Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/454

 146 Colour Symbolism.

doctrinal significance. We have been assured, time and again, that Egyptian women were depicted as being paler than men because of their indoor life. Herodotus (book ii. 35) informs us, however, that the women attended markets and traded, while men sat at home at the loom. Judging from the evidence of the tomb pictures, the women of the upper classes moved about quite freely out of doors. The Egyptian artistic convention was broken through by those artists who imitated flesh tints when they painted women's faces in the tombs, etc. Dr. Rendel Harris touches in his The Ascent of Olympus on sex colours. " A reference to Dioscorides," he writes, " shows that a division into male and female was accompanied by another into black and white." This aspect of the colour problem is complicated when we find black and white forms of the same god or goddess.

The data regarding the symbolic use of colour which I have collected tend to show that outside Egypt the colours most generally favoured in ancient times were these four : Black, White, Red and Yellow. All these were earth colours. Blue and green were, as I have indicated, colours of Egyptian origin manufactured from copper or copper ore. Vegetable blue and green dyes appear to have had a later origin as substitutes for the metal colours.

The four colours. Black, White, Red and Yellow, were used, as I have stated, to depict the hands in the caves occupied and " decorated " by Cro-Magnon man. Many peoples used these colours to divide space and time, to distinguish the cardinal points and the four winds, tO' distinguish the mountains, rivers and seas in the mythical world, to distinguish the races of mankind and, as in India, the various castes. The ancient habit of using these four colours in the manner indicated survives till our own day. We still have " Black," " White," " Red " and " Yellow " races ; " Black," " White," " Red " and " Yellow " winds and points of the compass ; " Black," " W^ite," " Red " and " Yellow " castes, as in India ; and " Black," " W^hite,"