Oct. 19, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



421 



of the Beni Kalb, i.e., sons of the dog.* In Peru, the Incas 

 were descended from the sun, which was their god ; and so, 

 if the Indians of Peru, before the Incas, claimed descent 

 from the fox, dog, llama, condor, eagle and puma, besides 

 the serpent and several species of fish, it is no very violent 

 supposition that these also were the names of celestial 

 bodies ; in fact, we are told on the best authority! that each 

 of these species was supposed to have a representative or 

 archetype in heaven. There were Greek houses descended 

 from Zeus the eagle, and from other gods, while many of 

 the gods had close association with animals, as Athena and 

 the owl, Dionysus and the dolphin, Apollo and the mouse. 

 I have no doubt that some of the gods of the Egyptians, 

 such as the ram-headed Ammon, were zodiacal ; and there is 

 a passage in Plutarch which connects these gods with the 

 military standards or crests. 



Since then the totem animal was the representative of a 

 stellar god, who was the progenitor and creator of all his 

 worshippers, we can readily understand how the animal came 

 to be reverenced, even to the degree of being worshipped. 



It becomes a principle that the totem animal is not to be 

 injured, much less killed and eaten. The Australian will not 

 kill the kangaroo, emu, or black snake, which is his totem, lest 

 it should be his own protector, being, in fact, in the form of 

 his god, and an incarnation of the deity. In New Caledonia, 

 when a child tries to kill a lizard, the men warn him to " be- 

 ware of killing his own ancestor ? " The Osages believe them- 

 selves to be descended from the beaver, and therefore will 

 not kill that animal. Everywhere it is the same ; a man does 

 not eat the animal which gives name to his clan, does not 

 clothe himself in its skin, and, if compelled by circumstances 

 to kill it, asks pardon for the offence and purifies himself from 

 the sacrilege. He will eat freely of the sacred animal of 

 another clan, but the incarnation of his own particular god he 

 would consider it a crime to injure. Thus, in ancient Egypt, at 

 Apollinopolis, men hated crocodiles and never lost a chance 

 of killing them, 'while the people of the Arsinoite nome dressed 

 geese and fish for these sacred creatures, adorned them with 

 necklaces and bracelets, and mummified them sumptuously 

 when they died. The crocodile here takes the place of the 

 python, the enemy of Apollo, and therefore it is hated by 

 the men of Apollo's city ; while every student of Greek 

 mythology will allow that Apollo was a celestial god. 



It is a very natural arrangement that totem clans should be 

 found localised in nomes or districts ; and it follows from 

 this localisation that the special god of the clan becomes the 

 chief god of the district, while other deities of the country 

 are not altogether ignored. We start with a small com- 

 munity, all of whose members reverence all the gods of the 

 Zodiac. We see them divide into twelve companies, which 

 become totem clans, each especially associated with the 

 worship of one deity out of the twelve, but they will retain 

 for a long time a lingering regard for all the rest. 



Chteremon and the wisest priests of Egypt quoted, in 

 support of their own opinions, those of the oldest Egyptians, 

 whom they understood to acknowledge as gods, only the sun, 

 moon and planets, the stars of the Zodiac, and those decans 

 which are subdivisions of each zodiacal sign into three. 

 These, they said, were the sovereign arbiters of destiny, 

 which their fathers had honoured by sacrifices, and to which 

 they had erected images. J It was an ancient opinion that 

 the division of Egypt into thirty-six nomes or provinces, was 

 in imitation of these thirty-six decans, each of which had its 

 protector. The heavenly guardians became the protecting 

 deities of the Egyptian nomes, which took the names of the 

 animals there revered, § as the lion of Leontopolis, the croco- 

 dile of Crocodilopolis, the wolf in Lycopolis, etc., while some 

 of the deities were worshipped universally. In some places 

 triads of gods existed ; for example, Amen, Mut, and 

 Chonsu, composed a triad at Thebes ; and this may possibly 

 have arisen through there being three decans to the sign. The 

 connection between the gods and the beasts has been a puzzle 



'Journal of Philol., ix. 17, 80. 



t Lubbock, who quotes Prescott, and Garcilaso de la Vega. 



% Dupuis, " Origin of Religious Worship," 24. 



§ Dupuis, quoted in S, Wake, 261 ; Frazer 12, 37. 



to writers on Egyptian religion,* but I think this was its 

 simple origin ; the living animals were symbols of the stellar 

 gods, and the constellations may perhaps have received their 

 animal names from their connection with the seasons and 

 months of the year. In each nome the worshippers refrained 

 from eating their own sacred animal. 



The tendency to separate clannish development, distinct 

 forms of worship, and internecine religious wars, was sought 

 to be met, as I conceive, by the strict enforcement of the rule 

 that children should never belong to the same clan as their 

 father. There were two ways of achieving this object, and 

 it may be difficult to say which would answer best ; one 

 would be the Australian system of classes, in which Ippai 

 and Kapota, for instance, being man and woman of one class, 

 marry together, and pass their children over to the class of 

 Murri and Mata ; the other, which, in fact, is more prevalent, 

 would be for a man to take his wife from outside the clan, 

 and the children to be reckoned to the same clan as their 

 mother. This view brings the Australian system of classes 

 into such consistent relation with the more widely spread 

 system of the gens, that I venture to think it favours the 

 explanation I offer of the reason for exogamy ; especially as 

 the Australian system is generally supposed to present pecu- 

 liar difficulty. 



This rule of exogamous marriage would operate to bring 

 into each local tribe an increasing number of women and 

 children belonging to every other, and in ordinary times 

 the tribes might regard themselves as one people. But 

 all the time the wife had a different god from the hus- 

 band, the children were of the gens and blood of their 

 mother, and when a blood feud sprung up, the father was 

 bound to be the enemy of his own children. The only safety 

 for the children was to go to their mother's blood relations, 

 and remain with the clan from which she had been drawn ; 

 and thus there would come about a local concentration of the 

 clans, which largely neutralised the good effect of exogamy. 



The views which I am putting forward receive remarkable 

 confirmation from the doctrine of metempsychosis. The 

 curious connection between the institution of totemism and 

 the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, has been noticed 

 by several writers, but their explanations of the connection 

 are not satisfactory. 



Opinions might be quoted, but I must hasten to state my 

 own — which is this, that the soul of a deceased person goes 

 beneath the horizon with the sun, performs the same journey 

 as the sun, and therefore necessarily passes through the 

 signs of the Zodiac in succession, and becomes identified 

 with one animal form after another. 



" The doctrine of transmigration," says Sir Gardner 

 Wilkinson,! " is mentioned by Plutarch, Plato, and other 

 ancient writers as the general belief among the Egyptians, 

 and it was adopted by Pythagoras and his preceptor 

 Pherecydes, as well as other philosophers of Greece. 

 Opinions varied respecting it ; and some maintained that the 

 soul passed through different bodies till it returned again to 

 the human shape, and that all events which had happened 

 were destined to occur again after a certain period, in the 

 identical order and manner as before. The same men were said 

 to be born again, and to fulfil the same career ; and the same 

 causes were thought to produce the same effects, as stated 

 by Virgil. This was termed kvkSos avayxr)?, " the circle (or 

 orbit) of necessity." 



This language is clearly borrowed from astronomy; it 

 points to the revolution of the heavens, and the periodical 

 recurrence of the same phenomena. It is confirmed by what 

 we are told by Maspero.J " In the evening the soul follows 

 the bark of the Sun and its escort of luminary gods into a 

 lower world bristling with ambuscades and perils. ... At 

 midnight began the upward journey towards the eastern 

 regions of the world. . . . The tombs of the kings were con- 

 structed upon the model of the world of night. They had 

 their passages, their doors, their vaulted halls, which plunged 



* S. Lang, " Myth and Ritual," ii. 107. 

 t "Ancient Egyptians." 



j G. Maspero's " Egyptian Archreology," translated by Amelia B. 

 Edwards, p. 1 54. 



