Assyrian fly-whisks were usually of feathers, set in a short handle of ivory, wood, or other material, carved or otherwise ornamented. There were two kinds, a smaller one which was a kind of brush, made of horse-hair or vegetable fibre, and a larger one of feathers; the short brush fan belongs to the earlier period, the long feathered form to the later.[16]
The two forms, however, appear at the same time. In the bas-relief of the banquet above referred to, attendants bear dishes of fruits and meats, each being provided with the small fly-whisk, evidently for the purpose of driving away insects from the royal dishes.
The ceremonies and usages connected with the fly-whisk open up a vast field of inquiry, far too involved to be adequately dealt with here; some few aspects may, however, be touched upon.
Baal-zebub, Beel-zebub, Beel-zebut, Bel-zebub, the Philistine god of Ekron, whom the Jews represented as Prince of Devils, was literally Lord Fly, or Lord of the Flies. When Ahaziah was sick he sent to consult the Lord Fly’s oracle.[17]
The word Baal simply means owner, master, or lord. In Phœnicia and Carthage it was the custom of kings and great men to unite their names with that of their god, as Hannibal, ‘grace of Baal,’ Hasdrubal, ‘help of Baal.’ Amongst the Jews also many names of cities were compounded with Baal; as Baal-Gad, Baal-Hammon, Baal-Thamar. In the ‘authorised version’ the name is Baal-zebub, afterwards changed to Beel-zebub; the original conception is, however, one of great difficulty and obscurity, unless, indeed, we may directly connect the worship of Baal with that of the sun. Josephus declares that the Assyrians erected the first statue of Mars, and worshipped him as a God, calling him Baal. We read in the book of Kings how Josiah destroyed the altars which had been reared by Manasseh, and ‘put down the idolatrous priests, ... them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven’; these instances suggesting that Baal and the sun were two separate deities. On the other hand, Baal-Hammon is represented on a Carthaginian monument with a crown of rays. Baalbek was called by the Greeks Heliopolis (sun-city) and at Baal-Shemeh (house of the sun) there was a temple to Baal.
If, therefore, we may regard Baal and the sun as synonymous, the matter is at once simplified, since the sun is the bringer of flies, and is in actual fact Lord of the Flies.
According to Pliny, the Cyrenians offered sacrifices to the fly-catching god Achor, because the flies bred pestilence, and this author remarks that no sooner is the sacrifice offered, than the flies perish.
The Greeks had their Jupiter Myiodes, or fly-hunter, to whom a bull was sacrificed in order to propitiate him in driving away the flies which infested the Olympic Games. There was also a Hercules Myiodes, the origin of whose worship Pausanias declares to have been the following:—Hercules, being molested by swarms of flies while he was about to offer sacrifice to Olympian Jupiter in the temple, offered a victim to that god under the name of Myagron, upon which all the flies flew away beyond the river Alpheus. Pausanias further refers to the festival of Athena at Aliphera in Arcadia, which was opened with a sacrifice and prayer to the Fly-catcher, and states that after the sacrifice, the flies gave no further trouble.
Ælian (Nat. An., xi. 8) affirms that at the festival of Apollo in the island of Leucas, an ox was sacrificed; the flies, glutted with the blood, gave no further trouble. The same author states that the flies of Pisa (Olympia) were more virtuous, because they did their duty, not for a consideration, but out of pure regard for the god.[18]