Taken all together, these legends point to a widespread practice of
dismembering the body of a king or magician and burying the pieces
in different parts of the country in order to ensure the fertility
of the ground and probably also the fecundity of man and beast.
To return to the human victims whose ashes the Egyptians scattered
with winnowing-fans, the red hair of these unfortunates was probably
significant. For in Egypt the oxen which were sacrificed had also to
be red; a single black or white hair found on the beast would have
disqualified it for the sacrifice. If, as I conjecture, these human
sacrifices were intended to promote the growth of the crops--and the
winnowing of their ashes seems to support this view--redhaired
victims were perhaps selected as best fitted to personate the spirit
of the ruddy grain. For when a god is represented by a living
person, it is natural that the human representative should be chosen
on the ground of his supposed resemblance to the divine original.
Hence the ancient Mexicans, conceiving the maize as a personal being
who went through the whole course of life between seed-time and
harvest, sacrificed new-born babes when the maize was sown, older
children when it had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe,
when they sacrificed old men.
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