gyptian methods of architecture made
their first appearance along with the peculiarly distinctive form of
agriculture and irrigation so intimately associated with early Babylonia
and Egypt.[22]

But agriculture also exerted a most profound influence in shaping the
early Egyptian body of beliefs.

I shall now call attention to certain features of the earliest mummies,
and then discuss how the ideas suggested by the practice of the art of
embalming the dead were affected by the early theories of agriculture
and the mutual influence they exerted one upon the other.

[17: See, however, _op. cit. supra_; also "The Origin of the
Pre-Columbian Civilization of America," _Science_, N.S., Vol. XLV, No.
1158, pp. 241-246, 9 March, 1917.]

[18: _Op. cit. supra_.]

[19: For the earliest evidence of the cutting of stone for architectural
purposes, see my statement in the _Report of the British Association for
1914_, p. 212.]

[20: Especially in Crete, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Southern Russia,
and the North African Littoral.]

[21: For an account of the evidence relating to these monuments, with
full bibliographical references, see Dechelette, "Manuel d'Archeologie
prehistorique Celtique et Gallo-Romaine," T. 1, 1912, pp. 390 _et seq._;
also Sophus Mueller, "Urgeschichte Europas," 1905, pp. 74 and 75; and
Louis Siret, "Les Cassiterides et l'Empire Colonial des Pheniciens,"
_L'Anthropologie_, T. 20, 1909, p. 313.]

[22: W. J. Perry, "The Geographical Distribution of Terraced Cultivation
and Irrigation," _Memoirs and Proc. Manch. Lit. and Phil. Soc._, Vol.
60, 1916.]

The Origin of Embalming.

I have already explained[23] how the increased importance that came to
be attached to the corpse as the means of securing a continuance of
existence led to the aggrandizement of the tomb. Special care was taken
to protect the dead and this led to the invention of coffins, and to the
making of a definite tomb, the size of which rapidly increased as more
and more ample supplies of food and other offerings were made. But the
very measures thus taken the more efficiently to protect and tend the
dead defeated the primary object of all this care. For, when buried in
such an elaborate tomb, the body no longer became desiccated and
preserved by the forces of nature, as so often happened when it was
placed in a simple grave directly in the hot dry sand.

It is of fundamental importance in the argument set forth here to
remember that