James Frazer - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 08 of 12)

Passing now to Attis and Adonis, we may note a few facts which seem to shew that these deities of vegetation had also, like other deities of the same class, their animal embodiments. The worshippers of Attis abstained from eating the flesh of swine. 74 74 See Adonis, Attis, Osiris , Second Edition, p. 221. On the position of the pig in ancient Oriental and particularly Semitic religion, see F. C. Movers, Die Phoenizier , i. (Bonn, 1841), pp. 218 sqq. This appears to indicate that the pig was regarded as an embodiment of Attis. And the legend that Attis was killed by a boar 75 75 Adonis, Attis, Osiris , Second Edition, p. 220. points in the same direction. For after the examples of the goat Dionysus and the pig Demeter it may almost be laid down as a rule that an animal which is said to have injured a god was originally the god himself. Perhaps the cry of “Hyes Attes! Hyes Attes!” 76 76 Demosthenes, De corona , p. 313. which was raised by the worshippers of Attis, may be neither more nor less than “Pig Attis! Pig Attis!” — hyes being possibly a Phrygian form of the Greek hȳs , “a pig.” 77 77 The suggestion was made to me in conversation by my lamented friend, the late R. A. Neil of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

In regard to Adonis, his connexion with the boar was not always explained by the story that he had been killed by the animal. 78 78 See Adonis, Attis, Osiris , Second Edition, p. 8; and to the authorities there cited add Athenaeus, ii. 80, p. 69 b; Cornutus, Theologiae Graecae Compendium , 28; Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. iv. 5. 3, § 8; Aristides, Apologia , II, p. 107, ed. J. Rendel Harris (Cambridge, 1891); Joannes Lydus, De mensibus , iv. 44; Propertius, iii. 4 (5). 53 sq. , ed. F. A. Paley; Lactantius, Divin. Instit. i. 17; Augustine, De civitate Dei , vi. 7; Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum , 9; Macrobius, Saturnal. i. 21. 4. See further W. W. Graf Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun (Leipsic, 1911), pp. 142 sqq. According to another story, a boar rent with his tusk the bark of the tree in which the infant Adonis was born. 79 79 See Adonis, Attis, Osiris , Second Edition, p. 186. According to yet another story, he perished at the [pg 023] hands of Hephaestus on Mount Lebanon while he was hunting wild boars. 80 80 W. Cureton, Spicilegium Syriacum (London, 1855), p. 44. These variations in the legend serve to shew that, while the connexion of the boar with Adonis was certain, the reason of the connexion was not understood, and that consequently different stories were devised to explain it. Certainly the pig ranked as a sacred animal among the Syrians. At the great religious metropolis of Hierapolis on the Euphrates pigs were neither sacrificed nor eaten, and if a man touched a pig he was unclean for the rest of the day. Some people said this was because the pigs were unclean; others said it was because the pigs were sacred. 81 81 Lucian, De dea Syria , 54. This difference of opinion points to a hazy state of religious thought in which the ideas of sanctity and uncleanness are not yet sharply distinguished, both being blent in a sort of vaporous solution to which we give the name of taboo. It is quite consistent with this that the pig should have been held to be an embodiment of the divine Adonis, and the analogies of Dionysus and Demeter make it probable that the story of the hostility of the animal to the god was only a late misapprehension of the old view of the god as embodied in a pig. The rule that pigs were not sacrificed or eaten by worshippers of Attis and presumably of Adonis, does not exclude the possibility that in these rituals the pig was slain on solemn occasions as a representative of the god and consumed sacramentally by the worshippers. Indeed, the sacramental killing and eating of an animal implies that the animal is sacred, and that, as a general rule, it is spared. 82 82 The heathen Harranians sacrificed swine once a year and ate the flesh (En-Nedîm, in D. Chwolsohn's Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus , St. Petersburg, 1856, ii. 42). My friend W. Robertson Smith conjectured that the wild boars annually sacrificed in Cyprus on 2nd April (Joannes Lydus, De mensibus , iv. 45) represented Adonis himself. See his Religion of the Semites , 2 pp. 290 sq. , 411.

The attitude of the Jews to the pig was as ambiguous as that of the heathen Syrians towards the same animal. The Greeks could not decide whether the Jews worshipped swine or abominated them. 83 83 Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. iv. 5. On the one hand they might not eat swine; but on the other hand they might not kill them. And if the former rule speaks for the uncleanness, the latter [pg 024] speaks still more strongly for the sanctity of the animal. For whereas both rules may, and one rule must, be explained on the supposition that the pig was sacred; neither rule must, and one rule cannot, be explained on the supposition that the pig was unclean. If, therefore, we prefer the former supposition, we must conclude that, originally at least, the pig was revered rather than abhorred by the Israelites. We are confirmed in this opinion by observing that down to the time of Isaiah some of the Jews used to meet secretly in gardens to eat the flesh of swine and mice as a religious rite. 84 84 Isaiah lxv. 3, lxvi. 3, 17. Compare R. H. Kennett, The Composition of the Book of Isaiah in the Light of History and Archaeology (London, 1910) p. 61, who suggests that the eating of the mouse as a sacrament may have been derived from the Greek worship of the Mouse Apollo (Apollo Smintheus). As to the Mouse Apollo see below, pp. 282 sq. Doubtless this was a very ancient ceremony, dating from a time when both the pig and the mouse were venerated as divine, and when their flesh was partaken of sacramentally on rare and solemn occasions as the body and blood of gods. And in general it may be said that all so-called unclean animals were originally sacred; the reason for not eating them was that they were divine.

In ancient Egypt, within historical times, the pig occupied the same dubious position as in Syria and Palestine, though at first sight its uncleanness is more prominent than its sanctity. The Egyptians are generally said by Greek writers to have abhorred the pig as a foul and loathsome animal. 85 85 Herodotus, ii. 47; Plutarch, Isis et Osiris , 8; Aelian, Nat. Anim. x. 16. Josephus merely says that the Egyptian priests abstained from the flesh of swine ( Contra Apionem , ii. 13). If a man so much as touched a pig in passing, he stepped into the river with all his clothes on, to wash off the taint. 86 86 Herodotus, l. c. To drink pig's milk was believed to cause leprosy to the drinker. 87 87 Plutarch and Aelian, ll.cc. Swineherds, though natives of Egypt, were forbidden to enter any temple, and they were the only men who were thus excluded. No one would give his daughter in marriage to a swineherd, or marry a swineherd's daughter; the swineherds married among themselves. 88 88 Herodotus, l. c. At Castabus in Chersonese there was a sacred precinct of Hemithea, which no one might approach who had touched or eaten of a pig (Diodorus Siculus, v. 62. 5). [pg 025] Yet once a year the Egyptians sacrificed pigs to the moon and to Osiris, and not only sacrificed them, but ate of their flesh, though on any other day of the year they would neither sacrifice them nor taste of their flesh. Those who were too poor to offer a pig on this day baked cakes of dough, and offered them instead. 89 89 Herodotus, ii. 47 sq. ; Aelian and Plutarch, ll.cc. Herodotus distinguishes the sacrifice to the moon from that to Osiris. According to him, at the sacrifice to the moon, the extremity of the pig's tail, together with the spleen and the caul, was covered with fat and burned; the rest of the flesh was eaten. On the evening (not the eve, see H. Stein's note on the passage) of the festival the sacrifice to Osiris took place. Each man slew a pig before his door, then gave it to the swineherd, from whom he had bought it, to take away. This can hardly be explained except by the supposition that the pig was a sacred animal which was eaten sacramentally by his worshippers once a year.