As applied to Egypt, this explanation is
supported by the analogy of the bull-god Apis, who was not suffered
to outlive a certain term of years. The intention of thus putting a
limit to the life of the human god was, as I have argued, to secure
him from the weakness and frailty of age. The same reasoning would
explain the custom--probably an older one--of putting the beast-god
to death annually, as was done with the ram of Thebes.
One point in the Theban ritual--the application of the skin to the
image of the god--deserves particular attention. If the god was at
first the living ram, his representation by an image must have
originated later. But how did it originate? One answer to this
question is perhaps furnished by the practice of preserving the skin
of the animal which is slain as divine. The Californians, as we have
seen, preserved the skin of the buzzard; and the skin of the goat,
which is killed on the harvest-field as a representative of the
corn-spirit, is kept for various superstitious purposes. The skin in
fact was kept as a token or memorial of the god, or rather as
containing in it a part of the divine life, and it had only to be
stuffed or stretched upon a frame to become a regular image of him.
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