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 Alteriumskunde, 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 Amenemhēt," 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
