FACING PAGE The Map of the Mask 146 MARIONETTES [Illustration: [Stage]] CHAPTER I The Marionette—Its Family Tree This is the family tree of the marionette. Its roots are deep in the life of ancient Egypt, India, Persia, China, Japan, and Java. Its great trunk springs from the soil of Greece and Rome. Its branches spread over Europe and reach to America. Long ago, in Egypt, there were little carved figures of wood and ivory with limbs that could be made to move by the pulling of strings. We do not know for what use these little figures were intended. They may have been the very first dolls in the world or they may have been little images of the great gods which the people of that country worshiped. We do know, however, that they were treasured, and were buried with the kings and queens of ancient Egypt in their tombs near the banks of the Nile. Some people tell us that the great idols in the Egyptian temples were puppets and that the priests concealing themselves inside their bodies could make them move their hands and open their mouths. This so amazed many of the people who saw them that they fell down and worshiped them. Imagine a very long avenue with a row of carved stone figures called sphinxes on either side, leading all the way up to a great temple. Imagine a slowly moving procession of a hundred priests on its way to the temple to do honor to the great god Osiris. These priests are carrying a colossal golden boat on their shoulders. But more wonderful than the temple with its lotus-flower columns and its beautiful colors, more wonderful than the golden boat carried by these white-robed priests, was a marvelously made statue of the god Osiris, which rode in the golden boat. It moved its head constantly from side to side. The priests knew which way it wished to go by the way it turned its head. This figure of the god was a marionette. We also know that the ancient Egyptians had miniature puppet stages. One has been unearthed which has doors of ivory with the rods and wires still in their places. Among the Egyptian puppets that have been found was one of a crocodile. Its lower jaw moves on a pivot and its feet are connected with a kind of hinge. INDIA