MOUSE, THE. According to a story in I. Samuel vi., when the Philistines sent back to the Israelites the Ark of Yahweh, which they had captured, they sent back also " golden mice " as a votive offering. And Isaiah lxvi. 17 condemns the mystic sacrifice of mice as a heathen abomination. According to Mainionides, field mice were sacrificed by the Harranians. The Encyel. Bibl. states: " Small votive offerings iu the shape of mice have even been found (see Frazer, Pans, 5, 290), and it is possible that the worship of mice (especially white mice) may have originated not so much from the survival of a mouse-totem as to propitiate mice in general and to induce them not to ravage the cornfields (cp. Frazer, Paus, 5, 289f.)." Donald A. Mackenzie thinks that " the mouse feasts referred to by ancient writers may have been held to ensure long life among those who, like the Egyptians, connected the mouse with the moon, the source of fertility and growth and the measurer of the days of man." In Egypt the mouse was associated with
the lunar god Thoth, and in Greece with Apollo. Homer refers to a Smintheus Apollo, that is to say, " Mouse Apollo." In several counties of England and in Scot land mice were at one time used as a cure for various child-ailments. They seem to have been used for the same purpose in ancient Egypt. Professor G. Elliot Smith writes (A.E., p. 43): " The occasional presence of the remains of mice in the alimentary canals of children, under circumstances which prove that the small rodent had been eaten after being skinned, is a discovery of very great interest, for Dr. Netolitzky informs me that the body of a mouse was the last resort of medical practi tioners iu the East several millennia later as the remedy for children in extremis."