But
the spiritual significance of this attitude is lost with the
decay of primitive beliefs. It survives, but merely as a gesture
of insult. The symbolism comes to have reference to the nates as
the excretory focus, the seat of the anus. In any case it ignores
any sexual attractiveness in this part of the body. Exhibitionism
of this kind, therefore, can scarcely arise in persons of any
sensitiveness or aesthetic perception, even putting aside the
question of modesty, and there seems to be little trace of it in
classic antiquity when the nates were regarded as objects of
beauty. Among the Egyptians, however, we gather from Herodotus
(Bk. II, Chapter LX) that at a certain popular religious festival
men and women would go in boats on the Nile, singing and playing,
and when they approached a town the women on the boats would
insult the women of the town by injurious language and by
exposing themselves. Among the Arabs, however, the specific
gesture we are concerned with is noted, and a man to whom
vengeance is forbidden would express his feelings by exposing his
posterior and strewing earth on his head (Wellhausen, _Rests
Arabischen Heidentums_, 1897, p.
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