It has become an indispensable piece of equipment in our wardrobe. Blue, pink or patterned, the mask is an accessory that we have, by force of circumstance, adopted on a daily basis and that we associate with the Covid-19 pandemic. However, from the theater of Antiquity to the podiums of haute couture, passing through the operating rooms, its port has taken on various cultural and religious meanings throughout history, which are not so far removed from our contemporary uses.
Historically, it remains difficult to know when the origins of the mask date back. If Paleolithic parietal paintings show masked men, the oldest masks, found in the Judean caves in Israel, date back nine thousand years. They might have been made from different materials: fabric, wood, leather, metal… Over time, these objects shaped by man might have had a function of disinhibition, celebration but also of fighting once morest evil spirits and , like our surgical masks, for protection once morest disease.
“I remember having seen one day a mask used by the Iroquois with a dark red color and intended to deceive the entourage or spirits. Putting it on was used to treat nosebleeds,” mentions Bernard Vialettes, professor emeritus of medicine and author of the book A clinical look at masks (The Harmattan, 2020). The echo between the blood and the red color of the object made it possible, as the author points out, to offer “a receptacle of illness to better free the suffering man from it”. Other masks may have had therapeutic functions, such as that of the demon Maha Kola Sanniya in Sri Lanka, which alone represented the demonic heads of eighteen distinct deities, each specific to a disease.
Exorcism and folklore
Despite the diversity of uses and representations, the sacred function of the mask is found in most ethnic groups and primitive civilizations, which wore it during their rituals. In Africa, porters might perform dances by displaying the faces of spirits or animals, mounted on their stilts. In Asia, the nuo theater resorted to it for the purpose of exorcism, to expel the demons deemed responsible for the illnesses and misfortunes of society. Finally, in Europe, the mask has long been associated with the sacred, especially among the Greeks and Romans, who wore them during religious festivals dedicated to the god Bacchus.
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