Читать книгу The Historical Child - Oscar Chrisman - Страница 45

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The child played a part in the religion of the ancient Egyptians. Even one of their gods, Harpocrates, was represented by an infant, having his finger to his mouth and that striking characteristic of a young child—a protruding abdomen. The birth of a child was a matter for thanksgiving offerings through the priests to the gods. Herodotus says: "When parents, living in town, perform vows for the recovery of their children's health, they offer prayers to the deity of whom the animal is sacred, and then shaving a portion, or half, or the whole of the child's head, they put the hair into one scale of the balance and money into the other until the latter outweighs the former; they then give it to the person who takes care of the animal to buy fish (or other food)."46

On some occasions when the sacred bull was led in procession through the town, the procession was led by children, and on such occasions it was thought that these children received the gift of foretelling future events. Wilkinson gives the following from Plutarch: "They even look upon children as gifted with a kind of faculty of divination, and they are ever anxious to observe the accidental prattle they talk during play, especially if it be in a sacred place, deducing from it presages of future events."47