Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/227

Rh not with the ordinary instrument, but with a fragment of flint or glass.

Under the reservation just stated, a recognition among the Jewish ordinances of the practice of slaughtering a beast with a [sharp] stone, may here he cited from the Mishna:—

"If a person has slaughtered [a beast] with a hand-sickle, a [sharp] stone, or a reed, it is casher," i.e. clean, or fit to be eaten. Here not only the context, but the necessity of shedding the animal's blood, proves that a proper cutting instrument of stone, or at least a sharp-edged piece, is meant.

Before drawing any inference from these pieces of evidence, it will be well to bring together other accounts of the use of cutting instruments of stone, glass, etc., by people who, though in possession of iron knives, for some reason or other did not choose to apply them to certain purposes. Thus the practice of sacrificing a beast, not with a knife or an axe, but with a sharp stone, has been observed on the West Coast of Africa during the last century, as will be more fully detailed in page 223.

An often quoted instance of the use of a stone knife for a ceremonial purpose, where iron would have been much more convenient, is the passage in Herodotus which relates that, in Egypt, the mummy-embalmers made the incision in the side of the corpse with a sharp Æthiopic stone. The account given by Diodorus Siculus is fuller:—"And first, the body being laid on the ground, he who is called the scribe marks on its left side how far the incision is to be made. Then the so-called slitter (paraschistes), having an Æthiopic stone, and cutting the flesh as far as the law allows, instantly runs off, the bystanders pursuing him and pelting him with stones, cursing him, and as it were, turning the horror of the deed upon him," for he who hurts a citizen is held worthy of abhorrence. There are two