Chapter I.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON

BY G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.

PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

_ILLUSTRATED_

Manchester: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY

London, New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras

1919

PREFACE.

Some explanation is due to the reader of the form and scope of these

elaborations of the lectures which I have given at the John Rylands

Library during the last three winters.

They deal with a wide range of topics, and the thread which binds them

more or less intimately into one connected story is only imperfectly

expressed in the title "The Evolution of the Dragon".

The book has been written in rare moments of leisure snatched from a

variety of arduous war-time occupations; and it reveals only too plainly

the traces of this disjointed process of composition. On 23 February,

1915, I presented to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society

an essay on the spread of certain customs and beliefs in ancient times

under the title "On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of

the Practice of Mummification," and in my Rylands Lecture two weeks

later I summed up the general conclusions.[1] In view of the lively

controversies that followed the publication of the former of these

addresses, I devoted my next Rylands Lecture (9 February, 1916) to the

discussion of "The Relationship of the Egyptian Practice of

Mummification to the Development of Civilization". In preparing this

address for publication in the _Bulletin_ some months later so much

stress was laid upon the problems of "Incense and Libations" that I

adopted this more concise title for the elaboration of the lecture which

forms the first chapter of this book. This will explain why so many

matters are discussed in that chapter which have little or no

connexion either with "Incense and Libations" or with "The Evolution

of the Dragon".

The study of the development of the belief in water's life-giving

attributes, and their personification in the gods Osiris, Ea, Soma

[Haoma] and Varuna, prepared the way for the elucidation of the history

of "Dragons and Rain Gods" in my next lecture (Chapter II). What played

a large part in directing my thoughts dragon-wards was the discussion of

certain representations of the Indian Elephant upon Precolumbian

monuments in, and manuscripts from, Central America (_Nature_, 25 Nov.,

1915; 16 Dec., 1915; and 27 Jan., 1916). For in the course of

investigating the meaning of these remarkable designs I discovered that

the Elephant-headed rain-god of America had attributes identical with

those of the Indian Indra (and of Varuna and Soma) and the Chinese

dragon. The investigation of these identities established the fact

that the American rain-god was transmitted across the Pacific from India

via Cambodia.

The intensive study of dragons impressed upon me the importance of the

part played by the Great Mother, especially in her Babylonian _avatar_

as Tiamat, in the evolution of the famous wonder-beast. Under the

stimulus of Dr. Rendel Harris's Rylands Lecture on "The Cult of

Aphrodite," I therefore devoted my next address (14 November, 1917) to

the "Birth of Aphrodite" and a general discussion of the problems of

Olympian obstetrics.

Each of these addresses was delivered as an informal demonstration of

large series of lantern projections; and, as Mr. Guppy insisted upon the

publication of the lectures in the _Bulletin_, it became necessary,

as a rule, many months after the delivery of each address, to rearrange

my material and put into the form of a written narrative the story

which had previously been told mainly by pictures and verbal comments

upon them.

In making these elaborations additional facts were added and new points

of view emerged, so that the printed statements bear little resemblance

to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such

transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written

report of what was essentially an ocular demonstration, unless every one

of the numerous pictures is reproduced.

Each of the first two lectures was printed before the succeeding lecture

was set up in type. For these reasons there is a good deal of

repetition, and in successive lectures a wider interpretation of

evidence mentioned in the preceding addresses. Had it been possible to

revise the whole book at one time, and if the pressure of other duties

had permitted me to devote more time to the work, these blemishes might

have been eliminated and a coherent story made out of what is little

more than a collection of data and tags of comment. No one is more

conscious than the writer of the inadequacy of this method of presenting

an argument of such inherent complexity as the dragon story: but my

obligation to the Rylands Library gave me no option in the matter: I had

to attempt the difficult task in spite of all the unpropitious

circumstances. This book must be regarded, then, not as a coherent

argument, but merely as some of the raw material for the study of the

dragon's history. In my lecture (13 November, 1918) on "The Meaning of

Myths," which will be published in the _Bulletin of the John Rylands

Library_, I have expounded the general conclusions that emerge from the

studies embodied in these three lectures; and in my forthcoming book,

"The Story of the Flood," I have submitted the whole mass of evidence to

examination in detail, and attempted to extract from it the real story

of mankind's age-long search for the elixir of life.

In the earliest records from Egypt and Babylonia it is customary to

portray a king's beneficence by representing him initiating irrigation

works. In course of time he came to be regarded, not merely as the giver

of the water which made the desert fertile, but as himself the

personification and the giver of the vital powers of water. The

fertility of the land and the welfare of the people thus came to be

regarded as dependent upon the king's vitality. Hence it was not

illogical to kill him when his virility showed signs of failing and so

imperilled the country's prosperity. But when the view developed that

the dead king acquired a new grant of vitality in the other world he

became the god Osiris, who was able to confer even greater boons of

life-giving to the land and people than was the case before. He was the

Nile, and he fertilized the land. The original dragon was a beneficent

creature, the personification of water, and was identified with kings

and gods.

But the enemy of Osiris became an evil dragon, and was identified with

Set.

The dragon-myth, however, did not really begin to develop until an

ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother, as

the giver of life, to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood;

and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her

murderous act led to her being compared with and ultimately identified

with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of the

dragon is a much distorted rumour of this incident; and in the process

of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of

interpretation and also confusion with the legendary account of the

conflict between Horus and Set.

When a substitute was obtained to replace the blood the slaying of a

human victim was no longer logically necessary: but an explanation had

to be found for the persistence of this incident in the story. Mankind

(no longer a mere individual human sacrifice) had become sinful and

rebellious (the act of rebellion being complaints that the king or god

was growing old) and had to be destroyed as a punishment for this

treason. The Great Mother continued to act as the avenger of the king or

god. But the enemies of the god were also punished by Horus in the

legend of Horus and Set. The two stories hence became confused the one

with the other. The king Horus took the place of the Great Mother as the

avenger of the gods. As she was identified with the moon, he became the

Sun-god, and assumed many of the Great Mother's attributes, and also

became her son. In the further development of the myth, when the Sun-god

had completely usurped his mother's place, the infamy of her deeds of

destruction seems to have led to her being confused with the rebellious

men who were now called the followers of Set, Horus's enemy. Thus an

evil dragon emerged from this blend of the attributes of the Great

Mother and Set. This is the Babylonian Tiamat. From the amazingly

complex jumble of this tissue of confusion all the incidents of the

dragon-myth were derived.

When attributes of the Water-god or his enemy became assimilated with

those of the Great Mother and the Warrior Sun-god, the animals with

which these deities were identified came to be regarded individually and

collectively as concrete expressions of the Water-god's powers. Thus the

cow and the gazelle, the falcon and the eagle, the lion and the serpent,

the fish and the crocodile became symbols of the life-giving and the

life-destroying powers of water, and composite monsters or dragons were

invented by combining parts of these various creatures to express the

different manifestations of the vital powers of water. The process of

elaboration of the attributes of these monsters led to the development

of an amazingly complex myth: but the story became still further

involved when the dragon's life-controlling powers became confused with

man's vital spirit and identified with the good or evil genius which was

regarded as the guest, welcome or unwelcome, of every individual's body,

and the arbiter of his destiny. In my remarks on the _ka_ and the

_fravashi_ I have merely hinted at the vast complexity of these elements

of confusion.

Had I been familiar with [Archbishop] Söderblom's important

monograph,[2] when I was writing Chapters I and III, I might have

attempted to indicate how vital a part the confusion of the individual

_genius_ with the mythical wonder-beast has played in the history of the

myths relating to the latter. For the identification of the dragon with

the vital spirit of the individual explains why the stories of the

former appealed to the selfish interest of every human being. At the

time the lecture on "Incense and Libations" was written, I had no idea

that the problems of the _ka_ and the _fravashi_ had any connexion with

those relating to the dragon. But in the third chapter a quotation from

Professor Langdon's account of "A Ritual of Atonement for a Babylonian

King" indicates that the Babylonian equivalent of the _ka_ and the

_fravashi_, "my god who walks at my side," presents many points of

affinity to a dragon.

When in the lecture on "Incense and Libations" I ventured to make the

daring suggestion that the ideas underlying the Egyptian conception of

the _ka_ were substantially identical with those entertained by the

Iranians in reference to the _fravashi_, I was not aware of the fact

that such a comparison had already been made. In [Archbishop]

Söderblom's monograph, which contains a wealth of information in

corroboration of the views set forth in Chapter I, the following

statement occurs: "L'analyse, faite par M. Brede-Kristensen (_Ægypternes

forestillinger om livet efter döden_, 14 ss. Kristiania, 1896) du _ka_

égyptien, jette une vive lumière sur notre question, par la frappante

analogie qui semble exister entre le sens originaire de ces deux termes

_ka_ et _fravashi_" (p. 58, note 4). "La similitude entre le _ka_ et la

_fravashi_ a été signalée dejà par Nestor Lhote, _Lettres écrites

d'Égypte_, note, selon Maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie

égyptiennes_, I, 47, note 3."

In support of the view, which I have submitted in Chapter I, that the

original idea of the _fravashi_, like that of the _ka_, was suggested by

the placenta and the foetal membranes, I might refer to the specific

statement (Farvardin-Yasht, XXIII, 1) that "les fravashis tiennent en

ordre l'enfant dans le sein de sa mère et l'enveloppent de sorte qu'il

ne meurt pas" (_op. cit._, Söderblom, p. 41, note 1). The _fravashi_

"nourishes and protects" (p. 57): it is "the nurse" (p. 58): it is

always feminine (p. 58). It is in fact the placenta, and is also

associated with the functions of the Great Mother. "Nous voyons dans

fravashi une personification de la force vitale, conservée et exercée

aussi après la mort. La fravashi est le principe de vie, la faculté qu'a

l'homme de se soutenir par la nourriture, de manger, d'absorber et ainsi

d'exister et de se développer. Cette étymologie et le rôle attributé à

la fravashi dans le développement de l'embryon, des animaux, des plantes

rappellent en quelque sorte, comme le remarque M. Foucher, l'idée

directrice de Claude Bernard. Seulement la fravashi n'a jamais été une

abstraction. La fravashi est une puissance vivante, un _homunculus in

homine_, un être personnifié comme du reste toutes les sources de vie et

de mouvement que l'homme non civilisé aperçoit dans son organisme.

"Il ne faut pas non plus considérer la fravashi comme un double de

l'homme, elle en est plutôt une partie, un hôte intime qui continue son

existence après la mort aux mêmes conditions qu'avant, et qui oblige

les vivants à lui fournir les aliments nécessaires" (_op. cit._, p. 59).

Thus the _fravashi_ has the same remarkable associations with

nourishment and placental functions as the _ka_. As a further suggestion

of its connexion with the Great Mother as the inaugurator of the year,

and in virtue of her physiological (uterine) functions the

moon-controlled measurer of the month, it is important to note that "Le

19^e jour de chaque mois est également consecré aux fravashis en

général. Le premier mois porte aussi le nom de Farvardîn. Quant aux

formes des fêtes mensuelles, elles semblent conformes à celles que nous

allons rappeler [les fêtes célébrées en l'honneur des mortes]" (_op.

cit._, p. 10).

But the _fravashi_ was not only associated with the Great Mother, but

also with the Water-god or Good Dragon, for it controlled the waters of

irrigation and gave fertility to the soil (_op. cit._, p. 36). The

_fravashi_ was also identified with the third member of the primitive

Trinity, the Warrior Sun-god, not merely in the general sense as the

adversary of the powers of evil, but also in the more definite form of

the Winged Disk (_op. cit._, pp. 67 and 68).

In all these respects the _fravashi_ is brought into close association

with the dragon, so that in addition to being "the divine and immortal

element" (_op. cit._, p. 51), it became the genius or spirit that

possesses a man and shapes his conduct and regulates his behaviour. It

was in fact the expression of a crude attempt on the part of the early

psychologists of Iran to explain the working of the instinct of

self-preservation.

In the text of Chapters I and III I have referred to the Greek,

Babylonian, Chinese, and Melanesian variants of essentially the same

conception. Söderblom refers to an interesting parallel among the

Karens, whose _kelah_ corresponds to the Iranian _fravashi_ (p. 54, Note

2: compare also A. E. Crawley, "The Idea of the Soul," 1909).

In the development of the dragon-myth astronomical factors played a very

obtrusive part: but I have deliberately refrained from entering into a

detailed discussion of them, because they were not primarily the real

causal agents in the origin of the myth. When the conception of a

sky-world or a heaven became drawn into the dragon story it came to

play so prominent a part as to convince most writers that the myth was

primarily and essentially astronomical. But it is clear that originally

the myth was concerned solely with the regulation of irrigation systems

and the search upon earth for an elixir of life.

When I put forward the suggestion that the annual inundation of the Nile

provided the information for the first measurement of the year, I was

not aware of the fact that Sir Norman Lockyer ("The Dawn of Astronomy,"

1894, p. 209), had already made the same claim and substantiated it by

much fuller evidence than I have brought together here.

In preparing these lectures I have received help from so large a number

of correspondents that it is difficult to enumerate all of them. But I

am under a special debt of gratitude to Dr. Alan Gardiner for calling my

attention to the fact that the common rendering of the Egyptian word

_didi_ as "mandrake" was unjustifiable, and to Mr. F. Ll. Griffith for

explaining its true meaning and for lending me the literature relating

to this matter. Miss Winifred M. Crompton, the Assistant Keeper of the

Egyptian Department in the Manchester Museum, gave me very material

assistance by bringing to my attention some very important literature

which otherwise would have been overlooked; and both she and Miss

Dorothy Davison helped me with the drawings that illustrate this volume.

Mr. Wilfrid Jackson gave me much of the information concerning shells

and cephalopods which forms such an essential part of the argument, and

he also collected a good deal of the literature which I have made use

of. Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., of Cambridge, lent me a number of books

and journals which I was unable to obtain in Manchester; and Mr. Donald

A. Mackenzie, of Edinburgh, has poured in upon me a stream of

information, especially upon the folk-lore of Scotland and India. Nor

must I forget to acknowledge the invaluable help and forbearance of

Mr. Henry Guppy, of the John Rylands Library, and Mr. Charles W. E.

Leigh, of the University Library. To all of these and to the still

larger number of correspondents who have helped me I offer my most

grateful thanks.

During the three years in which these lectures were compiled I have

been associated with Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, F.R.S., and Mr. T. H. Pear in

their psychological work in the military hospitals, and the influence of

this interesting experience is manifest upon every page of this volume.

But perhaps the most potent factor of all in shaping my views and

directing my train of thought has been the stimulating influence of Mr.

W. J. Perry's researches, which are converting ethnology into a real

science and shedding a brilliant light upon the early history of

civilization.

G. ELLIOT SMITH.

9 December, 1918.

[1: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilisation in the East and in

America," _Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, January-March, 1916.]

[2: Nathan Söderblom, "Les Fravashis Étude sur les Traces dans le

Mazdéisme d'une Ancienne Conception sur la Survivance des Morts," Paris,

1899.]

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. INCENSE AND LIBATIONS 1

CHAPTER II. DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS 76

CHAPTER III. THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE 140

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Fig. 1.--The conventional Egyptian representation of the burning

of incense and the pouring of libations 2

Fig. 2.--Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth, representing a

restoration of the early mummy found at Medûm by Professor

Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of

Surgeons in London 16

Fig. 3.--A mould taken from a life-mask found in the Pyramid of Teta

by Mr. Quibell 17

Fig. 4.--Portrait statue of an Egyptian lady of the Pyramid Age 18

Fig. 5.--Statue of an Egyptian noble of the Pyramid Age to show the

technical skill in the representation of life-like eyes 52

Fig. 6.--Representation of the ancient Mexican worship of the Sun 70

Fig. 7.--A mediæval picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its cloud

(after the late Professor W. Anderson) 80

Fig. 8.--A Chinese Dragon (after de Groot) 80

Fig. 9.--Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon 81

Fig. 10.--Babylonian Weather God 81

Fig. 11.--Reproduction of a picture in the Maya Codex Troano

representing the Rain-god _Chac_ treading upon the Serpent's

head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the

god is pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-goddess stands upon the

Serpent's tail 84

Fig. 12.--Another representation of the elephant-headed Rain-god. He

is holding thunderbolts, conventionalized in a hund-like form.

The serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the

rain-waters. 84

Fig. 13.--A page (the 36th) of the Dresden Maya Codex. 86

Fig. 14.--A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature

compounded of the antelope and fish of Ea.--B. The "sea-goat"

as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.--C to K--a series of varieties

of the _makara_ from the Buddhist Rails at Buddha Gaya and

Mathura, circa 70 B.C.--70 A.D., after Cunningham

("Archæological Survey of India," Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX and

XXIX).--L. The _makara_ as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir

George Birdwood. It is not difficult to understand how, in the

course of the easterly diffusion of culture, such a picture

should develop into the Chinese Dragon or the American

elephant-headed god 88

Fig. 15.--Photograph of a Chinese embroidery in the Manchester

School of Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon

Symbol 98

Fig. 16.--The God of Thunder (from a Chinese drawing (? 17th

Century) in the John Rylands Library) 136

Fig. 17.--From Joannes de Turrecremata's "Meditationes seu

Contemplationes". _Rome: Ulrich Han_, 1467 137

Fig. 18.--(a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer showing,

perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners

of the palette) as a woman with cow's horns and ears (compare

Flinders Petrie "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part

I, 1900, Plate XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt

from which are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in

place of the cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This

affords corroboration of the view that Hathor assumed the

functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell. (b) The

king's _sporran_, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the

cowries of the primitive girdle 150

Fig. 19.--The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic

representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners),

one of the ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America

(after Maudslay's photograph and diagram). The girdle of the

chief figure is decorated both with shells (_Oliva_ or

_Conus_) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to

the Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18) 151

Fig. 20.--Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts worn in

(a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively. (c) Ancient

Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the Bharat

Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones,

and what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of

cowries. (d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both

shells and heads of deities are represented. The two objects

suspended from the belt between the heads recall Hathor's

sistra 153

Fig. 21.--(a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A. Reisner in the

temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh

Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess Hathor,

represented as a woman with the moon and the cow's horns upon

her head, and on the left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon

her head the jackal-symbol of her nome. (b) The Ecuador

Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro-Jaboncillo (after Saville,

"Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907,

Plate XXXVIII). A grotesque composite monster intended to

represent a woman (compare Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and

XXXIX), whose head is a conventionalized Octopus, whose body

is a _Loligo_, and whose limbs are human 164

Fig. 22.--(a) _Sepia officinalis_, after Tryon, "Cephalopoda".

(b) _Loligo vulgaris_, after Tryon. (c) The position usually

adopted by the resting Octopus, after Tryon 168

Fig. 23.--A series of Mycenæan conventionalizations of the Argonaut

and the Octopus (after Tümpel), which provided the basis for

Houssay's theory of the origin of the triskele (a, c, and d)

and swastika (b and e), and Siret's theory to explain the

design of Bes's face (f and g) 172

Fig. 24.--(a) and (b) Two Mycenæan pots (after Schliemann). (a) The

so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the

Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).

(b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a

jar upon her head and another in her hands--a three-fold

representation of the Great Mother as a pot. (c) A Cretan vase

from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a

decoration upon the pot instead of in its form, (d), (e), (f),

(g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after Head)

showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with

its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f). (i) _Sepia

officinalis_ (after Tryon). (h) and (l) The so-called "spouting

vases" in the hands of the Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder

seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of Tello, after Ward ("Seal

Cylinders, etc.," p. 215) 180

Fig 25.--(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I. (b) Persian

design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal

Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109). (c) Assyrian or

Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life in an

extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).

(d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life,

from the design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig.

670). (e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of

Dungi (Ward, Fig. 663). (f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from

Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig. 9). (g) Double axe from a gold

signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenæ (after Sir Arthur Evans,

"Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10). (h) Assyrian Winged

Disk (Ward, Fig. 608). (i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate"

(Ward, Fig. 349). (k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144).

(l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely

conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 691). (m) Assyrian Tree of Life

and Winged Disk in which the god is riding in a crescent

replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695) 184

Fig. 26.--(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains

of the horizon (on which trees are growing) (after Budge,

"Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. II, p. 101). (b) The mountains

of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a surrogate of

Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in

the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, _op. cit._, p. 39).

(c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the

Eastern Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, _op. cit._, p.

373). (d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun

rising between the Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the

mountain giving birth to "the ridiculous mouse"--Smintheus).

(e) Part of the design from a Mycenæan vase from Old Salamis

(after Evans, p. 9). (f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem

from the Idæan Cave, now in the Candia Museum (after Evans,

Fig. 25). (g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form

of the goddess (after Evans, Fig. 66). (h) Another Mycenæan

design comparable with (e). (i) Design from a signet-ring from

Mycenæ; (after Evans, Fig. 34). (k) The famous sculpture above

the Lion Gate at Mycenæ 188

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.

PAGE

Fig 1.--Early representation of a "Dragon" compounded of the

forepart of an eagle and the hindpart of a lion (from an

Archaic Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier) 79

Fig. 2.--The earliest Babylonian conception of the Dragon Tiamat

(from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after L. W. King) 79

Fig. 3.--Wm. Dennis's drawing of the "Flying Dragon" depicted on the

rocks at Piasa, Illinois 94

Fig. 4.--Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh) 155

Fig. 5.--_Pterocera bryonia_, the Red Sea spider-shell 170

Fig. 6.--(a) Picture of a bowl of water--the hieroglyphic sign

equivalent to _hm_ (the word _hmt_ means "woman"--Griffith,

"Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29). (b) "A

basket of sycamore figs"--Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Vol.

I, p. 323. (c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic

signs meaning "wife" and are apparently taken from (b). But (c)

is identical with (i), which, according to Griffith (p. 14),

represents a bivalve shell (g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more

usually placed obliquely (h). The varying conventionalizations

of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f) (Griffith,

"Hieroglyphics," p. 34). (k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which

is a phonetic equivalent of the sign (h), and, according to

Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 26), "is probably derived from

the same root, on account of its shell-like outline". (l) The

hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as _Nu_ and

_Nut_. (m) A "pomegranate" (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a

sacred column at Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and

Pillar Cult," p. 46). (n) The form of the body of an octopus as

conventionalized on the coins of Central Greece (compare Fig.

24 (d)) 179

Fig. 7.--(a) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus

emerging from a lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis).

(b) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and

animistically identified with them either as an instrument of

life-giving or destruction. (c) Conventionalized lily--the

prototype of the trident and the thunder-weapon. (d) A

water-plant associated with the Nile-gods 180

Fig. 8.--(a) "Ceremonial forked object," or "magic wand," used in

the ceremony of "opening the mouth," possibly connected with

(b) (a bicornuate uterus), according to Griffith

("Hieroglyphics," p. 60). (c) The Egyptian sign for a key.

(d) The double axe of Crete and Egypt 191

Fig. 9.--The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign _nub_ 222

Chapter I.

INCENSE AND LIBATIONS.[3]

The dragon was primarily a personification of the life-giving and

life-destroying powers of water. This chapter is concerned with the

genesis of this biological theory of water and its relationship to the

other germs of civilisation.

It is commonly assumed that many of the elementary practices of

civilization, such as the erection of rough stone buildings, whether

houses, tombs, or temples, the crafts of the carpenter and the

stonemason, the carving of statues, the customs of pouring out libations

or burning incense, are such simple and obvious procedures that any

people might adopt them without prompting or contact of any kind with

other populations who do the same sort of things. But if such apparently

commonplace acts be investigated they will be found to have a long and

complex history. None of these things that seem so obvious to us was

attempted until a multitude of diverse circumstances became focussed in

some particular community, and constrained some individual to make the

discovery. Nor did the quality of obviousness become apparent even when

the enlightened discoverer had gathered up the threads of his

predecessor's ideas and woven them into the fabric of a new invention.

For he had then to begin the strenuous fight against the opposition of

his fellows before he could induce them to accept his discovery. He had,

in fact, to contend against their preconceived ideas and their lack of

appreciation of the significance of the progress he had made before he

could persuade them of its "obviousness". That is the history of most

inventions since the world began. But it is begging the question to

pretend that because tradition has made such inventions seem simple and

obvious to us it is unnecessary to inquire into their history or to

assume that any people or any individual simply did these things without

any instruction when the spirit moved it or him so to do.

The customs of burning incense and making libations in religious

ceremonies are so widespread and capable of being explained in such

plausible, though infinitely diverse, ways that it has seemed

unnecessary to inquire more deeply into their real origin and

significance. For example, Professor Toy[4] disposes of these questions

in relation to incense in a summary fashion. He claims that "when burnt

before the deity" it is "to be regarded as food, though in course of

time, when the recollection of this primitive character was lost, a

conventional significance was attached to the act of burning. A more

refined period demanded more refined food for the gods, such as ambrosia

and nectar, but these also were finally given up."

This, of course, is a purely gratuitous assumption, or series of

assumptions, for which there is no real evidence. Moreover, even if

there were any really early literature to justify such statements, they

explain nothing. Incense-burning is just as mysterious if Prof. Toy's

claim be granted as it was before.

But a bewildering variety of other explanations, for all of which the

merit of being "simple and obvious" is claimed, have been suggested. The

reader who is curious about these things will find a luxurious crop of

speculations by consulting a series of encyclopædias.[5] I shall content

myself by quoting only one more. "Frankincense and other spices were

indispensable in temples where bloody sacrifices formed part of the

religion. The atmosphere of Solomon's temple must have been that of a

sickening slaughter-house, and the fumes of incense could alone enable

the priests and worshippers to support it. This would apply to thousands

of other temples through Asia, and doubtless the palaces of kings and

nobles suffered from uncleanliness and insanitary arrangements and

required an antidote to evil smells to make them endurable."[6]

It is an altogether delightful anachronism to imagine that religious

ritual in the ancient and aromatic East was inspired by such

squeamishness as a British sanitary inspector of the twentieth century

might experience!

[Illustration: Fig. 1.--The conventional Egyptian representation of the

Burning of Incense and the Pouring of Libations (Period of the New

Empire)--after Lepsius]

But if there are these many diverse and mutually destructive reasons in

explanation of the origin of incense-burning, it follows that the

meaning of the practice cannot be so "simple and obvious". For scholars

in the past have been unable to agree as to the sense in which these

adjectives should be applied.

But no useful purpose would be served by enumerating a collection of

learned fallacies and exposing their contradictions when the true

explanation has been provided in the earliest body of literature that

has come down from antiquity. I refer to the Egyptian "Pyramid Texts".

Before this ancient testimony is examined certain general principles

involved in the discussion of such problems should be considered. In

this connexion it is appropriate to quote the apt remarks made, in

reference to the practice of totemism, by Professor Sollas.[7] "If it is

difficult to conceive how such ideas ... originated at all, it is still

more difficult to understand how they should have arisen repeatedly and

have developed in much the same way among races evolving independently

in different environments. It is at least simpler to suppose that all

[of them] have a common source ... and may have been carried ... to

remote parts of the world."

I do not think that anyone who conscientiously and without bias examines

the evidence relating to incense-burning, the arbitrary details of the

ritual and the peculiar circumstances under which it is practised in

different countries, can refuse to admit that so artificial a custom

must have been dispersed throughout the world from some one centre where

it was devised.

The remarkable fact that emerges from an examination of these so-called

"obvious explanations" of ethnological phenomena is the failure on the

part of those who are responsible for them to show any adequate

appreciation of the nature of the problems to be solved. They know that

incense has been in use for a vast period of time, and that the practice

of burning it is very widespread. They have been so familiarized with

the custom and certain more or less vague excuses for its perpetuation

that they show no realization of how strangely irrational and devoid of

obvious meaning the procedure is. The reasons usually given in

explanation of its use are for the most part merely paraphrases of the

traditional meanings that in the course of history have come to be

attached to the ritual act or the words used to designate it. Neither

the ethnologist nor the priestly apologist will, as a rule, admit that

he does not know why such ritual acts as pouring out water or burning

incense are performed, and that they are wholly inexplicable and

meaningless to him. Nor will they confess that the real inspiration to

perform such rites is the fact of their predecessors having handed them

down as sacred acts of devotion, the meaning of which has been entirely

forgotten during the process of transmission from antiquity. Instead of

this they simply pretend that the significance of such acts is obvious.

Stripped of the glamour which religious emotion and sophistry have woven

around them, such pretended explanations become transparent subterfuges,

none the less real because the apologists are quite innocent of any

conscious intention to deceive either themselves or their disciples. It

should be sufficient for them that such ritual acts have been handed

down by tradition as right and proper things to do. But in response to

the instinctive impulse of all human beings, the mind seeks for reasons

in justification of actions of which the real inspiration is unknown.

It is a common fallacy to suppose that men's actions are inspired mainly

by reason. The most elementary investigation of the psychology of

everyday life is sufficient to reveal the truth that man is not, as a

rule, the pre-eminently rational creature he is commonly supposed to

be.[8] He is impelled to most of his acts by his instincts, the

circumstances of his personal experience, and the conventions of the

society in which he has grown up. But once he has acted or decided upon

a course of procedure he is ready with excuses in explanation and

attempted justification of his motives. In most cases these are not the

real reasons, for few human beings attempt to analyse their motives or

in fact are competent without help to understand their own feelings and

the real significance of their actions. There is implanted in man the

instinct to interpret for his own satisfaction his feelings and

sensations, i.e. the meaning of his experience. But of necessity this is

mostly of the nature of rationalizing, i.e. providing satisfying

interpretations of thoughts and decisions the real meaning of which

is hidden.

Now it must be patent that the nature of this process of rationalization

will depend largely upon the mental make-up of the individual--of the

body of knowledge and traditions with which his mind has become stored

in the course of his personal experience. The influences to which he has

been exposed, daily and hourly, from the time of his birth onward,

provide the specific determinants of most of his beliefs and views.

Consciously and unconsciously he imbibes certain definite ideas, not

merely of religion, morals, and politics, but of what is the correct and

what is the incorrect attitude to assume in most of the circumstances of

his daily life. These form the staple currency of his beliefs and his

conversation. Reason plays a surprisingly small part in this process,

for most human beings acquire from their fellows the traditions of their

society which relieves them of the necessity of undue thought. The very

words in which the accumulated traditions of his community are conveyed

to each individual are themselves charged with the complex symbolism

that has slowly developed during the ages, and tinges the whole of his

thoughts with their subtle and, to most men, vaguely appreciated shades

of meaning.[9] During this process of acquiring the fruits of his

community's beliefs and experiences every individual accepts without

question a vast number of apparently simple customs and ideas. He is apt

to regard them as obvious, and to assume that reason led him to accept

them or be guided by them, although when the specific question is put to

him he is unable to give their real history.

Before leaving these general considerations[10] I want to emphasize

certain elementary facts of psychology which are often ignored by those

who investigate the early history of civilization.

First, the multitude and the complexity of the circumstances that are

necessary to lead men to make even the simplest invention render the

concatenation of all of these conditions wholly independently on a

second occasion in the highest degree improbable. Until very definite

and conclusive evidence is forthcoming in any individual case it can

safely be assumed that no ethnologically significant innovation in

customs or beliefs has ever been made twice.

Those critics who have recently attempted to dispose of this claim by

referring to the work of the Patent Office thereby display a singular

lack of appreciation of the real point at issue. For the ethnological

problem is concerned with different populations who are assumed _not_ to

share any common heritage of acquired knowledge, nor to have had any

contact, direct or indirect, the one with the other. But the inventors

who resort to the Patent Office are all of them persons supplied with

information from the storehouse of our common civilization; and the

inventions which they seek to protect from imitation by others are

merely developments of the heritage of all civilized peoples. Even when

similar inventions are made apparently independently under such

circumstances, in most cases they can be explained by the fact that two

investigators have followed up a line of advance which has been

determined by the development of the common body of knowledge.

This general discussion suggests another factor in the working of the

human mind.

When certain vital needs or the force of circumstances compel a man to

embark upon a certain train of reasoning or invention the results to

which his investigations lead depend upon a great many circumstances.

Obviously the range of his knowledge and experience and the general

ideas he has acquired from his fellows will play a large part in shaping

his inferences. It is quite certain that even in the simplest problem of

primitive physics or biology his attention will be directed only to some

of, and not all, the factors involved, and that the limitations of his

knowledge will permit him to form a wholly inadequate conception even of

the few factors that have obtruded themselves upon his attention. But he

may frame a working hypothesis in explanation of the factors he had

appreciated, which may seem perfectly exhaustive and final, as well as

logical and rational to him, but to those who come after him, with a

wider knowledge of the properties of matter and the nature of living

beings, and a wholly different attitude towards such problems, the

primitive man's solution may seem merely a ludicrous travesty.

But once a tentative explanation of one group of phenomena has been made

it is the method of science no less than the common tendency of the

human mind to buttress this theory with analogies and fancied

homologies. In other words the isolated facts are built up into a

generalisation. It is important to remember that in most cases this

mental process begins very early; so that the analogies play a very

obtrusive part in the building up of theories. As a rule a multitude of

such influences play a part consciously or unconsciously in shaping any

belief. Hence the historian is faced with the difficulty, often quite

insuperable, of ascertaining (among scores of factors that definitely

played some part in the building up of a great generalization) the real

foundation upon which the vast edifice has been erected. I refer to

these elementary matters here for two reasons. First, because they are

so often overlooked by ethnologists; and secondly, because in these

pages I shall have to discuss a series of historical events in which a

bewildering number of factors played their part. In sifting out a

certain number of them, I want to make it clear that I do not pretend to

have discovered more than a small minority of the most conspicuous

threads in the complex texture of the fabric of early human thought.

Another fact that emerges from these elementary psychological

considerations is the vital necessity of guarding against the

misunderstandings necessarily involved in the use of words. In the

course of long ages the originally simple connotation of the words used

to denote many of our ideas has become enormously enriched with a

meaning which in some degree reflects the chequered history of the

expression of human aspirations. Many writers who in discussing ancient

peoples make use of such terms, for example, as "soul," "religion," and

"gods," without stripping them of the accretions of complex symbolism

that have collected around them within more recent times, become

involved in difficulty and misunderstanding.

For example, the use of the terms "soul" or "soul-substance" in much of

the literature relating to early or relatively primitive people is

fruitful of misunderstanding. For it is quite clear from the context

that in many cases such people meant to imply nothing more than "life"

or "vital principle," the absence of which from the body for any

prolonged period means death. But to translate such a word simply as

"life" is inadequate because all of these people had some theoretical

views as to its identity with the "breath" or to its being in the nature

of a material substance or essence. It is naturally impossible to find

any one word or phrase in our own language to express the exact idea,

for among every people there are varying shades of meaning which cannot

adequately express the symbolism distinctive of each place and society.

To meet this insuperable difficulty perhaps the term "vital essence" is

open to least objection.

In my last Rylands lecture[11] I sketched in rough outline a tentative

explanation of the world-wide dispersal of the elements of the

civilization that is now the heritage of the world at large, and

referred to the part played by Ancient Egypt in the development of

certain arts, customs, and beliefs. On the present occasion I propose to

examine certain aspects of this process of development in greater

detail, and to study the far-reaching influence exerted by the Egyptian

practice of mummification, and the ideas that were suggested by it, in

starting new trains of thought, in stimulating the invention of arts

and crafts that were unknown before then, and in shaping the complex

body of customs and beliefs that were the outcome of these potent

intellectual ferments.

In speaking of the relationship of the practice of mummification to the

development of civilization, however, I have in mind not merely the

influence it exerted upon the moulding of culture, but also the part

played by the trend of philosophy in the world at large in determining

the Egyptian's conceptions of the wider significance of embalming, and

the reaction of these effects upon the current doctrines of the meaning

of natural phenomena.

No doubt it will be asked at the outset, what possible connexion can

there be between the practice of so fantastic and gruesome an art as the

embalming of the dead and the building up of civilization? Is it

conceivable that the course of the development of the arts and crafts,

the customs and beliefs, and the social and political organizations--in

fact any of the essential elements of civilization--has been deflected a

hair's breadth to the right or left as the outcome, directly or

indirectly, of such a practice?

In previous essays and lectures[12] I have indicated how intimately this

custom was related, not merely to the invention of the arts and crafts

of the carpenter and stonemason and all that is implied in the building

up of what Professor Lethaby has called the "matrix of civilization,"

but also to the shaping of religious beliefs and ritual practices,

which developed in association with the evolution of the temple and the

conception of a material resurrection. I have also suggested the

far-reaching significance of an indirect influence of the practice of

mummification in the history of civilization. It was mainly responsible

for prompting the earliest great maritime expeditions of which the

history has been preserved.[13] For many centuries the quest of resins

and balsams for embalming and for use in temple ritual, and wood for

coffin-making, continued to provide the chief motives which induced the

Egyptians to undertake sea-trafficking in the Mediterranean and the Red

Sea. The knowledge and experience thus acquired ultimately made it

possible for the Egyptians and their pupils to push their adventures

further afield. It is impossible adequately to estimate the vastness of

the influence of such intercourse, not merely in spreading abroad

throughout the world the germs of our common civilization, but also, by

bringing into close contact peoples of varied histories and traditions,

in stimulating progress. Even if the practice of mummification had

exerted no other noteworthy effect in the history of the world, this

fact alone would have given it a pre-eminent place.

Another aspect of the influence of mummification I have already

discussed, and do not intend to consider further in this lecture. I

refer to the manifold ways in which it affected the history of medicine

and pharmacy. By accustoming the Egyptians, through thirty centuries, to

the idea of cutting the human corpse, it made it possible for Greek

physicians of the Ptolemaic and later ages to initiate in Alexandria the

systematic dissection of the human body which popular prejudice forbade

elsewhere, and especially in Greece itself. Upon this foundation the

knowledge of anatomy and the science of medicine has been built up.[14]

But in many other ways the practice of mummification exerted

far-reaching effects, directly and indirectly, upon the development of

medical and pharmaceutical knowledge and methods.[15]

There is then this _prima-facie_ evidence that the Egyptian practice of

mummification was closely related to the development of architecture,

maritime trafficking, and medicine. But what I am chiefly concerned with

in the present lecture is the discussion of the much vaster part it

played in shaping the innermost beliefs of mankind and directing the

course of the religious aspirations and the scientific opinions, not

merely of the Egyptians themselves, but also of the world at large, for

many centuries afterward.

It had a profound influence upon the history of human thought. The vague

and ill-defined ideas of physiology and psychology, which had probably

been developing since Aurignacian times[16] in Europe, were suddenly

crystallized into a coherent structure and definite form by the musings

of the Egyptian embalmer. But at the same time, if the new philosophy

did not find expression in the invention of the first deities, it gave

them a much more concrete form than they had previously presented, and

played a large part in the establishment of the foundations upon which

all religious ritual was subsequently built up, and in the initiation of

a priesthood to administer the rites which were suggested by the

practice of mummification.

[3: An elaboration of a Lecture on the relationship of the Egyptian

practice of mummification to the development of civilization delivered

in the John Rylands Library, on 9 February, 1916.]

[4: "Introduction to the History of Religions," p. 486.]

[5: He might start upon this journey of adventure by reading the article

on "Incense" in Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]

[6: Samuel Laing, "Human Origins," Revised by Edward Clodd, 1903, p.

38.]

[7: "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, pp. 234 and 235.]

[8: On this subject see Elliot Smith and Pear, "Shell Shock and its

Lessons," Manchester University Press, 1917, p. 59.]

[9: An interesting discussion of this matter by the late Professor

William James will be found in his "Principles of Psychology," Vol. I,

pp. 261 _et seq._]

[10: For a fuller discussion of certain phases of this matter see my

address on "Primitive Man," in the _Proceedings of the British Academy_,

1917, especially pp. 23-50.]

[11: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in

America," _The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, Jan.-March, 1916.]

[12: "The Migrations of Early Culture," 1915, Manchester University

Press: "The Evolution of the Rock-cut Tomb and the Dolmen," _Essays and

Studies Presented to William Ridgeway_, Cambridge, 1913, p. 493:

"Oriental Tombs and Temples," _Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and

Oriental Society_, 1914-1915, p. 55.]

[13: "Ships as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture," Manchester

University Press, 1917, p. 37.]

[14: "Egyptian Mummies," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, Part

III, July, 1914, p. 189.]

[15: Such, for example, as its influence in the acquisition of the means

of preserving the tissues of the body, which has played so large a part

in the development of the sciences of anatomy, pathology, and in fact

biology in general. The practice of mummification was largely

responsible for the attainment of a knowledge of the properties of many

drugs and especially of those which restrain putrefactive changes. But

it was not merely in the acquisition of a knowledge of material facts

that mummification exerted its influence. The humoral theory of

pathology and medicine, which prevailed for so many centuries and the

effects of which are embalmed for all time in our common speech, was

closely related in its inception to the ideas which I shall discuss in

these pages. The Egyptians themselves did not profit to any appreciable

extent from the remarkable opportunities which their practice of

embalming provided for studying human anatomy. The sanctity of these

ritual acts was fatal to the employment of such opportunities to gain

knowledge. Nor was the attitude of mind of the Egyptians such as to

permit the acquisition of a real appreciation of the structure of the

body.]

[16: See my address, "Primitive Man," _Proc. Brit. Academy_, 1917.]

Beginning of Stone-Working.

During the last few years I have repeatedly had occasion to point out

the fundamental fallacy underlying much of the modern speculation in

ethnology, and I have no intention of repeating these strictures

here.[17] But it is a significant fact that, when one leaves the

writings of professed ethnologists and turns to the histories of their

special subjects written by scholars in kindred fields of investigation,

views such as I have been setting forth will often be found to be

accepted without question or comment as the obvious truth.

There is an excellent little book entitled "Architecture," written by

Professor W. R. Lethaby for the Home University Library, that affords an

admirable illustration of this interesting fact. I refer to this

particular work because it gives lucid expression to some of the ideas

that I wish to submit for consideration. "Two arts have changed the

surface of the world, Agriculture and Architecture" (p. 1). "To a large

degree architecture" [which he defines as "the matrix of civilization"]

"is an Egyptian art" (p. 66): for in Egypt "we shall best find the

origins of architecture as a whole" (p. 21).

Nevertheless Professor Lethaby bows the knee to current tradition when

he makes the wholly unwarranted assumption that Egypt probably learnt

its art from Babylonia. He puts forward this remarkable claim in spite

of his frank confession that "little or nothing is known of a primitive

age in Mesopotamia. At a remote time the art of Babylonia was that of a

civilized people. As has been said, there is a great similarity between

this art and that of dynastic times in Egypt. Yet it appears that Egypt

borrowed of Asia, rather than the reverse." [He gives no reasons for

this opinion, for which there is no evidence, except possibly the

invention of bricks for building.] "If the origins of art in Babylonia

were as fully known as those in Egypt, the story of architecture might

have to begin in Asia instead of Egypt" (p. 67).

But later on he speaks in a more convincing manner of the known facts

when he says (p. 82):--

When Greece entered on her period of high-strung life the time of first

invention in the arts was over--the heroes of Craft, like Tubal Cain and

Daedalus, necessarily belong to the infancy of culture. The phenomenon

of Egypt could not occur again; the mission of Greece was rather to

settle down to a task of gathering, interpreting, and bringing to

perfection Egypt's gifts. The arts of civilization were never developed

in watertight compartments, as is shown by the uniformity of custom over

the modern world. Further, if any new nation enters into the circle of

culture it seems that, like Japan, it must 'borrow the capital'. The art

of Greece could hardly have been more self-originated than is the

science of Japan. Ideas of the temple and of the fortified town must

have spread from the East, the square-roomed house, columnar orders,

fine masonry, were all Egyptian.

Elsewhere[18] I have pointed out that it was the importance which the

Egyptian came to attach to the preservation of the dead and to the

making of adequate provision for the deceased's welfare that gradually

led to the aggrandisement of the tomb. In course of time this impelled

him to cut into the rock,[19] and, later still, suggested the

substitution of stone for brick in erecting the chapel of offerings

above ground. The Egyptian burial customs were thus intimately related

to the conceptions that grew up with the invention of embalming. The

evidence in confirmation of this is so precise that every one who

conscientiously examines it must be forced to the conclusion that man

did not instinctively select stone as a suitable material with which to

erect temples and houses, and forthwith begin to quarry and shape it for

such purposes.

There was an intimate connexion between the first use of stone for

building and the practice of mummification. It was probably for this

reason, and not from any abstract sense of "wonder at the magic of art,"

as Professor Lethaby claims, that "ideas of sacredness, of ritual

rightness, of magic stability and correspondence with the universe,

and of perfection of form and proportion" came to be associated with

stone buildings.

At first stone was used only for such sacred purposes, and the pharaoh

alone was entitled to use it for his palaces, in virtue of the fact that

he was divine, the son and incarnation on earth of the sun-god. It was

only when these Egyptian practices were transplanted to other countries,

where these restrictions did not obtain, that the rigid wall of

convention was broken down.

Even in Rome until well into the Christian era "the largest domestic and

civil buildings were of plastered brick". "Wrought masonry seems to have

been demanded only for the great monuments, triumphal arches, theatres,

temples and above all for the Coliseum." (Lethaby, _op. cit._ p. 120).

Nevertheless Rome was mainly responsible for breaking down the hieratic

tradition which forbade the use of stone for civil purposes. "In Roman

architecture the engineering element became paramount. It was this which

broke the moulds of tradition and recast construction into modern form,

and made it free once more" (p. 130).

But Egypt was not only responsible for inaugurating the use of stone for

building. For another forty centuries she continued to be the inventor

of new devices in architecture. From time to time methods of building

which developed in Egypt were adopted by her neighbours and spread far

and wide. The shaft-tombs and _mastabas_ of the Egyptian Pyramid Age

were adopted in various localities in the region of the Eastern

Mediterranean,[20] with certain modifications in each place, and in turn

became the models which were roughly copied in later ages by the

wandering dolmen-builders. The round tombs of Crete and Mycenæ were

clearly only local modifications of their square prototypes, the

Egyptian Pyramids of the Middle Kingdom. "While this Ægean art gathered

from, and perhaps gave to, Egypt, it passed on its ideals to the north

and west of Europe, where the productions of the Bronze Age clearly show

its influence" (Lethaby, p. 78) in the chambered mounds of the Iberian

peninsula and Brittany, of New Grange in Ireland and of Maes Howe in the

Orkneys.[21] In the East the influence of these Ægean modifications may

possibly be seen in the Indian _stupas_ and the _dagabas_ of Ceylon,

just as the stone stepped pyramids there reveal the effects of contact

with the civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt.

Professor Lethaby sees the influence of Egypt in the orientation of

Christian churches (p. 133), as well as in many of their structural

details (p. 142); in the domed roofs, the iconography, the symbolism,

and the decoration of Byzantine architecture (p. 138); and in Mohammedan

buildings wherever they are found.

For it was not only the architecture of Greece, Rome, and Christendom

that received its inspiration from Egypt, but that of Islâm also. These

buildings were not, like the religion itself, in the main Arabic in

origin. "Primitive Arabian art itself is quite negligible. When the new

strength of the followers of the Prophet was consolidated with great

rapidity into a rich and powerful empire, it took over the arts and

artists of the conquered lands, extending from North Africa to Persia"

(p. 158); and it is known how this influence spread as far west as Spain

and as far east as Indonesia. "The Pharos at Alexandria, the great

lighthouse built about 280 B.C., almost appears to have been the parent

of all high and isolated towers.... Even on the coast of Britain, at

Dover, we had a Pharos which was in some degree an imitation of the

Alexandrian one." The Pharos at Boulogne, the round towers of Ravenna,

and the imitations of it elsewhere in Europe, even as far as Ireland,

are other examples of its influence. But in addition the Alexandrian

Pharos had "as great an effect as the prototype of Eastern minarets as

it had for Western towers" (p. 115).

I have quoted so extensively from Professor Lethaby's brilliant little

book to give this independent testimony of the vastness of the influence

exerted by Egypt during a span of nearly forty centuries in creating and

developing the "matrix of civilization". Most of this wider dispersal

abroad was effected by alien peoples, who transformed their gifts from

Egypt before they handed on the composite product to some more distant

peoples. But the fact remains that the great centre of original

inspiration in architecture was Egypt.

The original incentive to the invention of this essentially Egyptian art

was the desire to protect and secure the welfare of the dead. The

importance attached to this aim was intimately associated with the

development of the practice of mummification.

With this tangible and persistent evidence of the general scheme of

spread of the arts of building I can now turn to the consideration of

some of the other, more vital, manifestations of human thought and

aspirations, which also, like the "matrix of civilization" itself, grew

up in intimate association with the practice of embalming the dead.

I have already mentioned Professor Lethaby's reference to architecture

and agriculture as the two arts that have changed the surface of the

world. It is interesting to note that the influence of these two

ingredients of civilization was diffused abroad throughout the world in

intimate association the one with the other. In most parts of the world

the use of stone for building and Egyptian methods of architecture made

their first appearance along with the peculiarly distinctive form of

agriculture and irrigation so intimately associated with early Babylonia

and Egypt.[22]

But agriculture also exerted a most profound influence in shaping the

early Egyptian body of beliefs.

I shall now call attention to certain features of the earliest mummies,

and then discuss how the ideas suggested by the practice of the art of

embalming the dead were affected by the early theories of agriculture

and the mutual influence they exerted one upon the other.

[17: See, however, _op. cit. supra_; also "The Origin of the

Pre-Columbian Civilization of America," _Science_, N.S., Vol. XLV, No.

1158, pp. 241-246, 9 March, 1917.]

[18: _Op. cit. supra_.]

[19: For the earliest evidence of the cutting of stone for architectural

purposes, see my statement in the _Report of the British Association for

1914_, p. 212.]

[20: Especially in Crete, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Southern Russia,

and the North African Littoral.]

[21: For an account of the evidence relating to these monuments, with

full bibliographical references, see Déchelette, "Manuel d'Archéologie

préhistorique Celtique et Gallo-Romaine," T. 1, 1912, pp. 390 _et seq._;

also Sophus Müller, "Urgeschichte Europas," 1905, pp. 74 and 75; and

Louis Siret, "Les Cassitérides et l'Empire Colonial des Phéniciens,"

_L'Anthropologie_, T. 20, 1909, p. 313.]

[22: W. J. Perry, "The Geographical Distribution of Terraced Cultivation

and Irrigation," _Memoirs and Proc. Manch. Lit. and Phil. Soc._, Vol.

60, 1916.]

The Origin of Embalming.

I have already explained[23] how the increased importance that came to

be attached to the corpse as the means of securing a continuance of

existence led to the aggrandizement of the tomb. Special care was taken

to protect the dead and this led to the invention of coffins, and to the

making of a definite tomb, the size of which rapidly increased as more

and more ample supplies of food and other offerings were made. But the

very measures thus taken the more efficiently to protect and tend the

dead defeated the primary object of all this care. For, when buried in

such an elaborate tomb, the body no longer became desiccated and

preserved by the forces of nature, as so often happened when it was

placed in a simple grave directly in the hot dry sand.

It is of fundamental importance in the argument set forth here to

remember that these factors came into operation before the time of the

First Dynasty. They were responsible for impelling the Proto-Egyptians

not only to invent the wooden coffin, the stone sarcophagus, the

rock-cut tomb, and to begin building in stone, but also to devise

measures for the artificial preservation of the body.

But in addition to stimulating the development of the first real

architecture and the art of mummification other equally far-reaching

results in the region of ideas and beliefs grew out of these practices.

From the outset the Egyptian embalmer was clearly inspired by two

ideals: (a) to preserve the actual tissues of the body with a minimum

disturbance of its superficial appearance; and (b) to preserve a

likeness of the deceased as he was in life. At first it was naturally

attempted to make this simulacrum of the body itself if it were

possible, or alternatively, when this ideal was found to be

unattainable, from its wrappings or by means of a portrait statue. It

was soon recognized that it was beyond the powers of the early embalmer

to succeed in mummifying the body itself so as to retain a recognizable

likeness to the man when alive: although from time to time such attempts

were repeatedly made,[24] until the period of the XXI Dynasty, when the

operator clearly was convinced that he had at last achieved what his

predecessors, for perhaps twenty-five centuries, had been trying in vain

to do.

[23: _Op. cit. supra_.]

[24: See my volume on "The Royal Mummies," General Catalogue of the

Cairo Museum.]

Early Mummies.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth,

representing a restoration of the early mummy found at Medûm by Prof.

Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in

London]

In the earliest known (Second Dynasty) examples of Egyptian attempts at

mummification[25] the corpse was swathed in a large series of bandages,

which were moulded into shape to represent the form of the body. In a

later (probably Fifth Dynasty) mummy, found in 1892 by Professor

Flinders Petrie at Medûm, the superficial bandages had been impregnated

with a resinous paste, which while still plastic was moulded into the

form of the body, special care being bestowed upon the modelling of the

face[26] and the organs of reproduction, so as to leave no room for

doubt as to the identity and the sex. Professor Junker has described[27]

an interesting series of variations of these practices. In two graves

the bodies were covered with a layer of stucco plaster. First the corpse

was covered with a fine linen cloth: then the plaster was put on, and

modelled into the form of the body (p. 252). But in two other cases it

was not the whole body that was covered with this layer of stucco,

but only the head. Professor Junker claims that this was done

"apparently because the head was regarded as the most important part, as

the organs of taste, sight, smell, and hearing were contained in it".

But surely there was the additional and more obtrusive reason that the

face affords the means of identifying the individual! For this modelling

of the features was intended primarily as a restoration of the form of

the body which had been altered, if not actually destroyed. In other

cases, where no attempt was made to restore the features in such durable

materials as resin or stucco, the linen-enveloped head was modelled, and

a representation of the eyes painted upon it so as to enhance the

life-like appearance of the face.

These facts prove quite conclusively that the earliest attempts to

reproduce the features of the deceased and so preserve his likeness,

were made upon the wrapped mummy itself. Thus the mummy was intended to

be the portrait as well as the actual bodily remains of the dead. In

view of certain differences of opinion as to the original significance

of the funerary ritual, which I shall have occasion to discuss later on

(see p. 20), it is important to keep these facts clearly in mind.

A discovery made by Mr. J. E. Quibell in the course of his excavations

at Sakkara[28] suggests that, as an outcome of these practices a new

procedure may have been devised in the Pyramid Age--the making of a

death-mask. For he discovered what may be the mask taken directly from

the face of the Pharaoh Teta (Fig. 3).

[Illustration: Fig. 3.--A mould taken from a life-mask found in the

Pyramid of Teta by Mr. Quibell]

About this time also the practice originated of making a life-size

portrait statue of the dead man's head and placing it along with the

actual body in the burial chamber. These "reserve heads," as they have

been called, were usually made of fine limestone, but Junker found one

made of Nile mud.[29]

Junker believes that there was an intimate relationship between the

plaster-covered heads and the reserve-heads. They were both expressions

of the same idea, to preserve a simulacrum of the deceased when his

actual body had lost all recognizable likeness to him as he was when

alive. The one method aimed at combining in the same object the actual

body and the likeness; the other at making a more life-like portrait

apart from the corpse, which could take the place of the latter when

it decayed.

Junker states further that "it is no chance that the substitute-heads

... entirely, or at any rate chiefly, are found in the tombs that have

no statue-chamber and probably possessed no statues. The statues [of the

whole body] certainly were made, at any rate partly, with the intention

that they should take the place of the decaying body, although later the

idea was modified. The placing of the substitute-head in [the burial

chamber of] the mastaba therefore became unnecessary at the moment when

the complete figure of the dead [placed in a special hidden chamber, now

commonly called the _serdab_] was introduced." The ancient Egyptians

themselves called the _serdab_ the _pr-twt_ or "statue-house," and the

group of chambers, forming the tomb-chapel in the mastaba, was known to

them as the "_ka_-house".[30]

It is important to remember that, even when the custom of making a

statue of the deceased became fully established, the original idea of

restoring the form of the mummy itself or its wrappings was never

abandoned. The attempts made in the XVIII, and XXI and XXII Dynasties to

pack the body of the mummy itself and by artificial means give it a

life-like appearance afford evidence of this. In the New Empire and in

Roman times the wrapped mummy was sometimes modelled into the form of a

statue. But throughout Egyptian history it was a not uncommon practice

to provide a painted mask for the wrapped mummy, or in early Christian

times simply a portrait of the deceased.

With this custom there also persisted a remembrance of its original

significance. Professor Garstang records the fact that in the XII

Dynasty,[31] when a painted mask was placed upon the wrapped mummy, no

statue or statuette was found in the tomb. The undertakers apparently

realized that the mummy[32] which was provided with a life-like mask was

therefore fulfilling the purposes for which statues were devised. So

also in the New Empire the packing and modelling of the actual mummy so

as to restore its life-like appearance were regarded as obviating the

need for a statue.

[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Portrait Statue of an Egyptian Lady of the

Pyramid Age]

I must now return to the further consideration of the Old Kingdom

statues. All these varied experiments were inspired by the same desire,

to preserve the likeness of the deceased. But when the sculptors

attained their object, and created those marvellous life-like portraits,

which must ever remain marvels of technical skill and artistic feeling

(Fig. 4), the old ideas that surged through the minds of the Predynastic

Egyptians, as they contemplated the desiccated remains of the dead, were

strongly reinforced. The earlier people's thoughts were turned more

specifically than heretofore to the contemplation of the nature of life

and death by seeing the bodies of their dead preserved whole and

incorruptible; and, if their actions can be regarded as an expression of

their ideas, they began to wonder what was lacking in these physically

complete bodies to prevent them from feeling and acting like living

beings. Such must have been the results of their puzzled contemplation

of the great problems of life and death. Otherwise the impulse to make

more certain the preservation of the body by the invention of

mummification and to retain a life-like representation of the deceased

by means of a sculptured statue remains inexplicable. But when the

corpse had been rendered incorruptible and the deceased's portrait had

been fashioned with realistic perfection the old ideas would recur with

renewed strength. The belief then took more definite shape that if the

missing elements of vitality could be restored to the statue, it might

become animated and the dead man would live again in his vitalized

statue. This prompted a more intense and searching investigation of the

problems concerning the nature of the elements of vitality of which the

corpse was deprived at the time of death. Out of these inquiries in

course of time a highly complex system of philosophy developed.[33]

But in the earlier times with which I am now concerned it found

practical expression in certain ritual procedures, invented to convey to

the statue the breath of life, the vitalising fluids, and the odour and

sweat of the living body. The seat of knowledge and of feeling was

believed to be retained in the body when the heart was left _in situ_:

so that the only thing needed to awaken consciousness, and make it

possible for the dead man to take heed of his friends and to act

voluntarily, was to present offerings of blood to stimulate the

physiological functions of the heart. But the element of vitality which

left the body at death had to be restored to the statue, which

represented the deceased in the _ka_-house.[34]

In my earlier attempts[35] to interpret these problems, I adopted the

view that the making of portrait statues was the direct outcome of the

practice of mummification. But Dr. Alan Gardiner, whose intimate

knowledge of the early literature enables him to look at such problems

from the Egyptian's own point of view, has suggested a modification of

this interpretation. Instead of regarding the custom of making statues

as an outcome of the practice of mummification, he thinks that the two

customs developed simultaneously, in response to the two-fold desire to

preserve both the actual body and a representation of the features of

the dead. But I think this suggestion does not give adequate recognition

to the fact that the earliest attempts at funerary portraiture were made

upon the wrappings of the actual mummies.[36] This fact and the evidence

which I have already quoted from Junker make it quite clear that from

the beginning the embalmer's aim was to preserve the body and to convert

the mummy itself into a simulacrum of the deceased. When he realized

that his technical skill was not adequate to enable him to accomplish

this double aim, he fell back upon the device of making a more perfect

and realistic portrait statue apart from the mummy. But, as I have

already pointed out, he never completely renounced his ambition of

transforming the mummy itself; and in the time of the New Empire he

actually attained the result which he had kept in view for nearly twenty

centuries.

In these remarks I have been referring only to funerary portrait

statues. Centuries before the attempt was made to fashion them modellers

had been making of clay and stone representations of cattle and human

beings, which have been found not only in Predynastic graves in Egypt

but also in so-called "Upper Palæolithic" deposits in Europe.

But the fashioning of realistic and life-size human portrait-statues for

funerary purposes was a new art, which gradually developed in the way I

have tried to depict. No doubt the modellers made use of the skill they

had acquired in the practice of the older art of rough impressionism.

Once the statue was made a stone-house (the _serdab_) was provided for

it above ground[37]. As the dolmen is a crude copy of the _serdab_[38]

it can be claimed as one of the ultimate results of the practice of

mummification. It is clear that the conception of the possibility of a

life beyond the grave assumed a more concrete form when it was realized

that the body itself could be rendered incorruptible and its distinctive

traits could be kept alive by means of a portrait statue. There are

reasons for supposing that primitive man did not realize or contemplate

the possibility of his own existence coming to an end.[39] Even when he

witnessed the death of his fellows he does not appear to have

appreciated the fact that it was really the end of life and not merely a

kind of sleep from which the dead might awake. But if the corpse were

destroyed or underwent a process of natural disintegration the fact was

brought home to him that death had occurred. If these considerations,

which early Egyptian literature seems to suggest, be borne in mind, the

view that the preservation of the body from corruption implied a

continuation of existence becomes intelligible. At first the

subterranean chambers in which the actual body was housed were developed

into a many-roomed house for the deceased, complete in every detail.[40]

But when the statue took over the function of representing the deceased,

a dwelling was provided for it above ground. This developed into the

temple where the relatives and friends of the dead came and made the

offerings of food which were regarded as essential for the maintenance

of existence.

The evolution of the temple was thus the direct outcome of the ideas

that grew up in connexion with the preservation of the dead. For at

first it was nothing more than the dwelling place of the reanimated

dead. But when, for reasons which I shall explain later (see p. 30), the

dead king became deified, his temple of offerings became the building

where food and drink were presented to the god, not merely to maintain

his existence, but also to restore his consciousness, and so afford an

opportunity for his successor, the actual king, to consult him and

obtain his advice and help. The presentation of offerings and the ritual

procedures for animating and restoring consciousness to the dead king

were at first directed solely to these ends. But in course of time, as

their original purpose became obscured, these services in the temple

altered in character, and their meaning became rationalized into acts

of homage and worship, and of prayer and supplication, and in much later

times, acquired an ethical and moral significance that was wholly absent

from the original conception of the temple services. The earliest idea

of the temple as a place of offering has not been lost sight of. Even in

our times the offertory still finds a place in temple services.

[25: G. Elliot Smith, "The Earliest Evidence of Attempts at

Mummification in Egypt," _Report British Association_, 1912, p. 612:

compare also J. Garstang, "Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt," London,

1907, pp. 29 and 30. Professor Garstang did not recognize that

mummification had been attempted.]

[26: G. Elliot Smith, "The History of Mummification in Egypt," _Proc.

Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow_, 1910: also "Egyptian Mummies,"

_Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, Part III, July, 1914, Plate

XXXI.]

[27: "Excavations of the Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences at the

Pyramids of Gizah, 1914," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, Oct.

1914, p. 250.]

[28: "Excavations at Saqqara," 1907-8, p. 113.]

[29: The great variety of experiments that were being made at the

beginning of the Pyramid Age bears ample testimony to the fact that the

original inventors of these devices were actually at work in Lower Egypt

at that time.]

[30: Aylward M. Blackman, "The _Ka_-House and the Serdab," _Journal of

Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250. The word

_serdab_ is merely the Arabic word used by the native workmen, which has

been adopted and converted into a technical term by European

archæologists.]

[31: _Op. cit._ p. 171.]

[32: It is a remarkable fact that Professor Garstang, who brought to

light perhaps the best, and certainly the best-preserved, collection of

Middle Kingdom mummies ever discovered, failed to recognize the fact

that they had really been embalmed (_op. cit._ p. 171).]

[33: The reader who wishes for fuller information as to the reality of

these beliefs and how seriously they were held will find them still in

active operation in China. An admirable account of Chinese philosophy

will be found in De Groot's "Religious System of China," especially Vol.

IV, Book II. It represents the fully developed (New Empire) system of

Egyptian belief modified in various ways by Babylonian, Indian and

Central Asiatic influences, as well as by accretions developed locally

in China.]

[34: A. M. Blackman, "The _Ka_-House and the Serdab," _The Journal of

Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250.]

[35: "Migrations of Early Culture," p. 37.]

[36: Dr. Alan Gardiner (Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet,"

1915, p. 83, footnote) has, I think, overlooked certain statements in my

writings and underestimated the antiquity of the embalmer's art; for he

attributes to me the opinion that "mummification was a custom of

relatively late growth".

The presence in China of the characteristically Egyptian beliefs

concerning the animation of statues (de Groot, _op. cit._ pp. 339-356),

whereas the practice of mummification, though not wholly absent, is not

obtrusive, might perhaps be interpreted by some scholars as evidence in

favour of the development of the custom of making statues independently

of mummification. But such an inference is untenable. Not only is it the

fact that in most parts of the world the practices of making statues and

mummifying the dead are found in association the one with the other, but

also in China the essential beliefs concerning the dead are based upon

the supposition that the body is fully preserved (_see_ de Groot, chap.

XV.). It is quite evident that the Chinese customs have been derived

directly or indirectly from some people who mummified their dead as a

regular practice. There can be no doubt that the ultimate source of

their inspiration to do these things was Egypt.

I need mention only one of many identical peculiarities that makes this

quite certain. De Groot says it is "strange to see Chinese fancy depict

the souls of the viscera as distinct individuals with animal forms" (p.

71). The same custom prevailed in Egypt, where the "souls" or protective

deities were first given animal forms in the Nineteenth Dynasty

(Reisner).]

[37: The Arabic word conveys the idea of being "hidden underground,"

because the house is exposed by excavation.]

[38: _Op. cit. supra_, Ridgeway Essays; also _Man_, 1913, p. 193.]

[39: See Alan H. Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings'

_Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]

[40: See the quotation from Mr. Quibell's account in my statement in the

_Report of the British Association for 1914_, p. 215.]

The Significance of Libations.

The central idea of this lecture was suggested by Mr. Aylward M.

Blackman's important discovery of the actual meaning of incense and

libations to the Egyptians themselves.[41] The earliest body of

literature preserved from any of the peoples of antiquity is comprised

in the texts inscribed in the subterranean chambers of the Sakkara

Pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. These documents, written

forty-five centuries ago, were first brought to light in modern times in

1880-81; and since the late Sir Gaston Maspero published the first

translation of them, many scholars have helped in the task of

elucidating their meaning. But it remained for Blackman to discover the

explanation they give of the origin and significance of the act of

pouring out libations. "The general meaning of these passages is quite

clear. The corpse of the deceased is dry and shrivelled. To revivify it

the vital fluids that have exuded from it [in the process of

mummification] must be restored, for not till then will life return and

the heart beat again. This, so the texts show us, was believed to be

accomplished by offering libations to the accompaniment of incantations"

(_op. cit._ p. 70).

In the first three passages quoted by Blackman from the Pyramid Texts

"the libations are said to be the actual fluids that have issued from

the corpse". In the next four quotations "a different notion is

introduced. It is not the deceased's own exudations that are to revive

his shrunken frame but those of a divine body, the [god's fluid][42]

that came from the corpse of Osiris himself, the juices that dissolved

from his decaying flesh, which are communicated to the dead

sacrament-wise under the form of these libations."

This dragging-in of Osiris is especially significant. For the analogy of

the life-giving power of water that is specially associated with Osiris

played a dominant part in suggesting the ritual of libations. Just as

water, when applied to the apparently dead seed, makes it germinate and

come to life, so libations can reanimate the corpse. These general

biological theories of the potency of water were current at the time,

and, as I shall explain later (see p. 28), had possibly received

specific application to man long before the idea of libations developed.

For, in the development of the cult of Osiris[43] the general

fertilizing power of water when applied to the soil found specific

exemplification in the potency of the seminal fluid to fertilize human

beings. Malinowski has pointed out that certain Papuan people, who are

ignorant of the fact that women are fertilized by sexual connexion,

believe that they can be rendered pregnant by rain falling upon them

(_op. cit. infra_). The study of folk-lore and early beliefs makes it

abundantly clear that in the distant past which I am now discussing no

clear distinction was made between fertilization and vitalization,

between bringing new life into being and reanimating the body which had

once been alive. The process of fertilization of the female and

animating a corpse or a statue were regarded as belonging to the same

category of biological processes. The sculptor who carved the

portrait-statues for the Egyptian's tomb was called _sa'nkh_, "he who

causes to live," and "the word 'to fashion' (_ms_) a statue is to all

appearances identical with _ms_, 'to give birth'".[44]

Thus the Egyptians themselves expressed in words the ideas which an

independent study of the ethnological evidence showed many other peoples

to entertain, both in ancient and modern times.[45]

The interpretation of ancient texts and the study of the beliefs of less

cultured modern peoples indicate that our expressions: "to give birth,"

"to give life," "to maintain life," "to ward off death," "to insure good

luck," "to prolong life," "to give life to the dead," "to animate a

corpse or a representation of the dead," "to give fertility," "to

impregnate," "to create," represent a series of specializations of

meaning which were not clearly differentiated the one from the other in

early times or among relatively primitive modern people.

The evidence brought together in Jackson's work clearly suggests that at

a very early period in human history, long before the ideas that found

expression in the Osiris story had materialized, men entertained in all

its literal crudity the belief that the external organ of reproduction

from which the child emerged at birth was the actual creator of the

child, not merely the giver of birth but also the source of life.

The widespread tendency of the human mind to identify similar objects

and attribute to them the powers of the things they mimic led primitive

men to assign to the cowry-shell all these life-giving and birth-giving

virtues. It became an amulet to give fertility, to assist at birth, to

maintain life, to ward off danger, to ensure the life hereafter, to

bring luck of any sort. Now, as the giver of birth, the cowry-shell also

came to be identified with, or regarded as, the mother and creator of

the human family; and in course of time, as this belief became

rationalized, the shell's maternity received visible expression and it

became personified as an actual woman, the Great Mother, at first nameless

and with ill-defined features. But at a later period, when the dead king

Osiris gradually acquired his attributes of divinity, and a god emerged

with the form of a man, the vagueness of the Great Mother who had been

merely the personified cowry-shell soon disappeared and the amulet assumed,

as Hathor, the form of a real woman, or, for reasons to be explained

later, a cow.

The influence of these developments reacted upon the nascent conception

of the water-controlling god, Osiris; and his powers of fertility were

enlarged to include many of the life-giving attributes of Hathor.

[41: "The Significance of Incense and Libations in Funerary and Temple

Ritual," _Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde_, Bd.

50, 1912, p. 69.]

[42: Mr. Blackman here quotes the actual word in hieroglyphics and adds

the translation "god's fluid" and the following explanation in a

footnote: "The Nile was supposed to be the fluid which issued from

Osiris. The expression in the Pyramid texts may refer to this

belief--the dead" [in the Pyramid Age it would have been more accurate

if he had said the dead king, in whose Pyramid the inscriptions were

found] "being usually identified with Osiris--since the water used in

the libations was Nile water."]

[43: The voluminous literature relating to Osiris will be found

summarized in the latest edition of "The Golden Bough" by Sir James

Frazer. But in referring the reader to this remarkable compilation of

evidence it is necessary to call particular attention to the fact that

Sir James Frazer's interpretation is permeated with speculations based

upon the modern ethnological dogma of independent evolution of similar

customs and beliefs without cultural contact between the different

localities where such similarities make their appearance.

The complexities of the motives that inspire and direct human activities

are entirely fatal to such speculations, as I have attempted to indicate

(see above, p. 195). But apart from this general warning, there are

other objections to Sir James Frazer's theories. In his illuminating

article upon Osiris and Horus, Dr. Alan Gardiner (in a criticism of Sir

James Frazer's "The Golden Bough: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the

History of Oriental Religion," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol.

II, 1915, p. 122) insists upon the crucial fact that Osiris was

primarily a king, and that "it is always as a _dead_ king," "the rôle of

the living king being invariably played by Horus, his son and heir".

He states further: "What Egyptologists wish to know about Osiris beyond

anything else is how and by what means he became associated with the

processes of vegetable life". An examination of the literature relating

to Osiris and the large series of homologous deities in other countries

(which exhibit _prima facie_ evidence of a common origin) suggests the

idea that the king who first introduced the practice of systematic

irrigation thereby laid the foundation of his reputation as a beneficent

reformer. When, for reasons which I shall discuss later on (see p. 220),

the dead king became deified, his fame as the controller of water and

the fertilization of the earth became apotheosized also. I venture to

put forward this suggestion only because none of the alternative

hypotheses that have been propounded seem to be in accordance with,

or to offer an adequate explanation of, the body of known facts

concerning Osiris.

It is a remarkable fact that in his lectures on "The Development of

Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," which are based upon his own

studies of the Pyramid Texts, and are an invaluable storehouse of

information, Professor J. H. Breasted should have accepted Sir James

Frazer's views. These seem to me to be altogether at variance with the

renderings of the actual Egyptian texts and to confuse the exposition.]

[44: Dr. Alan Gardiner, quoted in my "Migrations of Early Culture," p.

42: see also the same scholar's remarks in Davies and Gardiner, "The

Tomb of Amenemhet," 1915, p. 57, and "A new Masterpiece of Egyptian

Sculpture," _The Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. IV, Part I,

Jan., 1917.]

[45: See J. Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of

Early Culture," 1917, Manchester University Press.]

Early Biological Theories.

Before the full significance of these procedures can be appreciated it

is essential to try to get at the back of the Proto-Egyptian's mind and

to understand his general trend of thought. I specially want to make it

clear that the ritual use of water for animating the corpse or the

statue was merely a specific application of the general principles of

biology which were then current. It was no mere childish make-believe or

priestly subterfuge to regard the pouring out of water as a means of

animating a block of stone. It was a conviction for which the

Proto-Egyptians considered there was a substantial scientific basis; and

their faith in the efficacy of water to animate the dead is to be

regarded in the same light as any scientific inference which is made at

the present time to give a specific application of some general theory

considered to be well founded. The Proto-Egyptians clearly believed in

the validity of the general biological theory of the life-giving

properties of water. Many facts, no doubt quite convincing to them,

testified to the soundness of their theory. They accepted the principle

with the same confidence that modern people have adopted Newton's Law of

Gravitation, and Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species, and applied

it to explain many phenomena or to justify certain procedures, which in

the light of fuller knowledge seem to modern people puerile and

ludicrous. But the early people obviously took these procedures

seriously and regarded their actions as rational. The fact that their

early biological theory was inadequate ought not to mislead modern

scholars and encourage them to fall into the error of supposing that the

ritual of libations was not based upon a serious inference. Modern

scientists do not accept the whole of Darwin's teaching, or possibly

even Newton's "Law," but this does not mean that in the past innumerable

inferences have been honestly and confidently made in specific

application of these general principles.

It is important, then, that I should examine more closely the

Proto-Egyptian body of doctrine to elucidate the mutual influence of it

and the ideas suggested by the practice of mummification. It is not

known where agriculture was first practised or the circumstances which

led men to appreciate the fact that plants could be cultivated. In many

parts of the world agriculture can be carried on without artificial

irrigation, and even without any adequate appreciation on the part of

the farmer of the importance of water. But when it came to be practised

under such conditions as prevail in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the

cultivator would soon be forced to realize that water was essential for

the growth of plants, and that it was imperative to devise artificial

means by which the soil might be irrigated. It is not known where or by

whom this cardinal fact first came to be appreciated, whether by the

Sumerians or the Egyptians or by some other people. But it is known that

in the earliest records both of Egypt and Sumer the most significant

manifestations of a ruler's wisdom were the making of irrigation canals

and the controlling of water. Important as these facts are from their

bearing upon the material prospects of the people, they had an

infinitely more profound and far-reaching effect upon the beliefs of

mankind. Groping after some explanation of the natural phenomenon that

the earth became fertile when water was applied to it, and that seed

burst into life under the same influence, the early biologist formulated

the natural and not wholly illogical idea that water was the repository

of life-giving powers. Water was equally necessary for the production of

life and for the maintenance of life.

At an early stage in the development of this biological theory man and

other animals were brought within the scope of the generalization. For

the drinking of water was a condition of existence in animals. The idea

that water played a part in reproduction was co-related with this fact.

Even at the present time many aboriginal peoples in Australia, New

Guinea, and elsewhere, are not aware of the fact that in the process of

animal reproduction the male exercises the physiological rôle of

fertilization.[46]

There are widespread indications throughout the world that the

appreciation of this elementary physiological knowledge was acquired at

a relatively recent period in the history of mankind. It is difficult to

believe that the fundamental facts of the physiology of fertilization in

animals could long have remained unknown when men became breeders of

cattle. The Egyptian hieroglyphs leave no doubt that the knowledge was

fully appreciated at the period when the earliest picture-symbols were

devised, for the verb "to beget" is represented by the male organs of

generation. But, as the domestication of animals may have been earlier

than the invention of agriculture, it is possible that the appreciation

of the fertilizing powers of the male animal may have been definitely

more ancient than the earliest biological theory of the fertilizing

power of water.

I have discussed this question to suggest that the knowledge that

animals could be fertilized by the seminal fluid was certainly brought

within the scope of the wider generalization that water itself was

endowed with fertilizing properties. Just as water fertilized the earth,

so the semen fertilized the female. Water was necessary for the

maintenance of life in plants and was also essential in the form of

drink for animals. As both the earth and women could be fertilized by

water they were homologized one with the other. The earth came to be

regarded as a woman, the Great Mother.[47] When the fertilizing water

came to be personified in the person of Osiris his consort Isis was

identified with the earth which was fertilized by water.[48]

One of the earliest pictures of an Egyptian king represents him using

the hoe to inaugurate the making of an irrigation-canal.[49] This was

the typical act of benevolence on the part of a wise ruler. It is not

unlikely that the earliest organization of a community under a definite

leader may have been due to the need for some systematized control of

irrigation. In any case the earliest rulers of Egypt and Sumer were

essentially the controllers and regulators of the water supply and as

such the givers of fertility and prosperity.

Once men first consciously formulated the belief that death was not the

end of all things,[50] that the body could be re-animated and

consciousness and the will restored, it was natural that a wise ruler

who, when alive, had rendered conspicuous services should after death

continue to be consulted. The fame of such a man would grow with age;

his good deeds and his powers would become apotheosized; he would become

an oracle whose advice might be sought and whose help be obtained in

grave crises. In other words the dead king would be "deified," or at any

rate credited with the ability to confer even greater boons than he was

able to do when alive.

It is no mere coincidence that the first "god" should have been a dead

king, Osiris, nor that he controlled the waters of irrigation and was

specially interested in agriculture. Nor, for the reasons that I have

already suggested, is it surprising that he should have had phallic

attributes, and in himself have personified the virile powers of

fertilization.[51]

In attempting to explain the origin of the ritual procedures of burning

incense and offering libations it is essential to realize that the

creation of the first deities was not primarily an expression of

religious belief, but rather an application of science to national

affairs. It was the logical interpretation of the dominant scientific

theory of the time for the practical benefit of the living; or in other

words, the means devised for securing the advice and the active help of

wise rulers after their death. It was essentially a matter of practical

politics and applied science. It became "religion" only when the

advancement of knowledge superseded these primitive scientific theories

and left them as soothing traditions for the thoughts and aspirations of

mankind to cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories of

knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and

had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's

conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral

precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that

no force was able to strip away this body of consolatory beliefs; and

they have persisted for all time, although the reasoning by which they

were originally built up has been demolished and forgotten several

millennia ago.

It is not known where Osiris was born. In other countries there are

homologous deities, such as Ea, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, which are

certainly manifestations of the same idea and sprung from the same

source. Certain recent writers assume that the germ of the

Osiris-conception was introduced into Egypt from abroad. But if so,

nothing is known for certain of its place of origin. In any case there

can be no doubt that the distinctive features of Osiris, his real

personality and character, were developed in Egypt.

For reasons which I have suggested already it is probable that the

significance of water in cultivation was not realized until cereals were

cultivated in some such place as Babylonia or Egypt. But there are very

definite legends of the Babylonian Ea coming from abroad by way of the

Persian Gulf.[52] The early history of Tammuz is veiled in obscurity.

Somewhere in South Western Asia or North Eastern Africa, probably within

a few years of the development of the art of agriculture, some

scientific theorist, interpreting the body of empirical knowledge

acquired by cultivating cereals, propounded the view that water was the

great life-giving element. This view eventually found expression in the

Osiris-group of legends.

This theory found specific application in the invention of libations and

incense. These practices in turn reacted upon the general body of

doctrine and gave it a more sharply defined form. The dead king also

became more real when he was represented by an actual embalmed body and

a life-like statue, sitting in state upon his throne and holding in his

hands the emblems of his high office.

Thus while, in the present state of knowledge, it would be unjustifiable

to claim that the Osiris-group of deities was invented in Egypt, and

certainly erroneous to attribute the general theory of the fertilizing

properties of water to the practice of embalming, it is true that the

latter was responsible for giving Osiris a much more concrete and

clearly-defined shape, of "making a god in the image of man", and for

giving to the water-theory a much richer and fuller significance than it

had before.

The symbolism so created has had a most profound influence upon the

thoughts and aspirations of the human race. For Osiris was the prototype

of all the gods; his ritual was the basis of all religious ceremonial;

his priests who conducted the animating ceremonies were the pioneers of

a long series of ministers who for more than fifty centuries, in spite

of the endless variety of details of their ritual and the character of

their temples, have continued to perform ceremonies that have undergone

remarkably little essential change. Though the chief functions of the

priest as the animator of the god and the restorer of his consciousness

have now fallen into the background in most religions, the ritual acts

(the incense and libations, the offerings of food and blood and the

rest) still persist in many countries: the priest still appeals by

prayer and supplication for those benefits, which the Proto-Egyptian

aimed at securing when he created Osiris as a god to give advice and

help. The prayer for rain is one of the earliest forms of religious

appeal, but the request for a plentiful inundation was earlier still.

I have already said that in using the terms "god" and "religion" with

reference to the earliest form of Osiris and the beliefs that grew up

with reference to him a potent element of confusion is introduced.

During the last fifty centuries the meanings of those two words have

become so complexly enriched with the glamour of a mystic symbolism that

the Proto-Egyptian's conception of Osiris and the Osirian beliefs must

have been vastly different from those implied in the words "god" and

"religion" at the present time. Osiris was regarded as an actual king

who had died and been reanimated. In other words he was a _man_ who

could bestow upon his former subjects the benefits of his advice and

help, but could also display such human weaknesses as malice, envy, and

all uncharitableness. Much modern discussion completely misses the mark

by the failure to recognize that these so-called "gods" were really men,

equally capable of acts of beneficence and of outbursts of hatred, and

as one or the other aspect became accentuated the same deity could

become a Vedic _deva_ or an Avestan _dæva_, a _deus_ or a devil, a god

of kindness or a demon of wickedness.

The acts which the earliest "gods" were supposed to perform were not at

first regarded as supernatural. They were merely the boons which the

mortal ruler was supposed to be able to confer, by controlling the

waters of irrigation and rendering the land fertile. It was only when

his powers became apotheosized with a halo of accumulated glory (and the

growth of knowledge revealed the insecurity of the scientific basis upon

which his fame was built up) that a priesthood reluctant to abandon any

of the attributes which had captured the popular imagination, made it an

obligation of belief to accept these supernatural powers of the gods for

which the student of natural phenomena refused any longer to be a

sponsor. This was the parting of the ways between science and religion;

and thenceforth the attributes of the "gods" became definitely and

admittedly superhuman.

As I have already stated (p. 23) the original object of the offering of

libations was thus clearly for the purpose of animating the statue of

the deceased and so enabling him to continue the existence which had

merely been interrupted by the incident of death. In course of time,

however, as definite gods gradually materialized and came to be

represented by statues, they also had to be vitalized by offerings of

water from time to time. Thus the pouring out of libations came to be an

act of worship of the deity; and in this form it has persisted until our

own times in many civilized countries.

But not only was water regarded as a means of animating the dead, or

statues representing the dead, and an appropriate act of worship, in

that it vitalized an idol and the god dwelling in it was thus able to

hear and answer supplications. Water also became an essential part of

any act of ritual rebirth.[53] As a baptism it also symbolized the

giving of life. The initiate was re-born into a new communion of faith.

In scores of other ways the same conception of the life-giving

properties of water was responsible for as many applications of the use

of libations in inaugurating new enterprises, such as "baptising" ships

and blessing buildings. It is important to remember that, according to

early Egyptian beliefs, the continued existence of the dead was wholly

dependent upon the attentions of the living. Unless this animating

ceremony was performed not merely at the time of the funeral, but also

at stated periods afterwards, and unless the friends of the deceased

periodically supplied food and drink, such a continuation of existence

was impossible.

The development of these beliefs had far-reaching effects in other

directions. The idea that a stone statue could be animated ultimately

became extended to mean that the dead man could enter into and dwell in

a block of stone, which he could leave or return to at will. From this

arose the beliefs, which spread far and wide, that the dead ancestors,

kings, or deified kings, dwelt in stones; and that they could be

consulted as oracles, who gave advice and counsel. The acceptance of

this idea that the dead could be reanimated in a stone statue no doubt

prepared the minds of the people to credit the further belief, which

other circumstances were responsible for creating, that men could be

turned into stone. In the next chapter I shall explain how these

petrifaction stories developed.[54]

All the rich crop of myths concerning men and animals dwelling in stones

which are to be found encircling the globe from Ireland to America, can

be referred back to these early Egyptian attempts to solve the mysteries

of death, and to acquire the means of circumventing fate.[55]

These beliefs at first may have concerned human beings only. But in

course of time, as the duty of revictualling an increasingly large

number of tombs and temples tended to tax the resources of the people,

the practice developed of substituting for the real things models, or

even pictures, of food-animals, vegetables, and other requisites of the

dead. And these objects and pictures were restored to life or reality by

means of a ritual which was essentially identical with that used for

animating the statue or the mummy of the deceased himself.

It is well worth considering whether this may not be one of the basal

factors in explanation of the phenomena which the late Sir Edward Tylor

labelled "animism".

So far from being a phase of culture through which many, if not all,

peoples have passed in the course of their evolution, may it not have

been merely an artificial conception of certain things, which was given

so definite a form in Egypt, for the specific reasons at which I have

just hinted, and from there spread far and wide?

Against this view may be urged the fact that our own children talk in an

animistic fashion. But is not this due in some measure to the

unconscious influence of their elders? Or at most is it not a vague and

ill-defined attitude of anthropomorphism necessarily involved in all

spoken languages, which is vastly different from what the ethnologist

understands by "animism"[56]?

But whether this be so or not, there can be no doubt that the "animism"

of the early Egyptians assumed its precise and clear-cut distinctive

features as the result of the growth of ideas suggested by the attempts

to make mummies and statues of the dead and symbolic offerings of food

and other funerary requisites.

Thus incidentally there grew up the belief in a power of magic by means

of which these make-believe offerings could be transformed into

realities. But it is important to emphasize the fact that originally the

conviction of the genuineness of this transubstantiation was a logical

and not unnatural inference based upon the attempt to interpret natural

phenomena, and then to influence them by imitating what were regarded as

the determining factors.[57]

In China these ideas still retain much of their primitive influence and

directness of expression. Referring to the Chinese "belief in the

identity of pictures or images with the beings they represent" de Groot

states that the _kwan shuh_ or "magic art" is a "main branch of Chinese

witchcraft". It consists essentially of "the infusion of a soul, life,

and activity into likenesses of beings, to thus render them fit to work

in some direction desired ... this infusion is effected by blowing or

breathing, or spurting water over the likeness: indeed breath or _khi_,

or water from the mouth imbued with breath, is identical with _yang_

substance or life."[58]

[46: Baldwin Spencer and Gillen, "The Northern Tribes of Central

Australia"; "Across Australia"; and Spencer's "Native Tribes of the

Northern Territory of Australia". For a very important study of the

whole problem with special reference to New Guinea, see B. Malinowski,

"Baloma: the Spirits of the Dead," etc., _Journal of the Royal

Anthropological Institute_, 1916, p. 415.]

[47: The idea of the earth's maternal function spread throughout the

greater part of the world.]

[48: With reference to the assimilation of the conceptions of human

fertilization and watering the soil and the widespread idea among the

ancients of regarding the male as "he who irrigates," Canon van

Hoonacker gave M. Louis Siret the following note:--

"In Assyrian the cuneiform sign for water is also used, _inter alia_, to

express the idea of begetting (_banú_). Compare with this the references

from Hebrew and Arabic writings. In Isaiah xlviii. 1, we read 'Hear ye

this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are

come forth out of the waters of Judah'; and in Numbers xxiv. 7, 'Water

shall flow from his buckets and his seed shall be in many waters'.

"The Hebrew verb (_shangal_) which denotes sexual intercourse has, in

Arabic (_sadjala_), the meaning 'to spill water'. In the Koran, Sur. 36,

v. 6, the word _mâ'un_ (water) is used to designate semen" (L. Siret,

"Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Ibériques," Tome I, 1913, p.

250).]

[49: Quibell, "Hieraconpolis", Vol. I, 260, 4.]

[50: In using this phrase I want to make a clear distinction between the

phase of culture in which it had never occurred to man that, in his

individual case, life would come to an end, and the more enlightened

stage, in which he fully realized that death would inevitably be his

fate, but that in spite of it his real existence would continue.

It is clear that at quite an early stage in his history man appreciated

the fact that he could kill an animal or his fellow-man. But for a long

time he failed to realize that he himself, if he could avoid the process

of mechanical destruction by which he could kill an animal or a

fellow-man, would not continue to exist. The dead are supposed by many

people to be still in existence so long as the body is preserved. Once

the body begins to disintegrate even the most unimaginative of men can

entirely repress the idea of death. But to primitive people the

preservation of the body is equally a token that existence has not come

to an end. The corpse is merely sleeping.]

[51: Breasted, _op. cit._, p. 28.]

[52: The possibility, or even the probability, must be borne in mind

that the legend of Ea arising from the waters may be merely another way

of expressing his primary attribute as the personification of the

fertilizing powers of water.]

[53: This occurred at a later epoch when the attributes of the

water-controlling deity of fertility became confused with those of the

birth-giving mother goddess (_vide infra_, p. 40).]

[54: For a large series of these stories see E. Sidney Hartland's

"Legend of Perseus". But even more instructive, as revealing the

intimate connexion of such ideas with the beliefs regarding the

preservation of the body, see J. J. M. de Groot, "The Religious System

of China," Vol. IV, Book II, 1901.]

[55: In this connexion see de Groot, _op. cit._ pp. 356 and 415.

[Transcriber's Note: the original text contained no marker for this

footnote, so a guess has been made as to what it referred]]

[56: The child certainly resembles primitive man in the readiness with

which it attributes to even the crudest models of animals or human

beings the feelings of living creatures.]

[57: It became "magical" in our sense of the term only when the growth

of knowledge revealed the fact that the measures taken were inadequate

to attain the desired end; while the "magician" continued to make the

pretence that he could attain that end by ultra-physical means.]

[58: De Groot, _op. cit._ p. 356.]

Incense.

So far I have referred in detail only to the offering of libations. But

this was only one of several procedures for animating statues, mummies,

and food-offerings. I have still to consider the ritual procedures of

incense-burning and "opening the mouth".

From Mr. Blackman's translations of the Egyptian texts it is clear that

the burning of incense was intended to restore to the statue (or the

mummy) the odour of the living body, and that this was part of the

procedure considered necessary to animate the statue. He says "the

belief about incense [which is explained by a later document, the

_Ritual of Amon_] apparently does not occur in the Old Kingdom religious

texts that are preserved to us, yet it may quite well be as ancient as

that period. That is certainly Erman's view" (_op. cit._ p. 75).

He gives the following translation of the relevant passage in the

_Ritual of Amon_ (XII, 11): "The god comes with body adorned which he

has fumigated with the eye of his body, the incense of the god which has

issued from his flesh, the sweat of the god which has fallen to the

ground, which he has given to all the gods.... It is the Horus eye. If

it lives, the people live, thy flesh lives, thy members are vigorous"

(_op. cit._ p. 72). In his comments upon this passage Mr. Blackman

states: "In the light of the Pyramid libation-formulæ the expressions in

this text are quite comprehensible. Like the libations the grains of

incense are the exudations of a divinity,[59] the fluid which issued

from his flesh, the god's sweat descending to the ground.... Here

incense is not merely the 'odour of the god,' but the grains of resin

are said to be the god's sweat" (_op. cit._ p. 72). "Both rites, the

pouring of libations and the burning of incense, are performed for the

same purpose--to revivify the body [or the statue] of god and man by

restoring to it its lost moisture" (p. 75).

In attempting to reconstitute the circumstances which led to the

invention of incense-burning as a ritual act, the nature of the problem

to be solved must be recalled. Among the most obtrusive evidences of

death were the coldness of the skin, the lack of perspiration and of the

odour of the living. It is important to realize what the phrase "odour

of the living" would convey to the Proto-Egyptian. From the earliest

Predynastic times in Egypt it had been the custom to make extensive use

of resinous material as an essential ingredient (what a pharmacist would

call the adhesive "vehicle") of cosmetics. One of the results of this

practice in a hot climate must have been the association of a strong

aroma of resin or balsam with a living person.[60] Whether or not it was

the practice to burn incense to give pleasure to the living is not

known. The fact that such a procedure was customary among their

successors may mean that it was really archaic; or on the other hand the

possibility must not be overlooked that it may be merely the later

vulgarization of a practice which originally was devised for purely

ritual purposes. The burning of incense before a corpse or statue was

intended to convey to it the warmth, the sweat, and the odour of life.

When the belief became well established that the burning of incense was

potent as an animating force, and especially a giver of life to the

dead, it naturally came to be regarded as a divine substance in the

sense that it had the power of resurrection. As the grains of incense

consisted of the exudation of trees, or, as the ancient texts express

it, "their sweat," the divine power of animation in course of time

became transferred to the trees. They were no longer merely the source

of the life-giving incense, but were themselves animated by the deity

whose drops of sweat were the means of conveying life to the mummy.

The reason why the deity which dwelt in these trees was usually

identified with the Mother-Goddess will become clear in the course of

the subsequent discussion (p. 38). It is probable that this was due

mainly to the geographical circumstance that the chief source of incense

was Southern Arabia, which was also the home of the primitive goddesses

of fertility. For they were originally nothing more than

personifications of the life-giving cowry amulets from the Red Sea.

Thus Robertson Smith's statement that "the value of the gum of the

acacia as an amulet is connected with the idea that it is a clot of

menstruous blood, i.e., that the tree is a woman"[61] is probably an

inversion of cause and effect. It was the value attached to the gum that

conferred animation upon the tree. The rest of the legend is merely a

rationalization based upon the idea that the tree was identified with

the mother-goddess. The same criticism applies to his further contention

(p. 427) with reference to "the religious value of incense" which he

claims to be due to the fact that "like the gum of the _samora_ (acacia)

tree, ... it was an animate or divine plant".

Many factors played a part in the development of tree-worship but it is

probable the origin of the sacredness of trees must be assigned to the

fact that it was acquired from the incense and the aromatic woods which

were credited with the power of animating the dead. But at a very early

epoch many other considerations helped to confirm and extend the

conception of deification. When Osiris was buried, a sacred sycamore

grew up as "the visible symbol of the imperishable life of Osiris".[62]

But the sap of trees was brought into relationship with life-giving

water and thus constituted another link with Osiris. The sap was also

regarded as the blood of trees and the incense that exuded as the sweat.

Just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid of the body of

Osiris, so also, by this process of rationalization, the incense came to

possess a similar significance.

For reasons precisely analogous to those already explained in the case

of libations, the custom of burning incense, from being originally a

ritual act for animating the funerary statue, ultimately developed into

an act of homage to the deity.

But it also acquired a special significance when the cult of sky-gods

developed,[63] for the smoke of the burning incense then came to be

regarded as the vehicle which wafted the deceased's soul to the sky or

conveyed there the requests of the dwellers upon earth.[64]

"The soul of a human being is generally conceived [by the Chinese] as

possessing the shape and characteristics of a human being, and

occasionally those of an animal; ... the spirit of an animal is the shape

of this animal or of some being with human attributes and speech. But

plant spirits are never conceived as plant-shaped, nor to have

plant-characters ... whenever forms are given them, they are mostly

represented as a man, a woman, or a child, and often also as an animal,

dwelling in or near the plant, and emerging from it at times to do harm,

or to dispense blessings.... Whether conceptions on the animation of

plants have never developed in Chinese thought and worship before ideas

about human ghosts ... had become predominant in mind and custom, we

cannot say: but the matter seems probable" (De Groot, _op. cit._ pp.

272, 273). Tales of trees that shed blood and that cry out when hurt are

common in Chinese literature (p. 274) [as also in Southern Arabia]; also

of trees that lodge or can change into maidens of transcendent beauty

(p. 276).

It is further significant that amongst the stories of souls of men

taking up their residence in and animating trees and plants, the human

being is usually a woman, accompanied by "a fox, a dog, an old raven or

the like" (p. 276).

Thus in China are found all the elements out of which Dr. Rendel Harris

believes the Aphrodite cult was compounded in Cyprus,[65] the animation

of the anthropoid plant, its human cry, its association with a beautiful

maiden and a dog.[66]