Semen and Blood: Some Ancient Theories Concerning Their Gene and Relationship Frangoise Héritier-Augé Fee-fi-fo-fum [ smell the blood of an Englishman Be he alive, or be he dead Pil have his bones to grind my bread “English children’s song Adam, Adam, where at thou? ese bones guvine to rise again Hab, Marse Lord, Ise comin’ now ese bones gwine rise again American gospel song When a child is born, its veins carry a certain amount of blood, but those of the adult carry much more. If blood is lost in the course of life, through accident or according to the laws of nature in the case of women, it is also constantly recreated nce inside the bod; denotes lifes a living body that is bled white becomes cold, a corpse, Blood and Il embody heat. A child, born living and warm, carrying within it that small quantity of blood its body can contain, isthe result of a conjunctiofi'without which repro- in the body. Blood is essential to life, life's mainstay Its pres duction is impossible; through this conjunction a substance is conveyed from the ale body to the female one, a substance that appears necessary to the creation of this new, living human being. However, this substance is not blood, but “seed,” or semen. What is more, only nubile girls and women who have not reached meno- pause — that is, women whe lose blood — are able to conceive. 159This simple combination of facts, built on commonplace human experience, has been the cause of speculation in all societies. Where do blood and semen come from? How are they constituted inside the body? In what relationship do they stand to each other? What happens when conception takes place? And further still: How does the biological link relate to the social link? What determines descent? How is the continuity between the living and the dead ascertained along the interwoven lines of progeny? What goes into the making of a person? What does he or she trans rit in turn? In what way does a child combine what it receives from each of its patents? How can we account for likenesses? And so on. for the above catalogue is far from To these questions and to many others exhaustive ~ complex answers have been provided. Such answers take the form of ore or less claborate theories of the person, aimed characteristically at presenting a coherent, well-ordered world image, fraught with meaning and able to account for its existence and reproduction, Each human group, through the collective and interrelated thinking ofits members, produces its own theory. The anthropologi- cal outlook takes account of these diverse and original versions and of their inner logical structure. Clearly, these theories have no scientific basis, though they exer plify a mode of thinking that arises, ifnot from experimentation, at leat from obser~ vation and experience, and may well be thought of as belonging to a rational order. “They are not true for that reason. Instead, they are regarded as true simply because they account satisfactorily for the facts that mect the eye. Still and all, however diverse and unscientific these theories may be, it appears that only a small number of explanatory models can be built that are capable of answering certain central questions. The thinking involved in the building of such models has to account for the same directly observable empirical data, which leave scant possibilities of choice, The answer, if shaped in the mind that formulates it, is also already shaped by things themselves. Hence, the main point of reflection concerning the genesis of blood and semen — the subject with which J am con- cerned here — deep-rooted as it isin the anatomy and the physiology of both the hhuman and animal body, comes up against an initial constraint of a purely physical order. I believe that this constraint explains why people living in very different epochs and in very different parts of the world have arrived at remarkably similar theories, as well as why those theories, in their explanatory acuteness and sophisti-experience, dsemen come + do they stand her still: How scent? How is 2e interwoven or she trans m each of its 1e is far from € the form of at presenting @ to account ollective and nthropologi WF their inner ha they exem- t from obser- tional order aply because «6, it appears 2 capable of ling of such which leave rmulates it, Freflection Lam con- of both the sly physical -y different iby similar 1d sophisti- clinic aaa cation, sometimes tally with the most mode knowledge on the subject. ‘Thus, my Samo informants in Burkina Faso make use of their anatomical obser vations to construct a model that encompasses and qualifies these observations, ‘According to them, both sexes dispose of “sex-water” (che literal translation of do ), which is discharged during sexual intercourse; but only men’s sex-water is thick and laden with generative potency. Its encounter with a thickened mass of blood, a kind of blood clot, spinning inside the womb, brings about the conception of a child, provided the clot i in the right position when ejaculation occurs. Sex-water is pro- duced by the male's bones, his joints and his spinal column, which serves asa col lector. Impregnation does not take place every time people make love. A particular the clot isa necessary precondition. When it does occur, an extremely orientation of t strong suction is believed to be exerted upon the male seed, which is thought to be literally sucked inward. I have often heard that a man who complains at daybreak of aching all over, of back pains and sore knees is teased by the others because his pains are the result of having “made a child that very night. The pain is asribed to a brutal, near-total draining of the substance present in the man’s bones. This red. dish substance, thick and mucilaginous, is called mu zunare (“gluey water,” or “ropy water”) and ordinarily circulates quietly through the human body. It is set into motion by walking or any other physical activity, and turns into blood and semen, a transformation about which I have little information, When impregnation takes place, this gente alchemy is quickened by a powerful discharge of that particular form of energy and heat which belongs only to man, and is required for impregnation. Later on, semen turns into blood inside the woman's body, either by reverting toa prior state, if semen is the ultimate stage of a transformational process, ot by achieving completion in the form of blood, if semen is only an intermediate stage. In spite of this residual ambiguity, semen and blood would appear to have a com- ‘mon origin: marrow, that of the bones and that of the spinal cord, merged together as a unique entity In ordinary times ~ that is, when a woman is neither pregnant nor nursing ~ sex- ual intercourse between spouses provides the wife with a surplus of blood, the larg- cst pat of which she loses through her menses, a fact that accounts for the abundance of menstrual blood shed by adult women as compared to nubile girls. When a child is conceived, the husbands seed, transmuted into blood, is vested in the child to 6which it brings the blood endowment necessary to the support of breath, heat and life, With that end in view, sexual relations must be sustained and assiduous, and the parents must conform to that requirement repeatedly throughout the first seven months of pregnan the distinctive featur (a requirement that, incidentally, is thought to account for that typify a posthumous child). As for the mother, she makes, use of her own blood, which she no longer loses, as the raw material for her child's body, including its skeleton. ‘When the dangerous moment of her lying-in is passed — a time when consider- able heat is lost through the expulsion of the child’s body in a copious flow of blood — the mother, who is kept warm beside a continuously burning fire and through washing with very hot water, will realize, step by step, the transmutations that pertain exclusively to woman: the gluey substance contained in her bones will turn into milk, Essentially cold by nature, women never manage to make semen, the only body fluid with fecund power. Out of their substance, they obtain a less perfect product, but one that nevertheless taxes all of their capacity for heat. This, explains the disappearance of menses, at least during the first months of nursing, All ofthe heat and all of the substance available goes into milk-making. And though they continue to produce enough blood to coves jr own needs, women have none to spare, Man alone has enough heat and potency to produce two distinct body fluids, simultaneously and plentifully. During the nursing period, sexual relations are normally interrupted. This is a well-known prohibition. The Samo explain it by the fact that semen and milk are similar in nature, though unequal in quality, hence their incompatibility. The intense heat that pervades semen risks burning up the milk, Even through occasional sex- ual intercourse, the sperm is thought to adulterate the taste of milk, causing the child to turn away crying from the breast, a symptom that makes people suspect that the parents have transgressed the prohibition. That the mother fashions her infant’s skeleton with her own blood may startle Us, insofar as the substance contained in the bones later provides fresh supplies of blood for the individual and sperm for the male child, But we are dealing here with that is patrilineal (descent through the male and patrivirilocal (a son lives with his wi at his father’s residence). These facts can be diversely construed; but first ofall, let us be rid of an illusion, What we have seen so far should not be 162ath, heat and siduous, and ne first seven account for 2, she makes wr her child’s en consider ous flow of ing fire and asmutations bones will take semen, sbeain a less « heat. This of nursing, nd though ‘have none itinet body 1. This is a vd milk are the intense sional sex- aausing the sle suspect nay startle ‘upplies of here with seal (a son construed; ald not be 5 this always taken as meaning that the women transmit something of their ow remains a man’s affai. A woman inherits blood from her own father who, having received an initial endowment of blood from his father, has also produced blood, day after day in his own bone marrow, constituted by the blood of his mother, and beyond her, by that of his male ancestors in the maternal line. If, once accepting these premises (the differential contributions ofthe father and the mother, and the matrow’s capacity to produce body fluids), we take them to their logical conclusion, we find the hazy outlines of a sophisticated theory: the infi- nite regression of those enclowments in blood received from male ancestors through the agency of women, even though the endowments that come from the paternal ancestors remain ever-present in the foreground. With every fruitful union new endowments are made, which become obliterated in the course of time, as one passes from one generation to the next. For each grown child, the fraction of blood coming from his or her mother — that is, the fraction constantly generated from the mucilaginous substance within her bones and, behind the mother, from the ‘mother’s father — this fraction is thought to accompany that coming from the father at birth, and to precede the fractions coming respectively from the father’s moth- cers father and the mother’s mother’s father. Those portions coming from more dis tant ancestors disappear, or remain only as infinitesimal strain. We ate even provided with a threshold of conscious recognition, Indeed, a par allel can be drawn between this theory of the making of a child and Samo marriage rules. Thus, to choose a very precise example, a marriage with a cognate in a collat eral line, descended from a female ancestor related to Ego’s line through men only, is allowed only at four generations’ remove from the common ancestor of the two lines. From this rule we may infer that three intervening generations are necessary to expunge in a child all traces of the physical imprint left in him/her by any ancestor to whom he/she is related through a woman. The prohibitions concerning matriage between such blood relations up to the third generation, andl also between cousins who happen to be cognates in a still more complex way, together with other such prohibitions, resule in ~ if they are not aimed at ~ preventing reinforcement by “agglutination” of those blood lines which we shall call recessive. That is lines of identical blood or a dominant line and a recessive line of the same blood are not permitted to be rejoined, once they are separate, without a three-generation interval, 163Yet another illusion must also be set aside. The dominant strain originating in the paternal line is also a compound, subject to the same regressive pattern as those endowments that come from the maternal ancestors. A man’s blood is also renewed during his lifetime through the marrow of his bones, which derives from his moth- ers blood, and so on. Thus, what this theory expresses, in a social context where descent traced in the agnatic line takes precedence, is that this phenomenon relies more on “speech” and Iess on blood relationships, insofar as itis based on the com- ‘mon will and public acknowledgment of the social link. As the Samo are wont to say: “Words make descent, and words can take it back.” This quite explicit maxim, whose bearing is strongly implemented by the genetic theory of blood, allows us to single out the salient points for this particular society: the individual exists as such only in the diversity of blood lines; and social descent is traced less through transmission by blood than through speech, as the common will voiced and affirmed by the social group. Obviously, each one of these important points would be of a radically different nature in a society that, for example, gave preference to consan- {uineous unions between close cousins. {descent is thus construed as one particular path among the several that concur in the advent of an individual composed of flesh, bones and blood, iti also explic- itly defined through the communal partaking of food inside the lineage. Group eat- ing is marked out in silhouette by prohibitions peculiar to each group; food generates and renews not only the flesh of the individual, but also his bones and their pre- cious content, which in turn generate blood and semen. Life - which, according to the Samo conceptual scheme, is one of the nine ingredients of man or woman — pervades the world, Every living creature retains a particle of it. Life is conveyed by the blood throughout the body. But if flesh is liable to death and decay, life still endures in a subdued, dormant form inside the bones and disappeats totally only when these are burned ~ a fact that corroborates the idea of a life-conveying blood originating in the bones (Hétitier 1977). f have presented this Afiican example ina brief and necessarily incomplete form. My description purports to show how a coherent, all-embracing scheme is built which encompasses in a single proposition a definition of the individual and a conception of man in society that embraces both the social links among human beings and the natural world. More could be said here about certain key notions, 164,originating in tem as those also renewed om his moth- ontext where menon relies ‘on the com. “are wont to licit maxim, od, allows us | lual exists as less through and affirmed ould be of a to consan that concur | also explic- Group eat | >d generates 4 their pre- » according onveyed by xy life sul tally only ying blood slete Form. ¢ ae is built ° Ss, Mali Zari peel Depletion ofa pair of Dogon grandparents, Mal ( rng human Ristberemuseum) y notions, ssCertain archaic themes, which underlie all these theories, such as the contrasting Pair identical/different, which acts as an essential classifier in Samo thinking. The notional system constructed by the observer out of parts of speech and elements of behavior is necessarily imperfect, in tha it can never be an entirely closed system. Indeed, for the social actors themselves, it is rarely if ever given as a coherent dis Course connecting and integrating in a meaningful context all the salient points we have mentioned: the genetic theory of body fluids and that of the person, the theory of alliance and descent, chat of imputed powers and forces, But itis a sys fem that functions only when required, justifying as necessary daily rites, prohibi- tions and practices. To be sure, from a dialectical perspective, as a system it i not devoid of contradictions ‘What has just been said should not be taken to mean that the analysis of any con- ceptual scheme always rests upon the local theory concerning body fMuids, or that the rationale for each act, which functions when required, always derives logically from this same conception of things, The structured ideational scheme, which makes differently in each society, is made up of mutually definable clements, These add the constraint oftheir inevitable interaction and reciprocal development to the basic constraint, which derives from the observation of those natural phenomena that must be understood and thus explained ~ rather inthe way stacked weapons assume their characteristic shape only because each weapon leans upon all the others. In the light of the preceding, ehe grounds for my assumption ~ chat the explana- tory acuteness of knowledge because they are deeply rooted in careful observations of human anatomy and physiology ~ may seem clearer. Thus, for instance, the bone marrow’s hemato- uch theories sometimes leads them to converge with scientific Poictic function is recognized, even if the actual process remains unknown and undescribed, and even if no distinction is drawn between bone marrow and spinal marrow. Likewise, the idea of a progressive obliteration of some ancestors" contr butions, calculated in terms of their increasing genealogical remoteness through ‘women, tallies in one sense with the scientific notion of recessivity. The marriage Prohibitions obtaining among the Samo between individuals carrying particles of the same blood are not based on eugenics ~ that is on the necessity of preventing the possible transmission of consanguineous taints. We ate dealing here instead with 166the contrasting thinking. The ad elements of closed system, Leoherent dis fent points we € person, the But it is a sys- rites, prohibi- a system it is sis of any con- fluids, or that tives logically which makes uly definable ad reciprocal tion of those cr in the way ‘weapon leans the explana- ith scientific nan anatomy ov's hemato- aknown and ww and spinal tors! contri ss through he marriage particles of preventing stead with 1 fandamental ideological privilege, active in every domain, accorded to the prin ciple of difference rather than that of entity. These prohibitions neatly concur with the idea of a genetic reshulfling of homozygotic factors. What is more, a fecundat- ited from one body to another. T have made a second assumption. The fact that the initial physical constraint consists in the samne observable data ~ the functioning of the human body ~ means that explanatory theories elaborated quite independently, in different places and at different epochs, coincide in a remarkable fashion on certain precise points, even if the linkage of the diverse elements included in each such cultural scheme shows This perspective, if ft does not absolutely exclude the exis- {ng principle is understood to be transmit significant variation. tence of mutual borrowing, and the far-reaching diflusion of ideas under peaceable s never as successful conditions, nevertheless strongly implies that such borrowing. as when it is cast in a mold to some degree foreordained by certain physiological features built into the structure of the species. apax” — I should now like TThat the Samo theory is not a unique instance — 2 to show briefly [will take aa central point the sequence bone/seed/blood, oF more comprehensively, food/marrow/seed and blood,® and examine it on the basis of a ow eases, some of which, while civilizationally near to Western cultures, are remote from them in time, while others are part of contemporary ethnographic knowledge. “There probably are many other such examples, but the comparative outlook must and pertinent cases may be missing, We know shat an ethno~ he author was able or allowed to see. Moreover, the so naturally that they use the data available, graphic report is simply what ¢ ost fundamental ideas are those people live and breathe by, s fanction, as it were, by preterition, without the need being felt co formulate them. Since every ideational scheme functions that way, traces must be isolated, extrapor Jated and illuminated, as we shall see in the case of ancient Egypt: n traditions, notably in Greck and There do exist, however, in the great written wave been Hindu thought, texts in which the combination of observable facts hy ordered along rational lines. In the treatise entitled Generation of Animals, Aristotle the theories of he origin of sperm and blood can be clasiied acording toto main hemes hey derive om substances already preset inside the body or ingested by mans ov tey at it ings. We shal consider ere ony the fist of hese explanatory schemes bestowed by supetnatual be 17expounds admirably upon a series of processes of a biochemical nature, without requiring that substances pass through the bones. Here, blood, milk and sperm are residues (sperm being the only perfect residue) ofthe transformation of food inside the body. The proofis in “the feeling of weakness which follows upon the slightest ‘mission of sperm, as ifthe body were deprived of the end product of nutrition” (1.18, 725a5; author's trans.). The process involves the transformation of food into blood, and thereafter — as a result of diverse processing procedures according to sex ~ into seed by males and milk by females. Man produces sperm because his is a ‘warm nature, such that he possesses a capacity for bringing about an intense con- coction of the blood, which transforms i¢ into its purest and thickest residue: sperm, or male seed. Women cannot perform this operation. They lose blood, and at their warmest, they can only succeed in turning it into milk. “Because menses occur, there cean be no sperm” (1.19. 727330). Thus, the ultimate difference between the sexes lies in the fact that one is warm and dry, the other cold and wet, qualities that reveal themselves in their aptitude or inaptitude for achieving concoction.” We now have a double transformational sequence: food/blood/sperm, food/blood/milk, which offers a rationalization of the production of fluids as a whole, and above all, orders them hierarchically in terms of a distinction established between the sexes that produce them — a distinction presented as the ultimate rationale and justification of the social order. This same distinction, formulated in hierarchically ordered con: trasting terms, necessary to the understanding of the inner workings of fluid pro duction as propounded by Aristotle, is also to be found in conceptual systems in which the male seed is not necessarily thought of as the ultimate stage of blood heating or concoction. We have noted it already among the Samo. In the Hindu world, as well, semen is considered to originate from food, but the sequence is completed without passage through the blood. But here we are deal- ing less with an analysis of processes of a somewhat biochemical nature (as in the case of Aristotle) than with what is, strictly speaking, a cosmic vision which inte gfates all the elements of the universe into a never-ending cycle. Some upanigad-s written before 1200 s.c. describe a perfect circle: “From water earth, from earth herbs, from grass food, from food semen, from semen man, Man thus consists of the essence of food” (Taittiriya Upanigad 2.1; in Keswani 1962:210-11), Cremation is then conceived of as a necessity: the body consumed by fire rises up in smoke, 168 4, without {sperm are food inside re slightest nutrition” F food into cording to use his isa ue: sperm, ad at their cur, there «the sexes that reveal row have a Ik, which all, orders sexes that tification tered con- uid pro- ystems in of blood food, but are deal- ‘as in the hich inte panisad-s om earth onsists of remation asmoke, wich turns into rainy clouds that fall back upon the earth, fertilizing the soll for the production of plants, food and semen. Certain diseased dead (lepers, smallpox ) are Ieft uncremated as a means to prevent thelr i hroughou the whole transformational cycle. This is also the who wish to withdraw from victims and such] ness from return ing to living beings th ‘case for the members of certain ascetic sects (Aghors), the whole life cycle. They are immersed, especially in the Ganges into the element that stands as the very antinomy of fire — and, in that element, ‘cir substance dissolves entirely or is consumned by animals (Parry 1982:81). A produced as described = that is, plunged th certain number of texts specify that life (meaning semen, above) is stored away in the bones. Cremation liberates it, allowing it to revere tO the great lifecycle. “The same idea of semen stored away in the rhe blood, is found in the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations, In ant of semen into the life cycle bones, without any sequence involv ing processing of dl both cases, what matters is not the cosmic reinvestme! through cremation, but quite the opposite: the integral pr tor bones, either in view of their survival in the hereafter, or because their actual presence betokens the link between the living and the dead. According to the Sumerians, man was created from a mixture of that God Marduk set upright by coagulating Ge hhe modeled the bony structure ofthe First Man: “1 want to coagulate blood in order to build a skeleton and erect a human being” (Cassin 1982:355). When men die, heir being that comes from dust returns to d mnes made out of blood — of divine reservation of the ances: dust and water od Kingu’s blood. Out of this blood that part oft just, But another part with he bones, the esemtu. These bor stands dissolution: blood, for the First Man ~ are perdurable and bear breath. Provided they are gathered together and interred, they make it possible for the dead to gain a new form of existence, Thus, blood is the raw material of those bones in which to die in some remote place and,fll bones. The dead that remain unburied become wandering family group Down-Below. To the immaterial double and the life lies hidden. The greatest possible fear is prey to wild beasts who will grind up one’s ghosts, incapable of joining with the spirits of their have one’s bones ground up by wild beasts is a fate that finds its culmination in a postmortem punishment, the most eerie ofall, inflicted by the sovereign who pos the bones of his vanquished foe pounded to dustin a mortar. Thus, Assurbanipal 169forced the vanquished sons of an enemy dead for over ten years to grind the disin- terred remains of their father. By so doing, he was forcing them to cut off their roots, swith their own hands, and thus to achieve their own destruction by destroying the foundation of their family stock. Provided they are properly treated, “the bones live con and remain attached by a kind of umbilical cord to the localized family or to the ethnic group,” writes Elena Cassin (1982:360). The kings are well aware of the bones relation to the entire stock. Thus, we take note of those who laid waste the towns and deported the bones of their kings, as did victorious Assurbanipal at Susa; or, when defeated, chose, as did Merodach-Baladam, king of Babylon, to flee with the remains of his ancestors, rather than save the living members of his family. By destroying the bones of the vanquished, the victors destroy their history, both past and future, because what is destroyed in the act is their very seed. The living are the fruit of their ancestors’ seed, hence, the sced of the living is destroyed when those of the dead suffer such a fate. In the bones lie the principle of uninterrupted transmission of life. From this analysis, we may derive a new sequence in which the terms of the trilogy are paired off differently: from the blood proceed the bones, which contain semen and life. In Egypt, not only is the source of all life found in that metaphorical version; quite explicitly it is semen itself that is found in the bones. Recent research reveals the existence of an ancient anatomical explanatory system, one founded on precise veterinary knowledge, alongside the metaphysico-religious interpretation, which calls for the intervention of the gods in the initial process of creating seminal fluids. ‘The facts unearthed by the scholars read like a detective story In 1960 Serge Sauneron deciphered inscriptions dating back to the Ptolemaic era, in which homage is paid to the Ram who “pours,” “solidifies,” “concreates,” “coagulates” semen in the bones. We are dealing here with the belief in the super- natural origin of semen. For Sauneron, these terms convey a very uncommon ana- tomical belief of recent origin. Finding similar beliefs in Greek texts (Semen is a defluxion, a gentle outflowing of the spinal bone,” writes Plato), Sauneron seeks to explain in diffasionist terms which of these two cultures, Greek or Egyptian, had invented this strange anatomical theory. Jean Yoyotte (1962), while ascribing the theory to a far more distant past, makes a similar analysis, noting that according to the priests of the Lower Period, a func- 0the disin. heir roots -oying the bones live nily or to ate of the waste the aL at Susas flee with amily. By both past iving are ed when erupted hich the reveals precise + which | fluids. cates,” > super- a seeks an, had makes a fianc- tional link would seem to have existed between the phallus and the back ~ oF more precisely, between the phallus and the spine. As a mater of fact, the graphical text mentions the complete genitalia, the progenitor” as being an organ onsticuted by “the phallus and the back” joined together. The spinal column would phallus to fou geo then play the role of collector of the marrow that flows out of the “concreate” again int The Egyptian theories of reproduction, io bones inside the womb. such as we find them expounded in the Jumilhac Papyrus, ascribe the bones to the male principle and the flesh to the female, ‘When Plutarch comments on the dismembering of Horus, he talks ofthe blood and the marrow as deriving from the paternal seminal fluids, while the fat and the flesh proceed from the mother. The child's blood and marrow are thus asociated with the bones, and both are produced by the paternal seed which concreates the bones. Sauneron (1960) observes that some very ancient beliefs give water as the source oflife, and that the words “water,” “semen” and “saliva” stem from the same root 2 “sperm,” “conception” and “procreation” in Sumerian. He then reflects in passing that it might be legitimate to postulate that the same conception may have aren independently in Egypt and in Asia Minor, “owing to a ich have some similarities in appear- in Egyptian, as do “watery natural tendency to assimilate two substances whi 2" (1960:26-27; author’s trans). Nevertheless, he inclines toward the diffu. source. As for Yoyotte, he chooses to settle the Egyptian origin. {¢ is only inci- and the background — for a sfonist assumption of @ common specific problem raised by Sauneron in favor of an dentally that these two authors question the grounds belief that assimilates marrow to sperm and! Jocates semen in the b this belief expresses only a metaphorical point of view, and proceeds from analog: cal reasoning, on the basis of trivial observations that allow for the identification not only of marrow and sperm as white and gluey substances, but also of the upraised phallus witha bone. Ifthe inscriptions and texts talk of semen inside the bones, in his view it would be only because the upraised phallus is viewed metaphorically as a bone (Yoyotte 1962:21). In a footnote, however, he quotes, asa curious instance ‘of modem lore, an Egyptian member of his party, a cook from Said, wh ‘exual overexertion one first felt a pain in the small of the back, pain in the neck. Infact, this man was describ- body by proceeding farther and farther along jones. For Yoyotte, ho explained that in case of s then a general backache, and still later p ing the way that sexual demands tax the mthe spinal column, in exactly the manner of the Samo, who identify sexual inter= course resulting in impregnation by this specifically masculine pain ~ proof, ifneed be, of the maximal drainage of semen fromn the bones. Recent American literature on the subject (Schwabe etal. 1982), without disre- garding the diffusionist assumptions, carry us still farther back in time. According to these authors (who aim to demonstrate that the sign ankk, the symbol for life, rust be iden! and stored away in the bones can be found in linguistic and iconographic evidence fied with a bovine thoracic vertebra), the idea that semen is produced dating back to the First Dynasty. The specific relationship between the spinal col- uumn and the phallus, as noted by Yoyotte, would be based on observations of an anatomical peculiarity of the bull’s genitalia made during sacrificial dissections reported in veterinary writings (such as the Kahun Papyrus). ‘The Egyptians espe- cially admired and emulated bulls for their libido, strength and bravery. We know that the bull’s sexual potency is explicitly associated with that of the pharaoh, who wore a bull’s tail attached to his clothing. The relevant anatomical detail is as fol- ows: the bull’s penis tautens through the action ofa muscle adhering firmly to the inner surface of the last two vertebrae above the tail; this muscle acts jointly with the penis for about ten centimeters. The Egyptian anatomists may well have viewed this apparatus asa single organ. This specific trait is also to be found in other mam- mals, such as rams, swine and dogs. Thus, knowledge of an anatomical peculiarity in animals was already being used in the First Dynasty to corroborate essential belief that cement the whole of the Egyptian ideological system, As Schwabe et al. say: “It would appear that this alboit erroneous physiologic cycle represents the earliest known instance of the acquisi- tion through comparative biological observations and analogical surmises of a theo retical basis for understanding a bodily process" (1982:462). As Yoyotte saw, the connection postulated between the penis and the spinal col- tumn forms an integral part of the theory that semen is contained in the bones. It provides the missing link, The semen-marrow concreates the skeleton and the blood of the child, whose bones in turn store away the semen. (But do they produce it? What role is played by the blood?) Once stored in the bones, the semen is col- lected by the spine and passes into the penis to which it is attached. Seen from this perspective, we can understand better the urgent necessity of gathering the ma‘xual inter >of, ifneed hout disre- According vol for life, s produced evidence spi fons of an col issections Jans espe- We know: raoh, who is as fol- nly to the intly with ve viewed her mam- cing used ale of the his albeit acquisi- of a theo- pinal col- bones. te and the produce nis cok ven from ring the bones, to allow for survival in che Hereafter, and the importance given to the spine in the religious writings that glorify the fecundity and generative potency of the bull, the ram or the pharaoh, Im China we find the idea ofa communication between the spinal marrow and the kidney, which is considered a genital organ, and that ofthe marrow duct opening into the genitourinary region, which implies “a certain participation ofthe brain and the ‘marrow in the secreting of sperm” (Huard and Wong:612). After the body's putre faction, the bones were unearthed, washed and interred again. They were thought to “breathe” a power of increase among their descendants (Parry 1982: Introduction). deals only with those classical civilizations of the -ader that the diffusfonist assumption From the preceding, which northem hemisphere, it may appear to the ig, after all, quite plausible. Ifso, it would suffice to discover which society had been the first to evolve such an original system, linking the bones and the marrow fic extent of the belief to the transmission of lif, in order to understand the speci However, this same idea turns up in very different parts of the world. I mention only a few examples. Among the Otomi, for instance, where the bones (the “stone sex”) are thought of as sperm-producing and the general source of life (Galinier 1984:46-58); in Hawaii, where after preliminary treatment of the body, the skeleton was put away for safekeeping: in Tahiti and the Marquesas, where the skull and the long bones of the ancestors were carefully kept apart (Handy 1927:68, 258-62; Babadzan 1983:94); and so on. In addition to a mobile and migratory soul, the bones contain the life-power of the semen, which is wealth for the living progeny as we found it in Samo culeure, and among many other Affican peoples. This idea occurs in the ideational schemes of a number of different populations all over the world, Whatever the sequential organization linking together food/ may be, it is easy to imagine how it could bones/marrow/blood/semen and milk have taken shape. Indeed, bones present a curious feature, particularly long bones, and, more generally, the whole spinal assemblage (if no difference is drawn between the two types of marrow), These parts, which constitute the bony structure of the body, are usually hollow, and enclose tightly the treasure they protect. Moreover, the whitish substance of the marrow is analogous, both in consistency and color, to human semen. Hence, it is not surprising that different people observing the same phenomena 3in the same way have reached the same conclusion: sperm and marrow are of the same nature and contain the germ of life, stored away like kernels, and jealously protected in the hard parts of the body. After all, we are dealing here with rational interpretations construed from direct factual observation, the most perfect being the Egyptian model. Semen that has to be constantly renewed must be stored away somewhere inside the body; the tightly sealed bone capsules are the ideal place for It, At the core of the belief, what we find is matter. BinuiocrarHy Aristotle, Generton of Animels. Translated by A.L, Peck, London and Cambridge, MA: Loeb Clas cal Library, 1963. abadsan, A. “Une perspective pour deux passages: Notes sur a représentation traditionnelle dela rnaisance et dela mort en Polynésie,”L’Homme 23.3 (July-September 1983). Cassin, E., “La mort: Valeur et représentation en Mésopotamie anclenne,” in La Mort ls mors dans es sacs oncenns. Edited by G. Gnoli and JP. Vernant, Pars and Cambridge: Cambridge Unt vetlty Press, 1982. Dictionnaire arctologique des techniques, 2 vos, Pari: Editions de !Accuell, 1964. (Se expecially, ‘Exteéme-Orient,” in Médecine, Huard and M. Wong, pp. 610-14). ‘homme sans pied. Métaphore de la castration imaginate en Mésoamérique.”L'Horime Galinier 24, no, 2 (April-June 1984). Handy, E.C., Polynesian Religion, Honolulu: Bayard Dominick Expedition, 1927. Hite F,“Lidentité Samo," in identi Seminal dig par Claude LévStrus, Pais: Grasct 1977 -écondité et strilité: La traduction de ces nations dela champ idéologique au stade pre nnn, Paes: Fayard 1978, with Mare Aug, “Le génétique sauvage” Le genre humain 3-4 (1982) Set, aidit, séchereses Quelques invariants de la pense symbolique,”n Le Sens du al tecologi hitoite dela moladie, Pars: Editions des Archives Contemporaines, 1984 Anthropologis Keswani, NAL, "The Concepts of Generation, Reproduction, Evolution and Human Development 3s Found in the Wetings of Indian (Hind) Scholars ducing the Early Period (up to 1200 a.v.) of Indian History.” Bulletin of the Natal astute of Sclences of India 21 (1962) Parry, J "Sacelficial Death and the Necrophagus Aacetio,” in Death and the Regeneration of Lf, Edited by M. Bloch and J. Pay. Camby: Cambridge University Pres, 1982. 74«are of the vd jealously ith rational rfect being stored away al place for Loeb Clasi- conn dela les mores dons bilge Unt 1 especially, ve" LHomme ase, 197, au stade prt Sene do Mal ines, 1984. velopment as 200 a.0.) of life Edited » Bullen de Instat France dArchélogle Orientale (1960) Sauneron, Sy "Le germe dans les 0s," sgyptian Belief about the Ball's Spine: An Anatomical Ori- Schwabe, CJ. Adstas and CT. Hodge, sin for Ankh” Anthropological Lingus 24.4 (1982) “Las op ot I semence masculine: A propos d'une théore physiologique éayptenne: Yoyottes Js ut Tein de Institut Panga d‘Archiolgle Oientale (1962) This essay was first published in Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse 32 (Fall 1985) and delivered in its English version as part ofthe Tenth Anniversary Lecture Series at che Department ‘of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University Research for this essay was funded by the Maryland Humanities Council and the Wenner Foundation “Translated by Tina Jolas. 0s