The Egyptian girls are generally freed from this inconvenient superfluity at the age of seven or eight. The women who are in the habit of performing this operation, which is attended with little difficulty, come from Said. They travel through the towns and villages, crying in the streets, “Who wants a good circumciser?” A superstitious tradition has marked the commencement of the rise of the Nile as the period at which it ought to be performed; and accordingly, besides the other difficulties he had to surmount, Sonnini had that of finding parents who would consent to the circumcision of their daughter at a season so distant from that which is considered as the most favourable, this being done in the winter; money, however, overcame this obstacle as it did the rest.
From Dalzel’s History we learn that in Dahome a similar custom prevails with regard to the women as that in Egypt. A certain operation is performed upon the woman, which is thus described in a foot-note:—“Prolongatio, videlicit, artificialis labiorum pudendi, capellæ mamillis simillima.” The part in question, locally called “Tu,” must, from the earliest years, be manipulated by professional old women, as is the bosom among the embryo prostitutes of China. If this be neglected, her lady friends will deride and denigrate the mother, declaring that she has neglected her child’s education; and the juniors will laugh at the daughter as a coward who would not prepare herself for marriage.[18]
“Circumcision was a federal rite, annexed by God as a seal to the covenant which he made with Abraham and his posterity, and was accordingly renewed and taken into the body of the Mosaical constitutions. It was not a mere mark, only to distinguish the Hebrews as the seed of Abraham from other nations; but by this they were made the children of the covenant, and entitled to the blessings of it; though if there had been no more in it than this, that they who were of the same faith should have a certain character whereby they should be known, it would have been a wise appointment. The mark seems to be fitly chosen for the purpose; because it was a sign that no man would have made upon himself and upon his children, unless it were for the sake of faith and religion. It was not a brand upon the arm, or an incision in the thigh, but a difficult operation in a most tender part, peculiarly called flesh in many places of scripture. That member which is the instrument of generation was made choice of, that they might be an holy seed, consecrated unto God from the beginning; and circumcision was properly a token of the divine covenant made with Abraham and his posterity that God would multiply their seed, and make them as the stars of heaven.”[19]
Ludolf, in his History of Ethiopa, after comparing the circumcision of the Jews with that of the Abyssinians, says: “This puts us in mind of the circumcision of females, of which Gregory was somewhat ashamed to discourse, and we should have more willingly omitted it had not Tzagazabus, in his rude Confession of Faith, spoken of it as a most remarkable custom introduced by the command of Queen Magneda; or had not Paulus Jovius himself, Bishop of Como, insisted in the same manner upon this unseemly custom. This same ceremony was not only used by the Habisenes, but was also familiar among other people of Africa, the Egyptians, and the Arabians themselves. For they cut away from the female infants something which they think to be an indecency and superfluity of nature. Jovius calls it Carunniculam, or a little piece of flesh; Golius, an oblong excrescence. The Arabians, by a particular word, called it Bedhron, or Bedhara, besides which they have many other words to the same purpose. Among their women it is as great a piece of reproach to revile a woman by saying to her, O Bandaron: that is, O Uncircumcised, as to call a man Arel, or Uncircumcised, among the Jews. The Jewish women in Germany, being acquainted by their reading with this custom, laugh at it, as admiring what it should be that should require such an amputation.”
CHAPTER VII.
Androgynous Deities—Theories respecting the Dual Sex of the Deity—Sacredness of the Phallus—Sex Worship—The Eastern Desire for Children—Sacred Prostitution—Hindu Law of Adoption and Inheritance—Hindu Need of Offspring, and especially of a Son—Obsequies of the Departed.
The phallic idea alluded to again and again in the preceding pages as entering into the heathen conception of a trinity, the practice of circumcision, and the use of the cross as a symbol, branches out in a great variety of directions; at some of these we must cast a brief glance in order that we may form a correct estimate of the subject.
Reference has been made to the androgynous nature ascribed to the Deity by different nations, and here at once is opened up the whole subject of sex worship. It is impossible to say how far back we should have to retrace our footsteps in seeking for men’s first ideas upon this matter; many ages, it is certain. Forlong, speaking of a remote age and our forefathers, says: “They began to see in life and all nature a God, a Force, a Spirit; or, I should rather say, some nameless thing which no language of those early days, if indeed of present, can describe. They gave to the outward creative organs those devotional thoughts, time, and praise which belonged to the Creator; they figured the living spirit in the cold bodily forms of stone and tree, and so worshipped it. As we read in early Jewish writings, their tribes, like all other early races, bowed before Ashar and Ashe’ra, as others had long before that period worshipped Belus and Uranus, Orus and Isis, Mahadeva, Siva, Sakti, and Parvati. Jupiter and Yuno, or Juno, or rather the first ideas of these, must have arisen in days long subsequent to this. All such steps in civilisation are very slow indeed, and here they had to penetrate the hearts of millions who could neither read nor write, nor yet follow the reader or the preacher; so centuries would fleet past over such rude infantile populations, acting no more on the inert pulpy mass than years, or even months, now do; and if this were so after they began to realise the ideas of a Bel and Ouranos, how much slower before that far-back stage was won. Their first symbolisation seems clearly to have been the simple line, pillar, or a stroke, as their male god; and a cup or circle as their female; and lo! the dual and mystic 10 which early became a trinity, and has stood before the world from that unknown time to this. In this mystic male and female we have the first great androgynous god.”