Iphigenia. “The sea spray (kluzei[[54]]) washes away all the crimes of men.”[[55]]
The rites used in the Greek mysteries illustrate the same subject. “The benefits which the initiated hoped to obtain were security against the vicissitudes of fortune and protection from dangers both in this life and in the life to come. The principal part of the initiation, and that which was thought to be most efficacious in producing the desired effects, were the lustrations and purifications, whence the mysteries themselves are sometimes called katharsia or katharmoi.”[[56]]
Those of Eleusis were a manifest imitation of the Levitical feast of ingathering or tabernacles. They were celebrated at the same season,—immediately after the bringing in of the harvest; and were in honor of Demeter, or Ceres, the patroness of agriculture. The celebration proper, continued for seven days, after which there was an additional eighth day, appropriated to the initiation of those who had been too late for the regular observances. This, again, was followed by a ninth day, which was named plēmochoai, from a vase called plēmochoē. “Two of these vessels were on this day filled with water or wine,” (Should it not be “water and wine?”) “and the contents of one thrown to the east, and those of the other to the west, while those who performed this rite uttered some mystical words.”[[57]] From the appropriating of a ninth day to the outpouring of the water and wine, it seems probable that the mysteries were originally imitated from the Levitical feast before the festival of the outpouring was instituted; and that when the latter rite was introduced, an additional day was appropriated to it, so as to avoid any change in what had become the established and consecrated order of the preceding days.
These mysteries were of two orders. The less were celebrated at Agræ, and were essential as a preparation for the greater at Eleusis. In the preparatory rites, the candidates were required to keep themselves continent and unpolluted for nine days; and were purified with water sprinkled on them, by an officer who was thence called the hydranos.[[58]] At Eleusis they offered sacrifices and prayers, wearing garlands of flowers; and, standing on the skin of a sacrificial animal, were again purified by the sprinkling of water by the hydranos.
That the observances thus illustrated were corrupted forms derived from the rites and institutions of Moses, is apparent. So manifest is this, that in the third and fourth centuries it was made the ground of a specious theory by means of which the advocates of paganism sought to stay the progress of Christianity. “Among those who wished to appear wise, and to take moderate ground, many were induced to devise a kind of reconciling religion, intermediate between the old superstition and Christianity, and to imagine that Christ had enjoined the very same things which had long been represented by the pagan priests, under the envelope of their ceremonies and fables.”[[59]]
There was, no doubt, an element of truth in this conception. The rites of Gentile idolatry were, it is evident, corrupted forms derived from divinely appointed institutions, partly, it may be, by tradition[tradition], from the parents of the race; but chiefly by imitation of the ritual of Moses.
Section XLIII.—Baptism in Egypt and among the Aztecs.
I am indebted to the courtesy of W. H. Ryland, F. S. A. Secretary of the (British) Society of Biblical Archæology, for a copy of the proceedings at a meeting held on the 4th of May, 1880. From it I make the following extract including part of a communication read from M. Paul Pierret. It is descriptive of “the Libation Vase of Osor-ur,” preserved in the Museum of the Louvre (No. 908), an inscription on which has been deciphered by M. Pierret.
“The vase, of the Saitic epoch, is of bronze, and of an oblong form, covered with an inscription, finely traced with a pointed instrument. The text has been published, by M. Pierret in the second volume of his ‘Recueil d’Inscriptions du Louvre,’ in the eighth number of the ‘Etudes Egyptologiques.’ The goddess, Nout, is represented standing in her sycamore, pouring the water which is received by the deceased, on one side, and by his soul, on the other. ‘Saith the Osiris, divine father and first prophet of Ammon Osor-ur, truthful;—Oh, Sycamore of Nout! give me the water and the breath [of life] which proceed from thee. That I may have the vigor of the goddess of vigor; that I may have the life of the goddess of life; that I may breathe the breath of the goddess of the respiration of breaths; for I am Toum. Saith Nout;—Oh the Osiris, divine father, etc., thou receivest the libation from my own hands; I, thy beneficent mother, I bring thee the vase, containing the abundant water for rejoicing thy heart by its effusion, that thou mayest breathe the breath [of life] resulting from it, that thy flesh may live by it. For, I give water to every mummy; I give breath to him whose throat is deprived of it, to those whose body is hidden, to those who have no funeral chapel. I am with thee. I reunite thee to thy soul, which will separate itself no more from thee, never.’”
The Saitic epoch, to which this vase is referred, began with the accession of Psammetichus I, about 664, B. C., and closed with the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses in 525. The parallel period of Jewish history extends from the closing years of Manasseh’s reign to the time of the machinations by which the decree of Cyrus for rebuilding the temple was suspended. But, although the date thus given is such as might suggest the idea of derivation from the institutions of Moses, it seems highly probable that the inscription presents a vestige, in a greatly corrupted form, of the primitive faith touching the resurrection, as held by Noah and the patriarchs of the old world, and transmitted to the founders of the Egyptian empire. Whatever the view adopted on that point, the relation of the inscription to the subject of the present treatise is manifest and very interesting. Not only does it very strikingly illustrate the doctrine of life to the dead, as symbolized by the effusion of water, but it brings together the two symbols of water and the breath of life, in such a manner as presents a very remarkable analogy to the similar association of ideas presented in the scene of Pentecost, as unfolded hereafter.