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December 13, 1977. THE ROLE OF SWINE IN MYTH AND RELIGION. Howard H. Schlossman, M.D.
The strong religious aversion to eating or even touching pig, which exists among the Jews, the Moslems of North Africa and the Orient, and other ethnic groups can be traced back to the ritualized avoidance practiced by the ancient Egyptians, who appear to have started this custom. Dr. Schlossman's explanation of these phenomena takes into consideration the ritual of death and resurrection developed by the early agrarian culture of the Nile Valley. Since an intact body was required for the afterlife, the dead were buried in the relatively dry sands beyond the arable land maintained by the annual Nile floods. The dessicated, mummified bodies were often rooted up from their shallow sand pit burials and eaten by semi-wild, escaped domesticated pigs. The horror of the pigs' destruction of one's ancestors was compounded by the horror of cannibalism, for if one ate the pig, one ate one's ancestors. Thus it can be concluded that the aversion to cannibalism lies behind the religious injunction of the ancient Egyptians and their cultural religious heirs, the Jews and the Moslems. In addition to the primitive belief that the strength and other admired qualities of vanquished enemies could be acquired by eating them, there was also an associated fear of the incorporated object. By the avoidance of swine, then, the Egyptians believed that they protected themselves from the danger of possible investment by a dead spirit.