In Australia, some
aboriginal tribes tied a corpse into a sitting position and left it
outdoors until dried by the sun. Then, instead of burial, they placed
the body in the branches of a tree or on a raised wooden platform. Some
tribes helped speed the mummification process by sewing the mouth, eyes,
and other orifices closed and then smoking the body in order to dry it.
Before doing this, they took out all the fat from the body, mixed it
with red ocher, and smeared it on the skin. Then, write Pretty and
Calder, fires were
kindled underneath
the platform, and the friends and mourners take up their position
around it, where they remain about 10 days, during the whole of which
time the mourners are not allowed to speak; a guard is placed on each
side of the corpse, whose duty it is to keep off the flies with
bunches of emu feathers or small branches of trees. . . . After the
body has remained several weeks on the platform, it is taken down and
buried [in a tree or on another platform]; the skull becomes the
drinking cup of the nearest relation. Bodies thus preserved have the
appearance of mummies; there is no sign of decay; and the wild dogs
will not meddle with them, though they devour all manner of carrion.
In a somewhat different
version, people from Melanesia, the islands north of Australia, allowed
the body to sit out for a few days before they put it (by then quite
swollen) into a canoe and sailed it away from land. Its skin was peeled
off and the internal organs were removed and replaced with palm pith;
the brain was also removed. Finally, the body was taken back to shore,
tied to a wooden frame, and hung to dry. In order to make sure that it
dried properly, small holes were made in the knees, elbows, hands, and
feet to help bodily fluids drain. At this time, the tongue, the palms of
the hands, and the soles of the feet were removed and given to the
surviving spouse.
After a number of months,
when the mummy was dried, it was decorated with seashell eyes, grass,
and seeds, and was painted in red ocher. The mummy was then tied to the
center post of the home of its spouse. As Pretty and Calder note,
"when, in the course of time, it fell to pieces, the head only was
retained."
