534 



ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



origin, and first employed in the production of sacred crops, destined 

 for ceremonial uses. Examples of areas set aside for such a purpose 

 are the Rharian (or Rarian) Plain near Eleusis, dedicated to Demeter, 

 and the Sacred Field ceremonially tilled every spring by the Chinese 

 emperors. Mesopotamian cylinder seals display the plowman garbed 

 as a priest; or they show the plow in association wdth astral symbols 

 or being offered to a seated god or goddess of agriculture (figs. 2-3). 

 Again, a Cypriote clay model of a plowing scene from the Early 



Figure 2.— Sumerian plow, about 2000 B. C. (After Ward, Seal cylinders, p. 133, No. 274.) 



Figure 3.— Ancient Mesopotamian plowing scone. (After Ward, Seal cylinders, p. 132, No. 372.) 



Bronze Age, during the third millennium B. C, associates the plow 

 with those cults of the Divine Mother and the Sacred Bull once so 

 widely diffused over the Near East.^ In many lands, too, the initial 

 plowing of the year has been a solemn religious observance con- 

 ducted in person by a priestly ruler; such, for example, was the case 

 in China until less than a generation ago. 



The earliest method of attaching cattle to the plow seems to have 

 been by means of ropes made fast to their horns — the latter themselves 



s lllustr. London News, December 10, 1932, p. 928 flf., and Man, No. 134, August 1933. For early contacts 

 of Cyprus with the mainland of Anatolia and Syria, see Sir Arthur J. Evans, Scrlpta Minoa, p. 68, 1909. 



