PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



Sprenger gives further particulars of the customs of the 

 town of Mirbat. He states that the women go every 

 night to the outer part of the city and devote themselves 

 to strange men, sporting with them the greater part of 

 the night. Meanwhile the husband brother son or 

 nephew goes by without taking any notice and enter- 

 tains himself with another woman. 1 On the other side 

 of the Red Sea the Hassenyeh Arabs of the White 

 Nile practise a curious form of marriage. The most 

 respectable people marry for not more than four days 

 in the week, and sometimes for fewer. During these 

 days the wife is required to observe matrimonial 

 chastity. On the other days she is free to receive 

 whatever man she may fancy ; and husbands appear 

 pleased with any attention paid to their wives during 

 their days of freedom ; it is so much evidence that 

 they are attractive. 2 The same people are reported to 

 place a wife at the service of a guest. 3 At Mecca the 

 old mother-goddess Al-Uzza was worshipped in " the 

 times of ignorance." She was probably identical with 

 Semitic goddess of fertility adored under various names 

 all over Western Asia and carried by the Phoenician 

 colonies to Carthage and elsewhere.- The festivals in 

 her honour were everywhere licentious, as became her 

 character. Such festivals are still held at Mecca under 

 another patronage ; and they are still as of old licen- 

 tious. 4 At some of these festivals in Arabia held in 



1 Barton, 44. 2 Id. 63, citing Wilken, Matriarchaat^ 24. 



3 Post, Afr. Jur. i. 472, citing Taylor. Dulaure, 301 note, cites 

 two examples of the rites of hospitality in Arabia and Syria: 

 doubtless many more could be added. 



4 On the worship of the Semitic goddess see Frazer, Adonis, Bk. 

 i. passim; Tylor Essays, 189 sqq.; Augustine, Civ. Dei. ii. 4, 26 ; 

 Barton, 233 sqq. 



