Both the Dance of the 7 Veils and Little Egypt really highlight the way Victorian prudery and stiff upper lip mentality fuelled a sort of eroticism based on repression and "peek a boo," instead of a healthy bodacious ness. The Dance of the 7 veils originated from a play written by the British playwright Oscar Wilde titled Salome and this was written in 1891. Then Richard Strauss wrote an Opera which was inspired by Wilde's play after its enormous success in its 1902 debut in Berlin. 

The play is based on the accounts in the New Testament regarding the Apostles after the death and resurrection of Christ. 

It is mentioned that at a birthday party for Herod, Herodia's daughter called Salome performed a dance that greatly pleased him. He promised to give her anything she wanted, "even half of my kingdom!" At her mother's urging the girl asked for John the Baptist's head on a tray. The king felt unable to go back on his promise and the commands were issued and the head did arrive on a tray. In the play Herod is portrayed as lusting after Salome, while Salome, in her turn, desires John the Baptist; she finally satisfies her corrupt wishes by kissing the lips of the severed head of John, who had spurned her. This story proved popular in Christian art from an early period and became especially popular during the Renaissance, exemplified by the work of the painter Masolino da Panicale. Salome has also been strikingly portrayed by the 19th-century artists Gustave Moreau and Aubrey Beardsley. 

Artistic license being Artistic license meant that the whole plot ran away with itself culminating in depicting sex in a very debased and smeggy way and the associations with the violence live right up to this day. Sir Norman Vincent Stevas, a prominent conservative politician was asked about his views on "Sex and Violence." He brought the entire house down by saying that he likes sex but not violence. 

So where did the Dance of the 7 veils come in then? The entire thing hangs around the mention in the Bible that Salome danced for Herod that greatly pleased him. There is no mention that the dance involved any veils, let alone 7 of them and no mention that the dance was necessarily seductive. It is Victorian uptight attitudes towards sex and the fundamental roles of woman around that time that create the very notion of the word "seduction." Seduction implies a woman going into a submissive role and doing things such as wearing sexy attire, in order to arouse the interest in the man. This is a very complex and controversial area but I am trying to convey the sort of mentality that may have existed around the Victorian Era and of which we still have major overtones now. It is this mentality that fuelled Oriental Art and the viewer must always take this into account, not withstanding that the works of Art are really beautiful and a lot can be learned from them. 

Into this picture comes Ishtar and it is from this that the notion of the 7 veils and everything else with it has come from. Ishtar is a complex character in ancient Sumerian legends that go back some 4,000 years. The word Sumerian relates to the oldest written language in existence. This had a tremendous impact on the development of the ancient cultures around Mesopotamia right up to the Christian era. This is the region in Southwest Asia where the world's earliest civilizations developed, between the Tirgris and Euphrates rivers and currently the area is now roughly covered by Eastern Syria, Southeastern Turkey and most of Iraq. Also into the picture comes another character called Tammuz. 

Ishtar's primary role was a fertility figure but she then took on a variety of identities, surrounded in myth by death and disaster, a goddess of contradictory connotations and forces: fire and fire-quenching, rejoicing and tears, fair play and enmity. She is associated with the planet Venus and the Moon God along with many other associations hence the associations with love, passion, sex and so on. 

Tammuz was also a fertility figure. Concentrating on a pastoral role and then moving onto a more agricultural deity. Again many complex relationships with other entities, gods and goddesses. Many important celebrations and festivals around the March/April period were to do with the rebirth of Spring and clear associations with these all important 2 figures. 

Amongst the numerous tales and legends there is a kind of common strand which is an association with Ishtar and Tammuz and a duality of death and then rebirth, symbolising obviously the seasons of Autumn and Winter and then Spring and Summer. In one legend it is depicted that the two divine lovers, Ishtar, the goddess of Love and War and Tammuz, the god of the Harvest loved each other dearly and were very happy together. But over time the process of Death slowly took over Tammuz and he then went into the Underworld. 

Ishtar, heartbroken, set upon a plan to go into the Underworld and rescue Tammuz and get him by her side in the Heavens again. She was confident that her dominion over love was greater than that over death, great enough to bring Tammuz back up to earth to rule at her side. 

Ishtar gathered her seven talismans of power. These were 1) Her golden crown 2) pendants hanging from her ears 3) A jewelled necklace 4) jewels hanging at her breasts 5) The bracelets on her arms and ankles 6) A girdle embroidered with the birthstones of the Universe 7) Vestments that were wrapped around her form. She then descended to earth, where the entrance into the land of the dead waited for her. Next she went through the most amazing set of adventures and battles involving many other deities and gods, making the adventures in Lord of the Rings seem quite tame, and amongst these she gave up her talismans of Power one by one. This Magical Story is all about that there is basically more Good than there is Evil. A heartwarming legend where good triumphs over evil and in a way saying though there is so much bad in the world, we should never forget that there is more good than bad. I have written out the full Legend on the following page - Ishtar's Descent. 

Of course you dear reader can see how uptight 19th Century Victorian playwrights and writers would instead take this wonderful Legend and change a few things here and there, skip over the vast legend and then before we know where we are, we have this story where Ishtar donned 7 veils and danced a seductive dance, taking off the veils one by one. Nudity in ancient times was normal. You only have to see any sort of ancient works of art to prove that. So the notion of seductively removing veils one by one and ultimately revealing a naked figure in these ancient times would be as daft as trying to do a striptease at a nudist camp. 

The Salome play and opera, excellent and entertaining as it may have been has nothing so far as I can see to do with belly dancing at all, and is a clear case study of how Entertainment is underpinned by whatever fears or prejudices a society may have at the time. 

It must be added that I have not seen any accounts of veils being used in the Middle East for dancing until the turn of the century. If you consider the harem dancing with the women, I really can't see how veils would be used, but I can see how veils would be used if there is an underpinning attitude that it is "naughty" to uncover the body or for stage performance where from a distance the veil would make interesting shapes and patterns as it is moved. Both these things in terms of Middle Eastern dance came about only at the turn of the 20th century. For example Isadora Duncan was experimenting with Middle Eastern motifs as she created modern dance. Fond of swirling fabric, she frequently incorporated flowing dresses and scarves into her choreography.

It is also believed that the costumes at the Salome play would have started developing the "bra and belt" idea revealing parts of the body but fully hiding other parts. This is the start of the "peek a boo" mentality whose roots lie with the Adam and Eve accounts which is the 1st book of the Bible. 

So the belly dancing costumes, even the very modest ones have nothing at all to do with the Middle East. I don't think it is even accurate to say they were inspired by Hollywood and the Far East. They were invented in the 20th century and were originally worn in settings outside the Middle East. Showing even small amounts of body must have been the equivalent of wearing going topless and a tiny G string nowadays when you consider that even Victorian ladies were not supposed to show their ankles. 

Meanwhile Little Egypt seems to be a collective term for exotic dancers inspired from the Middle East. It is not clear who the first "Little Egypt" was, though according to the reliable Ms Elliott of the Shira web site where she says that "there is a book called Looking For Little Egypt by Donna Carlton which focused entirely on careful research of the facts behind the Little Egypt legends, Carlton concludes, "Fahreda Mahzar probably did dance at the 1893 fair, but not under the name 'Little Egypt'." Ms Elliot mentions that Carlton discovered that the first dancer to call herself Little Egypt was Ashea Wabe." Please see the Links page to view the Shira web site. 

Before looking at what happened after the World Fairs, let us find out the role of the Gypsies.