Who played with the first doll; how was it fashioned; when and where was it evolved, are questions to which history fails to give a satisfactory answer. We search the archives of the past, we unearth Egypt to discover the secret, we wander through pagan Rome, we travel to India, to the cradle of our civilization, as far back as documentary evidence, legend or myth will carry us, and we find dolls. Recorded history does not go back to the time when there were no dolls.
They are found in the sanctuary of the pagan, in the tombs of the dead; pictured in quaint and sometimes awkward lines in plaster and stone, that have withstood the elements for thousands of years.
Since time was they have been, apparently, the presiding deity of the hearthstone and the cradle. Most people would subscribe to the popular theory that the mother impulse is so strong in every child that she must have some object upon which to lavish her childish affection, and that the most natural object is a doll built on somewhat the same lines as the baby brother or sister or some of the "grown ups" of the family.
The gathered opinions of various early and classic writers point to the probability that the doll, as the image of a human or superhuman creature, had an ecclesiastical origin and was used in the ceremonies of the religion which preceded Brahmanism.
Later with the religion it was carried to China and Egypt and from thence made its way to all the other countries of the globe. So much for theory.
That dolls were common in the time of Moses is certain, for we read that in those sarcophagi, which are frequently exhumed in Egypt, there have been found beside the poor little baby mummies pathetically comical little imitations of themselves placed there by loving mothers, within reach of the cold little baby fingers.
In "Ave Roma Immortalis," Marion Crawford speaks of children's dolls of centuries ago, "made of rags and stuffed with the waste from their mothers' spindles and looms." He also tells of effigies of bullrushes, which the pontiffs and vestals came to throw into the Tiber from the Sublician bridge on the Ides of May.
In the museums at Naples and Rome there are numbers of terracotta dolls that were found in the ruins of Pompeii; pathetic little remains of happy childhood.
When Herculaneum was being excavated, there was found the figure of a little girl with a doll clasped tightly in her arms - not even death could divide the two.
The presence of dolls in the graves of children is accounted for by the fact that it was an ancient custom to bury a child's toys with it in the expectation that the spirit forms of the inanimate things would rise with the child and amuse it in the spirit world as they had done in this.
Early writers tell us that a custom among the pagans required children to make votive offerings of their toys and playthings to the gods in the temples, when they had reached a certain age. This custom still obtains in certain parts of the Orient.
The oldest dolls in the world are in the British Museum. They were found in the tombs of Egyptian children and some among them are more than 4,000 years old.
Queer little manikins they are but they command immense respect as being the veritable doll- babies which the little brown-skinned children of Pharaoh's land loved and cuddled and put to sleep centuries before the Christ child was born.
The collection is labeled "Early Egyptian Dolls," with dates ranging from 1,000 to 4,400 years b.c. There is a great variety of them, as to material, form and decorations. Clothes evidently were thought superfluous or the material of which they were made has vanished, for there, is nothing that might even by a vivid imagination be thought to represent clothing. These small images are made of ivory, clay, wood and bronze.
The dolls in one group have curious heads of clay to which strings of colored beads have been attached either to represent hair or perhaps the face veil, which is still worn by many Eastern women, though in these days the beads are interspersed with coin which represents the woman's dower or fortune. They have neither feet nor legs which peculiarity is probably accounted for by the fact that at that time the extremities of babies were swathed about with yards of cloth and it was thought hardly worth while to carve feet and legs that would never be in evidence. The long flat body of one of this group is marked off in squares like a checkerboard, possibly having been used for a game of some sort. This particular group dates from 1000 b. c.
In another group there is one which somewhat resembles our modern dolls, it being fairly well shaped down to the knees. The arms are grotesquely long like the elongated ones of Japanese monkeys. The body is crudely carved of wood to represent a Nubian woman, and the doll was without doubt the beloved toy of an Egyptian child a century or more before Christ was born.
 |
| Old Egyptian dolls in British Museum; were exhumed from children's graves. One is marked 2,000 B.C. It will be noted that these dolls have neither legs nor feet; the ancient Egyptian child's extremities were swathed in yards of cloth- therefore, it perhaps was thought unnecessary to carve legs and feet? |
Another group consists of a terracotta man with a duck's head; an oriental Queen gorgeously dressed in a gilded crown only - the figure is made of bronze and has jointed arms and legs. Another figure in the group has a tiny babe in her arms.
In a museum in Berlin there is a wooden Egyptian doll with movable joints which is probably of the same period as the collection in the British Museum. There is also a fine collection of early Egyptian dolls in the Louvre, Paris, and another in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
According to Wilkinson, the children of the ancient Egyptians amused themselves with painted dolls whose hands and legs, moving on pins, were made to assume various positions by means of strings, like the modern puppets. Many of these were very crudely formed, without legs or with an imperfect representation of a single arm or leg on one side. Some had strings of beads hanging from the doubtful place of the head and others wore curious imitations of wigs.
A few exhibited a nearer approach to the human figure and some made with considerable attention to proportion were small models of the children themselves. They were colored in the most absurd manner; the more shapeless had usually the most gaudy appearance as being thought most likely to catch the eye of the infant. The show of reality was deemed more suited to the taste of an older child, and the nearer their resemblance to human objects the less they partook of artificial ornament.
Sometimes the doll was only part of a toy; for instance, a man washing clothes or kneading dough would be represented by a doll, the necessary movements indicative of his employment being imitated by the pulling of strings. Groups of soldiers were made to march in the same fashion. A crocodile doll that opened and shut its mouth with great realism was a favorite with most children in those days.
In Notes and Queries of April 21, 1906, there was the following query from an English gentleman:
"I have read somewhere, I cannot tell where, that children of the Comoro Islands use headless dolls, the reproduction of human features being forbidden by Mohammedan religion. Can any one kindly confirm or deny the above?"
In answer to the above nothing can be more conclusive than the following notes by Gustave Schlegel of the University of Leyden:
"Among the ancient Egyptians we find children's games developed in exactly the same way as today among our children. To them were known the running games, ball tossing and the doll. We have found wooden dolls that were not inferior to ours, and which were certainly dressed by the little Egyptian maid as today our girls dress their little manikins.
"There were also movable dolls, whose hands and feet could be pulled with strings; others there were made of painted wood which showed only indicationally the human form and had strings of pearls instead of hair.
"The children of the old world were supplied with dolls, although the plainer mode of dressing at that time furnished the little ladies less occupation than do our fashionable dolls of to-day. There are in the museums rude and rough dolls of wood and clay beside finer ones of wax and ivory.
 |
1. Congo iron dolls 2. Zuni Indian bead doll 3. Dolls from the Madeira Islands 4. Eskimo dolls, carved from walrus tusks |
"The doll is the first and most natural toy of the child, the girls especially, who in impulse of imitation, playing mother, converts any handy, suitable object to a doll. So effectual is this, the laws of Islam suffer therefrom.
"The Koran forbids bodily representation, but the Mohammedan child for that reason does not lose its doll. Aischa, the prophet Mohammed's nine-year-old wife, romped around with her doll in his harem, and the holy man himself was accustomed to play with them.
"A good authority on the Orient informs us that the Mohammedan woman in Bagdad sees a specter in every doll which might unexpectedly become active and do harm to her children. Dolls are therefore not given to the children as toys - but the little girls obeying the voice of Nature, nurse and play with pieces of wood and pillows instead of with the manufactured toys."
It would be wearying should I here mass the evidence and show how everywhere the doll is at home; a few illustrations will suffice:
With the children of the Arctic races, the doll plays an important part. It is present with all Siberians as a little fur monstrosity, and Wirdenskiol praises the good work of the dolls among the Tscuktchen. The Alaskan dolls are similar and made by women; the dress and exterior in imitation of adults. This applies to Indians.
Adrien Jacobsen speaks of "numerous dolls among the Eskimos, cut out of bones and mammoth teeth and dressed in furs. All the Northern people have dolls for their children as far as East Greenland and there they are found in the graves of extinct races.
"As with us it happens that we lay into the coffin the doll of a beloved child, so have Reiss and Slubel designated as dolls small originally dressed clay figures in old Peruvian graves. Dolls worked out of clay are also found amongst the Sakalaven of Madagascar."
Catlin tells us that "Indian mothers fill the cradle of the dead child with feathers arranged in the form of the child, and carry this substitute about with them; speak with it and treat it as a child.
"The Ojibways on the northern sea call these dolls Kitemagissiwin, which means unlucky doll, because through them the dead one is represented. Kohl says that the long fast-tied-together packages of the hair of the dead child contain its toys, clothes and amulets. This doll everywhere takes the place of the dead child; the sorrowing mother carries it around with her for a year; sets it in the wooden cradle at her side by the fire, and takes it with her on long journeys.
"The idea which is fixed in her mind is that the deceased child is still too small to find its way to Paradise, but through the persistent carrying of the substituted imitation the mother believes herself to help the soul along. Therefore she carries it until she fancies the soul of the little loved one has grown enough to find its own way.
"In Africa we find a similar custom. The Fingo doll plays in the Orange Free State an important role with the natives. Every Fingo maid receives upon maturity a doll which she retains until she becomes a mother. Then her mother gives her a new doll which she carefully conserves until she has a second child, and so forth. These dolls are held as sacred and the owner never voluntarily parts with them. Casalis reports a similar custom among the Basutos."
0 Comments