The Evolution of the Dragon Part 3

[25: G. Elliot Smith, "The Earliest Evidence of Attempts at Mummification in Egypt," _Report British a.s.sociation_, 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 Archaeology_, Vol. I, Part III, July, 1914, Plate x.x.xI.]

[27: "Excavations of the Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences at the Pyramids of Gizah, 1914," _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, 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 Archaeology_, 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 archaeologists.]

[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 Archaeology_, 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 a.s.sociation 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'

_Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_.]

[40: See the quotation from Mr. Quibell's account in my statement in the _Report of the British a.s.sociation 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 doc.u.ments, 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages 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 [G.o.d'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 a.n.a.logy of the life-giving power of water that is specially a.s.sociated 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 s.e.xual 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 fas.h.i.+on' (_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 a.s.sign to the cowry-sh.e.l.l all these life-giving and birth-giving virtues. It became an amulet to give fertility, to a.s.sist 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-sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l'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 G.o.d emerged with the form of a man, the vagueness of the Great Mother who had been merely the personified cowry-sh.e.l.l soon disappeared and the amulet a.s.sumed, 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 G.o.d, 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 fur agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde_, Bd.

50, 1912, p. 69.]

[42: Mr. Blackman here quotes the actual word in hieroglyphics and adds the translation "G.o.d'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 Archaeology_, 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 role 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 a.s.sociated with the processes of vegetable life". An examination of the literature relating to Osiris and the large series of h.o.m.ologous 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 Archaeology_, Vol. IV, Part I, Jan., 1917.]

[45: See J. Wilfrid Jackson, "Sh.e.l.ls 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ca.n.a.ls 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 role of fertilization.[46]