III. THE SACRED DANCE AT EGYPTIAN FESTIVALS 145 IV. THE SACRED DANCE AT GREEK FESTIVALS 146 V. THE SACRED DANCE AT ROMAN FESTIVALS 149 VI. THE SACRED DANCE AT FESTIVALS AMONG UNCULTURED RACES 151 SUMMARY AND CONSIDERATIONS 154 CHAPTER IX DANCES IN CELEBRATION OF VICTORY I. AMONG THE ISRAELITES 159 II. THE ORIGINAL PURPOSE OF THIS TYPE OF DANCE AMONG UNCULTURED RACES 167 SUMMARY AND CONSIDERATIONS 173 CHAPTER X THE SACRED DANCE AS A MARRIAGE RITE I. AMONG THE ISRAELITES, THE “DANCE OF MAḤANAIM” 177 II. AMONG SOME UNCULTURED RACES 184 III. SOME FURTHER PURPOSES OF THIS TYPE OF DANCE 189 SUMMARY AND CONSIDERATIONS 191 CHAPTER XI DANCING AS A MOURNING AND BURIAL RITE I. THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THIS TYPE OF DANCE 194 II. THE RITE AMONG MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN JEWS 198 III. THE RITE AMONG THE EGYPTIANS, ANCIENT AND MODERN 202 IV. THE RITE AMONG THE GREEKS AND ROMANS 207 V. THE RITE AMONG UNCULTURED RACES 209 SUMMARY AND CONSIDERATIONS 219 INDEX 223 ABBREVIATIONS _DB._ Hastings’ _Dictionary of the Bible_. _EB._ Cheyne’s _Encyclopaedia Biblica_. _ERE._ Hastings’ _Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_. _GB._ Frazer’s _The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion_ (3rd edition). _JE._ _The Jewish Encyclopaedia._ CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY I Our study is concerned with the “sacred” dance; that this epithet applied to the dance, at any rate during the earlier phases of its history and as still practised among many uncultured and even some semi-cultured peoples to-day, is more than justified, the following pages will, it is hoped, show. Its extreme importance in the eyes of early man, who regarded it as indispensable at all the crises of life—initiation, puberty, marriage, burial—who used it as one of the essentials in worship, who saw in it a means of propitiating whatever supernatural powers he believed in, a means of communion with the deity, a means of obtaining good crops, fruitful marriages, and of communicating with the departed—to mention only its more important uses, shows that it is a subject worth investigating though the domain it occupies is but a modest one in the great sphere of the history of Religion.