Among the Egyptians, however, we know that every temple had both priests and priestesses attached, among whom were dancers and musicians; and these played a very important part at all festivals[254]. Apart from official celebrations in temples, local feasts at which sacred dances were performed, also took place. Thus, when the Harvest was completed and the peasants offered the first-fruits, they danced in the presence of the god of fertility as an act of thanksgiving[255]. There was also a dance of thanksgiving performed in honour of Ptah for the annual overflowing of the Nile. In dancing a small piece of wood was often held in each hand, and these were knocked together in rhythmic time[256]. Mention should also be made of the great “Sed” festival, originally performed only once in thirty years, but later in every third year. At this festival the king was deified as Osiris, and the Crown Prince was appointed, and married to the heiress of the kingdom. At the enthronization of the deified king the Crown Prince danced before him as an act of honour to the god; this was also done at another part of the ceremony by all the men, who were present in great numbers[257]. IV A good example among the Greeks is that of the sacred dance performed at the celebration of the _Haloa_, which, according to a scholion to Lucian[258], was a feast at Athens containing mysteries of Demeter, and Kore, and Dionysos on the occasion of the cutting of vines and the tasting of wine made from them.... The _Haloa_ gets its name, according to Philochorus, from the fact that people hold sports at the _threshing-floors_; and he says it is celebrated in the month Poseidon[259].... The sports held were, of course, incidental to the business of threshing; but it was these sports that constituted the actual festival. To this day the great round threshing-floor that is found in most Greek villages is the scene of the harvest festival. Near it a booth (_skēnē_) is to this day erected, and in it the performers rest, and eat and drink in the intervals of their pantomimic dancing[260]. In connexion with ritual dances in honour of Demeter, Frazer draws attention to the remains of “the magnificent marble drapery which once adorned the colossal statue of Demeter and Persephone in the sanctuary of the two goddesses at Lycosura, in Arcadia”; on this are carved rows of semi-human, semi-bestial figures dancing and playing musical instruments; the bodies of these figures are those of women, but their heads, paws and feet are those of a horse, a pig, a cat, or a hare, and apparently an ass[261]. “It is reasonable to suppose,” he says, “that these dancing figures represent a ritual dance which was actually performed in the rites of Demeter and Persephone by masked men and women, who personated the goddesses in their character of beasts[262].”