Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

192 The Delphic Omphalos
quent in uncivilised or semi-civilised communities^ To quote a
typical case
'among the Maoris, when the navel-string dropped off, the child was carried
to a priest to be solemnly named by him. But before the ceremony of naming
began, the navel-string was buried in a sacred place and a young sapling was
planted over it. Ever afterwards that tree, as it grew, was a tohii ora7iga or sign
of life for the child'-.'
Analogous practices have survived here and there in modern
Greece^ Thus in Lesbos the severed portion of the cord is wrapped
in cloth and thrown into the school, or the church, or the fields. It
is believed that, if the cord falls in the school, the child will become
a teacher ; if in the church, a priest ; if in the fields, a farmer. So,
when a child hangs about a place, his mother gets angry and says
to him: 'Did they throw your navel there?*' Similar usages are
reported from Kephalleniaj'Aigina, Limnobria? {Btirdur) in Pisidia,
Sinasos in Kappadokia, etc., and there can be little doubt that from
time immemorial the Greeks have believed in a sympathetic rela-
tion existing between the infant and the umbilical cord. It is
therefore reasonable to conjecture that in Phokis, as in Crete, the
navel-string of Zeus—or rather of a local king (Python ?) personating
the sky-god'—was deposited in a holy place. And where could it
be more safely bestowed than beneath the central support of heaven
itself? To make security doubly secure, the mound in which the
relic lay buried was covered by the agrenon with its numerous
knots". So far as I can see, nothing short of this hypothesis will
^ See the examples collected by H. Ploss Das Kind in Branch unci Sitte der Volker-
Leipzig 1884 i. 15— 18, ii. 194, 199 f. and Frazer Golden Bongh'-^ : The Magic Art i.
182—201, ii. 56, ib.'^: Taboo p. 48, ib.'^: Adonis Attis Osiris^ ii. 167 ff., ib.'^: Balder the
Beautiful ii. 160 ff.
^ Frazer Golden Bough'^ : The Magic Art i. 182, citing R. Taylor Te Ika A Mani, or
New Zealand and its Inhabitants''- London 1870 p. 184.
^ They were collected, at the request of W. H. Rosclier, by N. G. Polites in Xaoypa,