EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 551 



This last instance introduces us to yet another kind of trophy. 

 Along with the heap of hands thus laid before the king, there is rep- 

 resented a phallic heap ; and an accompanying inscription, narrating 

 the victory of Meneptah I. over the Libyans, besides mentioning the 

 " cut hands of all their auxiliaries," as being carried on donkeys fol- 

 lowing the returning ai-my, mentions these other trophies as taken 

 from men of the Libyan nation. And here a natural transition brings 

 us to trophies of an allied kind, the taking of which, once common, 

 has continued in the neighborhood of Egypt down to modern times. 

 The great significance of the account Bruce gives of a practice among 

 the Abyssinians must be my excuse for quoting part of it. He says : 



" At the end of a day of battle, each chief is obliged to sit at the door of his 

 tent, and each of his followers, who has slain a man, presents himself in his 

 turn, armed as in fight, with the bloody foreskin of the man he has slain. . . . 

 If he has killed more than one man, so many more times he returns. . . . After 

 this ceremony is over, each man takes his bloody conquest, and retires to pre- 

 pare it in the same manner the Indians do their scalps. . . . The whole army 

 ... on a particular day of review, throws them before the king, and leaves 

 them at the gate of the palace." 



Here it is noteworthy that the trophy, first serving to demonstrate a 

 victory gained by the individual warrior, is subsequently made an 

 offering to the ruler, and further becomes a means of recording the 

 number slain facts verified by the more recent French traveler 

 d'Hericourt. That like purposes were similarly served among the 

 Hebrews, proof is yielded by the passage which narrates Saul's en- 

 deavor to betray David when offering him Michal to wife : "And 

 Saul said, Thus shall ye say to David, The king desireth not any 

 dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of 

 the king's enemies ; " and David " slew of the Philistines two hundred 

 men ; and David brought their foreskins, and gave them in full tale 

 to the king." 



Associated with the direct motive for taking trophies there is an 

 indirect motive, which probably aids considerably in developing the 

 custom. Numerous facts unite to prove that the unanalytical mind 

 of the savage thinks the qualities of any object reside in all its parts ; 

 and that, among others, the characteristics of human beings are thus 

 conceived by him From this we found there arise such customs as 

 swallowing parts of the bodies of dead relatives, or their ground 

 bones in water, with the view of inheriting their virtues ; devouring 

 the heart of a slain brave to gain his courage, or his eyes in the ex- 

 pectation of seeing further; avoiding the flesh of certain timid ani- 

 mals, lest their timidity should be acquired. A further implication 

 of this belief that the spirit of each person is diffused throughout him 

 is, that possession of a part of his body gives possession of a part of 

 his spirit, and, consequently, a power over his spirit : one corollary 



