Mask (through the medium of Fr. and Span. from the Arabic maskharat, 'a jester') is an artificial covering for the face, worn by many different peoples for different purposes. Masks are common amongst the inhabitants of New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the adjoining islands, amongst the North American Indians and the Eskimo, the Chinese, the aborigines of Australia, and some Negro tribes. The masks these peoples use are generally very hideous and repellent in aspect, being designed expressly to inspire terror in the mind of the beholder. The primary object is to scare away the demons and spirits who bring misfortunes, diseases, national calamities, or other evils upon the tribe; the exorcism is usually practised by processions of masked men, who dance and utter loud cries calculated to frighten the enemy away. Where totemistic beliefs prevail, it is customary for the people to celebrate dances clad in the skins of wild animals, and on such occasions masks are worn shaped to resemble the animals represented in the dance. It is highly probable that practices of a similar nature were current amongst the primitive Greeks, Egyptians, and other peoples. The myth of the snaky-haired Gorgon is traced back to this origin; so too is the practice of covering the faces of the dead with a mask, intended to keep the demons away from them whilst they were on their journey to the abode of shades, a practice common to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, and the ancient Peruvians and Mexicans. Death-masks of gold have been found in tombs of Mycene and Kertch; those of the Peruvians were made of silver and wood; some found at Carthage were of clay, painted in divers colours; and copper and wood were used in Mexico. Masks, besides being worn by living men, were sometimes attributed to their gods, as in ancient Egypt and Greece, and in India, or were put on over the faces of the gods' images, as in ancient Mexico. The Greeks, moreover, in their theatrical performances, employed masks shaped to represent the expression of a particular emotion or passion, as rage, grief, sly cunning, &c. These, made of linen, tree-bark, leather, or even wood, had large funnel-shaped mouth-openings, for the purpose of giving the voice of the actor a penetrating sound (whence Lat. per-sona = 'a mask'), so that it might be heard all over the vast theatres in which he had to act. Passing on to the Romans, the custom of putting masked actors on the stage was transmitted by them to the Italian theatres of the middle ages; nearly all the actors in the Commedia dell' Arte wore masks. The custom was also practised in the
English Masque (q.v.) of Elizabethan and subsequent times. The Masquerade (q.v.) or masked ball is a survival of the same observance; but in them the mask is worn for the purpose of disguising the identity of the wearer, as it was in the case of the Man with the Iron Mask (see IRON MASK).
See Dall, Masks, Labrets, and Certain Aboriginal Customs (Washington, 1885); Sand, Masques et Buffons (1860); Ficoroni, De Larvis Scenicis (1754); and A. B. Meyer, Masken von Neu-Guinea (1889).