156 



DISCOVERY 



of the decorated walls in ancient tomb-chapels as 

 charms to ensure their bearing children. It appears 

 that ancient things in Egypt are credited with great 

 potency in this respect. It is difficult, if not impossible, 



AT KUSIYICH. 



to obtain anv reliable information from the people 

 themselves as to why they attach so much magic to 

 antiquities. Originally there may have been some 

 belief in reincarnation — the stepping over the tomb- 

 shaft and the bones suggest this — but there is also the 

 idea that baraka is attached to anything that is old 

 or sacred, or even peculiar. The word baraka means 

 " blessing," and bariika is " a lucky coin," " a thing to 

 bring good luck." This quality is often attributed to the 

 tombs of Sheikhs, and such buildings are consequently 

 visited by people who have some special request to make, 

 hoping in this way to obtain a "blessing "or "good luck." 



Women who have no children will sometimes visit 

 a Sheikh's tomb entreating him to intervene on their 

 behalf and vowing to make some return if their wish is 

 granted. A cord or cords are often to be seen hang- 

 ing across the inside of such a building, and from it are 

 suspended a variety of objects, including coloured hand- 

 kerchiefs. These are in many cases the votive offerings 

 of women, which they have hung up in tlie tomb when 

 their prayers for offspring have been answered. 



Lane ^ records the practice of visiting tombs or 



^Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. London, 

 1895, pp. 246 it. A cheap edition has been published in " The 

 Everyman's Library"; see same page therein. 



mosques to obtain a blessing, or to urge some special 

 petition, such as the gift of children. He states that 

 the suppliants believe that a more favourable reception 

 of their prayers will be granted them if offered up in 

 such sacred places. 



It has been recorded by Mrs. Haris H. Spoer,^ that in 

 Jerusalem childless couples will travel for considerable 

 distances in order to visit and bathe in certain pools, 

 and that " barren women visit the hot springs in 

 \-arious districts, not, as might be supposed, for any 

 medicinal properties, but because the jinni, who causes 

 the vapour, is regarded as a being capable, in a definite 

 and physical sense, of giving them offspring." She 

 adds, " Belief that women may have intercourse with 

 disembodied spirits is common among Muslims " ; and 

 I have also found the same belief existing among the 

 peasants of the Fayiim. 



Baraka is also occasionallv believed to be possessed 

 by, or attached to, living people. Over and over 

 again women have come up to touch me because they 

 believed I had this virtue. Babies were handed to me 

 to hold in my arms for the same reason. As I generally 

 manage to hush a squalling infant to sleep, their belief 

 in me was strengthened, and they would say, " Ah, it 

 is true ; she has got baraka ! " 



It is a popular belief in Egypt that if a dead child 

 is tightly bound in its shroud the mother cannot con- 

 ceive again. Therefore the shroud is always loosened 

 just before burial, dust also being put in the child's lap. 

 If, in spite of the precautions, the woman, as time goes 

 on, seems to have no prospect of again becoming a 

 mother, she will go to the tomb of her dead child, 

 taking with her a friend, who opens the tomb. The 

 disconsolate mother then goes down to the place where 

 the body lies and steps over it backwards and forwards 

 seven times. 



A somewhat similar practice has been noticed among 

 the Bangalas, a tribe who live in Equatorial .\frica, to 

 the north of the Congo. On one occasion a woman of 

 this tribe was seen to be digging a hole in a public road. 

 Her husband explained to a Belgian officer who was 

 present that his wife wished to become a mother, and 

 begged that she might be left unmolested, promising 

 on his part to mend the road afterwards. The woman 

 continued to dig till she had unearthed the skeleton 

 of her dead child, which she affectionately embraced, 

 begging it, at the same time, to enter her body to be 

 reborn.^ 



The last-mentioned Egyptian practice, viz. that of 

 stepping over the dead child, is distinctly suggestive of 

 a belief in reincarnation. Such a belief is indeed defi- 

 nitely averred in the account given of the strikingly 



■Folklore, xviii, 1907, p. 55, " Powers of Evil in Jerusalem." 

 3 Quoted by Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, "Adonis, 

 Attis, Osiris," vol. i, p. 92. 



