§ 1. The Rise and Fall of the Nile.
(M25) If the Egyptian farmer of the olden time could thus get no help,
except at the rarest intervals, from the official or sacerdotal calendar,
he must have been compelled to observe for himself those natural signals
which marked the times for the various operations of husbandry. In all
ages of which we possess any records the Egyptians have been an
agricultural people, dependent for their subsistence on the growth of the
corn. The cereals which they cultivated were wheat, barley, and apparently
sorghum (_Holcus sorghum_, Linnaeus), the _doora_ of the modern
fellaheen.(57) Then as now the whole country, with the exception of a
fringe on the coast of the Mediterranean, was almost rainless, and owed
its immense fertility entirely to the annual inundation of the Nile,
which, regulated by an elaborate system of dams and canals, was
distributed over the fields, renewing the soil year by year with a fresh
deposit of mud washed down from the great equatorial lakes and the
mountains of Abyssinia. Hence the rise of the river has always been
watched by the inhabitants with the utmost anxiety; for if it either falls
short of or exceeds a certain height, dearth and famine are the inevitable
consequences.(58) The water begins to rise early in June, but it is not
until the latter half of July that it swells to a mighty tide. By the end
of September the inundation is at its greatest height. The country is now
submerged, and presents the appearance of a sea of turbid water, from
which the towns and villages, built on higher ground, rise like islands.
For about a month the flood remains nearly stationary, then sinks more and
more rapidly, till by December or January the river has returned to its
ordinary bed. With the approach of summer the level of the water continues
to fall. In the early days of June the Nile is reduced to half its
ordinary breadth; and Egypt, scorched by the sun, blasted by the wind that
has blown from the Sahara for many days, seems a mere continuation of the
desert. The trees are choked with a thick layer of grey dust. A few meagre
patches of vegetables, watered with difficulty, struggle painfully for
existence in the immediate neighbourhood of the villages. Some appearance
of verdure lingers beside the canals and in the hollows from which the
moisture has not wholly evaporated. The plain appears to pant in the
pitiless sunshine, bare, dusty, ash-coloured, cracked and seamed as far as
the eye can see with a network of fissures. From the middle of April till
the middle of June the land of Egypt is but half alive, waiting for the
new Nile.(59)
(M26) For countless ages this cycle of natural events has determined the
annual labours of the Egyptian husbandman. The first work of the
agricultural year is the cutting of the dams which have hitherto prevented
the swollen river from flooding the canals and the fields. This is done,
and the pent-up waters released on their beneficent mission, in the first
half of August.(60) In November, when the inundation has subsided, wheat,
barley, and sorghum are sown. The time of harvest varies with the
district, falling about a month later in the north than in the south. In
Upper or Southern Egypt barley is reaped at the beginning of March, wheat
at the beginning of April, and sorghum about the end of that month.(61)
(M27) It is natural to suppose that these various events of the
agricultural year were celebrated by the Egyptian farmer with some simple
religious rites designed to secure the blessing of the gods upon his
labours. These rustic ceremonies he would continue to perform year after
year at the same season, while the solemn festivals of the priests
continued to shift, with the shifting calendar, from summer through spring
to winter, and so backward through autumn to summer. The rites of the
husbandman were stable because they rested on direct observation of
nature: the rites of the priest were unstable because they were based on a
false calculation. Yet many of the priestly festivals may have been
nothing but the old rural festivals disguised in the course of ages by the
pomp of sacerdotalism and severed, by the error of the calendar, from
their roots in the natural cycle of the seasons.
§ 2. Rites of Irrigation.
(M28) These conjectures are confirmed by the little we know both of the
popular and of the official Egyptian religion. Thus we are told that the
Egyptians held a festival of Isis at the time when the Nile began to rise.
They believed that the goddess was then mourning for the lost Osiris, and
that the tears which dropped from her eyes swelled the impetuous tide of
the river.(62) Hence in Egyptian inscriptions Isis is spoken of as she
“who maketh the Nile to swell and overflow, who maketh the Nile to swell
in his season.”(63) Similarly the Toradjas of Central Celebes imagine that
showers of rain are the tears shed by the compassionate gods in weeping
for somebody who is about to die; a shower in the morning is to them an
infallible omen of death.(64) However, an uneasy suspicion would seem to
have occurred to the Egyptians that perhaps after all the tears of the
goddess might not suffice of themselves to raise the water to the proper
level; so in the time of Rameses II. the king used on the first day of the
flood to throw into the Nile a written order commanding the river to do
its duty, and the submissive stream never failed to obey the royal
mandate.(65) Yet the ancient belief survives in a modified form to this
day. For the Nile, as we saw, begins to rise in June about the time of the
summer solstice, and the people still attribute its increased volume to a
miraculous drop which falls into the river on the night of the seventeenth
of the month. The charms and divinations which they practise on that
mystic night in order to ascertain the length of their own life and to rid
the houses of bugs may well date from a remote antiquity.(66) Now if
Osiris was in one of his aspects a god of the corn, nothing could be more
natural than that he should be mourned at midsummer. For by that time the
harvest was past, the fields were bare, the river ran low, life seemed to
be suspended, the corn-god was dead. At such a moment people who saw the
handiwork of divine beings in all the operations of nature might well
trace the swelling of the sacred stream to the tears shed by the goddess
at the death of the beneficent corn-god her husband.
(M29) And the sign of the rising waters on earth was accompanied by a sign
in heaven. For in the early days of Egyptian history, some three or four
thousand years before the beginning of our era, the splendid star of
Sirius, the brightest of all the fixed stars, appeared at dawn in the east
just before sunrise about the time of the summer solstice, when the Nile
begins to rise.(67) The Egyptians called it Sothis, and regarded it as the
star of Isis,(68) just as the Babylonians deemed the planet Venus the star
of Astarte. To both peoples apparently the brilliant luminary in the
morning sky seemed the goddess of life and love come to mourn her departed
lover or spouse and to wake him from the dead. Hence the rising of Sirius
marked the beginning of the sacred Egyptian year,(69) and was regularly
celebrated by a festival which did not shift with the shifting official
year.(70) The first day of the first month Thoth was theoretically
supposed to date from the heliacal rising of the bright star, and in all
probability it really did so when the official or civil year of three
hundred and sixty-five days was first instituted. But the miscalculation
which has been already explained(71) had the effect of making the star to
shift its place in the calendar by one day in four years. Thus if Sirius
rose on the first of Thoth in one year, it would rise on the second of
Thoth four years afterwards, on the third of Thoth eight years afterwards,
and so on until after the lapse of a Siriac or Sothic period of fourteen
hundred and sixty solar years the first of Thoth again coincided with the
heliacal rising of Sirius.(72) This observation of the gradual
displacement of the star in the calendar has been of the utmost importance
for the progress of astronomy, since it led the Egyptians directly to the
determination of the approximately true length of the solar year and thus
laid the basis of our modern calendar; for the Julian calendar, which we
owe to Caesar, was founded on the Egyptian theory, though not on the
Egyptian practice.(73) It was therefore a fortunate moment for the world
when some pious Egyptian, thousands of years ago, identified for the first
time the bright star of Sirius with his goddess; for the identification
induced his countrymen to regard the heavenly body with an attention which
they would never have paid to it if they had known it to be nothing but a
world vastly greater than our own and separated from it by an
inconceivable, if not immeasurable, abyss of space.
(M30) The cutting of the dams and the admission of the water into the
canals and fields is a great event in the Egyptian year. At Cairo the
operation generally takes place between the sixth and the sixteenth of
August, and till lately was attended by ceremonies which deserve to be
noticed, because they were probably handed down from antiquity. An ancient
canal, known by the name of the Khalíj, formerly passed through the native
town of Cairo. Near its entrance the canal was crossed by a dam of earth,
very broad at the bottom and diminishing in breadth upwards, which used to
be constructed before or soon after the Nile began to rise. In front of
the dam, on the side of the river, was reared a truncated cone of earth
called the _’arooseh_ or “bride,” on the top of which a little maize or
millet was generally sown. This “bride” was commonly washed down by the
rising tide a week or a fortnight before the cutting of the dam. Tradition
runs that the old custom was to deck a young virgin in gay apparel and
throw her into the river as a sacrifice to obtain a plentiful
inundation.(74) Certainly human sacrifices were offered for a similar
purpose by the Wajagga of German East Africa down to recent years. These
people irrigate their fields by means of skilfully constructed channels,
through which they conduct the water of the mountain brooks and rivers to
the thirsty land. They imagine that the spirits of their forefathers dwell
in the rocky basins of these rushing streams, and that they would resent
the withdrawal of the water to irrigate the fields if compensation were
not offered to them. The water-rate paid to them consisted of a child,
uncircumcised and of unblemished body, who was decked with ornaments and
bells and thrown into the river to drown, before they ventured to draw off
the water into the irrigation channel. Having thrown him in, his
executioners shewed a clean pair of heels, because they expected the river
to rise in flood at once on receipt of the water-rate.(75) In similar
circumstances the Njamus of British East Africa sacrifice a sheep before
they let the water of the stream flow into the ditch or artificial
channel. The fat, dung, and blood of the animal are sprinkled at the mouth
of the ditch and in the water; thereupon the dam is broken down and the
stream pours into the ditch. The sacrifice may only be offered by a man of
the Il Mayek clan, and for two days afterwards he wears the skin of the
beast tied round his head. No one may quarrel with this man while the
water is irrigating the crops, else the people believe that the water
would cease to flow in the ditch; more than that, if the men of the Il
Mayek clan were angry and sulked for ten days, the water would dry up
permanently for that season. Hence the Il Mayek clan enjoys great
consideration in the tribe, since the crops are thought to depend on their
good will and good offices. Ten elders assist at the sacrifice of the
sheep, though they may take no part in it. They must all be of a
particular age; and after the ceremony they may not cohabit with their
wives until harvest, and they are obliged to sleep at night in their
granaries. Curiously enough, too, while the water is irrigating the
fields, nobody may kill waterbuck, eland, oryx, zebra, rhinoceros, or
hippopotamus. Anybody caught red-handed in the act of breaking this
game-law would at once be cast out of the village.(76)
(M31) Whether the “bride” who used to figure at the ceremony of cutting
the dam in Cairo was ever a live woman or not, the intention of the
practice appears to have been to marry the river, conceived as a male
power, to his bride the corn-land, which was soon to be fertilized by his
water. The ceremony was therefore a charm to ensure the growth of the
crops. As such it probably dated, in one form or another, from ancient
times. Dense crowds assembled to witness the cutting of the dam. The
operation was performed before sunrise, and many people spent the
preceding night on the banks of the canal or in boats lit with lamps on
the river, while fireworks were displayed and guns discharged at frequent
intervals. Before sunrise a great number of workmen began to cut the dam,
and the task was accomplished about an hour before the sun appeared on the
horizon. When only a thin ridge of earth remained, a boat with an officer
on board was propelled against it, and breaking through the slight barrier
descended with the rush of water into the canal. The Governor of Cairo
flung a purse of gold into the boat as it passed. Formerly the custom was
to throw money into the canal. The populace used to dive after it, and
several lives were generally lost in the scramble.(77) This practice also
would seem to have been ancient, for Seneca tells us that at a place
called the Veins of the Nile, not far from Philae, the priests used to
cast money and offerings of gold into the river at a festival which
apparently took place at the rising of the water.(78) At Cairo the
time-honoured ceremony came to an end in 1897, when the old canal was
filled up. An electric tramway now runs over the spot where for countless
ages crowds of worshippers or holiday-makers had annually assembled to
witness the marriage of the Nile.(79)
§ 3. Rites of Sowing.
(M32) The next great operation of the agricultural year in Egypt is the
sowing of the seed in November, when the water of the inundation has
retreated from the fields. With the Egyptians, as with many peoples of
antiquity, the committing of the seed to the earth assumed the character
of a solemn and mournful rite. On this subject I will let Plutarch speak
for himself. “What,” he asks, “are we to make of the gloomy, joyless, and
mournful sacrifices, if it is wrong either to omit the established rites
or to confuse and disturb our conceptions of the gods by absurd
suspicions? For the Greeks also perform many rites which resemble those of
the Egyptians and are observed about the same time. Thus at the festival
of the Thesmophoria in Athens women sit on the ground and fast. And the
Boeotians open the vaults of the Sorrowful One,(80) naming that festival
sorrowful because Demeter is sorrowing for the descent of the Maiden. The
month is the month of sowing about the setting of the Pleiades.(81) The
Egyptians call it Athyr, the Athenians Pyanepsion, the Boeotians the month
of Demeter. Theopompus informs us that the western peoples consider and
call the winter Cronus, the summer Aphrodite, and the spring Persephone,
and they believe that all things are brought into being by Cronus and
Aphrodite. The Phrygians imagine that the god sleeps in winter and wakes
in summer, and accordingly they celebrate with Bacchic rites the putting
him to bed in winter and his awakening in summer. The Paphlagonians allege
that he is bound fast and shut up in winter, but that he stirs and is set
free in spring. And the season furnishes a hint that the sadness is for
the hiding of those fruits of the earth which the ancients esteemed, not
indeed gods, but great and necessary gifts bestowed by the gods in order
that men might not lead the life of savages and of wild beasts. For it was
that time of year when they saw some of the fruits vanishing and falling
from the trees, while they sowed others grudgingly and with difficulty,
scraping the earth with their hands and huddling it up again, on the
uncertain chance that what they deposited in the ground would ever ripen
and come to maturity. Thus they did in many respects like those who bury
and mourn their dead. And just as we say that a purchaser of Plato’s books
purchases Plato, or that an actor who plays the comedies of Menander plays
Menander, so the men of old did not hesitate to call the gifts and
products of the gods by the names of the gods themselves, thereby
honouring and glorifying the things on account of their utility. But in
after ages simple folk in their ignorance applied to the gods statements
which only held true of the fruits of the earth, and so they came not
merely to say but actually to believe that the growth and decay of plants,
on which they subsisted,(82) were the birth and the death of gods. Thus
they fell into absurd, immoral, and confused ways of thinking, though all
the while the absurdity of the fallacy was manifest. Hence Xenophanes of
Colophon declared that if the Egyptians deemed their gods divine they
should not weep for them, and that if they wept for them they should not
deem them divine. ‘For it is ridiculous,’ said he, ‘to lament and pray
that the fruits would be good enough to grow and ripen again in order that
they may again be eaten and lamented.’ But he was wrong, for though the
lamentations are for the fruits, the prayers are addressed to the gods, as
the causes and givers of them, that they would be pleased to make fresh
fruits to spring up instead of those that perish.”(83)
(M33) In this interesting passage Plutarch expresses his belief that the
worship of the fruits of the earth was the result of a verbal
misapprehension or disease of language, as it has been called by a modern
school of mythologists, who explain the origin of myths in general on the
same easy principle of metaphors misunderstood. Primitive man, on
Plutarch’s theory, firmly believed that the fruits of the earth on which
he subsisted were not themselves gods but merely the gifts of the gods,
who were the real givers of all good things. Yet at the same time men were
in the habit of bestowing on these divine products the names of their
divine creators, either out of gratitude or merely for the sake of
brevity, as when we say that a man has bought a Shakespeare or acted
Molière, when we mean that he has bought the works of Shakespeare or acted
the plays of Molière. This abbreviated mode of expression was
misunderstood in later times, and so people came to look upon the fruits
of the earth as themselves divine instead of as being the work of
divinities: in short, they mistook the creature for the creator. In like
manner Plutarch would explain the Egyptian worship of animals as reverence
done not so much to the beasts themselves as to the great god who displays
the divine handiwork in sentient organisms even more than in the most
beautiful and wonderful works of inanimate nature.(84)
(M34) The comparative study of religion has proved that these theories of
Plutarch are an inversion of the truth. Fetishism, or the view that the
fruits of the earth and things in general are divine or animated by
powerful spirits, is not, as Plutarch imagined, a late corruption of a
pure and primitive theism, which regarded the gods as the creators and
givers of all good things. On the contrary, fetishism is early and theism
is late in the history of mankind. In this respect Xenophanes, whom
Plutarch attempts to correct, displayed a much truer insight into the mind
of the savage. To weep crocodile tears over the animals and plants which
he kills and eats, and to pray them to come again in order that they may
be again eaten and again lamented—this may seem absurd to us, but it is
precisely what the savage does. And from his point of view the proceeding
is not at all absurd but perfectly rational and well calculated to answer
his ends. For he sincerely believes that animals and fruits are tenanted
by spirits who can harm him if they please, and who cannot but be put to
considerable inconvenience by that destruction of their bodies which is
unfortunately inseparable from the processes of mastication and digestion.
What more natural, therefore, than that the savage should offer excuses to
the beasts and the fruits for the painful necessity he is under of
consuming them, and that he should endeavour to alleviate their pangs by
soft words and an air of respectful sympathy, in order that they may bear
him no grudge, and may in due time come again to be again eaten and again
lamented? Judged by the standard of primitive manners the attitude of the
walrus to the oysters was strictly correct:—
“_‘__I weep for you,__’__ the Walrus said:_
_‘__I deeply sympathize.__’_
_With sobs and tears he sorted out_
_Those of the largest size,_
_Holding his pocket-handkerchief_
_Before his streaming eyes._”
(M35) Many examples of such hypocritical lamentations for animals, drawn
not from the fancy of a playful writer but from the facts of savage life,
could be cited.(85) Here I shall quote the general statement of a writer
on the Indians of British Columbia, because it covers the case of
vegetable as well as of animal food. After describing the respectful
welcome accorded by the Stlatlum Indians to the first “sock-eye” salmon
which they have caught in the season, he goes on: “The significance of
these ceremonies is easy to perceive when we remember the attitude of the
Indians towards nature generally, and recall their myths relating to the
salmon, and their coming to their rivers and streams. Nothing that the
Indian of this region eats is regarded by him as mere food and nothing
more. Not a single plant, animal, or fish, or other object upon which he
feeds, is looked upon in this light, or as something he has secured for
himself by his own wit and skill. He regards it rather as something which
has been voluntarily and compassionately placed in his hands by the
goodwill and consent of the ’spirit’ of the object itself, or by the
intercession and magic of his culture-heroes; to be retained and used by
him only upon the fulfilment of certain conditions. These conditions
include respect and reverent care in the killing or plucking of the animal
or plant and proper treatment of the parts he has no use for, such as the
bones, blood, and offal; and the depositing of the same in some stream or
lake, so that the object may by that means renew its life and physical
form. The practices in connection with the killing of animals and the
gathering of plants and fruits all make this quite clear, and it is only
when we bear this attitude of the savage towards nature in mind that we
can hope to rightly understand the motives and purposes of many of his
strange customs and beliefs.”(86)
(M36) We can now understand why among many peoples of antiquity, as
Plutarch tells us, the time of sowing was a time of sorrow. The laying of
the seed in the earth was a burial of the divine element, and it was
fitting that like a human burial it should be performed with gravity and
the semblance, if not the reality, of sorrow. Yet they sorrowed not
without hope, perhaps a sure and certain hope, that the seed which they
thus committed with sighs and tears to the ground would yet rise from the
dust and yield fruit a hundredfold to the reaper. “They that sow in tears
shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed,
shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with
him.”(87)
§ 4. Rites of Harvest.
(M37) The Egyptian harvest, as we have seen, falls not in autumn but in
spring, in the months of March, April, and May. To the husbandman the time
of harvest, at least in a good year, must necessarily be a season of joy:
in bringing home his sheaves he is requited for his long and anxious
labours. Yet if the old Egyptian farmer felt a secret joy at reaping and
garnering the grain, it was essential that he should conceal the natural
emotion under an air of profound dejection. For was he not severing the
body of the corn-god with his sickle and trampling it to pieces under the
hoofs of his cattle on the threshing-floor?(88) Accordingly we are told
that it was an ancient custom of the Egyptian corn-reapers to beat their
breasts and lament over the first sheaf cut, while at the same time they
called upon Isis.(89) The invocation seems to have taken the form of a
melancholy chant, to which the Greeks gave the name of Maneros. Similar
plaintive strains were chanted by corn-reapers in Phoenicia and other
parts of Western Asia.(90) Probably all these doleful ditties were
lamentations for the corn-god killed by the sickles of the reapers. In
Egypt the slain deity was Osiris, and the name _Maneros_ applied to the
dirge appears to be derived from certain words meaning “Come to thy
house,” which often occur in the lamentations for the dead god.(91)
(M38) Ceremonies of the same sort have been observed by other peoples,
probably for the same purpose. Thus we are told that among all vegetables
corn (_selu_), by which is apparently meant maize, holds the first place
in the household economy and the ceremonial observance of the Cherokee
Indians, who invoke it under the name of “the Old Woman” in allusion to a
myth that it sprang from the blood of an old woman killed by her
disobedient sons. “Much ceremony accompanied the planting and tending of
the crop. Seven grains, the sacred number, were put into each hill, and
these were not afterwards thinned out. After the last working of the crop,
the priest and an assistant—generally the owner of the field—went into the
field and built a small enclosure in the centre. Then entering it, they
seated themselves upon the ground, with heads bent down, and while the
assistant kept perfect silence the priest, with rattle in hand, sang songs
of invocation to the spirit of the corn. Soon, according to the orthodox
belief, a loud rustling would be heard outside, which they would know was
caused by the ‘Old Woman’ bringing the corn into the field, but neither
must look up until the song was finished. This ceremony was repeated on
four successive nights, after which no one entered the field for seven
other nights, when the priest himself went in, and, if all the sacred
regulations had been properly observed, was rewarded by finding young ears
upon the stalks. The corn ceremonies could be performed by the owner of
the field himself, provided he was willing to pay a sufficient fee to the
priest in order to learn the songs and ritual. Care was always taken to
keep a clean trail from the field to the house, so that the corn might be
encouraged to stay at home and not go wandering elsewhere. Most of these
customs have now fallen into disuse excepting among the old people, by
many of whom they are still religiously observed. Another curious
ceremony, of which even the memory is now almost forgotten, was enacted
after the first working of the corn, when the owner or priest stood in
succession at each of the four corners of the field and wept and wailed
loudly. Even the priests are now unable to give a reason for this
performance, which may have been a lament for the bloody death of Selu,”
the Old Woman of the Corn.(92) In these Cherokee practices the
lamentations and the invocations of the Old Woman of the Corn resemble the
ancient Egyptian customs of lamenting over the first corn cut and calling
upon Isis, herself probably in one of her aspects an Old Woman of the
Corn. Further, the Cherokee precaution of leaving a clear path from the
field to the house resembles the Egyptian invitation to Osiris, “Come to
thy house.” So in the East Indies to this day people observe elaborate
ceremonies for the purpose of bringing back the Soul of the Rice from the
fields to the barn.(93) The Nandi of British East Africa perform a
ceremony in September when the eleusine grain is ripening. Every woman who
owns a plantation goes out with her daughters into the cornfields and
makes a bonfire of the branches and leaves of certain trees (the _Solanum
campylanthum_ and _Lantana salvifolia_). After that they pluck some of the
eleusine, and each of them puts one grain in her necklace, chews another
and rubs it on her forehead, throat, and breast. “No joy is shown by the
womenfolk on this occasion, and they sorrowfully cut a basketful of the
corn which they take home with them and place in the loft to dry.”(94)
(M39) Just as the Egyptians lamented at cutting the corn, so the Karok
Indians of California lament at hewing the sacred wood for the fire in the
assembly-room. The wood must be cut from a tree on the top of the highest
hill. In lopping off the boughs the Indian weeps and sobs piteously,
shedding real tears, and at the top of the tree he leaves two branches and
a top-knot, resembling a man’s head and outstretched arms. Having
descended from the tree, he binds the wood in a faggot and carries it back
to the assembly-room, blubbering all the way. If he is asked why he thus
weeps at cutting and fetching the sacred fuel, he will either give no
answer or say simply that he does it for luck.(95) We may suspect that his
real motive is to appease the wrath of the tree-spirit, many of whose
limbs he has amputated, though he took care to leave him two arms and a
head.
(M40) The conception of the corn-spirit as old and dead at harvest is very
clearly embodied in a custom observed by the Arabs of Moab. When the
harvesters have nearly finished their task and only a small corner of the
field remains to be reaped, the owner takes a handful of wheat tied up in
a sheaf. A hole is dug in the form of a grave, and two stones are set
upright, one at the head and the other at the foot, just as in an ordinary
burial. Then the sheaf of wheat is laid at the bottom of the grave, and
the sheikh pronounces these words, “The old man is dead.” Earth is
afterwards thrown in to cover the sheaf, with a prayer, “May Allah bring
us back the wheat of the dead.”(96)