in addition, with a long stick in his hand to point out 

 the way to travellers. Herodotus thus describes a festival 

 in Egypt : " The festival is celebrated almost exactly as 

 Bacchic festivals in Greece. They also use, instead of 

 phalli, another invention, consisting of images a cubit 

 high, pulled by strings, which the women carry round 

 to the villages. The virile member of these figures is 

 scarcely less than the rest of the body, and this member 

 they contrive to move. A piper goes in front, and the 

 women follow, singing hymns in honour of Bacchus." 



Among the royal offerings to the god Amen by 

 Rameses III. in the great Harris Papyrus are loaves 

 (called " Taenhannur ") in the form of the phallus.* 

 In the Pamelia the Egyptians exhibited a statue provided 

 with three phalli ; and in the festivals of Bacchus, cele- 

 brated by Ptolemy Philadelphus, a gilt phallus, 120 cubits- 

 high, was carried in procession. St. Jerome tells us 

 that, in Syria, Baal-Peor, the Hebrew Priapus, was repre- 

 sented with a phallus in his mouth ; and in Ezekiel xvi. 1 7 

 we find the Jewish women manufacturing silver and 

 golden phalli. 



According to Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, the 

 worship of Bacchus was imported into Greece by Melam- 

 pus, who taught the Greeks the mysteries connected 

 with phallic worship ; and Plutarch says that " nothing, 

 is simpler than the manner in which they celebrated 

 formerly in my country the Dionysiaca. Two men walked 

 at the head of the procession ; one carried an amphora- 

 of wine, the other a vine branch ; a third led a goat ; a 

 fourth bore a basket of figs ; a figure of a phallus closed 

 the procession." 



Tertullian tells us that that which in the mysteries- 

 of Eleusis is considered as most holy, concealed with 

 most care, and only explained to the initiated at the last 

 moment, is the image of the virile member. The festival 

 of Venus, held at Rome in the beginning of April each 

 year, was in honour of the sexual union of the powers 

 of heaven and of earth. The Roman ladies led a cart r 

 in which was a huge phallus, to the temple of Venus, 

 outside the Colline gate, and there presented the member 



* " Primitive Symbolism," by Hodder M. Westropp. 



