Footnotes
See Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 12-20; R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia (Turin, 1881-1884), vol. ii. pp. 692 sqq.; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum (Tübingen, n.d.), pp. 365-369; id., Die ägyptische Religion2 (Berlin, 1909), pp. 38 sqq.; A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Ägypter (Münster i. W. 1890), pp. 109 sqq.; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1897), pp. 207 sqq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 172 sqq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (London, 1904), ii. 123 sqq.; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (London, 1911), i. 1 sqq.
J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (London, 1912), pp. vii. sq., 77 sqq., 84 sqq., 91 sqq. Compare id., History of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1908), p. 68; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 116 sq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (London, 1911), i. 100 sqq. The first series of the texts was discovered in 1880 when Mariette's workmen penetrated into the pyramid of King Pepi the First. Till then it had been thought by modern scholars that the pyramids were destitute of inscriptions. The first to edit the Pyramid Texts was Sir Gaston Maspero.
J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 91 sq. Among the earlier works referred to in the Pyramid Texts are “the chapter of those who ascend” and “the chapter of those who raise themselves up” (J. H. Breasted, op. cit. p. 85). From their titles these works would seem to have recorded a belief in the resurrection and ascension of the dead.
This has been done by Professor J. H. Breasted in his Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 18 sqq.
In Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 12, we must clearly read ἑβδομηκοστὸν δεύτερον with Scaliger and Wyttenbach for the ἑβδομηκοστόν of the MSS.
Herodotus, ii. 4, with A. Wiedemann's note; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (Berlin, 1825-1826), i. 94 sqq.; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 468 sq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 208 sq.
The birth of the five deities on the five supplementary days is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus (i. 13. 4) as well as by Plutarch (Isis et Osiris, 12). The memory of the five supplementary days seems to survive in the modern Coptic calendar of Egypt. The days from the first to the sixth of Amshir (February) are called “the days outside the year” and they are deemed unlucky. “Any child begotten during these days will infallibly be misshapen or abnormally tall or short. This also applies to animals so that cattle and mares are not covered during these days; moreover, some say (though others deny) that neither sowing nor planting should be undertaken.” However, these unlucky days are not the true intercalary days of the Coptic calendar, which occur in the second week of September at the end of the Coptic year. See C. G. Seligmann, “Ancient Egyptian Beliefs in Modern Egypt,” Essays and Studies presented to William Ridgeway (Cambridge, 1913), p. 456. As to the unluckiness of intercalary days in general, see The Scapegoat, pp. 339 sqq.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 13; Diodorus Siculus, i. 14, 17, 20; Tibullus, i. 7. 29 sqq.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 13 sq.
A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 366; id., Die ägyptische Religion2 (Berlin, 1909), p. 40; A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1897), pp. 213 sq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, i. 487 sq., ii. 206-211; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (London, 1911), i. 92-96, ii. 84, 274-276. These incidents of the scorpions are not related by Plutarch but are known to us from Egyptian sources. The barbarous legend of the begetting of Horus by the dead Osiris is told in unambiguous language in the Pyramid Texts, and it is illustrated by a monument which represents the two sister goddesses hovering in the likeness of hawks over the god, while Hathor sits at his head and the Frog-goddess Heqet squats in the form of a huge frog at his feet. See J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, p. 28, with note 2; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 280. Harpocrates is in Egyptian Her-pe-khred, “Horus the child” (A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 223). Plutarch, who appears to distinguish him from Horus, says that Harpocrates was begotten by the dead Osiris on Isis, and that he was born untimely and was weak in his lower limbs (Isis et Osiris, 19). Elsewhere he tells us that Harpocrates “was born, incomplete and youthful, about the winter solstice along with the early flowers and blossoms” (Isis et Osiris, 65).
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 8, 18.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 18.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 18. Compare Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium, v. 7, p. 142, ed. L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1859).
Diodorus Siculus, i. 21. 5-11; compare id., iv. 6. 3; Strabo, xvii. 1. 23, p. 803.
H. Brugsch, “Das Osiris-Mysterium von Tentyra,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, xix. (1881) pp. 77 sqq.; V. Loret, “Les fêtes d'Osiris au mois de Khoiak,” Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie Égyptiennes et Assyriennes, iii. (1882) pp. 43 sqq.; R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, pp. 697 sqq.; A. Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch (Leipsic, 1890), pp. 584 sqq.; id., Die Religion der alten Ägypter, p. 115; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 215 sqq.; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 367 sq.
J. Rendel Harris, The Annotators of the Codex Bezae (London, 1901), p. 104, note 2, referring to Dulaure.
A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion2 (Berlin, 1909), pp. 39 sq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 59 sqq.
A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 211.
A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 39 sq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 176; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 140, 262; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 70-75, 80-82. On Osiris as king of the dead see Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 79.
Miss Margaret A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos (London, 1904), pp. 8, 17, 18.
On Osiris as judge of the dead see A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Ägypter, pp. 131 sqq.; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 248 sqq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 187 sqq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead2 (London, 1909), i. pp. liii. sqq.; id., The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 141 sqq.; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 305 sqq.; A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 116 sqq.
The Book of the Dead, ch. cxxv. (vol. ii. pp. 355 sqq. of Budge's translation; P. Pierret, Le Livre des Morts, Paris, 1882, pp. 369 sqq.); R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, pp. 788 sqq.; A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Ägypter, pp. 132-134; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 249 sqq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 188-191; A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 117-121; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 337 sqq.; J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 297 sqq.
A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 p. 121. Compare A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Ägypter, pp. 134 sq.; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 253.
A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 254; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 305 sqq.; G. Maspero, op. cit. i. 194 sq.; A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 121 sqq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 97 sq., 100 sqq.; E. Lefébure, “Le Paradis Egyptien,” Sphinx, iii. (Upsala, 1900) pp. 191 sqq.
A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 249. Compare A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 117, 121; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 317, 328.
G. Maspero, “Le rituel du sacrifice funéraire,” Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie Égyptiennes (Paris, 1893-1912), i. 291 sq.
G. Maspero, op. cit. pp. 300-316. Compare A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Ägypter, pp. 123 sqq.; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 234 sqq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead2 (London, 1909), i. pp. iiii. sqq.; id., The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 126, 140 sq.; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 66 sqq., 101 sq., 176, 305, 399 sq.; A. Moret, Du Caractère religieux de la Royauté Pharaonique (Paris, 1902), p. 312; id., Kings and Gods of Egypt (New York and London, 1912), pp. 91 sqq.; id., Mystères Égyptiens (Paris, 1913), pp. 37 sqq. “In one of the ceremonies of the ‘Opening of the Mouth’ the deceased was temporarily placed in a bull's skin, which was probably that of one of the bulls which were offered up during the celebration of the service. From this skin the deceased obtained further power, and his emergence from it was the visible symbol of his resurrection and of his entrance into everlasting life with all the strength of Osiris and Horus” (E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 400).
A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 416; J. H. Breasted, History of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 149 sq.; Margaret A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos (London, 1904), p. 31. Under the earlier dynasties only kings appear to have been identified with Osiris.
A. Moret, Mystères Égyptiens (Paris, 1913), p. 40.
A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 111-113. However, in later times the body with which the dead came to life was believed to be a spiritual, not a material body; it was called sāhu. See E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead,2 i. pp. lvii. sqq.; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 123 sq.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 19 and 55; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 368; id., Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 41 sq.; A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Ägypter, p. 114; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 214 sq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 176-178; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 62 sq., 64, 89 sqq., 309 sqq.
The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 290 sqq.
A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 217. For details see E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 30 sqq.
J. H. Breasted, History of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1908), p. 61; id., Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, p. 38; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 37, 67, 81, 210, 212, 214, 290, ii. 1, 2, 8-13, 82-85; A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 21, 23, 110; A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 289; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 70, 96, 97. It appears to be now generally held that the original seat of the worship of Osiris was at Busiris, but that at Abydos the god found a second home, which in time eclipsed the old one in glory. According to Professors Ed. Meyer and A. Erman, the god whom Osiris displaced at Abydos was Anubis.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 20; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 417; J. H. Breasted, History of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1908), pp. 148 sq.; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. p. 209; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 68 sq., ii. 3.
Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. p. 125.
J. H. Breasted, History of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 43, 50 sq. The excavations were begun by E. Amélineau and continued by W. M. Flinders Petrie (Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. p. 119). See E. Amélineau, Le Tombeau d'Osiris (Paris, 1899); W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties, Part ii. (London, 1901). The excavations of the former have been criticized by Sir Gaston Maspero (Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie Égyptiennes, vi. (Paris, 1912) pp. 153-182).
Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 119, 124; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 8. The place is now known by the Arabic name of Umm al-Ka'âb or “Mother of Pots” on account of the large quantity of pottery that has been found there.
Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 119, 125, 127, 128, 129, 209. The king's Horus name has sometimes been read Zer, but according to Professor Meyer (op. cit. p. 128) and Dr. Budge (Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 83) the true reading is Khent (Chent). The king's personal name was perhaps Ka (Ed. Meyer, op. cit. p. 128).
E. Amélineau, Le Tombeau d'Osiris (Paris, 1899), pp. 107-115; W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties, Part ii. (London, 1901) pp. 8 sq., 16-19, with the frontispiece and plates lx. lxi.; G. Maspero, Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie Égyptiennes (Paris, 1893-1912), vi. 167-173; J. H. Breasted, History of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1908), pp. 50 sq., 148; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 8-10, 13, 83-85. The tomb, with its interesting contents, was discovered and excavated by Monsieur E. Amélineau. The masses, almost the mountains, of broken pottery, under which the tomb was found to be buried, are probably remains of the vessels in which pious pilgrims presented their offerings at the shrine. See E. Amélineau, op. cit. pp. 85 sq.; J. H. Breasted, op. cit. pp. 51, 148. The high White Crown, worn by Osiris, was the symbol of the king's dominion over Upper Egypt; the flat Red Crown, with a high backpiece and a projecting spiral, was the symbol of his dominion over Lower Egypt. On the monuments the king is sometimes represented wearing a combination of the White and the Red Crown to symbolize his sovereignty over both the South and the North. White was the distinctive colour of Upper, as red was of Lower, Egypt. The treasury of Upper Egypt was called “the White House”; the treasury of Lower Egypt was called “the Red House.” See Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 103 sq.; J. H. Breasted, History of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1908), pp. 34 sq., 36, 41.
A. Moret, Mystères Égyptiens (Paris, 1913), pp. 159-162, with plate iii. Compare Victor Loret, “L'Égypte au temps du totémisme,” Conférences faites au Musée Guimet, Bibliothèque de Vulgarisation, xix. (Paris, 1906) pp. 179-186. Both these writers regard the hawk as the totem of the royal clan. This view is rejected by Prof. Ed. Meyer, who, however, holds that Horus, whose emblem was the hawk, was the oldest national god of Egypt (Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 102-106). He prefers to suppose that the hawk, or rather the falcon, was the emblem of a god of light because the bird flies high in the sky (op. cit. p. 73; according to him the bird is not the sparrow-hawk but the falcon, ib. p. 75). A similar view is adopted by Professor A. Wiedemann (Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 26). Compare A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 10, 11. The native Egyptian name of Hawk-town was Nechen, in Greek it was Hieraconpolis (Ed. Meyer, op. cit. p. 103). Hawks were worshipped by the inhabitants (Strabo, xvii. 1. 47, p. 817).
According to the legend the four sons of Horus were set by Anubis to protect the burial of Osiris. They washed his dead body, they mourned over him, and they opened his cold lips with their fingers. But they disappeared, for Isis had caused them to grow out of a lotus flower in a pool of water. In that position they are sometimes represented in Egyptian art before the seated effigy of Osiris. See A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 p. 43; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 40, 41, 327.
See above, pp. 9sq.
E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 16 sq.
Cyril of Alexandria, In Isaiam, lib. ii. Tomus iii. (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, lxx. 441).
As to the Egyptian calendar see L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie (Berlin, 1825-1826), i. 93 sqq.; Sir J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), ii. 368 sqq.; R. Lepsius, Die Chronologie der Aegypter, i. (Berlin, 1849) pp. 125 sqq.; H. Brugsch, Die Ägyptologie (Leipsic, 1891), pp. 347-366; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 468 sq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 207-210; Ed. Meyer, “Aegyptische Chronologie,” Abhandlungen der königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1904, pp. 2 sqq.; id., “Nachträge zur ägyptischen Chronologie,” Abhandlungen der königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1907, pp. 3 sqq.; id., Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 28 sqq., 98 sqq.; F. K. Ginzel, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. (Leipsic, 1906) pp. 150 sqq.
Herodotus, ii. 4, with A. Wiedemann's note; Geminus, Elementa Astronomiae, 8, p. 106, ed. C. Manitius (Leipsic, 1898); Censorinus, De die natali, xviii. 10.
Geminus, Elementa Astronomiae, 8, pp. 106 sqq., ed. C. Manitius.
Diodorus Siculus, i. 50. 2; Strabo, xvii. i. 46, p. 816. According to H. Brugsch (Die Ägyptologie, pp. 349 sq.), the Egyptians would seem to have denoted the movable year of the calendar and the fixed year of the sun by different written symbols. For more evidence that they were acquainted with a four years' period, corrected by intercalation, see R. Lepsius, Chronologie der Aegypter, i. 149 sqq.
Geminus, Elementa Astronomiae, 8, p. 106, ed. C. Manitius. The same writer further (p. 108) describes as a popular Greek error the opinion that the Egyptian festival of Isis coincided with the winter solstice. In his day, he tells us, the two events were separated by an interval of a full month, though they had coincided a hundred and twenty years before the time he was writing.
Scholia in Caesaris Germanici Aratea, p. 409, ed. Fr. Eyssenhardt, in his edition of Martianus Capella (Leipsic, 1866).
Copies of the decree in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek have been found inscribed on stones in Egypt. See Ch. Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques (Brussels, 1900), pp. 415 sqq., No. 551; W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (Leipsic, 1903-1905), vol. i. pp. 91 sqq., No. 56; J. P. Mahaffy, The Empire of the Ptolemies (London, 1895), pp. 205 sqq., 226 sqq. The star mentioned in the decree is the Dog-star (Sirius). See below, pp. 34sqq.
W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, vol. i. pp. 140 sqq., No. 90, with note 25 of the editor.
On the Alexandrian year see L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 140 sqq. That admirable chronologer argued (pp. 153-161) that the innovation was introduced not, as had been commonly supposed, in 25 b.c., but in 30 b.c., the year in which Augustus defeated Mark Antony under the walls of Alexandria and captured the city. However, the question seems to be still unsettled. See F. K. Ginzel, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 226 sqq., who thinks it probable that the change was made in 26 b.c. For the purposes of this study the precise date of the introduction of the Alexandrian year is not material.
In demotic the fixed Alexandrian year is called “the year of the Ionians,” while the old movable year is styled “the year of the Egyptians.” Documents have been found which are dated by the day and the month of both years. See H. Brugsch, Die Ägyptologie, pp. 354 sq.
L. Ideler, op. cit. i. 149-152. Macrobius thought that the Egyptians had always employed a solar year of 365-¼ days (Saturn. i. 12. 2, i. 14. 3). The ancient calendar of the Mexicans resembled that of the Egyptians except that it was divided into eighteen months of twenty days each (instead of twelve months of thirty days each), with five supplementary days added at the end of the year. These supplementary days (nemontemi) were deemed unlucky: nothing was done on them: they were dedicated to no deity; and persons born on them were considered unfortunate. See B. de Sahagun, Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne, traduite par D. Jourdanet et R. Simeon (Paris, 1880), pp. 50, 164; F. S. Clavigero, History of Mexico (London, 1807), i. 290. Unlike the Egyptian calendar, however, the Mexican appears to have been regularly corrected by intercalation so as to bring it into harmony with the solar year. But as to the mode of intercalation our authorities differ. According to the positive statement of Sahagun, one of the earliest and best authorities, the Mexicans corrected the deficiency of their year by intercalating one day in every fourth year, which is precisely the correction adopted in the Alexandrian and the Julian calendar. See B. de Sahagun, op. cit. pp. 286 sq., where he expressly asserts the falsehood of the view that the bissextile year was unknown to the Mexicans. This weighty statement is confirmed by the practice of the Indians of Yucatan. Like the Aztecs, they reckoned a year to consist of 360 days divided into 18 months of 20 days each, with 5 days added so as to make a total of 365 days, but every fourth year they intercalated a day so as to make a total of 366 days. See Diego de Landa, Relation des choses de Yucatan (Paris, 1864), pp. 202 sqq. On the other hand the historian Clavigero, who lived in the eighteenth century, but used earlier authorities, tells us that the Mexicans “did not interpose a day every four years, but thirteen days (making use here even of this favourite number) every fifty-two years; which produces the same regulation of time” (History of Mexico, Second Edition, London, 1807, vol. i. p. 293). However, the view that the Mexicans corrected their year by intercalation is rejected by Professor E. Seler. See his “Mexican Chronology,” in Bulletin 28 of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1904), pp. 13 sqq.; and on the other side Miss Zelia Nuttall, “The Periodical Adjustments of the Ancient Mexican Calendar,” American Anthropologist, N.S. vi. (1904) pp. 486-500.
Herodotus, ii. 36, with A. Wiedemann's note; Diodorus Siculus, i. 14-1, i. 17. 1; Pliny, Nat. Hist. v. 57 sq., xviii. 60; Sir J. Gardiner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), ii. 398, 399, 418, 426 sq.; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 577 sqq.; A. de Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants (London, 1884), pp. 354 sq., 369, 381; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 66.
Herodotus, ii. 14; Diodorus Siculus, i. 36; Strabo, xvii. 1. 3, pp. 786-788; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 167-170; Seneca, Natur. Quaest. iv. 2. 1-10; E. W. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Paisley and London, 1895), pp. 17 sq., 495 sqq.; A. Erman, op. cit. pp. 21-25; G. Maspero, op. cit. i. 22 sqq. However, since the Suez Canal was cut, rain has been commoner in Lower Egypt (A. H. Sayce on Herodotus, ii. 14).
G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 22-26; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 23. According to Lane (op. cit. pp. 17 sq.) the Nile rises in Egypt about the summer solstice (June 21) and reaches its greatest height by the autumnal equinox (September 22). This agrees exactly with the statement of Diodorus Siculus (i. 36. 2). Herodotus says (ii. 19) that the rise of the river lasted for a hundred days from the summer solstice. Compare Pliny, Nat. Hist. v. 57, xviii. 167; Seneca, Nat. Quaest. iv. 2. 1. According to Prof. Ginzel the Nile does not rise in Egypt till the last week of June (Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 154). For ancient descriptions of Egypt in time of flood see Herodotus, ii. 97; Diodorus Siculus, i. 36. 8 sq.; Strabo, xvii. 1. 4, p. 788; Aelian, De natura animalium, x. 43; Achilles Tatius, iv. 12; Seneca, Natur. Quaest. iv. 2. 8 and 11.
Sir J. Gardiner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), ii. 365 sq.; E. W. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Paisley and London, 1895), pp. 498 sqq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 23 sq., 69. The last-mentioned writer says (p. 24) that the dams are commonly cut between the first and sixteenth of July, but apparently he means August.
Sir J. D. Wilkinson, op. cit. ii. 398 sq.; Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, cited above, vol. i. p. 231, note 3. According to Pliny (Nat. Hist. xviii. 60) barley was reaped in Egypt in the sixth month from sowing, and wheat in the seventh month. Diodorus Siculus, on the other hand, says (i. 36. 4) that the corn was reaped after four or five months. Perhaps Pliny refers to Lower, and Diodorus to Upper Egypt. Elsewhere Pliny affirms (Nat. Hist. xviii. 169) that the corn was sown at the beginning of November, and that the reaping began at the end of March and was completed in May. This certainly applies better to Lower than to Upper Egypt.
Pausanias, x. 32. 18.
E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 278.
N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, De Bare'e-sprekende Toradjas van Midden-Celebes (Batavia, 1912), i. 273. The more civilized Indians of tropical America, who practised agriculture and had developed a barbaric art, appear to have commonly represented the rain-god in human form with tears streaming down from his eyes. See T. A. Joyce, “The Weeping God,” Essays and Studies presented to William Ridgeway (Cambridge, 1913), pp. 365-374.
This we learn from inscriptions at Silsilis. See A. Moret, Mystères Égyptiens (Paris, 1913), p. 180.
E. W. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Paisley and London, 1895), ch. xxvi. pp. 495 sq.
L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 124 sqq.; R. Lepsius, Die Chronologie der Aegypter, i. 168 sq.; F. K. Ginzel, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 190 sq.; Ed. Meyer, “Nachträge zur ägyptischen Chronologie,” Abhandlungen der königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1907 (Berlin, 1908), pp. 11 sq.; id., Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 28 sq., 99 sqq. The coincidence of the rising of Sirius with the swelling of the Nile is mentioned by Tibullus (i. 7. 21 sq.) and Aelian (De natura animalium, x. 45). In later times, as a consequence of the precession of the equinoxes, the rising of Sirius gradually diverged from the summer solstice, falling later and later in the solar year. In the sixteenth and fifteenth century b.c. Sirius rose seventeen days after the summer solstice, and at the date of the Canopic decree (238 b.c.) it rose a whole month after the first swelling of the Nile. See L. Ideler, op. cit. i. 130; F. K. Ginzel, op. cit. i. 190; Ed. Meyer, “Nachträge zur ägyptischen Chronologie,” pp. 11 sq. According to Censorinus (De die natali, xxi. 10), Sirius regularly rose in Egypt on the twentieth of July (Julian calendar); and this was true of latitude 30° in Egypt (the latitude nearly of Heliopolis and Memphis) for about three thousand years of Egyptian history. See L. Ideler, op. cit. i. 128-130. But the date of the rising of the star is not the same throughout Egypt; it varies with the latitude, and the variation within the limits of Egypt amounts to seven days or more. Roughly speaking, Sirius rises nearly a whole day earlier for each degree of latitude you go south. Thus, whereas near Alexandria in the north Sirius does not rise till the twenty-second of July, at Syene in the south it rises on the sixteenth of July. See R. Lepsius, op. cit. i. 168 sq.; F. K. Ginzel, op. cit. i. 182 sq. Now it is to be remembered that the rising of the Nile, as well as the rising of Sirius, is observed earlier and earlier the further south you go. The coincident variation of the two phenomena could hardly fail to confirm the Egyptians in their belief of a natural or supernatural connexion between them.
Diodorus Siculus, i. 27. 4; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 21, 22, 38, 61; Porphyry, De antro nympharum, 24; Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, ii. 517; Canopic decree, lines 36 sq., in W. Dittenberger's Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, vol. i. p. 102, No. 56 (lines 28 sq. in Ch. Michel's Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques, p. 417, No. 551); R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, pp. 825 sq. On the ceiling of the Memnonium at Thebes the heliacal rising of Sirius is represented under the form and name of Isis (Sir J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, London, 1878, iii. 102).
Porphyry and the Canopic decree, ll.cc.; Censorinus, De die natali, xviii. 10, xxi. 10. In inscriptions on the temple at Syene, the modern Assuan, Isis is called “the mistress of the beginning of the year,” the goddess “who revolves about the world, near to the constellation of Orion, who rises in the eastern sky and passes to the west perpetually” (R. V. Lanzone, op. cit. p. 826). According to some, the festival of the rising of Sirius and the beginning of the sacred year was held on the nineteenth, not the twentieth of July. See Ed. Meyer, “Ägyptische Chronologie,” Abhandlungen der königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1904, pp. 22 sqq.; id., “Nachträge zur ägyptischen Chronologie,” Abhandlungen der königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1907, pp. 7 sqq.; id., Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 28 sqq., 98 sqq.
Eudoxi ars astronomica, qualis in charta Aegyptiaca superest, ed. F. Blass (Kiliae, 1887), p. 14, οἱ δὲ ἀσ[τρο]λ[ό]γοι καὶ οἱ ἱερογραμμ[ατεῖς] χ[ρῶν]ται ταῖς κατὰ σελή[ν]ἠ[ν] ἡμ[έ]ραις καὶ ἄγουσι πανδημ[ι]κὰς ἕ[ορ]τας τινὰς μὲν ὡς ἐνομί[σθ]ἠ τὰ δὲ καταχυτήρια καὶ κυνὸς ἀνατολὴν καὶ σεληναῖα κατὰ θεό[ν], ἀναλεγόμενοι τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων. This statement of Eudoxus or of one of his pupils is important, since it definitely proves that, besides the shifting festivals of the shifting official year, the Egyptians celebrated other festivals, which were dated by direct observation of natural phenomena, namely, the annual inundation, the rise of Sirius, and the phases of the moon. The same distinction of the fixed from the movable festivals is indicated in one of the Hibeh papyri, but the passage is unfortunately mutilated. See The Hibeh Papyri, part i., edited by B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt (London, 1906), pp. 145, 151 (pointed out to me by my friend Mr. W. Wyse). The annual festival in honour of Ptolemy and Berenice was fixed on the day of the rising of Sirius. See the Canopic decree, in W. Dittenberger's Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, No. 56 (vol. i. pp. 102 sq.).
The rise of Sirius was carefully observed by the islanders of Ceos, in the Aegean. They watched for it with arms in their hands and sacrificed on the mountains to the star, drawing from its aspect omens of the salubrity or unhealthiness of the coming year. The sacrifice was believed to secure the advent of the cool North winds (the Etesian winds as the Greeks call them), which regularly begin to blow about this time of the year, and mitigate the oppressive heat of summer in the Aegean. See Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. ii. 516-527, with the notes of the Scholiast on vv. 498, 526; Theophrastus, De ventis, ii. 14; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. vi. 3. 29, p. 753, ed. Potter; Nonnus, Dionys. v. 269-279; Hyginus, Astronomica, ii. 4; Cicero, De divinatione, i. 57. 130; M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipsic, 1906), pp. 6-8; C. Neumann und J. Partsch, Physikalische Geographie von Griechenland (Breslau, 1885), pp. 96 sqq. On the top of Mount Pelion in Thessaly there was a sanctuary of Zeus, where sacrifices were offered at the rising of Sirius, in the height of the summer, by men of rank, who were chosen by the priest and wore fresh sheep-skins. See [Dicaearchus,] “Descriptio Graeciae,” Geographi Graeci Minores, ed. C. Müller, i. 107; Historicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. C. Müller, ii. 262.
Above, pp. 24sq.
We know from Censorinus (De die natali, xxi. 10) that the first of Thoth coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius on July 20 (Julian calendar) in the year 139 a.d. Hence reckoning backwards by Sothic periods of 1460 solar years we may infer that Sirius rose on July 20th (Julian calendar) in the years 1321 b.c., 2781 b.c., and 4241 b.c.; and accordingly that the civil or vague Egyptian year of 365 days was instituted in one of these years. In favour of supposing that it was instituted either in 2781 b.c. or 4241 b.c., it may be said that in both these years the rising of Sirius nearly coincided with the summer solstice and the rising of the Nile; whereas in the year 1321 b.c. the summer solstice, and with it the rising of the Nile, fell nineteen days before the rising of Sirius and the first of Thoth. Now when we consider the close causal connexion which the Egyptians traced between the rising of Sirius and the rising of the Nile, it seems probable that they started the new calendar on the first of Thoth in a year in which the two natural phenomena coincided rather than in one in which they diverged from each other by nineteen days. Prof. Ed. Meyer decides in favour of the year 4241 b.c. as the date of the introduction of the Egyptian calendar on the ground that the calendar was already well known in the Old Kingdom. See L. Ideler, op. cit. i. 125 sqq.; F. K. Ginzel, op. cit. i. 192 sqq.; Ed. Meyer, “Nachträge zur ägyptischen Chronologie,” Abhandlungen der königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1907 (Berlin, 1908), pp. 11 sq.; id., Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 28 sqq., 98 sqq. When the fixed Alexandrian year was introduced in 30 b.c. (see above, pp. 27sq.) the first of Thoth fell on August 29, which accordingly was thenceforth reckoned the first day of the year in the Alexandrian calendar. See L. Ideler, op. cit. i. 153 sqq. The period of 1460 solar or 1461 movable Egyptian years was variously called a Sothic period (Clement of Alexandria, Strom. i. 21. 136, p. 401 ed. Potter), a Canicular year (from Canicula, “the Dog-star,” that is, Sirius), a heliacal year, and a year of God (Censorinus, De die natali, xviii. 10). But there is no evidence or probability that the period was recognized by the Egyptian astronomers who instituted the movable year of 365 days. Rather, as Ideler pointed out (op. cit. i. 132), it must have been a later discovery based on continued observations of the heliacal rising of Sirius and of its gradual displacement through the whole length of the official calendar. Brugsch, indeed, went so far as to suppose that the period was a discovery of astronomers of the second century a.d., to which they were led by the coincidence of the first of Thoth with the heliacal rising of Sirius in 139 a.d. (Die Ägyptologie, p. 357). But the discovery, based as it is on a very simple calculation (365 × 4 = 1460), could hardly fail to be made as soon as astronomers estimated the length of the solar year at 365-¼ days, and that they did so at least as early as 238 b.c. is proved conclusively by the Canopic decree. See above, pp. 25 sq., 27. As to the Sothic period see further R. Lepsius, Die Chronologie der Aegypter, i. 165 sqq.; F. K. Ginzel, op. cit. i. 187 sqq.
For the convenience of the reader I subjoin a table of the Egyptian months, with their dates, as these fell, (1) in a year when the first of Thoth coincided with July 20 of the Julian calendar, and (2) in the fixed Alexandrian year.
Egyptian Months, Sothic Year beginning July 20, Alexandrian Year.
1 Thoth, 20 July, 29 August
1 Phaophi, 19 August, 28 September
1 Atbyr, 18 September, 28 October
1 Khoiak, 18 October, 27 November
1 Tybi, 17 November, 27 December
1 Mechir, 17 December, 26 January
1 Phamenoth, 16 January, 25 February
1 Pharmuthi, 15 February, 27 March
1 Pachon, 17 March, 26 April
1 Payni, 16 April, 26 May
1 Epiphi, 16 May, 25 June
1 Mesori, 15 June, 25 July
1 Supplementary, 15 July, 24 August
See L. Ideler, op. cit. i. 143 sq.; F. K. Ginzel, op. cit. i. 200.
The Canopic decree (above, p. 27) suffices to prove that the Egyptian astronomers, long before Caesar's time, were well acquainted with the approximately exact length of the solar year, although they did not use their knowledge to correct the calendar except for a short time in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes. With regard to Caesar's debt to the Egyptian astronomers see Dio Cassius, xliii. 26; Macrobius, Saturn, i. 14. 3, i. 16. 39; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 166 sqq.
E. W. Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (Paisley and London, 1895), ch. xxvi. pp. 499 sq.
Bruno Gutmann, “Feldbausitten und Wachstumsbräuche der Wadschagga,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xlv. (1913) pp. 484 sq.
Hon. K. R. Dundas, “Notes on the tribes inhabiting the Baringo District, East Africa Protectorate,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) p. 54.
E. W. Lane, op. cit. pp. 500-504; Sir Auckland Colvin, The Making of Modern Egypt (London, 1906), pp. 278 sq. According to the latter writer, a dressed dummy was thrown into the river at each cutting of the dam.
Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones, iv. 2. 7. The cutting of the dams is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus (i. 36. 3), and the festival on that occasion (τὰ καταχυτήρια) is noticed by Eudoxus (or one of his pupils) in a passage which has already been quoted. See above, p. 35, note 2.
Sir Auckland Colvin, l.c.
Τῆς Ἀχαίας. Plutarch derives the name from ἄχος, “pain,” “grief.” But the etymology is uncertain. It has lately been proposed to derive the epithet from ὀχή, “nourishment.” See M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste (Leipsic, 1906), p. 326. As to the vaults (μέγαρα) of Demeter see Pausanias, ix. 8. 1; Scholiast on Lucian, Dial. Meretr. ii. pp. 275 sq., ed. H. Rabe (Leipsic, 1906).
In antiquity the Pleiades set at dawn about the end of October or early in November. See L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 242; Aug. Mommsen, Chronologie (Leipsic, 1883), pp. 16, 27; G. F. Unger, “Zeitrechnung der Griechen und Römer,” in Iwan Müller's Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, i.1 (Nördlingen, 1886) pp. 558, 585.
Τὰς παρουσίας τῶν ἀναγκαίων καί ἀποκρύψεις.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 69-71. With the sleep of the Phrygian gods we may compare the sleep of Vishnu. The toils and anxieties of the Indian farmer “are continuous, and his only period of comparative rest is in the heavy rain time, when, as he says, the god Vishnu goes to sleep, and does not wake till October is well advanced and the time has come to begin cutting and crushing the sugar-cane and boiling down the juice” (W. Crooke, Natives of Northern India, London, 1907, p. 159).
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 77.
Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 204 sqq.
C. Hill Tout, “Report on the Ethnology of the Stlatlum Indians of British Columbia,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv. (1905) pp. 140 sq.
Psalm cxxvi. 5 sq. Firmicus Maternus asks the Egyptians (De errore profanarum religionum, ii. 7), “Cur plangitis fruges terrae et crescentia lugetis semina?”
As to the Egyptian modes of reaping and threshing see Sir J. Gardiner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), ii. 419 sqq.; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 572 sqq.
Diodorus Siculus, i. 14. 2.
Herodotus, ii. 79; Julius Pollux, iv. 54; Pausanias, ix. 29. 7; Athenaeus, xiv. 11 sq., pp. 618-620. As to these songs see Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 214 sqq.
H. Brugsch, Adonisklage und Linoslied (Berlin, 1852), p. 24, corrected by A. Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 336. As to the lamentations for Osiris see above, p. 12.
J. Mooney, “Myths of the Cherokee,” Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1900), pp. 423 sq. I do not know what precisely the writer means by “the last working of the crop” and “the first working of the corn.”
Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 180 sqq.
A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, 1909), p. 46.
S. Powers, Tribes of California (Washington, 1877), p. 25.
A. Jaussen, “Coutumes Arabes,” Revue Biblique, 1er avril 1903, p. 258; id., Coutumes des Arabes au pays de Moab (Paris 1908), pp. 252 sq.
Thus with regard to the Egyptian month of Athyr he tells us that the sun was then in the sign of the Scorpion (Isis et Osiris, 13), that Athyr corresponded to the Athenian month Pyanepsion and the Boeotian month Damatrius (op. cit. 69), that it was the month of sowing (ib.), that in it the Nile sank, the earth was laid bare by the retreat of the inundation, the leaves fell, and the nights grew longer than the days (op. cit. 39). These indications agree on the whole with the date of Athyr in the Alexandrian calendar, namely October 28-November 26. Again, he says (op. cit. 43) that the festival of the beginning of spring was held at the new moon of the month Phamenoth, which, in the Alexandrian calendar, corresponded to February 24-March 26. Further, he tells us that a festival was celebrated on the 23rd of Phaophi after the autumn equinox (op. cit. 52), and in the Alexandrian calendar Phaophi began on September 28, a few days after the autumn equinox. Once more, he observes that another festival was held after the spring equinox (op. cit. 65), which implies the use of a fixed solar year. See G. Parthey in his edition of Plutarch's Isis et Osiris (Berlin, 1850), pp. 165-169.
H. Brugsch, Die Ägyptologie, p. 355.
Herodotus, ii. 170.
Herodotus, ii. 129-132.
Herodotus, ii. 41, with Prof. A. Wiedemann's note (Herodots zweites Buch, pp. 187 sqq.); Diodorus Siculus, i. 11. 4; Aelian, De natura animalium, x. 27; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 19 and 39. According to Prof. Wiedemann “the Egyptian name of the cow of Isis was ḥes-t, and this is one of the rare cases in which the name of the sacred animal agrees with that of the deity.” Hest was the usual Egyptian form of the name which the Greeks and Romans represented as Isis. See R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, pp. 813 sqq.
In this form she is represented on a relief at Philae pouring a libation in honour of the soul of Osiris. See E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 8. She is similarly portrayed in a bronze statuette, which is now in the Louvre. See G. Perrot et Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de l'Art dans l'Antiquité, i. (Paris, 1882) p. 60, fig. 40.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 52. The interpretation is accepted by Prof. A. Wiedemann (Herodots zweites Buch, p. 482).
Herodotus, ii. 62. In one of the Hibeh papyri (No. 27, lines 165-167) mention is made of the festival and of the lights which were burned throughout the district. See The Hibeh Papyri, part i., ed. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt (London, 1906), p. 149 (pointed out to me by Mr. W. Wyse). In the papyrus the festival is said to have been held in honour of Athena (i.e. Neith), the great goddess of Sais, who was there identified with Isis. See A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Ägypter, pp. 77 sq.; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 140 sq.
In the period of the Middle Kingdom the Egyptians of Siut used to light lamps for the dead on the last day and the first day of the year. See A. Erman, “Zehn Vorträge aus dem mittleren Reich,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, xx. (1882) p. 164; id., Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 434 sq.
E. W. Nelson, “The Eskimo about Bering Strait,” Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Part i. (Washington, 1899) pp. 363 sqq.
S. Powers, Tribes of California (Washington, 1877), pp. 328, 355, 356, 384.
Kostromitonow, “Bemerkungen über die Indianer in Ober-Kalifornien,” in K. F. v. Baer and Gr. v. Helmersen's Beiträge zur Kenntniss des russischen Reiches, i. (St. Petersburg, 1839) pp. 88 sq. The natives of the western islands of Torres Straits used to hold a great death-dance at which disguised men personated the ghosts of the lately deceased, mimicking their characteristic gait and gestures. Women and children were supposed to take these mummers for real ghosts. See A. C. Haddon, in Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, v. (Cambridge, 1904) pp. 252-256; The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, i. 176 sqq.
S. Powers, Tribes of California, pp. 437 sq.
Bossu, Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes Occidentales (Paris, 1768), ii. 95 sq.
T. G. S. Ten Broeck, in H. R. Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia, 1853-1856), iv. 78. The Pueblo village to which the writer particularly refers is Laguna.
Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique-Centrale (Paris, 1857-1859), iii. 23 sq.; H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (London, 1875-1876), ii. 623. Similar customs are still practised by the Indians of a great part of Mexico and Central America (Brasseur de Bourbourg, op. cit. iii. 24, note 1).
“Lettre du curé de Santiago Tepehuacan àson évêque,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris), IIme Série, ii. (1834) p. 179.
S. Roos, “Bijdrage tot de kennis van taal, land en volk op het eiland Soemba,” Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, xxxvi. (1872) pp. 63-65.
Rev. S. B. Fellows, quoted by George Brown, D.D., Melanesians and Polynesians (London, 1910), p. 237.
E. H. Gomes, Seventeen Years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo (London, 1911), pp. 216-218. For another and briefer account of this festival see The Scapegoat, p. 154.
Rev. Wm. Pettigrew, “Kathi Kasham, the ‘Soul Departure’ feast as practised by the Tangkkul Nagas, Manipur, Assam,” Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, N.S. vol. v. 1909 (Calcutta, 1910), pp. 37-46; T. C. Hodson, The Naga Tribes of Manipur (London, 1911), pp. 153-158.
Rev. P. Dehon, S.J., “Religion and Customs of the Uraons,” Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. i. No. 9 (Calcutta, 1906), p. 136. Compare Rev. F. Hahn, “Some Notes on the Religion and Superstition of the Orāōs,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, lxxii. Part iii. (Calcutta, 1904) pp. 12 sq. According to the latter writer the pots containing the relics of the dead are buried, not in the sand of the river, but in a pit, generally covered with huge stones, which is dug for the purpose in some field or grove.
E. M. Gordon, Indian Folk Tales (London, 1908), p. 18. According to Mr. W. Crooke, the Hindoo Feast of Lamps (Diwálî) seems to have been based on “the idea that on this night the spirits of the dead revisit their homes, which are cleaned and lighted for their reception.” See W. Crooke, The Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 295 sq.
Rev. F. Mason, D.D., “Physical Character of the Karens,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1866, Part ii. pp. 29 sq. Lights are not mentioned by the writer, but the festival being nocturnal we may assume that they are used for the convenience of the living as well as of the dead. In other respects the ceremonies are typical.
R. F. St. Andrew St. John, “A Short Account of the Hill Tribes of North Aracan,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, ii. (1873) p. 238. At this festival the dead are apparently not supposed to return to the houses.
E. Aymonier, Notice sur le Cambodge (Paris, 1875), p. 59; A. Leclère, Le Buddhisme au Cambodge (Paris, 1899), pp. 374-376. The departure of the souls is described only by the latter writer. Compare E. Aymonier, “Notes sur les coutumes et croyances superstitieuses des Cambodgiens,” Cochinchine Française, Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 16 (Saigon, 1883), pp. 205 sq.
Mariny, Relation nouvelle et curieuse des royaumes de Tunquin et de Lao (Paris, 1666), pp. 251-253.
Le R. P. Cadière, “Coutumes populaires de la vallée du Nguôn-So'n,” Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient, ii. (Hanoi, 1902) pp. 376-379; P. d'Enjoy, “Du droit successoral en Annam,” etc., Bulletins de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, Ve Série, iv. (1903) pp. 500-502; E. Diguet, Les Annamites (Paris, 1906), pp. 372-375.
E. Diguet, Les Annamites (Paris, 1906), pp. 254 sq.; Paul Giran, Magie et Religion Annamites (Paris, 1912), pp. 258 sq. According to the latter writer the offerings to the vagrant souls are made on the first and last days of the month, while sacrifices of a more domestic character are performed on the fifteenth.
L. E. Louvet, La Cochinchine religieuse (Paris, 1885), pp. 149-151.
The Scapegoat, pp. 149 sqq.
C. v. Hahn, “Religiöse Anschauungen und Totengedächtnisfeier der Chewsuren,” Globus, lxxvi. (1899) pp. 211 sq.
M. Abeghian, Der armenische Volksglaube (Leipsic, 1899), pp. 23 sq.
Fred. E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans (London, 1851), ii. 73. Compare John Duncan, Travels in Western Africa (London, 1847), i. 125 sq.; A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast (London, 1890), p. 108. The Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast and Ashantee celebrate an annual festival of eight days in honour of the dead. It falls towards the end of August. The offerings are presented to the departed at their graves. See A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast (London, 1887), pp. 227 sq.; E. Perregaux, Chez les Achanti (Neuchâtel, 1908), pp. 136, 138. According to the latter writer the festival is celebrated at the time of the yam harvest.
W. Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien (Schaffhausen, 1864), p. 473.
The Scapegoat, pp. 136 sq.
On the worship of the dead, and especially of ancestors, among Aryan peoples, see W. Caland, Über Totenverehrung bei einigen der indo-germanischen Völker (Amsterdam, 1888); O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde (Strasburg, 1901), pp. 21 sqq.; id., s.v. “Aryan Religion,” in Dr. J. Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ii. (Edinburgh, 1909) pp. 16 sqq.
As to the Iranian calendar see W. Geiger, Altiranische Kultur im Altertum (Erlangen, 1882), pp. 314 sqq.; as to the Iranian worship of the sainted dead (the Fravashis) see id. pp. 286 sqq. As to the annual festival of the dead (Hamaspathmaedaya) see W. Caland, Über Totenverehrung bei einigen der indo-germanischen Völker (Amsterdam, 1888), pp. 64 sq.; N. Söderblom, Les Fravashis (Paris, 1899), pp. 4 sqq.; J. H. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism (London, 1913), pp. 256 sqq. All these writers agree that the Fravashis of the Zend-Avesta were originally the souls of the dead. See also James Darmesteter, Zend-Avesta, Part ii. (Oxford, 1883) p. 179: “The Fravashi is the inner power in every being that maintains it and makes it grow and subsist. Originally the Fravashis were the same as the Pitris of the Hindus or the Manes of the Latins, that is to say, the everlasting and deified souls of the dead; but in course of time they gained a wider domain, and not only men, but gods and even physical objects, like the sky and the earth, etc., had each a Fravashi.” Compare id., Ormazd et Ahriman (Paris, 1877), pp. 130 sqq.; N. Söderblom, La Vie Future d'après Le Mazdéisme (Paris, 1901), pp. 7 sqq. A different view of the original nature of the Fravashis was taken by C. P. Tiele, according to whom they were essentially guardian spirits. See C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der Religion im Altertum (Gotha, 1896-1903), ii. 256 sqq.
The Zend-Avesta, translated by James Darmesteter, Part ii. (Oxford, 1883) pp. 192 sq. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxiii.).
Albiruni, The Chronology of Ancient Nations, translated and edited by Dr. C. Edward Sachau (London, 1879), p. 210. In the Dinkard, a Pahlavi work which seems to have been composed in the first half of the ninth century a.d., the festival is spoken of as “those ten days which are the end of the winter and termination of the year, because the five Gathic days, among them, are for that purpose.” By “the five Gathic days” the writer means the five supplementary days added at the end of the twelfth month to complete the year of 365 days. See Pahlavi Texts translated by E. W. West, Part iv. (Oxford, 1892) p. 17 (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxvii.).
A. le Braz, La Légende de la Morten Basse-Bretagne (Paris, 1893), pp. 280-287. Compare J. Lecœur, Esquisses du Bocage Normand (Condé-sur-Noireau, 1883-1887), ii. 283 sqq.
L. F. Sauvé, Le folk-lore des Hautes-Vosges (Paris, 1889), pp. 295 sq.
J. L. M. Noguès, Les mœurs d'autrefois en Saintonge et en Aunis (Saintes, 1891), p. 76. As to the observance of All Souls' Day in other parts of France see A. Meyrac, Traditions, coutumes, légendes et contes des Ardennes (Charleville, 1890), pp. 22-24; Ch. Beauquier, Les mois en Franche-Comté (Paris, 1900), pp. 123-125.
Above, p. 52.
W. Crooke, The Natives of Northern India (London, 1907), p. 219.
Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Calendrier Belge (Brussels, 1861-1862), ii. 236-240; id., Das festliche Jahr (Leipsic, 1863), pp. 229 sq.
Karl Freiherr von Leoprechting, Aus dem Lechrain (Munich, 1855), pp. 198-200.
O. Freiherr von Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Das festliche Jahr (Leipsic, 1863), p. 330. As to these cakes (called “souls”) in Swabia see E. Meyer, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben (Stuttgart, 1852), p. 452, § 174; Anton Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1861-1862), ii. 167 sq. The cakes are baked of white flour, and are of a longish rounded shape with two small tips at each end.
Adalbert Kuhn, Mythologische Studien, ii. (Gütersloh, 1912) pp. 41 sq., citing F. Schönwerth, Aus der Oberpfalz, i. 283.
O. Freiherr von Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, Fest-Kalender aus Böhmen (Prague, n.d.), pp. 493-495.
Alois John, Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube im deutschen Westböhmen (Prague, 1905), p. 97.
Willibald Müller, Beiträge zur Volkskunde der Deutschen in Mähren (Vienna and Olmütz, 1893), p. 330.
Ignaz V. Zingerle, Sitten, Bräuche und Meiningen des Tiroler Volkes2 (Innsbruck, 1871), pp. 176-178.
Christian Schneller, Märchen und Sagen aus Wälschtirol (Innsbruck, 1867), p. 238.
Elard Hugo Meyer, Badisches Volksleben im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Strasburg, 1900), p. 601.
P. Einhorn, “Historia Lettica,” in Scriptores Rerum Livonicarum, ii. (Riga and Leipsic, 1848) pp. 587, 598, 630 sq., 645 sq. See also the description of D. Fabricius in his “Livonicae Historiae compendiosa series,” ib. p. 441. Fabricius assigns the custom to All Souls' Day.
J. Lasicius, “De diis Samagitarum caeterorumque Sarmatarum,” in Magazin herausgegeben von der lettisch-literärischen Gesellschaft, xiv. 1. (Mitau, 1868), p. 92.
F. J. Wiedemann, Aus dem inneren und äussern Leben der Ehsten (St. Petersburg, 1876), pp. 366 sq.; Boecler-Kreutzwald, Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und Gewohnheiten (St. Petersburg, 1854), p. 89.
W. R. S. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People2 (London, 1872), pp. 321 sq. The date of the festival is not mentioned. Apparently it is celebrated at irregular intervals.
M. Buch, Die Wotjäken (Stuttgart, 1882), p. 145.
J. Wasiljev, Übersicht über die heidnischen Gebräuche, Aberglauben und Religion der Wotjäken (Helsingfors, 1902), pp. 34 sq. (Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne, xviii.). As to the Votiak clans see the same work, pp. 42-44.
G. Finamore, Credenze, Usi e Costumi Abruzzesi (Palermo, 1890), pp. 180-182. Mr. W. R. Paton writes to me (12th December 1906): “You do not mention the practice[s] on the modern Greek feast τῶν ψυχῶν (in May) which quite correspond. The κόλυβα is made in every house and put on a table laid with a white tablecloth. A glass of water and a taper are put on the table, and all is left so for the whole night. Our Greek maid-servant says that when she was a child she remembers seeing the souls come and partake. Almost the same rite is practised for the κόλυβα made on the commemoration of particular dead.”
John Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (London, 1882-1883), i. 393.
John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme (London, 1881), p. 23.
Miss C. S. Burne and Miss G. F. Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore (London, 1883), p. 381. The writers record (pp. 382 sqq.) some of the ditties which were sung on this occasion by those who begged for soul-cakes.
J. Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, i. 392, 393; W. Hone, Year Book (London, n.d.), col. 1288; T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs (London, 1876), pp. 405, 406, 407, 409; J. Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-lore (London, 1882), p. 251; Elizabeth Mary Wright, Rustic Speech and Folk-lore (Oxford, 1913), p. 300.
Marie Trevelyan, Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales (London, 1909), p. 255. See also T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs (London, 1876), p. 410, who, quoting Pennant as his authority, says that the poor people who received soul-cakes prayed God to bless the next crop of wheat.
County Folk-lore, vol. ii. North Riding of Yorkshire, York, and the Ainsty (London, 1901), quoting George Young, A History of Whitby and Streoneshalth Abbey (Whitby, 1817), ii. 882.
T. F. Thiselton Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 410.
M. Martin, “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,” in John Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels (London, 1808-1814), iii. 666.
Dr. Rivet, “Le Christianisme et les Indiens de la République de l'Équateur,” L'Anthropologie, xvii. (1906) pp. 93 sq.
See above, pp. 53, 55, 62, 65.
Sir John Rhys, Celtic Heathendom (London and Edinburgh, 1888), pp. 460, 514 sq.; id., “Celtae and Galli,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 1905-1906 (London, n.d.), p. 78; Balder the Beautiful, i. 224 sq.
K. Müllenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, iv. (Berlin, 1900) pp. 379 sq. The first of October seems to have been a great festival among the Saxons and also the Samagitians. See Widukind, Res gestae Saxonicae, i. 12 (Migne's Patrologia Latina, cxxxvii. 135); M. A. Michov, “De Sarmatia Asiana atque Europea,” in S. Grynaeus's Novus Orbis Regionum ac Insularum veteribus incognitarum (Bâle, 1532), p. 520. I have to thank Professor H. M. Chadwick for pointing out these two passages to me. Mr. A. Tille prefers to date the Teutonic winter from Martinmas, the eleventh of November. See A. Tille, Die Geschichte der deutschen Weihnacht (Leipsic, n.d.), pp. 23 sqq.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde (Strasburg, 1901), p. 395.
A. J. Binterim, Die vorzüglichsten Denkwürdigkeiten der Christ-Katholischen Kirche, v. 1 (Mayence, 1829), pp. 493 sq.; J. J. Herzog und G. F. Plitt, Real-Encyclopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche,2 i. (Leipsic, 1877), pp. 303 sq.; W. Smith and S. Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities (London, 1875-1880), i. 57 sq.
A. J. Binterim, op. cit. v. 1, pp. 487 sqq.; J. J. Herzog und G. F. Plitt, op. cit. i. p. 303; W. Smith and S. Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, i. 57. In the last of these works a passage from the Martyrologium Romanum Vetus is quoted which states that a feast of Saints (Festivitas Sanctorum) on the first of November was celebrated at Rome. But the date of this particular Martyrology is disputed. See A. J. Binterim, op. cit. v. 1, pp. 52-54.
J. J. Herzog und G. F. Plitt, op. cit. i. 304. A similar attempt to reform religion by diverting the devotion of the people from the spirits of their dead appears to have been made in antiquity by the doctors of the Persian faith. For that faith “in its most finished and purest form, in the Gathas, does not recognize the dead as objects worthy of worship and sacrifice. But the popular beliefs were too firmly rooted, and the Mazdeans, like the sectaries of many other ideal and lofty forms of religion, were forced to give way. As they could not suppress the worship and get rid of the primitive and crude ideas involved in it, they set about the reform in another way: they interpreted the worship in a new manner, and thus the worship of the dead became a worship of the gods or of a god in favour of the loved and lost ones, a pious commemoration of their names and their virtues.” See N. Söderblom, Les Fravashis (Paris, 1899), pp. 6 sq. The Gathas form the oldest part of the Zend-Avesta. James Darmesteter, indeed, in his later life startled the learned world by a theory that the Gathas were a comparatively late work based on the teaching of Philo of Alexandria. But this attempt of a Jew to claim for his race the inspiration of the Persian scriptures has been coldly received by Gentile scholars. See J. H. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism (London, 1913), pp. 8 sqq.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 39. As to the death of Osiris on the seventeenth of Athyr see ib. 13 and 42. Plutarch's statement on this subject is confirmed by the evidence of the papyrus Sallier IV., a document dating from the 19th dynasty, which places the lamentation for Osiris at Sais on the seventeenth day of Athyr. See A. Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 262; id., Die Religion der alten Ägypter, p. 112; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 211 sq.
See above, p. 50.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 39. The words which I have translated “vegetable mould” are γῆν κάρπιμον, literally, “fruitful earth.” The composition of the image was very important, as we shall see presently.
Lactantius, Divin. Institut., i. 21; id., Epitome Inst. Divin. 23 (18, ed. Brandt and Laubmann). The description of the ceremony which Minucius Felix gives (Octavius, xxii. 1) agrees closely with, and is probably copied from, that of Lactantius. We know from Appian (Bell. Civ. iv. 6. 47) that in the rites of Isis a priest personated Anubis, wearing a dog's, or perhaps rather a jackal's, mask on his head; for the historian tells how in the great proscription a certain Volusius, who was on the condemned list, escaped in the disguise of a priest of Isis, wearing a long linen garment and the mask of a dog over his head.
The suggestion is due to Prof. A. Wiedemann (Herodots zweites Buch, p. 261).
Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 2. Herodotus tells (ii. 61) how the Carians cut their foreheads with knives at the mourning for Osiris.
In addition to the writers who have been already cited see Juvenal, viii. 29 sq.; Athenagoras, Supplicatio pro Christianis, 22, pp. 112, 114, ed. J. C. T. Otto (Jena, 1857); Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, i. 13; Augustine, De civitate Dei, vi. 10.
W. Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, ii. 1127.
For complete translations of the inscription see H. Brugsch, “Das Osiris-Mysterium von Tentyra,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1881, pp. 77-111; V. Loret, “Les fêtes d'Osiris au mois de Khoiak,” Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie Égyptiennes et Assyriennes, iii. (1882) pp. 43-57, iv. (1883) pp. 21-33, v. (1884) pp. 85-103. On the document and the festivals described in it see further A. Mariette-Pacha, Dendérah (Paris, 1880), pp. 334-347; J. Dümichen, “Die dem Osiris im Denderatempel geweihten Räume,” Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1882, pp. 88-101; H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter (Leipsic, 1885-1888), pp. 616-618; R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, pp. 725-744; A. Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 262; id., “Osiris végétant,” Le Muséon, N.S. iv. (1903) p. 113; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 128 sq.; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 21 sqq.; Miss Margaret A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos (London, 1904), pp. 27 sq.
R. V. Lanzone, op. cit. p. 727.
H. Brugsch, in Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1881, pp. 80-82; A. Wiedemann, in Le Muséon, N.S. iv. (1903) p. 113. The corn used in the making of the images is called barley by Brugsch and Miss M. A. Murray (l.c.), but wheat (blé) by Mr. V. Loret.
H. Brugsch, op. cit. pp. 99, 101.
H. Brugsch, op. cit. pp. 82 sq.; R. V. Lanzone, op. cit. p. 728; Miss Margaret A. Murray, op. cit. p. 27.
H. Brugsch, op. cit. pp. 90 sq., 96 sq., 98; R. V. Lanzone, op. cit. pp. 743 sq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 128. According to Lanzone, the ploughing took place, not on the first, but on the last day of the festival, namely, on the thirtieth of Khoiak; and that certainly appears to have been the date of the ploughing at Busiris, for the inscription directs that there “the ploughing of the earth shall take place in the Serapeum of Aa-n-beḥ under the fine Persea trees on the last day of the month Khoiak” (H. Brugsch, op. cit. p. 84).
Miss Margaret A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos, p. 28; H. Brugsch, op. cit. pp. 83, 92. The headless human image in the cow may have stood for Isis, who is said to have been decapitated by her son Horus, and to have received from Thoth a cow's head as a substitute. See Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 20; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 177; Ed. Meyer, s.v. “Isis,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 366.
H. Brugsch, op. cit. pp. 92 sq.; R. V. Lanzone, op. cit. pp. 738-740; A. Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 262; Miss M. A. Murray, op. cit. p. 35. An Egyptian calendar, written at Sais about 300 b.c., has under the date 26 Khoiak the following entry: “Osiris goes about and the golden boat is brought forth.” See The Hibeh Papyri, Part i., edited by B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt (London, 1906), pp. 146, 153. In the Canopic decree “the voyage of the sacred boat of Osiris” is said to take place on the 29th of Khoiak from “the sanctuary in the Heracleum” to the Canopic sanctuary. See W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, No. 56 (vol. i. pp. 105, 108). Hence it would seem that the date of this part of the festival varied somewhat in different places or at different times.
H. Brugsch, op. cit. p. 99; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 129; compare Miss Margaret A. Murray, op. cit. p. 28, who refers the ceremony to the twenty-fifth of Khoiak.
H. Brugsch, op. cit. pp. 94, 99; A. Mariette-Pacha, Dendérah, pp. 336 sq.; R. V. Lanzone, op. cit. p. 744. Mariette supposed that after depositing the new image in the sepulchre they carried out the old one of the preceding year, thus setting forth the resurrection as well as the death of the god. But this view is apparently not shared by Brugsch and Lanzone.
A. Mariette-Bey, Dendérah, iv. (Paris, 1873) plates 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 88, 89, 90; R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, pp. 757 sqq., with plates cclxviii.-ccxcii.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 131-138; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 31 sqq.
H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 621; R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, plate cclxi.; A. Wiedemann, “L'Osiris végétant,” Le Muséon, N.S. iv. (1903) p. 112; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 58. According to Prof. Wiedemann, the corn springing from the god's body is barley. Similarly in a papyrus of the Louvre (No. 3377) Osiris is represented swathed as a mummy and lying on his back, while stalks of corn sprout from his body. See R. V. Lanzone, op. cit. pp. 801 sq., with plate ccciii. 2; A. Wiedemann, “L'Osiris végétant,” Le Muséon, N.S. iv. (1903) p. 112.
Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium, v. 8, p. 162 ed. L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin (Göttingen, 1859). See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 38 sq.
Prof. A. Erman rightly assumes (Die ägyptische Religion,2 p. 234) that the images made in the month of Khoiak were intended to germinate as a symbol of the divine resurrection.
A. Wiedemann, “L'Osiris végétant,” Le Muséon, N.S. iv. (1903) p. 111; Egyptian Exploration Fund Archaeological Report, 1898-1899, pp. 24 sq.; A. Moret, Kings and Gods of Egypt (New York and London, 1912), p. 94, with plate xi.; id., Mystères Égyptiens (Paris, 1913), p. 41.
B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, in Egyptian Exploration Fund Archaeological Report, 1902-1903, p. 5.
Miss Margaret A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos, pp. 28 sq.
Sir J. Gardiner Wilkinson, A Second Series of the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1841), ii. 300, note §. The writer seems to have doubted whether these effigies represented Osiris. But the doubt has been entirely removed by subsequent discoveries. Wilkinson's important note on the subject is omitted by his editor, S. Birch (vol. iii. p. 375, ed. 1878).
A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 209 sq.
See above, pp. 24sq., 27sq., 49sq.
So it was reckoned at the time. But, strictly speaking, Thoth in that year began on August 31. The miscalculation originated in a blunder of the ignorant Roman pontiffs who, being charged with the management of the new Julian calendar, at first intercalated a day every third, instead of every fourth, year. See Solinus, Collectanea, i. 45-47 (p. 15, ed. Th. Mommsen, Berlin, 1864); Macrobius, Saturn, i. 14. 13 sq.; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 157-161.
Theoretically the shift should have been 40, or rather 42 days, that being the interval between July 20 and August 29 or 31 (see the preceding note). If that shift was actually made, the calendar date of any festival in the old vague Egyptian year could be found by adding 40 or 42 days to its date in the Alexandrian year. Thus if the death of Osiris fell on the 17th of Athyr in the Alexandrian year, it should have fallen on the 27th or 29th of Khoiak in the old vague year; and if his resurrection fell on the 19th of Athyr in the Alexandrian year, it should have fallen on the 29th of Khoiak or the 1st of Tybi in the old vague year. These calculations agree nearly, but not exactly, with the somewhat uncertain indications of the Denderah calendar (above, p. 88), and also with the independent evidence which we possess that the resurrection of Osiris was celebrated on the 30th of Khoiak (below, pp. 108sq.). These approximate agreements to some extent confirm my theory that, with the adoption of the fixed Alexandrian year, the dates of the official Egyptian festivals were shifted from their accidental places in the calendar to their proper places in the natural year.
Since I published in the first edition of this book (1906) my theory that with the adoption of the fixed Alexandrian year in 30 b.c. the Egyptian festivals were shifted about a month backward in the year, Professor Ed. Meyer has shown independent grounds for holding “that the festivals which gave rise to the later names of the (Egyptian) months were demonstrably held a month later in earlier ages, under the twentieth, eighteenth, indeed partly under the twelfth dynasty; in other words, that after the end of the New Kingdom the festivals and the corresponding names of the months were displaced one month backwards. It is true that this displacement can as yet be proved for only five months; but as the names of these months and the festivals keep their relative position towards each other, the assumption is inevitable that the displacement affected not merely particular festivals but the whole system equally.” See Ed. Meyer, Nachträge zur ägyptischen Chronologie (Berlin, 1908), pp. 3 sqq. (Abhandlungen der königl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften vom Jahre 1907). Thus it is possible that the displacement of the festivals by a month backward in the calendar took place a good deal earlier than I had supposed. In the uncertainty of the whole question I leave my theory as it stood.
If the results of the foregoing inquiry be accepted, the resurrection of Osiris was regularly celebrated in Egypt on the 15th of November from the year 30 b.c. onward, since the 15th of November corresponded to the 19th of Athyr (the resurrection day) in the fixed Alexandrian year. This agrees with the indications of the Roman Rustic Calendars, which place the resurrection (heuresis, that is, the discovery of Osiris) between the 14th and the 30th of November. Yet according to the calendar of Philocalus, the official Roman celebration of the resurrection seems to have been held on the 1st of November, not on the 15th. How is the discrepancy to be explained? Th. Mommsen supposed that the festival was officially adopted at Rome at a time when the 19th of Athyr of the vague Egyptian year corresponded to the 31st of October or the 1st of November of the Julian calendar, and that the Romans, overlooking the vague or shifting character of the Egyptian year, fixed the resurrection of Osiris permanently on the 1st of November. Now the 19th of Athyr of the vague year corresponded to the 1st of November in the years 32-35 a.d. and to the 31st of October in the years 36-39; and it appears that the festival was officially adopted at Rome some time before 65 a.d. (Lucan, Pharsalia, viii. 831 sqq.). It is unlikely that the adoption took place in the reign of Tiberius, who died in 37 a.d.; for he is known to have persecuted the Egyptian religion (Tacitus, Annals, ii. 85; Suetonius, Tiberius, 36; Josephus, Antiquit. Jud. xviii. 3. 4); hence Mommsen concluded that the great festival of Osiris was officially adopted at Rome in the early years of the reign of Caligula, that is, in 37, 38, or 39 a.d. See Th. Mommsen, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, i.2 Pars prior (Berlin, 1893), pp. 333 sq.; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, vol. ii. p. 995, No. 8745. This theory of Mommsen's assumes that in Egypt the festivals were still regulated by the old vague year in the first century of our era. It cannot, therefore, be reconciled with the conclusion reached in the text that the Egyptian festivals ceased to be regulated by the old vague year from 30 b.c. onward. How the difference of date between the official Roman and the Egyptian festival of the resurrection is to be explained, I do not pretend to say.
See above, p. 48.
See above, p. 6.
See above, p. 7.
Servius on Virgil, Georg. i. 166.
The Dying God, p. 250.
Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 236 sqq.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 73, compare 33.
Diodorus Siculus, i. 88. 5. The slaughter may have been performed by the king with his own hand. On Egyptian monuments the king is often represented in the act of slaying prisoners before a god. See A. Moret, Du caractère religieux de la royauté Pharaonique (Paris, 1902), pp. 179, 224; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 197 sqq. Similarly the kings of Ashantee and Dahomey used often themselves to cut the throats of the human victims. See A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast (London, 1887), p. 162; id., The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast (London, 1890), pp. 125, 129.
Scholia in Caesaris Germanici Aratea, in F. Eyssenhardt's edition of Martianus Capella, p. 408 (Leipsic, 1866).
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. ii. 56. 4. Compare Livy, i. 16. 4; Florus, i. 1. 16 sq.; Plutarch, Romulus, 27. Mr. A. B. Cook was, I believe, the first to interpret the story as a reminiscence of the sacrifice of a king. See his article “The European Sky-God,” Folk-lore, xvi. (1905) pp. 324 sq. However, the acute historian A. Schwegler long ago maintained that the tradition rested on some very ancient religious rite, which was afterwards abolished or misunderstood, and he rightly compared the legendary deaths of Pentheus and Orpheus (Römische Geschichte, Tübingen, 1853-1858, vol. i. pp. 534 sq.). See further W. Otto, “Juno,” Philologus, lxiv. (1905) pp. 187 sqq.
The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 313 sqq.
Euripides, Bacchae, 43 sqq., 1043 sqq.; Theocritus, xxvi.; Pausanias, ii. 2. 7; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 5. 1 sq.; Hyginus, Fab. 132 and 184. The destruction of Lycurgus by horses seems to be mentioned only by Apollodorus. As to Pentheus see especially A. G. Bather, “The Problem of the Bacchae,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, xiv. (1904) pp. 244-263.
Nonnus, Dionys. vi. 165-205; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 17 sq., p. 15 ed. Potter; Justin Martyr, Apology, i. 54; Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 6; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 19. According to the Clementine Recognitiones, x. 24 (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, i. 1434) Dionysus was torn in pieces at Thebes, the very place of which Pentheus was king. The description of Euripides (Bacchae, 1058 sqq.) suggests that the human victim was tied or hung to a pine-tree before being rent to pieces. We are reminded of the effigy of Attis which hung on the sacred pine (above, vol. i. p. 267), and of the image of Osiris which was made out of a pine-tree and then buried in the hollow of the trunk (below, p. 108). The pine-tree on which Pentheus was pelted by the Bacchanals before they tore him limb from limb is said to have been worshipped as if it were the god himself by the Corinthians, who made two images of Dionysus out of it (Pausanias, ii. 2. 7). The tradition points to an intimate connexion between the tree, the god, and the human victim.
Porphyry, De abstinentia, ii. 55. At Potniae in Boeotia a priest of Dionysus is said to have been killed by the drunken worshippers (Pausanias, ix. 8. 2). He may have been sacrificed in the character of the god.
Lucian, De saltatione, 51; Plato, Symposium, 7, p. 179 d, e; Pausanias, ix. 30. 5; Ovid, Metam. xi. 1-43; O. Gruppe, s.v. “Orpheus,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, iii. 1165 sq. That Orpheus died the death of the god has been observed both in ancient and modern times. See E. Rohde, Psyche3 (Tübingen and Leipsic, 1903) ii. 118, note 2, quoting Proclus on Plato; S. Reinach, “La mort d'Orphée,” Cultes, Mythes et Religions, ii. (1906) pp. 85 sqq. According to Ovid, the Bacchanals killed him with hoes, rakes, and mattocks. Similarly in West Africa human victims used to be killed with spades and hoes and then buried in a field which had just been tilled (J. B. Labat, Relation historique de l'Ethiopie occidentale, Paris, 1732, i. 380). Such a mode of sacrifice points to the identification of the human victim with the fruits of the earth.
Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 5. 1.
R. M. Dawkins, “The Modern Carnival in Thrace and the Cult of Dionysus,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxvi. (1906) pp. 191-206. See further Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, i. 25 sqq.
Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, Saga Halfdanar Svarta, ch. 9. I have to thank Professor H. M. Chadwick for referring me to this passage and translating it for me. See also The Stories of the Kings of Norway (Heimskringla), done into English by W. Morris and E. Magnússon (London, 1893-1905), i. 86 sq. Halfdan the Black was the father of Harold the Fair-haired, king of Norway (860-933 a.d.). Professor Chadwick tells me that, though the tradition as to the death and mutilation of Halfdan was not committed to writing for three hundred years, he sees no reason to doubt its truth. He also informs me that the word translated “abundance” means literally “the produce of the season.” “Plenteous years” is the rendering of Morris and Magnússon.
As to the descent of Halfdan and the Ynglings from Frey, see Heimskringla, done into English by W. Morris and E. Magnússon, i. 23-71 (The Saga Library, vol. iii.). With regard to Frey, the god of fertility, both animal and vegetable, see E. H. Meyer, Mythologie der Germanen (Strasburg, 1903), pp. 366 sq.; P. Hermann, Nordische Mythologie (Leipsic, 1903), pp. 206 sqq.
Heimskringla, done into English by W. Morris and E. Magnússon, i. 4, 22-24 (The Saga Library, vol. iii.).
Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 32 sq., from information supplied by Dr. C. G. Seligmann.
See above, p. 10.
Dudley Kidd, Savage Childhood (London, 1906), p. 291.
Above, p. 97.
Above, pp. 268sq.
See my notes on Pausanias, i. 28. 7 and viii. 47. 5 (vol. ii. pp. 366 sq., vol. iv. pp. 433 sq.).
R. F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Literature (New York, 1901), p. 116; C. Fossey, La Magie Assyrienne (Paris, 1902), pp. 34 sq.
Amos ii. 1.
Pausanias, i. 9. 7 sq.
P. B. du Chaillu, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (London, 1861), pp. 18 sq.
J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906), p. 107.
Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, 1897), pp. 449 sq. In West African jargon the word ju-ju means fetish or magic.
Father Porte, “Les reminiscences d'un missionnaire du Basutoland,” Missions Catholiques, xxviii. (1896) pp. 311 sq. As to the Baloi, see A. Merensky, Beiträge zur Kenntniss Süd-Afrikas (Berlin, 1875), pp. 138 sq.; E. Gottschling, “The Bawenda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv. (1905) p. 375. For these two references I have to thank Mr. E. S. Hartland.
Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe (Neuchâtel, 1912-1913), i. 387 sq.
Lorimer Fison, “Notes on Fijian Burial Customs,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, x. (1881) pp. 141 sq.
R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), p. 269.
Ivan Petroff, Report on the Population, Industries, and Resources of Alaska, p. 142. The account seems to be borrowed from H. J. Holmberg, who adds that pains were taken to preserve the flesh from decay, “because they believed that their own life depended on it.” See H. J. Holmberg, “Über die Völker des russischen Amerika,” Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae, iv. (Helsingfors, 1856) p. 391.
Above, p. 97.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 31; Herodotus, ii. 38.
Herrera, quoted by A. Bastian, Die Culturländer des alten Amerika (Berlin, 1878), ii. 639; id., General History of the vast Continent and Islands of America, translated by Capt. J. Stevens (London, 1725-26), ii. 379 sq. (whose version of the passage is inadequate). Compare Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale (Paris, 1857-59), i. 327, iii. 525.
E. Lefébure, Le mythe Osirien (Paris, 1874-75), p. 188.
Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 2, “Defensores eorum volunt addere physicam rationem, frugum semina Osirim dicentes esse, Isim terram, Tyfonem calorem: et quia maturatae fruges calore ad vitam hominum colliguntur et divisae a terrae consortio separantur et rursus adpropinquante hieme seminantur, hanc volunt esse mortem Osiridis, cum fruges recondunt, inventionem vero, cum fruges genitali terrae fomento conceptae annua rursus coeperint procreatione generari.” Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, i. 13, “Sic et Osiris quod semper sepelitur et in vivido quaeritur et cum gaudio invenitur, reciprocarum frugum et vividorum elementorum et recidivi anni fidem argumentantur.” Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 65, οὕτω δὲ καὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ φορτικοῖς ἐπιχειρήσομεν, εἴτε ταῖς καθ᾽ ὤραν μεταβολαῖς τοῦ περιέχοντος εἴτε ταῖς καρπῶν γενέσεσι καὶ σποραῖς καὶ ἀρότοις χαίρουσι τὰ περὶ τοὺς θεοὺς τούτους συνοικειοῦντες, καὶ λέγοντες θάπτεσθαι μὲν Ὄσιριν ὅτε κρύπτεται τῇ γῇ σπειρόμενος ὁ καρπός, αὖθις δ᾽ ἀναβιοῦσθαι καὶ ἀναφαίνεσφαι ὅτε βλαστήσεως ἀρχή. Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelii, iii. 11. 31, ὁ δὲ Ὄσιρις παρ᾽ Αἰγυπτίοις τὴν κάρπιμον παρίστησι δύναμιν, ἢν θρήνοις ἀπομειλίσσονται εἰς γὴν ἀφανιζομένην ἐν τῷ σπόρῳ καὶ ὑφ᾽ ἡμῶν καταναλισκομένην εἰς τὰς τροφάς. Athenagoras, Supplicatio pro Christianis, 22, pp. 112, 114 ed. J. C. T. Otto, τὰ δὲ στοιχεῖα καὶ τὰ μόρια αὐτῶν θεοποιοῦσιν, ἄλλοτε ἄλλα ὀνόματα αὐτοῖς τιθέμενοι, τὴν μὲν τοῦ σίτου σπορὰν Ὄσιριν (ὄφεν φασὶ μυστικῶς ἐπὶ τῇ ἀνευρέσει τῶν μελῶν ἢ τῶν καρπῶν ἐπιλεχθῆναι τῇ Ἴσιδι. Εὐρήκαμεν, συγχαίρομεν). See also the passage of Cornutus quoted above, vol. i. p. 229, note 2.
De errore profanarum religionum, 27.
See above, vol. i. pp. 267, 277.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 21, αἰνῶ δὲ τομὴν ξύλου καὶ σχίσιν λίνου καὶ χοὰς χεομένας, διὰ τὸ πολλὰ τῶν μυστικῶν ἀναμεμίχθαι τούτοις. Again, ibid. 42, τὸ δὲ ξύλον ἐν ταῖς λεγομέναις Ὀσίριδος ταφαῖς τέμνοντες κατασκευάζουσι λάρνακα μηνοειδῆ.
See above, p. 9.
As to the tet or ded pillar and its erection at the festival see H. Brugsch in Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1881, pp. 84, 96; id., Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 618; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 377 sq.; id., Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 22, 64; C. P. Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion (London, 1882), pp. 46 sq.; Sir J. Gardiner Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. pp. 67, note 3, and 82; A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 289 sq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 130 sq.; A. Moret, Du caractère religieux de la royauté Pharaonique, p. 153, note 1; id., Mystères Égyptiens, pp. 12-16; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 122, 124, sq.; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 6, 37, 48, 51 sqq.; Miss Margaret A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos, pp. 27, 28; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2, p. 70. In a letter to me (dated 8th December, 1910) my colleague Professor P. E. Newberry tells me that he believes Osiris to have been originally a cedar-tree god imported into Egypt from the Lebanon, and he regards the ded pillar as a lopped cedar-tree. The flail, as a symbol of Osiris, he believes to be the instrument used to collect incense. A similar flail is used by peasants in Crete to extract the ladanum gum from the shrubs. See P. de Tournefort, Relation d'un Voyage du Levant (Amsterdam, 1718), i. 29, with the plate. For this reference I am indebted to Professor Newberry.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 15. See above, p. 9.
The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 88-90.
A. Mariette-Bey, Dendérah, iv. pl. 66.
A. Mariette-Bey, Dendérah, iv. pl. 72. Compare E. Lefébure, Le mythe Osirien, pp. 194, 196, who regards the tree as a conifer. But it is perhaps a tamarisk.
E. Lefébure, op. cit. pp. 195, 197.
S. Birch, in Sir J. G. Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 84.
Sir J. G. Wilkinson, op. cit. iii. 62-64; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 106 sq.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 185.
J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (London, 1912), p. 28.
A. Moret, Kings and Gods of Egypt (New York and London, 1912), p. 83.
Above, vol. i. pp. 227 sq.
Sir J. G. Wilkinson, op. cit. iii. 349 sq.; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, p. 368; H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 621.
We may compare a belief of some of the Californian Indians that the owl is the guardian spirit and deity of the “California big tree,” and that it is equally unlucky to fell the tree or to shoot the bird. See S. Powers, Tribes of California (Washington, 1877), p. 398. When a Maori priest desires to protect the life or soul (hau) of a tree against the insidious arts of magicians, he sets a bird-snare in the tree, and the first bird caught in the snare, or its right wing, embodies the life or soul of the tree. Accordingly the priest recites appropriate spells over the bird or its wing and hides it away in the forest. After that no evil-disposed magician can hurt the tree, since its life or soul is not in it but hidden away in the forest. See Elsdon Best, “Spiritual Concepts of the Maori,” Journal of the Polynesian Society, ix. (1900) p. 195. Thus the bird or its wing is the depository of the external soul of the tree. Compare Balder the Beautiful, i. 95 sqq.
Sir J. G. Wilkinson, op. cit. iii. 349 sq.; H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 621; R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, tav. cclxiii.; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 20. In this passage of Plutarch it has been proposed by G. Parthey to read μυρίκης (tamarisk) for μηθίδης (methide), and the conjecture appears to be accepted by Wilkinson, loc. cit.
E. Lefébure, Le mythe Osirien, p. 191.
E. Lefébure, op. cit. p. 188.
R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, tav. ccciv.; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, ii. 570, fig.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35. One of the points in which the myths of Isis and Demeter agree is that both goddesses in the search for the loved and lost one are said to have sat down, sad at heart and weary, on the edge of a well. Hence those who had been initiated at Eleusis were forbidden to sit on a well. See Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 15; Homer, Hymn to Demeter, 98 sq.; Pausanias, i. 39. 1; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, i. 5. 1; Nicander, Theriaca, 486; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 20, p. 16 ed. Potter.
Tibullus, i. 7. 33-36; Diodorus Siculus, i. 17. 1, i. 20. 4.
E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 38, 39.
E. A. Wallis Budge, op. cit. i. 19, 45, with frontispiece.
Diodorus Siculus, i. 17. 4 sq.
Herodotus, ii. 48; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 12, 18, 36, 51; Diodorus Siculus, i. 21. 5, i. 22. 6 sq., iv. 6. 3.
Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium, v. 7, p. 144 ed. Duncker and Schneidewin.
A. Mariette-Bey, Dendérah, iv. plates 66, 68, 69, 70, 88, 89, 90. Compare R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, tavv. cclxxi., cclxxii., cclxxvi., cclxxxv., cclxxxvi., cclxxxvii., cclxxxix., ccxc.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 132, 136, 137.
Miss Margaret A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos, p. 27.
That the Greek Dionysus was nothing but a slightly disguised form of the Egyptian Osiris has been held by Herodotus in ancient and by Mr. P. Foucart in modern times. See Herodotus, ii. 49; P. Foucart, Le culte de Dionysos en Attique (Paris, 1904) (Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, xxxvii.).
Above, pp. 13sq.
Above, pp. 90sq.
1 Corinthians xv. 36-38, 42-44.
Herodotus, ii. 42. Compare E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 115 sq., 203 sq.; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 22 sq.
H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 645; W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, vol. ii. p. 433, No. 695; Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, iii. p. 1232, No. 4941. Compare H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, vol. ii. Pars i. p. 179, No. 4376 a. In Egyptian her name is Hest or Ast, but the derivation and meaning of the name are unknown. See A. Wiedemann, The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 218 sq.
C. P. Tiele, History of Egyptian Religion (London, 1882), p. 57.
E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 203 sq.
Diodorus Siculus, i. 14. 1 sq. Eusebius (Praeparatio Evangelii, iii. 3) quotes from Diodorus a long passage on the early religion of Egypt, prefacing it with the remark that Diodorus's account of the subject was more concise than that of Manetho.
Augustine, De civitate Dei, viii. 27. Tertullian says that Isis wore a wreath of the corn she had discovered (De corona, 7).
Diodorus Siculus, i. 14. 2.
See above, p. 45, and vol. i. p. 232.
H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 647; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, ii. 277.
H. Brugsch, op. cit. p. 649. Compare E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 216.
H. Brugsch, loc. cit.
Herodotus, ii. 59, 156; Diodorus Siculus, i. 13, 25, 95; Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, ii. 1. 3; J. Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 212. See further W. Drexler, s.v. “Isis,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 443 sq.
Anthologia Planudea, cclxiv. 1.
Epigrammata Graeca ex lapidibus conlecta, ed. G. Kaibel (Berlin, 1878), No. 1028, pp. 437 sq.; Orphica, ed. E. Abel (Leipsic and Prague, 1885), pp. 295 sqq.
W. Drexler, op. cit. ii. 448 sqq.
Otho often celebrated, or at least attended, the rites of Isis, clad in a linen garment (Suetonius, Otho, 12). Commodus did the same, with shaven head, carrying the effigy of Anubis. See Lampridius, Commodus, 9; Spartianus, Pescennius Niger, 6; id., Caracallus, 9.
L. Preller, Römische Mythologie3 (Berlin, 1881-1883), ii. 373-385; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung (Leipsic, 1885), iii.2 77-81; E. Renan, Marc-Aurèle et la fin du Monde Antique (Paris, 1882), pp. 570 sqq.; J. Reville, La religion romaine à Rome sous les Sévères (Paris, 1886), pp. 54-61; G. Lafaye, Histoire du culte des divinités d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1884); E. Meyer and W. Drexler, s.v. “Isis,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 360 sqq.; S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire2 (London, 1899), pp. 79 sq., 85 sqq.; id., Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (London, 1904), pp. 560 sqq. The chief passage on the worship of Isis in the West is the eleventh book of Apuleius's Metamorphoses. On the reputation which the goddess enjoyed as a healer of the sick see Diodorus Siculus, i. 25; W. Drexler, op. cit. ii. 521 sqq. The divine partner of Isis in later times, especially outside of Egypt, was Serapis, that is Osiris-Apis (Asar-Ḥāpi), the sacred Apis bull of Memphis, identified after death with Osiris. His oldest sanctuary was at Memphis (Pausanias, i. 18. 4), and there was one at Babylon in the time of Alexander the Great (Plutarch, Alexander, 76; Arrian, Anabasis, vii. 26). Ptolemy I. or II. built a great and famous temple in his honour at Alexandria, where he set up an image of the god which was commonly said to have been imported from Sinope in Pontus. See Tacitus, Histor. iv. 83 sq.; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 27-29; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. iv. 48, p. 42 ed. Potter. In after ages the institution of the worship of Serapis was attributed to this Ptolemy, but all that the politic Macedonian monarch appears to have done was to assimilate the Egyptian Osiris to the Greek Pluto, and so to set up a god whom Egyptians and Greeks could unite in worshipping. Serapis gradually assumed the attributes of Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing, in addition to those of Pluto, the Greek god of the dead. See G. Lafaye, Histoire du culte des divinités d'Alexandrie, pp. 16 sqq.; A. Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 589; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 195 sqq.; A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 237 sq.
The resemblance of Isis to the Virgin Mary has often been pointed out. See W. Drexler, s.v. “Isis,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 428 sqq.
W. Drexler, op. cit. ii. 430 sq.
Th. Trede, Das Heidentum in der römischen Kirche (Gotha, 1889-1891), iii. 144 sq.
On this later aspect of Isis see W. Drexler, op. cit. ii. 474 sqq.
P. E. Jablonski, Pantheon Aegyptiorum (Frankfort, 1750-1752), i. 125 sq.
Diodorus Siculus, i. 11. 1.
See p. 116, note 2.
See Macrobius, Saturnalia, bk. i.
Saturn. i. 21. 11.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 10 and 51; Sir J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1878), iii. 353; R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, pp. 782 sq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 113 sq.; J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 11 sq. Strictly speaking, the eye was the eye of Horus, which the dutiful son sacrificed in behalf of his father Osiris. “This act of filial devotion, preserved to us in the Pyramid Texts, made the already sacred Horus-eye doubly revered in the tradition and feeling of the Egyptians. It became the symbol of all sacrifice; every gift or offering might be called a ‘Horus-eye,’ especially if offered to the dead. Excepting the sacred beetle, or scarab, it became the commonest and the most revered symbol known to Egyptian religion, and the myriads of eyes, wrought in blue or green glaze, or even cut from costly stone, which fill our museum collections, and are brought home by thousands by the modern tourist, are survivals of this ancient story of Horus and his devotion to his father” (J. H. Breasted, op. cit. p. 31).
E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, i. 467; A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 p. 8.
Isis et Osiris, 52.
De errore profanarum religionum, 8.
Lepsius, “Über den ersten ägyptischen Götterkreis und seine geschichtlich-mythologische Entstehung,” in Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1851, pp. 194 sq.
The view here taken of the history of Egyptian religion is based on the sketch in Ad. Erman's Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 351 sqq. Compare C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der Religion im Altertum (Gotha, 1896-1903), i. 79 sq.
On this attempted revolution in religion see Lepsius, in Verhandlungen der königl. Akad. der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1851, pp. 196-201; A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 74 sq., 355-357; id., Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 76-84; H. Brugsch, History of Egypt (London, 1879), i. 441 sqq.; A. Wiedemann, Aegyptische Geschichte (Gotha, 1884), pp. 396 sqq.; id., Die Religion der alten Agypter, pp. 20-22; id., Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 35-43; C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der Religion im Altertum, i. 84-92; G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 316 sqq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 68-84; J. H. Breasted, History of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1908), pp. 264-279; A. Moret, Kings and Gods of Egypt (New York and London, 1912), pp. 41-68. A very sympathetic account of this remarkable religious reformer is given by Professor J. H. Breasted (Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 319-343). Amenophis IV. reigned from about 1375 to 1358 b.c. His new capital, Akhetaton, the modern Tell-el-Amarna, was on the right bank of the Nile, between Memphis and Thebes. The king has been described as “of all the Pharaohs the most curious and at the same time the most enigmatic figure.” To explain his bodily and mental peculiarities some scholars conjectured that through his mother, Queen Tii, he might have had Semitic blood in his veins. But this theory appears to have been refuted by the discovery in 1905 of the tomb of Queen Tii's parents, the contents of which are of pure Egyptian style. See A. Moret, op. cit. pp. 46 sq.
P. Le Page Renouf, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion2 (London, 1884), p. 113.
The late eminent scholar C. P. Tiele, who formerly interpreted Osiris as a sun-god (History of Egyptian Religion, pp. 43 sqq.), afterwards adopted a view of his nature which approaches more nearly to the one advocated in this book. See his Geschichte der Religion im Altertum, i. 35 sq., 123. Professor Ed. Meyer also formerly regarded Osiris as a sun-god; he now interprets him as a great vegetation god, dwelling in the depths of the earth and causing the plants and trees to spring from it. The god's symbol, the ded pillar (see above, pp. 108sq.), he takes to be a tree-trunk with cross-beams. See Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, i. p. 67, § 57 (first edition, 1884); id., i.2 2. pp. 70, 84, 87 (second edition, 1909). Sir Gaston Maspero has also abandoned the theory that Osiris was the sun; he now supposes that the deity originally personified the Nile. See his Histoire ancienne4 (Paris, 1886), p. 35; and his Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. (Paris, 1895), p. 130. Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge also formerly interpreted Osiris as the Nile (The Gods of the Egyptians, i. 122, 123), and this view was held by some ancient writers (Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 32, 34, 36, 38, 39). Compare Miss M. A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos (London, 1904), p. 29. Dr. Budge now explains Osiris as a deified king. See his Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, vol. i. pp. xviii, 30 sq., 37, 66 sq., 168, 254, 256, 290, 300, 312, 384. As to this view see below, pp. 158 sqq.
For the identification of Osiris with Dionysus, and of Isis with Demeter, see Herodotus, ii. 42, 49, 59, 144, 156; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 13, 35; Diodorus Siculus, i. 13, 25, 96, iv. 1; Orphica, Hymn 42; Eusebius, Praepar. Evang. iii. 11. 31; Servius on Virgil, Aen. xi. 287; id., on Virgil, Georg. i. 166; J. Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 212; Διηγήματα, xxii. 2, in Mythographi Graeci, ed. A. Westermann (Brunswick, 1843), p. 368; Nonnus, Dionys. iv. 269 sq.; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium, 28; Ausonius, Epigrammata, 29 and 30. For the identification of Osiris with Adonis and Attis see Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Ἀμαθοῦς; Damascius, “Vita Isodori,” in Photius, Bibliotheca, ed. Im. Bekker (Berlin, 1824), p. 343a, lines 21 sq.; Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium, v. 9. p. 168 ed. Duncker and Schneidewin; Orphica, Hymn 42. For the identification of Attis, Adonis, and Dionysus see Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica, iii. 23 (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, lxvii. 448); Plutarch, Quaestiones Conviviales, iv. 5. 3; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 19, p. 16 ed. Potter.
Lucian, De dea Syria, 7. According to Professor Ed. Meyer, the relations of Egypt to Byblus were very ancient and close; he even suggests that there may have been from early times an Egyptian colony, or at all events an Egyptian military post, in the city. The commercial importance of Byblus arose from its possession of the fine cedar forests on the Lebanon; the timber was exported to Egypt, where it was in great demand. See Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. xix, 391 sqq.
Herodotus, ii. 49.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35.
Osiris, Attis, Adonis, and Dionysus were all resolved by him into the sun; but he spared Demeter (Ceres), whom, however, he interpreted as the moon. See the Saturnalia, bk. i.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 41.
On Osiris as a moon-god see E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 19-22, 59, 384 sqq.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 13, 42.
Ibid. 18, 42. The hieroglyphic texts sometimes speak of fourteen pieces, and sometimes of sixteen, or even eighteen. But fourteen seems to have been the true number, because the inscriptions of Denderah, which refer to the rites of Osiris, describe the mystic image of the god as composed of fourteen pieces. See E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, ii. 126 sq.; id., Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 386 sq.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 8.
A. S. Gatschet, The Klamath Indians of South-Western Oregon (Washington, 1890), p. lxxxix.
S. R. Riggs, Dakota Grammar, Texts, and Ethnography (Washington, 1893), p. 16.
R. F. Kaindl, Die Huzulen (Vienna, 1894), p. 97.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 43.
Ibid. 43.
Ibid. 20, 29.
Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 43; id., Quaest. Conviv. viii. 1. 3. Compare Herodotus, iii. 28; Aelian, Nat. Anim. xi. 10; Mela, i. 9. 58.
Herodotus, ii. 47; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 8. As to pigs in relation to Osiris, see Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 24 sqq.
P. J. de Horrack, “Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys,” Records of the Past, ii. (London, n.d.) pp. 121 sq.; H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, pp. 629 sq.; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 389. “Apart from the fact that Osiris is actually called Āsār Aāḥ, i.e. ‘Osiris the Moon,’ there are so many passages which prove beyond all doubt that at one period at least Osiris was the Moon-god, that it is difficult to understand why Diodorus stated that Osiris was the sun and Isis the moon” (E. A. Wallis Budge, op. cit. i. 21).
E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 59.
According to C. P. Tiele (Geschichte der Religion im Altertum, i. 79) the conception of Osiris as the moon was late and never became popular. This entirely accords with the view adopted in the text.
Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 221.
Macrobius, Comment. in somnium Scipionis, i. 11. 7.
Aulus Gellius, xx. 8. For the opinions of the ancients on this subject see further W. H. Roscher, Über Selene und Verwandtes (Leipsic, 1890), pp. 61 sqq.
John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, edited by A. Allardyce (Edinburgh and London, 1888), ii. 449.
J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), pp. 306 sq.
Palladius, De re rustica, i. 34. 8. Compare id. i. 6. 12; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 321, “omnia quae caeduntur, carpuntur, tondentur innocentius decrescente luna quam crescente fiunt”; Geoponica, i. 6. 8, τινὲς δοκιμάζουσι μηδὲν φθινούσης τῆς σελήνης ἀλλὰ αὐξανομένης φυτεύειν.
J. Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain (London, 1882-1883), iii. 144, quoting Werenfels, Dissertation upon Superstition (London, 1748), p. 6.
A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube3 (Berlin, 1869), § 65, pp. 57 sq. Compare J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie4 (Berlin, 1875-1878), ii. 595; Montanus, Die deutsche Volksfeste, Volksbräuche und deutscher Volksglaube (Iserlohn, n.d.), p. 128; M. Prätorius, Deliciae Prussicae (Berlin, 1871), p. 18; O. Schell, “Einige Bemerkungen über den Mond im heutigen Glauben des bergischen Volkes,” Am Ur-quell, v. (1894) p. 173. The rule that the grafting of trees should be done at the waxing of the moon is laid down by Pliny (Nat. Hist. xvii. 108). At Deutsch-Zepling in Transylvania, by an inversion of the usual custom, seed is generally sown at the waning of the moon (A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens, Hermannstadt, 1880, p. 7). Some French peasants also prefer to sow in the wane (F. Chapiseau, Folk-lore de la Beauce et du Perche, Paris, 1902, i. 291). In the Abruzzi also sowing and grafting are commonly done when the moon is on the wane; timber that is to be durable must be cut in January during the moon's decrease (G. Finamore, Credenze, Usi e Costumi Abruzzesi, Palermo, 1890, p. 43).
P. Sébillot, Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne (Paris, 1882), ii. 355; L. F. Sauvé, Folk-lore des Hautes-Vosges (Paris, 1889), p. 5; J. Brand, Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, iii. 150; Holzmayer, “Osiliana,” Verhandlungen der gelehrten Estnichen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat, vii. (1872) p. 47.
The rule is mentioned by Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, i. 37 (where we should probably read “ne decrescente tendens calvos fiam,” and refer istaec to the former member of the preceding sentence); A. Wuttke, l.c.; Montanus, op. cit. p. 128; P. Sébillot, l.c.; E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben (Stuttgart, 1852), p. 511, § 421; W. J. A. von Tettau und J. D. H. Temme, Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens, Litthauens und Westpreussens (Berlin, 1837), p. 283; A. Kuhn, Märkische Sagen und Märchen (Berlin, 1843), p. 386, § 92; L. Schandein, in Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern (Munich, 1860-1867), iv. 2, p. 402; F. S. Krauss, Volksglaube und religiöser Brauch der Südslaven (Münster, i. W. 1890), p. 15; E. Krause, “Abergläubische Kuren und sonstiger Aberglaube in Berlin,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xv. (1883) p. 91; R. Wuttke, Sächsische Volkskunde2 (Dresden, 1901), p. 369; C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore (London, 1883), p. 259. The reason assigned in the text was probably the original one in all cases, though it is not always the one alleged now.
F. S. Krauss, op. cit. p. 16; Montanus, l.c.; Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, i. 37 (see above, note 2). However, the opposite rule is observed in the Upper Vosges, where it is thought that if the sheep are shorn at the new moon the quantity of wool will be much less than if they were shorn in the waning of the moon (L. F. Sauvé, Folk-lore des Hautes-Vosges, p. 5). In the Bocage of Normandy, also, wool is clipped during the waning of the moon; otherwise moths would get into it (J. Lecœur, Esquisses du Bocage Normand, Condé-sur-Noireau, 1883-1887, ii. 12).
Father Lejeune, “Dans la forêt,” Missions Catholiques, xxvii. (1895) p. 272.
S. Johnson, Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (Baltimore, 1810), p. 183.
J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, p. 306.
Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, New Edition (London, 1812), p. 107 (under February).
Fairweather, in W. F. Owen's Narrative of Voyages to explore the Shores of Africa, Arabia, and Madagascar (London, 1833), ii. 396 sq.
A. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube,3 § 65, p. 58; J. Lecœur, loc. cit.; E. Meier, Deutsche Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Schwaben, p. 511, § 422; Th. Siebs, “Das Saterland,” Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, iii. (1893) p. 278; Holzmayer, op. cit. p. 47.
H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (London, 1875-1876), ii. 719 sq.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), p. 402.
Cato, De agri cultura, 37. 4; Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, i. 37; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvi. 190; Palladius, De re rustica, ii. 22, xii. 15; Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. iii. 10. 3; Macrobius, Saturn. vii. 16; A. Wuttke, l.c.; Bavaria, Landes- und Volkskunde des Königreichs Bayern, iv. 2, p. 402; W. Kolbe, Hessische Volks-Sitten und Gebräuche2 (Marburg, 1888), p. 58; L. F. Sauvé, Folk-lore des Hautes-Vosges, p. 5; F. Chapiseau, Folk-lore de la Beauce et du Perche, i. 291 sq.; M. Martin, “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,” in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, iii. 630; J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, p. 306; G. Amalfi, Tradizioni ed Usi nella peninsola Sorrentina (Palermo, 1890), p. 87; K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens (Berlin, 1894), p. 559. Compare F. de Castelnau, Expédition dans les parties centrales de l'Amérique du Sud (Paris, 1851-1852), iii. 438. Pliny, while he says that the period from the twentieth to the thirtieth day of the lunar month was the season generally recommended, adds that the best time of all, according to universal opinion, was the interlunar day, between the old and the new moon, when the planet is invisible through being in conjunction with the sun.
J. Lecœur, Esquisses du Bocage Normand, ii. 11 sq.
Mrs. Leslie Milne, Shans at Home (London, 1910), p. 100.
Letter of Mr. A. S. F. Marshall, dated Hacienda “La Maronna,” Cd. Porfirio Diaz, Coah., Mexico, 2nd October 1908. The writer gives instances confirmatory of this belief. I have to thank Professor A. C. Seward of Cambridge for kindly showing me this letter.
Letter of Mr. Francis S. Schloss to me, dated 58 New Cavendish Street, W., 12th May 1912. Mr. Schloss adds that “as a matter of practical observation, timber, etc., should only be felled when the moon is waning. This has been stated to me not only by natives, but also by English mining engineers of high repute, who have done work in Colombia.”
O. Baumann, Usambara und seine Nachbargebiete (Berlin, 1891), p. 125.
Montanus, Die deutsche Volksfeste, Volksbräuche und deutscher Volksglaube, p. 128.
Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. iii. 10. 3; Macrobius, Saturn. vii. 16. See further, W. H. Roscher, Über Selene und Verwandtes (Leipsic, 1890), pp. 49 sqq.
Plutarch and Macrobius, ll.cc.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 223, xx. 1; Aristotle, Problemata, xxiv. 14, p. 937 b, 3 sq. ed. I. Bekker (Berlin).
Macrobius and Plutarch, ll.cc.
L. F. Sauvé, Folk-lore des Hautes-Vosges, p. 5.
Above, p. 136.
M. Martin, “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland,” in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, iii. 630.
E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America, i. (Oxford, 1892) p. 495. In his remarks on the origin of moon-worship this learned and philosophical historian has indicated (op. cit. i. 493 sqq.) the true causes which lead primitive man to trace the growth of plants to the influence of the moon. Compare Sir E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture2 (London, 1873), i. 130. Payne suggests that the custom of naming the months after the principal natural products that ripen in them may have contributed to the same result. The custom is certainly very common among savages, as I hope to show elsewhere, but whether it has contributed to foster the fallacy in question seems doubtful.
The Indians of Brazil are said to pay more attention to the moon than to the sun, regarding it as a source both of good and ill. See J. B. von Spix und C. F. von Martius, Reise in Brasilien (Munich, 1823-1831), i. 379. The natives of Mori, a district of Central Celebes, believe that the rice-spirit Omonga lives in the moon and eats up the rice in the granary if he is not treated with due respect. See A. C. Kruijt, “Eenige ethnografische aanteekeningen omtrent de Toboengkoe en de Tomori,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xliv. (1900) p. 231.
E. A. Budge, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, on recently-discovered inscriptions of this King, pp. 5 sq.; A. H. Sayce, Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 155; M. Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 68 sq., 75 sq.; L. W. King, Babylonian Religion and Mythology (London, 1899), pp. 17 sq. The Ahts of Vancouver Island, a tribe of fishers and hunters, view the moon as the husband of the sun and as a more powerful deity than her (G. M. Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, London, 1868, p. 206).
This principle is clearly recognized and well illustrated by J. Grimm (Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 594-596).
D. F. A. Hervey, “The Mentra Traditions,” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 10 (Singapore, 1883), p. 190; W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula (London, 1906), ii. 337.
Rev. J. Grant (parish minister of Kirkmichael), in Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1791-1799), xii. 457.
A. Kuhn und W. Schwartz, Nord-deutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche (Leipsic, 1848), p. 457, § 419.
Tacitus, Germania, 11.
Caesar, De bello Gallico, i. 50.
Herodotus, vi. 106; Lucian, De astrologia, 25; Pausanias, i. 28. 4.
Thucydides, vii. 50.
Le capitaine Binger, Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée (Paris, 1892), ii. 116.
Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa5 (London, 1807), pp. 406 sq.
W. Smythe and F. Lowe, Narrative of a Journey from Lima to Para (London, 1836), p. 230.
Father G. Boscana, “Chinig-chinich,” in Life in California, by an American [A. Robinson] (New York, 1846), pp. 298 sq.
Merolla, “Voyage to Congo,” in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, xvi. 273.
H. Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika (Oldenburg and Leipsic, n.d.), p. 319.
A. C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford, 1905), p. 274.
H. Cole, “Notes on the Wagogo of German East Africa,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) p. 330.
John H. Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 142.
J. G. Kohl, Die deutsch-russischen Ostseeprovinzen (Dresden and Leipsic, 1841), ii. 279. Compare Boecler-Kreutzwald, Der Ehsten abergläubische Gebräuche, Weisen und Gewohnheiten (St. Petersburg, 1854), pp. 142 sq.; J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 595, note 1. The power of regeneration ascribed to the moon in these customs is sometimes attributed to the sun. Thus it is said that the Chiriguanos Indians of South-Eastern Bolivia often address the sun as follows: “Thou art born and disappearest every day, only to revive always young. Cause that it may be so with me.” See A. Thouar, Explorations dans l'Amérique du Sud (Paris, 1891), p. 50.
W. Woodville Rockhill, “Notes on some of the Laws, Customs, and Superstitions of Korea,” The American Anthropologist, iv. (Washington, 1891), p. 185.
W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), i. 14 sq.
George Brown, D.D., Melanesians and Polynesians (London, 1910), p. 37.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), p. 58.
Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe (Neuchatel, 1912-1913), i. 51.
A. d'Orbigny, Voyage dans l'Amérique Méridionale, iii. 1re Partie (Paris and Strasburg, 1844), p. 24.
F. de Castelnau, Expédition dans les parties centrales de l'Amérique du Sud (Paris, 1850-1851), ii. 31-34.
J. Roscoe, “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda.” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. (1902) pp. 63, 76; id., The Baganda (London, 1911) pp. 235 sq. In the former passage the part of the king's person which is treated with this ceremony is said to be the placenta, not the navel-string.
M. Abeghian, Der armenische Volksglaube (Leipsic, 1899), p. 49.
Plutarch, Quaestiones Conviviales, iv. 10. 3. 7.
J. B. von Spix und C. F. Ph. von Martius, Reise in Brasilien (Munich, 1823-1831), i. 381, iii. 1186.
J. Jamieson, Dictionary of the Scottish Language, New Edition edited by J. Longmuir and D. Donaldson (Paisley, 1879-1882), iii. 300 (s.v. “Mone”).
F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie (Munich, 1848-1855), ii. 260; P. Drechsler, Sitte, Brauch und Volksglaube in Schlesien, ii. (Leipsic, 1906) p. 131; W. Henderson, Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England (London, 1879), p. 114; C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore (London, 1883), p. 257; W. Gregor, Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland (London, 1881), p. 151.
C. R. Conder, Heth and Moab (London, 1883), p. 286.
P. Sébillot, Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne (Paris, 1882), ii. 355.
A. Kuhn, Märkische Sagen und Märchen (Berlin, 1843), p. 387, § 93.
Die gestriegelte Rockenphilosophie (Chemnitz, 1759), p. 447.
F. Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, ii. 302. Compare J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 ii. 596.
R. F. Kaindl, “Zauberglaube bei den Huzulen,” Globus, lxxvi. (1899) p. 256.
See above, vol. i. pp. 16 sq., 48 sqq., 110, 114, 170 sq., 172 sqq., 176 sqq., 179 sqq., 285 sqq., 288 sqq.
A. Moret, Du caractère religieux de la royauté Pharaonique (Paris, 1902), pp. 235-238. The festival is discussed at length by M. Moret (op. cit. pp. 235-273). See further R. Lepsius, Die Chronologie der Aegypter, i. 161-165; Miss M. A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos, pp. 32-34; W. M. Flinders Petrie, Researches in Sinai (London, 1906), pp. 176-185. In interpreting the festival I follow Professor Flinders Petrie. That the festival occurred, theoretically at least, at intervals of thirty years, appears to be unquestionable; for in the Greek text of the Rosetta Stone Ptolemy V. is called “lord of periods of thirty years,” and though the corresponding part of the hieroglyphic text is lost, the demotic version of the words is “master of the years of the Sed festival.” See R. Lepsius, op. cit. pp. 161 sq.; W. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, No. 90, line 2 (vol. i. p. 142); A. Moret, op. cit. 260. However, the kings appear to have sometimes celebrated the festival at much shorter intervals, so that the dates of its recurrence cannot safely be used for chronological purposes. See Ed. Meyer, Nachträge zur ägyptischen Chronologie (Berlin, 1908), pp. 43 sq. (Abhandlungen der königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften vom Jahre 1907); id., Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. xix. 130.
This was Letronne's theory (R. Lepsius, op. cit. p. 163).
This was in substance the theory of Biot (R. Lepsius, l.c.), and it is the view of Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie (Researches in Sinai, pp. 176 sqq.).
W. M. Flinders Petrie, Researches in Sinai, p. 180.
A. Moret, Du caractère religieux de la royauté Pharaonique, pp. 255 sq.
W. M. Flinders Petrie, Researches in Sinai, p. 181.
A. Moret, op. cit. p. 240; Miss M. A. Murray, The Osireion at Abydos, pp. 33 sq., with the slip inserted at p. 33; W. Flinders Petrie, op. cit. p. 184.
A. Moret, op. cit. p. 242.
Miss M. A. Murray, op. cit., slip inserted at p. 33.
W. M. Flinders Petrie, Researches in Sinai, p. 183.
W. M. Flinders Petrie, l.c. As to the king's name (Khent instead of Zer) see above, p. 20, note 1.
J. Capart, “Bulletin critique des religions de l'Égypte,” Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, liii. (1906) pp. 332-334. I have to thank Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie for calling my attention to this passage.
W. M. Flinders Petrie, Researches in Sinai, p. 185. As to the Coptic mock-king see C. B. Klunzinger, Bilder aus Oberägypten, der Wüste und dem Rothen Meere (Stuttgart, 1877), pp. 180 sq.; The Dying God, pp. 151 sq. For examples of human sacrifices offered to prolong the lives of kings see below, vol. ii. pp. 219 sqq.
A. Moret, Mystères Égyptiens (Paris, 1913), pp. 187-190. For a detailed account of the Egyptian evidence, monumental and inscriptional, on which M. Moret bases his view of the king's rebirth by deputy from the hide of a sacrificed animal, see pp. 16 sqq., 72 sqq. of the same work. Compare his article, “Du sacrifice en Égypte,” Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, lvii. (1908) pp. 93 sqq. In support of the view that the king of Egypt was deemed to be born again at the Sed festival it has been pointed out that on these solemn occasions, as we learn from the monuments, there was carried before the king on a pole an object shaped like a placenta, a part of the human body which many savage or barbarous peoples regard as the twin brother or sister of the new-born child. See C. G. Seligmann and Margaret A. Murray, “Note upon an early Egyptian standard,” Man, xi. (1911) pp. 165-171. The object which these writers take to represent a human placenta is interpreted by M. Alexandre Moret as the likeness of a human embryo. As to the belief that the afterbirth is a twin brother or sister of the infant, see above, vol. i. p. 93, and below, pp. 169sq.; The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 82 sqq.
Professor J. H. Breasted thinks that the Sed festival is probably “the oldest religious feast of which any trace has been preserved in Egypt”; he admits that on these occasions “the king assumed the costume and insignia of Osiris, and undoubtedly impersonated him,” and further that “one of the ceremonies of this feast symbolized the resurrection of Osiris”; but he considers that the significance of the festival is as yet obscure. See J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (London, 1912), p. 39.
It is maintained by the discoverer of the tomb of Osiris at Abydos, Monsieur E. Amélineau, in his work Le Tombeau d'Osiris (Paris, 1899) and by Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge in his elaborate treatise Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, in which the author pays much attention to analogies drawn from the religion and customs of modern African tribes.
G. Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient Classique, i. 43 sqq.; J. H. Breasted, History of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 29 sq.; Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. pp. 41 sqq. The affinity of the Egyptian language to the Semitic family of speech seems now to be admitted even by historians who maintain the African origin of the Egyptians.
The Dying God, pp. 17 sqq. The information there given was kindly supplied by Dr. C. G. Seligmann, who has since published it with fuller details. See C. G. Seligmann, The Cult of Nyakang and the Divine Kings of the Shilluk (Khartoum, 1911), pp. 216-232 (reprint from Fourth Report of the Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories, Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum); W. Hofmayr, “Religion der Schilluk,” Anthropos, vi. (1911) pp. 120-131; Diedrich Westermann, The Shilluk People, their Language and Folk-lore (Berlin, preface dated 1912), pp. xxxix. sqq. In what follows I have drawn on all these authorities.
C. G. Seligmann, The Cult of Nyakang, p. 221.
D. Westermann, The Shilluk People, p. xlii.
D. Westermann, l.c.
W. Hofmayr, “Religion der Schilluk,” Anthropos, vi. (1911) pp. 123 sq.; C. G. Seligmann, op. cit. p. 230; D. Westermann, op. cit. p. xliii.
C. G. Seligmann, op. cit. pp. 229 sq.
W. Hofmayr, op. cit. p. 125.
W. Hofmayr, op. cit. p. 123. This writer spells the name of the deified king as Nykang. I have adopted Dr. Seligmann's spelling.
Diederich Westermann, The Shilluk People, their Language and Folklore (Berlin, preface dated 1912), pp. xlii, xliii. Mr. Westermann gives the names of the demi-god and the god as Nyikang and Jwok respectively. For the sake of uniformity I have altered them to Nyakang and Juok, the forms adopted by Dr. C. G. Seligmann.
C. G. Seligmann, The Cult of Nyakang and the Divine Kings of the Shilluk (Khartoum, 1911), p. 220.
C. G. Seligmann, op. cit. p. 231.
W. Hofmayr, op. cit. p. 125. “It must be remembered that the due growth of the crops, i.e. of the most important part of the vegetable world, depends on the well-being of the divine king” (C. G. Seligmann, op. cit. p. 229).
C. G. Seligmann, op. cit. p. 227.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), p. 283.
Rev. J. Roscoe, op. cit. pp. 113, 282.
Rev. J. Roscoe, op. cit. pp. 110, 282, 285.
Rev. J. Roscoe, op. cit. pp. 104, 252 sq.; L. F. Cunningham, Uganda and its People (London, 1905), p. 226.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 104-107, id., “Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxi. (1901) p. 129; id., “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” ibid., xxxii. (1902) pp. 44 sq. Compare L. F. Cunningham, Uganda and its People (London, 1905), pp. 224, 226.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 109 sq.
Above, p. 147.
Rev. J. Roscoe, “Kibuka, the War God of the Baganda,” Man, vii. (1907) pp. 164 sq.; id., The Baganda, pp. 235 sq.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 110-112, 283 sq.
Rev. J. Roscoe, “Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxi. (1901) pp. 129 sq.; id., “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” ibid., xxxii. (1902) p. 45.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, p. 283.
Rev. J. Roscoe, “Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxi. (1901) p. 130; id., “Further Notes on the Manners and Customs of the Baganda,” ibid., xxxii. (1902) p. 46; id., The Baganda, pp. 283-285.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 112, 284.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, p. 112. It may be worth while to quote an early notice of the worship of the Kings of Uganda. See C. T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin, Uganda and the Egyptian Soudan (London, 1882), i. 208: “The former kings of the country appear also to be regarded as demi-gods, and their graves are kept with religious care, and houses are erected over them, which are under the constant supervision of one of the principal chiefs of the country, and where human sacrifices are also occasionally offered.” The graves here spoken of are no doubt the temples in which the jawbones and navel-strings of the dead kings are kept and worshipped.
Hermann Rehse, Kiziba, Land und Leute (Stuttgart, 1910), pp. 4-7, 106 sqq., 121, 125 sqq., 130. Among the totems of the people are the long-tailed monkey (Cercopithecus), a small species of antelope, the locust, the hippopotamus, the buffalo, the otter, dappled cows, and the hearts of all animals. The members of the clan which is charged with the duty of burying the king's body have for their totem the remains of a goat that has been killed by a leopard. See H. Rehse, op. cit. pp. 5 sq.
C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia (London, 1911), pp. 80 sq.
C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia, pp. 82 sq.
C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, op. cit. pp. 84 sq.
Rev. James Macdonald, “Manners, Customs, Superstitions, and Religions of South African Tribes,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xix. (1890) p. 286. Compare id., Light in Africa2 (London, 1890), p. 191.
G. McCall Theal, Records of South-Eastern Africa, vii. (1901) pp. 399 sq. With regard to the ghost who controls lightning see Mr. Warner's notes in Col. Maclean's Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs (Cape Town, 1866), pp. 82 sq.: “The Kafirs have strange notions respecting the lightning. They consider that it is governed by the umshologu, or ghost, of the greatest and most renowned of their departed chiefs; and who is emphatically styled the inkosi; but they are not at all clear as to which of their ancestors is intended by this designation. Hence they allow of no lamentation being made for a person killed by lightning; as they say that it would be a sign of disloyalty to lament for one whom the inkosi had sent for, and whose services he consequently needed; and it would cause him to punish them, by making the lightning again to descend and do them another injury.”
G. McCall Theal, op. cit. vii. 400.
Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir (London, 1904), pp. 88-91.
Rev. E. Casalis, The Basutos (London, 1861), pp. 248-250.
Henri A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe (Neuchâtel, 1912-1913), ii. 347.
H. A. Junod, op. cit. ii. 385.
H. A. Junod, op. cit. ii. 344.
H. A. Junod, op. cit. ii. 385.
H. A. Junod, op. cit. ii. 348 sq.
H. A. Junod, op. cit. ii. 341.
H. A. Junod, op. cit. ii. 346.
A. Merensky, Beiträge zur Kenntnis Süd-Afrikas (Berlin, 1875), p. 130.
Rev. H. Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu, i. (Natal, Springvale, etc., 1868) pp. 1 sq.
Rev. Joseph Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country (London, 1857), p. 159.
Rev. J. Shooter, op. cit. p. 161.
Rev. Lewis Grout, Zulu-land, or Life among the Zulu-Kafirs (Philadelphia, n.d.), pp. 137, 143-145.
“That is, they suggest to the Itongo [ancestral spirit, singular of Amatongo], by whose ill-will or want of care they are afflicted, that if they should all die in consequence, and thus his worshippers come to an end, he would have none to worship him; and therefore for his own sake, as well as for theirs, he had better preserve his people, that there may be a village for him to enter, and meat of the sacrifices for him to eat.”
Rev. Henry Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu, Part ii., Amatongo or Ancestor Worship as existing among the Amazulu, in their own words, with a translation into English (Natal, Springvale, etc., 1869), pp. 144-146.
Missionar J. Irle, Die Herero, ein Beitrag zur Landes- Volks- und Missionskunde (Gütersloh, 1906), pp. 72 sq.
J. Irle, op. cit. p. 73.
Ovakuru, the plural form of Mukuru.
J. Irle, op. cit. p. 74.
J. Irle, op. cit. p. 75. The writer tells us (l.c.) that the Herero name for the good celestial God, whom they acknowledge but do not worship, is common, in different forms, to almost all the Bantu tribes. Among the Ovambo it is Kalunga; among tribes of Loango, the Congo, Angola and Benguela it is Zambi, Njambi, Ambi, Njame, Onjame, Ngambe, Nsambi; in the Cameroons it is Nzambi, etc. Compare John H. Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), pp. 246 sq.: “We have found a vague knowledge of a Supreme Being, and a belief in Him, very general among those tribes on the Congo with which we have come into contact.... On the Lower Congo He is called Nzambi, or by His fuller title Nzambi a mpungu; no satisfactory root word has yet been found for Nzambi, but for mpungu there are sayings and proverbs that clearly indicate its meaning as, most of all, supreme, highest, and Nzambi a mpungu as the Being most High, or Supreme. On the Upper Congo among the Bobangi folk the word used for the Supreme Being is Nyambe; among the Lulanga people, Nzakomba; among the Boloki, Njambe; among the Bopoto people it is Libanza.... It is interesting to note that the most common name for the Supreme Being on the Congo is also known, in one form or another, over an extensive area of Africa reaching from 6° north of the Equator away to extreme South Africa; as, for example, among the Ashanti it is Onyame, at Gaboon it is Anyambie, and two thousand miles away among the Barotse folk it is Niambe. These are the names that stand for a Being who is endowed with strength, wealth, and wisdom by the natives; and He is also regarded and spoken of by them as the principal Creator of the world, and the Maker of all things.... But the Supreme Being is believed by the natives to have withdrawn Himself to a great distance after performing His creative works; that He has now little or no concern in mundane affairs; and apparently no power over spirits and no control over the lives of men, either to protect them from malignant spirits or to help them by averting danger. They also consider the Supreme Being (Nzambi) as being so good and kind that there is no need to appease Him by rites, ceremonies or sacrifices. Hence they never pray to this Supreme One, they never worship Him, or think of Him as being interested in the doings of the world and its peoples.”
J. Irle, op. cit. p. 77. Mr. Irle's account of the religion of the Herero or Ovaherero is fully borne out by the testimony of earlier missionaries among the tribe. See Rev. G. Viehe, “Some Customs of the Ovaherero” (South African) Folk-lore Journal, i. (Cape Town, 1879) pp. 64 sq.: “The religious customs and ceremonies of the Ovaherero are all rooted in the presumption that the deceased continue to live, and that they have a great influence on earth, and exercise power over the life and death of man. This influence and power is ascribed especially to those who have been great men, and who become Ovakuru after death. The numerous religious customs and ceremonies are a worshipping of the ancestors.” Further, Mr. Viehe reports that “the Ovaherero have a slight idea of another being (Supreme being?) which differs greatly from the Ovakuru, is superior to them, and is supposed never to have been a human being. It is called Karunga.... Karunga does only good; whilst the influence of the Ovakuru is more feared than wished for; and, therefore, it is not thought necessary to bring sacrifices to Karunga to guard against his influence.” He is situated so high, and is so superior to men “that he takes little special notice of them; and so the Ovaherero, on their part, also trouble themselves little about this superior being” (op. cit. p. 67 note 1). Similar evidence is given by another missionary as to the belief of the Herero in a superior god Karunga and their fear and worship of ancestral spirits. See the Rev. H. Beiderbecke, “Some Religious Ideas and Customs of the Ovaherero” (South African) Folk-lore Journal, ii. (Cape Town, 1880) pp. 88 sqq.
Hermann Tönjes, Ovamboland, Land, Leute, Mission (Berlin, 1911), pp. 193-197.
E. Nigmann, Die Wahehe (Berlin, 1908), pp. 22 sq. The writer does not describe the Wahehe as a Bantu tribe, but from the characteristic prefixes which they employ to designate the tribe, individual tribesmen, the country, and so forth (op. cit. p. 124) we may infer that the people belong to the Bantu stock.
E. Nigmann, Die Wahehe, pp. 23 sq.
E. Nigmann, op. cit. p. 35.
E. Nigmann, op. cit. p. 39.
E. Nigmann, op. cit. pp. 24 sqq., 35 sqq.
Rev. J. Roscoe, “The Bahima, a Cow Tribe of Enkole,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xxxvii. (1907) pp. 108 sq. The supreme god Lugaba is no doubt the same with the supreme god Rugaba worshipped by the Bahimas in Kiziba. See above, p. 173. With regard to the religion of the Baganda the same authority tells us that “the last, and possibly the most venerated, class of religious objects were the ghosts of departed relatives. The power of ghosts for good or evil was incalculable” (The Baganda, p. 273).
C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia, p. 83.
C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, op. cit. p. 11.
C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, op. cit. p. 292.
C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, op. cit. pp. 294 sq.
J. H. West Sheane, “Wemba Warpaths,” Journal of the African Society, No. xli. (October, 1911) pp. 25 sq.
C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern Nigeria, p. 83.
C. Gouldsbury and H. Sheane, op. cit. p. 84.
Eugène Béguin, Les Ma-rotsé (Lausanne and Fontaines, 1903), pp. 118 sq.
Eugène Béguin, Les Ba-rotsé, pp. 120-123. Compare Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 306 sq.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), p. 271.
Rev. J. Roscoe, op. cit. pp. 290, 291. In the worship of Mukasa “the principal ceremony was the annual festival, when the king sent his presents to the god, to secure a blessing on the crops and on the people for the year.” (J. Roscoe, op. cit. p. 298).
Rev. J. Roscoe, “Kibuka, the War God of the Baganda,” Man, vii. (1907) pp. 161-166; id., The Baganda, pp. 301-308. Among the personal relics of Kibuka kept in his temple were his genital organs; these also were rescued when the Mohammedans burned down his temple in the civil wars of 1887-1890. They are now with the rest of the god's, or rather the man's, remains at Cambridge.
This consideration is rightly urged by H. Schäfer as a strong argument in favour of the antiquity of the tradition which associated the grave of Osiris with the grave of King Khent. See H. Schäfer, Die Mysterien des Osiris in Abydos (Leipsic, 1904), pp. 28 sq.
One of the commonest and oldest titles of Osiris was Chent (Khent)-Ament or Chenti (Khenti)-Amenti, as the name is also written. It means “Chief of those who are in the West” and refers to the Egyptian belief that the souls of the dead go westward. See R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, p. 727; H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter, p. 617; A. Erman, Die ägyptische Religion,2 pp. 23, 103 sq.; J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, pp. 38, 143 (who spells the name Khenti-Amentiu); E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. 31 sq., 67. “Khenti-Amenti was one of the oldest gods of Abydos, and was certainly connected with the dead, being probably the ancient local god of the dead of Abydos and its neighbourhood. Now, in the Pyramid Texts, which were written under the VIth dynasty, there are several mentions of Khenti-Amenti, and in a large number of instances the name is preceded by that of Osiris. It is quite clear, therefore, that the chief attributes of the one god must have resembled those of the other, and that Osiris Khenti-Amenti was assumed to have absorbed the powers of Khenti-Amenti. In the representations of the two gods which are found at Abydos there is usually no difference, at least not under the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties” (E. A. Wallis Budge, op. cit. i. 31). However, it would be unsafe to infer that the resemblance between the name of the god and the name of the king is more than accidental.
W. E. H. Lecky, History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, Third Edition (London, 1877), ii. 271.
I have adopted the terms “mother-kin” and “father-kin” as less ambiguous than the terms “mother-right” and “father-right,” which I formerly employed in the same sense.
The Khasis, by Major P. R. T. Gurdon, I.A., Deputy Commissioner Eastern Bengal and Assam Commission, and Superintendent of Ethnography in Assam (London, 1907).
“The Khasi saying is, ‘long jaid na ka kynthei’ (from the woman sprang the clan). The Khasis, when reckoning descent, count from the mother only; they speak of a family of brothers and sisters, who are the great grandchildren of one great grandmother, as shi kpoh, which, being literally translated, is one womb, i.e. the issue of one womb. The man is nobody” (P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis, p. 82). “All land acquired by inheritance must follow the Khasi law of entail, by which property descends from the mother to the youngest daughter, and again from the latter to her youngest daughter. Ancestral landed property must therefore be always owned by women. The male members of the family may cultivate such lands, but they must carry all the produce to the house of their mother, who will divide it amongst the members of the family” (op. cit. p. 88). “The rule amongst the Khasis is that the youngest daughter ‘holds’ the religion, ‘ka bat ka niam.’ Her house is called, ‘ka iing seng,’ and it is here that the members of the family assemble to witness her performance of the family ceremonies. Hers is, therefore, the largest share of the family property, because it is she whose duty it is to perform the family ceremonies, and propitiate the family ancestors” (op. cit. p. 83).
Sir C. J. Lyall, in his Introduction to The Khasis, by Major P. R. T. Gurdon, pp. xxiii. sq. Sir C. J. Lyall himself lived for many years among the Khasis and studied their customs. For the details of the evidence on which his summary is based see especially pp. 63 sqq., 68 sq., 76, 82 sqq., 88, 106 sqq., 109 sqq., 112 sq., 121, 150, of Major Gurdon's book. As to the Khasi priestesses, see above, vol. i. p. 46.
J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer (Berlin, 1885), pp. 35 sq. The writer calls one of these kins indifferently a Familie or a Stamm.
J. S. Kubary, “Die Todtenbestattung auf den Pelau-Inseln,” Original-Mittheilungen aus der ethnologischen Abtheilung der königlichen Museen zu Berlin, i. (Berlin, 1885) p. 7.
J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, p. 40.
J. Kubary, “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in A. Bastian's Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde (Berlin, 1888), i. 20-22. The writer says that the family or clan gods of the Pelew Islanders are too many to be enumerated, but he gives as a specimen a list of the family deities of one particular district (Ngarupesang). Having done so he observes that they are all goddesses, and he adds that “this is explained by the importance of the woman for the clan. The deity of the mother is inherited, that of the father is not” (op. cit. p. 22). As he says nothing to indicate that the family deities of this particular district are exceptional, we may infer, as I have done, that the deities of all the families or clans are goddesses. Yet a few pages previously (pp. 16 sq.) he tells us that a village which contains twenty families will have at least forty deities, if not more, “for some houses may have two kalids [deities], and every house has also a goddess.” This seems to imply that the families or clans have gods as well as goddesses. The seeming discrepancy is perhaps to be explained by another statement of the writer that “in the family only the kalids [deities] of the women count” (“sich geltend machen,” J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, p. 38).
J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, pp. 33 sq., 63; id., “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in A. Bastian's Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde, i. 16.
J. Kubary, “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in A. Bastian's Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde, i. 15-17, 22, 25-27.
From the passages cited in the preceding note it appears that this was Kubary's opinion, though he has not stated it explicitly.
J. Kubary, “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in A. Bastian's Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde, i. 28 sq.
J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, p. 38. See also above, p. 204, note 4.
J. Kubary, l.c.
See the statement of Kubary quoted in the next paragraph.
J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, p. 39.
See the statement of Kubary quoted in the next paragraph.
J. S. Kubary, Ethnographische Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Karolinen Archipels (Leyden, 1895), p. 159. On the importance of the taro or sweet potato as the staple food of the people, see ib. pp. 156 sq.
J. Kubary, “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in A. Bastian's Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde, i. 34.
J. Kubary, “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in A. Bastian's Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde, i. 30-35. The author wrote thus in the year 1883, and his account of the Pelew religion was published in 1888. Compare his work Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, p. 81. Great changes have probably taken place in the islands since Kubary wrote.
For some other parallels between the state of society and religion in these two regions, see Note IV. at the end of the volume.
Compare E. Stephan und F. Graebner, Neu-Mecklenburg (Berlin, 1907), p. 107 note 1: “It is necessary always to repeat emphatically that the terms father-right and mother-right indicate simply and solely the group-membership of the individual and the systems of relationship which that membership implies, but that they have nothing at all to do with the higher or lower position of women. Rather the opposite might be affirmed, namely, that woman is generally more highly esteemed in places where father-right prevails than in places where mother-right is the rule.”
Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The Khasis, pp. 66-71. The rule of succession is as follows. A Siem, or king, “is succeeded by the eldest of his uterine brothers; failing such brothers, by the eldest of his sisters' sons; failing such nephews, by the eldest of the sons of his sisters' daughters; failing such grand-nephews, by the eldest of the sons of his mother's sisters; and, failing such first cousins, by the eldest of his male cousins on the female side, other than first cousins, those nearest in degree of relationship having prior claim. If there were no heirs male, as above, he would be succeeded by the eldest of his uterine sisters; in the absence of such sisters, by the eldest of his sisters' daughters; failing such nieces, by the eldest of the daughters of his sisters' daughters; failing such grand-nieces, by the eldest of the daughters of his mother's sisters; and failing such first cousins, by the eldest of his female cousins on the female side, other than first cousins, those nearest in degree of relationship having prior claim. A female Siem would be succeeded by her eldest son, and so on” (op. cit. p. 71). The rule illustrates the logical precision with which the system of mother-kin is carried out by these people even when the intention is actually to exclude women from power.
J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, pp. 35, 39 sq., 73-83. See also above, pp. 204 sq.
R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), p. 34.
See A. H. Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz (Oldenburg and Leipsic, 1887), i. 140 sq. Captain W. Gill reports that the Su-Mu, a Man-Tzŭ tribe in Southern China numbering some three and a half millions, is always ruled by a queen (The River of Golden Sand, London, 1880, i. 365). But Capt. Gill was not nearer to the tribe than a six days' journey; and even if his report is correct we may suppose that the real power is exercised by men, just as it is in the solitary Khasi tribe which is nominally governed by a woman.
The theory, or at all events the latter part of it, has been carefully examined by Dr. L. R. Farnell; and if, as I apprehend, he rejects it, I agree with him. See his article “Sociological Hypotheses concerning the position of Women in Ancient Religion,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, vii. (1904) pp. 70-94; his Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1896-1909), iii. 109 sqq.; and The Hibbert Journal, April 1907, p. 690. But I differ from him, it seems, in thinking that mother-kin is favourable to the growth of mother goddesses.
The Lycians traced their descent through women, not through men; and among them it was the daughters, not the sons, who inherited the family property. See Herodotus, i. 174; Nicolaus Damascenus, in Stobaeus, Florilegium, xliv. 41 (Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, iii. 461); Plutarch, De mulierum virtutibus, 9. An ancient historian even asserts that the Lycians were ruled by women (ἐκ παλαιοῦ γυναικοκρατοῦνται, Heraclides Ponticus, Frag. 15, in Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Müller, ii. 217). Inscriptions found at Dalisandos, in Isauria, seem to prove that it was not unusual there to trace descent through the mother even in the third or the fourth century after Christ. See Sir W. M. Ramsay, “The Permanence of Religion at Holy Places in the East,” The Expositor, November 1906, p. 475. Dr. L. Messerschmidt seems to think that the Lycians were Hittites (The Hittites, p. 20). Scholars are not agreed as to the family of speech to which the Lycian language belongs. Some think that it was an Indo-European tongue; but this view is now abandoned by Professor Ed. Meyer (Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2. p. 626).
W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia2 (London, 1903), p. 306. The hypothesis of the former existence of mother-kin among the Semites is rejected by Professor Ed. Meyer (Geschichte des Altertums,2 i. 2, p. 360) and W. W. Graf Baudissin (Adonis und Esmun, pp. 46 sq.).
Diodorus Siculus, i. 27. 1 sq. In spite of this express testimony to the existence of a true gynaecocracy in ancient Egypt, I am of opinion that the alleged superiority of the queen to the king and of the wife to her husband must have been to a great extent only nominal. Certainly we know that it was the king and not the queen who really governed the country; and we can hardly doubt that in like manner it was for the most part the husband and not the wife who really ruled the house, though unquestionably in regard to property the law seems to have granted important rights to women which it denied to men. On the position of women in ancient Egypt see especially the able article of Miss Rachel Evelyn White (Mrs. Wedd), “Women in Ptolemaic Egypt,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, xviii. (1898) pp. 238-256.
Herodotus, ii. 35.
Sir Gaston Maspero, quoted by Miss R. E. White, op. cit. p. 244.
J. Nietzold, Die Ehe in Ägypten zur ptolemäisch-römischen Zeit (Leipzic, 1903), p. 12.
A. Erman, Ägypten und ägyptisches Leben im Altertum, pp. 221 sq.; U. Wilcken, “Arsinoitische Steuerprofessionen aus dem Jahre 189 n. Chr.,” Sitzungsberichte der könig. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1883, p. 903; J. Nietzold, Die Ehe in Ägypten zur ptolemäisch-römischen Zeit, pp. 12-14.
J. F. McLennan, Studies in Ancient History (London, 1886), pp. 101 sqq. Among the Kocchs of North-Eastern India “the property of the husband is made over to the wife; when she dies it goes to her daughters, and when he marries he lives with his wife's mother” (R. G. Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, London, 1859, i. 96).
This is in substance the explanation which Miss Rachel Evelyn White (Mrs. Wedd) gives of the Egyptian custom. See her paper, “Women in Ptolemaic Egypt,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, xviii. (1898) p. 265. Similarly Mr. J. Nietzold observes that “economical considerations, especially in the case of great landowners, may often have been the occasion of marriages with sisters, the intention being in this way to avoid a division of the property” (Die Ehe in Ägypten, p. 13). The same explanation of the custom has been given by Prof. W. Ridgeway. See his “Supplices of Aeschylus,” in Praelections delivered before the Senate of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1906), pp. 154 sq. I understand from Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie that the theory has been a commonplace with Egyptologists for many years. McLennan explained the marriage of brothers and sisters in royal families as an expedient for shifting the succession from the female to the male line; but he did not extend the theory so as to explain similar marriages among common people in Egypt, perhaps because he was not aware of the facts. See J. F. McLennan, The Patriarchal Theory, edited and completed by D. McLennan (London, 1885), p. 95.
Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica, i. 18 (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, lxvii. 121). The learned Valesius, in his note on this passage, informs us that the cubit was again transferred by the Emperor Julian to the Serapeum, where it was left in peace till the destruction of that temple.
Athanasius, Oratio contra Gentes, 10 (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, xxv. 24).
Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica, v. 16 sq. (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, lxvii. 604 sq.); Sozomenus, Historia Ecclesiastica, vii. 15 (Migne's Patrologia Graeca, lxvii. 1152 sq.). These events took place under the Emperor Theodosius in the year 391 a.d.
See above, vol. i. pp. 17 sqq.
The Dying God, pp. 168 sqq.; G. F. Moore, in Encyclopaedia Biblica, s.v. “Molech.” The phrase translated “make pass through the fire to Molech” (2 Kings xxiii. 10) means properly, Professor Kennett tells me, “make to pass over by means of fire to Molech,” where the verb has the sense of “make over to,” “dedicate,” “devote,” as appears from its use in Exodus xiii. 12 (“set apart,” English Version) and Ezekiel xx. 26. That the children were not made simply to pass through the fire, but were burned in it, is shown by a comparison of 2 Kings xvi. 3, xxiii. 10, Jeremiah xxxii. 35, with 2 Chronicles xxviii. 3, Jeremiah vii. 31, xix. 5. As to the use of the verb העכיר in the sense of “dedicate,” “devote,” see G. F. Moore, s.v. “Molech,” Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii. 3184; F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1906), p. 718. “The testimony of both the prophets and the laws is abundant and unambiguous that the victims were slain and burnt as a holocaust” (G. F. Moore, in Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii. 3184). Similarly Principal J. Skinner translates the phrase in 2 Kings xvi. 3 by “dedicated his son by fire,” and remarks that the expression, “whatever its primary sense may be, undoubtedly denoted actual burning” (commentary on Kings in The Century Bible). The practice would seem to have been very ancient at Jerusalem, for tradition placed the attempted burnt-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham on Mount Moriah, which was no other than Mount Zion, the site of the king's palace and of the temple of Jehovah. See Genesis xxii. 1-18; 2 Chronicles iii. 1; J. Benzinger, Hebräische Archäologie (Freiburg i. Baden and Leipsic, 1894), pp. 45, 233; T. K. Cheyne, s.v. “Moriah,” Encyclopaedia Biblica, iii. 3200 sq.
Leviticus xviii. 21, xx. 2-5; 1 Kings xi. 7; 2 Kings xxiii. 10; Jeremiah xxxii. 35.
W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites,2 p. 372, note 1.
“It is plain, from various passages of the prophets, that the sacrifices of children among the Jews before the captivity, which are commonly known as sacrifices to Moloch, were regarded by the worshippers as oblations to Jehovah, under the title of king” (W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites,2 p. 372, referring to Jeremiah vii. 31, xix. 5, xxxii. 35; Ezekiel xxiii. 39; Micah vi. 7). The same view is taken by Prof. G. F. Moore, in Encyclopaedia Biblica, s.v. “Molech,” vol. iii. 3187 sq.
The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, i. 366 sq.
“Ynglinga Saga,” 29, in The Heimskringla or Chronicle of the Kings of Norway, translated by S. Laing (London, 1844), i. 239 sq.; H. M. Chadwick, The Cult of Othin (London, 1899), pp. 4, 27; The Dying God, pp. 160 sq. Similarly in Peru, when a person of note was sick, he would sometimes sacrifice his son to the idol in order that his own life might be spared. See A. de Herrera, The General History of the Vast Continent and Islands of America, translated by Capt. J. Stevens (London, 1725-1726), iv. 347 sq.
Micah vi. 6-8.
Herodotus, vii. 114; Plutarch, De superstitione, 13.
W. Ellis, History of Madagascar (London, n.d.), i. 344 sq.
Major A. G. Leonard, The Lower Niger and its Tribes (London, 1906), p. 457.
D. Leslie, Among the Zulus and Amatongas2 (Edinburgh, 1875), p. 91. This sacrifice may be the one described by J. Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal (London, 1857), p. 26. The reason for not stabbing the animal is perhaps a wish not to lose any of the blood, but to convey its life intact to the king. The same reason would explain the same rule which the Baganda observed in killing a human victim for the same purpose (see below, p. 224).
J. Dos Santos, Eastern Ethiopia, bk. ii. chap. 16 (G. M'Call Theal's Records of South-Eastern Africa, vii. 289).
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), pp. 27 sq.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, p. 200.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 209 sq.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 210 sq.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda, pp. 211 sq. I have abridged the account of the ceremonies.
Rev. J. Roscoe, op. cit. pp. 213 sq.
From information furnished by my friend the Rev. J. Roscoe. Compare his book, The Baganda, pp. 331 sqq.
See The Dying God, pp. 166 sqq.
See above, vol. i. p. 45.
The Hibbert Journal, April 1907, p. 689.
Lucian, De dea Syria, 53.
G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,2 vol. ii. pp. 725 sqq., Nos. 877, 878.
G. Dittenberger, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 429 sq., No. 633.
Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, ed. Aug. Boeckh, etc. (Berlin, 1828-1877), vol. ii. pp. 481 sqq., No. 2715, οὔσης ἐξουσίας το[ῖς παισίν, ἐά]ν τινες αὐτῶν μὴ ὦσιν ὑγιεῖς ἤ πένθει οἰκείῳ κατέχωνται, where I understand ἐξουσία to mean “leave of absence.”
W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas (London, 1906), pp. 99 sq.
Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 24.
Aulus Gellius, l.c.: “funus tamen exequi non est religio.”
Gaius, Instit. i. 112, “quod jus etiam nostris temporibus in usu est: nam flamines majores, id est Diales, Martiales, Quirinales, item reges sacrorum, nisi (qui) ex farreatis nati sunt non leguntur: ac ne ipsi quidem sine confarreatione sacerdotium habere possunt”; Servius on Virgil, Aen. iv. 103, “quae res ad farreatas nuptias pertinet, quibus flaminem et flaminicam jure pontificio in matrimonium necesse est convenire.” For a fuller description of the rite see Servius, on Virgil, Aen. iv. 374. From the testimony of Gaius it appears that not only the Flamen Dialis but all the other principal Flamens were bound to be married. However, the text of Gaius in this passage is somewhat uncertain. I have quoted it from P. E. Huschke's third edition (Leipsic, 1878).
W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, p. 99. According to an old account, there was an important exception to the rule, but Dr. Rivers was not able to verify it; he understood that during the tenure of his office the dairyman is really celibate.
Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 23, “Matrimonium flaminis nisi morte dirimi jus non est”; Festus, p. 89, ed. C. O. Müller, s.v. “Flammeo”; Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 50. Plutarch mentions as an illegal exception that in his own time the Emperor Domitian allowed a Flamen to divorce his wife, but the ceremony of the divorce was attended by “many awful, strange, and gloomy rites” performed by the priests.
Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 50. That the wives of Roman priests aided their husbands in the performance of sacred rites is mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who attributes the institution of these joint priesthoods to Romulus (Antiquit. Rom. ii. 22).
The epithet Dialis, which was applied to the Flaminica as well as to the Flamen (Aulus Gellius, x. 15. 26; Servius, on Virgil, Aen. iv. 137), would of itself prove that husband and wife served the same god or pair of gods; and while the word was doubtfully derived by Varro from Jove (De lingua Latina, v. 84), we are expressly told that the Flamen was the priest and the Flaminica the priestess of that god (Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 109; Festus, p. 92, ed. C. O. Müller, s.v. “Flammeo”). There is therefore every reason to accept the statement of Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 86) that the Flaminica was reputed to be sacred to Juno, the divine partner of Jupiter, in spite of the objections raised by Mr. W. Warde Fowler (“Was the Flaminica Dialis priestess of Juno?” Classical Review, ix. (1895) pp. 474 sqq.).
E. Thurston, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909), iv. 10.
Leviticus, xxi. 1-3; Ezekiel, xliv. 25.
The Hibbert Journal, iv. (1906) p. 932.
Varro, De lingua Latina, v. 67, “Quod Jovis Juno conjux et is caelum.”
Augustine, De civitate Dei, iv. 32, “Dicit etiam [scil. Varro] de generationibus deorum magis ad poetas quam ad physicos fuisse populos inclinatos, et ideo et sexum et generationes deorum majores suos, id est veteres credidisse Romanos et eorum constituisse conjugia.”
Seneca, quoted by Augustine, De civitate Dei, vi. 10, “Quid quod et matrimonia, inquit, deorum jungimus, et ne pie quidem, fratrum ac sororum? Bellonam Marti conlocamus, Vulcano Venerem, Neptuno Salaciam. Quosdam tamen caelibes relinquimus, quasi condicio defecerit, praesertim cum quaedam viduae sint, ut Populonia vel Fulgora et diva Rumina; quibus non miror petitorem defuisse.” In this passage the marriage of Venus to Vulcan is probably Greek; all the rest is pure Roman.
Servius, on Virgil, Georg. i. 344, “Aliud est sacrum, aliud nuptias Cereri celebrare, in quibus re vera vinum adhiberi nefas fuerat, quae Orci nuptiae dicebantur, quas praesentia sua pontifices ingenti solemnitate celebrabant.”
Servius, on Virgil, Georg. i. 344, and on Aen. iv. 58. As to the prohibition of wine, compare Macrobius, Saturn. iii. 11. There seems to be no doubt that Orcus was a genuine old Italian god of death and the dead. See the evidence collected by R. Peter, s.v. “Orcus,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, iii. 940 sqq., who says that “Orcus was obviously one of those old Roman gods who occupied the thoughts of the people in the most lively manner.” On the other hand, Prof. G. Wissowa supposes that Orcus is merely a borrowed form of the Greek Horkos (Religion und Kultus der Römer,2 p. 310). But Horkos was not a god of death and the dead; he was simply a personified oath (ὅρκος; see Hesiod, Works and Days, 804 Ὅρκον γεινόμενον, τὸν Ἔρις τέκε πῆμ᾽ ἐπιόρκοις), an abstract idea which makes no figure in Greek mythology and religion. That such a rare and thin Greek abstraction should through a gross misunderstanding be transformed into a highly popular Roman god of death, who not only passed muster with the people but was admitted by the pontiffs themselves to the national pantheon and honoured by them with a solemn ritual, is in the last degree improbable.
Aulus Gellius, xiii. 23 (22), 1 sq., “Conprecationes deum inmortalium, quae ritu Romano fiunt, expositae sunt in libris sacerdotum populi Romani et in plerisque antiquis orationibus. In his scribtum est: Luam Saturni, Salaciam Neptuni, Horam Quirini, Virites Quirini, Maiam Volcani, Heriem Junonis, Moles Martis Nerienemque Martis.” As to this list see Mr. W. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1899), pp. 60-62; id., The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1911), pp. 150 sqq., 481 sqq. He holds (p. 485) that the feminine names Salacia, etc., do not designate goddesses, the wives of the gods, but that they “indicate functions or attributes of the male deity to whom they are attached.”
Aulus Gellius, xiii. 23 (22), 11-16.
Macrobius, Saturn. i. 12. 18, “Cingius mensem [Maium] nominatum putat a Maia, quam Vulcani dicit uxorem, argumentoque utitur quod flamen Vulcanalis Kalendis Maiis huic deae rem divinam facit: sed Piso uxorem Vulcani Majestam, non Maiam, dicit vocari.” The work of Cincius (Cingius) is mentioned by Macrobius in the same chapter (§ 12, “Cingius in eo libro quem de fastis reliquit”). As to the life and writings of this old annalist and antiquary see M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur,2 i. (Munich, 1898), p. 128; G. Wissowa, Münzer, and Cichorius, s.v. “Cincius,” in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, iii. 2555 sqq. All these writers distinguish the old annalist from the antiquary, whom they take to have been a later writer of the same name. But the distinction appears to be purely arbitrary and destitute of any ancient authority.
Macrobius, Saturn. i. 12. 18. See the preceding note.
Macrobius, Saturn. i. 12. 18. See the passage cited above, p. 232, note 3.
Varro, De lingua Latina, v. 72, “Salacia Neptuni a salo.” This was probably one of the cases which Varro had in his mind when he stated that the ancient Roman gods were married.
Augustine, De civitate Dei, vii. 22, “Jam utique habebat Salaciam Neptunus uxorem”; Servius, on Virgil, Aen. x. 76, “Sane hanc Veniliam quidam Salaciam accipiunt, Neptuni uxorem.” As for Seneca's evidence see above, p. 231, note 3.
Nonius Marcellus, De compendiosa doctrina, p. 125, ed. L. Quicherat (Paris, 1872), “Hora juventutis dea. Ennius Annali[um] lib. i. [Teque,] Quirine pater, veneror, Horamque Quirini.”
Livy, viii. 1. 6, xlv. 33. 2.
Festus, p. 186, ed. C. O. Müller, “Opima spolia dicuntur originem quidem trahentia ab Ope Saturni uxore”; id., p. 187, “Opis dicta est conjux Saturni”; Macrobius, Saturnal. i. 10. 19, “Hanc autem deam Opem Saturni conjugem crediderunt, et ideo hoc mense Saturnalia itemque Opalia celebrari, quod Saturnus ejusque uxor tam frugum quam fructuum repertores esse creduntur.” Varro couples Saturn and Ops together (De lingua Latina, v. 57, “Principes in Latio Saturnus et Ops”; compare id., v. 64), but without expressly affirming them to be husband and wife. Professor G. Wissowa, however, argues that the male partner (he would not say husband) of Ops was not Saturn but Consus. See G. Wissowa, “De feriis anni Romanorum vetustissimi observationes selectae,” reprinted in his Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur römischen Religions- und Stadtgeschichte (Munich, 1904), pp. 156 sqq. His view is accepted by Mr. W. Warde Fowler (Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, p. 212; The Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 482).
Lactantius, Divin. Instit. iv. 3, “Itaque et Jupiter a precantibus pater vocatur, et Saturnus, et Janus, et Liber, et ceteri deinceps, quod Lucilius in deorum consilio irridet:
Ut nemo sit nostrum, quin aut pater optimus divum
Ut Neptunus pater, Liber, Saturnus pater, Mars,
Janus, Quirinus pater nomen dicatur ad unum.”
Compare Aulus Gellius, v. 12. 5; Servius, on Virgil, Georg. ii. 4. Roman goddesses who received the title of Mother were Vesta, Earth, Ops, Matuta, and Lua. As to Mother Vesta see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 229; as to Mother Earth see H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, Nos. 3950-3955, 3960; as to Mother Ops see Varro, De lingua Latina, v. 64; as to Mother Matuta see L. Preller, Römische Mythologie,3 i. 322 sqq.; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer,2 pp. 110 sqq.; id., s.v. “Mater Matuta,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 2462 sqq. I cite these passages only to prove that the Romans commonly applied the titles “father” and “mother” to their deities. The inference that these titles implied paternity or maternity is my own, but in the text I have given some reasons for thinking that the Romans themselves accepted the implication. Mr. W. Warde Fowler, on the other hand, prefers to suppose that the titles were employed in a merely figurative sense to “imply the dependence of the human citizen upon his divine protector”; but he admits that what exactly the Romans understood by pater and mater applied to deities is not easy to determine (The Religious Experience of the Roman People, pp. 155-157). He makes at the same time the important observation that the Romans never, so far as he is aware, applied the terms Father and Mother to foreign gods, but “always to di indigetes, those on whom the original Roman stock looked as their fellow-citizens and guardians.” The limitation is significant and seems more naturally explicable on my hypothesis than on that of my learned friend.
See Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, xiv. Nos. 2862, 2863; H. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, Nos. 3684, 3685; R. Peter, s.v. “Fortuna,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, i. 1542; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer,2 p. 259. I have to thank my learned and candid friend Mr. W. Warde Fowler for referring me to this good evidence of Jupiter's paternal character.
L. Preller, Römische Mythologie3 (Berlin, 1881-1883), i. 379.
The epithet Inuus applied to Faunus was so understood by the ancients, and this suffices to prove the conception they had of the god's virility, whether the etymology was right or wrong. See Servius, on Virgil, Aen. vi. 775, “Dicitur autem Inuus ab ineundo passim cum omnibus animalibus.” As to the title see G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer,2 p. 211, who, however, rejects the ancient etymology and the identification of Inuus with Faunus.
Macrobius, Saturn. i. 12. 21-24; Lactantius, Divin. Instit. i. 22; Servius, on Virgil, Aen. viii. 314; Plutarch, Caesar, 9; id., Quaest. Roman. 20. According to Varro, the goddess was the daughter of Faunus (Macrobius, Saturn. i. 12. 27); according to Sextus Clodius she was his wife (Lactantius, l.c.; compare Arnobius, Adversus nationes, v. 18).
Livy, i. 4. 2; Plutarch, Romulus, 4; Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Roman. i. 77.
See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 195 sq.
Plutarch, Romulus, 2. Plutarch's authority was Promathion in his history of Italy. See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 196.
Servius, on Virgil, Aen. vii. 678.
The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 230 sq.
Such, for example, as the loves of Vertumnus for Pomona (Ovid, Metam. xiv. 623 sqq.), of Jupiter for Juturna (Ovid, Fasti, ii. 585 sqq.), and of Janus for Carna (Ovid, Fasti, vi. 101 sqq.) and for Camasene (Servius, on Virgil, Aen. viii. 330). The water-nymph Juturna beloved by Jupiter is said to have been the daughter of the river Vulturnus, the wife of Janus, and the mother of Fontus (Arnobius, Adversus nationes, iii. 29). Janus in particular would seem to have been the theme of many myths, and his claim to be a genuine Italian god has never been disputed.
The marriage of the Roman gods has been denied by E. Aust (Die Religion der Römer, Münster i. W. 1899, pp. 19 sq.) and Professor G. Wissowa (Religion und Kultus der Römer,2 pp. 26 sq.), as well as by Mr. W. Warde Fowler. On the other hand, the evidence for it has been clearly and concisely stated by L. Preller, Römische Mythologie,3 i. 55-57. It is with sincere diffidence that I venture to differ on a point of Roman religion from the eminent scholars I have named. But without for a moment pitting my superficial acquaintance with Roman religion against their deep learning, I cannot but think that the single positive testimony of Varro on a matter about which he could scarcely be ignorant ought to outweigh the opinion of any modern scholar, however learned and able.
The Hibbert Journal, April 1907, p. 689. Such a boy was called a παῖς ἀμφιθαλής, “a boy blooming on both sides,” the metaphor being drawn from a tree which sends out branches on both sides. See Plato, Laws, xi. 8, p. 927 d; Julius Pollux, iii. 25; Hesychius and Suidas, s.v. ἀμφιθαλής.
Festus, p. 93, ed. C. O. Müller, s.vv. “Flaminius” and “Flaminia.” That certain Roman rites had to be performed by the children of living parents is mentioned in general terms by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Antiquit. Rom. ii. 22).
Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 50.
Proclus, in Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 322 a, ed. I. Bekker (Berlin, 1824); Athenaeus, xi. 92, pp. 495 sq.; Scholiast on Nicander, Alexipharmaca, 109. Only the last of these writers mentions that the boys had to be ἀμφιθαλεῖς. As to this and the following custom see A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipsic, 1898), pp. 278 sqq.; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, pp. 214 sqq.
Eustathius, on Homer, Iliad, xxii. 495, p. 1283; Etymologicum Magnum, p. 303. 18 sqq., s.v. Εἰρεσιώνη; Plutarch, Theseus, 22. According to a scholiast on Aristophanes (Plutus, 1054) the branch might be either of olive or laurel.
Scholiast on Aristophanes, Plutus, 1054.
O. Kern, Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maeander (Berlin, 1900), No. 98; G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,2 vol. ii. pp. 246 sqq., No. 553. This inscription has been well expounded by Prof. M. P. Nilsson (Griechische Feste, Leipsic, 1906, pp. 23-27). I follow him and Dittenberger in regarding the month of Artemision, when the bull was sacrificed, as the harvest month corresponding to the Attic Thargelion.
J. H. Neumann, “Iets over den landbouw bij de Karo-Bataks,” Mededeelingen van wege het Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, xlvi. (1902) p. 381.
G. Henzen, Acta Fratrum Arvalium (Berlin, 1874), pp. vi. sq., cix. cx. cxix. cliii. clix. clxxxvii. 12, 13, 15. As to the evergreen oaks and laurels of the grove, see ib., pp. 137, 138; as to the wreaths of corn-ears, see ib., pp. 26, 28; Aulus Gellius, vii. 7. 8. That the rites performed by the Arval Brothers were intended to make the fields bear corn is expressly stated by Varro (De lingua Latina, v. 85, “Fratres Arvales dicti sunt, qui sacra publica faciunt propterea ut fruges ferant arva”). On the Arval Brothers and their rites see also L. Preller, Römische Mythologie,3 ii. 29 sqq.; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii.2 (Leipsic, 1885) pp. 447-462; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer,2 pp. 561 sqq.; J. B. Carter, s.v. “Arval Brothers,” in J. Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ii. (Edinburgh, 1909) pp. 7 sqq.
Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. iii. 60.
Pausanias, v. 15. 3.
Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 12; id., De defectu oraculorum, 15; Aelian, Varia Historia, iii. 1; Strabo, ix. 3. 12, p. 422. In a note on Pausanias (ii. 7. 7, vol. iii. pp. 53 sqq.) I have described the festival more fully and adduced savage parallels. As to the Vale of Tempe see W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece (London, 1835), iii. 390 sqq. The rhetoric of Livy (xliv. 6. 8) has lashed the smooth and silent current of the Peneus into a roaring torrent.
Proclus, in Photius, Bibliotheca, ed. I. Bekker, p. 321.
O. Crusius, s.v. “Kadmos,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, ii. 830, 838, 839. On an Etruscan mirror the scene of Cadmus's combat with the dragon is surrounded with a wreath of laurel (O. Crusius, op. cit. ii. 862). My learned friend Mr. A. B. Cook was the first to call attention to these vase-paintings in confirmation of my view that the Festival of the Laurel-bearing celebrated the destruction of the dragon by Cadmus. See A. B. Cook, “The European Sky-God,” Folk-lore, xv. (1904) p. 411, note 224; and my note on Pausanias, ix. 10. 4 (vol. v. pp. 41 sqq.).
I have examined both festivals more closely in a former part of this work (The Dying God, pp. 78 sqq.), and have shown grounds for holding that the old octennial cycle in Greece, based on an attempt to harmonize solar and lunar time, gave rise to an octennial festival at which the mythical marriage of the sun and moon was celebrated by the dramatic marriage of human actors, who appear sometimes to have been the king and queen. In the Laurel-bearing at Thebes a clear reference to the astronomical character of the festival is contained in the emblems of the sun, moon, stars, and days of the year which were carried in procession (Proclus, l.c.); and another reference to it may be detected in the legendary marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia. Dr. L. R. Farnell supposes that the festival of the Laurel-bearing “belongs to the maypole processions, universal in the peasant-religion of Europe, of which the object is to quicken the vitalizing powers of the year in the middle of spring or at the beginning of summer” (The Cults of the Greek States, iv. 285). But this explanation appears to be inconsistent with the octennial period of the festival.
We may conjecture that the Olympic, like the Delphic and the Theban, festival was at first octennial, though in historical times it was quadrennial. Certainly it seems to have been based on an octennial cycle. See the Scholiast on Pindar, Olymp. iii. 35 (20); Aug. Boeckh on Pindar, Explicationes (Leipsic, 1821), p. 138; L. Ideler, Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie, i. 366 sq.; G. F. Unger, “Zeitrechnung der Griechen und Römer,” in Iwan Müller's Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, i. (Nördlingen, 1886) pp. 605 sq.; K. O. Müller, Die Dorier2 (Breslau, 1844), ii. 483. The Pythian games, which appear to have been at first identical with the Delphic Festival of Crowning, were held originally at intervals of eight instead of four years. See the Scholiast on Pindar, Pyth. Argum. p. 298, ed. A. Boeckh (Leipsic, 1819); Censorinus, De die natali, xviii. 6; compare Eustathius on Homer, Od. iii. 267, p. 1466. 29. As to the original identity of the Pythian games and the Festival of Crowning see Th. Schreiber, Apollon Pythoktonos (Leipsic, 1879), pp. 37 sq.; A. B. Cook, “The European Sky-God,” Folk-lore, xv. (1904) pp. 404 sq.
Antonin Jaussen, Coutumes des Arabes au pays de Moab (Paris, 1908), p. 382.
R. Parkinson, Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee (Stuttgart, 1907), pp. 150-152.
On the use of crowns and wreaths in classical antiquity see W. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,3 i. 545 sqq., s.v. “Corona”; E. Saglio, s.v. “Corona,” in Ch. Daremberg et E. Saglio's Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines, iii. 1520 sqq. In time of mourning the ancients laid aside crowns (Athenaeus, xv. 16, p. 675 A); and so did the king at Athens when he tried a homicide (Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, 57). I mention these cases because they seem to conflict with the theory in the text, in accordance with which crowns might be regarded as amulets to protect the wearer against ghosts and the pollution of blood.
Heliodorus, Aethiopica, i. 22.
Aulus Gellius, i. 12. 2.
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. ii. 67; Plutarch, Numa, 10. We read of a Vestal who held office for fifty-seven years (Tacitus, Annals, ii. 86). It is unlikely that the parents of this venerable lady were both alive at the date of her decease.
Dionysius Halicarnasensis, Antiquit. Rom. ii. 71.
Macrobius, Sat. iii. 14. 14. That the rule as to their parents being both alive applied to the Vestals and Salii only at the time of their entrance on office is recognized by Marquardt (Römische Staatsverwaltung, iii.2 228, note 1).
Cicero, De haruspicum responso, 11.
Livy, xxxvii. 3; Macrobius, Saturn. i. 6. 13 sq.; Vopiscus, Aurelianus, 19 (where the words “patrimis matrimisque pueris carmen indicite” are omitted from the text by H. Peter).
Tacitus, Histor. iv. 53. For the sack and conflagration of the Capitol see id. iii. 71-75.
Flowing water in Hebrew is called “living water” (מים היים).
Festus, De verborum significatione, ed. C. O. Müller (Leipsic, 1839), pp. 244, 245, s.v. “Patrimi et matrimi pueri.”
Ovid, Fasti, vi. 129 sq., 165-168.
Zenobius, Proverb. iii. 98; Plutarch, Proverb. i. 16; Apostolius, Proverb. viii. 16 (Paroemiographi Graeci, ed. Leutsch et Schneidewin, i. 82, 323 sq., ii. 429); Eustathius, on Homer, Od. xii. 357, p. 1726; Photius, Lexicon, s.v. ἔφυγον κακόν.
C. Wachsmuth, Das alte Griechenland im neuen (Bonn, 1864), pp. 83-85, 86, 87, 100 sq.
J. G. von Hahn, Albanesische Studien (Jena, 1854), i. 144, 146.
F. S. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Süd-Slaven (Vienna, 1885), pp. 438, 441.
Captain J. S. King, “Notes on the Folk-lore and some Social Customs of the Western Somali Tribes,” The Folk-lore Journal, vi. (1888) p. 124. Compare Ph. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, die materielle Cultur der Danâkil, Galla und Somâl (Berlin, 1893), p. 200.
The Grihya-Sûtras, translated by H. Oldenberg, Part ii. (Oxford, 1892) p. 50 (The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxx.).
Rev. William Ellis, History of Madagascar (London, n.d.), i. 151 sq.
Rev. W. Ellis, op. cit. i. 180.
J. Pearse, “Customs connected with Death and Burial among the Sihanaka,” The Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine, vol. ii. (a reprint of the second four numbers, 1881-1884) (Antananarivo, 1896) p. 152.
A. C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford, 1905), p. 299.
Lucian, Hermotimus, 57.
A fragmentary list of these youths is preserved in an Athenian inscription of the year 91 or 90 b.c. See Ch. Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques, Supplément, i. (Paris, 1912) p. 104, No. 1544.
Aelius Lampridius, Antoninus Heliogabalus, viii. 1 sq. The historian thinks that the monster chose these victims merely for the pleasure of rending the hearts of both the parents.
See above, vol. i. p. 184.
Rev. W. C. Willoughby, “Notes on the Totemism of the Becwana,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv. (1905) pp. 303 sq.
For more evidence of the sanctity of cattle among the Bechuanas see the Rev. W. C. Willoughby, op. cit. pp. 301 sqq.
T. Arbousset et F. Daumas, Voyage d'Exploration au Nord-est de la Colonie du Cap de Bonne-Espérance (Paris, 1842), p. 49.
Virgil, Aen. i. 367 sq., with the commentary of Servius; Justin, xviii. 5. 9. Thongs cut from the hide of the ox sacrificed to the four-handed Apollo were given as prizes. See Hesychius, s.v. κυνακίας; compare id., πυρώλοφοι. Whether the Greek custom was related to those discussed in the text seems doubtful. I have to thank my colleague and friend Professor R. C. Bosanquet for calling my attention to these passages of Hesychius.
Saxo Grammaticus, Historia Danica, ix. vol. i. pp. 462 sq. ed. P. E. Müller (Copenhagen, 1839-1858) (where the hide employed is that of a horse); J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer3 (Göttingen, 1881), pp. 90 sq. Compare R. Köhler, “Sage von Landerwerbung durch zerschnittene Häute,” Orient und Occident, iii. 185-187.
Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajast'han, ii. (London, 1832) p. 235; W. Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Sibiriens, iv. (St. Petersburg, 1872) p. 179; A. Bastian, Die Voelker des oestlichen Asien (Berlin, 1884-1889), i. 25, iv. 367 sq.; T. Stamford Raffles, History of Java (London, 1817), ii. 153 sq.; R. van Eck, “Schetsen van het eiland Bali,” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Feb. 1880, p. 117. The substance of all these stories, except the first, was given by me in a note on “Hide-measured Lands,” The Classical Review, ii. (1888) p. 322.
J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, pp. 538 sq.
Rev. W. C. Willoughby, “Notes on the Totemism of the Becwana,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv. (1905) p. 304.
Rev. E. Gottschling, “The Bawenda, a Sketch of their History and Customs,” Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxxv. (1905) pp. 368 sq.
T. Arbousset et F. Daumas, Relation d'un Voyage d'Exploration, pp. 561-565.
Above, pp. 204sqq.
J. Kubary, “Die Religion der Pelauer,” in A. Bastian's Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde (Berlin, 1888), i. 35.
C. A. L. M. Schwaner, Borneo (Amsterdam, 1853), i. 186; M. T. H. Perelaer, Ethnographische Beschrijving der Dajaks (Zalt-Bommel, 1870), pp. 32-35; Captain Rodney Mundy, Narrative of Events in Borneo and Celebes from the Journals of James Brooke, Esq., Rajah of Sarawak (London, 1848), ii. 65 sq.; Charles Brooke, Ten Years in Sarawak (London, 1866), ii. 280; H. Low, Sarawak (London, 1848), pp. 174-177; The Bishop of Labuan, “On the Wild Tribes of the North-West Coast of Borneo,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S. ii. (1863) pp. 31 sq.; Spenser St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East2 (London, 1863), i. 73. In Sarawak these men are called manangs, in Dutch Borneo they are called bazirs or bassirs.
Captain R. Mundy, op. cit. i. 82 sq.; B. F. Matthes, Over de Bissoes of heidensche Priesters en Priesteressen der Boeginezen (Amsterdam, 1872), pp. 1 sq.
Th. Falkner, Description of Patagonia (Hereford, 1774), p. 117; J. Hutchinson, “The Tehuelche Indians of Patagonia,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, N.S. vii. (1869) p. 323. Among the Guaycurus of Southern Brazil there is a class of men who dress as women and do only women's work, such as spinning, weaving, and making pottery. But so far as I know, they are not said to be sorcerers or priests. See C. F. Ph. v. Martius, Zur Ethnographie Amerikas zumal Brasiliens (Leipsic, 1867), pp. 74 sq.
G. H. von Langsdorff, Reise um die Welt (Frankfort, 1812), ii. 43; H. J. Holmberg, “Über die Völker des Russischen Amerika,” Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicae, iv. (Helsingfors, 1856) pp. 400 sq.; W. H. Dall, Alaska (London, 1870), pp. 402 sq.; Ross Cox, The Columbia River2 (London, 1832), i. 327 sqq.; Father G. Boscana, “Chinigchinich,” in [A. Robinson's] Life in California (New York, 1846), pp. 283 sq.; S. Powers, Tribes of California (Washington, 1877), pp. 132 sq.; H. H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (London, 1875-1876), i. 82, 92, 415, 585, 774; Hontan, Mémoires de l'Amérique Septentrionale (Amsterdam, 1705), p. 144; J. F. Lafitau, Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains (Paris, 1724), i. 52-54; Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1744), vi. 4 sq.; W. H. Keating, Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River (London, 1825), i. 227 sq., 436; George Catlin, North American Indians4 (London, 1844), ii. 214 sq.; Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-America (Coblentz, 1839-1841), ii. 132 sq.; D. G. Brinton, The Lenâpé and their Legends (Philadelphia, 1885), pp. 109 sq.; J. G. Müller, Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen2 (Bâle, 167), pp. 44 sq., 418. Among the tribes which permitted the custom were the Illinois, Mandans, Dacotas (Sioux), Sauks, and Foxes, to the east of the Rocky Mountains, the Yukis, Pomos, and Pitt River Indians of California, and the Koniags of Alaska.
Lieut. W. Foley, “Journal of a Tour through the Island of Rambree,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, iv. (Calcutta, 1835) p. 199.
Monier Williams, Religious Life and Thought in India (London, 1883), p. 136. Compare J. A. Dubois, Mœurs, Institutions, et Cérémonies des Peuples de l'Inde (Paris, 1825), i. 439.
O. Dapper, Description de l'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), p. 467.
J. B. Labat, Relation historique de l'Éthiopie Occidentale (Paris, 1732), ii. 195-199. Wherever men regularly dress as women, we may suspect that a superstitious motive underlies the custom even though our authorities do not mention it. The custom is thus reported among the Italmenes of Kamtschatka (G. W. Steller, Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka, Frankfort and Leipsic, 1774, pp. 350 sq.), the Lhoosais of South-Eastern India (Capt. T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, London, 1870, p. 255), and the Nogay or Mongutay of the Caucasus (J. Reinegg, Beschreibung des Kaukasus, St. Petersburg, Gotha, and Hildesheim, 1796-1797, i. 270). Among the Lhoosais or Lushais not only do men sometimes dress like women and consort and work with them (T. H. Lewin, l.c.), but, on the other hand, women sometimes dress and live like men, adopting masculine habits in all respects. When one of these unsexed women was asked her reasons for adopting a masculine mode of life, she at first denied that she was a woman, but finally confessed “that her khuavang was not good, and so she became a man.” See the extract from the Pioneer Mail of May 1890, quoted in The Indian Antiquary, xxxii. (1903) p. 413. The permanent transformation of women into men seems to be much rarer than the converse change of men into women.
Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das innere Nord-America, ii. 133.
W. H. Keating, Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River, i. 227 sq.
Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, “A Study of Siouan Cults,” Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1894), p. 378.
E. H. Gomes, Seventeen Years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo (London, 1911), p. 179; Ch. Hose and W. McDougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo (London, 1912), ii. 116.
Waldemar Bogoras, The Chukchee (Leyden and New York, 1904-1909), pp. 448-453 (The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. vii.; Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History).
Rev. A. L. Kitching, On the Backwaters of the Nile (London, 1912), p. 239, with the plate.
For this information I have to thank my friend the Rev. J. Roscoe. He tells me that according to tradition Mukasa used to give his oracles by the mouth of a man, not of a woman. To wear two bark cloths, one on each shoulder, is a privilege of royalty and of priests. The ordinary man wears a single bark cloth knotted on one shoulder only. With the single exception mentioned in the text, women in Uganda never wear bark cloths fastened over the shoulders.
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), p. 297.
The Scapegoat, pp. 387 sqq.
Catullus, lxiii. This is in substance the explanation of the custom given by Dr. L. R. Farnell, who observes that “the mad worshipper endeavoured thus against nature to assimilate himself more closely to his goddess” (“Sociological hypotheses concerning the position of women in ancient religion,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, vii. (1904) p. 93). The theory is not necessarily inconsistent with my conjecture as to the magical use made of the severed parts. See above, vol. i. pp. 268 sq.
Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 58.
Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, ii. 6. 2 sq.; Athenaeus, xii. 11, pp. 515 f-516 b; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 31; Joannes Lydus, De magistratibus, iii. 64; Lucian, Dialogi deorum, xiii. 2; Ovid, Heroides, ix. 55 sqq.; Statius, Theb. x. 646-649.
On Semiramis in this character see above, vol. i. pp. 176 sq.; The Scapegoat, pp. 369 sqq.
Joannes Lydus, De mensibus, iv. 46, p. 81, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1837). Yet at Rome, by an apparent contradiction, women might not be present at a sacrifice offered to Hercules (Propertius, v. 9. 67-70; see further above, vol. i. p. 113, note 1), and at Gades women might not enter the temple of Melcarth, the Tyrian Hercules (Silius Italicus, iii. 22). There was a Greek proverb, “A woman does not go to a temple of Hercules” (Macarius, Cent. iii. 11; Paroemiographi Graeci, ed. Leutsch et Schneidewin, i. 392, ii. 154). Roman women did not swear by Hercules (Aulus Gellius, xi. 6).
Lucian, Calumniae non temere credendum, 16; Hesychius and Suidas, s.v. Ἰθύφαλλοι. At the Athenian vintage festival of the Oschophoria a chorus of singers was led in procession by two young men dressed exactly like girls; they carried branches of vines laden with ripe clusters. The procession was said to be in honour of Dionysus and Athena or Ariadne. See Proclus, quoted by Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 322a, ed. I. Bekker (Berlin, 1824); Plutarch, Theseus, 23.
Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 34, pp. 29 sq., ed. Potter; Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, v. 28; Mythographi Graeci, ed. A. Westermann (Brunswick, 1843), p. 368; J. Tzetzes, Scholia on Lycophron, 212. As to the special association of the fig with Dionysus, see Athenaeus, iii. 14, p. 78. As to the artificial fertilization of the fig, see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 314 sq. On the type of the effeminate Dionysus in art see E. Thraemer, s.v. “Dionysos,” in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griech. und röm. Mythologie, i. 1135 sqq.
Tacitus, Germania, 43. Perhaps, as Professor Chadwick thinks, this priest may have succeeded to a priestess when the change from mother-kin to father-kin took place. See H. M. Chadwick, The Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge, 1907), p. 339.
In Cyprus there was a bearded and masculine image of Venus (probably Astarte) in female attire: according to Philochorus, the deity thus represented was the moon, and sacrifices were offered to him or her by men clad as women, and by women clad as men. See Macrobius, Saturn. iii. 7. 2 sq.; Servius on Virgil, Aen. ii. 632. A similar exchange of garments took place between Argive men and women at the festival of the Hybristica, which fell in the month of Hermes, either at the new moon or on the fourth of the month. See Plutarch, De mulierum virtutibus, 4; Polyaenus, viii. 33. On the thirteenth of January flute-players paraded the streets of Rome in the garb of women (Plutarch, Quaestiones Romanae, 55).
For traces of mother-kin in Lydia see The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 281 sq. With regard to Cos we know from inscriptions that at Halasarna all who shared in the sacred rites of Apollo and Hercules had to register the names of their father, their mother, and of their mother's father; from which it appears that maternal descent was counted more important than paternal descent. See H. Collitz und F. Bechtel, Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften, iii. 1 (Göttingen, 1899), pp. 382-393, Nos. 3705, 3706; G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarnum,2 vol. ii. pp. 396 sqq., No. 614; Ch. Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques, pp. 796 sq., No. 1003; J. Toepffer, Attische Genealogie (Berlin, 1889), pp. 192 sq. On traces of mother-kin in the legend and ritual of Hercules see A. B. Cook, “Who was the wife of Hercules?” The Classical Review, xx. (1906) pp. 376 sq. Mr. Cook conjectures that a Sacred Marriage of Hercules and Hera was celebrated in Cos. We know in fact from a Coan inscription that a bed was made and a marriage celebrated beside the image of Hercules, and it seems probable that the rite was that of a Sacred Marriage, though some scholars interpret it merely of an ordinary human wedding. See G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,2 vol. ii. pp. 577 sqq., No. 734; R. Dareste, B. Haussoulier, Th. Reinach, Recueil d'Inscriptions Juridiques Grecques, Deuxième Série (Paris, 1898), No. xxiv. B, pp. 94 sqq.; Fr. Back, De Graecorum caerimoniis in quibus homines deorum vice fungebantur (Berlin, 1883), pp. 14-24.
Panjab Notes and Queries, i. (1884) §§ 219, 869, 1007, 1029; id. ii. (1885) §§ 344, 561, 570; Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, i. (1886) p. 123; North Indian Notes and Queries, iii. (1893) § 99. Compare my notes, “The Youth of Achilles,” The Classical Review, vii. (1893) pp. 292 sq.; and on Pausanias, i. 22. 6 (vol. ii. p. 266).
Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 58.
Plutarch, Lycurgus, 15.
Plutarch, De mulierum virtutibus, 4.
B. F. Matthes, Bijdragen tot de Ethnologie van Zuid-Celebes (The Hague, 1875), p. 35. The marriage ceremonies here described are especially those of princes.
Sepp, Altbayerischer Sagenschatz (Munich, 1876), p. 232, referring to Maimonides.
E. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India (Madras, 1906), p. 3. The pseudo-bridegroom is apparently the bride in masculine attire.
Central Provinces, Ethnographic Survey, iii. Draft Articles on Forest Tribes (Allahabad, 1907), p. 31.
Central Provinces, Ethnographic Survey, i. Draft Articles on Hindustani Castes (Allahabad, 1907), p. 48.
Elsewhere I have conjectured that the wearing of female attire by the bridegroom at marriage may mark a transition from mother-kin to father-kin, the intention of the custom being to transfer to the father those rights over the children which had previously been enjoyed by the mother alone. See Totemism (Edinburgh, 1887), pp. 78 sq.; Totemism and Exogamy, i. 73. But I am now disposed to think that the other explanation suggested in the text is the more probable.
Central Provinces, Ethnographic Survey, iii. Draft Articles on Forest Tribes (Allahabad, 1907), p. 31.
Central Provinces, Ethnographic Survey, iii. Draft Articles on Forest Tribes (Allahabad, 1907), p. 48.
Central Provinces, Ethnographic Survey, vi. Draft Articles on Hindustani Castes, Second Series (Allahabad, 1911), p. 50.
Compare W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India (Westminster, 1896), ii. 8, who proposes, with great probability, to explain on a similar principle, the European marriage custom known as the False Bride. For more instances of the interchange of male and female costume at marriage between persons other than the bridegroom see Capt. J. S. King, “Social Customs of the Western Somali Tribes,” The Folk-lore Journal, vi. (1888) p. 122; J. P. Farler, “The Usambara Country in East Africa,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, N.S. i. (1879) p. 92; Major J. Biddulph, Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh (Calcutta, 1880), pp. 78, 80; G. A. Grierson, Bihar Peasant Life (Calcutta, 1885), p. 365; A. de Gubernatis, Usi Nuziali in Italia2 (Milan, 1878), p. 190; P. Sébillot, Coutumes Populaires de la Haute-Bretagne (Paris, 1886), p. 438.
L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden (London, 1870), p. 85.
J. Liorel, Kabylie du Jurjura (Paris, n. d.), p. 406.
Rev. J. H. Weeks, Among Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 267. Compare id., “Anthropological Notes on the Bangala of the Upper Congo River,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) pp. 370 sq.
Lieut.-Colonel J. Shakespear, “The Kuki-Lushai Clans,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xxxix. (1909) pp. 380 sq.
A. C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford, 1905), p. 298.
A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, 1909), pp. 53-58. Mr. Hollis informs me that among the Akikuyu, another tribe of British East Africa, the custom of boys dressing as girls at or after circumcision is also observed.
Plutarch, Consolatio ad Apollonium, 22; Valerius Maximus, ii. 6. 13.
Plutarch, l.c.
J. Kreemer, “De Loeboes in Mandailing,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, lxvi. (1912) p. 317.
J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, pp. 50 sq.
J. Kubary, op. cit. p. 51.
J. Kubary, op. cit. pp. 51-53, 91-98.
See above, vol. i. pp. 39 sqq.
F. W. Christian, The Caroline Islands (London, 1899), pp. 290 sq. Compare W. H. Furness, The Island of Stone Money, Uap of the Carolines (Philadelphia and London, 1910), pp. 46 sqq.
W. H. Furness, op. cit. pp. 46 sq.
W. H. Furness, op. cit. pp. 49 sq.
J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, p. 43. The writer does not translate the word tobolbel, but the context sufficiently explains its meaning.
J. Kubary, Die socialen Einrichtungen der Pelauer, pp. 43-45, 75-78.
