In what has been said as to the Greek Mysteries, I have regarded them as
of native origin. I have exhibited rites of analogous kinds in the germ,
as it were, among savage and barbaric communities. In Peru, under the
Incas, we actually find Mama and Cora (Demeter and Kore) as Goddesses of
the maize (Acosta), and for rites of sympathetic magic connected with the
production of fertile harvests (as in the Thesmophoria at Athens) it is
enough to refer to the vast collection in Mr. Frazer's "Golden Bough." I
have also indicated the closest of all known parallels to the Eleusinian
in a medicine-dance and legend of the Pawnees. For other savage
Mysteries in which a moral element occurs, I have quoted Australian and
African examples. Thence I have inferred that the early Greeks might,
and probably did, evolve their multiform mystic rites out of germs of
such things inherited from their own prehistoric ancestors. No process,
on the other hand, of borrowing from Greece can conceivably account for
the Pawnee and Peruvian rites, so closely analogous to those of Hellas.
Therefore I see no reason why, if Egypt, for instance, presents parallels
to the Eleusinia, we should suppose that the prehistoric Greeks borrowed
the Eleusinia from Egypt. These things can grow up, autochthonous and
underived, out of the soil of human nature anywhere, granting certain
social conditions. Monsieur Foucart, however, has lately argued in
favour of an Egyptian origin of the Eleusinia. {82}
The Greeks naturally identified Demeter and Dionysus with Isis and
Osiris. There were analogies in the figures and the legends, and that
was enough. So, had the Greeks visited America, they would have
recognised Demeter in the Pawnee Earth Mother, and Persephone or
Eubouleus in Chibiabos. To account for the similarities they would
probably have invented a fable of Pawnee visitors to Greece, or of Greek
missionaries among the Pawnees. So they were apt to form a theory of an
Egyptian origin of Dionysus and Demeter.
M. Foucart, however, argues that agriculture, corn-growing at least, came
into Greece at one stride, barley and wheat not being indigenous in a
wild state. The Greeks, however, may have brought grain in their
original national migration (the Greek words for grain and ploughing are
common to other families of Aryan speech) or obtained it from Phoenician
settlements. Demeter, however, in M. Foucart's theory, would be the
Goddess of the foreigners who carried the grain first to Hellas. Now
both the Homeric epics and the Egyptian monuments show us Egypt and
Greece in contact in the Greek prehistoric period. But it does not
exactly follow that the prehistoric Greeks would adopt Egyptian gods; or
that the Thesmophoria, an Athenian harvest-rite of Demeter, was founded
by colonists from Egypt, answering to the daughters of Danaus. {84}
Egyptians certainly did not introduce the similar rite among the Khonds,
or the Incas. The rites _could_ grow up without importation, as the
result of the similarities of primitive fancy everywhere. If Isis is
Lady of the Grain in Egypt, so is Mama in Peru, and Demeter need no more
have been imported from Egypt than Mama. If Osiris taught the arts of
life and the laws of society in Egypt, so did Daramulun in Australia, and
Yehl in British Columbia. All the gods and culture heroes everywhere
play this _role_--in regions where importation of the idea from Egypt is
utterly out of the question. Even in minute details, legends recur
everywhere; the _phallus_ of a mutilated Australian being of the fabulous
"Alcheringa time," is hunted for by his wives; exactly as Isis wanders in
search of the _phallus_ of the mutilated Osiris. {85a} Is anything in
the Demeter legend so like the Isis legend as this Australian
coincidence? Yet the Arunta did not borrow it from Egypt. {85b} The
mere fact, again, that there were Mysteries both in Egypt and Greece
proves nothing. There is a river in Monmouth, and a river in Macedon;
there are Mysteries in almost all religions.
Again, it is argued, the Gods of the Mysteries in Egypt and Greece had
secret names, only revealed to the initiated. So, too, in Australia,
women (never initiated) and boys before initiation, know Daramulun only
as Papang (Father). {85c} The uninitiated among the Kurnai do not know
the sacred name, Mungan-ngaur. {85d} The Australian did not borrow this
secrecy from Egypt. Everywhere a mystery is kept up about proper names.
M. Foucart seems to think that what is practically universal, a taboo on
names, can only have reached Greece by transplantation from Egypt. {86a}
To the anthropologist it seems that scholars, in ignoring the universal
ideas of the lower races, run the risk of venturing on theories at once
superficial and untenable.
M. Foucart has another argument, which does not seem more convincing,
though it probably lights up the humorous or indecent side of the
Eleusinia. Isocrates speaks of "good offices" rendered to Demeter by
"our ancestors," which "can only be told to the initiate." {86b} Now
these cannot be the kindly deeds reported in the Hymn, for these were
publicly proclaimed. What, then, were the _secret_ good offices? In one
version of the legend the hosts of Demeter were not Celeus and Metaneira,
but Dusaules and Baubo. The part of Baubo was to relieve the gloom of
the Goddess, not by the harmless pleasantries of Iambe, in the Hymn, but
by obscene gestures. The Christian Fathers, Clemens of Alexandria at
least, make this a part of their attack on the Mysteries; but it may be
said that they were prejudiced or misinformed. {87a} But, says M.
Foucart, an inscription has been found in Paros, wherein there is a
dedication to Hera, Demeter Thesmophoros, Kore, and _Babo_, or Baubo.
Again, two authors of the fourth century, Palaephatus and Asclepiades,
cite the Dusaules and Baubo legend. {87b}
Now the indecent gesture of Baubo was part of the comic or obscene folk-
lore of contempt in Egypt, and so M. Foucart thinks that it was borrowed
from Egypt with the Demeter legend. {87c} Can Isocrates have referred to
_this_ good office?--the amusing of Demeter by an obscene gesture? If he
did, such gestures as Baubo's are as widely diffused as any other piece
of folk-lore. In the centre of the Australian desert Mr. Carnegie saw a
native make a derisive gesture which he thought had only been known to
English schoolboys. {88a} Again, indecent pantomimic dances, said to be
intended to act as "object lessons" in things _not_ to be done, are
common in Australian Mysteries. Further, we do not know Baubo, or a
counterpart of her, in the ritual of Isis, and the clay figurines of such
a figure, in Egypt, are of the Greek, the Ptolemaic period. Thus the
evidence comes to this: an indecent gesture of contempt, known in Egypt,
is, at Eleusis, attributed to Baubo. This does not prove that Baubo was
originally Egyptian. {88b} Certain traditions make Demeter the mistress
of Celeus. {88c} Traces of a "mystic marriage," which also occur, are
not necessarily Egyptian: the idea and rite are common.
There remains the question of the sacred objects displayed (possibly
statues, probably very ancient "medicine" things, as among the Pawnees)
and sacred words spoken. These are said by many authors to confirm the
initiate in their security of hope as to a future life. Now similar
instruction, as to the details of the soul's voyage, the dangers to
avoid, the precautions to be taken, notoriously occur in the Egyptian
"Book of the Dead." But very similar fancies are reported from the
Ojibbeways (Kohl), the Polynesians and Maoris (Taylor, Turner, Gill,
Thomson), the early peoples of Virginia, {89a} the modern Arapaho and
Sioux of the Ghost Dance rite, the Aztecs, and so forth. In all
countries these details are said to have been revealed by men or women
who died, but did not (like Persephone) taste the food of the dead; and
so were enabled to return to earth. The initiate, at Eleusis, were
guided along a theatrically arranged pathway of the dead, into a
theatrical Elysium. {89b} Now as such ideas as these occur among races
utterly removed from contact with Egypt, as they are part of the European
folk-lore of the visits of mortals to fairyland (in which it is fatal to
taste fairy food), I do not see that Eleusis need have borrowed such
common elements of early belief from the Egyptians in the seventh century
B.C. {90} One might as well attribute to Egypt the Finnish legend of the
descent of Wainamoinen into Tuonela; or the experience of the aunt of
Montezuma just before the arrival of Cortes; or the expedition to
fairyland of Thomas the Rhymer. It is not pretended by M. Foucart that
the _details_ of the "Book of the Dead" were copied in Greek ritual; and
the general idea of a river to cross, of dangerous monsters to avoid, of
perils to encounter, of precautions to be taken by the wandering soul, is
nearly universal, where it must be unborrowed from Egypt, in Polynesian
and Red Indian belief. As at Eleusis, in these remote tribes formulas of
a preservative character are inculcated.
The "Book of the Dead" was a guidebook of the itinerary of Egyptian
souls. Very probably similar instruction was given to the initiate at
Eleusis. But the Fijians also have a regular theory of what is to be
done and avoided on "The Path of the Shades." The shade is ferried by
Ceba (Charon) over Wainiyalo (Lethe); he reaches the mystic pandanus tree
(here occurs a rite); he meets, and dodges, Drodroyalo and the two
devouring Goddesses; he comes to a spring, and drinks, and forgets sorrow
at Wai-na-dula, the "Water of Solace." After half-a-dozen other
probations and terrors, he reaches the Gods, "the dancing-ground and the
white quicksand; and then the young Gods dance before them and sing. . . . "
{91a}
Now turn to Plutarch. {91b} Plutarch compares the soul's mortal
experience with that of the initiate in the Mysteries. "There are
wanderings, darkness, fear, trembling, shuddering, horror, then a
marvellous light: pure places and meadows, dances, songs, and holy
apparitions." Plutarch might be summarising the Fijian belief. Again,
take the mystic golden scroll, found in a Greek grave at Petilia. It
describes in hexameters the Path of the Shade: the spring and the white
cypress on the left: "Do not approach it. Go to the other stream from
the Lake of Memory; tell the Guardians that you are the child of Earth
and of the starry sky, but that yours is a heavenly lineage; and they
will give you to drink of that water, and you shall reign with the other
heroes."
Tree, and spring, and peaceful place with dance, song, and divine
apparitions, all are Fijian, all are Greek, yet nothing is borrowed by
Fiji from Greece. Many other Greek inscriptions cited by M. Foucart
attest similar beliefs. Very probably such precepts as those of the
Petilia scroll were among the secret instructions of Eleusis. But they
are not so much Egyptian as human. Chibiabos is assuredly not borrowed
from Osiris, nor the Fijian faith from the "Book of the Dead." "Sacred
things," not to be shown to man, still less to woman, date from the
"medicine bag" of the Red Indian, the mystic tribal bundles of the
Pawnees, and the _churinga_, and bark "native portmanteaux," of which Mr.
Carnegie brought several from the Australian desert.
[Demeter and Persephone sending Triptolemos on his mission. Marble
relief found at Eleusis--now in Athens: lang92.jpg]
For all Greek Mysteries a satisfactory savage analogy can be found. These
spring straight from human nature: from the desire to place customs, and
duties, and taboos under divine protection; from the need of
strengthening them, and the influence of the elders, by mystic sanctions;
from the need of fortifying and trying the young by probations of
strength, secrecy, and fortitude; from the magical expulsion of hostile
influences; from the sympathetic magic of early agriculture; from study
of the processes of nature regarded as personal; and from guesses,
surmises, visions, and dreams as to the fortunes of the wandering soul on
its way to its final home. I have shown all these things to be human,
universal, not sprung from one race in one region. Greek Mysteries are
based on all these natural early conceptions of life and death. The
early Greeks, like other races, entertained these primitive, or very
archaic ideas. Greece had no need to borrow from Egypt; and, though
Egypt was within reach, Greece probably developed freely her original
stock of ideas in her own fashion, just as did the Incas, Aztecs,
Australians, Ojibbeways, and the other remote peoples whom I have
selected. The argument of M. Foucart, I think, is only good as long as
we are ignorant of the universally diffused forms of religious belief
which correspond to the creeds of Eleusis or of Egypt. In the Greek
Mysteries we have the Greek guise,--solemn, wistful, hopeful, holy, and
pure, yet not uncontaminated with archaic buffoonery,--of notions and
rites, hopes and fears, common to all mankind. There is no other secret.
The same arguments as I have advanced against Greek borrowing from Egypt,
apply to Greek borrowing from Asia. Mr. Ramsay, following Mr. Robertson
Smith, suggests that Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis, may be "the
old Semitic Al-lat." {95a} Then we have Leto and Artemis, as the Mother
and the Maid (Kore) with their mystery play. "Clement describes them"
(the details) as "Eleusinian, for they had spread to Eleusis as the rites
of Demeter and Kore _crossing from Asia to Crete, and from Crete to the
European_ peninsula." The ritual "remained everywhere fundamentally the
same." Obviously if the Eleusinian Mysteries are of Phrygian origin
(Ramsay), they cannot also be of Egyptian origin (Foucart). In truth
they are no more specially of Phrygian or Egyptian than of Pawnee or
Peruvian origin. Mankind can and does evolve such ideas and rites in any
region of the world. {95b}