Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/171

 The Ciirsing of Venizelos. 139

Here, again, the casting of the stones is clearly a rite of purification rather than of commination, and it was probably not supposed to have been accompanied with curses.

The bull's head at which, in default of the head of M. Venizelos, the clerical and lay blackguards of Athens hurled their stones and curses, has its parallel in the sacri- ficial ritual of ancient Egypt. Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians used to sacrifice black bulls, and that when they had slaughtered the victim at the altar, they skinned the carcase, cut off the head, loaded it with curses, and sold it to any Greeks who might be resident in the town ; but if there happened to be no Greek population in the place, the Egyptians carried the bull's head to the river and threw it into the water. The curses which they levelled at the bull's head consisted in an imprecation, that whatever evil was about to befall either the sacrificers themselves or the whole land of Egypt, might be diverted therefrom and concentrated on the head.^° Naturally, no native Egyptian would purchase a head laden with malisons so dreadful ; but the Greek- traders appear to have cal- culated, with great justice, that the curses could not affect foreigners, and as the cursed heads no doubt sold a good deal cheaper than common heads in the market, and were quite as good to eat, a shrewd Greek householder probably rather preferred to dine on a bull's head which had been blasted by the ecclesiastical thunder.

It will be observed that in this Egyptian rite the priests apparently confined themselves to loading the black bull's head with curses ; they did not give point and weight to their maledictions by pelting it with stones. In short, in ancient Egyptian ritual we have found curses without stones, and in ancient Greek ritual stones without curses. The Metropolitan of Athens has combined both weapons, the material and the spiritual, in the assault, as futile as

^" Herodotus, ii. 39.