What is the story behind the Evil Eye?
Professor Alan Dundes theorizes that the evil eye, which has a Middle-Eastern, Mediterranean, and Indo-European distribution pattern and was unknown in the Americas, Pacific Islands, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or Australia until the introduction of European culture, is based upon underlying beliefs about water equating to life and dryness equating to death. He posits that the true “evil” done by the evil eye is that it causes living beings to “dry up” — notably babies, milking animals, young fruit trees, and nursing mothers. The harm caused by overlooking consists of sudden vomiting or diarrhea in children, drying up of milk in nursing mothers or livestock, withering of fruit on orchard trees, and loss of potency in men. In short, the envious eye “dries up liquids,” according to Dundes — a fact that he contends demonstrates its Middle Eastern desert origins. As Dundes points out in support of this theory, evil eye belief is geographically spread out in a radiating ring from ancient Sum
