MUSEUM NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 23945, 11 October 1939, Page 5

MUSEUM NOTES

SACRED ANIMALS The worship of animals among the ancient Egyptians, which so greatly amused the Greeks and tiakled the risible faculty even of the grave Herodotus, is merely a phase of religious experience through which practically all peoples have passed. That the first inhabitants of Britain were no exception to the general rule is clear enough from the statements of Julius Caesar, who, as his own war correspondent, noticed most things during his brief and stormy stay among our ancestors, for he assures us that they refused to eat the hare, the hen and the goose. This abstention from the flesh of certain animals is perhaps the surest sign that they are, or once were, the objects of adoration, or exercised a mysterious guardianship over the tribes who regarded them as unfit for food. This forbearance from the flesh of certain beasts and birds is associated with the extremely involved system of social taboos and tribal economy which has come to be known to students of savage life as “totemism,” a scheme or way of life developed throughout long ages of savage experience, regarding the basic principles of which, authorities are by no means in agreement. In all probability early man regarded the lower animals as being much on the same plane as himself. He spoke, as do some living savages, of the “beaver people,” or the “bear people,” and in some cases believed that animals distinguished for sagacity or courage were the ancestors of his own tribe or clan. Many legends of such kinship exist, and this supposed actual or spiritual relationship rendered the whole of the species of the ancestor beast sacred to him. There was a powerful taboo against its slaughter save at certain periods, when it was ceremonially eaten to inspire an access of its qualities. This theory, however, does not account for all the circumstances of animal-worship. At a later stage of totemic belief the beast-form of the guardian or patron animal shaded off into a semi-human form, the body of a man with the head of a bird or beast. Eut in certain other cases certain animals were thought of as possessing the symbolic attributes of gods, their wisdom, courage or cunning, and came to be adored as their earthly representatives. It is often extremely difficult to ascertain whether a god origin- ‘ ated in the animal form, or whether ! the animal form merely symbolized the god, and it is only by careful study of the early forms of the deity as ex-' pressed in paintings and sculpture that, this can be ascertained. Even so, many cases remain where scanty proof t

makes it impossible to arrive at any definite conclusion.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS It is reasonably clear, for example, that the bull which represented the Egyptian god Osiris, was regarded rather as symbolical of his attribute of fertility than as a survival of the totem form, and that the rat which invariably accompanies the Indian elephantheaded god Ganesha, is typical of his sagacity. It seems probable, too, that the owl, represented along with Pallas, Athena or Minerva, was characteristic of the wisdom of that goddess rather than reminiscent of any more primitive form of her, even though Homer does allude to her as “the owl-eyed Athena.” Ancient Egypt was perhaps richer in sacred animals than any other country of antiquity—the bull, the serpent, the cat, crocodile, ape, hippopotamus, ibis and dog, scorpion and frog all figured in her animal pantheon. (A mummified hawk in the Southland Museum collections probably falls under this heading.) The sanctity with which these animals were regarded, may, in some cases, have been a legacy from totemic worship forms, but be that as it may, they were adored in one or other of the provinces of the Nile country either as local patrons or as personifications of the gods. When they died they were mourned for as if they had been human, and they were embalmed in: the same manner as the dead Egyptian. The sacred animals of India are revered not as in Egypt, as symbols of the gods so much as the possible reincarnations of human beings whose souls have entered the bodies in the process of transmigration. To the Buddhist all animals are inviolate, and the life of even the smallest insect may not be taken without offence. But in the Hindu pantheon certain animals are regarded as having at one time or another acted as the atavars or bodily regenerations of the gods, and have thus an especial sanctity. All cows possess a certain degree of sacredness because of theii’ former association with Krishna, the divine cowherd, the elephant because of its symbolical connection with Ganesha, the god of knowledge, and the serpent whose affinities are with the cloud-gods is also venerated and feared. Some of the aboriginal tribes of America are still in the totemic stage of religious belief, and there is abundant evidence that certain of them anciently worshipped animals, directly or symbolically. So, too, are the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia in the totemic stage of religious belief and certain animals may not be killed or eaten by certain tribes, although their | neighbouring tribe may take that animal or bird with impunity. It is interesting to note also that among some of the ancient pendants of Maori origin are some which show a bird-headed man.