Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

78 Magic [CH.
of his worship. But here he is complacently seated, manipulating
the odd implements in his hands. Odd to us they are, and no
classical archaeologist offered any explanation; but to an anthropo-
logist 1 skilled in the knowledge of savage gear they are thrice
familiar. They are primitive musical instruments, part of the
normal equipment of the medicine-man. They are gourd-rattles.
A glance at the series of gourd-rattles in Fig. 11 brings
immediate conviction. To the right (a) is a natural pear-shaped
gourd from W. Africa, simply dried with the seeds inside acting as
pellets. The middle design (b) is from a gourd pierced through
(c) Pottery-rattle,
of Arizona.
Moki (b) Gourd-rattle with
stick. Zuni of New Mexico.
Fig. 11.
(a) Natural Gourd-rattle.
W. Africa.
with a wooden handle. It is from the Zuni tribe in New Mexico.
In the third design (c) the rattle has been copied in pottery, the
protuberance at the top being copied from the stick handle in the
1 I sent a photograph of the Dipylon fragment to Mr Balfour at the Pitt Rivers
Museum, Oxford, asking if he could explain the implements, and he at once wrote,
'I think they must be a pair of hollow rattles, perhaps of gourd, a very common
form over the world, and one surviving in modern Sudan.' I publish drawings of
the three instances in Fig. 11 by his kind permission. Mr K. W. Halliday kindly
tells me that in the Anthropological Museum at Berlin are a number of these ritual
rattles, some gourds, some made of wood, some double, some and more frecpuently
single.