Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/468

160 The Egyptians not only theorised regarding the source of the Nile, but, as I have shown, concerned themselves greatly to discover the substances that coloured its waters. The “Green Nile” was evidently of primary importance. Its greeness was the source and substance of life in human beings, in animals and in vegetation. The Green Nile substance renewed life each year in the land of Egypt; it renewed life after death in Paradise. Blood and milk animated and nourished, but the green substance originated new life. This idea is enshrined in the Ethiopian story of El-Khidr, who found the “Well of Life.” When he plunged into it “all the flesh of his body became a bluish-green and his garments likewise bluish-green.” He became a green immortal.

As will be shown from the evidence that follows, the Egyptians identified the green substance in the Green Nile with malachite. Malachite evidently contained the “germ of life,” as the Mexican green stones, and perhaps the Aurignacian, contained “the principle of life.”

Green malachite charms were worn by the Egyptians at an early period. In Pre-Dynastic times fragments of malachite were placed in graves with the dead, while the living folk ground malachite to powder, and then mixed it, as has been noted, with a fatty substance—perhaps the fat of the sacred cow—or vegetable oil for use as a face paint. Kohl was used for an eyelid paint as well as malachite, and found to be beneficial to the eyes by protecting them from the glare of the sun or desert sands. It should not be assumed, however, that this practice was adopted for such a reason alone and had originally no magical or religious significance. Mummies had their eyes treated in like manner. Withal, the painting of the eyelids was associated with the painting of other parts of the body. The dead were as much in need of magical colouring as were the living. Shells containing green paint have been