Note 69.1 — Chapter XVIII · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA: ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SACRIFICES.

The traces of human sacrifice among the Egyptians are faint and uncertain. Classical writers, indeed, alleged it; but they brought forward hardly any tangible evidence, beyond the statement of Plutarch—and that at second-hand—that the engraving on the seals of the Sphragistai, whose business it was to seal the beasts intended for the offerings, was a man bound and kneeling, with a knife at his throat.69.1 Nor is there reason to suppose that in any case men or women were given during historical times to their sacred animals. We must turn to a lower range of culture for such a custom. At Bonny, on the West Coast of Africa, a virgin was bound to a stake on the sea-shore at the first low water of every spring-tide, and left there as a sacrifice to the shark-god.70.1 In the East Indies we find many traditions of such practices. “It has been somewhere related that the Rájá of Kupang, on the island of Timor, formerly sacrificed a young virgin of royal descent to the Alligator, by throwing her into the sea in order to be swallowed by that monster.”70.2 Dr. Pleyte, the friend and pupil of the late Professor Wilken, relates “how in Boeroe at sunset, after the day’s work, the notables of the island would gather round him [Professor Wilken] and go down to the cool sea-shore, where he would sit on a rock in the midst of an improvised assembly, and the old men would tell traditions of past glories in the days when every year a maiden, chosen for her beauty, was led down to the sea as a sacrifice to the crocodile-god for the prosperity of the people.”70.3 In the seventeenth century, Gautier Schouten, a medical man in the service of the Dutch East India Company, heard a story on the same island, which discloses a somewhat different motive for the sacrifice. A holy crocodile, it runs, having fallen in love with one of the daughters of the king of the island, who was very beautiful, ravaged the coast every day, carrying off and devouring men, women, and children. The inhabitants assembled in arms to surprise the brute and to kill it. The crocodile was prepared for this, and cried out to them in their own tongue that they should beware of insulting him, for he was mighty enough to destroy them and all their island; and that he would do so unless they delivered up to him the king’s daughter; but, on the other hand, if they did this he would become the protector of the island and would load it with benefits. The islanders could not resist these promises and threats. They led the princess to the beach, and bound her to a pillar, whence the crocodile carried her off in due course, and by her became the parent of all crocodiles; on which account they are honoured as gods.71.1 If Archdeacon Gray’s information is to be trusted, the Shurii-Kia-Miau, one of the aboriginal tribes of China, still offer human sacrifices to their canine deity, though not exactly to a living dog. They possess a large temple in which is an idol in the form of a dog. There they hold an annual religious festival, when the wealthy members of the tribe “entertain their poorer brethren at a banquet given in honour of one who has agreed, for a sum of money paid to his family, to allow himself to be offered as a sacrifice on the altar of the dog idol. At the end of the banquet, the victim, having drunk wine freely, is put to death before the idol.” And the people “believe that, were they to neglect this rite, they would be visited with pestilence, famine, or the sword.”71.2 Among the South Sea Islanders, themselves cannibals, human offerings were frequent. Their idols, it is true, were roughly human in form; yet the divinities often took the shape of other animals. Ellis relates that “birds resorting to the temple were said to feed upon the bodies of the human sacrifices, and it was imagined that the god approached the temple in the birds, and thus devoured the victims placed upon the altar. In some of the islands ‘man-eater’ was an epithet of the principal deities.” To the king, who was a sacred being descended from the gods, and who often personated the god, the eye, as the most precious part of the victim, the organ or emblem of power, was presented. He feigned to eat it; the simulation being, there can be little doubt, a relic of a former period when he actually did eat the eye and probably other parts of the body. Portions of some of the victims were also eaten by the priests, who of course were also representatives of the gods.72.1 The legends of the Greeks and Romans afford us glimpses of a belief like that of the Polynesians. How else may we interpret the stories, reported by Plutarch, of Helena, a noble virgin of Lacedæmon, who, in obedience to an oracle, was prepared for sacrifice, but was saved by an eagle carrying away the sword and laying it upon a heifer; and of Valeria Luperca, a maiden of Falerii to whom a similar adventure happened—an adventure commemorated still by a yearly ceremony in the days of Plutarch, or at least of Aristides, the author whom he cites?72.2 The tradition of Lycaon points in the same direction. He, having offered an infant to Zeus, was changed into a wolf; and it was believed that any one who imitated his example would share his fate, though with the chance of regaining his own form if for ten years he abstained from human flesh.72.3