that the custom of using them was borrowed from the Scythians, on the Black Sea. On the other hand, the Scythians may have adopted the custom from the Milesians who founded Olbiain the eighth century, having received it themselves at a still earlier date from some other quarter. The general likeness, already noticed, between the Mycenæan and Olbian masks seems to point to the Peloponese itself, but this may be purely accidental. Indeed, the custom may have come directly or indirectly from Egypt, where it was in full swing in the 18th dynasty (1700 ), if not earlier. At any rate the Yeniseans of Minusinsk could not have borrowed the usage from the Chinese. They must be ignorant of any such practice, as it is not mentioned by Dr. J. M. de Groot in his great work, The Religions System of China: the Disposal of the Dead.

Having thus briefly enumerated the instances—probably not nearly all of them—in which funeral portrait-masks and offshoots of them have been found in Europe, and shown that they can be traced back, though with occasional wide gaps, for rather over 3,000 years, it remains to explain a few points in connection with the custom. We naturally enquire why they were used, and for whose benefit; why in some cases holes are pierced for the eyes, nostrils, and mouth, in others not; why they were not always placed on the face of the corpse, but merely laid alongside it.

To answer these and other questions that may suggest themselves we must form a connected theory on the whole subject. It is well known that death was often looked upon with such instinctive aversion and dread, that to touch a corpse was to incur defilement and require a subsequent