[Illustration: TEA FAN.] CHAPTER II FANS OF THE ANCIENTS EGYPT [Illustration] The word fan, or van, is derived from the Latin _vannus_, the Roman instrument for winnowing grain. This winnowing-fan, held sacred by all the peoples of the ancient world, together with the fire-fan (bellows), also a sacred instrument, and used by the priestesses of Isis to fan the flame of their altars—these must be accounted amongst the earliest of the ancient and prolific fan-family. To the first named are several references in Holy Writ. Isaiah, xxx. 24, speaks of the oxen and young asses that shall eat clean provender which hath been winnowed with the shovel and with the fan. Jeremiah, xv. 6-7, lamenting the backsliding of Jerusalem, exclaims, ‘I am weary with repenting; and I will fan them with a fan in the gates of the land’; and again in li. 2, ‘Send unto Babylon fanners that shall fan her, and shall empty her land.’ In Matt. iii. 12, and Luke iii. 17, John the Baptist, announcing the coming of ‘one mightier than I’—‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner.’ Both these instruments appear on a bas-relief from a tomb at Sakkarah, of the twelfth Pharaonic dynasty, _circa_ B.C. 2366-2266, sixteen hundred years before Isaiah wrote. In this some shepherds are roasting trussed and spitted ducks over fires which are being kept alive by the plaited, wedge-shaped hand-fan; the winnowing-fan appearing in the same picture. Servius, in commenting on Virgil’s mystical fan of Bacchus, (‘mystica vannus Iacchi,’ _Georg._ i. 166) affirms that the sacred rites of Bacchus pertained to the purification of souls; in Assyria, also, it was introduced in the ceremonies connected with the worship of Bacchus and became a sacred emblem.[10] This instrument, carried at the Dionysia or festivals in honour of Bacchus, was called Lichnon (Λίχνον), and was so essential to the solemnities of this god, that they could not be duly celebrated without it. So also Osiris, when judge of Amenti, holds in his crossed hands the crook and flagellum, the mystical _vannus_—‘whose fan is in his hand,’[11] each of these instances having reference to the generative principle, and the improvement of the world by tillage. The passage in Jeremiah xiii. 24, ‘Therefore will I scatter them as the stubble that passeth away by the wind of the wilderness,’ suggested the proud motto of the Kentish family of Septvans (Setvans): ‘Dissipabo inimicos Regis mei ut paleam.’ ‘The enemies of my king will I disperse like chaff.’[12] On the brass of Sir Robert de Septvans, 1306, Chartham, Kent, the knight’s shield and aillettes upon the shoulders are charged with the winnowing-fans from which he takes his name, and small fans are embroidered upon his surcoat. In the Lansdowne MSS. 855 B.M., the arms are thus given: ‘Sir robt de sevens dazur e iij vans dor.’