Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/457

 Coheir Synibolism. 149

period were often careless. " In the majority of mummies examined by me," he writes, " Amset was associated with the liver, Hapi with the lungs, Taumautef with the stomach and Qebhsenuf with the intestines."

The Canopic jars were dispensed with during the XXIst Dynasty, and the practice became prevalent of wrapping up the internal organs with a wax model of the protecting deity and restoring them to the body. " Occasionally," it is of special interest to learn in this connection, " kidneys were found by men in parcels of viscera associated with one or more of the deities." The older custom, which had a doctrinal significance of course, was to leave the heart and kidneys in situ}

It is unnecessary here to deal with the varied ideas regarding the internal organs that existed in different ancient countries outside Egypt. The point of special interest is that the Egyptian custom of connecting the internal organs with the coloured cardinal points, which had a doctrinal significance connected with mummification, spread eastward and reached China and America. The Maya custom, it will be noted, bears a closer resemblance to the Egyptian than does the Chinese. Black is in both cases the colour for the intestines and yellow for the stomach, while white is apparently the liver colour in America as in Egypt. The Canopic jars, which went out of fashion in Egypt, were continued in use by the Maya and placed under the protection of the Bacabs, their gods of the four coloured cardinal points. Apparently the Egyptian system of mummification which reached America was accompanied by the Egyptian doctrines in less modified form than one might be led to expect, especially when one considers how varied were the cultural influences to which these doctrines must have been subjected during the process of gradual transmission from Egypt to the Far East and

1 The " Heart and Reins " articles in The Journal of the Manchester Oriental Society, 191 1, pp. 41 et seq. K