The procedures revealed in the Canary Islands bear no trace of the influence of Negro Africa to which I have called attention (_supra_) in the Soudan, Uganda, the Congo and the Niger. The details of the technique suggests the method employed in the XXIst Dynasty; and other features seem to point to the conclusion that the practice must have reached the Canary Islands from the Western Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar, not improbably through Phœnician channels.
[For a full critical discussion of all the literature relating to Egyptian influence in West Africa see Dahse, “Ein zweites Goldland Salomos,” _Zeitsch. f. Ethn._, 1911, p. 1. The mass of evidence collected in this memoir is entirely corroborative of the conclusions at which I have arrived from the study of mummification.]
With reference to Babylonia Langdon (=32=) states:—“Traces of embalming have not been found, but Herodotus says that the Babylonians preserved in honey. But a text has been discovered which mentions embalming with cedar oil (cited by Meissner, _Wiener Zeitsch. f. Kunde des Morgenlandes_, xii, 1898, p. 61). At any rate embalming is not characteristic of Babylonian burials and the custom may be due to Egyptian influence.”
There can, I think, be no doubt whatever as to the Egyptian origin of these instances of embalming in Babylonia. The mere fact of its sporadic occurrence in a country of which it is not characteristic clearly points to this conclusion, which is confirmed by the emphasis laid upon the use of oil of cedar—a definite indication of the Egyptian practice. The reference of Herodotus to the use of honey in Babylonia is also of peculiar interest, for it provides us with a connecting link between the Mediterranean area and India and Burma.
The extensive use of honey for the preservation of the body among the Greeks, Romans, Jews, and possibly also the Egyptians, is indicated by the frequent references to the practice in the classics, which have been summarised, with numerous quotations, by Pettigrew (=56=, pp. 85-87).
The employment of honey suggests the spread of Egyptian influence to Babylonia _viâ_ the Mediterranean and Syria, seeing that, so far as is known, such a method was used only on the Mediterranean littoral of Egypt, in Phœnicia and the Ægean.