It would be interesting, in this connection, to follow out the meanings and uses of the Greek words πυθμήν (puthmēn), root φυ (phu); and φλιή (phliē), doorpost, root φλι (phli); compare φλέω (phleō), φίλος (philos). It is evident that the twofold idea of the threshold of life, and the threshold, or sockets, of the door, is in the uses of these terms and their derivatives in earlier and later Greek. But only this suggestion can be made here.
The correspondence of “woman” and “door,” or of “wife” and “threshold,” in the Arabic, has already been pointed out.[[675]] A similar suggestion is in Sanskrit terms.[[676]]
In Germany, even at the present time, a common term for “woman” is “woman chamber” (frauenzimmer), as in Arabic hareema is a woman, while hareem is the women’s apartment. A remark attributed to a prominent American clergyman, as showing the naturalness of the figure of woman as a door, is: “He who marries a wife opens a door, through which unborn generations shall troop.”
A Chinese character is the representation of “threshold,” of “door,” and also of “woman.”[[677]] It is suggested by the lexicographer that the origin of this character was a small door in a large gate, as the inner door to the hareem or women’s apartments; but it seems probable, from the correspondence of this twofold idea with the primitive thought of woman as the door of humanity, that the Chinese character must have had an origin prior to that degree of civilization which recognized such a classification in household apartments. The combination of “door” and “border” is another Chinese character[[678]] that stands for “threshold” or “door-sill.”[[679]] Confucius said that this
threshold “should not be trodden on when walking through” the door.
SYMBOLISM OF THE TWO SEXES.
As showing the antiquity, as well as the universality, of the symbolism of the two sexes as the source of life, in connection with reverent worship, an illustration of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead is noteworthy. In a vignette on Chapter CXXV, in the Papyrus Ani, a worshiper, is represented before the throne of Osiris, in the Hall of Righteousness, with uplifted hands, in token of covenant worship, while his offering is a lotus flower, the symbol of fecundity, laid on the conventional phallus, the symbol of virility.[[680]] This vignette is reproduced on the cover of this volume. The lotus flower has the same signification in Assyria and India as in Egypt.[[681]]
The pine cone, which, as the symbol of virility and vitalizing force, was prominent in the ancient Assyrian sculptures, as also in the Phenician and Grecian cults,[[682]] was likewise to be found in ancient Rome. An enormous bronze pine cone, eleven feet high, probably older than the Christian era, still ornaments a fountain in the gardens of the Vatican. Lanciani says: “Pope Symmachus, who did so much toward the embellishment of sacred edifices in Rome (between 498 and 514), removed the pine cone from its ancient place, most probably from Agrippa’s artificial lake in the Campus Martius, and used it for adorning the magnificent fountain which he had built in the center of the so-called ‘Paradise’ of S. Peter’s, viz., in the center of the square portico in front of the basilica.”[[683]]
Among the Pompeian relics in the Royal Museum at Naples is a representation of a woman making an offering to Priapus in order to be cured of sterility. She brings a pine cone, while her husband is near her.[[684]]
Evidences of the fact that boundary posts, landmarks, and milestones were intended to represent the phallus at the threshold in the Roman empire, as in the far East, abound among the same relics in the Neapolitan Museum.[[685]]