Thus
they did in many respects like those who bury and mourn their dead."
The Egyptian harvest, as we have seen, falls not in autumn but in
spring, in the months of March, April, and May. To the husbandman
the time of harvest, at least in a good year, must necessarily be a
season of joy: in bringing home his sheaves he is requited for his
long and anxious labours. Yet if the old Egyptian farmer felt a
secret joy at reaping and garnering the grain, it was essential that
he should conceal the natural emotion under an air of profound
dejection. For was he not severing the body of the corn-god with his
sickle and trampling it to pieces under the hoofs of his cattle on
the threshing-floor? Accordingly we are told that it was an ancient
custom of the Egyptian corn-reapers to beat their breasts and lament
over the first sheaf cut, while at the same time they called upon
Isis. The invocation seems to have taken the form of a melancholy
chant, to which the Greeks gave the name of Maneros. Similar
plaintive strains were chanted by corn-reapers in Phoenicia and
other parts of Western Asia.
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