Читать книгу Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores онлайн

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A sacrifice is performed to Uliliyassis, continuing for three days. Food is prepared: sacrificial loaves, grain, a pitcher of wine. The shirt of the male suppliant is brought forth.

The suppliant bathes. He twines cords of red and of white wool. A sheep is sacrificed. An invocation is made, beseeching help and favor: Come to this man, the cry arises. Come down to this man. Make his wife conceive and let him beget sons and daughters.

An Egyptian love song, belonging in the second millennium B.C., is still extant. The love song was usually chanted to a musical accompaniment. The lover is addressed as sister, or brother.

The heart is sick from love, laments the victim, and no physician, no magician can heal this disease, except the appearance of the sister. There is abundant reference to spices, to myrrh and incense, and the tone of the amatory supplications and yearnings is the tone of the Song of Songs. Listlessness on the part of the love-sick suppliant is banished, as soon as he beholds his beloved, as soon as her arms open in embrace.