Very civil of you Dave. Ok. Before the days when oaths were made on Bibles, Korans etc. other things were used. We know for example that biblical/Hebraic oaths were often made together with placing the hand on the loins, to swear ''on the seed of Abraham''. The practice of making an oath whilst placing the hand on either your own, or someone else's, testacles was reputedly also used by the Romans. Hence the closeness of the words testament/testify and testacle. My question is - what did the ancient Egyptians hold in their hand whilst making an oath ? All the Pharoes did this when being sworn in. Clue is that it was not the testacles because the Egyptians practised sexual equality and therefore needed a gender neutral version.