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.He is, furthermore, the archetypal trickster god of the an-cient world.We think of the bull-voiced lyres of the graves of Urand of the Greek orgies where "bull-voices roared from somewhereout of the unseen" (Aeschylus, Fragment 57).We think of theyoung boy and girl of the fire-sticks in Africa, and their shockingrite.* And we think, too, of Coyote-trickster, who turned himselfinto a girl and became pregnant.Hermes, too, is androgyne, as oneshould know from the sign of his staff.When the messenger, Ninshubur, then, Hermes' protoype, hadwept to no effect first before Enlil and then before the moon-god,Nanna, of the city of Ur, he turned to Enki, "Lord of the Watersof the Abyss," who, when he had heard, cried out:"What now has my daughter done! I am troubled,What now has Inanna done! I am troubled,What now has the queen of all the lands done! I am troubled,What now has the hierodule of heaven done! I am troubled."He brought forth dirt and fashioned two sexless creatures, twoangels.To the one he gave the food of life; to the other he gavethe water of life.And then he issued his commands."Upon the corpse hung from a stake direct the fear of therays of fire,Sixty times the food of life, sixty times the water of life, sprinkleupon it,Verily Inanna will arise."Upon the corpse hung from a stake they directed the fearof the rays of fire,Sixty times the food of life, sixty times the water of life, theysprinkled upon it,Inanna arose.Inanna ascended from the nether world,The Anunnaki fled,And whoever of the nether world had descended peacefullyto the nether world;When Inanna ascended from the nether world,Verily the dead hastened ahead of her.* Supra, p.169. PRI MI TI VE MYTHOLOGY418Inanna ascends from the nether world,The small demons like reeds,The large demons like tablet styluses,.26Walk at her side.The conclusion of the piece is missing.But the import of theimage is clear enough.It is a theme that has been given manyturns in the course of the centuries since.One thinks, for example,of Mary Magdalene at the tomb, weeping outside the tomb; andas she wept she stooped to look within.But she saw two angelssitting in white where the body of Jesus had been, one at the headand one at the feet, and they said to her, "Woman, why are youweeping?" She answered, "Because they have taken away my Lord,and I do not know where they have laid him." Saying which, sheturned around and saw Jesus standing, but did not know that itwas Jesus.He said to her: "Woman, why are you weeping? Whomdo you seek?" And supposing him to be the gardener, she said,"Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laidhim, and I will take him away." He said to her, "Mary!" Sheturned, and she said to him in Hebrew, "Teacher!" Jesus said toher, "Do not hold me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father;but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to myFather and your Father, to my God and your God." Then MaryMagdalene went and said to the disciples, "I have seen theLord." 27III.The Great DiffusionHuizinga, in his highly suggestive study of the play element inculture, Homo Ludens, points out that the Dutch and Germanwords for "duty," Plicht and Pflicht, are related etymologically toour English "play," the words being derived from a commonroot.28 English "pledge," too, is of this context, as well as theverb "plight," meaning "to put under a pledge, to engage" (as in"to plight troth," "a plighted bride").We may recall here Hui-zinga's reference to the Japanese "play language," or "polite lan-guage" (asobase-kotoba), where it is not said that "you arrive inTokyo," but mat "you play arrival"; not that "I hear your fatheris dead," but that "I hear your father has played dying." 29 "Theplay-concept as such is of a higher order than seriousness," Huizinga THRESHOLDS OF THE NEOLI THI C 419declares."For seriousness seeks to exclude play, whereas playcan very well include seriousness." 30The royal tombs of Ur illustrate the capacity and spirit of theworld's first aristocracy for play: pledging in play and then play-ing out the pledge.And it was in their utterly wonderful nervefor this particular game that the world was lifted from savagery tocivilization.In such a performance the question of belief is ofsecondary moment and effect.The principle is that of the masque,the dance, the pageant, the motion pattern through the form ofwhich a new power for life is evoked.An image is conceived, asupernormal image, surpassing in scope the requirements of food,clothing, shelter, sex, and a pleasant hobby for one's leisure time.Nerve is required to move into such a game and to play out thefraction of one's part in the picture.But then, behold! a trans-formation of life, an increment such as before had not been evenimagined, and therewith a new horizon, both for man and for hisgods.It was in the marvelous talent of the Sumerians for theirextremely demanding divine play that civilization was born as afunction of an aristocracy of spirit.And it was continued as suchin many parts of the world up to a very recent date.Now, as Sir Leonard Woolley has already shown, the effigies ofservants at their tasks in certain Egyptian tombs indicate that atone time the courts of the Nile too went with their kings into theunderworld.Likewise, in the royal tombs of ancient China ceramiceffigies have been found.In fact, in China the practice of humansacrifice at royal entombments persisted until well into the twelfthcentury A.D.; and in the neighboring island empire of Japan animpressive instance of the custom of voluntary "dead following"(jinchu, "loyalty") came to the notice of the world as late as 1912,when the general Count Nogi, the hero of Port Arthur, put himselfto death at the precise hour of the burial of his Mikado, Meiji-tenno, and the Countess Nogi then killed herself to accompanyher spouse
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