Ancient Art and Ritual | Page 4

desired, _i.e._
the resurrection, is acted, in art it is represented.
No one will refuse to these bas-reliefs the title of art. In Egypt, then, we
have clearly an instance--only one out of many--where art and ritual go

hand in hand. Countless bas-reliefs that decorate Egyptian tombs and
temples are but ritual practices translated into stone. This, as we shall
later see, is an important step in our argument. Ancient art and ritual are
not only closely connected, not only do they mutually explain and
illustrate each other, but, as we shall presently find, they actually arise
out of a common human impulse.
* * * * *
The god who died and rose again is not of course confined to Egypt; he
is world-wide. When Ezekiel (viii. 14) "came to the gate of the Lord's
house which was toward the north" he beheld there the "women
weeping for Tammuz." This "abomination" the house of Judah had
brought with them from Babylon. Tammuz is Dumuzi, "the true son,"
or more fully, _Dumuzi-absu_, "true son of the waters." He too, like
Osiris, is a god of the life that springs from inundation and that dies
down in the heat of the summer. In Milton's procession of false gods,
"Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer's
day."
Tammuz in Babylon was the young love of Ishtar. Each year he died
and passed below the earth to the place of dust and death, "the land
from which there is no returning, the house of darkness, where dust lies
on door and bolt." And the goddess went after him, and while she was
below, life ceased in the earth, no flower blossomed and no child of
animal or man was born.
We know Tammuz, "the true son," best by one of his titles, Adonis, the
Lord or King. The Rites of Adonis were celebrated at midsummer. That
is certain and memorable; for, just as the Athenian fleet was setting sail
on its ill-omened voyage to Syracuse, the streets of Athens were
thronged with funeral processions, everywhere was seen the image of
the dead god, and the air was full of the lamentations of weeping
women. Thucydides does not so much as mention the coincidence, but
Plutarch[2] tells us those who took account of omens were full of
concern for the fate of their countrymen. To start an expedition on the

day of the funeral rites of Adonis, the Canaanitish "Lord," was no
luckier than to set sail on a Friday, the death-day of the "Lord" of
Christendom.
The rites of Tammuz and of Adonis, celebrated in the summer, were
rites of death rather than of resurrection. The emphasis is on the fading
and dying down of vegetation rather than on its upspringing. The
reason of this is simple and will soon become manifest. For the
moment we have only to note that while in Egypt the rites of Osiris are
represented as much by art as by ritual, in Babylon and Palestine in the
feasts of Tammuz and Adonis it is ritual rather than art that obtains.
* * * * *
We have now to pass to another enquiry. We have seen that art and
ritual, not only in Greece but in Egypt and Palestine, are closely linked.
So closely, indeed, are they linked that we even begin to suspect they
may have a common origin. We have now to ask, what is it that links
art and ritual so closely together, what have they in common? Do they
start from the same impulse, and if so why do they, as they develop,
fall so widely asunder?
It will clear the air if we consider for a moment what we mean by art,
and also in somewhat greater detail what we mean by ritual.
* * * * *
Art, Plato[3] tells us in a famous passage of the Republic, is imitation;
the artist imitates natural objects, which are themselves in his
philosophy but copies of higher realities. All the artist can do is to
make a copy of a copy, to hold up a mirror to Nature in which, as he
turns it whither he will, "are reflected sun and heavens and earth and
man," anything and everything. Never did a statement so false, so
wrong-headed, contain so much suggestion of truth--truth which, by the
help of analysing ritual, we may perhaps be able to disentangle. But
first its falsehood must be grasped, and this is the more important as
Plato's misconception in modified form lives on to-day. A painter not
long ago thus defined his own art: "The art of painting is the art of

imitating solid objects upon a flat surface by means of pigments." A
sorry