DISCOVERY 



11 



merits of cosmopolitanism and individualism, this 

 markedly social or political attitude towards life 

 remained strong. WTiat I mean by this may perhaps 

 be illustrated by a quotation from the Funeral Speech 

 which Thucydides represents as having been delivered 

 by Pericles in honour of those who had fallen in the 

 first year of the Peloponnesian War. To the bereaved 

 he offers this consolation : "I know it is not easy to 

 give you comfort. I know how often in the joy of 

 others you will have reminders of what was once your 

 own, and how men feel sorrow, not for the loss of 

 what they have never held, but when something that 

 has grown dear to them has been snatched away. But 

 you must keep a brave heart in the hope of other 

 children, those who are stUl of an age to bear them. 

 For the new-comers will help you to forget the gap in 

 your own circle and will help the city to fill up the 

 ranks of its workers and its soldiers." The temper of 

 this consolation perhaps prepares us to learn that, 

 although during the Peloponnesian War one of the 

 psychological results of prolonged strain manifested 

 itself in a great vogue of prophecy and of religious 

 emotionalism in general, this did not, so far as I am 

 aware, take the same form of a passionate hope of effecting 

 communication with the spirits of the fallen, which has 

 been the characteristic feature of our own time. 

 [To he continusd in the February No.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 



The most important books dealing with these matters are 

 Rohde, Psyche : Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der 

 Griechen ; and Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality . 

 Some references with regard to necromancy are collected in 

 Halliday, Greelt Divination. An entertaining, if slight, little 

 book is Collison Morley, Greett and Roman Ghost Stories 

 (Blackwell, 1012). Warde Fowler's Religions Experience of 

 the Roman People gives an admirable account of the early 

 belief of Italians and their development into the Roman state- 

 religion and subsequent decay. 



Festivals Celebrating 



Local Saints in Modem 



Egypt 



By Winifred S. Blackman 



Oxford Research Student in Anthropology 



Owing to the fertility of its soil, Egypt, as far as 

 the necessities of life are concerned, has always been 

 largely self-supporting. But from the earliest times, 

 as the ancient records show, numerous commodities 

 were imported into the country by foreigners, or 

 else by the more ambitious of the native merchants 

 themselves, who ventured far afield to obtain such goods 



in return for their own products. The richly endowed 

 temples would have been generous purchasers not only 

 of home products, but also of foreign goods, such as 

 incense, which played so important a part in the 

 elaborate ceremonial of the daily liturgy, panther 

 skins which were required for the fashioning of the 

 vestments of certain priests, and sweet- smelling 

 unguents. 



Thus in Ancient Egypt, as in many other countries,' 

 commerce and religion were closely associated. Such 

 also is no less the case in Egypt at the present day, 

 as is particularly noticeable at the miilids, or annual 

 festivals of the local sheikhs or saints. 



The Mulid en-Nebi, the annual celebration of the 

 birthday of the Prophet, ranks, of course, as the most 

 important of such festivals among the Mohammedan 

 section of the population. However, in this article 

 I shall content myself with a description of three 

 mulids in honour of local village saints, which I myself 

 attended during my stay in the more unfrequented 

 parts of Egypt last winter. 



Each village has its local sheikh, whose dome- 

 shaped tomb forms its most prominent architectural 

 feature, rising up among the crowded hovels of the 

 felldhln (peasants), or standing on the highest point 

 of the adjacent burial-ground. Sometimes a village 

 can lay claim to two or more sheikhs." 



The mulids, at which I was present, took place at 

 El-LahQn and Dimishkin in Fayum Province, and at 

 Manial in the province of Beni Suef. 



Festiv.^l at El-LahOn 



I propose to describe them in the order of their 

 occurrence, the first being that held at El-Lahiin in 

 honour of the Sheikh Umbarak, whose tomb stands in 

 an old disused burial-ground situated on the out- 

 skirts of the village (Fig. i). The whitewashed walls 

 of this tomb are decorated outside with pictures 

 descriptive of the pilgrimage to Mecca, roughly sketched 

 in red and blue paint. Around the dome are small, 

 what one might almost call clerestory windows, in 

 each of which a lighted candle is placed every night. 

 The light afforded by this illumination is a welcome 

 break in the surrounding darkness to the traveller, 

 who, returning home after night has fallen, has to 

 pick his way through refuse-heaps, piles of stones 

 or mud — the invariable obstacles to one's progress 

 along the narrow, tortuous lanes of an Egyptian 

 village. 



' Cf. Robertson Smith, The Religion oj the Semites, p, 461. 

 London, 1907. 



^ The word sheihh means literally an old man. It also 

 signifies the head of a tribe, the leading man in a village, a 

 learned man (i.e., one learned in the sacred writings), and a 

 holy man or saint, living or dead. 



