The Greeks named ῥιπίς the large flat instrument which was used to fan the fire: the diminutive ῥιπίδιον was applied to objects of similar form in ordinary use amongst both sexes for the purpose of fanning as well as to drive away the flies. Indeed the use of the fan as bellows appears to have been practically universal, and to have dated from a very early period of the world’s history. [Illustration] The employment of these instruments, as well as the forms which they assumed, is continued even to the present day:[13] in the Republic of Colombia, where fans are employed as much by men as by women, the kitchen of every hut and house throughout the country is provided with a fan in lieu of bellows, rectangular in form, albeit broader at the outside than at the short handle, and about 12 inches by 9 inches in size: These are formed of the young inside leaf of the cabbage-palm, the handle and back being the rib of the leaf, the fan portion being the fronds of the leaf plaited. [Illustration] The Portuguese fire-fans (Abano) made in the south of Portugal, and in universal use in that country, are round in shape, coarsely plaited in straw or rush, and fixed in a rough wooden handle. These, representing the two simplest elemental forms, are the primeval fans which have come down to us from the remotest periods of history, have endured through the centuries, and, like the fans in use in India at present, identical as a matter of fact with these in form, are as modern as they are ancient. These two fans, the winnowing-fan and the fire-fan, minister to the two most pressing of man’s necessities—to the first of his physical necessities, his daily bread, and to his chief mental necessity, the attainment of the bread of life; the fire-fan keeping alive the flame sacred to the great goddess who is the mother of all things, mistress of the elements, giver of the golden grain, which, when ripened, is separated from the chaff by the winnowing-fan; the one instrument, therefore, being the complement and counterpart of the other. The Egyptian plaited hand-fan, used for fanning the fire, as well as for other domestic purposes, was made in a precisely similar way to the Portuguese ‘Abano’ above referred to, except that instead of being a complete circle, it assumed the form of a rather full crescent. In the painted decoration of a tomb at Eileithyia, representing the interior of a storeroom, a workman is cooling, by means of one of these hand-fans, the liquid which is contained in a number of vases or amphoræ. [Illustration] In a great funeral procession of a royal scribe at Thebes, servants carry, among other offerings, similar crescent-shaped matted fans, together with, in three instances, the more ornamental semicircular feather hand-fan used by ladies for the purpose of fanning themselves, and also, with a somewhat longer handle, waved by servitors in attendance upon great personages of both sexes. [Illustration]