The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

VI THE GODS ALL BLACK 191
In the statues of Diana of Ephesus (supposed to
represent the original " image which fell down ") at
Naples and elsewhere, the face, hands, and feet, are
of black marble, showing that it was intended to re-
present a black goddess; and it is main-
tained by some writers that the prim-
aeval belief of mankind was that the
Mother of the Gods was black.^^^
Ishtar was adored in ancient Baby-
beholding the famous painting was that he was black.
"Ma! non ho capito mai che fu More!" was her first
remark.
Upon the remarkable halo surrounding the heads of both
the Indian mother and child one might almost say that it
belonged to a Christian work and not a heathen. The
nimbus is, however, far older than the nineteen centuries of
Christendom. Rays were said to have proceeded from the
head of Isis ; and they have been called the proper attri-
butes of Juno, of Isis, or the "Mother of the Gods" Fig. 73.
(Pignorius, Vetustissima: Tabula, p. 16).
313 Inman, A^icient Faitlis embodied in Ancie7tt Names, vol. i. p. 105.
A learned writer remarks that not only was Diana black, but that so was
Christna of the Hindoos. Isis, Horus, Cneph, Osiris, Buddha, Mercury,
and the Roman Terminus, were typified by black stones. There was a black
Venus at Corinth. "Venus, Isis, Hecate, Diana, Juno, Metis, Ceres, and
Cybele, were black, and the Multimammia in the Campidoglio in Rome is
also black." To this list are added Jupiter, Apollo, Bacchus, Hercules,
Asteroth, Adonis, Apis, Ammon. The same author states that the Roman
and Greek emperors who claimed to be gods, had their statues in black
marble with coloured draperies (Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 286).
The famous Virgin of Einsiedeln in Switzerland, to whom 150,000 pilgrims
annually resort, is a black image. Black is appropriated to the female creator
for reasons given, but not here producible, by all Oriental nations (Inman,
Ancient Faiths, p. 266).
Higgins in his very remarkable book [Anacalypsis) gives much learning
and many references : indeed, we strongly urge those who are interested in
this particular subject to study the book. He says, in speaking of the negro
Chrishna, that he presumes man to have been originally negro, and that he
improved and developed as he travelled westward (vol. i. p. 284). He also
refers to Venus and the other divinities as all black ; ancl remarks (p. 286)
that "all wood and stone deities were black." This is not quite the fact in
these modern days. In the Pitt Rivers Museum is a Siva, having a trinity of
heads ; while besides the principal pair of arms, are three other subsidiary
pairs, all rising one over the other. The three faces all show tusks like the
Cambodian and Peruvian Gorgons, without a protruded tongue ; but the
whole figure is black. On the other hand, Thagya, the Buddhist Angel of
Life, a wooden figure, is represented as of a light colour.
Another author (Lieut. Wilford, "On Egypt and the Nile, from the
Ancient Books of the Hindus," Asiatic Researches, vol. iii. pp. 3S9, 406) says :