[397]. For Egypt there is the testimony of Herodotus,[720] who describes a procession of women bearing small phallic images and singing hymns in honor of a deity whom he calls Dionysos—probably Khem or Osiris or Bes; such images are mentioned by Plutarch,[721] supposed by him to represent Osiris. Both Khem and Osiris were great gods, credited with general creative power, and popular ceremonies of a phallicistic nature might easily be attached to their cults. Bes, a less important deity, seems to have been fashioned largely by popular fancy. These ceremonies were doubtless attended with license,[722] but they probably formed no part of Egyptian serious worship. The phallus was essential in a realistic image, but it appears to have been regarded simply as a physical part of the god or as an emblem of him; there is no evidence that worship was addressed to it in itself.
[398]. The evidence that has been adduced for a cult of the phallus among Semitic peoples is of a doubtful nature. No ithyphallic images or figures of gods have been found. Religious prostitution there was in all North Semitic lands,[723] but this is a wholly different thing from a phallicistic cult. It is supposed, however, by not a few scholars that descriptions and representations of the phallus occur in so many places as to make some sort of cult of the object probable. In a passage of the Book of Isaiah, descriptive of a foreign cult practiced, probably, by some Jews, the phallus, it is held, is named.[724] The passage is obscure. The nature and origin of the cult referred to are not clear; it is not elsewhere mentioned. The word (yad, usually 'hand') supposed to mean 'phallus' is not found in this sense elsewhere in the Old Testament or in later Hebrew literature. But, if the proposed rendering be adopted, the reference will be not to a cult of the phallus but to sexual intercourse, a figurative description of idolatry.
[399]. A distinct mention of phalli as connected with religious worship occurs in Pseudo-Lucian's description of the temple of a certain goddess at Hierapolis.[725] He gives the name to enormously high structures standing in the propylæa of the temple, but mentions no details suggesting a phallic cult. Twice a year, he says, a man ascends one of them, on the top of which he stays seven days, praying, as some think, for a blessing on all Syria—a procedure suggesting that the pillar was simply a structure consecrated to the deity of the place (probably Atargatis, who is often called "the Syrian goddess")[726]. However, if there was a phallic cult there (the phallus being regarded as a symbol of the productive function of the deity), it is not certain that it was Semitic. Hierapolis had long been an important religious center in a region in which Asiatic and Greek worships were influential, and foreign elements might easily have become attached to the worship of a Semitic deity. The cult of the Asian Great Mother (whom the Greeks identified with their Leto) had orgiastic elements. Lucian's reference to a custom of emasculation suggests Asian features at Hierapolis.[727]
[400]. In Babylonia and Palestine stones, held by some to be phalli, have been found.[728] While the shape of some of these objects and their occurrence at shrines may be supposed to lend support to this view, its correctness is open to doubt. There is no documentary evidence as to the character of the objects in question, and they may be explained otherwise than as phalli. But, if they are phalli, their presence does not prove a phallic cult—they may be votive objects, indicating that the phallus was regarded as in some sort sacred, not that it was worshiped. Decision of the question may be reserved till more material has been collected. There is no sufficient ground for regarding the stone posts that stood by Hebrew shrines as phallic symbols; they are naturally explained as sacred stones, originally embodying a deity, later attached to his shrines as traditional objects entitled to veneration.[729]
[401]. In Asia Minor and the Hellenic communities (both in Ionia and in Greece proper) the phallicistic material is extensive and complicated. A symbolic signification appears to have been superimposed on early realistic anthropomorphic figures that were simply images of supernatural Powers. In various regions such figures came to be associated with the generative force of nature in human birth, and the tendency to specialization assigned these divine beings special functions; of this nature, probably, were the local Athenian deities Orthanes, Konisalos, and others.[730] At a later period such functions were attributed to the well-developed gods of fertility; rituals sprang up and were explained by myths, and various combinations and identifications were made between the prominent gods.
[402]. The most interesting figure of this character is Priapos, an ithyphallic deity of uncertain origin; his special connection was with Lampsakos, and he may have been an Asian creation. From the variety of his functions (he was patron of gardens and viticulture, of sailors and fishermen, and in some places a god of war)[731] it may be surmised that he was originally a local deity, charged with the care of all human interests, in an agricultural community the patron of fertility, and at some time, and under circumstances unknown to us, especially connected with sexual life. Whatever his origin, his cult spread over Greece, he was identified with certain Greek deities, licentious popular festivals naturally attached themselves to his worship, and his name became a synonym of sexual passion. In the later time the pictorial representations of him became grossly indecent; his cult was an outlet for popular and artistic license.[732] On the other hand, in the higher thought he was made the representative of the production of universal animal life, and rose to the rank of a great god.[733]
[403]. The Greek deities with whom Priapos was oftenest identified were Dionysos and Hermes—both gods of fertility. They, as great gods of such a nature, would naturally absorb lesser phallicistic figures; but they were specialized in other directions, and Priapos remained as the distinctest embodiment of phallicistic conceptions. Other such figures, as Pan, Titans, Sileni, and Satyrs, were beings connected with fields, woods, and mountains, products of a low form of civilization, to whom realistic forms and licentious festivals naturally attached themselves.
[404]. Rome had its native ithyphallic deity, Mutunus Tutunus (or Mutinus), a naïve symbol of generative power.[734] Little is known of his cult beyond the fact that he figured in marriage ceremonies in a peculiarly indecent way; by later writers he is sometimes identified with Priapos.[735] The Romans adopted the cult of Priapos as well as other phallicistic forms of worship; his original character appears in his rôle of patron of gardens.
[405]. Phalli as amulets occur in all parts of the world; as symbols and perhaps as abodes of deities, they have been held potent to ward off all evils.[736]
[406]. The female organ (yoni, kteis) appears frequently in figures of female deities, ordinarily without special significance, religious or other, except as a sign of sex. In the rare cases in which it is the object of religious veneration (as in India) it is subordinated to the phallos[737]—there is little or no evidence for the existence of a yonistic cult proper.[738] Female deities act as fully formed anthropomorphic Powers, embodiments of the productive energies of nature; they are generally treated as persons, without special reference to bodily parts. The most definite formulation of this conception appears in Çaktism, the worship of the female principle in nature as represented by various goddesses, often accompanied, naturally, by licentious rites.[739]