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"Early Semitic Legend State That Cain, Who Had Married Hit Stepmother, Lilith, Migrated in a Southerly Direction Towara
Africa, Where Her Shrine Hat Been Found." Thi Migration It Here Reconstructed and Painted by the Celebrated French
Artktt F. Conxion.
Her Shrine Found in Africa and a Legend
Illuminating, the Age-long Controversy Over the
i Merits of Brunette and Blonde Beauty
THD reported diicotery of a lirln
to Lilith. the trtdlUootl first wit
' of Adam; is an occurrence of fas
cinattng interest U recalls the ace-lonc
struggle for supremacy between the
blonde ul the brunette, for Lilith Is re
puted to bare been a brunette, and to
have been aupplanted by the blonde Eve
In Adam's affections.
The discovery was made by Dr. Ken
nedy, of the British expeditionary force
tlut has been fighting the Germans la
AvrTvce Ftua At
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"The Expulsion of Adam and Eve From Eden I Interpreted in the Af
rican Legend a a Punishment of the Man for Succumbing to the
Charm of the Blonde Woman." .From the Painting by A. F. NowelL
Omaha Sunday Bee Magazine Page
resting
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Cast Africa. ' Dr. Kennedy Is a well
known authority on Uganda folk-lore.
The contest over the relative superior
ity of the blonde and brunette types is
generally admitted to be a old as the
human race that Is to say, as old as
Adam and Eve. It is raging to-day as
fiercely as ever. There is a considerable
mass of evidence to ebow that man con
siders the blonde woman a crevtare of
superior delicacy, a luxury to be pre
ferred by the most powerful males of the
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tribe, Just as Adam preferred Eve to
LUltn, On the other hand, the majority
of men appear to be taking brunette
wives, for the latter type is growing more
numerous in the countries where races '
are mixed. After all, wtoo shall decide
whether Lillian Russell is preferable to
Una Oavalleri?
It Is mentions! as a curious fact br
Havelock Ellis that a man who has loved
a brunette woman will often transfer his
affections to a blonde, but when once he
has experienced the ascendency of the
blonde type tne brunette becomes abso
lutely repugnant to him.
Blondness has always been a charac
ter of aristocracy in Europe. The late
Colonel Charles E. Woodruff, the noted
United States army authority on the ef
fects of tropical light on white men,
commenting on blondltude, says: "The
strange .tendency of actresses to bleach
the hair has it origin in the admiration
for the blonde ruling Aryan aristocracy,
just aa in ancient Greece.
"The devil and all bis imps are almost
always pictured as brunettes," continues
Colonel Woodruff, "as they are looked
upon as a lower order of celestial beings.
Similarly the villain of the drama is gen
erally brunette, while the hero and hero
ine are more apt to be staged as blonds."
We have seen that there has generally
been a tendency to regard the blonde as
a finer type. Nevertheless, Dr. John H.
Kellogg and Dr. A. J. Held, at the recent
Race Betterment Congress at San Fran
cisco, boldly declared v that the Ideal'
American woman of the future would be
a brunette, because that type lias more
Vitality and endurance, and is especially
adapted to flourish under American con
ditions or life.
Now Lilith, the first brunette, was a
wild, passionate, half-human creature,
While the blonde Eve seems to have been
inore gentle, wily and feminine.
Ulith is spoken of as the first wire of
Adam in the oldest rabbinical writings,
and the earliest Asiatic legends persis
tently mention her. The Talmudtsta call
her Adam's first wife. Although the
Bible does not give her this distinction,
it does mention her in Isaiah, chapter 34.
verse 14. The Hebrew word Lilith is
translated "screech .owl in our King
Jamea version, the verse reading J'The
acreech owl also shall rest there and find
for herself a place of rest" The trans
lators probably shrank from bringing
the strange Oriental myth into the Eng
lish Bible by using the word "Lilith."
The existence of a Lilith legend in Cen
tral Africa agrees with Hebrew myths
which describe the flight of the first
brunette and ner stepson Cain towards
Africa.
The expeditionary force to which Dr.
Kennedy was attached marched directly
across from Nairobi toward the enemy's
country over tbe Great Slave Road. Thla
road, which runa for a thousand miles
from the heart of the African continent,
whitened with human skeletons and was
watered for centuries with tbe blood and
tears of shackled slaves, to its terminus
at the great alave port of Mombassa. is
now a military road.
On turning the flank of the Juhl Hills,
tbe expedition turned from the slave road
to where, towering before them, thrust
into the sky the twin snow-capped peaks
of Mount Kilimanjaro, over 19,250 feet
high. Avoiding even the regular though
rarely trodden track that led through
the defile, and following a trail unmarked
on any chart, over a part of the moun
tain never before trodden by . a whit
man's foot, tbe expeditionary force ad-
Copyright. 1H5, by the Star Company.
verier hhm
ette i
. .
Dante Rostetti,'
Beautiful Picture
of" Lilith, "Now
In the Metropoli
tan Museum, in
Which He
Expressed Her
Allurements
Exquisitely, But
Departed from
the Legend by
Giving Her Red
Instead of Black
Hair
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vanced. its artillery consisting only of
two light machine guns, carried on mule
back.
Up and up, leaving the sweltering heat
of a tropical jungle near the equator in
July, the expedition climbed into the
blistering cold of the eternal snows. A
few miles to the south, a German fort
with heavy modern guns guarded the de
file, but this high mountain track, un
known and almost unscalable, was un
defended. More than once. Dr. Kennedy
writes, he found himself wondering why
this track, so . obscure, should be evi
dently so well-traveled.
Over the -crest they passed, and down
into German East Africa beyond. About
ialf-way down the mountain, the path
that they were following suddenly forked,
a branch ascending up a cleft in the peak.
The doctor, who was the ethnologist of
th party, questioned the native guide,
a Zmbl't chief, in bis own dialect, aud by
persistent queries elicited the i., ormatlon
that there was a ehrine up ;he cleft,
where the Zinbi'i worshipped L'Luth, a
demon, who was buried there.
Devil-worship is common enough in East
Africa, but demons are not considered
mortal. The burial place of a demon was
a piece of folk-lore new to Dr. Kennedy.
Securing permission from the senior of
ficer In command to make a reconnoitre
while the column made its day-time halt
or In order to secure secrecy the expedi
tionary force marched only at night Dr.
Kennedy took the native guide with him
and proceeded up the cleft in the rock.
After a etiff climb of five hours tbe
doctor found himself in front of a cava
Great Britain Rlvhta R.r.4
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in the mountain, partly filled up by a
wall of cyclopean masonry, erected with
out mortar, but now fallen into ruina.
Around. him, everywhere on bushes, on
trees, and even stuck in the ground,
were little fetishes made of a stick
painted red with a tuft of yellow wool
on one side and a tuft of black wool on
the. other. . The Zmbi't guide explained
that these fetishes were offered by the
native women, shortly after their mar
riage, to secure the protection of L'l.uth
(Lilith) against a fair-haired demon Hav
vak (Eve) who sucked the breath or new
born Infants while they slept. These
fetishes -were intended to represent thu
first man (Adam) and his two wives
L'Luth (Lilith) of the dark hair, and
.Havvak (Eve) whose hair was golden.
The Zmbl'i legend of the expulsion of
Adam from the Garden of Eden differs
widely from the story given in Genesis.
According to the East African version,
Dr. Kennedy reports. Adam and Lilith
were created together, both full-grown,
. and mates for each other. Th'tham
(Adam) was light-skinned with brown
hair, but L'Luth (Lilith) was "dusky as
night, with a storm of red-black hair."
Many children were born to this pair,
some peaceful like Adam, others dark and
fierce like their mother.
In order that mankind might not be
come hopelessly wicked. Lilith was
spirited away, and. for awhile. Adam was
alone. Then, one night, aa he lay in a
deep sleea, Havvak (Eve) was made from
on of hia bones, "mado of a little bit of
mm so that she should be as big as be.
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and Eve was to be pure, as God had
decided not to bring any more people into
the world.
Then the snako came and spoke to Eve.
He took her to a tree with very sweet
fruit. When Eve ate this fruit,, slie be
came full of life and took some of the
Intoxicating truit to Adam, who ate it
also. Their love, which had been cold
and distant, became more real, and from
their embrace, the giants were born.
Cain, according to the East African
version, which calls him K'hen, was one
of these giants.
The Zmbi'i legend says nothing of the
killing of Abel, but tells that Cain was
banished beyond the confines of the land
that God had set apart for Adam and
Eve. In this land of darkness which
was banishment be met Lilith, his step
mother, as young and as gloriously beau
tiful as ever, and with her he wandered
south for many years, passing the great
desert. There they lived together for
centuries and peopled all the land south
of the Great Baud (Sahara). At last
Lilith died, and Cain buried her in the
cave on Mount Kilimanjaro, looking
southward, where her spirit could see
none whom were not her children.
In view of the fact that hair color Cas
been shown to be a Mendelian character
that it is transmitted from parent to
child, that it is liable to revert back to
Its primitive blonde or brunette color
this referring of the different types of
humanity to Eve and Lilith is plainly a
myth method of explaining a racial dlri
slon that goes back to the creation of
man.
i Purr
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