CHAPTER VII 

 BIRDS AS SYMBOLS AND BADGES 



CERTAIN kinds of birds have become symbols of 

 popular ideas, or even significant badges of 

 persons and events, and are thus more or less con- 

 ventionalized accessories in art, by reason of their ap- 

 pearance (form, color), or their habits, or their connec- 

 tion with some historic incident or fabulous tale. In 

 many cases this symbolism is of very ancient origin, as 

 is most particularly true of the eagle and the dove. The 

 eagle is accounted for elsewhere in its various aspects and 

 relations: but the dove, by which is meant the prehis- 

 torically domesticated blue rock-pigeon, almost deserves 

 a chapter to itself. 



To trace the career of the dove in religion, customs, and 

 art is, indeed, one of the most engaging of my tasks, and 

 the quest discloses a curiously double and diverse symbo- 

 lism running almost simultaneously from the beginning 

 of history to the present, for this bird serves as an emblem 

 of purity and conjugal affection in one association, and 

 in another suggests the familiar epithet "soiled." 



The story of this bird goes back to the misty dawn of 

 civilization and religion in Mesopotamia, the Garden-of- 

 Eden land, where arose the dual "nature-worship" of the 

 combining elements heaven and earth, male and female. 

 The fecund soil, yielding its fruits to the fertilizing sun- 

 shine and rain, sent by the sky-god, became personified as 

 Ishtar (Ashtaroth), and to her was assigned the amorous 



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