The transmission of the descriptions about the mummification in the Canary IslandsBetween tradition and innovation

Resumen

The mummies from the Canary lslands have been of considerable interest since the 15th century onward to authors of different historie contexts, provenances and professional profiles. They provide information about the well-preserved state of the aborigines' corpses, their funerary context and the speciflc conservation procedures applied to the bodies called mirlado. The objective of this article is to present different aspects about the transmission of knowledge of the mirlado, which cannot be merely defined as textual reproduction.While some data is collected from previous authors, other is newly introduced. As a result (re)productive texts combining traditional and innovative elements are composed. This study is mainly based on the application of the philological methodology called textual criticism through the comparison of more than seventy authors / descriptions.