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+Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Evolution of the Dragon
+
+Author: G. Elliot Smith
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2007 [EBook #22038]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Colin Bell, Dave Maddock and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file made using scans of public domain works at the
+University of Georgia.)
+
+
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+
+
+
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
+
+BY G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
+
+PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
+
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+
+Manchester: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
+
+LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY
+
+London, New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Some explanation is due to the reader of the form and scope of these
+elaborations of the lectures which I have given at the John Rylands
+Library during the last three winters.
+
+They deal with a wide range of topics, and the thread which binds them
+more or less intimately into one connected story is only imperfectly
+expressed in the title "The Evolution of the Dragon".
+
+The book has been written in rare moments of leisure snatched from a
+variety of arduous war-time occupations; and it reveals only too plainly
+the traces of this disjointed process of composition. On 23 February,
+1915, I presented to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society
+an essay on the spread of certain customs and beliefs in ancient times
+under the title "On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of
+the Practice of Mummification," and in my Rylands Lecture two weeks
+later I summed up the general conclusions.[1] In view of the lively
+controversies that followed the publication of the former of these
+addresses, I devoted my next Rylands Lecture (9 February, 1916) to the
+discussion of "The Relationship of the Egyptian Practice of
+Mummification to the Development of Civilization". In preparing this
+address for publication in the _Bulletin_ some months later so much
+stress was laid upon the problems of "Incense and Libations" that I
+adopted this more concise title for the elaboration of the lecture which
+forms the first chapter of this book. This will explain why so many
+matters are discussed in that chapter which have little or no
+connexion either with "Incense and Libations" or with "The Evolution
+of the Dragon".
+
+The study of the development of the belief in water's life-giving
+attributes, and their personification in the gods Osiris, Ea, Soma
+[Haoma] and Varuna, prepared the way for the elucidation of the history
+of "Dragons and Rain Gods" in my next lecture (Chapter II). What played
+a large part in directing my thoughts dragon-wards was the discussion of
+certain representations of the Indian Elephant upon Precolumbian
+monuments in, and manuscripts from, Central America (_Nature_, 25 Nov.,
+1915; 16 Dec., 1915; and 27 Jan., 1916). For in the course of
+investigating the meaning of these remarkable designs I discovered that
+the Elephant-headed rain-god of America had attributes identical with
+those of the Indian Indra (and of Varuna and Soma) and the Chinese
+dragon. The investigation of these identities established the fact
+that the American rain-god was transmitted across the Pacific from India
+via Cambodia.
+
+The intensive study of dragons impressed upon me the importance of the
+part played by the Great Mother, especially in her Babylonian _avatar_
+as Tiamat, in the evolution of the famous wonder-beast. Under the
+stimulus of Dr. Rendel Harris's Rylands Lecture on "The Cult of
+Aphrodite," I therefore devoted my next address (14 November, 1917) to
+the "Birth of Aphrodite" and a general discussion of the problems of
+Olympian obstetrics.
+
+Each of these addresses was delivered as an informal demonstration of
+large series of lantern projections; and, as Mr. Guppy insisted upon the
+publication of the lectures in the _Bulletin_, it became necessary,
+as a rule, many months after the delivery of each address, to rearrange
+my material and put into the form of a written narrative the story
+which had previously been told mainly by pictures and verbal comments
+upon them.
+
+In making these elaborations additional facts were added and new points
+of view emerged, so that the printed statements bear little resemblance
+to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such
+transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written
+report of what was essentially an ocular demonstration, unless every one
+of the numerous pictures is reproduced.
+
+Each of the first two lectures was printed before the succeeding lecture
+was set up in type. For these reasons there is a good deal of
+repetition, and in successive lectures a wider interpretation of
+evidence mentioned in the preceding addresses. Had it been possible to
+revise the whole book at one time, and if the pressure of other duties
+had permitted me to devote more time to the work, these blemishes might
+have been eliminated and a coherent story made out of what is little
+more than a collection of data and tags of comment. No one is more
+conscious than the writer of the inadequacy of this method of presenting
+an argument of such inherent complexity as the dragon story: but my
+obligation to the Rylands Library gave me no option in the matter: I had
+to attempt the difficult task in spite of all the unpropitious
+circumstances. This book must be regarded, then, not as a coherent
+argument, but merely as some of the raw material for the study of the
+dragon's history. In my lecture (13 November, 1918) on "The Meaning of
+Myths," which will be published in the _Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library_, I have expounded the general conclusions that emerge from the
+studies embodied in these three lectures; and in my forthcoming book,
+"The Story of the Flood," I have submitted the whole mass of evidence to
+examination in detail, and attempted to extract from it the real story
+of mankind's age-long search for the elixir of life.
+
+In the earliest records from Egypt and Babylonia it is customary to
+portray a king's beneficence by representing him initiating irrigation
+works. In course of time he came to be regarded, not merely as the giver
+of the water which made the desert fertile, but as himself the
+personification and the giver of the vital powers of water. The
+fertility of the land and the welfare of the people thus came to be
+regarded as dependent upon the king's vitality. Hence it was not
+illogical to kill him when his virility showed signs of failing and so
+imperilled the country's prosperity. But when the view developed that
+the dead king acquired a new grant of vitality in the other world he
+became the god Osiris, who was able to confer even greater boons of
+life-giving to the land and people than was the case before. He was the
+Nile, and he fertilized the land. The original dragon was a beneficent
+creature, the personification of water, and was identified with kings
+and gods.
+
+But the enemy of Osiris became an evil dragon, and was identified with
+Set.
+
+The dragon-myth, however, did not really begin to develop until an
+ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother, as
+the giver of life, to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood;
+and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her
+murderous act led to her being compared with and ultimately identified
+with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of the
+dragon is a much distorted rumour of this incident; and in the process
+of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of
+interpretation and also confusion with the legendary account of the
+conflict between Horus and Set.
+
+When a substitute was obtained to replace the blood the slaying of a
+human victim was no longer logically necessary: but an explanation had
+to be found for the persistence of this incident in the story. Mankind
+(no longer a mere individual human sacrifice) had become sinful and
+rebellious (the act of rebellion being complaints that the king or god
+was growing old) and had to be destroyed as a punishment for this
+treason. The Great Mother continued to act as the avenger of the king or
+god. But the enemies of the god were also punished by Horus in the
+legend of Horus and Set. The two stories hence became confused the one
+with the other. The king Horus took the place of the Great Mother as the
+avenger of the gods. As she was identified with the moon, he became the
+Sun-god, and assumed many of the Great Mother's attributes, and also
+became her son. In the further development of the myth, when the Sun-god
+had completely usurped his mother's place, the infamy of her deeds of
+destruction seems to have led to her being confused with the rebellious
+men who were now called the followers of Set, Horus's enemy. Thus an
+evil dragon emerged from this blend of the attributes of the Great
+Mother and Set. This is the Babylonian Tiamat. From the amazingly
+complex jumble of this tissue of confusion all the incidents of the
+dragon-myth were derived.
+
+When attributes of the Water-god or his enemy became assimilated with
+those of the Great Mother and the Warrior Sun-god, the animals with
+which these deities were identified came to be regarded individually and
+collectively as concrete expressions of the Water-god's powers. Thus the
+cow and the gazelle, the falcon and the eagle, the lion and the serpent,
+the fish and the crocodile became symbols of the life-giving and the
+life-destroying powers of water, and composite monsters or dragons were
+invented by combining parts of these various creatures to express the
+different manifestations of the vital powers of water. The process of
+elaboration of the attributes of these monsters led to the development
+of an amazingly complex myth: but the story became still further
+involved when the dragon's life-controlling powers became confused with
+man's vital spirit and identified with the good or evil genius which was
+regarded as the guest, welcome or unwelcome, of every individual's body,
+and the arbiter of his destiny. In my remarks on the _ka_ and the
+_fravashi_ I have merely hinted at the vast complexity of these elements
+of confusion.
+
+Had I been familiar with [Archbishop] Söderblom's important
+monograph,[2] when I was writing Chapters I and III, I might have
+attempted to indicate how vital a part the confusion of the individual
+_genius_ with the mythical wonder-beast has played in the history of the
+myths relating to the latter. For the identification of the dragon with
+the vital spirit of the individual explains why the stories of the
+former appealed to the selfish interest of every human being. At the
+time the lecture on "Incense and Libations" was written, I had no idea
+that the problems of the _ka_ and the _fravashi_ had any connexion with
+those relating to the dragon. But in the third chapter a quotation from
+Professor Langdon's account of "A Ritual of Atonement for a Babylonian
+King" indicates that the Babylonian equivalent of the _ka_ and the
+_fravashi_, "my god who walks at my side," presents many points of
+affinity to a dragon.
+
+When in the lecture on "Incense and Libations" I ventured to make the
+daring suggestion that the ideas underlying the Egyptian conception of
+the _ka_ were substantially identical with those entertained by the
+Iranians in reference to the _fravashi_, I was not aware of the fact
+that such a comparison had already been made. In [Archbishop]
+Söderblom's monograph, which contains a wealth of information in
+corroboration of the views set forth in Chapter I, the following
+statement occurs: "L'analyse, faite par M. Brede-Kristensen (_Ægypternes
+forestillinger om livet efter döden_, 14 ss. Kristiania, 1896) du _ka_
+égyptien, jette une vive lumière sur notre question, par la frappante
+analogie qui semble exister entre le sens originaire de ces deux termes
+_ka_ et _fravashi_" (p. 58, note 4). "La similitude entre le _ka_ et la
+_fravashi_ a été signalée dejà par Nestor Lhote, _Lettres écrites
+d'Égypte_, note, selon Maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie
+égyptiennes_, I, 47, note 3."
+
+In support of the view, which I have submitted in Chapter I, that the
+original idea of the _fravashi_, like that of the _ka_, was suggested by
+the placenta and the fœtal membranes, I might refer to the specific
+statement (Farvardin-Yasht, XXIII, 1) that "les fravashis tiennent en
+ordre l'enfant dans le sein de sa mère et l'enveloppent de sorte qu'il
+ne meurt pas" (_op. cit._, Söderblom, p. 41, note 1). The _fravashi_
+"nourishes and protects" (p. 57): it is "the nurse" (p. 58): it is
+always feminine (p. 58). It is in fact the placenta, and is also
+associated with the functions of the Great Mother. "Nous voyons dans
+fravashi une personification de la force vitale, conservée et exercée
+aussi après la mort. La fravashi est le principe de vie, la faculté qu'a
+l'homme de se soutenir par la nourriture, de manger, d'absorber et ainsi
+d'exister et de se développer. Cette étymologie et le rôle attributé à
+la fravashi dans le développement de l'embryon, des animaux, des plantes
+rappellent en quelque sorte, comme le remarque M. Foucher, l'idée
+directrice de Claude Bernard. Seulement la fravashi n'a jamais été une
+abstraction. La fravashi est une puissance vivante, un _homunculus in
+homine_, un être personnifié comme du reste toutes les sources de vie et
+de mouvement que l'homme non civilisé aperçoit dans son organisme.
+
+"Il ne faut pas non plus considérer la fravashi comme un double de
+l'homme, elle en est plutôt une partie, un hôte intime qui continue son
+existence après la mort aux mêmes conditions qu'avant, et qui oblige
+les vivants à lui fournir les aliments nécessaires" (_op. cit._, p. 59).
+
+Thus the _fravashi_ has the same remarkable associations with
+nourishment and placental functions as the _ka_. As a further suggestion
+of its connexion with the Great Mother as the inaugurator of the year,
+and in virtue of her physiological (uterine) functions the
+moon-controlled measurer of the month, it is important to note that "Le
+19^e jour de chaque mois est également consecré aux fravashis en
+général. Le premier mois porte aussi le nom de Farvardîn. Quant aux
+formes des fêtes mensuelles, elles semblent conformes à celles que nous
+allons rappeler [les fêtes célébrées en l'honneur des mortes]" (_op.
+cit._, p. 10).
+
+But the _fravashi_ was not only associated with the Great Mother, but
+also with the Water-god or Good Dragon, for it controlled the waters of
+irrigation and gave fertility to the soil (_op. cit._, p. 36). The
+_fravashi_ was also identified with the third member of the primitive
+Trinity, the Warrior Sun-god, not merely in the general sense as the
+adversary of the powers of evil, but also in the more definite form of
+the Winged Disk (_op. cit._, pp. 67 and 68).
+
+In all these respects the _fravashi_ is brought into close association
+with the dragon, so that in addition to being "the divine and immortal
+element" (_op. cit._, p. 51), it became the genius or spirit that
+possesses a man and shapes his conduct and regulates his behaviour. It
+was in fact the expression of a crude attempt on the part of the early
+psychologists of Iran to explain the working of the instinct of
+self-preservation.
+
+In the text of Chapters I and III I have referred to the Greek,
+Babylonian, Chinese, and Melanesian variants of essentially the same
+conception. Söderblom refers to an interesting parallel among the
+Karens, whose _kelah_ corresponds to the Iranian _fravashi_ (p. 54, Note
+2: compare also A. E. Crawley, "The Idea of the Soul," 1909).
+
+In the development of the dragon-myth astronomical factors played a very
+obtrusive part: but I have deliberately refrained from entering into a
+detailed discussion of them, because they were not primarily the real
+causal agents in the origin of the myth. When the conception of a
+sky-world or a heaven became drawn into the dragon story it came to
+play so prominent a part as to convince most writers that the myth was
+primarily and essentially astronomical. But it is clear that originally
+the myth was concerned solely with the regulation of irrigation systems
+and the search upon earth for an elixir of life.
+
+When I put forward the suggestion that the annual inundation of the Nile
+provided the information for the first measurement of the year, I was
+not aware of the fact that Sir Norman Lockyer ("The Dawn of Astronomy,"
+1894, p. 209), had already made the same claim and substantiated it by
+much fuller evidence than I have brought together here.
+
+In preparing these lectures I have received help from so large a number
+of correspondents that it is difficult to enumerate all of them. But I
+am under a special debt of gratitude to Dr. Alan Gardiner for calling my
+attention to the fact that the common rendering of the Egyptian word
+_didi_ as "mandrake" was unjustifiable, and to Mr. F. Ll. Griffith for
+explaining its true meaning and for lending me the literature relating
+to this matter. Miss Winifred M. Crompton, the Assistant Keeper of the
+Egyptian Department in the Manchester Museum, gave me very material
+assistance by bringing to my attention some very important literature
+which otherwise would have been overlooked; and both she and Miss
+Dorothy Davison helped me with the drawings that illustrate this volume.
+Mr. Wilfrid Jackson gave me much of the information concerning shells
+and cephalopods which forms such an essential part of the argument, and
+he also collected a good deal of the literature which I have made use
+of. Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., of Cambridge, lent me a number of books
+and journals which I was unable to obtain in Manchester; and Mr. Donald
+A. Mackenzie, of Edinburgh, has poured in upon me a stream of
+information, especially upon the folk-lore of Scotland and India. Nor
+must I forget to acknowledge the invaluable help and forbearance of
+Mr. Henry Guppy, of the John Rylands Library, and Mr. Charles W. E.
+Leigh, of the University Library. To all of these and to the still
+larger number of correspondents who have helped me I offer my most
+grateful thanks.
+
+During the three years in which these lectures were compiled I have
+been associated with Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, F.R.S., and Mr. T. H. Pear in
+their psychological work in the military hospitals, and the influence of
+this interesting experience is manifest upon every page of this volume.
+
+But perhaps the most potent factor of all in shaping my views and
+directing my train of thought has been the stimulating influence of Mr.
+W. J. Perry's researches, which are converting ethnology into a real
+science and shedding a brilliant light upon the early history of
+civilization.
+
+G. ELLIOT SMITH.
+
+9 December, 1918.
+
+
+[1: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilisation in the East and in
+America," _Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, January-March, 1916.]
+
+[2: Nathan Söderblom, "Les Fravashis Étude sur les Traces dans le
+Mazdéisme d'une Ancienne Conception sur la Survivance des Morts," Paris,
+1899.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.   INCENSE AND LIBATIONS                                    1
+
+ CHAPTER II.  DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS                                   76
+
+ CHAPTER III. THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE                                 140
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                             FACING PAGE
+ Fig. 1.--The conventional Egyptian representation of the burning
+     of incense and the pouring of libations                           2
+
+ Fig. 2.--Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth, representing a
+     restoration of the early mummy found at Medûm by Professor
+     Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of
+     Surgeons in London                                               16
+
+ Fig. 3.--A mould taken from a life-mask found in the Pyramid of Teta
+     by Mr. Quibell                                                   17
+
+ Fig. 4.--Portrait statue of an Egyptian lady of the Pyramid Age      18
+
+ Fig. 5.--Statue of an Egyptian noble of the Pyramid Age to show the
+     technical skill in the representation of life-like eyes          52
+
+ Fig. 6.--Representation of the ancient Mexican worship of the Sun    70
+
+ Fig. 7.--A mediæval picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its cloud
+     (after the late Professor W. Anderson)                           80
+
+ Fig. 8.--A Chinese Dragon (after de Groot)                           80
+
+ Fig. 9.--Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon                      81
+
+ Fig. 10.--Babylonian Weather God                                     81
+
+ Fig. 11.--Reproduction of a picture in the Maya Codex Troano
+     representing the Rain-god _Chac_ treading upon the Serpent's
+     head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the
+     god is pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-goddess stands upon the
+     Serpent's tail                                                   84
+
+ Fig. 12.--Another representation of the elephant-headed Rain-god. He
+     is holding thunderbolts, conventionalized in a hund-like form.
+     The serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the
+     rain-waters.                                                     84
+
+ Fig. 13.--A page (the 36th) of the Dresden Maya Codex.               86
+
+ Fig. 14.--A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature
+     compounded of the antelope and fish of Ea.--B. The "sea-goat"
+     as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.--C to K--a series of varieties
+     of the _makara_ from the Buddhist Rails at Buddha Gaya and
+     Mathura, circa 70 B.C.--70 A.D., after Cunningham
+     ("Archæological Survey of India," Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX and
+     XXIX).--L. The _makara_ as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir
+     George Birdwood. It is not difficult to understand how, in the
+     course of the easterly diffusion of culture, such a picture
+     should develop into the Chinese Dragon or the American
+     elephant-headed god                                              88
+
+ Fig. 15.--Photograph of a Chinese embroidery in the Manchester
+     School of Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon
+     Symbol                                                           98
+
+ Fig. 16.--The God of Thunder (from a Chinese drawing (? 17th
+     Century) in the John Rylands Library)                           136
+
+ Fig. 17.--From Joannes de Turrecremata's "Meditationes seu
+     Contemplationes". _Rome: Ulrich Han_, 1467                      137
+
+ Fig. 18.--(a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer showing,
+     perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners
+     of the palette) as a woman with cow's horns and ears (compare
+     Flinders Petrie "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part
+     I, 1900, Plate XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt
+     from which are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in
+     place of the cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This
+     affords corroboration of the view that Hathor assumed the
+     functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell. (b) The
+     king's _sporran_, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the
+     cowries of the primitive girdle                                 150
+
+ Fig. 19.--The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic
+     representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners),
+     one of the ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America
+     (after Maudslay's photograph and diagram). The girdle of the
+     chief figure is decorated both with shells (_Oliva_ or
+     _Conus_) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to
+     the Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18)                151
+
+ Fig. 20.--Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts worn in
+     (a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively. (c) Ancient
+     Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the Bharat
+     Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones,
+     and what  seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of
+     cowries. (d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both
+     shells and heads of deities are represented. The two objects
+     suspended from the belt between the heads recall Hathor's
+     sistra                                                          153
+
+ Fig. 21.--(a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A. Reisner in the
+     temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh
+     Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess Hathor,
+     represented as a woman with the moon and the cow's horns upon
+     her head, and on the left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon
+     her head the jackal-symbol of her nome. (b) The Ecuador
+     Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro-Jaboncillo (after Saville,
+     "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907,
+     Plate XXXVIII). A grotesque composite monster intended to
+     represent a woman (compare Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and
+     XXXIX), whose head is a conventionalized Octopus, whose body
+     is a _Loligo_, and whose limbs are human                        164
+
+ Fig. 22.--(a) _Sepia officinalis_, after Tryon, "Cephalopoda".
+     (b) _Loligo vulgaris_, after Tryon. (c) The position usually
+     adopted by the resting Octopus, after Tryon                     168
+
+ Fig. 23.--A series of Mycenæan conventionalizations of the Argonaut
+     and the Octopus (after Tümpel), which provided the basis for
+     Houssay's theory of the origin of the triskele (a, c, and d)
+     and swastika (b and e), and Siret's theory to explain the
+     design of Bes's face (f and g)                                  172
+
+ Fig. 24.--(a) and (b) Two Mycenæan pots (after Schliemann). (a) The
+     so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the
+     Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
+     (b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a
+     jar upon her head and another in her hands--a three-fold
+     representation of the Great Mother as a pot. (c) A Cretan vase
+     from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a
+     decoration upon the pot instead of in its form, (d), (e), (f),
+     (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after Head)
+     showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with
+     its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f). (i) _Sepia
+     officinalis_ (after Tryon). (h) and (l) The so-called "spouting
+     vases" in the hands of the Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder
+     seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of Tello, after Ward ("Seal
+     Cylinders, etc.," p. 215)                                       180
+
+ Fig 25.--(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I. (b) Persian
+     design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal
+     Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109). (c) Assyrian or
+     Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life in an
+     extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).
+     (d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life,
+     from the design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig.
+     670). (e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of
+     Dungi (Ward, Fig. 663). (f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from
+     Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig. 9). (g) Double axe from a gold
+     signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenæ (after Sir Arthur Evans,
+     "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10). (h) Assyrian Winged
+     Disk (Ward, Fig. 608). (i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate"
+     (Ward, Fig. 349). (k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144).
+     (l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely
+     conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 691). (m) Assyrian Tree of Life
+     and Winged Disk in which the god is riding in a crescent
+     replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695)                             184
+
+ Fig. 26.--(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains
+     of the horizon (on which trees are growing) (after Budge,
+     "Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. II, p. 101). (b) The mountains
+     of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a surrogate of
+     Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in
+     the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, _op. cit._, p. 39).
+     (c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the
+     Eastern Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, _op. cit._, p.
+     373). (d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun
+     rising between the Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the
+     mountain giving birth to "the ridiculous mouse"--Smintheus).
+     (e) Part of the design from a Mycenæan vase from Old Salamis
+     (after Evans, p. 9). (f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem
+     from the Idæan Cave, now in the Candia Museum (after Evans,
+     Fig. 25). (g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form
+     of the goddess (after Evans, Fig. 66). (h) Another Mycenæan
+     design comparable with (e). (i) Design from a signet-ring from
+     Mycenæ; (after Evans, Fig. 34). (k) The famous sculpture above
+     the Lion Gate at Mycenæ                                         188
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+ Fig 1.--Early representation of a "Dragon" compounded of the
+    forepart of an eagle and the hindpart of a lion (from an
+    Archaic Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier)                   79
+
+ Fig. 2.--The earliest Babylonian conception of the Dragon Tiamat
+    (from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after L. W. King)    79
+
+ Fig. 3.--Wm. Dennis's drawing of the "Flying Dragon" depicted on the
+    rocks at Piasa, Illinois                                          94
+
+ Fig. 4.--Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh)                    155
+
+ Fig. 5.--_Pterocera bryonia_, the Red Sea spider-shell              170
+
+ Fig. 6.--(a) Picture of a bowl of water--the hieroglyphic sign
+     equivalent to _hm_ (the word _hmt_ means "woman"--Griffith,
+     "Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29). (b) "A
+     basket of sycamore figs"--Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Vol.
+     I, p. 323. (c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic
+     signs meaning "wife" and are apparently taken from (b). But (c)
+     is identical with (i), which, according to Griffith (p. 14),
+     represents a bivalve shell (g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more
+     usually placed obliquely (h). The varying conventionalizations
+     of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f) (Griffith,
+     "Hieroglyphics," p. 34). (k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which
+     is a phonetic equivalent of the sign (h), and, according to
+     Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 26), "is probably derived from
+     the same root, on account of its shell-like outline". (l) The
+     hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as _Nu_ and
+     _Nut_. (m) A "pomegranate" (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a
+     sacred column at Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and
+     Pillar Cult," p. 46). (n) The form of the body of an octopus as
+     conventionalized on the coins of Central Greece (compare Fig.
+     24 (d))                                                         179
+
+ Fig. 7.--(a) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus
+     emerging from a lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis).
+     (b) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and
+     animistically identified with them either as an instrument of
+     life-giving or destruction. (c) Conventionalized lily--the
+     prototype of the trident and the thunder-weapon. (d) A
+     water-plant associated with the Nile-gods                       180
+
+ Fig. 8.--(a) "Ceremonial forked object," or "magic wand," used in
+     the ceremony of "opening the mouth," possibly connected with
+     (b) (a bicornuate uterus), according to Griffith
+     ("Hieroglyphics," p. 60). (c) The Egyptian sign for a key.
+     (d) The double axe of Crete and Egypt                           191
+
+ Fig. 9.--The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign _nub_               222
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+INCENSE AND LIBATIONS.[3]
+
+
+The dragon was primarily a personification of the life-giving and
+life-destroying powers of water. This chapter is concerned with the
+genesis of this biological theory of water and its relationship to the
+other germs of civilisation.
+
+It is commonly assumed that many of the elementary practices of
+civilization, such as the erection of rough stone buildings, whether
+houses, tombs, or temples, the crafts of the carpenter and the
+stonemason, the carving of statues, the customs of pouring out libations
+or burning incense, are such simple and obvious procedures that any
+people might adopt them without prompting or contact of any kind with
+other populations who do the same sort of things. But if such apparently
+commonplace acts be investigated they will be found to have a long and
+complex history. None of these things that seem so obvious to us was
+attempted until a multitude of diverse circumstances became focussed in
+some particular community, and constrained some individual to make the
+discovery. Nor did the quality of obviousness become apparent even when
+the enlightened discoverer had gathered up the threads of his
+predecessor's ideas and woven them into the fabric of a new invention.
+For he had then to begin the strenuous fight against the opposition of
+his fellows before he could induce them to accept his discovery. He had,
+in fact, to contend against their preconceived ideas and their lack of
+appreciation of the significance of the progress he had made before he
+could persuade them of its "obviousness". That is the history of most
+inventions since the world began. But it is begging the question to
+pretend that because tradition has made such inventions seem simple and
+obvious to us it is unnecessary to inquire into their history or to
+assume that any people or any individual simply did these things without
+any instruction when the spirit moved it or him so to do.
+
+The customs of burning incense and making libations in religious
+ceremonies are so widespread and capable of being explained in such
+plausible, though infinitely diverse, ways that it has seemed
+unnecessary to inquire more deeply into their real origin and
+significance. For example, Professor Toy[4] disposes of these questions
+in relation to incense in a summary fashion. He claims that "when burnt
+before the deity" it is "to be regarded as food, though in course of
+time, when the recollection of this primitive character was lost, a
+conventional significance was attached to the act of burning. A more
+refined period demanded more refined food for the gods, such as ambrosia
+and nectar, but these also were finally given up."
+
+This, of course, is a purely gratuitous assumption, or series of
+assumptions, for which there is no real evidence. Moreover, even if
+there were any really early literature to justify such statements, they
+explain nothing. Incense-burning is just as mysterious if Prof. Toy's
+claim be granted as it was before.
+
+But a bewildering variety of other explanations, for all of which the
+merit of being "simple and obvious" is claimed, have been suggested. The
+reader who is curious about these things will find a luxurious crop of
+speculations by consulting a series of encyclopædias.[5] I shall content
+myself by quoting only one more. "Frankincense and other spices were
+indispensable in temples where bloody sacrifices formed part of the
+religion. The atmosphere of Solomon's temple must have been that of a
+sickening slaughter-house, and the fumes of incense could alone enable
+the priests and worshippers to support it. This would apply to thousands
+of other temples through Asia, and doubtless the palaces of kings and
+nobles suffered from uncleanliness and insanitary arrangements and
+required an antidote to evil smells to make them endurable."[6]
+
+It is an altogether delightful anachronism to imagine that religious
+ritual in the ancient and aromatic East was inspired by such
+squeamishness as a British sanitary inspector of the twentieth century
+might experience!
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.--The conventional Egyptian representation of the
+Burning of Incense and the Pouring of Libations (Period of the New
+Empire)--after Lepsius]
+
+But if there are these many diverse and mutually destructive reasons in
+explanation of the origin of incense-burning, it follows that the
+meaning of the practice cannot be so "simple and obvious". For scholars
+in the past have been unable to agree as to the sense in which these
+adjectives should be applied.
+
+But no useful purpose would be served by enumerating a collection of
+learned fallacies and exposing their contradictions when the true
+explanation has been provided in the earliest body of literature that
+has come down from antiquity. I refer to the Egyptian "Pyramid Texts".
+
+Before this ancient testimony is examined certain general principles
+involved in the discussion of such problems should be considered. In
+this connexion it is appropriate to quote the apt remarks made, in
+reference to the practice of totemism, by Professor Sollas.[7] "If it is
+difficult to conceive how such ideas ... originated at all, it is still
+more difficult to understand how they should have arisen repeatedly and
+have developed in much the same way among races evolving independently
+in different environments. It is at least simpler to suppose that all
+[of them] have a common source ... and may have been carried ... to
+remote parts of the world."
+
+I do not think that anyone who conscientiously and without bias examines
+the evidence relating to incense-burning, the arbitrary details of the
+ritual and the peculiar circumstances under which it is practised in
+different countries, can refuse to admit that so artificial a custom
+must have been dispersed throughout the world from some one centre where
+it was devised.
+
+The remarkable fact that emerges from an examination of these so-called
+"obvious explanations" of ethnological phenomena is the failure on the
+part of those who are responsible for them to show any adequate
+appreciation of the nature of the problems to be solved. They know that
+incense has been in use for a vast period of time, and that the practice
+of burning it is very widespread. They have been so familiarized with
+the custom and certain more or less vague excuses for its perpetuation
+that they show no realization of how strangely irrational and devoid of
+obvious meaning the procedure is. The reasons usually given in
+explanation of its use are for the most part merely paraphrases of the
+traditional meanings that in the course of history have come to be
+attached to the ritual act or the words used to designate it. Neither
+the ethnologist nor the priestly apologist will, as a rule, admit that
+he does not know why such ritual acts as pouring out water or burning
+incense are performed, and that they are wholly inexplicable and
+meaningless to him. Nor will they confess that the real inspiration to
+perform such rites is the fact of their predecessors having handed them
+down as sacred acts of devotion, the meaning of which has been entirely
+forgotten during the process of transmission from antiquity. Instead of
+this they simply pretend that the significance of such acts is obvious.
+Stripped of the glamour which religious emotion and sophistry have woven
+around them, such pretended explanations become transparent subterfuges,
+none the less real because the apologists are quite innocent of any
+conscious intention to deceive either themselves or their disciples. It
+should be sufficient for them that such ritual acts have been handed
+down by tradition as right and proper things to do. But in response to
+the instinctive impulse of all human beings, the mind seeks for reasons
+in justification of actions of which the real inspiration is unknown.
+
+It is a common fallacy to suppose that men's actions are inspired mainly
+by reason. The most elementary investigation of the psychology of
+everyday life is sufficient to reveal the truth that man is not, as a
+rule, the pre-eminently rational creature he is commonly supposed to
+be.[8] He is impelled to most of his acts by his instincts, the
+circumstances of his personal experience, and the conventions of the
+society in which he has grown up. But once he has acted or decided upon
+a course of procedure he is ready with excuses in explanation and
+attempted justification of his motives. In most cases these are not the
+real reasons, for few human beings attempt to analyse their motives or
+in fact are competent without help to understand their own feelings and
+the real significance of their actions. There is implanted in man the
+instinct to interpret for his own satisfaction his feelings and
+sensations, i.e. the meaning of his experience. But of necessity this is
+mostly of the nature of rationalizing, i.e. providing satisfying
+interpretations of thoughts and decisions the real meaning of which
+is hidden.
+
+Now it must be patent that the nature of this process of rationalization
+will depend largely upon the mental make-up of the individual--of the
+body of knowledge and traditions with which his mind has become stored
+in the course of his personal experience. The influences to which he has
+been exposed, daily and hourly, from the time of his birth onward,
+provide the specific determinants of most of his beliefs and views.
+Consciously and unconsciously he imbibes certain definite ideas, not
+merely of religion, morals, and politics, but of what is the correct and
+what is the incorrect attitude to assume in most of the circumstances of
+his daily life. These form the staple currency of his beliefs and his
+conversation. Reason plays a surprisingly small part in this process,
+for most human beings acquire from their fellows the traditions of their
+society which relieves them of the necessity of undue thought. The very
+words in which the accumulated traditions of his community are conveyed
+to each individual are themselves charged with the complex symbolism
+that has slowly developed during the ages, and tinges the whole of his
+thoughts with their subtle and, to most men, vaguely appreciated shades
+of meaning.[9] During this process of acquiring the fruits of his
+community's beliefs and experiences every individual accepts without
+question a vast number of apparently simple customs and ideas. He is apt
+to regard them as obvious, and to assume that reason led him to accept
+them or be guided by them, although when the specific question is put to
+him he is unable to give their real history.
+
+Before leaving these general considerations[10] I want to emphasize
+certain elementary facts of psychology which are often ignored by those
+who investigate the early history of civilization.
+
+First, the multitude and the complexity of the circumstances that are
+necessary to lead men to make even the simplest invention render the
+concatenation of all of these conditions wholly independently on a
+second occasion in the highest degree improbable. Until very definite
+and conclusive evidence is forthcoming in any individual case it can
+safely be assumed that no ethnologically significant innovation in
+customs or beliefs has ever been made twice.
+
+Those critics who have recently attempted to dispose of this claim by
+referring to the work of the Patent Office thereby display a singular
+lack of appreciation of the real point at issue. For the ethnological
+problem is concerned with different populations who are assumed _not_ to
+share any common heritage of acquired knowledge, nor to have had any
+contact, direct or indirect, the one with the other. But the inventors
+who resort to the Patent Office are all of them persons supplied with
+information from the storehouse of our common civilization; and the
+inventions which they seek to protect from imitation by others are
+merely developments of the heritage of all civilized peoples. Even when
+similar inventions are made apparently independently under such
+circumstances, in most cases they can be explained by the fact that two
+investigators have followed up a line of advance which has been
+determined by the development of the common body of knowledge.
+
+This general discussion suggests another factor in the working of the
+human mind.
+
+When certain vital needs or the force of circumstances compel a man to
+embark upon a certain train of reasoning or invention the results to
+which his investigations lead depend upon a great many circumstances.
+Obviously the range of his knowledge and experience and the general
+ideas he has acquired from his fellows will play a large part in shaping
+his inferences. It is quite certain that even in the simplest problem of
+primitive physics or biology his attention will be directed only to some
+of, and not all, the factors involved, and that the limitations of his
+knowledge will permit him to form a wholly inadequate conception even of
+the few factors that have obtruded themselves upon his attention. But he
+may frame a working hypothesis in explanation of the factors he had
+appreciated, which may seem perfectly exhaustive and final, as well as
+logical and rational to him, but to those who come after him, with a
+wider knowledge of the properties of matter and the nature of living
+beings, and a wholly different attitude towards such problems, the
+primitive man's solution may seem merely a ludicrous travesty.
+
+But once a tentative explanation of one group of phenomena has been made
+it is the method of science no less than the common tendency of the
+human mind to buttress this theory with analogies and fancied
+homologies. In other words the isolated facts are built up into a
+generalisation. It is important to remember that in most cases this
+mental process begins very early; so that the analogies play a very
+obtrusive part in the building up of theories. As a rule a multitude of
+such influences play a part consciously or unconsciously in shaping any
+belief. Hence the historian is faced with the difficulty, often quite
+insuperable, of ascertaining (among scores of factors that definitely
+played some part in the building up of a great generalization) the real
+foundation upon which the vast edifice has been erected. I refer to
+these elementary matters here for two reasons. First, because they are
+so often overlooked by ethnologists; and secondly, because in these
+pages I shall have to discuss a series of historical events in which a
+bewildering number of factors played their part. In sifting out a
+certain number of them, I want to make it clear that I do not pretend to
+have discovered more than a small minority of the most conspicuous
+threads in the complex texture of the fabric of early human thought.
+
+Another fact that emerges from these elementary psychological
+considerations is the vital necessity of guarding against the
+misunderstandings necessarily involved in the use of words. In the
+course of long ages the originally simple connotation of the words used
+to denote many of our ideas has become enormously enriched with a
+meaning which in some degree reflects the chequered history of the
+expression of human aspirations. Many writers who in discussing ancient
+peoples make use of such terms, for example, as "soul," "religion," and
+"gods," without stripping them of the accretions of complex symbolism
+that have collected around them within more recent times, become
+involved in difficulty and misunderstanding.
+
+For example, the use of the terms "soul" or "soul-substance" in much of
+the literature relating to early or relatively primitive people is
+fruitful of misunderstanding. For it is quite clear from the context
+that in many cases such people meant to imply nothing more than "life"
+or "vital principle," the absence of which from the body for any
+prolonged period means death. But to translate such a word simply as
+"life" is inadequate because all of these people had some theoretical
+views as to its identity with the "breath" or to its being in the nature
+of a material substance or essence. It is naturally impossible to find
+any one word or phrase in our own language to express the exact idea,
+for among every people there are varying shades of meaning which cannot
+adequately express the symbolism distinctive of each place and society.
+To meet this insuperable difficulty perhaps the term "vital essence" is
+open to least objection.
+
+In my last Rylands lecture[11] I sketched in rough outline a tentative
+explanation of the world-wide dispersal of the elements of the
+civilization that is now the heritage of the world at large, and
+referred to the part played by Ancient Egypt in the development of
+certain arts, customs, and beliefs. On the present occasion I propose to
+examine certain aspects of this process of development in greater
+detail, and to study the far-reaching influence exerted by the Egyptian
+practice of mummification, and the ideas that were suggested by it, in
+starting new trains of thought, in stimulating the invention of arts
+and crafts that were unknown before then, and in shaping the complex
+body of customs and beliefs that were the outcome of these potent
+intellectual ferments.
+
+In speaking of the relationship of the practice of mummification to the
+development of civilization, however, I have in mind not merely the
+influence it exerted upon the moulding of culture, but also the part
+played by the trend of philosophy in the world at large in determining
+the Egyptian's conceptions of the wider significance of embalming, and
+the reaction of these effects upon the current doctrines of the meaning
+of natural phenomena.
+
+No doubt it will be asked at the outset, what possible connexion can
+there be between the practice of so fantastic and gruesome an art as the
+embalming of the dead and the building up of civilization? Is it
+conceivable that the course of the development of the arts and crafts,
+the customs and beliefs, and the social and political organizations--in
+fact any of the essential elements of civilization--has been deflected a
+hair's breadth to the right or left as the outcome, directly or
+indirectly, of such a practice?
+
+In previous essays and lectures[12] I have indicated how intimately this
+custom was related, not merely to the invention of the arts and crafts
+of the carpenter and stonemason and all that is implied in the building
+up of what Professor Lethaby has called the "matrix of civilization,"
+but also to the shaping of religious beliefs and ritual practices,
+which developed in association with the evolution of the temple and the
+conception of a material resurrection. I have also suggested the
+far-reaching significance of an indirect influence of the practice of
+mummification in the history of civilization. It was mainly responsible
+for prompting the earliest great maritime expeditions of which the
+history has been preserved.[13] For many centuries the quest of resins
+and balsams for embalming and for use in temple ritual, and wood for
+coffin-making, continued to provide the chief motives which induced the
+Egyptians to undertake sea-trafficking in the Mediterranean and the Red
+Sea. The knowledge and experience thus acquired ultimately made it
+possible for the Egyptians and their pupils to push their adventures
+further afield. It is impossible adequately to estimate the vastness of
+the influence of such intercourse, not merely in spreading abroad
+throughout the world the germs of our common civilization, but also, by
+bringing into close contact peoples of varied histories and traditions,
+in stimulating progress. Even if the practice of mummification had
+exerted no other noteworthy effect in the history of the world, this
+fact alone would have given it a pre-eminent place.
+
+Another aspect of the influence of mummification I have already
+discussed, and do not intend to consider further in this lecture. I
+refer to the manifold ways in which it affected the history of medicine
+and pharmacy. By accustoming the Egyptians, through thirty centuries, to
+the idea of cutting the human corpse, it made it possible for Greek
+physicians of the Ptolemaic and later ages to initiate in Alexandria the
+systematic dissection of the human body which popular prejudice forbade
+elsewhere, and especially in Greece itself. Upon this foundation the
+knowledge of anatomy and the science of medicine has been built up.[14]
+But in many other ways the practice of mummification exerted
+far-reaching effects, directly and indirectly, upon the development of
+medical and pharmaceutical knowledge and methods.[15]
+
+There is then this _prima-facie_ evidence that the Egyptian practice of
+mummification was closely related to the development of architecture,
+maritime trafficking, and medicine. But what I am chiefly concerned with
+in the present lecture is the discussion of the much vaster part it
+played in shaping the innermost beliefs of mankind and directing the
+course of the religious aspirations and the scientific opinions, not
+merely of the Egyptians themselves, but also of the world at large, for
+many centuries afterward.
+
+It had a profound influence upon the history of human thought. The vague
+and ill-defined ideas of physiology and psychology, which had probably
+been developing since Aurignacian times[16] in Europe, were suddenly
+crystallized into a coherent structure and definite form by the musings
+of the Egyptian embalmer. But at the same time, if the new philosophy
+did not find expression in the invention of the first deities, it gave
+them a much more concrete form than they had previously presented, and
+played a large part in the establishment of the foundations upon which
+all religious ritual was subsequently built up, and in the initiation of
+a priesthood to administer the rites which were suggested by the
+practice of mummification.
+
+
+[3: An elaboration of a Lecture on the relationship of the Egyptian
+practice of mummification to the development of civilization delivered
+in the John Rylands Library, on 9 February, 1916.]
+
+[4: "Introduction to the History of Religions," p. 486.]
+
+[5: He might start upon this journey of adventure by reading the article
+on "Incense" in Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]
+
+[6: Samuel Laing, "Human Origins," Revised by Edward Clodd, 1903, p.
+38.]
+
+[7: "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, pp. 234 and 235.]
+
+[8: On this subject see Elliot Smith and Pear, "Shell Shock and its
+Lessons," Manchester University Press, 1917, p. 59.]
+
+[9: An interesting discussion of this matter by the late Professor
+William James will be found in his "Principles of Psychology," Vol. I,
+pp. 261 _et seq._]
+
+[10: For a fuller discussion of certain phases of this matter see my
+address on "Primitive Man," in the _Proceedings of the British Academy_,
+1917, especially pp. 23-50.]
+
+[11: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
+America," _The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, Jan.-March, 1916.]
+
+[12: "The Migrations of Early Culture," 1915, Manchester University
+Press: "The Evolution of the Rock-cut Tomb and the Dolmen," _Essays and
+Studies Presented to William Ridgeway_, Cambridge, 1913, p. 493:
+"Oriental Tombs and Temples," _Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and
+Oriental Society_, 1914-1915, p. 55.]
+
+[13: "Ships as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture," Manchester
+University Press, 1917, p. 37.]
+
+[14: "Egyptian Mummies," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, Part
+III, July, 1914, p. 189.]
+
+[15: Such, for example, as its influence in the acquisition of the means
+of preserving the tissues of the body, which has played so large a part
+in the development of the sciences of anatomy, pathology, and in fact
+biology in general. The practice of mummification was largely
+responsible for the attainment of a knowledge of the properties of many
+drugs and especially of those which restrain putrefactive changes. But
+it was not merely in the acquisition of a knowledge of material facts
+that mummification exerted its influence. The humoral theory of
+pathology and medicine, which prevailed for so many centuries and the
+effects of which are embalmed for all time in our common speech, was
+closely related in its inception to the ideas which I shall discuss in
+these pages. The Egyptians themselves did not profit to any appreciable
+extent from the remarkable opportunities which their practice of
+embalming provided for studying human anatomy. The sanctity of these
+ritual acts was fatal to the employment of such opportunities to gain
+knowledge. Nor was the attitude of mind of the Egyptians such as to
+permit the acquisition of a real appreciation of the structure of the
+body.]
+
+[16: See my address, "Primitive Man," _Proc. Brit. Academy_, 1917.]
+
+
+Beginning of Stone-Working.
+
+During the last few years I have repeatedly had occasion to point out
+the fundamental fallacy underlying much of the modern speculation in
+ethnology, and I have no intention of repeating these strictures
+here.[17] But it is a significant fact that, when one leaves the
+writings of professed ethnologists and turns to the histories of their
+special subjects written by scholars in kindred fields of investigation,
+views such as I have been setting forth will often be found to be
+accepted without question or comment as the obvious truth.
+
+There is an excellent little book entitled "Architecture," written by
+Professor W. R. Lethaby for the Home University Library, that affords an
+admirable illustration of this interesting fact. I refer to this
+particular work because it gives lucid expression to some of the ideas
+that I wish to submit for consideration. "Two arts have changed the
+surface of the world, Agriculture and Architecture" (p. 1). "To a large
+degree architecture" [which he defines as "the matrix of civilization"]
+"is an Egyptian art" (p. 66): for in Egypt "we shall best find the
+origins of architecture as a whole" (p. 21).
+
+Nevertheless Professor Lethaby bows the knee to current tradition when
+he makes the wholly unwarranted assumption that Egypt probably learnt
+its art from Babylonia. He puts forward this remarkable claim in spite
+of his frank confession that "little or nothing is known of a primitive
+age in Mesopotamia. At a remote time the art of Babylonia was that of a
+civilized people. As has been said, there is a great similarity between
+this art and that of dynastic times in Egypt. Yet it appears that Egypt
+borrowed of Asia, rather than the reverse." [He gives no reasons for
+this opinion, for which there is no evidence, except possibly the
+invention of bricks for building.] "If the origins of art in Babylonia
+were as fully known as those in Egypt, the story of architecture might
+have to begin in Asia instead of Egypt" (p. 67).
+
+But later on he speaks in a more convincing manner of the known facts
+when he says (p. 82):--
+
+When Greece entered on her period of high-strung life the time of first
+invention in the arts was over--the heroes of Craft, like Tubal Cain and
+Daedalus, necessarily belong to the infancy of culture. The phenomenon
+of Egypt could not occur again; the mission of Greece was rather to
+settle down to a task of gathering, interpreting, and bringing to
+perfection Egypt's gifts. The arts of civilization were never developed
+in watertight compartments, as is shown by the uniformity of custom over
+the modern world. Further, if any new nation enters into the circle of
+culture it seems that, like Japan, it must 'borrow the capital'. The art
+of Greece could hardly have been more self-originated than is the
+science of Japan. Ideas of the temple and of the fortified town must
+have spread from the East, the square-roomed house, columnar orders,
+fine masonry, were all Egyptian.
+
+Elsewhere[18] I have pointed out that it was the importance which the
+Egyptian came to attach to the preservation of the dead and to the
+making of adequate provision for the deceased's welfare that gradually
+led to the aggrandisement of the tomb. In course of time this impelled
+him to cut into the rock,[19] and, later still, suggested the
+substitution of stone for brick in erecting the chapel of offerings
+above ground. The Egyptian burial customs were thus intimately related
+to the conceptions that grew up with the invention of embalming. The
+evidence in confirmation of this is so precise that every one who
+conscientiously examines it must be forced to the conclusion that man
+did not instinctively select stone as a suitable material with which to
+erect temples and houses, and forthwith begin to quarry and shape it for
+such purposes.
+
+There was an intimate connexion between the first use of stone for
+building and the practice of mummification. It was probably for this
+reason, and not from any abstract sense of "wonder at the magic of art,"
+as Professor Lethaby claims, that "ideas of sacredness, of ritual
+rightness, of magic stability and correspondence with the universe,
+and of perfection of form and proportion" came to be associated with
+stone buildings.
+
+At first stone was used only for such sacred purposes, and the pharaoh
+alone was entitled to use it for his palaces, in virtue of the fact that
+he was divine, the son and incarnation on earth of the sun-god. It was
+only when these Egyptian practices were transplanted to other countries,
+where these restrictions did not obtain, that the rigid wall of
+convention was broken down.
+
+Even in Rome until well into the Christian era "the largest domestic and
+civil buildings were of plastered brick". "Wrought masonry seems to have
+been demanded only for the great monuments, triumphal arches, theatres,
+temples and above all for the Coliseum." (Lethaby, _op. cit._ p. 120).
+
+Nevertheless Rome was mainly responsible for breaking down the hieratic
+tradition which forbade the use of stone for civil purposes. "In Roman
+architecture the engineering element became paramount. It was this which
+broke the moulds of tradition and recast construction into modern form,
+and made it free once more" (p. 130).
+
+But Egypt was not only responsible for inaugurating the use of stone for
+building. For another forty centuries she continued to be the inventor
+of new devices in architecture. From time to time methods of building
+which developed in Egypt were adopted by her neighbours and spread far
+and wide. The shaft-tombs and _mastabas_ of the Egyptian Pyramid Age
+were adopted in various localities in the region of the Eastern
+Mediterranean,[20] with certain modifications in each place, and in turn
+became the models which were roughly copied in later ages by the
+wandering dolmen-builders. The round tombs of Crete and Mycenæ were
+clearly only local modifications of their square prototypes, the
+Egyptian Pyramids of the Middle Kingdom. "While this Ægean art gathered
+from, and perhaps gave to, Egypt, it passed on its ideals to the north
+and west of Europe, where the productions of the Bronze Age clearly show
+its influence" (Lethaby, p. 78) in the chambered mounds of the Iberian
+peninsula and Brittany, of New Grange in Ireland and of Maes Howe in the
+Orkneys.[21] In the East the influence of these Ægean modifications may
+possibly be seen in the Indian _stupas_ and the _dagabas_ of Ceylon,
+just as the stone stepped pyramids there reveal the effects of contact
+with the civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt.
+
+Professor Lethaby sees the influence of Egypt in the orientation of
+Christian churches (p. 133), as well as in many of their structural
+details (p. 142); in the domed roofs, the iconography, the symbolism,
+and the decoration of Byzantine architecture (p. 138); and in Mohammedan
+buildings wherever they are found.
+
+For it was not only the architecture of Greece, Rome, and Christendom
+that received its inspiration from Egypt, but that of Islâm also. These
+buildings were not, like the religion itself, in the main Arabic in
+origin. "Primitive Arabian art itself is quite negligible. When the new
+strength of the followers of the Prophet was consolidated with great
+rapidity into a rich and powerful empire, it took over the arts and
+artists of the conquered lands, extending from North Africa to Persia"
+(p. 158); and it is known how this influence spread as far west as Spain
+and as far east as Indonesia. "The Pharos at Alexandria, the great
+lighthouse built about 280 B.C., almost appears to have been the parent
+of all high and isolated towers.... Even on the coast of Britain, at
+Dover, we had a Pharos which was in some degree an imitation of the
+Alexandrian one." The Pharos at Boulogne, the round towers of Ravenna,
+and the imitations of it elsewhere in Europe, even as far as Ireland,
+are other examples of its influence. But in addition the Alexandrian
+Pharos had "as great an effect as the prototype of Eastern minarets as
+it had for Western towers" (p. 115).
+
+I have quoted so extensively from Professor Lethaby's brilliant little
+book to give this independent testimony of the vastness of the influence
+exerted by Egypt during a span of nearly forty centuries in creating and
+developing the "matrix of civilization". Most of this wider dispersal
+abroad was effected by alien peoples, who transformed their gifts from
+Egypt before they handed on the composite product to some more distant
+peoples. But the fact remains that the great centre of original
+inspiration in architecture was Egypt.
+
+The original incentive to the invention of this essentially Egyptian art
+was the desire to protect and secure the welfare of the dead. The
+importance attached to this aim was intimately associated with the
+development of the practice of mummification.
+
+With this tangible and persistent evidence of the general scheme of
+spread of the arts of building I can now turn to the consideration of
+some of the other, more vital, manifestations of human thought and
+aspirations, which also, like the "matrix of civilization" itself, grew
+up in intimate association with the practice of embalming the dead.
+
+I have already mentioned Professor Lethaby's reference to architecture
+and agriculture as the two arts that have changed the surface of the
+world. It is interesting to note that the influence of these two
+ingredients of civilization was diffused abroad throughout the world in
+intimate association the one with the other. In most parts of the world
+the use of stone for building and Egyptian methods of architecture made
+their first appearance along with the peculiarly distinctive form of
+agriculture and irrigation so intimately associated with early Babylonia
+and Egypt.[22]
+
+But agriculture also exerted a most profound influence in shaping the
+early Egyptian body of beliefs.
+
+I shall now call attention to certain features of the earliest mummies,
+and then discuss how the ideas suggested by the practice of the art of
+embalming the dead were affected by the early theories of agriculture
+and the mutual influence they exerted one upon the other.
+
+
+[17: See, however, _op. cit. supra_; also "The Origin of the
+Pre-Columbian Civilization of America," _Science_, N.S., Vol. XLV, No.
+1158, pp. 241-246, 9 March, 1917.]
+
+[18: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+[19: For the earliest evidence of the cutting of stone for architectural
+purposes, see my statement in the _Report of the British Association for
+1914_, p. 212.]
+
+[20: Especially in Crete, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Southern Russia,
+and the North African Littoral.]
+
+[21: For an account of the evidence relating to these monuments, with
+full bibliographical references, see Déchelette, "Manuel d'Archéologie
+préhistorique Celtique et Gallo-Romaine," T. 1, 1912, pp. 390 _et seq._;
+also Sophus Müller, "Urgeschichte Europas," 1905, pp. 74 and 75; and
+Louis Siret, "Les Cassitérides et l'Empire Colonial des Phéniciens,"
+_L'Anthropologie_, T. 20, 1909, p. 313.]
+
+[22: W. J. Perry, "The Geographical Distribution of Terraced Cultivation
+and Irrigation," _Memoirs and Proc. Manch. Lit. and Phil. Soc._, Vol.
+60, 1916.]
+
+
+The Origin of Embalming.
+
+I have already explained[23] how the increased importance that came to
+be attached to the corpse as the means of securing a continuance of
+existence led to the aggrandizement of the tomb. Special care was taken
+to protect the dead and this led to the invention of coffins, and to the
+making of a definite tomb, the size of which rapidly increased as more
+and more ample supplies of food and other offerings were made. But the
+very measures thus taken the more efficiently to protect and tend the
+dead defeated the primary object of all this care. For, when buried in
+such an elaborate tomb, the body no longer became desiccated and
+preserved by the forces of nature, as so often happened when it was
+placed in a simple grave directly in the hot dry sand.
+
+It is of fundamental importance in the argument set forth here to
+remember that these factors came into operation before the time of the
+First Dynasty. They were responsible for impelling the Proto-Egyptians
+not only to invent the wooden coffin, the stone sarcophagus, the
+rock-cut tomb, and to begin building in stone, but also to devise
+measures for the artificial preservation of the body.
+
+But in addition to stimulating the development of the first real
+architecture and the art of mummification other equally far-reaching
+results in the region of ideas and beliefs grew out of these practices.
+
+From the outset the Egyptian embalmer was clearly inspired by two
+ideals: (a) to preserve the actual tissues of the body with a minimum
+disturbance of its superficial appearance; and (b) to preserve a
+likeness of the deceased as he was in life. At first it was naturally
+attempted to make this simulacrum of the body itself if it were
+possible, or alternatively, when this ideal was found to be
+unattainable, from its wrappings or by means of a portrait statue. It
+was soon recognized that it was beyond the powers of the early embalmer
+to succeed in mummifying the body itself so as to retain a recognizable
+likeness to the man when alive: although from time to time such attempts
+were repeatedly made,[24] until the period of the XXI Dynasty, when the
+operator clearly was convinced that he had at last achieved what his
+predecessors, for perhaps twenty-five centuries, had been trying in vain
+to do.
+
+
+[23: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+[24: See my volume on "The Royal Mummies," General Catalogue of the
+Cairo Museum.]
+
+
+Early Mummies.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth,
+representing a restoration of the early mummy found at Medûm by Prof.
+Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in
+London]
+
+In the earliest known (Second Dynasty) examples of Egyptian attempts at
+mummification[25] the corpse was swathed in a large series of bandages,
+which were moulded into shape to represent the form of the body. In a
+later (probably Fifth Dynasty) mummy, found in 1892 by Professor
+Flinders Petrie at Medûm, the superficial bandages had been impregnated
+with a resinous paste, which while still plastic was moulded into the
+form of the body, special care being bestowed upon the modelling of the
+face[26] and the organs of reproduction, so as to leave no room for
+doubt as to the identity and the sex. Professor Junker has described[27]
+an interesting series of variations of these practices. In two graves
+the bodies were covered with a layer of stucco plaster. First the corpse
+was covered with a fine linen cloth: then the plaster was put on, and
+modelled into the form of the body (p. 252). But in two other cases it
+was not the whole body that was covered with this layer of stucco,
+but only the head. Professor Junker claims that this was done
+"apparently because the head was regarded as the most important part, as
+the organs of taste, sight, smell, and hearing were contained in it".
+But surely there was the additional and more obtrusive reason that the
+face affords the means of identifying the individual! For this modelling
+of the features was intended primarily as a restoration of the form of
+the body which had been altered, if not actually destroyed. In other
+cases, where no attempt was made to restore the features in such durable
+materials as resin or stucco, the linen-enveloped head was modelled, and
+a representation of the eyes painted upon it so as to enhance the
+life-like appearance of the face.
+
+These facts prove quite conclusively that the earliest attempts to
+reproduce the features of the deceased and so preserve his likeness,
+were made upon the wrapped mummy itself. Thus the mummy was intended to
+be the portrait as well as the actual bodily remains of the dead. In
+view of certain differences of opinion as to the original significance
+of the funerary ritual, which I shall have occasion to discuss later on
+(see p. 20), it is important to keep these facts clearly in mind.
+
+A discovery made by Mr. J. E. Quibell in the course of his excavations
+at Sakkara[28] suggests that, as an outcome of these practices a new
+procedure may have been devised in the Pyramid Age--the making of a
+death-mask. For he discovered what may be the mask taken directly from
+the face of the Pharaoh Teta (Fig. 3).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.--A mould taken from a life-mask found in the
+Pyramid of Teta by Mr. Quibell]
+
+About this time also the practice originated of making a life-size
+portrait statue of the dead man's head and placing it along with the
+actual body in the burial chamber. These "reserve heads," as they have
+been called, were usually made of fine limestone, but Junker found one
+made of Nile mud.[29]
+
+Junker believes that there was an intimate relationship between the
+plaster-covered heads and the reserve-heads. They were both expressions
+of the same idea, to preserve a simulacrum of the deceased when his
+actual body had lost all recognizable likeness to him as he was when
+alive. The one method aimed at combining in the same object the actual
+body and the likeness; the other at making a more life-like portrait
+apart from the corpse, which could take the place of the latter when
+it decayed.
+
+Junker states further that "it is no chance that the substitute-heads
+... entirely, or at any rate chiefly, are found in the tombs that have
+no statue-chamber and probably possessed no statues. The statues [of the
+whole body] certainly were made, at any rate partly, with the intention
+that they should take the place of the decaying body, although later the
+idea was modified. The placing of the substitute-head in [the burial
+chamber of] the mastaba therefore became unnecessary at the moment when
+the complete figure of the dead [placed in a special hidden chamber, now
+commonly called the _serdab_] was introduced." The ancient Egyptians
+themselves called the _serdab_ the _pr-twt_ or "statue-house," and the
+group of chambers, forming the tomb-chapel in the mastaba, was known to
+them as the "_ka_-house".[30]
+
+It is important to remember that, even when the custom of making a
+statue of the deceased became fully established, the original idea of
+restoring the form of the mummy itself or its wrappings was never
+abandoned. The attempts made in the XVIII, and XXI and XXII Dynasties to
+pack the body of the mummy itself and by artificial means give it a
+life-like appearance afford evidence of this. In the New Empire and in
+Roman times the wrapped mummy was sometimes modelled into the form of a
+statue. But throughout Egyptian history it was a not uncommon practice
+to provide a painted mask for the wrapped mummy, or in early Christian
+times simply a portrait of the deceased.
+
+With this custom there also persisted a remembrance of its original
+significance. Professor Garstang records the fact that in the XII
+Dynasty,[31] when a painted mask was placed upon the wrapped mummy, no
+statue or statuette was found in the tomb. The undertakers apparently
+realized that the mummy[32] which was provided with a life-like mask was
+therefore fulfilling the purposes for which statues were devised. So
+also in the New Empire the packing and modelling of the actual mummy so
+as to restore its life-like appearance were regarded as obviating the
+need for a statue.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Portrait Statue of an Egyptian Lady of the
+Pyramid Age]
+
+I must now return to the further consideration of the Old Kingdom
+statues. All these varied experiments were inspired by the same desire,
+to preserve the likeness of the deceased. But when the sculptors
+attained their object, and created those marvellous life-like portraits,
+which must ever remain marvels of technical skill and artistic feeling
+(Fig. 4), the old ideas that surged through the minds of the Predynastic
+Egyptians, as they contemplated the desiccated remains of the dead, were
+strongly reinforced. The earlier people's thoughts were turned more
+specifically than heretofore to the contemplation of the nature of life
+and death by seeing the bodies of their dead preserved whole and
+incorruptible; and, if their actions can be regarded as an expression of
+their ideas, they began to wonder what was lacking in these physically
+complete bodies to prevent them from feeling and acting like living
+beings. Such must have been the results of their puzzled contemplation
+of the great problems of life and death. Otherwise the impulse to make
+more certain the preservation of the body by the invention of
+mummification and to retain a life-like representation of the deceased
+by means of a sculptured statue remains inexplicable. But when the
+corpse had been rendered incorruptible and the deceased's portrait had
+been fashioned with realistic perfection the old ideas would recur with
+renewed strength. The belief then took more definite shape that if the
+missing elements of vitality could be restored to the statue, it might
+become animated and the dead man would live again in his vitalized
+statue. This prompted a more intense and searching investigation of the
+problems concerning the nature of the elements of vitality of which the
+corpse was deprived at the time of death. Out of these inquiries in
+course of time a highly complex system of philosophy developed.[33]
+
+But in the earlier times with which I am now concerned it found
+practical expression in certain ritual procedures, invented to convey to
+the statue the breath of life, the vitalising fluids, and the odour and
+sweat of the living body. The seat of knowledge and of feeling was
+believed to be retained in the body when the heart was left _in situ_:
+so that the only thing needed to awaken consciousness, and make it
+possible for the dead man to take heed of his friends and to act
+voluntarily, was to present offerings of blood to stimulate the
+physiological functions of the heart. But the element of vitality which
+left the body at death had to be restored to the statue, which
+represented the deceased in the _ka_-house.[34]
+
+In my earlier attempts[35] to interpret these problems, I adopted the
+view that the making of portrait statues was the direct outcome of the
+practice of mummification. But Dr. Alan Gardiner, whose intimate
+knowledge of the early literature enables him to look at such problems
+from the Egyptian's own point of view, has suggested a modification of
+this interpretation. Instead of regarding the custom of making statues
+as an outcome of the practice of mummification, he thinks that the two
+customs developed simultaneously, in response to the two-fold desire to
+preserve both the actual body and a representation of the features of
+the dead. But I think this suggestion does not give adequate recognition
+to the fact that the earliest attempts at funerary portraiture were made
+upon the wrappings of the actual mummies.[36] This fact and the evidence
+which I have already quoted from Junker make it quite clear that from
+the beginning the embalmer's aim was to preserve the body and to convert
+the mummy itself into a simulacrum of the deceased. When he realized
+that his technical skill was not adequate to enable him to accomplish
+this double aim, he fell back upon the device of making a more perfect
+and realistic portrait statue apart from the mummy. But, as I have
+already pointed out, he never completely renounced his ambition of
+transforming the mummy itself; and in the time of the New Empire he
+actually attained the result which he had kept in view for nearly twenty
+centuries.
+
+In these remarks I have been referring only to funerary portrait
+statues. Centuries before the attempt was made to fashion them modellers
+had been making of clay and stone representations of cattle and human
+beings, which have been found not only in Predynastic graves in Egypt
+but also in so-called "Upper Palæolithic" deposits in Europe.
+
+But the fashioning of realistic and life-size human portrait-statues for
+funerary purposes was a new art, which gradually developed in the way I
+have tried to depict. No doubt the modellers made use of the skill they
+had acquired in the practice of the older art of rough impressionism.
+
+Once the statue was made a stone-house (the _serdab_) was provided for
+it above ground[37]. As the dolmen is a crude copy of the _serdab_[38]
+it can be claimed as one of the ultimate results of the practice of
+mummification. It is clear that the conception of the possibility of a
+life beyond the grave assumed a more concrete form when it was realized
+that the body itself could be rendered incorruptible and its distinctive
+traits could be kept alive by means of a portrait statue. There are
+reasons for supposing that primitive man did not realize or contemplate
+the possibility of his own existence coming to an end.[39] Even when he
+witnessed the death of his fellows he does not appear to have
+appreciated the fact that it was really the end of life and not merely a
+kind of sleep from which the dead might awake. But if the corpse were
+destroyed or underwent a process of natural disintegration the fact was
+brought home to him that death had occurred. If these considerations,
+which early Egyptian literature seems to suggest, be borne in mind, the
+view that the preservation of the body from corruption implied a
+continuation of existence becomes intelligible. At first the
+subterranean chambers in which the actual body was housed were developed
+into a many-roomed house for the deceased, complete in every detail.[40]
+But when the statue took over the function of representing the deceased,
+a dwelling was provided for it above ground. This developed into the
+temple where the relatives and friends of the dead came and made the
+offerings of food which were regarded as essential for the maintenance
+of existence.
+
+The evolution of the temple was thus the direct outcome of the ideas
+that grew up in connexion with the preservation of the dead. For at
+first it was nothing more than the dwelling place of the reanimated
+dead. But when, for reasons which I shall explain later (see p. 30), the
+dead king became deified, his temple of offerings became the building
+where food and drink were presented to the god, not merely to maintain
+his existence, but also to restore his consciousness, and so afford an
+opportunity for his successor, the actual king, to consult him and
+obtain his advice and help. The presentation of offerings and the ritual
+procedures for animating and restoring consciousness to the dead king
+were at first directed solely to these ends. But in course of time, as
+their original purpose became obscured, these services in the temple
+altered in character, and their meaning became rationalized into acts
+of homage and worship, and of prayer and supplication, and in much later
+times, acquired an ethical and moral significance that was wholly absent
+from the original conception of the temple services. The earliest idea
+of the temple as a place of offering has not been lost sight of. Even in
+our times the offertory still finds a place in temple services.
+
+
+[25: G. Elliot Smith, "The Earliest Evidence of Attempts at
+Mummification in Egypt," _Report British Association_, 1912, p. 612:
+compare also J. Garstang, "Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt," London,
+1907, pp. 29 and 30. Professor Garstang did not recognize that
+mummification had been attempted.]
+
+[26: G. Elliot Smith, "The History of Mummification in Egypt," _Proc.
+Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow_, 1910: also "Egyptian Mummies,"
+_Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, Part III, July, 1914, Plate
+XXXI.]
+
+[27: "Excavations of the Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences at the
+Pyramids of Gizah, 1914," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, Oct.
+1914, p. 250.]
+
+[28: "Excavations at Saqqara," 1907-8, p. 113.]
+
+[29: The great variety of experiments that were being made at the
+beginning of the Pyramid Age bears ample testimony to the fact that the
+original inventors of these devices were actually at work in Lower Egypt
+at that time.]
+
+[30: Aylward M. Blackman, "The _Ka_-House and the Serdab," _Journal of
+Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250. The word
+_serdab_ is merely the Arabic word used by the native workmen, which has
+been adopted and converted into a technical term by European
+archæologists.]
+
+[31: _Op. cit._ p. 171.]
+
+[32: It is a remarkable fact that Professor Garstang, who brought to
+light perhaps the best, and certainly the best-preserved, collection of
+Middle Kingdom mummies ever discovered, failed to recognize the fact
+that they had really been embalmed (_op. cit._ p. 171).]
+
+[33: The reader who wishes for fuller information as to the reality of
+these beliefs and how seriously they were held will find them still in
+active operation in China. An admirable account of Chinese philosophy
+will be found in De Groot's "Religious System of China," especially Vol.
+IV, Book II. It represents the fully developed (New Empire) system of
+Egyptian belief modified in various ways by Babylonian, Indian and
+Central Asiatic influences, as well as by accretions developed locally
+in China.]
+
+[34: A. M. Blackman, "The _Ka_-House and the Serdab," _The Journal of
+Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250.]
+
+[35: "Migrations of Early Culture," p. 37.]
+
+[36: Dr. Alan Gardiner (Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhēt,"
+1915, p. 83, footnote) has, I think, overlooked certain statements in my
+writings and underestimated the antiquity of the embalmer's art; for he
+attributes to me the opinion that "mummification was a custom of
+relatively late growth".
+
+The presence in China of the characteristically Egyptian beliefs
+concerning the animation of statues (de Groot, _op. cit._ pp. 339-356),
+whereas the practice of mummification, though not wholly absent, is not
+obtrusive, might perhaps be interpreted by some scholars as evidence in
+favour of the development of the custom of making statues independently
+of mummification. But such an inference is untenable. Not only is it the
+fact that in most parts of the world the practices of making statues and
+mummifying the dead are found in association the one with the other, but
+also in China the essential beliefs concerning the dead are based upon
+the supposition that the body is fully preserved (_see_ de Groot, chap.
+XV.). It is quite evident that the Chinese customs have been derived
+directly or indirectly from some people who mummified their dead as a
+regular practice. There can be no doubt that the ultimate source of
+their inspiration to do these things was Egypt.
+
+I need mention only one of many identical peculiarities that makes this
+quite certain. De Groot says it is "strange to see Chinese fancy depict
+the souls of the viscera as distinct individuals with animal forms" (p.
+71). The same custom prevailed in Egypt, where the "souls" or protective
+deities were first given animal forms in the Nineteenth Dynasty
+(Reisner).]
+
+[37: The Arabic word conveys the idea of being "hidden underground,"
+because the house is exposed by excavation.]
+
+[38: _Op. cit. supra_, Ridgeway Essays; also _Man_, 1913, p. 193.]
+
+[39: See Alan H. Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings'
+_Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]
+
+[40: See the quotation from Mr. Quibell's account in my statement in the
+_Report of the British Association for 1914_, p. 215.]
+
+
+The Significance of Libations.
+
+The central idea of this lecture was suggested by Mr. Aylward M.
+Blackman's important discovery of the actual meaning of incense and
+libations to the Egyptians themselves.[41] The earliest body of
+literature preserved from any of the peoples of antiquity is comprised
+in the texts inscribed in the subterranean chambers of the Sakkara
+Pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. These documents, written
+forty-five centuries ago, were first brought to light in modern times in
+1880-81; and since the late Sir Gaston Maspero published the first
+translation of them, many scholars have helped in the task of
+elucidating their meaning. But it remained for Blackman to discover the
+explanation they give of the origin and significance of the act of
+pouring out libations. "The general meaning of these passages is quite
+clear. The corpse of the deceased is dry and shrivelled. To revivify it
+the vital fluids that have exuded from it [in the process of
+mummification] must be restored, for not till then will life return and
+the heart beat again. This, so the texts show us, was believed to be
+accomplished by offering libations to the accompaniment of incantations"
+(_op. cit._ p. 70).
+
+In the first three passages quoted by Blackman from the Pyramid Texts
+"the libations are said to be the actual fluids that have issued from
+the corpse". In the next four quotations "a different notion is
+introduced. It is not the deceased's own exudations that are to revive
+his shrunken frame but those of a divine body, the [god's fluid][42]
+that came from the corpse of Osiris himself, the juices that dissolved
+from his decaying flesh, which are communicated to the dead
+sacrament-wise under the form of these libations."
+
+This dragging-in of Osiris is especially significant. For the analogy of
+the life-giving power of water that is specially associated with Osiris
+played a dominant part in suggesting the ritual of libations. Just as
+water, when applied to the apparently dead seed, makes it germinate and
+come to life, so libations can reanimate the corpse. These general
+biological theories of the potency of water were current at the time,
+and, as I shall explain later (see p. 28), had possibly received
+specific application to man long before the idea of libations developed.
+For, in the development of the cult of Osiris[43] the general
+fertilizing power of water when applied to the soil found specific
+exemplification in the potency of the seminal fluid to fertilize human
+beings. Malinowski has pointed out that certain Papuan people, who are
+ignorant of the fact that women are fertilized by sexual connexion,
+believe that they can be rendered pregnant by rain falling upon them
+(_op. cit. infra_). The study of folk-lore and early beliefs makes it
+abundantly clear that in the distant past which I am now discussing no
+clear distinction was made between fertilization and vitalization,
+between bringing new life into being and reanimating the body which had
+once been alive. The process of fertilization of the female and
+animating a corpse or a statue were regarded as belonging to the same
+category of biological processes. The sculptor who carved the
+portrait-statues for the Egyptian's tomb was called _sa'nkh_, "he who
+causes to live," and "the word 'to fashion' (_ms_) a statue is to all
+appearances identical with _ms_, 'to give birth'".[44]
+
+Thus the Egyptians themselves expressed in words the ideas which an
+independent study of the ethnological evidence showed many other peoples
+to entertain, both in ancient and modern times.[45]
+
+The interpretation of ancient texts and the study of the beliefs of less
+cultured modern peoples indicate that our expressions: "to give birth,"
+"to give life," "to maintain life," "to ward off death," "to insure good
+luck," "to prolong life," "to give life to the dead," "to animate a
+corpse or a representation of the dead," "to give fertility," "to
+impregnate," "to create," represent a series of specializations of
+meaning which were not clearly differentiated the one from the other in
+early times or among relatively primitive modern people.
+
+The evidence brought together in Jackson's work clearly suggests that at
+a very early period in human history, long before the ideas that found
+expression in the Osiris story had materialized, men entertained in all
+its literal crudity the belief that the external organ of reproduction
+from which the child emerged at birth was the actual creator of the
+child, not merely the giver of birth but also the source of life.
+
+The widespread tendency of the human mind to identify similar objects
+and attribute to them the powers of the things they mimic led primitive
+men to assign to the cowry-shell all these life-giving and birth-giving
+virtues. It became an amulet to give fertility, to assist at birth, to
+maintain life, to ward off danger, to ensure the life hereafter, to
+bring luck of any sort. Now, as the giver of birth, the cowry-shell also
+came to be identified with, or regarded as, the mother and creator of
+the human family; and in course of time, as this belief became
+rationalized, the shell's maternity received visible expression and it
+became personified as an actual woman, the Great Mother, at first nameless
+and with ill-defined features. But at a later period, when the dead king
+Osiris gradually acquired his attributes of divinity, and a god emerged
+with the form of a man, the vagueness of the Great Mother who had been
+merely the personified cowry-shell soon disappeared and the amulet assumed,
+as Hathor, the form of a real woman, or, for reasons to be explained
+later, a cow.
+
+The influence of these developments reacted upon the nascent conception
+of the water-controlling god, Osiris; and his powers of fertility were
+enlarged to include many of the life-giving attributes of Hathor.
+
+
+[41: "The Significance of Incense and Libations in Funerary and Temple
+Ritual," _Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde_, Bd.
+50, 1912, p. 69.]
+
+[42: Mr. Blackman here quotes the actual word in hieroglyphics and adds
+the translation "god's fluid" and the following explanation in a
+footnote: "The Nile was supposed to be the fluid which issued from
+Osiris. The expression in the Pyramid texts may refer to this
+belief--the dead" [in the Pyramid Age it would have been more accurate
+if he had said the dead king, in whose Pyramid the inscriptions were
+found] "being usually identified with Osiris--since the water used in
+the libations was Nile water."]
+
+[43: The voluminous literature relating to Osiris will be found
+summarized in the latest edition of "The Golden Bough" by Sir James
+Frazer. But in referring the reader to this remarkable compilation of
+evidence it is necessary to call particular attention to the fact that
+Sir James Frazer's interpretation is permeated with speculations based
+upon the modern ethnological dogma of independent evolution of similar
+customs and beliefs without cultural contact between the different
+localities where such similarities make their appearance.
+
+The complexities of the motives that inspire and direct human activities
+are entirely fatal to such speculations, as I have attempted to indicate
+(see above, p. 195). But apart from this general warning, there are
+other objections to Sir James Frazer's theories. In his illuminating
+article upon Osiris and Horus, Dr. Alan Gardiner (in a criticism of Sir
+James Frazer's "The Golden Bough: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the
+History of Oriental Religion," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol.
+II, 1915, p. 122) insists upon the crucial fact that Osiris was
+primarily a king, and that "it is always as a _dead_ king," "the rôle of
+the living king being invariably played by Horus, his son and heir".
+
+He states further: "What Egyptologists wish to know about Osiris beyond
+anything else is how and by what means he became associated with the
+processes of vegetable life". An examination of the literature relating
+to Osiris and the large series of homologous deities in other countries
+(which exhibit _prima facie_ evidence of a common origin) suggests the
+idea that the king who first introduced the practice of systematic
+irrigation thereby laid the foundation of his reputation as a beneficent
+reformer. When, for reasons which I shall discuss later on (see p. 220),
+the dead king became deified, his fame as the controller of water and
+the fertilization of the earth became apotheosized also. I venture to
+put forward this suggestion only because none of the alternative
+hypotheses that have been propounded seem to be in accordance with,
+or to offer an adequate explanation of, the body of known facts
+concerning Osiris.
+
+It is a remarkable fact that in his lectures on "The Development of
+Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," which are based upon his own
+studies of the Pyramid Texts, and are an invaluable storehouse of
+information, Professor J. H. Breasted should have accepted Sir James
+Frazer's views. These seem to me to be altogether at variance with the
+renderings of the actual Egyptian texts and to confuse the exposition.]
+
+[44: Dr. Alan Gardiner, quoted in my "Migrations of Early Culture," p.
+42: see also the same scholar's remarks in Davies and Gardiner, "The
+Tomb of Amenemhēt," 1915, p. 57, and "A new Masterpiece of Egyptian
+Sculpture," _The Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. IV, Part I,
+Jan., 1917.]
+
+[45: See J. Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of
+Early Culture," 1917, Manchester University Press.]
+
+
+Early Biological Theories.
+
+Before the full significance of these procedures can be appreciated it
+is essential to try to get at the back of the Proto-Egyptian's mind and
+to understand his general trend of thought. I specially want to make it
+clear that the ritual use of water for animating the corpse or the
+statue was merely a specific application of the general principles of
+biology which were then current. It was no mere childish make-believe or
+priestly subterfuge to regard the pouring out of water as a means of
+animating a block of stone. It was a conviction for which the
+Proto-Egyptians considered there was a substantial scientific basis; and
+their faith in the efficacy of water to animate the dead is to be
+regarded in the same light as any scientific inference which is made at
+the present time to give a specific application of some general theory
+considered to be well founded. The Proto-Egyptians clearly believed in
+the validity of the general biological theory of the life-giving
+properties of water. Many facts, no doubt quite convincing to them,
+testified to the soundness of their theory. They accepted the principle
+with the same confidence that modern people have adopted Newton's Law of
+Gravitation, and Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species, and applied
+it to explain many phenomena or to justify certain procedures, which in
+the light of fuller knowledge seem to modern people puerile and
+ludicrous. But the early people obviously took these procedures
+seriously and regarded their actions as rational. The fact that their
+early biological theory was inadequate ought not to mislead modern
+scholars and encourage them to fall into the error of supposing that the
+ritual of libations was not based upon a serious inference. Modern
+scientists do not accept the whole of Darwin's teaching, or possibly
+even Newton's "Law," but this does not mean that in the past innumerable
+inferences have been honestly and confidently made in specific
+application of these general principles.
+
+It is important, then, that I should examine more closely the
+Proto-Egyptian body of doctrine to elucidate the mutual influence of it
+and the ideas suggested by the practice of mummification. It is not
+known where agriculture was first practised or the circumstances which
+led men to appreciate the fact that plants could be cultivated. In many
+parts of the world agriculture can be carried on without artificial
+irrigation, and even without any adequate appreciation on the part of
+the farmer of the importance of water. But when it came to be practised
+under such conditions as prevail in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the
+cultivator would soon be forced to realize that water was essential for
+the growth of plants, and that it was imperative to devise artificial
+means by which the soil might be irrigated. It is not known where or by
+whom this cardinal fact first came to be appreciated, whether by the
+Sumerians or the Egyptians or by some other people. But it is known that
+in the earliest records both of Egypt and Sumer the most significant
+manifestations of a ruler's wisdom were the making of irrigation canals
+and the controlling of water. Important as these facts are from their
+bearing upon the material prospects of the people, they had an
+infinitely more profound and far-reaching effect upon the beliefs of
+mankind. Groping after some explanation of the natural phenomenon that
+the earth became fertile when water was applied to it, and that seed
+burst into life under the same influence, the early biologist formulated
+the natural and not wholly illogical idea that water was the repository
+of life-giving powers. Water was equally necessary for the production of
+life and for the maintenance of life.
+
+At an early stage in the development of this biological theory man and
+other animals were brought within the scope of the generalization. For
+the drinking of water was a condition of existence in animals. The idea
+that water played a part in reproduction was co-related with this fact.
+
+Even at the present time many aboriginal peoples in Australia, New
+Guinea, and elsewhere, are not aware of the fact that in the process of
+animal reproduction the male exercises the physiological rôle of
+fertilization.[46]
+
+There are widespread indications throughout the world that the
+appreciation of this elementary physiological knowledge was acquired at
+a relatively recent period in the history of mankind. It is difficult to
+believe that the fundamental facts of the physiology of fertilization in
+animals could long have remained unknown when men became breeders of
+cattle. The Egyptian hieroglyphs leave no doubt that the knowledge was
+fully appreciated at the period when the earliest picture-symbols were
+devised, for the verb "to beget" is represented by the male organs of
+generation. But, as the domestication of animals may have been earlier
+than the invention of agriculture, it is possible that the appreciation
+of the fertilizing powers of the male animal may have been definitely
+more ancient than the earliest biological theory of the fertilizing
+power of water.
+
+I have discussed this question to suggest that the knowledge that
+animals could be fertilized by the seminal fluid was certainly brought
+within the scope of the wider generalization that water itself was
+endowed with fertilizing properties. Just as water fertilized the earth,
+so the semen fertilized the female. Water was necessary for the
+maintenance of life in plants and was also essential in the form of
+drink for animals. As both the earth and women could be fertilized by
+water they were homologized one with the other. The earth came to be
+regarded as a woman, the Great Mother.[47] When the fertilizing water
+came to be personified in the person of Osiris his consort Isis was
+identified with the earth which was fertilized by water.[48]
+
+One of the earliest pictures of an Egyptian king represents him using
+the hoe to inaugurate the making of an irrigation-canal.[49] This was
+the typical act of benevolence on the part of a wise ruler. It is not
+unlikely that the earliest organization of a community under a definite
+leader may have been due to the need for some systematized control of
+irrigation. In any case the earliest rulers of Egypt and Sumer were
+essentially the controllers and regulators of the water supply and as
+such the givers of fertility and prosperity.
+
+Once men first consciously formulated the belief that death was not the
+end of all things,[50] that the body could be re-animated and
+consciousness and the will restored, it was natural that a wise ruler
+who, when alive, had rendered conspicuous services should after death
+continue to be consulted. The fame of such a man would grow with age;
+his good deeds and his powers would become apotheosized; he would become
+an oracle whose advice might be sought and whose help be obtained in
+grave crises. In other words the dead king would be "deified," or at any
+rate credited with the ability to confer even greater boons than he was
+able to do when alive.
+
+It is no mere coincidence that the first "god" should have been a dead
+king, Osiris, nor that he controlled the waters of irrigation and was
+specially interested in agriculture. Nor, for the reasons that I have
+already suggested, is it surprising that he should have had phallic
+attributes, and in himself have personified the virile powers of
+fertilization.[51]
+
+In attempting to explain the origin of the ritual procedures of burning
+incense and offering libations it is essential to realize that the
+creation of the first deities was not primarily an expression of
+religious belief, but rather an application of science to national
+affairs. It was the logical interpretation of the dominant scientific
+theory of the time for the practical benefit of the living; or in other
+words, the means devised for securing the advice and the active help of
+wise rulers after their death. It was essentially a matter of practical
+politics and applied science. It became "religion" only when the
+advancement of knowledge superseded these primitive scientific theories
+and left them as soothing traditions for the thoughts and aspirations of
+mankind to cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories of
+knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and
+had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's
+conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral
+precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that
+no force was able to strip away this body of consolatory beliefs; and
+they have persisted for all time, although the reasoning by which they
+were originally built up has been demolished and forgotten several
+millennia ago.
+
+It is not known where Osiris was born. In other countries there are
+homologous deities, such as Ea, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, which are
+certainly manifestations of the same idea and sprung from the same
+source. Certain recent writers assume that the germ of the
+Osiris-conception was introduced into Egypt from abroad. But if so,
+nothing is known for certain of its place of origin. In any case there
+can be no doubt that the distinctive features of Osiris, his real
+personality and character, were developed in Egypt.
+
+For reasons which I have suggested already it is probable that the
+significance of water in cultivation was not realized until cereals were
+cultivated in some such place as Babylonia or Egypt. But there are very
+definite legends of the Babylonian Ea coming from abroad by way of the
+Persian Gulf.[52] The early history of Tammuz is veiled in obscurity.
+
+Somewhere in South Western Asia or North Eastern Africa, probably within
+a few years of the development of the art of agriculture, some
+scientific theorist, interpreting the body of empirical knowledge
+acquired by cultivating cereals, propounded the view that water was the
+great life-giving element. This view eventually found expression in the
+Osiris-group of legends.
+
+This theory found specific application in the invention of libations and
+incense. These practices in turn reacted upon the general body of
+doctrine and gave it a more sharply defined form. The dead king also
+became more real when he was represented by an actual embalmed body and
+a life-like statue, sitting in state upon his throne and holding in his
+hands the emblems of his high office.
+
+Thus while, in the present state of knowledge, it would be unjustifiable
+to claim that the Osiris-group of deities was invented in Egypt, and
+certainly erroneous to attribute the general theory of the fertilizing
+properties of water to the practice of embalming, it is true that the
+latter was responsible for giving Osiris a much more concrete and
+clearly-defined shape, of "making a god in the image of man", and for
+giving to the water-theory a much richer and fuller significance than it
+had before.
+
+The symbolism so created has had a most profound influence upon the
+thoughts and aspirations of the human race. For Osiris was the prototype
+of all the gods; his ritual was the basis of all religious ceremonial;
+his priests who conducted the animating ceremonies were the pioneers of
+a long series of ministers who for more than fifty centuries, in spite
+of the endless variety of details of their ritual and the character of
+their temples, have continued to perform ceremonies that have undergone
+remarkably little essential change. Though the chief functions of the
+priest as the animator of the god and the restorer of his consciousness
+have now fallen into the background in most religions, the ritual acts
+(the incense and libations, the offerings of food and blood and the
+rest) still persist in many countries: the priest still appeals by
+prayer and supplication for those benefits, which the Proto-Egyptian
+aimed at securing when he created Osiris as a god to give advice and
+help. The prayer for rain is one of the earliest forms of religious
+appeal, but the request for a plentiful inundation was earlier still.
+
+I have already said that in using the terms "god" and "religion" with
+reference to the earliest form of Osiris and the beliefs that grew up
+with reference to him a potent element of confusion is introduced.
+
+During the last fifty centuries the meanings of those two words have
+become so complexly enriched with the glamour of a mystic symbolism that
+the Proto-Egyptian's conception of Osiris and the Osirian beliefs must
+have been vastly different from those implied in the words "god" and
+"religion" at the present time. Osiris was regarded as an actual king
+who had died and been reanimated. In other words he was a _man_ who
+could bestow upon his former subjects the benefits of his advice and
+help, but could also display such human weaknesses as malice, envy, and
+all uncharitableness. Much modern discussion completely misses the mark
+by the failure to recognize that these so-called "gods" were really men,
+equally capable of acts of beneficence and of outbursts of hatred, and
+as one or the other aspect became accentuated the same deity could
+become a Vedic _deva_ or an Avestan _dæva_, a _deus_ or a devil, a god
+of kindness or a demon of wickedness.
+
+The acts which the earliest "gods" were supposed to perform were not at
+first regarded as supernatural. They were merely the boons which the
+mortal ruler was supposed to be able to confer, by controlling the
+waters of irrigation and rendering the land fertile. It was only when
+his powers became apotheosized with a halo of accumulated glory (and the
+growth of knowledge revealed the insecurity of the scientific basis upon
+which his fame was built up) that a priesthood reluctant to abandon any
+of the attributes which had captured the popular imagination, made it an
+obligation of belief to accept these supernatural powers of the gods for
+which the student of natural phenomena refused any longer to be a
+sponsor. This was the parting of the ways between science and religion;
+and thenceforth the attributes of the "gods" became definitely and
+admittedly superhuman.
+
+As I have already stated (p. 23) the original object of the offering of
+libations was thus clearly for the purpose of animating the statue of
+the deceased and so enabling him to continue the existence which had
+merely been interrupted by the incident of death. In course of time,
+however, as definite gods gradually materialized and came to be
+represented by statues, they also had to be vitalized by offerings of
+water from time to time. Thus the pouring out of libations came to be an
+act of worship of the deity; and in this form it has persisted until our
+own times in many civilized countries.
+
+But not only was water regarded as a means of animating the dead, or
+statues representing the dead, and an appropriate act of worship, in
+that it vitalized an idol and the god dwelling in it was thus able to
+hear and answer supplications. Water also became an essential part of
+any act of ritual rebirth.[53] As a baptism it also symbolized the
+giving of life. The initiate was re-born into a new communion of faith.
+In scores of other ways the same conception of the life-giving
+properties of water was responsible for as many applications of the use
+of libations in inaugurating new enterprises, such as "baptising" ships
+and blessing buildings. It is important to remember that, according to
+early Egyptian beliefs, the continued existence of the dead was wholly
+dependent upon the attentions of the living. Unless this animating
+ceremony was performed not merely at the time of the funeral, but also
+at stated periods afterwards, and unless the friends of the deceased
+periodically supplied food and drink, such a continuation of existence
+was impossible.
+
+The development of these beliefs had far-reaching effects in other
+directions. The idea that a stone statue could be animated ultimately
+became extended to mean that the dead man could enter into and dwell in
+a block of stone, which he could leave or return to at will. From this
+arose the beliefs, which spread far and wide, that the dead ancestors,
+kings, or deified kings, dwelt in stones; and that they could be
+consulted as oracles, who gave advice and counsel. The acceptance of
+this idea that the dead could be reanimated in a stone statue no doubt
+prepared the minds of the people to credit the further belief, which
+other circumstances were responsible for creating, that men could be
+turned into stone. In the next chapter I shall explain how these
+petrifaction stories developed.[54]
+
+All the rich crop of myths concerning men and animals dwelling in stones
+which are to be found encircling the globe from Ireland to America, can
+be referred back to these early Egyptian attempts to solve the mysteries
+of death, and to acquire the means of circumventing fate.[55]
+
+These beliefs at first may have concerned human beings only. But in
+course of time, as the duty of revictualling an increasingly large
+number of tombs and temples tended to tax the resources of the people,
+the practice developed of substituting for the real things models, or
+even pictures, of food-animals, vegetables, and other requisites of the
+dead. And these objects and pictures were restored to life or reality by
+means of a ritual which was essentially identical with that used for
+animating the statue or the mummy of the deceased himself.
+
+It is well worth considering whether this may not be one of the basal
+factors in explanation of the phenomena which the late Sir Edward Tylor
+labelled "animism".
+
+So far from being a phase of culture through which many, if not all,
+peoples have passed in the course of their evolution, may it not have
+been merely an artificial conception of certain things, which was given
+so definite a form in Egypt, for the specific reasons at which I have
+just hinted, and from there spread far and wide?
+
+Against this view may be urged the fact that our own children talk in an
+animistic fashion. But is not this due in some measure to the
+unconscious influence of their elders? Or at most is it not a vague and
+ill-defined attitude of anthropomorphism necessarily involved in all
+spoken languages, which is vastly different from what the ethnologist
+understands by "animism"[56]?
+
+But whether this be so or not, there can be no doubt that the "animism"
+of the early Egyptians assumed its precise and clear-cut distinctive
+features as the result of the growth of ideas suggested by the attempts
+to make mummies and statues of the dead and symbolic offerings of food
+and other funerary requisites.
+
+Thus incidentally there grew up the belief in a power of magic by means
+of which these make-believe offerings could be transformed into
+realities. But it is important to emphasize the fact that originally the
+conviction of the genuineness of this transubstantiation was a logical
+and not unnatural inference based upon the attempt to interpret natural
+phenomena, and then to influence them by imitating what were regarded as
+the determining factors.[57]
+
+In China these ideas still retain much of their primitive influence and
+directness of expression. Referring to the Chinese "belief in the
+identity of pictures or images with the beings they represent" de Groot
+states that the _kwan shuh_ or "magic art" is a "main branch of Chinese
+witchcraft". It consists essentially of "the infusion of a soul, life,
+and activity into likenesses of beings, to thus render them fit to work
+in some direction desired ... this infusion is effected by blowing or
+breathing, or spurting water over the likeness: indeed breath or _khi_,
+or water from the mouth imbued with breath, is identical with _yang_
+substance or life."[58]
+
+
+[46: Baldwin Spencer and Gillen, "The Northern Tribes of Central
+Australia"; "Across Australia"; and Spencer's "Native Tribes of the
+Northern Territory of Australia". For a very important study of the
+whole problem with special reference to New Guinea, see B. Malinowski,
+"Baloma: the Spirits of the Dead," etc., _Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute_, 1916, p. 415.]
+
+[47: The idea of the earth's maternal function spread throughout the
+greater part of the world.]
+
+[48: With reference to the assimilation of the conceptions of human
+fertilization and watering the soil and the widespread idea among the
+ancients of regarding the male as "he who irrigates," Canon van
+Hoonacker gave M. Louis Siret the following note:--
+
+"In Assyrian the cuneiform sign for water is also used, _inter alia_, to
+express the idea of begetting (_banú_). Compare with this the references
+from Hebrew and Arabic writings. In Isaiah xlviii. 1, we read 'Hear ye
+this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are
+come forth out of the waters of Judah'; and in Numbers xxiv. 7, 'Water
+shall flow from his buckets and his seed shall be in many waters'.
+
+"The Hebrew verb (_shangal_) which denotes sexual intercourse has, in
+Arabic (_sadjala_), the meaning 'to spill water'. In the Koran, Sur. 36,
+v. 6, the word _mâ'un_ (water) is used to designate semen" (L. Siret,
+"Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Ibériques," Tome I, 1913, p.
+250).]
+
+[49: Quibell, "Hieraconpolis", Vol. I, 260, 4.]
+
+[50: In using this phrase I want to make a clear distinction between the
+phase of culture in which it had never occurred to man that, in his
+individual case, life would come to an end, and the more enlightened
+stage, in which he fully realized that death would inevitably be his
+fate, but that in spite of it his real existence would continue.
+
+It is clear that at quite an early stage in his history man appreciated
+the fact that he could kill an animal or his fellow-man. But for a long
+time he failed to realize that he himself, if he could avoid the process
+of mechanical destruction by which he could kill an animal or a
+fellow-man, would not continue to exist. The dead are supposed by many
+people to be still in existence so long as the body is preserved. Once
+the body begins to disintegrate even the most unimaginative of men can
+entirely repress the idea of death. But to primitive people the
+preservation of the body is equally a token that existence has not come
+to an end. The corpse is merely sleeping.]
+
+[51: Breasted, _op. cit._, p. 28.]
+
+[52: The possibility, or even the probability, must be borne in mind
+that the legend of Ea arising from the waters may be merely another way
+of expressing his primary attribute as the personification of the
+fertilizing powers of water.]
+
+[53: This occurred at a later epoch when the attributes of the
+water-controlling deity of fertility became confused with those of the
+birth-giving mother goddess (_vide infra_, p. 40).]
+
+[54: For a large series of these stories see E. Sidney Hartland's
+"Legend of Perseus". But even more instructive, as revealing the
+intimate connexion of such ideas with the beliefs regarding the
+preservation of the body, see J. J. M. de Groot, "The Religious System
+of China," Vol. IV, Book II, 1901.]
+
+[55: In this connexion see de Groot, _op. cit._ pp. 356 and 415.
+[Transcriber's Note: the original text contained no marker for this
+footnote, so a guess has been made as to what it referred]]
+
+[56: The child certainly resembles primitive man in the readiness with
+which it attributes to even the crudest models of animals or human
+beings the feelings of living creatures.]
+
+[57: It became "magical" in our sense of the term only when the growth
+of knowledge revealed the fact that the measures taken were inadequate
+to attain the desired end; while the "magician" continued to make the
+pretence that he could attain that end by ultra-physical means.]
+
+[58: De Groot, _op. cit._ p. 356.]
+
+
+Incense.
+
+So far I have referred in detail only to the offering of libations. But
+this was only one of several procedures for animating statues, mummies,
+and food-offerings. I have still to consider the ritual procedures of
+incense-burning and "opening the mouth".
+
+From Mr. Blackman's translations of the Egyptian texts it is clear that
+the burning of incense was intended to restore to the statue (or the
+mummy) the odour of the living body, and that this was part of the
+procedure considered necessary to animate the statue. He says "the
+belief about incense [which is explained by a later document, the
+_Ritual of Amon_] apparently does not occur in the Old Kingdom religious
+texts that are preserved to us, yet it may quite well be as ancient as
+that period. That is certainly Erman's view" (_op. cit._ p. 75).
+
+He gives the following translation of the relevant passage in the
+_Ritual of Amon_ (XII, 11): "The god comes with body adorned which he
+has fumigated with the eye of his body, the incense of the god which has
+issued from his flesh, the sweat of the god which has fallen to the
+ground, which he has given to all the gods.... It is the Horus eye. If
+it lives, the people live, thy flesh lives, thy members are vigorous"
+(_op. cit._ p. 72). In his comments upon this passage Mr. Blackman
+states: "In the light of the Pyramid libation-formulæ the expressions in
+this text are quite comprehensible. Like the libations the grains of
+incense are the exudations of a divinity,[59] the fluid which issued
+from his flesh, the god's sweat descending to the ground.... Here
+incense is not merely the 'odour of the god,' but the grains of resin
+are said to be the god's sweat" (_op. cit._ p. 72). "Both rites, the
+pouring of libations and the burning of incense, are performed for the
+same purpose--to revivify the body [or the statue] of god and man by
+restoring to it its lost moisture" (p. 75).
+
+In attempting to reconstitute the circumstances which led to the
+invention of incense-burning as a ritual act, the nature of the problem
+to be solved must be recalled. Among the most obtrusive evidences of
+death were the coldness of the skin, the lack of perspiration and of the
+odour of the living. It is important to realize what the phrase "odour
+of the living" would convey to the Proto-Egyptian. From the earliest
+Predynastic times in Egypt it had been the custom to make extensive use
+of resinous material as an essential ingredient (what a pharmacist would
+call the adhesive "vehicle") of cosmetics. One of the results of this
+practice in a hot climate must have been the association of a strong
+aroma of resin or balsam with a living person.[60] Whether or not it was
+the practice to burn incense to give pleasure to the living is not
+known. The fact that such a procedure was customary among their
+successors may mean that it was really archaic; or on the other hand the
+possibility must not be overlooked that it may be merely the later
+vulgarization of a practice which originally was devised for purely
+ritual purposes. The burning of incense before a corpse or statue was
+intended to convey to it the warmth, the sweat, and the odour of life.
+
+When the belief became well established that the burning of incense was
+potent as an animating force, and especially a giver of life to the
+dead, it naturally came to be regarded as a divine substance in the
+sense that it had the power of resurrection. As the grains of incense
+consisted of the exudation of trees, or, as the ancient texts express
+it, "their sweat," the divine power of animation in course of time
+became transferred to the trees. They were no longer merely the source
+of the life-giving incense, but were themselves animated by the deity
+whose drops of sweat were the means of conveying life to the mummy.
+
+The reason why the deity which dwelt in these trees was usually
+identified with the Mother-Goddess will become clear in the course of
+the subsequent discussion (p. 38). It is probable that this was due
+mainly to the geographical circumstance that the chief source of incense
+was Southern Arabia, which was also the home of the primitive goddesses
+of fertility. For they were originally nothing more than
+personifications of the life-giving cowry amulets from the Red Sea.
+
+Thus Robertson Smith's statement that "the value of the gum of the
+acacia as an amulet is connected with the idea that it is a clot of
+menstruous blood, i.e., that the tree is a woman"[61] is probably an
+inversion of cause and effect. It was the value attached to the gum that
+conferred animation upon the tree. The rest of the legend is merely a
+rationalization based upon the idea that the tree was identified with
+the mother-goddess. The same criticism applies to his further contention
+(p. 427) with reference to "the religious value of incense" which he
+claims to be due to the fact that "like the gum of the _samora_ (acacia)
+tree, ... it was an animate or divine plant".
+
+Many factors played a part in the development of tree-worship but it is
+probable the origin of the sacredness of trees must be assigned to the
+fact that it was acquired from the incense and the aromatic woods which
+were credited with the power of animating the dead. But at a very early
+epoch many other considerations helped to confirm and extend the
+conception of deification. When Osiris was buried, a sacred sycamore
+grew up as "the visible symbol of the imperishable life of Osiris".[62]
+But the sap of trees was brought into relationship with life-giving
+water and thus constituted another link with Osiris. The sap was also
+regarded as the blood of trees and the incense that exuded as the sweat.
+Just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid of the body of
+Osiris, so also, by this process of rationalization, the incense came to
+possess a similar significance.
+
+For reasons precisely analogous to those already explained in the case
+of libations, the custom of burning incense, from being originally a
+ritual act for animating the funerary statue, ultimately developed into
+an act of homage to the deity.
+
+But it also acquired a special significance when the cult of sky-gods
+developed,[63] for the smoke of the burning incense then came to be
+regarded as the vehicle which wafted the deceased's soul to the sky or
+conveyed there the requests of the dwellers upon earth.[64]
+
+"The soul of a human being is generally conceived [by the Chinese] as
+possessing the shape and characteristics of a human being, and
+occasionally those of an animal; ... the spirit of an animal is the shape
+of this animal or of some being with human attributes and speech. But
+plant spirits are never conceived as plant-shaped, nor to have
+plant-characters ... whenever forms are given them, they are mostly
+represented as a man, a woman, or a child, and often also as an animal,
+dwelling in or near the plant, and emerging from it at times to do harm,
+or to dispense blessings.... Whether conceptions on the animation of
+plants have never developed in Chinese thought and worship before ideas
+about human ghosts ... had become predominant in mind and custom, we
+cannot say: but the matter seems probable" (De Groot, _op. cit._ pp.
+272, 273). Tales of trees that shed blood and that cry out when hurt are
+common in Chinese literature (p. 274) [as also in Southern Arabia]; also
+of trees that lodge or can change into maidens of transcendent beauty
+(p. 276).
+
+It is further significant that amongst the stories of souls of men
+taking up their residence in and animating trees and plants, the human
+being is usually a woman, accompanied by "a fox, a dog, an old raven or
+the like" (p. 276).
+
+Thus in China are found all the elements out of which Dr. Rendel Harris
+believes the Aphrodite cult was compounded in Cyprus,[65] the animation
+of the anthropoid plant, its human cry, its association with a beautiful
+maiden and a dog.[66]
+
+The immemorial custom of planting trees on graves in China is supposed
+by De Groot (p. 277) to be due to "the desire to strengthen the soul of
+the buried person, thus to save his body from corruption, for which
+reason trees such as pines and cypresses, deemed to be bearers of great
+vitality for being possessed of more _shen_ than other trees, were used
+preferably for such purposes". But may not such beliefs also be an
+expression of the idea that a tree growing upon a grave is developed
+from and becomes the personification of the deceased? The significance
+of the selection of pines and cypresses may be compared to that
+associated with the so-called "cedars" in Babylonia, Egypt, and
+Phœnicia, and the myrrh- and frankincense-producing trees in Arabia and
+East Africa. They have come to be accredited with "soul-substance,"
+since their use in mummification and as incense and for making coffins,
+has made them the means for attaining a future existence. Hence in
+course of time they came to be regarded as charged with the spirit of
+vitality, the _shen_ or "soul-substance".
+
+In China also it was because the woods of the pine or fir and the cyprus
+were used for making coffins and grave-vaults and that pine-resin was
+regarded as a means of attaining immortality (De Groot, _op. cit._ pp.
+296 and 297) that such veneration was bestowed upon these trees. "At an
+early date, Taoist seekers after immortality transplanted that animation
+[of the hardy long-lived fir and cypress[67]] into themselves by
+consuming the resin of those trees, which, apparently, they looked upon
+as coagulated soul-substance, the counterpart of the blood in men and
+animals" (p. 296).
+
+In India the _amrita_, the god's food of immortality, was sometimes
+regarded as the sap exuded from the sacred trees of paradise.
+
+Elsewhere in these pages it is explained how the vaguely defined Mother
+"Goddess" and the more distinctly anthropoid Water "God," which
+originally developed quite independently the one of the other,
+ultimately came to exert a profound and mutual influence, so that many
+of the attributes which originally belonged to one of them came to be
+shared with the other. Many factors played a part in this process of
+blending and confusion of sex. As I shall explain later, when the moon
+came to be regarded as the dwelling or the impersonation of Hathor, the
+supposed influence of the moon over water led to a further assimilation
+of her attributes with those of Osiris as the controller of water, which
+received definite expression in a lunar form of Osiris.
+
+But the link that is most intimately related to the subject of this
+address is provided by the personification of the Mother-Goddess in
+incense-trees. For incense thus became the sweat or the tears of the
+Great Mother just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid
+of Osiris.
+
+
+[59: As I shall explain later (see page 38), the idea of the divinity of
+the incense-tree was a result of, and not the reason for, the practice
+of incense-burning. As one of the means by which the resurrection was
+attained incense became a giver of divinity; and by a simple process
+of rationalization the tree which produced this divine substance became
+a god.
+
+The reference to the "eye of the body" (see p. 55) means the life-giving
+god or goddess who is the "eye" of the sky, _i.e._ the god with whom the
+dead king is identified.]
+
+[60: It would lead me too far afield to enter into a discussion of the
+use of scents and unguents, which is closely related to this question.]
+
+[61: "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133.]
+
+[62: Breasted, p. 28.]
+
+[63: For reasons explained on a subsequent page (56).]
+
+[64: It is also worth considering whether the extension of this idea may
+not have been responsible for originating the practice of cremation--as
+a device for transferring, not merely the animating incense and the
+supplications of the living, but also the body of the deceased to the
+sky-world. This, of course, did not happen in Egypt, but in some other
+country which adopted the Egyptian practice of incense-burning, but was
+not hampered by the religious conservatism that guarded the sacredness
+of the corpse.]
+
+[65: "The Ascent of Olympus," 1917.]
+
+[66: For a collection of stories relating to human beings, generally
+women, dwelling in trees, see Hartland's "Legend of Perseus".]
+
+[67: The fact that the fir and cypress are "hardy and long-lived" is not
+the reason for their being accredited with these life-prolonging
+qualities. But once the latter virtues had become attributed to them the
+fact that the trees were "hardy and long-lived" may have been used to
+bolster up the belief by a process of rationalization.]
+
+
+The Breath of Life.
+
+Although the pouring of libations and the burning of incense played so
+prominent a part in the ritual of animating the statue or the mummy, the
+most important incident in the ceremony was the "opening of the mouth,"
+which was regarded as giving it the breath of life.
+
+Elsewhere[68] I have suggested that the conception of the heart and
+blood as the vehicles of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge may have
+been extremely ancient. It is not known when or under what circumstances
+the idea of the breath being the "life" was first entertained. The fact
+that in certain primitive systems of philosophy the breath was supposed
+to have something to do with the heart suggests that these beliefs may
+be a constituent element of the ancient heart-theory. In some of the
+rock-pictures in America, Australia, and elsewhere the air-passages are
+represented leading to the heart. But there can be little doubt that the
+practice of mummification gave greater definiteness to the ideas
+regarding the "heart" and "breath," which eventually led to a
+differentiation between their supposed functions.[69] As the heart and
+the blood were obviously present in the dead body they could no longer
+be regarded as the "life". The breath was clearly the "element" the lack
+of which rendered the body inanimate. It was therefore regarded as
+necessary to set the heart working. The heart then came to be looked
+upon as the seat of knowledge, the organ that feels and wills during
+waking life. All the pulsating motions of the body seem to have been
+regarded, like the act of respiration, as expressions of the vital
+principle or "life," which Dutch ethnological writers refer to as "soul
+substance". The neighbourhood of certain joints where the pulse can be
+felt most readily, and the top of the head, where pulsation can be felt
+in the infant's fontanelle, were therefore regarded by some Asiatic
+peoples as the places where the substance of life could leave or enter
+the body.
+
+It is possible that in ancient times this belief was more widespread
+than it is now. It affords an explanation of the motive for trephining
+the skull among ancient peoples, to afford a more ready passage for the
+"vital essence" to and from the skull.
+
+In his lecture on "The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul,"[70] Professor
+John Burnet has expounded the meaning of early Greek conceptions of the
+soul with rare insight and lucidity. Originally, the word [Greek:
+psychê] meant "breath," but, by historical times, it had already been
+specialized in two distinct ways. It had come to mean _courage_ in the
+first place, and secondly the _breath of life_, the presence or absence
+of which is the most obvious distinction between the animate and the
+inanimate, the "ghost" which a man "gives up" at death. But it may also
+quit the body temporarily, which explains the phenomenon of swooning
+([Greek: lipopsychia]). It seemed natural to suppose it was also the
+thing that can roam at large when the body is asleep, and even appear to
+another sleeping person in his dream. Moreover, since we can dream of
+the dead, what then appears to us must be just what leaves the body at
+the moment of death. These considerations explain the world-wide belief
+in the "soul" as a sort of double of the real bodily man, the Egyptian
+_ka_,[71] the Italian _genius_, and the Greek [Greek: psychê].
+
+Now this double is not identical with whatever it is in us that feels
+and wills during our waking life. That is generally supposed to be blood
+and not breath.
+
+What we feel and perceive have their seat in the heart: they belong to
+the body and perish with it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is only when the shades have been allowed to drink blood that
+consciousness returns to them for a while.
+
+At one time the [Greek: psychê] was supposed to dwell with the body in
+the grave, where it had to be supported by the offerings of the
+survivors, especially by libations ([Greek: choai]).
+
+An Egyptian psychologist has carried the story back long before the
+times of which Professor Burnet writes. He has explained "his conception
+of the functions of the 'heart (mind) and tongue'. 'When the eyes see,
+the ears hear, and the nose breathes, they transmit to the heart. It is
+he (the heart) who brings forth every issue and it is the tongue which
+repeats the thought of the heart.'"[72]
+
+"There came the saying that Atum, who created the gods, stated
+concerning Ptah-Tatenen: 'He is the fashioner of the gods.... He made
+likenesses of their bodies to the satisfaction of their hearts. Then the
+gods entered into their bodies of every wood and every stone and every
+metal.'"[73]
+
+That these ideas are really ancient is shown by the fact that in the
+Pyramid Texts Isis is represented conveying the breath of life to Osiris
+by "causing a wind with her wings".[74] The ceremony of "opening the
+mouth" which aimed at achieving this restoration of the breath of life
+was the principal part of the ritual procedure before the statue or
+mummy. As I have already mentioned (p. 25), the sculptor who modelled
+the portrait statue was called "he who causes to live," and the word "to
+fashion" a statue is identical with that which means "to give birth".
+The god Ptah created man by modelling his form in clay. Similarly the
+life-giving sculptor made the portrait which was to be the means of
+securing a perpetuation of existence, when it was animated by the
+"opening of the mouth," by libations and incense.
+
+As the outcome of this process of rationalization in Egypt a vast crop
+of creation-legends came into existence, which have persisted with
+remarkable completeness until the present day in India, Indonesia,
+China, America, and elsewhere. A statue of stone, wood, or clay is
+fashioned, and the ceremony of animation is performed to convey to it
+the breath of life, which in many places is supposed to be brought down
+from the sky.[75]
+
+In the Egyptian beliefs, as well as in most of the world-wide legends
+that were derived from them, the idea assumed a definite form that the
+vital principle (often referred to as the "soul," "soul-substance," or
+"double") could exist apart from the body. Whatever the explanation, it
+is clear that the possibility of the existence of the vital principle
+apart from the body was entertained. It was supposed that it could
+return to the body and temporarily reanimate it. It could enter into and
+dwell within the stone representation of the deceased. Sometimes this
+so-called "soul" was identified[76] with the breath of life, which
+could enter into the statue as the result of the ceremony of "opening
+the mouth".
+
+It has been commonly assumed by Sir Edward Tyler and those who accept
+his theory of animism that the idea of the "soul" was based upon the
+attempts to interpret the phenomena of dreams and shadows, to which
+Burnet has referred in the passage quoted above. The fact that when a
+person is sleeping he may dream of seeing absent people and of having a
+variety of adventures is explained by many peoples by the hypothesis
+that these are real experiences which befell the "soul" when it wandered
+abroad during its owner's sleep. A man's shadow or his reflection in
+water or a mirror has been interpreted as his double. But what these
+speculations leave out of account is the fact that these dream- and
+shadow-phenomena were probably merely the predisposing circumstances
+which helped in the development of (or the corroborative details which
+were added to and, by rationalization, incorporated in) the
+"soul-theory," which other circumstances were responsible for
+creating.[77]
+
+I have already called attention (p. 5) to the fact that in many of the
+psychological speculations in ethnology too little account is taken of
+the enormous complexity of the factors which determine even the simplest
+and apparently most obvious and rational actions of men. I must again
+remind the reader that a vast multitude of influences, many of them of a
+subconscious and emotional nature, affect men's decisions and opinions.
+But once some definite state of feeling inclines a man to a certain
+conclusion, he will call up a host of other circumstances to buttress
+his decision, and weave them into a complex net of rationalization. Some
+such process undoubtedly took place in the development of "animism"; and
+though it is not possible yet to reconstruct the whole history of the
+growth of the idea, there can be no question that these early strivings
+after an understanding of the nature of life and death, and the attempts
+to put the theories into practice to reanimate the dead, provided the
+foundations upon which has been built up during the last fifty centuries
+a vast and complex theory of the soul. In the creation of this edifice
+the thoughts and the aspirations of countless millions of peoples have
+played a part: but the foundation was laid down when the Egyptian king
+or priest claimed that he could restore to the dead the "breath of life"
+and, by means of the wand which he called "the great magician,"[78]
+could enable the dead to be born again. The wand is supposed by some
+scholars[79] to be a conventionalized representation of the uterus, so
+that its power of giving birth is expressed with literal directness.
+Such beliefs and stories of the "magic wand" are found to-day in
+scattered localities from the Scottish Highlands to Indonesia and
+America.
+
+In this sketch I have referred merely to one or two aspects of a
+conception of vast complexity. But it must be remembered that, once the
+mind of man began to play with the idea of a vital essence capable of
+existing apart from the body and to identify it with the breath of life,
+an illimitable field was opened up for speculation. The vital principle
+could manifest itself in all the varied expressions of human
+personality, as well as in all the physiological indications of life.
+Experience of dreams led men to believe that the "soul" could also leave
+the body temporarily and enjoy varied experiences. But the
+concrete-minded Egyptian demanded some physical evidence to buttress
+these intangible ideas of the wandering abroad of his vital essence. He
+made a statue for it to dwell in after his death, because he was not
+able to make an adequately life-like reproduction of the dead man's
+features upon the mummy itself or its wrappings. Then he gradually
+persuaded himself that the life-substance could exist apart from the
+body as a "double" or "twin" which animated the statue.
+
+Searching for material evidence to support his faith primitive man not
+unnaturally turned to the contemplation of the circumstances of his
+birth. All his beliefs concerning the nature of life can ultimately be
+referred back to the story of his own origin, his birth or creation.
+
+When an infant is born it is accompanied by the after-birth or placenta
+to which it is linked by the umbilical cord. The full comprehension of
+the significance of these structures is an achievement of modern
+science. To primitive man they were an incomprehensible marvel. But once
+he began to play with the idea that he had a double, a vital essence in
+his own shape which could leave the sleeping body and lead a separate
+existence, the placenta obviously provided tangible evidence of its
+reality. The considerations set forth by Blackman,[80] supplementing
+those of Moret, Murray and Seligman and others, have been claimed as
+linking the placenta with the _ka_.
+
+Much controversy has waged around the interpretation of the Egyptian
+word _ka_, especially during recent years. An excellent summary of the
+arguments brought forward by the various disputants up to 1912 will be
+found in Morel's "Mystères Égyptiens". Since then more or less
+contradictory views have been put forward by Alan Gardiner, Breasted,
+and Blackman. It is not my intention to intervene in a dispute as to the
+meaning of certain phrases in ancient literature; but there are certain
+aspects of the problems at issue which are so intimately related to my
+main theme as to make some reference to them unavoidable.
+
+The development of the custom of making statues of the dead necessarily
+raised for solution the problem of explaining the deceased's two bodies,
+his actual mummy and his portrait statue. During life on earth his vital
+principle dwelt in the former, except on those occasions when the man
+was asleep. His actual body also gave expression to all the varied
+attributes of his personality. But after death the statue became the
+dwelling place of these manifestations of the spirit of vitality.
+
+Whether or not the conception arose out of the necessities unavoidably
+created by the making of statues, it seems clear that this custom must
+have given more concrete shape to the belief that all of those elements
+of the dead man's individuality which left his body at the time of death
+could shift as a shadowy double into his statue.
+
+At the birth of a king he is accompanied by a comrade or twin exactly
+reproducing all his features. This double or _ka_ is intimately
+associated throughout life and in the life to come with the king's
+welfare. In fact Breasted claims that the _ka_ "was a kind of superior
+genius intended to guide the fortunes of the individual _in the
+hereafter_" ... there "he had his abode and awaited the coming of his
+earthly companion".[81] At death the deceased "goes to his _ka_, to the
+sky". The _ka_ controls and protects the deceased: he brings him food
+which they eat together.
+
+It is important clearly to keep in mind the different factors involved
+in the conception of the _ka_:--
+
+(a) The statue of the deceased is animated by restoring to it the breath
+of life and all the other vital attributes of which the early Egyptian
+physiologist took cognisance.
+
+(b) At the time of birth there came into being along with the child a
+"twin" whose destinies were closely linked with the child's.
+
+(c) As the result of animating the statue the deceased also has restored
+to him his character, "the sum of his attributes," his individuality,
+later raised to the position of a protecting genius or god, a Providence
+who watches over his well-being.[82]
+
+The _ka_ is not simply identical with the breath of life or _animus_, as
+Burnet supposes (_op. cit. supra_), but has a wider significance. The
+adoption of the conception of the _ka_ as a sort of guardian angel which
+finds its appropriate habitation in a statue that has been animated does
+not necessarily conflict with the view so concretely and unmistakably
+represented in the tomb-pictures that the _ka_ is also a double who is
+born along with the individual.
+
+This material conception of the _ka_ as a double who is born with and
+closely linked to the individual is, as Blackman has emphasized,[83]
+very suggestive of Baganda beliefs and rites connected with the
+placenta. At death the circumstances of the act of birth are
+reconstituted, and for this rebirth the placenta which played an
+essential part in the original process is restored to the deceased. May
+not the original meaning of the expression "he goes to his _ka_" be a
+literal description of this reunion with his placenta? The
+identification of the _ka_ with the moon, the guardian of the dead man's
+welfare, may have enriched the symbolism.
+
+Blackman makes the suggestion that "on the analogy of the beliefs
+entertained by the Hamitic ruling caste in Uganda," according to Roscoe,
+"the placenta,[84] or rather its ghost, would have been supposed by the
+Ancient Egyptians to be closely connected with the individual's
+personality, as" he maintains was also the case with the god or
+protecting genius of the Babylonians.[85] "Unless united with his twin's
+[i.e. his placenta's] ghost the dead king was an imperfect deity, i.e.
+his directing intelligence was impaired or lacking," presumably because
+the placenta was composed of blood, which was regarded as the material
+of consciousness and intelligence.
+
+In China, as the quotations from de Groot (see footnote) show, the
+placenta when placed under felicitous circumstances is able to ensure
+the child a long life and to control his mental and physical welfare.
+
+In view of the claims put forward by Blackman to associate the placenta
+with the _ka_, it is of interest to note Moret's suggestion concerning
+the fourteen forms of the _ka_, to which von Bissing assigns the
+general significance "nourishment or offerings". He puts the question
+whether they do not "personify the elements of material and intellectual
+prosperity, all that is necessary for the health of body and spirit"
+(_op. cit._, p. 209).
+
+The placenta is credited with all the varieties of life-giving potency
+that are attributed to the Mother-Goddess. It therefore controls the
+welfare of the individual and, like all maternal amulets (_vide supra_),
+ensures his good fortune. But, probably by virtue of its supposed
+derivation from and intimate association with blood, it also ministered
+to his mental welfare.
+
+In my last Rylands Lecture I referred to the probability that the
+essential elements of Chinese civilization were derived from the West. I
+had hoped that, before the present statement went to the printer, I
+would have found time to set forth in detail the evidence in
+substantiation of the reality of that diffusion of culture.
+
+Briefly the chain of proof is composed of the following links: (a) the
+intimate cultural contact between Egypt, Southern Arabia, Sumer, and
+Elam from a period at least as early as the First Egyptian Dynasty; (b)
+the diffusion of Sumerian and Elamite culture in very early times at
+least as far north as Russian Turkestan and as far east as Baluchistan;
+(c) at some later period the quest of gold, copper, turquoise, and jade
+led the Babylonians (and their neighbours) as far north as the Altai and
+as far east as Khotan and the Tarim Valley, where their pathways were
+blazed with the distinctive methods of cultivation and irrigation; (d)
+at some subsequent period there was an easterly diffusion of culture
+from Turkestan into the Shensi Province of China proper; and (e) at
+least as early as the seventh century B.C. there was also a spread of
+Western culture to China by sea.[86]
+
+I have already referred to some of the distinctively Egyptian traits in
+Chinese beliefs concerning the dead. Mingled with them are other equally
+definitely Babylonian ideas concerning the liver.
+
+It must be apparent that in the course of the spread of a complex system
+of religious beliefs to so great a distance, only certain of their
+features would survive the journey. Handed on from people to people,
+each of whom would unavoidably transform them to some extent, the
+tenets of the Western beliefs would become shorn of many of their
+details and have many excrescences added to them before the Chinese
+received them. In the crucible of the local philosophy they would be
+assimilated with Chinese ideas until the resulting compound assumed a
+Chinese appearance. When these inevitable circumstances are recalled the
+value of any positive evidence of Western influence is of special
+significance.
+
+According to the ancient Chinese, man has two souls, the _kwei_ and the
+_shen_. The former, which according to de Groot is definitely the more
+ancient of the two (p. 8), is the material, substantial soul, which
+emanates from the terrestrial part of the universe, and is formed of
+_yin_ substance. In living man it operates under the name of _p'oh_,
+and on his death it returns to the earth and abides with the deceased
+in his grave.
+
+The _shen_ or immaterial soul emanates from the ethereal celestial part
+of the cosmos and consists of _yang_ substance. When operating actively
+in the living human body, it is called _khi_ or "breath," and _hwun_;
+when separated from it after death it lives forth as a refulgent spirit,
+styled _ming_.[87]
+
+But the _shen_ also, in spite of its sky-affinities, hovers about the
+grave and may dwell in the inscribed grave-stone (p. 6). There may be a
+multitude of _shen_ in one body and many "soul-tablets" may be provided
+for them (p. 74).
+
+Just as in Egypt the _ka_ is said to "symbolize the force of life which
+resides in nourishment" (Moret, p. 212), so the Chinese refer to the
+ethereal part of the food as its _khi_, i.e. the "breath" of its _shen_.
+
+The careful study of the mass of detailed evidence so lucidly set forth
+by de Groot in his great monograph reveals the fact that, in spite of
+many superficial differences and apparent contradictions, the early
+Chinese conceptions of the soul and its functions are essentially
+identical with the Egyptian, and must have been derived from the
+same source.
+
+From the quotations which I have already given in the foregoing pages,
+it appears that the Chinese entertain views regarding the functions of
+the placenta which are identical with those of the Baganda, and a
+conception of the souls of man which presents unmistakable analogies
+with Egyptian beliefs. Yet these Chinese references do not shed any
+clearer light than Egyptian literature does upon the problem of the
+possible relationship between the _ka_ and the _placenta_.
+
+In the Iranian domain, however, right on the overland route from the
+Persian Gulf to China, there seems to be a ray of light. According to
+the late Professor Moulton, "The later Parsi books tell us that the
+Fravashi is a part of a good man's identity, living in heaven and
+reuniting with the soul at death. It is not exactly a guardian angel,
+for it shares in the development or deterioration of the rest of the
+man."[88]
+
+In fact the Fravashi is not unlike the Egyptian _ka_ on the one side and
+the Chinese _shen_ on the other. "They are the _Manes_, 'the good folk'"
+(p. 144): they are connected with the stars in their capacity as spirits
+of the dead (p. 143), and they "showed their paths to the sun, the moon,
+the sun, and the endless lights," just as the _kas_ guide the dead in
+the hereafter.
+
+The Fravashis play a part in the annual All Soul's feast (p. 144), for
+which Breasted has provided an almost exact parallel in Egypt during the
+Middle Kingdom.[89] All the circumstances of the two ceremonies are
+essentially identical.
+
+Now Professor Moulton suggests that the word Fravashi may be derived
+from the Avestan root _var_, "to impregnate," and _fravaši_ mean
+"birth-promotion" (p. 142). As he associates this with childbirth the
+possibility suggests itself whether the "birth-promoter" may not be
+simply the placenta.
+
+Loret (quoted by Moret, p. 202), however, derives the word _ka_ from a
+root signifying "to beget," so that the Fravashi may be nothing more
+than the Iranian homologue of the Egyptian _ka_.
+
+The connecting link between the Iranian and Egyptian conceptions may be
+the Sumerian instances given to Blackman[90] by Dr. Langdon.
+
+The whole idea seems to have originated out of the belief that the sum
+of the individual attributes or vital expressions of a man's personality
+could exist apart from the physical body. The contemplation of the
+phenomena of sleep and death provided the evidence in corroboration
+of this.
+
+At birth the newcomer came into the world physically connected with the
+placenta, which was accredited with the attributes of the life-giving
+and birth-promoting Great Mother and intimately related to the moon and
+the earliest totem. It was obviously, also, closely concerned in the
+nutrition of the embryo, for was it not the stalk upon which the latter
+was growing like some fruit on its stem? It was a not unnatural
+inference to suppose that, as the elements of the personality were not
+indissolubly connected with the body, they were brought into existence
+at the time of birth and that the placenta was their vehicle.
+
+The Egyptians' own terms of reference to the sculptor of a statue show
+that the ideas of birth were uppermost in their minds when the custom of
+statue-making was first devised. Moret has brought together (_op. cit.
+supra_) a good deal of evidence to suggest the far-reaching significance
+of the conception of ritual rebirth in early Egyptian religious
+ceremonial. With these ideas in his mind the Egyptian would naturally
+attach great importance to the placenta in any attempt to reconstruct
+the act of rebirth, which would be regarded in a literal sense. The
+placenta which played an essential part in the original act would have
+an equally important rôle in the ritual of rebirth. [For a further
+comment upon the problem discussed in the preceding ten pages, see
+Appendix A, p. 73.]
+
+
+[68: "Primitive Man," _Proceedings of the British Academy_, 1917, p. 41.
+
+It is important to remember that the real meaning of respiration was
+quite unknown until modern science revealed the part played by oxygen.]
+
+[69: The enormous complexity and intricacy of the interrelation between
+the functions of the "heart," and the "breath" is revealed in Chinese
+philosophy (see de Groot, _op. cit._ Chapter VII. _inter alia_).]
+
+[70: Second Annual Philosophical Lecture, Henriette Hertz Trust,
+_Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol. VII, 26 Jan., 1916.]
+
+[71: The Egyptian _ka_, however, was a more complex entity than this
+comparison suggests.]
+
+[72: Breasted, _op. cit._ pp. 44 and 45.]
+
+[73: _Op. cit._ pp. 45 and 46.]
+
+[74: _Ibid._ p. 28.]
+
+[75: W. J. Perry has collected the evidence preserved in a remarkable
+series of Indonesian legends in his recent book, "The Megalithic Culture
+of Indonesia". But the fullest exposition of the whole subject is
+provided in the Chinese literature summarized by de Groot (_op. cit._).]
+
+[76: See, however, the reservations in the subsequent pages.]
+
+[77: The thorough analysis of the beliefs of any people makes this
+abundantly clear. De Groot's monograph is an admirable illustration of
+this (_op. cit._ Chapter VII.). Both in Egypt and China the conceptions
+of the significance of the shadow are later and altogether subsidiary.]
+
+[78: Alan H. Gardiner, Davies and Gardiner, _op. cit._ p. 59.]
+
+[79: F. Ll. Griffith, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs," 1898, p. 60.]
+
+[80: Aylward M. Blackman, "Some Remarks on an Emblem upon the Head of an
+Ancient Egyptian Birth-Goddess," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol.
+III, Part III, July, 1916, p. 199; and "The Pharaoh's Placenta and the
+Moon-God Khons," _ibid._ Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 235.]
+
+[81: "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 52. Breasted denies
+that the _ka_ was an element of the personality.]
+
+[82: For an abstruse discussion of this problem see Alan H. Gardiner,
+"Personification (Egyptian)," Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and
+Ethics_, pp. 790 and 792.]
+
+[83: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+[84: Mr. Blackman is puzzled to explain what "possible connexion there
+could be between the Pharaoh's placenta and the moon beyond the fact
+that it is the custom in Uganda to expose the king's placenta each new
+moon and anoint it with butter."
+
+To those readers who follow my argument in the later pages of this
+discussion the reasoning at the back of this association should be plain
+enough. The moon was regarded as the controller of menstruation. The
+placenta (and also the child) was considered to be formed of menstrual
+blood. The welfare of the placenta was therefore considered to be under
+the control of the moon.
+
+The anointing with butter is an interesting illustration of the close
+connexion of these lunar and maternal phenomena with the cow.
+
+The placenta was associated with the moon also in China, as the
+following quotation shows.
+
+According to de Groot (_op. cit._ p. 396), "in the _Siao 'rh fang_ or
+Medicament for Babies, by the hand of Ts'ui Hing-kung [died 674 A.D.],
+it is said: 'The placenta should be stored away in a felicitous spot
+under the salutary influences of the sky or the moon ... in order that
+the child may be ensured a long life'". He then goes on to explain how
+any interference with the placenta will entail mental or physical
+trouble to the child.
+
+The placenta also is used as the ingredient of pills to increase
+fertility, facilitate parturition, to bring back life to people on the
+brink of death and it is the main ingredient "in medicines for lunacy,
+convulsions, epilepsy, etc." (p. 397). "It gives rest to the heart,
+nourishes the blood, increases the breath, and strengthens the _tsing_"
+(p. 396).
+
+These attributes of the placenta indicate that the beliefs of the
+Baganda are not merely local eccentricities, but widespread and sharply
+defined interpretations of the natural phenomena of birth.]
+
+[85: _Op. cit._ p. 241.]
+
+[86: See "The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization," now being
+published in the _Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and
+Philosophical Society_.]
+
+[87: De Groot, p. 5.]
+
+[88: _Early Religious Poetry of Persia_, p. 145.]
+
+[89: _Op. cit._ p. 264.]
+
+[90: _Ibid._ p. 240.]
+
+
+The Power of the Eye.
+
+In attempting to understand the peculiar functions attributed to the eye
+it is essential that the inquirer should endeavour to look at the
+problem from the early Egyptian's point of view. After moulding into
+shape the wrappings of the mummy so as to restore as far as possible the
+form of the deceased the embalmer then painted eyes upon the face. So
+also when the sculptor had learned to make finished models in stone or
+wood, and by the addition of paint had enhanced the life-like
+appearance, the statue was still merely a dead thing. What were needed
+above all to enliven it, literally and actually, in other words, to
+animate it, were the eyes; and the Egyptian artist set to work and with
+truly marvellous skill reproduced the appearance of living eyes (Fig.
+5). How ample was the justification for this belief will be appreciated
+by anyone who glances at the remarkable photographs recently published
+by Dr. Alan H. Gardiner.[91] The wonderful eyes will be seen to make the
+statue sparkle and live. To the concrete mind of the Egyptian this
+triumph of art was regarded not as a mere technical success or
+æsthetic achievement. The artist was considered to have made the statue
+really live; in fact, literally and actually converted it into a "living
+image". The eyes themselves were regarded as one of the chief sources of
+the vitality which had been conferred upon the statue.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5--Statue of an Egyptian Noble of the Pyramid Age to
+show the technical skill in the representation of life-like eyes]
+
+This is the explanation of all the elaborate care and skill bestowed
+upon the making of artificial eyes. No doubt also it was largely
+responsible for giving definition to the remarkable belief in the
+animating power of the eye. But so many other factors of most diverse
+kinds played a part in building up the complex theory of the eye's
+fertilizing potency that all the stages in the process of
+rationalization cannot yet be arranged in orderly sequence.
+
+I refer to the question here and suggest certain aspects of it that seem
+worthy of investigation merely for the purpose of stimulating some
+student of early Egyptian literature to look into the matter
+further.[92]
+
+As death was regarded as a kind of sleep and the closing of the eyes was
+the distinctive sign of the latter condition the open eyes were not
+unnaturally regarded as clear evidence of wakefulness and life. In fact,
+to a matter-of-fact people the restoration of the eyes to the mummy or
+statue was equivalent to an awakening to life.
+
+At a time when a reflection in a mirror or in a sheet of water was
+supposed to afford quite positive evidence of the reality of each
+individual's "double," and when the "soul," or more concretely, "life,"
+was imagined to be a minute image or homunculus, it is quite likely that
+the reflection in the eye may have been interpreted as the "soul"
+dwelling within it. The eye was certainly regarded as peculiarly rich in
+"soul substance". It was not until Osiris received from Horus the eye
+which had been wrenched out in the latter's combat with Set that he
+"became a soul".[93]
+
+It is a remarkable fact that this belief in the animating power of the
+eye spread as far east as Polynesia and America, and as far west as the
+British Islands.
+
+Of course the obvious physiological functions of the eyes as means of
+communication between their possessor and the world around him; the
+powerful influence of the eyes for expressing feeling and emotion
+without speech; the analogy between the closing and opening of the eyes
+and the changes of day and night, are all hinted at in Egyptian
+literature.
+
+But there were certain specific factors that seem to have helped to give
+definiteness to these general ideas of the physiology of the eyes. The
+tears, like all the body moisture, came to share the life-giving
+attributes of water in general. And when it is recalled that at funeral
+ceremonies emotion found natural expression in the shedding of tears, it
+is not unlikely that this came to be assimilated with all the other
+water-symbolism of the funerary ritual. The early literature of Egypt,
+in fact, refers to the part played by Isis and Nephthys in the
+reanimation of Osiris, when the tears they shed as mourners brought
+life back to the god. But the fertilizing tears of Isis were life-giving
+in the wider sense. They were said to cause the inundation which
+fertilized the soil of Egypt, meaning presumably that the "Eye of Re"
+sent the rain.
+
+There is the further possibility that the beliefs associated with the
+cowry may have played some part, if not in originating, at any rate in
+emphasizing the conception of the fertilizing powers of the eye. I have
+already mentioned the outstanding features of the symbolism of the
+cowry. In many places in Africa and elsewhere the similarity of this
+shell to the half-closed eyelids led to its use as an artificial "eye"
+in mummies. The use of the same objects to symbolize the female
+reproductive organs and the eyes may have played some part in
+transferring to the latter the fertility of the former. The gods were
+born of the eyes of Ptah. Might not the confusion of the eye with the
+genitalia have given a meaning to this statement? There is evidence of
+this double symbolism of these shells. Cowry shells have also been
+employed, both in the Persian Gulf and the Pacific, to decorate the bows
+of boats, probably for the dual purpose of representing eyes and
+conferring vitality upon the vessel. These facts suggest that the belief
+in the fertilizing power of the eyes may to some extent be due to this
+cowry-association. Even if it be admitted that all the known cases of
+the use of cowries as eyes of mummies are relatively late, and that it
+is not known to have been employed for such a purpose in Egypt, the mere
+fact that the likeness to the eyelids so readily suggests itself may
+have linked together the attributes of the cowry and the eye even in
+Predynastic times, when cowries were placed with the dead in the grave.
+
+Hathor's identification with the "Eye of Re" may possibly have been an
+expression of the same idea. But the rôle of the "Eye of Re" was due
+primarily to her association with the moon (_vide infra_, p. 56).
+
+The apparently hopeless tangle of contradictions involved in these
+conceptions of Hathor will have to be unravelled. For "no eye is to be
+feared more than thine (Re's) when it attacketh in the form of Hathor"
+(Maspero, _op. cit._ p. 165). If it was the beneficent life-giving
+aspect of the eye which led to its identification with Hathor, in course
+of time, when the reason for this connexion was lost sight of, it became
+associated with the malevolent, death-dealing _avatar_ of the goddess,
+and became the expression of the god's anger and hatred toward his
+enemies. It is not unlikely that such a confusion may have been
+responsible for giving concrete expression to the general psychological
+fact that the eyes are obviously among the chief means for expressing
+hatred for and intimidating and "brow-beating" one's fellows. [In my
+lecture on "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall explain the explicit
+circumstances that gave rise to these contradictions.]
+
+It is significant that, in addition to the widespread belief in the
+"evil eye"--which in itself embodies the same confusion, the expression
+of admiration that works evil--in a multitude of legends it is the eye
+that produces petrifaction. The "stony stare" causes death and the dead
+become transformed into statues, which, however, usually lack their
+original attribute of animation. These stories have been collected by
+Mr. E. S. Hartland in his "Legend of Perseus".
+
+There is another possible link in the chain of associations between the
+eye and the idea of fertility. I have already referred to the
+development of the belief that incense, which plays so prominent a part
+in the ritual for conferring vitality upon the dead, is itself replete
+with animating properties. "Glaser has already shown the _anti_ incense
+of the Egyptian Punt Reliefs to be an Arabian word, _a-a-netc_,
+'tree-eyes' (_Punt und die Südarabischen Reiche_, p. 7), and to refer to
+the large lumps ... as distinguished from the small round drops, which
+are supposed to be tree-tears or the tree-blood."[94]
+
+
+[91: "A New Masterpiece of Egyptian Sculpture," _The Journal of Egyptian
+Archæology_, Vol. IV, Part I, Jan., 1917.]
+
+[92: In all probability the main factor that was responsible for
+conferring such definite life-giving powers upon the eye was the
+identification of the moon with the Great Mother. The moon was the Eye
+of Re, the sky-god.]
+
+[93: Breasted, "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 59. The
+meaning of the phrase rendered "a soul" here would be more accurately
+given by the word "reanimated".]
+
+[94: Wilfred H. Schoff, "The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea," 1912, p.
+164.]
+
+
+The Moon and the Sky-World.
+
+There are reasons for believing that the chief episodes in Aphrodite's
+past point to the Red Sea for their inspiration, though many other
+factors, due partly to local circumstances and partly to contact with
+other civilizations, contributed to the determination of the traits of
+the Mediterranean goddess of love. In Babylonia and India there are very
+definite signs of borrowing from the same source. It is important,
+therefore, to look for further evidence to Arabia as the obvious bond of
+union both with Phœnicia and Babylonia.
+
+The claim made in Roscher's _Lexicon der Mythologie_ that the Assyrian
+Ishtar, the Phœnician Ashtoreth (Astarte), the Syrian Atargatis
+(Derketo), the Babylonian Belit (Mylitta) and the Arabian Ilat (Al-ilat)
+were all moon-goddesses has given rise to much rather aimless
+discussion, for there can be no question of their essential homology
+with Hathor and Aphrodite. Moreover, from the beginning, all
+goddesses--and especially this most primitive stratum of fertility
+deities--were for obvious reasons intimately associated with the
+moon.[95] But the cyclical periodicity of the moon which suggested the
+analogy with the similar physiological periodicity of women merely
+explains the association of the moon with women. The influence of the
+moon upon dew and the tides, perhaps, suggested its controlling power
+over water and emphasized the life-giving function which its association
+with women had already suggested. For reasons which have been explained
+already, water was associated more especially with fertilization by the
+male. Hence the symbolism of the moon came to include the control of
+both the male and the female processes of reproduction.[96]
+
+The literature relating to the development of these ideas with
+reference to the moon has been summarized by Professor Hutton
+Webster.[97] He shows that "there is good reason for believing that
+among many primitive peoples the moon, rather than the sun, the planets
+or any of the constellations, first excited the imagination and aroused
+feelings of superstitious awe or of religious veneration".
+
+Special attention was first devoted to the moon when agricultural
+pursuits compelled men to measure time and determine the seasons. The
+influence of the moon on water, both the tides and dew, brought it
+within the scope of the then current biological theory of fertilization.
+This conception was powerfully corroborated by the parallelism of the
+moon's cycles and those of womankind, which was interpreted by regarding
+the moon as the controlling power of the female reproductive functions.
+Thus all of the earliest goddesses who were personifications of the
+powers of fertility came to be associated, and in some cases identified,
+with the moon.
+
+In this way the animation and deification of the moon was brought about:
+and the first sky deity assumed not only all the attributes of the
+cowry, i.e. the female reproductive functions, but also, as the
+controller of water, many of those which afterwards were associated with
+Osiris. The confusion of the male fertilizing powers of Osiris with the
+female reproductive functions of Hathor and Isis may explain how in some
+places the moon became a masculine deity, who, however, still retained
+his control over womankind, and caused the phenomena of menstruation by
+the exercise of his virile powers.[98] But the moon-god was also a
+measurer of time and in this aspect was specially personified in Thoth.
+
+The assimilation of the moon with these earth-deities was probably
+responsible for the creation of the first sky-deity. For once the
+conception developed of identifying a deity with the moon, and the
+Osirian beliefs associated with the deification of a dead king grew up,
+the moon became the impersonation of the spirit of womankind, some
+mortal woman who by death had acquired divinity.
+
+After the idea had developed of regarding the moon as the spirit of a
+dead person, it was only natural that, in course of time, the sun and
+stars should be brought within the scope of the same train of thought,
+and be regarded as the deified dead. When this happened the sun not
+unnaturally soon leapt into a position of pre-eminence. As the moon
+represented the deified female principle the sun became the dominant
+male deity Re. The stars also became the spirits of the dead.
+
+Once this new conception of a sky-world was adumbrated a luxuriant crop
+of beliefs grew up to assimilate the new beliefs with the old, and to
+buttress the confused mixture of incompatible ideas with a complex
+scaffolding of rationalization.
+
+The sun-god Horus was already the son of Osiris. Osiris controlled not
+only the river and the irrigation canals, but also the rain-clouds. The
+fumes of incense conveyed to the sky-gods the supplications of the
+worshippers on earth. Incense was not only "the perfume that deities,"
+but also the means by which the deities and the dead could pass to their
+doubles in the newly invented sky-heaven. The sun-god Re was represented
+in his temple not by an anthropoid statue, but by an obelisk,[99] the
+gilded apex of which pointed to heaven and "drew down" the dazzling rays
+of the sun, reflected from its polished surface, so that all the
+worshippers could see the manifestations of the god in his temple.
+
+These events are important, not only for creating the sky-gods and the
+sky-heaven, but possibly also for suggesting the idea that even a mere
+pillar of stone, whether carved or uncarved, upon which no attempt had
+been made to model the human form, could represent the deity, or rather
+could become the "body" to be animated by the god.[100] For once it was
+admitted, even in the home of these ancient ideas concerning the
+animation of statues, that it was not essential for the idol to be
+shaped into human form, the way was opened for less cultured peoples,
+who had not acquired the technical skill to carve statues, simply to
+erect stone pillars or unshaped masses of stone or wood for their gods
+to enter, when the appropriate ritual of animation was performed.[101]
+
+This conception of the possibility of gods, men, or animals dwelling in
+stones spread in course of time throughout the world, but in every place
+where it is found certain arbitrary details of the methods of animating
+the stone reveal the fact that all these legends must have been derived
+from the same source.
+
+The complementary belief in the possibility of the petrifaction of men
+and animals has a similarly extensive geographical distribution. The
+history of this remarkable incident I shall explain in the lecture on
+"Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II.).[102]
+
+
+[95: I am not concerned here with the explanation of the means by which
+their home became transferred to the planet Venus.]
+
+[96: In his discussion of the functions of the Fravashis in the Iranian
+Yasht, the late Professor Moulton suggested the derivation of the word
+from the Avestan root _var_, "to impregnate," so that _fravaši_ might
+mean "birth-promotion". But he was puzzled by a reference to water.
+"Less easy to understand is their intimate connexion with the Waters"
+("Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 142 and 143). But the Waters
+were regarded as fertilizing agents. This is seen in the Avestan
+Anahita, who was "the presiding genie of Fertility and more especially
+of the Waters" (W. J. Phythian-Adams, "Mithraism," 1915, p. 13).]
+
+[97: "Rest Days," New York, 1916, pp. 124 _et seq._]
+
+[98: Wherever these deities of fertility are found, whether in Egypt,
+Babylonia, the Mediterranean Area, Eastern Asia, and America,
+illustrations of this confusion of sex are found. The explanation which
+Dr. Rendel Harris offers of this confusion in the case of Aphrodite
+seems to me not to give due recognition to its great antiquity and
+almost world-wide distribution.]
+
+[99: L. Borchardt, "Das Re-heiligtum des Königs Ne-woser-re". For a good
+exposition of this matter see A. Moret, "Sanctuaires de l'ancien Empire
+Égyptien,"; _Annales du Musée Guimet_, 1912, p. 265.]
+
+[100: It is possible that the ceremony of erecting the _dad_ columns may
+have played some part in the development of these beliefs. (On this see
+A. Moret, "Mystères Égyptiens," 1913, pp. 13-17.)]
+
+[101: Many other factors played a part in the development of the stories
+of the birth of ancestors from stones. I have already referred to the
+origin of the idea of the cowry (or some other shell) as the parent of
+mankind. The place of the shell was often taken by roughly carved
+stones, which of course were accredited with the same power of being
+able to produce men, or of being a sort of egg from which human beings
+could be hatched. It is unlikely that the finding of fossilized animals
+played any leading rôle in the development of these beliefs, beyond
+affording corroborative evidence in support of them after other
+circumstances had been responsible for originating the stories. The more
+circumstantial Oriental stories of the splitting of stones giving birth
+to heroes and gods may have been suggested by the finding in pebbles of
+fossilized shells--themselves regarded already as the parents of
+mankind. But such interpretations were only possible because all the
+predisposing circumstances had already prepared the way for the
+acceptance of these specific illustrations of a general theory.
+
+These beliefs may have developed before and quite independently of the
+ideas concerning the animation of statues; but if so the latter event
+would have strengthened and in some places become merged with the other
+story.]
+
+[102: For an extensive collection of these remarkable petrifaction
+legends in almost every part of the world, see E. Sidney Hartland's "The
+Legend of Perseus," especially Volumes I and III. These distinctive
+stories will be found to be complexly interwoven with all the matters
+discussed in this address.]
+
+
+The Worship of the Cow.
+
+Intimately linked with the subjects I have been discussing is the
+worship of the cow. It would lead me too far afield to enter into the
+details of the process by which the earliest Mother-Goddesses became so
+closely associated or even identified with the cow, and why the cow's
+horns became associated with the moon among the emblems of Hathor.
+But it is essential that reference should be made to certain aspects of
+the subject.
+
+I do not think there is any evidence to justify the common theory that
+the likeness of the crescent moon to a cow's horns was the reason for
+the association. On the other hand, it is clear that both the moon and
+the cow became identified with the Mother-Goddess quite independently
+the one of the other, and at a very remote period.
+
+It is probable that the fundamental factor in the development of this
+association of the cow and the Mother-Goddess was the fact of the use of
+milk as food for human beings. For if the cow could assume this maternal
+function she was in fact a sort of foster-mother of mankind; and in
+course of time she came to be regarded as the actual mother of the human
+race and to be identified with the Great Mother.
+
+Many other considerations helped in this process of assimilation. The
+use of cattle not merely as meat for the sustenance of the living but as
+the usual and most characteristic life-giving food for the dead
+naturally played a part in conferring divinity upon the cow, just as an
+analogous relationship made incense a holy substance and was responsible
+for the personification of the incense-tree as a goddess. This influence
+was still further emphasized in the case of cattle because they also
+supplied the blood which was used for the ritual purpose of bestowing
+consciousness upon the dead, and in course of time upon the gods also,
+so that they might hear and attend to the prayers of supplicants.
+
+Other circumstances emphasize the significance attached to the cow: but
+it is difficult to decide whether they contributed in any way to the
+development of these beliefs or were merely some of the practices which
+were the result of the divination of the cow. The custom of placing
+butter in the mouths of the dead, in Egypt, Uganda, and India, the
+various ritual uses of milk, the employment of a cow's hide as a
+wrapping for the dead in the grave, and also in certain mysterious
+ceremonies,[103] all indicate the intimate connexion between the cow and
+the means of attaining a rebirth in the life to come.
+
+I think there are definite reasons for believing that once the cow
+became identified with the Mother-Goddess as the parent of mankind the
+first step was taken in the development of the curious system of ideas
+now known as "totemism".
+
+This, however, is a complex problem which I cannot stay to discuss here.
+
+When the cow became identified with the Great Mother and the moon was
+regarded as the dwelling or the personification of the same goddess, the
+Divine Cow by a process of confused syncretism came to be regarded as
+the sky or the heavens, to which the dead were raised up on the cow's
+back. When Re became the dominant deity, he was identified with the sky,
+and the sun and moon were then regarded as his eyes. Thus the moon, as
+the Great Mother as well as the Eye of Re, was the bond of
+identification of the Great Mother with an eye. This was probably how
+the eye acquired the animating powers of the Giver of Life.
+
+A whole volume might be written upon the almost world-wide diffusion of
+these beliefs regarding the cow, as far as Scotland and Ireland in the
+west, and in their easterly migration probably as far as America, to the
+confusion alike of its ancient artists and its modern ethnologists.[104]
+
+As an illustration of the identification of the cow's attributes with
+those of the life-giving Great Mother, I might refer to the late
+Professor Moulton's commentary[105] on the ancient Iranian Gâthâs, where
+cow's flesh is given to mortals by Yima to make them immortal. "May we
+connect it with another legend whereby at the Regeneration Mithra is to
+make men immortal by giving them to eat the fat of the ... primeval Cow
+from whose slain body, according to the Aryan legends adopted by
+Mithraism, mankind was first created?"[106]
+
+
+[103: See A. Moret, _op. cit._ p. 81, _inter alia_.]
+
+[104: See the Copan sculptured monuments described by Maudslay in Godman
+and Salvin's "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Archæology, Plate 46,
+representing "Stela D," with two serpents in the places occupied by the
+Indian elephants in Stela B--concerning which see _Nature_, November 25,
+1915. To one of these intertwined serpents is attached a cow-headed
+human dæmon. Compare also the Chiriqui figure depicted by MacCurdy,
+"A Study of Chiriquian Antiquities," Yale University Press, 1911, fig.
+361, p. 209.]
+
+[105: "Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 42 and 43.]
+
+[106: _Op. cit._ p. 43. But I think these legends accredited to the
+Aryans owe their parentage to the same source as the Egyptian beliefs
+concerning the cow, and especially the remarkable mysteries upon which
+Moret has been endeavouring to throw some light--"Mystères Égyptiens,"
+p. 43.]
+
+
+The Diffusion of Culture.
+
+In these pages I have made no attempt to deal with the far-reaching and
+intricate problems of the diffusion abroad of the practices and beliefs
+which I have been discussing. But the thoughts and the aspirations of
+every cultured people are permeated through and through with their
+influence.
+
+It is important to remember that in almost every stage of the
+development of these complex customs and ideas not merely the "finished
+product" but also the ingredients out of which it was built up were
+being scattered abroad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall briefly refer to certain evidence from Asia and America in
+illustration of this fact and in substantiation of the reality of the
+diffusion to the East of some of the beliefs I have been discussing.
+
+The unity of Egyptian and Babylonian ideas is nowhere more strikingly
+demonstrated than in the essential identity of the attributes of Osiris
+and Ea. It affords the most positive proof of the derivation of the
+beliefs from some common source, and reveals the fact that Egyptian and
+Sumerian civilizations must have been in intimate cultural contact at
+the beginning of their developmental history. "In Babylonia, as in
+Egypt, there were differences of opinion regarding the origin of life
+and the particular natural element which represented the vital
+principle." "One section of the people, who were represented by the
+worshippers of Ea, appear to have believed that the essence of life was
+contained in water. The god of Eridu was the source of the 'water of
+life'."[107]
+
+"Offerings of water and food were made to the dead," not primarily so
+that they might be "prevented from troubling the living,"[108] but to
+supply them with the means of sustenance and to reanimate them to help
+the suppliants. It is a common belief that these and other procedures
+were inspired by fear of the dead. But such a statement does not
+accurately represent the attitude of mind of the people who devised
+these funerary ceremonies. For it is not the enemies of the dead or
+those against whom he had a grudge that run a risk at funerals, but
+rather his friends; and the more deeply he was attached to a particular
+person the greater the danger for the latter. For among many people
+the belief obtains that when a man dies he will endeavour to steal
+the "soul-substance" of those who are dearest to him so that they
+may accompany him to the other world. But as stealing the
+"soul-substance"[109] means death, it is easy to misunderstand such a
+display of affection. Hence most people who long for life and hate death
+do their utmost to evade such embarrassing tokens of love; and most
+ethnologists, misjudging such actions, write about "appeasing the dead".
+It was those whom the gods _loved_ who died young.
+
+Ea was not only the god of the deep, but also "lord of life," king of
+the river and god of creation. Like Osiris "he fertilized parched and
+sunburnt wastes through rivers and irrigating canals, and conferred upon
+man the sustaining 'food of life'.... The goddess of the dead commanded
+her servant to 'sprinkle the Lady Ishtar with the water of life'" (_op.
+cit._, p. 44).
+
+In Chapter III. of Mr. Mackenzie's book, from which I have just quoted,
+there is an interesting collection of quotations clearly showing that
+the conception of the vitalizing properties of the body moisture of gods
+is not restricted to Egypt, but is found also in Babylonia and India, in
+Western Asia and Greece, and also in Western Europe.
+
+It has been suggested that the name Ishtar has been derived from Semitic
+roots implying "she who waters," "she who makes fruitful".[110]
+
+Barton claims that: "The beginnings of Semitic religion as they were
+conceived by the Semites themselves go back to sexual relations ... the
+Semitic conception of deity ... embodies the truth--grossly indeed, but
+nevertheless embodies it--that 'God is love'" (_op. cit._ p. 107). [This
+statement, however, is very misleading--see Appendix C, p. 75.]
+
+Throughout the countries where Semitic[111] influence spread the
+primitive Mother-Goddesses or some of their specialized variants are
+found. But in every case the goddess is associated with many distinctive
+traits which reveal her identity with her homologues in Cyprus,
+Babylonia, and Egypt.
+
+Among the Sumerians "life comes on earth through the introduction of
+water and irrigation".[112] "Man also results from a union between the
+water-gods."
+
+The Akkadians held views which were almost the direct antithesis of
+these. To them "the watery deep is disorder, and the cosmos, the order
+of the world, is due to the victory of a god of light and spring over
+the monster of winter and water; man is directly made by the gods".[113]
+
+"The Sumerian account of Beginnings centres around the production by the
+gods of water, Enki and his consort Nin-ella (or Dangal), of a great
+number of canals bringing rain to the desolate fields of a dry
+continent. Life both of vegetables and animals follows the profusion of
+the vivifying waters.... In the process of life's production besides
+Enki, the personality of his consort is very conspicuous. She is called
+_Nin-Ella_, 'the pure Lady,' _Damgal-Nunna_, the 'great Lady of the
+Waters,' _Nin-Tu_, 'the Lady of Birth'" (p. 301). The child of Enki and
+Nin-ella was the ancestor of mankind.[114]
+
+"In later traditions, the personality of that Great Lady seems to have
+been overshadowed by that of Ishtar, who absorbed several of her
+functions" (p. 301).
+
+Professor Carnoy fully demonstrates the derivation of certain early
+so-called "Aryan" beliefs from Chaldea. In the Iranian account of the
+creation "the great spring Ardvī Sūra An�hita is the
+life-increasing, the herd-increasing, the fold-increasing who makes
+prosperity for all countries (Yt. 5, 1) ... that precious spring is
+worshipped as a goddess ... and is personified as a handsome and stately
+woman. She is a fair maid, most strong, tall of form, high-girded. Her
+arms are white and thick as a horse's shoulder or still thicker. She is
+full of gracefulness" (Yt. 5, 7, 64, 78). "Professor Cumont thinks that
+An�hita is Ishtar ... she is a goddess of fecundation and birth.
+Moreover in Achæmenian inscriptions An�hita is associated with Ahura
+Mazd�h and Mithra, a triad corresponding to the Chaldean triad:
+Sin-Shamash-Ishtar. [Greek: Anaitis] in Strabo and other Greek writers
+is treated as [Greek: Aphroditê]" (p. 302).
+
+But in Mesopotamia also the same views were entertained as in Egypt of
+the functions of statues.
+
+"The statues hidden in the recesses of the temples or erected on the
+summits of the 'Ziggurats' became imbued, by virtue of their
+consecration, with the actual body of the god whom they represented."
+Thus Marduk is said to "inhabit his image" (Maspero, _op. cit._ p. 64).
+
+This is precisely the idea which the Egyptians had. Even at the present
+day it survives among the Dravidian peoples of India.[115] They make
+images of their village deities, which may be permanent or only
+temporary, but in any case they are regarded not as actual deities but
+as the "bodies" so to speak into which these deities can enter. They are
+sacred only when they are so animated by the goddess. The ritual of
+animation is essentially identical with that found in Ancient Egypt.
+Libations are poured out; incense is burnt; the bleeding right fore-leg
+of a buffalo constitutes the blood-offering.[116] When the deity is
+reanimated by these procedures and its consciousness restored by the
+blood-offering it can hear appeals and speak.
+
+The same attitude towards their idols was adopted by the Polynesians.
+"The priest usually addressed the image, into which it was imagined the
+god entered when anyone came to inquire his will."[117]
+
+But there are certain other aspects of these Indian customs that are of
+peculiar interest. In my Ridgeway essay (_op. cit. supra_) I referred to
+the means by which in Nubia the degradation of the oblong Egyptian
+_mastaba_ gave rise to the simple stone circle. This type spread to the
+west along the North African littoral, and also to the Eastern desert
+and Palestine. At some subsequent time mariners from the Red Sea
+introduced this practice into India.
+
+[It is important to bear in mind that two other classes of stone circles
+were invented. One of them was derived, not from the _mastaba_ itself,
+but from the enclosing wall surrounding it (see my Ridgeway essay, Fig.
+13, p. 531, and compare with Figs. 3 and 4, p. 510, for illustrations of
+the transformed _mastaba_-type). This type of circle (enclosing a
+dolmen) is found both in the Caucasus-Caspian area as well as in India.
+A highly developed form of this encircling type of structure is seen in
+the famous rails surrounding the Buddhist _stupas_ and _dagabas_. A
+third and later form of circle, of which Stonehenge is an example, was
+developed out of the much later New Empire Egyptian conception of
+a temple.]
+
+But at the same time, as in Nubia, and possibly in Libya, the _mastaba_
+was being degraded into the first of the three main varieties of stone
+circle, other, though less drastic, forms of simplification of the
+_mastaba_ were taking place, possibly in Egypt itself, but certainly
+upon the neighbouring Mediterranean coasts. In some respects the least
+altered copies of the _mastaba_ are found in the so-called "giant's
+graves" of Sardinia and the "horned cairns" of the British Isles. But
+the real features of the Egyptian _serdab_, which was the essential
+part, the nucleus so to speak, of the _mastaba_, are best preserved in
+the so-called "holed dolmens" of the Levant, the Caucasus, and India.
+[They also occur sporadically in the West, as in France and Britain.]
+
+Such dolmens and more simplified forms are scattered in Palestine,[118]
+but are seen to best advantage upon the Eastern Littoral of the Black
+Sea, the Caucasus, and the neighbourhood of the Caspian. They are found
+only in scattered localities between the Black and Caspian Seas. As de
+Morgan has pointed out,[119] their distribution is explained by their
+association with ancient gold and copper mines. They were the tombs of
+immigrant mining colonies who had settled in these definite localities
+to exploit these minerals.
+
+Now the same types of dolmens, also associated with ancient mines,[120]
+are found in India. There is some evidence to suggest that these
+degraded types of Egyptian _mastabas_ were introduced into India at some
+time after the adoption of the other, the Nubian modification of the
+_mastaba_ which is represented by the first variety of stone
+circle.[121]
+
+I have referred to these Indian dolmens for the specific purpose of
+illustrating the complexities of the processes of diffusion of culture.
+For not only have several variously specialized degradation-products of
+the same original type of Egyptian _mastaba_ reached India, possibly by
+different routes and at different times, but also many of the ideas
+that developed out of the funerary ritual in Egypt--of which the
+_mastaba_ was merely one of the manifestations--made their way to India
+at various times and became secondarily blended with other expressions
+of the same or associated ideas there. I have already referred to the
+essential elements of the Egyptian funerary ritual--the statues,
+incense, libations, and the rest--as still persisting among the
+Dravidian peoples.
+
+But in the Madras Presidency dolmens are found converted into Siva
+temples.[122] Now in the inner chamber of the shrine--which represents
+the homologue of the _serdab_--in place of the statue or bas-relief of
+the deceased or of the deity, which is found in some of them (see Plate
+I), there is the stone _linga-yoni_ emblem in the position corresponding
+to that in which, in the later temple in the same locality (Kambaduru),
+there is an image of Parvati, the consort of Siva.
+
+The earliest deities in Egypt, both Osiris and Hathor, were really
+expressions of the creative principle. In the case of Hathor, the
+goddess was, in fact, the personification of the female organs of
+reproduction.[123] In these early Siva temples in India these principles
+of creation were given their literal interpretation, and represented
+frankly as the organs of reproduction of the two sexes. The gods of
+creation were symbolized by models in stone of the creating organs.
+Further illustrations of the same principle are witnessed in the
+Indonesian megalithic monuments which Perry calls "dissoliths".[124]
+
+The later Indian temples, both Buddhist and Hindu, were developed from
+these early dolmens, as Mr. Longhurst's reports so clearly demonstrate.
+But from time to time there was an influx of new ideas from the West
+which found expression in a series of modifications of the architecture.
+Thus India provides an admirable illustration of this principle of
+culture contact. A series of waves of megalithic culture introduced
+purely Western ideas. These were developed by the local people in their
+own way, constantly intermingling a variety of cultural influences to
+weave them into a distinctive fabric, which was compounded partly of
+imported, partly of local threads, woven locally into a truly Indian
+pattern. In this process of development one can detect the effects of
+Mycenæan accretions (see for example Longhurst's Plate XIII), probably
+modified during its indirect transmission by Phœnician and later
+influences; and also the more intimate part played by Babylonian,
+Egyptian, and, later, Greek and Persian art and architecture in
+directing the course of development of Indian culture.
+
+Incidentally, in the course of the discussions in the foregoing pages, I
+have referred to the profound influence of Egyptian, Babylonian and
+Indian ideas in Eastern Asia. Perry's important book (_op. cit. supra_)
+reveals their efforts in Indonesia. Thence they spread across the
+Pacific to America.
+
+In the "Migrations of Early Culture" (p. 114) I called attention to the
+fact that among the Aztecs water was poured upon the head of the mummy.
+This ritual procedure was inspired by the Egyptian idea of libations,
+for, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg, the pouring out of the water
+was accompanied by the remark "C'est cette eau que tu as reçue en venant
+an monde".
+
+But incense-burning and blood-offering were also practised in America.
+In an interesting memoir[125] on the practice of blood-letting by
+piercing the ears and tongue, Mrs. Zelia Nuttall reproduces a remarkable
+picture from a "partly unpublished MS. of Sahagun's work preserved in
+Florence". "The image of the sun is held up by a man whose body is
+partly hidden, and two men, seated opposite to each other in the
+foreground, are in the act of piercing the helices or external borders
+of their ears." But in addition to these blood-offerings to the sun, two
+priests are burning incense in remarkably Egyptian-like censers, and
+another pair are blowing conch-shell trumpets.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Representation of the ancient Mexican Worship of
+the Sun.
+
+The image of the sun is held up by a man in front of his face; two men
+blow conch-shell trumpets; another pair burn incense; and a third pair
+make blood-offerings by piercing their ears--after Zelia Nuttall.]
+
+But it was not merely the use of incense and libations and the
+identities in the wholly arbitrary attributes of the American pantheon
+that reveal the sources of their derivation in the Old World. When the
+Spaniards first visited Yucatan they found traces of a Maya baptismal
+rite which the natives called _zihil_, signifying "to be born again". At
+the ceremony also incense was burnt.[126]
+
+The forehead, the face, the fingers and toes were moistened. "After they
+had been thus sprinkled with water, the priest arose and removed the
+cloths from the heads of the children, and then cut off with a stone
+knife a certain bead that was attached to the head from childhood."[127]
+
+[The custom of wearing such a bead during childhood is found in Egypt at
+the present day.]
+
+In the case of the girls, their mothers "divested them of a cord which
+was worn during their childhood, fastened round the loins, having a
+small shell that hung in front ('una conchuela asida que les venia a dar
+encima de la parte honesta'--Landa). The removal of this signified that
+they could marry."[128]
+
+This use of shells is found in the Soudan and East Africa at the present
+day.[129] The girdle upon which the shells were hung is the prototype of
+the cestus of Hathor, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Kali and all the goddesses of
+fertility in the Old World. It is an admirable illustration of the fact
+that not only were the finished products, the goddesses and their
+fantastic repertory of attributes, transmitted to the New World, but
+also the earliest and most primitive ingredients out of which the
+complexities of their traits were compounded.
+
+In Chapter III ("The Birth of Aphrodite") I shall explain what an
+important part the invention of this girdle played in the development of
+the material side of civilization and the even vaster influence it
+exerted upon beliefs and ethics. It represents the first stage in the
+evolution of clothing; and it was responsible for originating the belief
+in love-philtres and in the possibility of foretelling the future.
+
+It would lead me too far from my main purpose in this book to discuss
+the widespread geographical distribution and historical associations of
+the customs of baptism and pouring libations among different peoples. I
+may, however, refer the reader to an article by Mr. Elsdon Best,
+entitled "Ceremonial Performances Pertaining to Birth, as Performed by
+the Maori of New Zealand in Past Times" (_Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XLIV, 1914, p. 127), which sheds a
+clear light upon the general problem.
+
+The whole subject of baptismal ceremonies is well worth detailed study
+as a remarkable demonstration of the spread of culture in early times.
+
+
+[107: Donald A. Mackenzie, "Myths of Babylonia and Assyria," p. 44 _et
+seq._]
+
+[108: Dr. Alan Gardiner has protested against the assertions of "some
+Egyptologists, influenced more by anthropological theorists than by the
+unambiguous evidence of the Egyptian texts," to the effect that "the
+funerary rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main
+precautionary measures serving to protect the living against the dead"
+(Article "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings' _Encyclopædia of
+Religion and Ethics_). I should like to emphasize the fact that the
+"anthropological theorists," who so frequently put forward these claims
+have little more justification for them than "some Egyptologists".
+Careful study of the best evidence from Babylonia, India, Indonesia, and
+Japan, reveals the fact that anthropologists who make such claims have
+in many cases misinterpreted the facts. In an article on "Ancestor
+Worship" by Professor Nobushige Hozumi in A. Stead's "Japan by the
+Japanese" (1904) the true point of view is put very clearly: "The origin
+of ancestor-worship is ascribed by many eminent writers to the _dread of
+ghosts_ and the sacrifices made to the souls of ancestors for the
+purpose of _propitiating_ them. It appears to me more correct to
+attribute the origin of ancestor-worship to a contrary cause. It was the
+_love_ of ancestors, not the _dread_ of them" [Here he quotes the
+Chinese philosophers Shiu-ki and Confucius in corroboration] that
+impelled men to worship. "We celebrate the anniversary of our ancestors,
+pay visits to their graves, offer flowers, food and drink, burn incense
+and bow before their tombs, entirely from a feeling of love and respect
+for their memory, and no question of 'dread' enters our minds in doing
+so" (pp. 281 and 282). [See, however, Appendix B, p. 74.]]
+
+[109: For, as I have already explained, the idea so commonly and
+mistakenly conveyed by the term "soul-substance" by writers on
+Indonesian and Chinese beliefs would be much more accurately rendered
+simply by the word "life," so that the stealing of it necessarily means
+death.]
+
+[110: Barton, _op. cit._ p. 105.]
+
+[111: The evidence set forth in these pages makes it clear that such
+ideas are not restricted to the Semites: nor is there any reason to
+suppose that they originated amongst them.]
+
+[112: Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in Connexion with
+Similar Babylonian Beliefs," _Journal of the American Oriental Society_,
+Vol. XXXVI, 1916, pp. 300-20.]
+
+[113: This is Professor Carnoy's summary of Professor Jastrow's views as
+expressed in his article "Sumerian and Akkadian Views of Beginnings".]
+
+[114: Jastrow's interpretation of a recently-discovered tablet published
+by Langdon under the title _The Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the Flood and
+the Fall of Man_.]
+
+[115: I have already (p. 43) mentioned the fact that it is still
+preserved in China also.]
+
+[116: Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Deities of
+Southern India," Madras Government Museum, Bull., Vol. V, No. 3, 1907;
+Wilber Theodore Elmore, "Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism: A Study of
+the Local and Village Deities of Southern India," University Studies:
+University of Nebraska, Vol. XV, No. 1, Jan., 1915. Compare the
+sacrifice of the fore-leg of a living calf in Egypt--A. E. P. B.
+Weigall, "An Ancient Egyptian Funeral Ceremony," _Journal of Egyptian
+Archæology_, Vol. II, 1915, p. 10. Early literary references from
+Babylonia suggest that a similar method of offering blood was practised
+there.]
+
+[117: William Ellis, "Polynesian Researches," 2nd edition, 1832, Vol. I,
+p. 373.]
+
+[118: See H. Vincent, "Canaan d'après l'exploration récente," Paris,
+1907, p. 395.]
+
+[119: "Les Premières Civilizations," Paris, 1909, p. 404: Mémoires de la
+Délégation en Perse, Tome VIII, archéol.; and Mission Scientifique au
+Caucase, Tome I.]
+
+[120: W. J. Perry, "The Relationship between the Geographical
+Distribution of Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," _Memoirs and
+Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society_, Vol.
+60, Part I, 24th Nov., 1915.]
+
+[121: The evidence for this is being prepared for publication by Captain
+Leonard Munn, R.E., who has personally collected the data in Hyderabad.]
+
+[122: Annual Report of the Archæological Department, Southern Circle,
+Madras, for the year 1915-1916. See for example Mr. A. H. Longhurst's
+photographs and plans (Plates I-IV) and especially that of the old Siva
+temple at Kambaduru, Plate IV (b).]
+
+[123: As I shall show in "The Birth of Aphrodite" (Chapter III).]
+
+[124: W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia".]
+
+[125: "A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans," Archæological and
+Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. I,
+No. 7, 1904.]
+
+[126: Bancroft, _op. cit._ Vol. II, pp. 682 and 683.]
+
+[127: _Op. cit._ p. 684.]
+
+[128: _Ibid._]
+
+[129: See J. Wilfrid Jackson, _op. cit. supra_.]
+
+
+Summary.
+
+In these pages I have ranged over a very wide field of speculation,
+groping in the dim shadows of the early history of civilization. I have
+been attempting to pick up a few of the threads which ultimately became
+woven into the texture of human beliefs and aspirations, and to suggest
+that the practice of mummification was the woof around which the web of
+civilization was intimately intertwined.
+
+I have already explained how closely that practice was related to the
+origin and development of architecture, which Professor Lethaby has
+called the "matrix of civilization," and how nearly the ideas that grew
+up in explanation and in justification of the ritual of embalming were
+affected by the practice of agriculture, the second great pillar of
+support for the edifice of civilization. It has also been shown how
+far-reaching was the influence exerted by the needs of the embalmer,
+which impelled men, probably for the first time in history, to plan and
+carry out great expeditions by sea and land to obtain the necessary
+resins and the balsams, the wood and the spices. Incidentally also in
+course of time the practice of mummification came to exert a profound
+effect upon the means for the acquisition of a knowledge of medicine and
+all the sciences ancillary to it.
+
+But I have devoted chief attention to the bearing of the ideas which
+developed out of the practice and ritual of embalming upon the spirit of
+man. It gave shape and substance to the belief in a future life; it was
+perhaps the most important factor in the development of a definite
+conception of the gods: it laid the foundation of the ideas which
+subsequently were built up into a theory of the soul: in fact, it was
+intimately connected with the birth of all those ideals and aspirations
+which are now included in the conception of religious belief and ritual.
+A multitude of other trains of thought were started amidst the
+intellectual ferment of the formulation of the earliest concrete system
+of biological theory. The idea of the properties and functions of water
+which had previously sprung up in connexion with the development of
+agriculture became crystallized into a more definite form as the result
+of the development of mummification, and this has played an obtrusive
+part in religion, in philosophy and in medicine ever since. Moreover its
+influence has become embalmed for all time in many languages and in the
+ritual of every religion.
+
+But it was a factor in the development not merely of religious beliefs,
+temples and ritual, but it was also very closely related to the origin
+of much of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular beliefs.
+The swastika and the thunderbolt, dragons and demons, totemism and the
+sky-world are all of them conceptions that were more or less closely
+connected with the matters I have been discussing.
+
+The ideas which grew up in association with the practice of
+mummification were responsible for the development of the temple and its
+ritual and for a definite formulation of the conception of deities. But
+they were also responsible for originating a priesthood. For the
+resuscitation of the dead king, Osiris, and for the maintenance of his
+existence it was necessary for his successor, the reigning king, to
+perform the ritual of animation and the provision of food and drink. The
+king, therefore, was the first priest, and his functions were not
+primarily acts of worship but merely the necessary preliminaries for
+restoring life and consciousness to the dead seer so that he could
+consult him and secure his advice and help.
+
+It was only when the number of temples became so great and their ritual
+so complex and elaborate as to make it a physical impossibility for the
+king to act in this capacity in all of them and on every occasion that
+he was compelled to delegate some of his priestly functions to others,
+either members of the royal family or high officials. In course of time
+certain individuals devoted themselves exclusively to these duties and
+became professional priests; but it is important to remember that at
+first it was the exclusive privilege of Horus, the reigning king, to
+intercede with Osiris, the dead king, on behalf of men, and that the
+earliest priesthood consisted of those individuals to whom he had
+delegated some of these duties.
+
+In conclusion I should like to express in words what must be only too
+apparent to every reader of this statement. It claims to be nothing more
+than a contribution to the study of some of the most difficult problems
+in the history of human thought. For one so ill-equipped for a task of
+such a nature as I am to attempt it calls for a word of explanation. The
+clear light that recent research has shed upon the earliest literature
+in the world has done much to destroy the foundations upon which the
+theories propounded by scholars have been built up. It seemed to be
+worth while to attempt to read afresh the voluminous mass of old
+documents with the illumination of this new information.
+
+The other reason for making such an attempt is that almost every modern
+scholar who has discussed the matters at issue has assumed that the
+fashionable doctrine of the independent development of human beliefs and
+practices was a safe basis upon which to construct his theories. At best
+it is an unproven and reckless speculation. I am convinced it is utterly
+false. Holding such views I have attempted to read the evidence afresh.
+
+
+APPENDIX A.
+
+On re-reading the discussion of the significance of the _ka_ I realize
+that, in striving after brevity and conciseness--to keep the size of my
+statement within the limits of the _Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library_, generously elastic though it is--I have left the argument in a
+rather nebulous form.
+
+It must not be imagined that a concrete-minded people like the ancient
+Egyptians entertained highly abstract and ethereal ideas about "the
+soul". They recognized that all the expressions of consciousness and
+personality could cease during sleep; and at the same time the phenomena
+of dreams seemed to afford evidence that these absent elements of the
+individual's being were enjoying real experiences elsewhere. Thus there
+was an _alter ego_, identified by this matter-of-fact people with the
+twin (placenta) which was born with the child and was clearly concerned
+with its physical and intellectual nourishment--for it was obviously
+connected by its stalk to the embryo like a tree to its roots, and it
+seemed to be composed of blood, which was regarded as the vehicle of
+mind. But this intellectual "twin" kept pace in its growth with the
+physical body. When a statue was made to represent the latter the _ka_
+could dwell in the real body or the statue.
+
+The identification of the placenta with the moon helped the growth of
+the conception that this "birth-promoter" could not only bring about a
+re-birth in the life to come, but also facilitate a transference to the
+sky-world. The placenta had already been superintending the deceased's
+welfare upon earth and would continue to do so when he rejoined his _ka_
+in the sky world.
+
+The complexity of the conception is due to the fact that the simple
+early belief in "a double" was gradually elaborated, as one new idea
+after another became added to it, and rationalized to blend with the
+former complex in an increasingly involved synthesis. It was only when
+the elaborate scaffolding of material factors was cleared away that a
+more ethereal conception of "the soul" was sublimated.
+
+
+APPENDIX B.
+
+I should like to emphasize the fact that my protest (on p. 63) was
+directed against the claim that the custom of offering food and drink to
+the dead was inspired _primarily_ to prevent them from troubling the
+living. Its original purpose was to sustain and reanimate the dead; but,
+of course, when its real meaning was forgotten, it was explained in a
+great variety of ways by the people who made a practice of presenting
+offerings to the dead without really knowing why they did so.
+
+Dr. Alan Gardiner himself has made a statement which casual readers
+(i.e., those who do not discriminate between the motive for the
+invention of a procedure and the reasons subsequently given for its
+continuance) might regard as a contradiction of my quotation from his
+writings on p. 62. Thus he says: "Any god could doubtless attack human
+beings, but savage and malicious deities, like Seth [Set], the murderer
+of Osiris, or Sakhmet, [Sekhet], the 'lady of pestilence' (_nb-t 'idw_),
+were doubtless most to be feared." [This attitude of the malignant
+goddesses is revealed in a most obtrusive form in the village deities of
+the Dravidians of Southern India.] "The dead were specially to be
+feared; nor was it only those dead who were unhappy or unburied that
+might torment the living, for the magician sometimes warns them that
+their tombs are endangered" (Article "Magic (Egyptian)," _Hastings'
+Encycl. Ethics and Religion_, p. 264).
+
+But it is important to bear in mind, as the same scholar has explained
+elsewhere ["Life and Death (Egyptian)," _Hastings' Encycl._, p. 23]:
+"Nothing could be farther from the truth [than the statement that 'the
+funerary rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main
+precautionary measures serving to protect the living against the dead'];
+it is of fundamental importance to realize that the vast stores of
+wealth and thought expended by the Egyptians on their tombs--that wealth
+and that thought which created not only the pyramids, but also the
+practice of mummification and a very extensive funerary literature--were
+due to the anxiety of each member of the community with regard to his
+own individual future welfare, and not to feelings of respect, or fear,
+or duty felt towards the other dead."
+
+It was only in response to certain binding obligations that the living
+observed all those costly and troublesome rules which were believed to
+insure the welfare of the deceased. But this recognition of the primary
+and real purpose of the food offerings as sustenance for the dead or the
+gods must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that there is
+widespread throughout the world a real fear of the dead and ghosts, and
+that in many places food-offerings are made for the specific purpose "of
+appeasing the fairies".
+
+Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me that offerings of milk and porridge are
+made at the stone monuments in Scotland, and children carry meal in
+their pockets to protect themselves from the fairies. For the dead went
+to Fairyland.
+
+Beliefs of a similar kind can be collected from most parts of the world:
+but the point I specially want to emphasize is that they are _secondary_
+rationalizations of a custom which originally had an utterly different
+significance.
+
+
+APPENDIX C.
+
+Prof. Barton's statement (_supra_, p. 64) is typical of a widespread
+misapprehension, resulting from the confusion between sexual relations
+and the giving of life. At first primitive people did not realize that
+the manifestations of the sex instinct had anything whatever to do with
+reproduction. They were aware of the fact that women gave birth to
+children; and the organ concerned in this process was regarded as the
+giver of life, the creator. The apotheosis of these powers led to the
+conception of the first deity. But it was only secondarily that these
+life-giving attributes were brought into association with the sexual act
+and the masculine powers of fertilization. Much confusion has been
+created by those writers who see manifestations of the sexual factor and
+phallic ideas in every aspect of primitive religion, where in most cases
+only the power of life-giving plays a part.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS.[130]
+
+
+An adequate account of the development of the dragon-legend would
+represent the history of the expression of mankind's aspirations and
+fears during the past fifty centuries and more. For the dragon was
+evolved along with civilization itself. The search for the elixir of
+life, to turn back the years from old age and confer the boon of
+immortality, has been the great driving force that compelled men to
+build up the material and the intellectual fabric of civilization. The
+dragon-legend is the history of that search which has been preserved by
+popular tradition: it has grown up and kept pace with the constant
+struggle to grasp the unattainable goal of men's desires; and the story
+has been constantly growing in complexity, as new incidents were drawn
+within its scope and confused with old incidents whose real meaning was
+forgotten or distorted. It has passed through all the phases with which
+the study of the spreading of rumours or the development of dreams has
+familiarized students of psychology. The simple original stories, which
+become blended and confused, their meaning distorted and reinterpreted
+by the rationalizing of incoherent incidents, are given the dramatic
+form with which the human mind invests all stories that make a strong
+appeal to its emotions, and then secondarily elaborated with a wealth of
+circumstantial detail. This is the history of popular legends and the
+development of rumours. But these phenomena are displayed in their most
+emphatic form in dreams.[131] In his waking state man restrains his
+roving fancies and exercises what Freud has called a "censorship" over
+the stream of his thoughts: but when he falls asleep, the "censor" dozes
+also; and free rein is given to his unrestrained fancies to make a
+hotch-potch of the most varied and unrelated incidents, and to create a
+fantastic mosaic built up from fragments of his actual experience, bound
+together by the cement of his aspirations and fears. The myth resembles
+the dream because it has developed without any consistent and effective
+censorship. The individual who tells one particular phase of the story
+may exert the controlling influence of his mind over the version he
+narrates: but as it is handed on from man to man and generation to
+generation the "censorship" also is constantly changing. This lack of
+unity of control implies that the development of the myth is not unlike
+the building-up of a dream-story. But the dragon-myth is vastly more
+complex than any dream, because mankind as a whole has taken a hand in
+the process of shaping it; and the number of centuries devoted to this
+work of elaboration has been far greater than the years spent by the
+average individual in accumulating the stuff of which most of his dreams
+have been made. But though the myth is enormously complex, so vast a
+mass of detailed evidence concerning every phase and every detail of its
+history has been preserved, both in the literature and the folk-lore of
+the world, that we are able to submit it to psychological analysis and
+determine the course of its development and the significance of every
+incident in its tortuous rambling.
+
+In instituting these comparisons between the development of myths and
+dreams, I should like to emphasize the fact that the interpretation of
+the _myth_ proposed in these pages is almost diametrically opposed to
+that suggested by Freud, and pushed to a _reductio ad absurdum_ by his
+more reckless followers, and especially by Yung.
+
+The dragon has been described as "the most venerable symbol employed in
+ornamental art and the favourite and most highly decorative motif in
+artistic design". It has been the inspiration of much, if not most, of
+the world's great literature in every age and clime, and the nucleus
+around which a wealth of ethical symbolism has accumulated throughout
+the ages. The dragon-myth represents also the earliest doctrine or
+systematic theory of astronomy and meteorology.
+
+In the course of its romantic and chequered history the dragon has been
+identified with all of the gods and all of the demons of every religion.
+But it is most intimately associated with the earliest stratum of
+divinities, for it has been homologized with each of the members of the
+earliest Trinity, the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun
+God, both individually and collectively. To add to the complexities of
+the story, the dragon-slayer is also represented by the same deities,
+either individually or collectively; and the weapon with which the hero
+slays the dragon is also homologous both with him and his victim, for it
+is animated by him who wields it, and its powers of destruction make it
+a symbol of the same power of evil which it itself destroys.
+
+Such a fantastic paradox of contradictions has supplied the materials
+with which the fancies of men of every race and land, and every stage of
+knowledge and ignorance, have been playing for all these centuries. It
+is not surprising, therefore, that an endless series of variations of
+the story has been evolved, each decked out with topical allusions and
+distinctive embellishments. But throughout the complex tissue of this
+highly embroidered fabric the essential threads of the web and woof of
+its foundation can be detected with surprising constancy and regularity.
+
+Within the limits of such an account as this it is obvious that I can
+deal only with the main threads of the argument and leave the
+interesting details of the local embellishments until some other time.
+
+The fundamental element in the dragon's powers is the control of water.
+Both in its beneficent and destructive aspects water was regarded as
+animated by the dragon, who thus assumed the rôle of Osiris or his enemy
+Set. But when the attributes of the Water God became confused with those
+of the Great Mother, and her evil avatar, the lioness (Sekhet) form of
+Hathor in Egypt, or in Babylonia the destructive Tiamat, became the
+symbol of disorder and chaos, the dragon became identified with
+her also.
+
+Similarly the third member of the Earliest Trinity also became the
+dragon. As the son and successor of the dead king Osiris the living king
+Horus became assimilated with him. When the belief became more and more
+insistent that the dead king had acquired the boon of immortality and
+was really alive, the distinction between him and the actually living
+king Horus became correspondingly minimized. This process of
+assimilation was advanced a further stage when the king became a god and
+was thus more closely identified with his father and predecessor. Hence
+Horus assumed many of the functions of Osiris; and amongst them those
+which in foreign lands contributed to making a dragon of the Water God.
+But if the distinction between Horus and Osiris became more and more
+attenuated with the lapse of time, the identification with his mother
+Hathor (Isis) was more complete still. For he took her place and assumed
+many of her attributes in the later versions of the great saga which is
+the nucleus of all the literature of mythology--I refer to the story of
+"The Destruction Of Mankind".
+
+The attributes of these three members of the Trinity, Hathor, Osiris,
+and Horus, thus became intimately linked the one with the other; and in
+Susa, where the earliest pictorial representation of a real dragon
+developed, it received concrete form (Fig. 1) as a monster compounded of
+the lioness of Hathor (Sekhet) with the falcon (or eagle) of Horus, but
+with the human attributes and water-controlling powers which originally
+belonged to Osiris. In some parts of Africa the earliest "dragon" was
+nothing more than Hathor's cow or the gazelle or antelope of Horus
+(Osiris) or of Set.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Early Representation of a "Dragon" Compounded of
+the Forepart of an Eagle and the Hindpart of a Lion--(from an Archaic
+Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier).]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2.--The Earliest Babylonian Conception of the Dragon
+Tiamat--(from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after L. W. King).]
+
+But if the dragon was compounded of all three deities, who was the
+slayer of the evil dragon?
+
+The story of the dragon-conflict is really a recital of Horus's vendetta
+against Set, intimately blended and confused with different versions of
+"The Destruction of Mankind".[132] The commonplace incidents of the
+originally prosaic stories were distorted into an almost unrecognizable
+form, then secondarily elaborated without any attention to their
+original meaning, but with a wealth of circumstantial embellishment, in
+accordance with the usual methods of the human mind that I have already
+mentioned. The history of the legend is in fact the most complete,
+because it is the oldest and the most widespread, illustration of those
+instinctive tendencies of the human spirit to bridge the gaps in its
+disjointed experience, and to link together in a kind of mental mosaic
+the otherwise isolated incidents in the facts of daily life and the
+rumours and traditions that have been handed down from the
+story-teller's predecessors.
+
+In the "Destruction of Mankind," which I shall discuss more fully in the
+following pages (p. 109 _et seq._), Hathor does the slaying: in the
+later stories Horus takes his mother's place and earns his spurs as the
+Warrior Sun-god:[133] hence confusion was inevitably introduced between
+the enemies of Re, the original victims in the legend, and Horus's
+traditional enemies, the followers of Set. Against the latter it was
+Osiris himself who fought originally; and in many of the non-Egyptian
+variants of the legend it is the rain-god himself who is the warrior.
+
+Hence all three members of the Trinity were identified, not only with
+the dragon, but also with the hero who was the dragon-slayer.
+
+But the weapon used by the latter was also animated by the same Trinity,
+and in fact identified with them. In the Saga of the Winged Disk, Horus
+assumed the form of the sun equipped with the wings of his own falcon
+and the fire-spitting uræus serpents. Flying down from heaven in this
+form he was at the same time the god and the god's weapon. As a fiery
+bolt from heaven he slew the enemies of Re, who were now identified with
+his own personal foes, the followers of Set. But in the earlier versions
+of the myth (i.e. the "Destruction of Mankind"), it was Hathor who was
+the "Eye of Re" and descended from heaven to destroy mankind with fire;
+she also was the vulture (Mut); and in the earliest version she did the
+slaughter with a knife or an axe with which she was animistically
+identified.
+
+But Osiris also was the weapon of destruction, both in the form of the
+flood (for he was the personification of the river) and the rain-storms
+from heaven. But he was also an instrument for vanquishing the demon,
+when the intoxicating beer or the sedative drink (the potency of which
+was due to the indwelling spirit of the god) was the chosen means of
+overcoming the dragon.
+
+This, in brief, is the framework of the dragon-story. The early Trinity
+as the hero, armed with the Trinity as weapon, slays the dragon,
+which again is the same Trinity. With its illimitable possibilities for
+dramatic development and fantastic embellishment with incident and
+ethical symbolism, this theme has provided countless thousands of
+story-tellers with the skeleton which they clothed with the living flesh
+of their stories, representing not merely the earliest theories of
+astronomy and meteorology, but all the emotional conflicts of daily
+life, the struggle between light and darkness, heat and cold, right and
+wrong, justice and injustice, prosperity and adversity, wealth and
+poverty. The whole gamut of human strivings and emotions was drawn
+into the legend until it became the great epic of the human spirit and
+the main theme that has appealed to the interest of all mankind in
+every age.
+
+An ancient Chinese philosopher, Wang Fu, writing in the time of the Han
+Dynasty, enumerates the "nine resemblances" of the dragon. "His horns
+resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes those of a
+demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam, his scales
+those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a
+tiger, his ears those of a cow."[134] But this list includes only a
+small minority of the menagerie of diverse creatures which at one time
+or another have contributed their quota to this truly astounding
+hotch-potch.
+
+This composite wonder-beast ranges from Western Europe to the Far East
+of Asia, and as we shall see, also even across the Pacific to America.
+Although in the different localities a great number of most varied
+ingredients enter into its composition, in most places where the dragon
+occurs the substratum of its anatomy consists of a serpent or a
+crocodile, usually with the scales of a fish for covering, and the feet
+and wings, and sometimes also the head, of an eagle, falcon, or hawk,
+and the forelimbs and sometimes the head of a lion. An association of
+anatomical features of so unnatural and arbitrary a nature can only mean
+that all dragons are the progeny of the same ultimate ancestors.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7.--A Mediæval Picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its
+cloud (After the late Professor W. Anderson)]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8.--A Chinese Dragon (After de Groot)]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 10.--Babylonian Weather God]
+
+But it is not merely a case of structural or anatomical similarity, but
+also of physiological identity, that clinches the proof of the
+derivation of this fantastic brood from the same parents. Wherever the
+dragon is found, it displays a special partiality for water. It controls
+the rivers or seas, dwells in pools or wells, or in the clouds on the
+tops of mountains, regulates the tides, the flow of streams, or the
+rainfall, and is associated with thunder and lightning. Its home is a
+mansion at the bottom of the sea, where it guards vast treasures,
+usually pearls, but also gold and precious stones. In other instances
+the dwelling is upon the top of a high mountain; and the dragon's breath
+forms the rain-clouds. It emits thunder and lightning. Eating the
+dragon's heart enables the diner to acquire the knowledge stored in this
+"organ of the mind" so that he can understand the language of birds,
+and in fact of all the creatures that have contributed to the making
+of a dragon.
+
+It should not be necessary to rebut the numerous attempts that have been
+made to explain the dragon-myth as a story relating to extinct monsters.
+Such fantastic claims can be made only by writers devoid of any
+knowledge of palæontology or of the distinctive features of the dragon
+and its history. But when the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian
+Antiquities in the British Museum, in a book that is not intended to be
+humorous,[135] seriously claims Dr. Andrews' discovery of a gigantic
+fossil snake as "proof" of the former existence of "the great
+serpent-devil Āpep," it is time to protest.
+
+Those who attempt to derive the dragon from such living creatures as
+lizards like _Draco volans_ or _Moloch horridus_[136] ignore the
+evidence of the composite and unnatural features of the monsters.
+
+"Whatever be the origin of the Northern dragon, the myths, when they
+first became articulate for us, show him to be in all essentials the
+same as that of the South and East. He is a power of evil, guardian of
+hoards, the greedy withholder of good things from men; and the slaying
+of a dragon is the crowning achievement of heroes--of Siegmund, of
+Beowulf, of Sigurd, of Arthur, of Tristam--even of Lancelot, the _beau
+ideal_ of mediæval chivalry" (_Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. viii., p.
+467). But if in the West the dragon is usually a "power of evil," in the
+far East he is equally emphatically a symbol of beneficence. He is
+identified with emperors and kings; he is the son of heaven the bestower
+of all bounties, not merely to mankind directly, but also to the earth
+as well.
+
+Even in our country his symbolism is not always wholly malevolent,
+otherwise--if for the moment we shut our eyes to the history of the
+development of heraldic ornament--dragons would hardly figure as the
+supporters of the arms of the City of London, and as the symbol of many
+of our aristocratic families, among which the Royal House of Tudor is
+included. It is only a few years since the Red Dragon of Cadwallader was
+added as an additional badge to the achievement of the Prince of Wales.
+But, "though a common ensign in war, both in the East and the West, as
+an ecclesiastical emblem his opposite qualities have remained
+consistently until the present day. Whenever the dragon is represented,
+it symbolizes the power of evil, the devil and his works. Hell in
+mediæval art is a dragon with gaping jaws, belching fire."
+
+And in the East the dragon's reputation is not always blameless. For it
+figures in some disreputable incidents and does not escape the sort of
+punishment that tradition metes out to his European cousins.
+
+
+[130: An elaboration of a Lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library
+on 8 November, 1916.]
+
+[131: In his lecture, "Dreams and Primitive Culture," delivered at the
+John Rylands Library on 10 April, 1918, Dr. Rivers has expounded the
+principles of dream-development.]
+
+[132: _Vide infra_, p. 109 _et seq._]
+
+[133: Hence soldiers killed in battle and women dying in childbirth
+receive special consideration in the exclusive heaven of (Osiris's)
+Horus's Indian and American representatives, Indra and Tlaloc.]
+
+[134: M. W. de Visser, "The Dragon in China and Japan," _Verhandelingen
+der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam_, Afdeeling
+Letterkunde, Deel XIII, No. 2, 1913, p. 70.]
+
+[135: E. A. Wallis Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," 1904, vol. i,
+p. 11]
+
+[136: Gould's "Mythical Monsters," 1886.]
+
+
+The Dragon in America and Eastern Asia.
+
+In the early centuries of the Christian era, and probably also even for
+two or three hundred years earlier still, the leaven of the ancient
+civilizations of the Old World was at work in Mexico, Central America
+and Peru. The most obtrusive influences that were brought to bear,
+especially in the area from Yucatan to Mexico, were inspired by the
+Cambodian and Indonesian modifications of Indian beliefs and practices.
+The god who was most often depicted upon the ancient Maya and Aztec
+codices was the Indian rain-god Indra, who in America was provided with
+the head of the Indian elephant[137] (i.e. seems to have been confused
+with the Indian Ganesa) and given other attributes more suggestive of
+the Dravidian Nâga than his enemy, the Aryan deity. In other words the
+character of the American god, known as _Chac_ by the Maya people and as
+_Tlaloc_ by the Aztecs, is an interesting illustration of the effects of
+such a mixture of cultures as Dr. Rivers has studied in Melanesia.[138]
+Not only does the elephant-headed god in America represent a blend of
+the two great Indian rain-gods which in the Old World are mortal
+enemies, the one of the other (partly for the political reason that the
+Dravidians and Aryans were rival and hostile peoples), but all the
+traits of each deity, even those depicting the old Aryan conception of
+their deadly combat, are reproduced in America under circumstances which
+reveal an ignorance on the part of the artists of the significance of
+the paradoxical contradictions they are representing. But even many
+incidents in the early history of the Vedic gods, which were due to
+arbitrary circumstances in the growth of the legends, reappear in
+America. To cite one instance (out of scores which might be quoted), in
+the Vedic story Indra assumed many of the attributes of the god Soma. In
+America the name of the god of rain and thunder, the Mexican Indra, is
+_Tlaloc_, which is generally translated "pulque of the earth," from
+_tlal[l]i_, "earth," and _oc[tli]_, "pulque, a fermented drink (like the
+Indian drink _soma_) made from the juice of the agave".[139]
+
+The so-called "long-nosed god" (the elephant-headed rain-god) has been
+given the non-committal designation "god B," by Schellhas.[140]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Reproduction of a Picture in the Maya Codex
+Troano representing the Rain-god _Chac_ treading upon the Serpent's
+head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the god is
+pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-goddess stands upon the Serpent's tail.]
+
+I reproduce here a remarkable drawing (Fig. 11) from the Codex Troano,
+in which this god, whom the Maya people called _Chac_, is shown pouring
+the rain out of a water-jar (just as the deities of Babylonia and India
+are often represented), and putting his foot upon the head of a serpent,
+who is preventing the rain from reaching the earth. Here we find
+depicted with childlike simplicity and directness the Vedic conception
+of Indra overcoming the demon Vritra. Stempell describes this scene as
+"the elephant-headed god B standing upon the head of a serpent";[141]
+while Seler, who claims that god B is a tortoise, explains it as the
+serpent forming a footstool for the rain-god.[142] In the
+Codex Cortes the same theme is depicted in another way, which is truer
+to the Indian conception of Vritra, as "the restrainer"[143] (Fig. 12).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 12.--Another representation of the Elephant-headed
+Rain god. He is holding thunderbolts, conventionalised in a hand-like
+form. The Serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the rain-waters.]
+
+The serpent (the American rattlesnake) restrains the water by coiling
+itself into a sac to hold up the rain and so prevent it from reaching
+the earth. In the various American codices this episode is depicted in
+as great a variety of forms as the Vedic poets of India described when
+they sang of the exploits of Indra. The Maya Chac is, in fact, Indra
+transferred to the other side of the Pacific and there only thinly
+disguised by a veneer of American stylistic design.
+
+But the Aztec god Tlaloc is merely the Chac of the Maya people
+transferred to Mexico. Schellhas declares that the "god B," the "most
+common figure in the codices," is a "universal deity to whom the most
+varied elements, natural phenomena, and activities are subject". "Many
+authorities consider God B to represent Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent,
+whose Aztec equivalent is Quetzalcoatl. Others identify him with
+Itzamna, the Serpent God of the East, or with Chac, the Rain God of the
+four quarters and the equivalent of Tlaloc of the Mexicans."[144]
+
+From the point of view of its Indian analogies these confusions are
+peculiarly significant, for the same phenomena are found in India. The
+snake and the dragon can be either the rain-god of the East or the enemy
+of the rain-god; either the dragon-slayer or the evil dragon who has to
+be slain. The Indian word _Nâga_, which is applied to the beneficent god
+or king identified with the cobra, can also mean "elephant," and this
+double significance probably played a part in the confusion of the
+deities in America.
+
+In the Dresden Codex the elephant-headed god is represented in one place
+grasping a serpent, in another issuing from a serpent's mouth, and again
+as an actual serpent (Fig. 13). Turning next to the attributes of these
+American gods we find that they reproduce with amazing precision those
+of Indra. Not only were they the divinities who controlled rain,
+thunder, lightning, and vegetation, but they also carried axes and
+thunderbolts (Fig. 13) like their homologues in the Old World. Like
+Indra, Tlaloc was intimately associated with the East and with the tops
+of mountains, where he had a special heaven, reserved for warriors who
+fell in battle and women who died in childbirth. As a water-god also he
+presided over the souls of the drowned and those who in life suffered
+from dropsical affections. Indra also specialized in the same branch
+of medicine.
+
+In fact, if one compares the account of Tlaloc's attributes and
+achievements, such as is given in Mr. Joyce's "Mexican Archæology" or
+Professor Seler's monograph on the "Codex Vaticanus," with Professor
+Hopkins's summary of Indra's character ("Religions of India") the
+identity is so exact, even in the most arbitrary traits and confusions
+with other deities' peculiarities, that it becomes impossible for any
+serious investigator to refuse to admit that Tlaloc and Chac are merely
+American forms of Indra. Even so fantastic a practice as the
+representation of the American rain-god's face as composed of contorted
+snakes[145] finds its analogy in Siam, where in relatively recent times
+this curious device was still being used by artists.[146]
+
+"As the god of fertility maize belonged to him [Tlaloc], though not
+altogether by right, for according to one legend he stole it after it
+had been discovered by other gods concealed in the heart of a
+mountain."[147] Indra also obtained soma from the mountain by similar
+means.[148]
+
+In the ancient civilization of America one of the most prominent deities
+was called the "Feathered Serpent," in the Maya language, Kukulkan,
+Quiché Gukumatz, Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the Pueblo "Mother of Waters".
+Throughout a very extensive part of America the snake, like the Indian
+Nâga, is the emblem of rain, clouds, thunder and lightning. But it is
+essentially and pre-eminently the symbol of rain; and the god who
+controls the rain, Chac of the Mayas, Tlaloc of the Aztecs, carried the
+axe and the thunderbolt like his homologues and prototypes in the Old
+World. In America also we find reproduced in full, not only the legends
+of the antagonism between the thunder-bird and the serpent, but also
+the identification of these two rivals in one composite monster, which,
+as I have already mentioned, is seen in the winged disks, both in the
+Old World and the New.[149] Hardly any incident in the history of the
+Egyptian falcon or the thunder-birds of Babylonia, Greece or India,
+fails to reappear in America and find pictorial expression in the Maya
+and Aztec codices.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 13.
+
+A photographic reproduction of the 36th page of the Dresden Maya Codex.
+
+Of the three pictures in the top row one represents the elephant-headed
+god _Chac_ with a snake's body. He is pouring out rain. The central
+picture represents the lightning animal carrying fire down from heaven
+to earth. On the right _Chac_ is shown in human guise carrying
+thunder-weapons in the form of burning torches.
+
+In the second row a goddess sits in the rain: her head is prolonged into
+that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows
+_Chac_ in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The
+third illustration depicts the familiar conflict between the vulture and
+serpent.
+
+In the third row _Chac_ is seen with his axe: in the central picture he
+is standing in the water looking up towards a rain-cloud; and on the
+right he is shown sitting in a hut resting from his labours.]
+
+What makes America such a rich storehouse of historical data is the fact
+that it is stretched across the world almost from pole to pole; and for
+many centuries the jetsam and flotsam swept on to this vast strand has
+made it a museum of the cultural history of the Old World, much of which
+would have been lost for ever if America had not saved it. But a record
+preserved in this manner is necessarily in a highly confused state. For
+essentially the same materials reached America in manifold forms. The
+original immigrants into America brought from North-Eastern Asia such
+cultural equipment as had reached the area east of the Yenesei at the
+time when Europe was in the Neolithic phase of culture. Then when
+ancient mariners began to coast along the Eastern Asiatic littoral and
+make their way to America by the Aleutian route there was a further
+infiltration of new ideas. But when more venturesome sailors began to
+navigate the open seas and exploit Polynesia, for centuries[150] there
+was a more or less constant influx of customs and beliefs, which were
+drawn from Egypt and Babylonia, from the Mediterranean and East Africa,
+from India and Indonesia, China and Japan, Cambodia and Oceania. One and
+the same fundamental idea, such as the attributes of the serpent as a
+water-god, reached America in an infinite variety of guises, Egyptian,
+Babylonian, Indian, Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese, and from this
+amazing jumble of confusion the local priesthood of Central America
+built up a system of beliefs which is distinctively American, though
+most of the ingredients and the principles of synthetic composition were
+borrowed from the Old World.
+
+Every possible phase of the early history of the dragon-story and all
+the ingredients which in the Old World went to the making of it have
+been preserved in American pictures and legends in a bewildering variety
+of forms and with an amazing luxuriance of complicated symbolism and
+picturesque ingenuity. In America, as in India and Eastern Asia, the
+power controlling water was identified both with a serpent (which in the
+New World, as in the Old, was often equipped with such inappropriate and
+arbitrary appendages, as wings, horns and crests) and a god, who was
+either associated or confused with an elephant. Now many of the
+attributes of these gods, as personifications of the life-giving powers
+of water, are identical with those of the Babylonian god Ea and the
+Egyptian Osiris, and their reputations as warriors with the respective
+sons and representatives, Marduk and Horus. The composite animal of
+Ea-Marduk, the "sea-goat" (the Capricornus of the Zodiac), was also the
+vehicle of Varuna in India whose relationship to Indra was in some
+respects analogous to that of Ea to Marduk in Babylonia.[151] The Indian
+"sea-goat" or _Makara_ was in fact intimately associated both with
+Varuna and with Indra. This monster assumed a great variety of forms,
+such as the crocodile, the dolphin, the sea-serpent or dragon, or
+combinations of the heads of different animals with a fish's body (Fig.
+14). Amongst these we find an elephant-headed form of the _makara_,
+which was adopted as far east as Indonesia and as far west as Scotland.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 14.
+
+A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature compounded of the
+antelope and fish of Ea.
+
+B. The "sea-goat" as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.
+
+C to K--a series of varieties of the _makara_ from the Buddhist Rails at
+Buddha Gaya and Mathura, circa 70 B.C.-70 A.D., after Cunningham
+("Archæological Survey of India," Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX and XXIX).
+
+L. The _makara_ as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood. It
+is not difficult to understand how, in the course of the easterly
+diffusion of culture, such a picture should develop into the Chinese
+Dragon or the American Elephant-headed God.]
+
+I have already called attention[152] to the part played by the _makara_
+in determining the development of the form of the elephant-headed god in
+America. Another form of the _makara_ is described in the following
+American legend, which is interesting also as a mutilated version of the
+original dragon-story of the Old World.
+
+In 1912 Hernández translated and published a Maya manuscript[153] which
+had been written out in Spanish characters in the early days of the
+conquest of the Americas, but had been overlooked until six years ago.
+It is an account of the creation, and includes the following passages:
+"All at once came the water [? rain] after the dragon was carried away.
+The heaven was broken up; it fell upon the earth; and they say that
+_Cantul-ti-ku_ (four gods), the four Baccab, were those who destroyed
+it.... 'The whole world', said _Ah-uuc-chek-nale_ (he who seven times
+makes fruitful), 'proceeded from the seven bosoms of the earth.' And he
+descended to make fruitful _Itzam-kab-uin_ (the female whale with
+alligator-feet), when he came down from the central angle of the
+heavenly region" (p. 171).
+
+Hernández adds that "the old fishermen of Yucatan still call the whale
+_Itzam_: this explains the name of _Itzaes_, by which the Mayas were
+known before the founding of Mayapan".
+
+The close analogy to the Indra-story is suggested by the phrase
+describing the coming of the water "after the dragon was carried away".
+Moreover, the Indian sea-elephant _makara_, which was confused in the
+Old World with the dolphin of Aphrodite, and was sometimes also regarded
+as a crocodile, naturally suggests that the "female whale with the
+alligator-feet" was only an American version of the old Indian legend.
+
+All this serves, not only to corroborate the inferences drawn from the
+other sources of information which I have already indicated, but also to
+suggest that, in addition to borrowing the chief divinities of their
+pantheon from India, the Maya people's original name was derived from
+the same mythology.[154]
+
+It is of considerable interest and importance to note that in the
+earliest dated example of Maya workmanship (from Tuxtla, in the Vera
+Cruz State of Mexico), for which Spinden assigns a tentative date of 235
+B.C., an unmistakable elephant figures among the four hieroglyphs which
+Spinden reproduces (_op. cit._, p. 171). A similar hieroglyphic sign is
+found in the Chinese records of the Early Chow Dynasty (John Ross, "The
+Origin of the Chinese People," 1916, P. 152).
+
+The use of the numerals four and seven in the narrative translated by
+Hernández, as in so many other American documents, is itself, as Mrs.
+Zelia Nuttall has so conclusively demonstrated,[155] a most striking and
+conclusive demonstration of the link with the Old World.
+
+Indra was not the only Indian god who was transferred to America, for
+all the associated deities, with the characteristic stories of their
+exploits,[156] are also found depicted with childlike directness of
+incident, but amazingly luxuriant artistic phantasy, in the Maya and
+Aztec codices.
+
+We find scattered throughout the islands of the Pacific the familiar
+stories of the dragon. One mentioned by the Bishop of Wellington refers
+to a New Zealand dragon with jaws like a crocodile's, which spouted
+water like a whale. It lived in a fresh-water lake.[157] In the same
+number of the same _Journal_ Sir George Grey gives extracts from a Maori
+legend of the dragon, which he compares with corresponding passages from
+Spenser's "Faery Queen". "Their strict verbal and poetical conformity
+with the New Zealand legends are such as at first to lead to the
+impression either that Spenser must have stolen his images and language
+from the New Zealand poets, or that they must have acted unfairly by the
+English bard" (p. 362). The Maori legend describes the dragon as "in
+size large as a monstrous whale, in shape like a hideous lizard; for in
+its huge head, its limbs, its tail, its scales, its tough skin, its
+sharp spines, yes, in all these it resembled a lizard" (p. 364).
+
+Now the attributes of the Chinese and Japanese dragon as the controller
+of rain, thunder and lightning are identical with those of the American
+elephant-headed god. It also is associated with the East and with the
+tops of mountains. It is identified with the Indian Nâga, but the
+conflict involved in this identification is less obtrusive than it is
+either in America or in India. In Dravidian India the rulers and the
+gods are identified with the serpent: but among the Aryans, who were
+hostile to the Dravidians, the rain-god is the enemy of the Nâga. In
+America the confusion becomes more pronounced because Tlaloc (Chac)
+represents both Indra and his enemy the serpent. The representation in
+the codices of his conflict with the serpent is merely a tradition
+which the Maya and Aztec scribes followed, apparently without
+understanding its meaning.
+
+In China and Japan the Indra-episode plays a much less prominent part,
+for the dragon is, like the Indian Nâga, a beneficent creature, which
+approximates more nearly to the Babylonian Ea or the Egyptian Osiris. It
+is not only the controller of water, but the impersonation of water and
+its life-giving powers: it is identified with the emperor, with his
+standard, with the sky, and with all the powers that give, maintain, and
+prolong life and guard against all kinds of danger to life. In other
+words, it is the bringer of good luck, the rejuvenator of mankind, the
+giver of immortality.
+
+But if the physiological functions of the dragon of the Far East can
+thus be assimilated to those of the Indian Nâga and the Babylonian and
+Egyptian Water God, who is also the king, anatomically he is usually
+represented in a form which can only be regarded as the Babylonian
+composite monster, as a rule stripped of his wings, though not of his
+avian feet.
+
+In America we find preserved in the legends of the Indians an accurate
+and unmistakable description of the Japanese dragon (which is mainly
+Chinese in origin). Even Spinden, who "does not care to dignify by
+refutation the numerous empty theories of ethnic connections between
+Central America" [and in fact America as a whole] "and the Old World,"
+makes the following statement (in the course of a discussion of the
+myths relating to horned snakes in California): "a similar monster,
+possessing antlers, and sometimes wings, is also very common in Algonkin
+and Iroquois legends, although rare in art. As a rule the horned serpent
+is a water spirit and an enemy of the thunder bird. Among the Pueblo
+Indians the horned snake seems to have considerable prestige in
+religious belief.... It lives in the water or in the sky and is
+connected with rain or lightning."[158]
+
+Thus we find stories of a dragon equipped with those distinctive tokens
+of Chinese origin, the deer's antlers; and along with it a snake with
+less specialized horns suggesting the Cerastes of Egypt and Babylonia. A
+horned viper distantly akin to the Cerastes of the Old World does occur
+in California; but its "horns" are so insignificant as to make it highly
+improbable that they could have been in any way responsible for the
+obtrusive rôle played by horns in these widespread American stories.
+But the proof of the foreign origin of these stories is established by
+the horned serpent's achievements.
+
+It "lives in the water or the sky" like its homologue in the Old World,
+and it is "a water spirit". Now neither the Cobra nor the Cerastes is
+actually a water serpent. Their achievements in the myths therefore have
+no possible relationship with the natural habits of the real snakes.
+They are purely arbitrary attributes which they have acquired as the
+result of a peculiar and fortuitous series of historical incidents.
+
+It is therefore utterly inconceivable and in the highest degree
+improbable that this long chain of chance circumstances should have
+happened a second time in America, and have been responsible for the
+creation of the same bizarre story in reference to one of the rarer
+American snakes of a localized distribution, whose horns are mere
+vestiges, which no one but a trained morphologist is likely to have
+noticed or recognized as such.
+
+But the American horned serpent, like its Babylonian and Indian
+homologues, is also the enemy of the thunder bird. Here is a further
+corroboration of the transmission to America of ideas which were the
+chance result of certain historical events in the Old World, which I
+have mentioned in this lecture.
+
+In the figure on page 94 I reproduce a remarkable drawing of an American
+dragon. If the Algonkin Indians had not preserved legends of a winged
+serpent equipped with deer's antlers, no value could be assigned to this
+sketch: but as we know that this particular tribe retains the legend of
+just such a wonder-beast, we are justified in treating this drawing as
+something more than a jest.
+
+"Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. John Criley as occurring near Ava,
+Jackson County, Illinois. The outlines of the characters observed by him
+were drawn from memory and submitted to Mr. Charles S. Mason, of Toledo,
+Ohio, through whom they were furnished to the Bureau of Ethnology.
+Little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of such drawing, but
+from the general appearance of the sketches the originals of which they
+are copies were probably made by one of the middle Algonquin tribes of
+Indians.[159]
+
+"The 'Piasa' rock, as it is generally designated, was referred to by the
+missionary explorer Marquette in 1675. Its situation was immediately
+above the city of Alton, Illinois."
+
+Marquette's remarks are translated by Dr. Francis Parkman as follows:--
+
+"On the flat face of a high rock were painted, in red, black, and green,
+a pair of monsters, each 'as large as a calf, with horns like a deer,
+red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression of
+countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body covered
+with scales; and the tail so long that it passes entirely round the
+body, over the head, and between the legs, ending like that of a fish.'"
+
+Another version, by Davidson and Struve, of the discovery of the
+petroglyph is as follows:--
+
+"Again they (Joliet and Marquette) were floating on the broad bosom of
+the unknown stream. Passing the mouth of the Illinois, they soon fell
+into the shadow of a tall promontory, and with great astonishment beheld
+the representation of two monsters painted on its lofty limestone front.
+According to Marquette, each of these frightful figures had the face of
+a man, the horns of a deer, the beard of a tiger, and the tail of a fish
+so long that it passed around the body, over the head, and between the
+legs. It was an object of Indian worship and greatly impressed the mind
+of the pious missionary with the necessity of substituting for this
+monstrous idolatry the worship of the true God."
+
+A footnote connected with the foregoing quotation gives the following
+description of the same rock:--
+
+"Near the mouth of the Piasa creek, on the bluff, there is a smooth rock
+in a cavernous cleft, under an overhanging cliff, on whose face 50 feet
+from the base, are painted some ancient pictures or hieroglyphics, of
+great interest to the curious. They are placed in a horizontal line from
+east to west, representing men, plants and animals. The paintings,
+though protected from dampness and storms, are in great part destroyed,
+marred by portions of the rock becoming detached and falling down."
+
+Mr. McAdams, of Alton, Illinois, says, "The name Piasa is Indian and
+signifies, in the Illini, the bird which devours men". He furnishes a
+spirited pen-and-ink sketch, 12 by 15 inches in size and purporting to
+represent the ancient painting described by Marquette. On the picture
+is inscribed the following in ink: "Made by Wm. Dennis, April 3rd,
+1825". The date is in both letters and figures. On the top of the
+picture in large letters are the two words, "FLYING DRAGON". This
+picture, which has been kept in the old Gilham family of Madison county
+and bears the evidence of its age, is reproduced as Fig. 3.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Wm. Dennis's Drawing of the "Flying Dragon"
+Depicted on the Rocks at Piasa, Illinois.]
+
+He also publishes another representation with the following remarks:--
+
+"One of the most satisfactory pictures of the Piasa we have ever seen is
+in an old German publication entitled 'The Valley of the Mississippi
+Illustrated. Eighty illustrations from Nature, by H. Lewis, from the
+Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico,' published about the year
+1839 by Arenz & Co., Dusseldorf, Germany. One of the large full-page
+plates in this work gives a fine view of the bluff at Alton, with the
+figure of the Piasa on the face of the rock. It is represented to have
+been taken on the spot by artists from Germany.... In the German picture
+there is shown just behind the rather dim outlines of the second face a
+ragged crevice, as though of a fracture. Part of the bluff's face might
+have fallen and thus nearly destroyed one of the monsters, for in later
+years writers speak of but one figure. The whole face of the bluff was
+quarried away in 1846-47."
+
+The close agreement of this account with that of the Chinese and
+Japanese dragon at once arrests attention. The anatomical peculiarities
+are so extraordinary that if Père Marquette's account is trustworthy
+there is no longer any room for doubt of the Chinese or Japanese
+derivation of this composite creature. If the account is not accepted we
+will be driven, not only to attribute to the pious seventeenth-century
+missionary serious dishonesty or culpable gullibility, but also to
+credit him with a remarkably precise knowledge of Mongolian archæology.
+When Algonkin legends are recalled, however, I think we are bound to
+accept the missionary's account as substantially accurate.
+
+Minns claims that representations of the dragon are unknown in China
+before the Han dynasty. But the legend of the dragon is much more
+ancient. The evidence has been given in full by de Visser.[160]
+
+He tells us that the earliest reference is found in the _Yih King_, and
+shows that the dragon was "a water animal akin to the snake, which
+[used] to sleep in pools during winter and arises in the spring." "It is
+the god of thunder, who brings good crops when he appears in the rice
+fields (as rain) or in the sky (as dark and yellow clouds), in other
+words when he makes the rain fertilize the ground" (p. 38).
+
+In the _Shu King_ there is a reference to the dragon as one of the
+symbolic figures painted on the upper garment of the emperor Hwang Ti
+(who according to the Chinese legends, which of course are not above
+reproach, reigned in the twenty-seventh century B.C.). In this ancient
+literature there are numerous references to the dragon, and not merely
+to the legends, _but also to representations_ of the benign monster on
+garments, banners and metal tablets.[161] "The ancient texts ... are
+short, but sufficient to give us the main conceptions of Old China with
+regard to the dragon. In those early days [just as at present] he was
+the god of water, thunder, clouds, and rain, the harbinger of blessings,
+and the symbol of holy men. As the emperors are the holy beings on
+earth, the idea of the dragon being the symbol of Imperial power is
+based upon this ancient conception" (_op. cit._, p. 42).
+
+In the fifth appendix to the _Yih King_, which has been ascribed to
+Confucius, (i.e. three centuries earlier than the Han dynasty mentioned
+by Mr. Minns), it is stated that "_K'ien_ (Heaven) is a horse, _Kw'un_
+(Earth) is a cow, _Chen (Thunder) is a dragon_." (_op. cit._, p.
+37).[162]
+
+The philosopher Hwai Nan Tsze (who died 122 B.C.) declared that the
+dragon is the origin of all creatures, winged, hairy, scaly, and
+mailed; and he propounded a scheme of evolution (de Visser, p. 65). He
+seems to have tried to explain away the fact that he had never actually
+witnessed the dragon performing some of the remarkable feats attributed
+to it: "Mankind cannot see the dragons rise: wind and rain assist them
+to ascend to a great height" (_op. cit._, p. 65). Confucius also is
+credited with the frankness of a similar confession: "As to the dragon,
+we cannot understand his riding on the wind and clouds and his ascending
+to the sky. To-day I saw Lao Tsze; is he not like the dragon?" (p. 65).
+
+This does not necessarily mean that these learned men were sceptical of
+the beliefs which tradition had forged in their minds, but that the
+dragon had the power of hiding itself in a cloak of invisibility, just
+as clouds (in which the Chinese saw dragons) could be dissipated in the
+sky. The belief in these powers of the dragon was as sincere as that of
+learned men of other countries in the beneficent attributes which
+tradition had taught them to assign to their particular deities. In the
+passages I have quoted the Chinese scholars were presumably attempting
+to bridge the gap between the ideas inculcated by faith and the evidence
+of their senses, in much the same sort of spirit as, for instance,
+actuated Dean Buckland last century, when he claimed that the glacial
+deposits of this country afforded evidence in confirmation of the Deluge
+described in the Book of Genesis.
+
+The tiger and the dragon, the gods of wind and water, are the keystones
+of the doctrine called _fung shui_, which Professor de Groot has
+described in detail.[163]
+
+He describes it "as a quasi-scientific system, supposed to teach men
+where and how to build graves, temples, and dwellings, in order that the
+dead, the gods, and the living may be located therein exclusively, or as
+far as possible, under the auspicious influences of Nature". The dragon
+plays a most important part in this system, being "the chief spirit of
+water and rain, and at the same time representing one of the four
+quarters of heaven (i.e. the East, called the Azure Dragon, and the
+first of the seasons, spring)." The word Dragon comprises the high
+grounds in general, and the water streams which have their sources
+therein or wind their way through them.[164]
+
+The attributes thus assigned to the Blue Dragon, his control of water
+and streams, his dwelling on high mountains whence they spring, and his
+association with the East, will be seen to reveal his identity with the
+so-called "god B" of American archæologists, the elephant-headed god
+_Tlaloc_ of the Aztecs, _Chac_ of the Mayas, whose more direct parent
+was Indra.
+
+It is of interest to note that, according to Gerini,[165] the word
+_Nâga_ denotes not only a snake but also an elephant. Both the Chinese
+dragon and the Mexican elephant-god are thus linked with the Nâga, who
+is identified both with Indra himself and Indra's enemy Vritra. This is
+another instance of those remarkable contradictions that one meets at
+every step in pursuing the dragon. In the confusion resulting from the
+blending of hostile tribes and diverse cultures the Aryan deity who,
+both for religious and political reasons, is the enemy of the Nâgas
+becomes himself identified with a Nâga!
+
+I have already called attention (_Nature_, Jan. 27, 1916) to the fact
+that the graphic form of representation of the American elephant-headed
+god was derived from Indonesian pictures of the _makara_. In India
+itself the _makara_ (see Fig. 14) is represented in a great variety of
+forms, most of which are prototypes of different kinds of dragons. Hence
+the homology of the elephant-headed god with the other dragons is
+further established and shown to be genetically related to the evolution
+of the protean manifestations of the dragon's form.
+
+The dragon in China is "the heavenly giver of fertilizing rain" (_op.
+cit._, p. 36). In the _Shu King_ "the emblematic figures of the ancients
+are given as the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountain, the _dragon_,
+and the variegated animals (pheasants) which are depicted on the upper
+sacrificial garment of the Emperor" (p. 39). In the _Li Ki_ the unicorn,
+the phoenix, the tortoise, and the dragon are called the four _ling_
+(p. 39), which de Visser translates "spiritual beings," creatures with
+enormously strong vital spirit. The dragon possesses the most _ling_ of
+all creatures (p. 64). The tiger is the deadly enemy of the dragon
+(p. 42).
+
+The dragon sheds a brilliant light at night (p. 44), usually from his
+glittering eyes. He is the giver of omens (p. 45), good and bad, rains
+and floods. The dragon-horse is a vital spirit of Heaven and Earth (p.
+58) and also of river water: it has the tail of a huge serpent.
+
+The ecclesiastical vestments of the Wu-ist priests are endowed with
+magical properties which are considered to enable the wearer to control
+the order of the world, to avert unseasonable and calamitous events,
+such as drought, untimely and superabundant rainfall, and eclipses.
+These powers are conferred by the decoration upon the dress. Upon the
+back of the chief vestment the representation of a range of mountains is
+embroidered as a symbol of the world: on each side (the right and left)
+of it a large dragon arises above the billows to represent the
+fertilizing rain. They are surrounded by gold-thread figures
+representing clouds and spirals typifying rolling thunder.[166]
+
+A ball, sometimes with a spiral decoration, is commonly represented in
+front of the Chinese dragon. The Chinese writer Koh Hung tells us that
+"a spiral denotes the rolling of thunder from which issues a flash of
+lightning".[167] De Visser discusses this question at some length and
+refers to Hirth's claim that the Chinese triquetrum, i.e., the
+well-known three-comma shaped figure, the Japanese _mitsu-tomoe_, the
+ancient spiral, represents thunder also.[168] Before discussing this
+question, which involves the consideration of the almost world-wide
+belief in a thunder-weapon and its relationship to the spiral ornament,
+the octopus, the pearl, the swastika and triskele, let us examine
+further the problem of the dragon's ball (see Fig. 15).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Photograph of a Chinese Embroidery in the
+Manchester School of Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon
+Symbol.]
+
+De Groot regards the dragon as a thunder-god and therefore, like Hirth,
+assumes that the supposed thunder-ball is being _belched forth_ and not
+being _swallowed_ by the dragon. But de Visser, as the result of a
+conversation with Mr. Kramp and the study of a Chinese picture in
+Blacker's "Chats on Oriental China" (1908, p. 54), puts forward the
+suggestion that the ball is the moon or the pearl-moon which the dragon
+is swallowing, thereby causing the fertilizing rain. The Chinese
+themselves refer to the ball as the "precious pearl," which, under the
+influence of Buddhism in China, was identified with "the pearl that
+grants all desires" and is under the special protection of the Nâga,
+i.e., the dragon. Arising out of this de Visser puts the conundrum: "Was
+the ball originally also a pearl, not of Buddhism but of Taoism?"
+
+In reply to this question I may call attention to the fact that the
+germs of civilization were first planted in China by people strongly
+imbued with the belief that the pearl was the quintessence of
+life-giving and prosperity-conferring powers:[169] it was not only
+identified with the moon, but also was itself a particle of
+moon-substance which fell as dew into the gaping oyster. It was the very
+people who held such views about pearls and gold who, when searching for
+alluvial gold and fresh-water pearls in Turkestan, were responsible for
+transferring these same life-giving properties to jade; and the magical
+value thus attached to jade was the nucleus, so to speak, around which
+the earliest civilization of China was crystallized.
+
+As we shall see, in the discussion of the thunder-weapon (p. 121), the
+luminous pearl, which was believed to have fallen from the sky, was
+homologized with the thunderbolt, with the functions of which its own
+magical properties were assimilated.
+
+Kramp called de Visser's attention to the fact that the Chinese
+hieroglyphic character for the dragon's ball is compounded of the signs
+for _jewel_ and _moon_, which is also given in a Japanese lexicon as
+_divine pearl_, the pearl of the bright moon.
+
+"When the clouds approached and covered the moon, the ancient Chinese
+may have thought that the dragons had seized and swallowed this pearl,
+more brilliant than all the pearls of the sea" (de Visser, p. 108).
+
+The difficulty de Visser finds in regarding his own theory as wholly
+satisfactory is, first, the red colour of the ball, and secondly, the
+spiral pattern upon it. He explains the colour as possibly an attempt to
+represent the pearl's lustre. But de Visser seems to have overlooked the
+fact that red and rose-coloured pearls obtained from the conch-shell
+were used in China and Japan.[170]
+
+"The spiral is much used in delineating the sacred pearls of Buddhism,
+so that it might have served also to design those of Taoism; although I
+must acknowledge that the spiral of the Buddhist pearl goes upward,
+while the spiral of the dragon is flat" (p. 103).
+
+De Visser sums up the whole argument in these words:--
+
+"These are, however, all mere suppositions. The only facts we know are:
+the eager attitude of the dragons, ready to grasp and swallow the ball;
+the ideas of the Chinese themselves as to the ball being the moon or a
+pearl; the existence of a kind of sacred "moon-pearl"; the red colour of
+the ball, its emitting flames and its spiral-like form. As the three
+last facts are in favour of the thunder theory, I should be inclined to
+prefer the latter. Yet I am convinced that the dragons do not _belch
+out_ the thunder. If their trying to _grasp_ or _swallow_ the thunder
+could be explained, I should immediately accept the theory concerning
+the thunder-spiral, especially on account of the flames it emits. But I
+do not see the reason why the god of thunder should persecute thunder
+itself. Therefore, after having given the above facts that the reader
+may take them into consideration, I feel obliged to say: 'non liquet'"
+(p. 108).
+
+It does not seem to have occurred to the distinguished Dutch scholar,
+who has so lucidly put the issue before us, that his demonstration of
+the fact of the ball being the pearl-moon about to be swallowed by the
+dragon does not preclude it being also confused with the thunder.
+Elsewhere in this volume I have referred to the origin of the spiral
+symbolism and have shown that it became associated with the pearl
+_before_ it became the symbol of thunder. The pearl-association in fact
+was one of the links in the chain of events which made the pearl and
+the spirally-coiled arm of the octopus the sign of thunder.[171]
+
+It seems quite clear to me that de Visser's pearl-moon theory is the
+true interpretation. But when the pearl-ball was provided with the
+spiral, painted red, and given flames to represent its power of emitting
+light and shining by night, the fact of the spiral ornamentation and of
+the pearl being one of the surrogates of the thunder-weapon was
+rationalized into an identification of the ball with thunder and the
+light it was emitting as lightning. It is, of course, quite irrational
+for a thunder-god to swallow his own thunder: but popular
+interpretations of subtle symbolism, the true explanation of which is
+deeply buried in the history of the distant past, are rarely logical and
+almost invariably irrelevant.
+
+In his account of the state of Brahmanism in India after the times of
+the two earlier Vedas, Professor Hopkins[172] throws light upon the real
+significance of the ball in the dragon-symbolism. "Old legends are
+varied. The victory over Vritra is now expounded thus: Indra, who slays
+Vritra, is the sun. Vritra is the moon, who swims into the sun's mouth
+on the night of the new moon. The sun rises after swallowing him, and
+the moon is invisible because he is swallowed. The sun vomits out the
+moon, and the latter is then seen in the west, and increases again, to
+serve the sun as food. In another passage it is said that when the moon
+is invisible he is hiding in plants and waters."
+
+This seems to clear away any doubt as to the significance of the ball.
+It is the pearl-moon, which is both swallowed and vomited by the dragon.
+
+The snake takes a more obtrusive part in the Japanese than in the
+Chinese dragon and it frequently manifests itself as a god of the sea.
+The old Japanese sea-gods were often female water-snakes. The cultural
+influences which reached Japan from the south by way of Indonesia--many
+centuries before the coming of Buddhism--naturally emphasized the
+serpent form of the dragon and its connexion with the ocean.
+
+But the river-gods, or "water-fathers," were real four-footed dragons
+identified with the dragon-kings of Chinese myth, but at the same time
+were strictly homologous with the Nâga Rajas or cobra-kings of India.
+
+The Japanese "Sea Lord" or "Sea Snake" was also called
+"Abundant-Pearl-Prince," who had a magnificent palace at the bottom of
+the sea. His daughter ("Abundant-Pearl-Princess") married a youth whom
+she observed, reflected in the well, sitting on a cassia tree near the
+castle gate. Ashamed at his presence at her lying-in she was changed
+into a _wani_ or crocodile (de Visser, p. 139), elsewhere described as a
+dragon (_makara_). De Visser gives it as his opinion that the _wani_ is
+"an old Japanese dragon, or serpent-shaped sea-god, and the legend is an
+ancient Japanese tale, dressed in an Indian garb by later generations"
+(p. 140). He is arguing that the Japanese dragon existed long before
+Japan came under Indian influence. But he ignores the fact that at a
+very early date both India and China were diversely influenced by
+Babylonia, the great breeding place of dragons; and, secondly, that
+Japan was influenced by Indonesia, and through it by the West, for many
+centuries before the arrival of such later Indian legends as those
+relating to the palace under the sea, the castle gate and the cassia
+tree. As Aston (quoted by de Visser) remarks, all these incidents and
+also the well that serves as a mirror, "form a combination not unknown
+to European folk-lore".
+
+After de Visser had given his own views, he modified them (on p. 141)
+when he learned that essentially the same dragon-stories had been
+recorded in the Kei Islands and Minahassa (Celebes). In the light of
+this new information he frankly admits that "the resemblance of several
+features of this myth with the Japanese one is so striking, that we may
+be sure that the latter is of Indonesian origin." He goes further when
+he recognizes that "probably the foreign invaders, who in prehistoric
+times conquered Japan, came from Indonesia, and brought the myth with
+them" (p. 141). The evidence recently brought together by W. J. Perry in
+his book "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia" makes it certain that the
+people of Indonesia in turn got it from the West.
+
+An old painting reproduced by F. W. K. Müller,[173] who called de
+Visser's attention to these interesting stories, shows Hohodemi (the
+youth on the cassia tree who married the princess) returning home
+mounted on the back of a crocodile, like the Indian Varuna upon the
+_makara_ in a drawing reproduced by the late Sir George Birdwood.[174]
+
+The _wani_ or crocodile thus introduced from India, _via_ Indonesia, is
+really the Chinese and Japanese dragon, as Aston has claimed. Aston
+refers to Japanese pictures in which the Abundant-Pearl-Prince and his
+daughter are represented with dragon's heads appearing over their human
+ones, but in the old Indonesian version they maintain their forms as
+_wani_ or crocodiles.
+
+The dragon's head appearing over a human one is quite an Indian motive,
+transferred to China and from there to Korea and Japan (de Visser, p.
+142), and, I may add, also to America.
+
+[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been printed, the Curator of the
+Liverpool Museum has kindly called my attention to a remarkable series
+of Maya remains in the collection under his care, which were obtained in
+the course of excavations made by Mr. T. W. F. Gann, M.R.C.S., an
+officer in the Medical Service of British Honduras (see his account of
+the excavations in Part II. of the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of
+Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution of Washington). Among them is a
+pottery figure of a _wani_ or _makara_ in the form of an alligator,
+equipped with diminutive deer's horns (like the dragon of Eastern Asia);
+and its skin is studded with circular elevations, presumably meant to
+represent the spots upon the star-spangled "Celestial Stag" of the
+Aryans (p. 130). As in the Japanese pictures mentioned by Aston, a human
+head is seen emerging from the creature's throat. It affords a most
+definite and convincing demonstration of the sources of American
+culture.]
+
+The jewels of flood and ebb in the Japanese legends consist of the
+pearls of flood and ebb obtained from the dragon's palace at the bottom
+of the sea. By their aid storms and floods could be created to destroy
+enemies or calm to secure safety for friends. Such stories are the
+logical result of the identification of pearls with the moon, the
+influence of which upon the tides was probably one of the circumstances
+which was responsible for bringing the moon into the circle of the great
+scientific theory of the life-giving powers of water. This in turn
+played a great, if not decisive, part in originating the earliest belief
+in a sky world, or heaven.
+
+
+[137: "Precolumbian Representations of the Elephant in America,"
+_Nature_, Nov. 25, 1915, p. 340; Dec. 16, 1915, p. 425; and Jan. 27,
+1916, p. 593.]
+
+[138: "History of Melanesian Society," Cambridge, 1914.]
+
+[139: H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archéologie Américaine," 1912, p. 319.]
+
+[140: "Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts," _Papers of
+the Peabody Museum_, vol. iv., 1904.]
+
+[141: _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Bd. 40, 1908, p. 716.]
+
+[142: "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Handschriften,"
+_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Bd. 42, 1910, pp. 75 and 77. In the
+remarkable series of drawings from Maya and Aztec sources reproduced by
+Seler in his articles in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, the _Peabody
+Museum Papers_, and his monograph on the _Codex Vaticanus_, not only is
+practically every episode of the dragon-myth of the Old World
+graphically depicted, but also every phase and incident of the legends
+from India (and Babylonia, Egypt and the Ægean) that contributed to the
+building-up of the myth.]
+
+[143: Compare Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 94.]
+
+[144: Herbert J. Spinden, "Maya Art," p. 62.]
+
+[145: Seler, "Codex Vaticanus," Figs. 299-304.]
+
+[146: See, for example, F. W. K. Müller, "Nang," _Int. Arch. f.
+Ethnolog._, 1894, Suppl. zu Bd. vii., Taf. vii., where the mask of
+_Ravana_ (a late surrogate of Indra in the _Ramayana_) reveals a
+survival of the prototype of the Mexican designs.]
+
+[147: Joyce, _op. cit._, p. 37.]
+
+[148: For the incident of the stealing of the soma by Garuda, who in
+this legend is the representative of Indra, see Hopkins, "Religions of
+India," pp. 360-61.]
+
+[149: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
+America," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1916, Fig. 4, "The
+Serpent-Bird".]
+
+[150: Probably from about 300 B.C. to 700 A.D.]
+
+[151: For information concerning Ea's "Goat-Fish," which can truly be
+called the "Father of Dragons," as well as the prototype of the Indian
+_makara_, the mermaid, the "sea-serpent," the "dolphin of Aphrodite,"
+and of most composite sea-monsters, see W. H. Ward's "Seal Cylinders of
+Western Asia," pp. 382 _et seq._ and 399 _et seq._; and especially the
+detailed reports in de Morgan's _Mémoires_ (Délégation en Perse).]
+
+[152: _Nature, op. cit., supra_.]
+
+[153: Juan Martinez Hernández, "La Creación del Mundo segun los Mayas,"
+Páginas Inéditas del MS. De Chumayel, _International Congress of
+Americanists, Proceedings of the XVIII. Session_, London, 1912, p. 164.]
+
+[154: From the folk-lore of America I have collected many interesting
+variants of the Indra story and other legends (and artistic designs) of
+the elephant. I hope to publish these in the near future.]
+
+[155: _Peabody Museum Papers_, 1901.]
+
+[156: See, for example, Wilfrid Jackson's "Shells as Evidence of the
+Migration of Early Culture," pp. 50-66.]
+
+[157: "Notes on the Maoris, etc.," _Journal of the Ethnological
+Society_, vol. i., 1869, p. 368.]
+
+[158: _Op. cit._, p. 231.]
+
+[159: I quote this and the following paragraphs verbatim from Garrick
+Mallery, "Picture Writing of the American Indians," _10th Annual Report,
+1888-89, Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institute)_. p. 78.]
+
+[160: _Op. cit._, pp. 35 _et seq._]
+
+[161: See de Visser, p. 41.]
+
+[162: There can be no doubt that the Chinese dragon is the descendant of
+the early Babylonian monster, and that the inspiration to create it
+probably reached Shensi during the third millennium B.C. by the route
+indicated in my "Incense and Libations" (_Bull. John Rylands Library_,
+vol. iv., No. 2, p. 239). Some centuries later the Indian dragon reached
+the Far East via Indonesia and mingled with his Babylonian cousin in
+Japan and China.]
+
+[163: "Religious System of China," vol. iii., chap, xii., pp. 936-1056.]
+
+[164: This paragraph is taken almost verbatim from de Visser, _op. cit._
+pp. 59 and 60.]
+
+[165: G. E. Gerini, "Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia,"
+_Asiatic Society's Monographs_, No. 1, 1909, p. 146.]
+
+[166: De Visser, p. 102, and de Groot, vi., p. 1265, Plate XVIII. The
+reference to "a range of mountains ... as a symbol of the world" recalls
+the Egyptian representation of the eastern horizon as two hills between
+which Hathor or her son arises (see Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol.
+ii., p. 101; and compare Griffith's "Hieroglyphs," p. 30): the same
+conception was adopted in Mesopotamia (see Ward, "Seal Cylinders of
+Western Asia," fig. 412, p. 156) and in the Mediterranean (see Evans,
+"Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 37 _et seq._). It is a remarkable
+fact that Sir Arthur Evans, who, upon p. 64 of his memoir, reproduces
+two drawings of the Egyptian "horizon" supporting the sun's disk, should
+have failed to recognize in it the prototype of what he calls "the horns
+of consecration". Even if the confusion of the "horizon" with a cow's
+horns was very ancient (for the horns of the Divine Cow supporting the
+moon made this inevitable), this rationalization should not blind us as
+to the real origin of the idea, which is preserved in the ancient
+Egyptian, Babylonian, Cretan and Chinese pictures (see Fig. 26, facing
+p. 188).]
+
+[167: De Visser, p. 103.]
+
+[168: P. 104. The Chinese triquetrum has a circle in the centre and five
+or eight commas.]
+
+[169: See on this my paper "The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization,"
+now being published in the _Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester
+Literary and Philosophical Society_.]
+
+[170: Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early
+Culture," p. 106.]
+
+[171: I shall discuss this more fully in "The Birth of Aphrodite".]
+
+[172: "Religions of India," p. 197.]
+
+[173: "Mythe der Kei-Insulaner und Verwandtes," _Zeitsch. f.
+Ethnologie_, vol. xxv., 1893, pp. 533 _et seq._]
+
+[174: See Fig. 14.]
+
+
+The Evolution of the Dragon.
+
+The American and Indonesian dragons can be referred back primarily to
+India, the Chinese and Japanese varieties to India and Babylonia. The
+dragons of Europe can be traced through Greek channels to the same
+ultimate source. But the cruder dragons of Africa are derived either
+from Egypt, from the Ægean, or from India. All dragons that strictly
+conform to the conventional idea of what such a wonder-beast should be
+can be shown to be sprung from the fertile imagination of ancient Sumer,
+the "great breeding place of monsters" (Minns).
+
+But the history of the dragon's evolution and transmission to other
+countries is full of complexities; and the dragon-myth is made up of
+many episodes, some of which were not derived from Babylonia.
+
+In Egypt we do not find the characteristic dragon and dragon-story. Yet
+all of the ingredients out of which both the monster and the legends are
+compounded have been preserved in Egypt, and in perhaps a more primitive
+and less altered form than elsewhere. Hence, if Egypt does not provide
+dragons for us to dissect, it does supply us with the evidence without
+which the dragon's evolution would be quite unintelligible.
+
+Egyptian literature affords a clearer insight into the development of
+the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun God than we can
+obtain from any other writings of the origin of this fundamental stratum
+of deities. And in the three legends: The Destruction of Mankind, The
+Story of the Winged Disk, and The Conflict between Horus and Set, it has
+preserved the germs of the great Dragon Saga. Babylonian literature has
+shown us how this raw material was worked up into the definite and
+familiar story, as well as how the features of a variety of animals were
+blended to form the composite monster. India and Greece, as well as more
+distant parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia, and even America have
+preserved many details that have been lost in the real home of the
+monster.
+
+In the earliest literature that has come down to us from antiquity a
+clear account is given of the original attributes of Osiris. "Horus
+comes, he recognizes his father in thee [Osiris], youthful in thy name
+of 'Fresh Water'." "Thou art indeed the Nile, great on the fields at the
+beginning of the seasons; gods and men live by the moisture that is in
+thee." He is also identified with the inundation of the river. "It is
+Unis [the dead king identified with Osiris] who inundates the land." He
+also brings the wind and guides it. It is the breath of life which
+raises the king from the dead as an Osiris. The wine-press god comes to
+Osiris bearing wine-juice and the great god becomes "Lord of the
+overflowing wine": he is also identified with barley and with the beer
+made from it. Certain trees also are personifications of the god.
+
+But Osiris was regarded not only as the waters upon earth, the rivers
+and streams, the moisture in the soil and in the bodies of animals and
+plants, but also as "the waters of life that are in the sky".
+
+"As Osiris was identified with the waters of earth and sky, he may even
+become the sea and the ocean itself. We find him addressed thus: 'Thou
+art great, thou art green, in thy name of Great Green (Sea); lo, thou
+art round as the Great Circle (Okeanos); lo, thou art turned about, thou
+art round as the circle that encircles the Haunebu (Ægeans)."
+
+This series of interesting extracts from Professor Breasted's "Religion
+and Thought in Ancient Egypt" (pp. 18-26) gives the earliest Egyptians'
+own ideas of the attributes of Osiris. The Babylonians regarded Ea in
+almost precisely the same light and endowed him with identical powers.
+But there is an important and significant difference between Osiris and
+Ea. The former was usually represented as a man, that is, as a dead
+king, whereas Ea was represented as a man wearing a fish-skin, as a
+fish, or as the composite monster with a fish's body and tail, which was
+the prototype of the Indian _makara_ and "the father of dragons".
+
+In attempting to understand the creation of the dragon it is important
+to remember that, although Osiris and Ea were regarded primarily as
+personifications of the beneficent life-giving powers of water, as the
+bringers of fertility to the soil and the givers of life and immortality
+to living creatures, they were also identified with the destructive
+forces of water, by which men were drowned or their welfare affected in
+various ways by storms of sea and wind.
+
+Thus Osiris or the fish-god Ea could destroy mankind. In other words the
+fish-dragon, or the composite monster formed of a fish and an antelope,
+could represent the destructive forces of wind and water. Thus even the
+malignant dragon can be the homologue of the usually beneficent gods
+Osiris and Ea, and their Aryan surrogates Mazdah and Varuna.
+
+By a somewhat analogous process of archaic rationalization the sons
+respectively of Osiris and Ea, the sun-gods Horus and Marduk, acquired a
+similarly confused reputation. Although their outstanding achievements
+were the overcoming of the powers of evil, and, as the givers of light,
+conquering darkness, their character as warriors made them also powers
+of destruction. The falcon of Horus thus became also a symbol of chaos,
+and as the thunder-bird became the most obtrusive feature in the weird
+anatomy of the composite Mesopotamian dragon and his more modern
+bird-footed brood, which ranges from Western Europe to the Far East of
+Asia and America.
+
+That the sun-god derived his functions directly or indirectly from
+Osiris and Hathor is shown by his most primitive attributes, for in "the
+earliest sun-temples at Abusir, he appears as the source of life and
+increase". "Men said of him: 'Thou hast driven away the storm, and hast
+expelled the rain, and hast broken up the clouds'." Horus was in fact
+the son of Osiris and Hathor, from whom he derived his attributes. The
+invention of the sun-god was not, as most scholars pretend, an attempt
+to give direct expression to the fact that the sun is the source of
+fertility. That is a discovery of modern science. The sun-god acquired
+his attributes secondarily (and for definite historical reasons) from
+his parents, who were responsible for his birth.
+
+The quotation from the Pyramid Texts is of special interest as an
+illustration of one of the results of the assimilation of the idea of
+Osiris as the controller of water with that of a sky-heaven and a
+sun-god. The sun-god's powers are rationalized so as to bring them
+into conformity with the earliest conception of a god as a power
+controlling water.
+
+Breasted attempts to interpret the statements concerning the storm and
+rain-clouds as references to the enemies of the sun, who steal the
+sky-god's eye, i.e., obscure the sun or moon.[175] The incident of
+Horus's loss of an eye, which looms so large in Egyptian legends, is
+possibly more closely related to the earliest attempts at explaining
+eclipses of the sun and moon, the "eyes" of the sky. The obscuring of
+the sun and moon by clouds is a matter of little significance to the
+Egyptian: but the modern Egyptian _fellah_, and no doubt his
+predecessors also, regard eclipses with much concern. Such events
+excite great alarm, for the peasants consider them as actual combats
+between the powers of good and evil.
+
+In other countries where rain is a blessing and not, as in Egypt, merely
+an unwelcome inconvenience, the clouds play a much more prominent part
+in the popular beliefs. In the Rig-Veda the power that holds up the
+clouds is evil: as an elaboration of the ancient Egyptian conception of
+the sky as a Divine Cow, the Great Mother, the Aryan Indians regarded
+the clouds as a herd of cattle which the Vedic warrior-god Indra (who in
+this respect is the homologue of the Egyptian warrior Horus) stole from
+the powers of evil and bestowed upon mankind. In other words, like
+Horus, he broke up the clouds and brought rain.
+
+The antithesis between the two aspects of the character of these ancient
+deities is most pronounced in the case of the other member of this most
+primitive Trinity, the Great Mother. She was the great beneficent giver
+of life, but also the controller of life, which implies that she was the
+death-dealer. But this evil aspect of her character developed only under
+the stress of a peculiar dilemma in which she was placed. On a famous
+occasion in the very remote past the great Giver of Life was summoned to
+rejuvenate the ageing king. The only elixir of life that was known to
+the pharmacopœia of the times was human blood: but to obtain this
+life-blood the Giver of Life was compelled to slaughter mankind. She
+thus became the destroyer of mankind in her lioness _avatar_ as Sekhet.
+
+The earliest known pictorial representation of the dragon (Fig. 1)
+consists of the forepart of the sun-god's falcon or eagle united with
+the hindpart of the mother-goddess's lioness. The student of modern
+heraldry would not regard this as a dragon at all, but merely a gryphon
+or griffin. A recent writer on heraldry has complained that, "in spite
+of frequent corrections, this creature is persistently confused in the
+popular mind with the _dragon_, which is even more purely
+imaginary."[176] But the investigator of the early history of these
+wonder-beasts is compelled, even at the risk of incurring the herald's
+censure, to regard the gryphon as one of the earliest known tentative
+efforts at dragon-making. But though the fish, the falcon or eagle, and
+the composite eagle-lion monster are early known pictorial
+representations of the dragon, good or bad, the serpent is probably more
+ancient still (Fig. 2).
+
+The earliest form assumed by the power of evil was the serpent: but it
+is important to remember that, as each of the primary deities can be a
+power of either good or evil, any of the animals representing them can
+symbolize either aspect. Though Hathor in her cow manifestation is
+usually benevolent and as a lioness a power of destruction, the cow may
+become a demon in certain cases and the lioness a kindly creature. The
+falcon of Horus (or its representatives, eagle, hawk, woodpecker, dove,
+redbreast, etc) may be either good or bad: so also the gazelle (antelope
+or deer), the crocodile, the fish, or any of the menagerie of creatures
+that enter into the composition of good or bad demons.
+
+"The Nâgas are semi-divine serpents which very often assume human shapes
+and whose kings live with their retinues in the utmost luxury in their
+magnificent abodes at the bottom of the sea or in rivers or lakes. When
+leaving the Nâga world they are in constant danger of being grasped and
+killed by the gigantic semi-divine birds, the Garudas, which also change
+themselves into men" (de Visser, p. 7).
+
+"The Nâgas are depicted in three forms: common snakes, guarding jewels;
+human beings with four snakes in their necks; and winged sea-dragons,
+the upper part of the body human, but with a horned, ox-like head, the
+lower part of the body that of a coiling-dragon. Here we find a link
+between the snake of ancient India and the four-legged Chinese dragon"
+(p. 6), hidden in the clouds, which the dragon himself emitted, like a
+modern battleship, for the purpose of rendering himself invisible. In
+other words, the rain clouds were the dragon's breath. The fertilizing
+rain was thus in fact the vital essence of the dragon, being both water
+and the breath of life.
+
+"We find the Nâga king not only in the possession of numberless jewels
+and beautiful girls, but also of mighty charms, bestowing supernatural
+vision and hearing. The palaces of the Nâga kings are always described
+as extremely splendid, abounding with gold and silver and precious
+stones, and the Nâga women, when appearing in human shape, were
+beautiful beyond description" (p. 9).
+
+De Visser records the story of an evil Nâga protecting a big tree that
+grew in a pond, who failed to emit clouds and thunder when the tree was
+cut down, because he was neither despised nor wounded: for his body
+became the support of the stūpa and the tree became a beam of the
+stūpa (p. 16). This aspect of the Nâga as a tree-demon is rare in
+India, but common in China and Japan. It seems to be identical with the
+Mediterranean conception of the pillar of wood or stone, which is both a
+representative of the Great Mother and the chief support of a
+temple.[177]
+
+In the magnificent city that king Yaçaḥketu saw, when he dived into
+the sea, "wishing trees that granted every desire" were among the
+objects that met his vision. There were also palaces of precious stones
+and gardens and tanks, and, of course, beautiful maidens (de Visser, p.
+20).
+
+In the Far Eastern stories it is interesting to note the antagonism of
+the dragon to the tiger, when we recall that the lioness-form of Hathor
+was the prototype of the earliest malevolent dragon.
+
+There are five sorts of dragons: serpent-dragons; lizard-dragons;
+fish-dragons; elephant-dragons; and toad-dragons (de Visser, p. 23).
+
+"According to de Groot, the blue colour is chosen in China because this
+is the colour of the East, from where the rain must come; this quarter
+is represented by the Azure Dragon, the highest in rank among all the
+dragons. We have seen, however, that the original sūtra already
+prescribed to use the blue colour and to face the East.... Indra, the
+rain-god, is the patron of the East, and Indra-colour is _nila_, dark
+blue or rather blue-black, the regular epithet of the rain clouds. If
+the priest had not to face the East but the West, this would agree with
+the fact that the Nâgas were said to live in the western quarter and
+that in India the West corresponds with the blue colour. Facing the
+East, however, seems to point to an old rain ceremony in which Indra was
+invoked to raise the blue-black clouds" (de Visser, pp. 30 and 31).
+
+
+[175: Breasted, _op. cit._, p. 11.]
+
+[176: G. W. Eve, "Decorative Heraldry," 1897, p. 35.]
+
+[177: Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 88 _et
+seq._]
+
+
+The Dragon Myth.
+
+The most important and fundamental legend in the whole history of
+mythology is the story of the "Destruction of Mankind". "It was
+discovered, translated, and commented upon by Naville ("La Destruction
+des hommes par les Dieux," in the _Transactions of the Society of
+Biblical Archæology_, vol. iv., pp. 1-19, reproducing Hay's copies made
+at the beginning of [the nineteenth] century; and "L'Inscription de la
+Destruction des hommes dans le tombeau de Ramsés III," in the
+_Transactions_, vol. viii., pp. 412-20); afterwards published anew by
+Herr von Bergmann (_Hieroglyphische Inscriften_, pls. lxxv.-lxxxii., and
+pp. 55, 56); completely translated by Brugsch (_Die neue Weltordnung
+nach Vernichtung des sündigen Menschengeschlechts nach einer
+Altägyptischen Ueberlieferung_, 1881); and partly translated by Lauth
+(_Aus Ægyptens Vorzeit_, pp. 70-81) and by Lefèbure ("Une chapitre de la
+chronique solaire," in the _Zeitschrift für Ægyptische Sprache_, 1883,
+pp 32, 33)".[178]
+
+Important commentaries upon this story have been published also by
+Brugsch and Gauthier.[179]
+
+As the really important features of the story consist of the incoherent
+and contradictory details, and it would take up too much space to
+reproduce the whole legend here, I must refer the reader to Maspero's
+account of it (_op. cit._), or to the versions given by Erman in his
+"Life in Ancient Egypt" (p. 267, from which I quote) or Budge in "The
+Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 388.
+
+Although the story as we know it was not written down until the time of
+Seti I (_circa_ 1300 B.C.), it is very old and had been circulating as a
+popular legend for more than twenty centuries before that time. The
+narrative itself tells its own story because it is composed of many
+contradictory interpretations of the same incidents flung together in a
+highly confused and incoherent form.
+
+The other legends to which I shall have constantly to refer are "The
+Saga of the Winged Disk," "The Feud between Horus and Set," "The
+Stealing of Re's Name by Isis," and a series of later variants and
+confusions of these stories.[180]
+
+The Egyptian legends cannot be fully appreciated unless they are in
+conjunction with those of Babylonia and Assyria,[181] the mythology of
+Greece,[182] Persia,[183] India,[184] China,[185] Indonesia,[186] and
+America.[187]
+
+For it will be found that essentially the same stream of legends was
+flowing in all these countries, and that the scribes and painters have
+caught and preserved certain definite phases of this verbal currency.
+The legends which have thus been preserved are not to be regarded as
+having been directly derived the one from the other but as collateral
+phases of a variety of waves of story spreading out from one centre.
+Thus the comparison of the whole range of homologous legends is
+peculiarly instructive and useful; because the gaps in the Egyptian
+series, for example, can be filled in by necessary phases which are
+missing in Egypt itself, but are preserved in Babylonia or Greece,
+Persia or India, China or Britain, or even Oceania and America.
+
+The incidents in the Destruction of Mankind may be briefly summarized:
+
+As Re grows old "the men who were begotten of his eye"[188] show signs
+of rebellion. Re calls a council of the gods and they advise him to
+"shoot forth his Eye[189] that it may slay the evil conspirators.... Let
+the goddess Hathor descend [from heaven] and slay the men on the
+mountains [to which they had fled in fear]." As the goddess complied she
+remarked: "it will be good for me when I subject mankind," and Re
+replied, "I shall subject them and slay them". Hence the goddess
+received the additional name of _Sekhmet_ from the word "to subject".
+The destructive Sekhmet[190] _avatar_ of Hathor is represented as a
+fierce lion-headed goddess of war wading in blood. For the goddess set
+to work slaughtering mankind and the land was flooded with blood[191].
+Re became alarmed and determined to save at least some remnant of
+mankind. For this purpose he sent messengers to Elephantine to obtain a
+substance called _d'd'_ in the Egyptian text, which he gave to the god
+Sektet of Heliopolis to grind up in a mortar. When the slaves had
+crushed barley to make beer the powdered _d'd'_ was mixed with it so as
+to make it red like human blood. Enough of this blood-coloured beer was
+made to fill 7000 jars. At nighttime this was poured out upon the
+fields, so that when the goddess came to resume her task of destruction
+in the morning she found the fields inundated and her face was mirrored
+in the fluid. She drank of the fluid and became intoxicated so that she
+no longer recognized mankind.[192]
+
+Thus Re saved a remnant of mankind from the bloodthirsty, terrible
+Hathor. But the god was weary of life on earth and withdrew to heaven
+upon the back of the Divine Cow.
+
+There can be no doubt as to the meaning of this legend, highly confused
+as it is. The king who was responsible for introducing irrigation came
+to be himself identified with the life-giving power of water. He was the
+river: his own vitality was the source of all fertility and prosperity.
+Hence when he showed signs that his vital powers were failing it became
+a logical necessity that he should be killed to safeguard the welfare of
+his country and people.[193]
+
+The time came when a king, rich in power and the enjoyment of life,
+refused to comply with this custom. When he realized that his virility
+was failing he consulted the Great Mother, as the source and giver of
+life, to obtain an elixir which would rejuvenate him and obviate the
+necessity of being killed. The only medicine in the pharmacopœia of
+those times that was believed to be useful in minimizing danger to life
+was human blood. Wounds that gave rise to severe hæmorrhage were known
+to produce unconsciousness and death. If the escape of the blood of
+life could produce these results it was not altogether illogical to
+assume that the exhibition of human blood could also add to the vitality
+of living men and so "turn back the years from their old age," as the
+Pyramid Texts express it.
+
+Thus the Great Mother, the giver of life to all mankind, was faced with
+the dilemma that, to provide the king with the elixir to restore his
+youth, she had to slay mankind, to take the life she herself had given
+to her own children. Thus she acquired an evil reputation which was to
+stick to her throughout her career. She was not only the beneficent
+creator of all things and the bestower of all blessings: but she was
+also a demon of destruction who did not hesitate to slaughter even her
+own children.
+
+In course of time the practice of human sacrifice was abandoned and
+substitutes were adopted in place of the blood of mankind. Either the
+blood of cattle,[194] who by means of appropriate ceremonies could be
+transformed into human beings (for the Great Mother herself was the
+Divine Cow and her offspring cattle), was employed in its stead; or red
+ochre was used to colour a liquid which was used ritually to replace the
+blood of sacrifice. When this phase of culture was reached the goddess
+provided for the king an elixir of life consisting of beer stained red
+by means of red ochre, so as to simulate human blood.
+
+But such a mixture was doubly potent, for the barley from which the beer
+was made and the drink itself was supposed to be imbued with the
+life-giving powers of Osiris, and the blood-colour reinforced its
+therapeutic usefulness. The legend now begins to become involved and
+confused. For the goddess is making the rejuvenator for the king, who in
+the meantime has died and become deified as Osiris; and the beer, which
+is the vehicle of the life-giving powers of Osiris, is now being used to
+rejuvenate his son and successor, the living king Horus, who in the
+version that has come down to us is replaced by the sun-god Re.
+
+It is Re who is king and is growing old: he asks Hathor, the Great
+Mother, to provide him with the elixir of life. But comparison with some
+of the legends of other countries suggests that Re has usurped the place
+previously occupied by Horus and originally by Osiris, who as the real
+personification of the life-giving power of water is obviously the
+appropriate person to be slain when his virility begins to fail. Dr.
+C. G. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker Lerpiu, which I have
+already quoted (p. 113) from Sir James Frazer's "Dying God," suggests
+that the slain king or god was originally Osiris.
+
+The introduction of Re into the story marks the beginning of the belief
+in the sky-world or heaven. Hathor was originally nothing more than an
+amulet to enhance fertility and vitality. Then she was personified as a
+woman and identified with a cow. But when the view developed that the
+moon controlled the powers of life-giving in women and exercised a
+direct influence upon their life-blood, the Great Mother was identified
+with the moon. But how was such a conception to be brought into harmony
+with the view that she was also a cow? The human mind displays an
+irresistible tendency to unify its experience and to bridge the gaps
+that necessarily exist in its broken series of scraps of knowledge and
+ideas. No break is too great to be bridged by this instinctive impulse
+to rationalize the products of diverse experience. Hence, early man,
+having identified the Great Mother both with a cow and the moon, had no
+compunction in making "the cow jump over the moon" to become the sky.
+The moon then became the "Eye" of the sky and the sun necessarily became
+its other "Eye". But, as the sun was clearly the more important "Eye,"
+seeing that it determined the day and gave warmth and light for man's
+daily work, it was the more important deity. Therefore Re, at first the
+Brother-Eye of Hathor, and afterwards her husband, became the supreme
+sky-deity, and Hathor merely one of his Eyes.
+
+When this stage of theological evolution was reached, the story of the
+"Destruction of Mankind" was re-edited, and Hathor was called the "Eye
+of Re". In the earlier versions she was called into consultation solely
+as the giver of life and, to obtain the life-blood, she cut men's
+throats with a knife.
+
+But as the Eye of Re she was identified with the fire-spitting
+uræus-serpent which the king or god wore on his forehead. She was both
+the moon and the fiery bolt which shot down from the sky to slay the
+enemies of Re. For the men who were originally slaughtered to provide
+the blood for an elixir now became the enemies of Re. The reason for
+this was that, human sacrifice having been abandoned and substitutes
+provided to replace the human blood, the story-teller was at a loss to
+know why the goddess killed mankind. A reason had to be found--and the
+rationalization adopted was that men had rebelled against the gods and
+had to be killed. This interpretation was probably the result of a
+confusion with the old legend of the fight between Horus and Set, the
+rulers of the two kingdoms of Egypt. The possibility also suggests
+itself that a pun made by some priestly jester may have been the real
+factor that led to this mingling of two originally separate stories. In
+the "Destruction of Mankind" the story runs, according to Budge,[195]
+that Re, referring to his enemies, said: _m�-ten set u�r er set_,
+"Behold ye them (_set_) fleeing into the mountain (_set_)". The enemies
+were thus identified with the mountain or stone and with Set, the enemy
+of the gods.[196]
+
+In Egyptian hieroglyphics the symbol for stone is used as the
+determinative for Set. When the "Eye of Re" destroyed mankind and the
+rebels were thus identified with the followers of Set, they were
+regarded as creatures of "stone". In other words the Medusa-eye
+petrified the enemies. From this feeble pun on the part of some ancient
+Egyptian scribe has arisen the world-wide stories of the influence of
+the "Evil Eye" and the petrification of the enemies of the gods.[197] As
+the name for Isis in Egyptian is "_Set_" it is possible that the
+confusion of the Power of Evil with the Great Mother may also have been
+facilitated by an extension of the same pun.
+
+It is important to recognize that the legend of Hathor descending from
+the moon or the sky in the form of destroying fire had nothing whatever
+to do, in the first instance, with the phenomena of lightning and
+meteorites. It was the result of verbal quibbling after the destructive
+goddess came to be identified with the moon, the sky and the "Eye of
+Re". But once the evolution of the story on these lines prepared the
+way, it was inevitable that in later times the powers of destruction
+exerted by the fire from the sky should have been identified with the
+lightning and meteorites.
+
+When the destructive force of the heavens was attributed to the "Eye of
+Re" and the god's enemies were identified with the followers of Set, it
+was natural that the traditional enemy of Set who was also the more
+potent other "Eye of Re" should assume his mother's rôle of punishing
+rebellious mankind. That Horus did in fact take the place at first
+occupied by Hathor in the story is revealed by the series of trivial
+episodes from the "Destruction of Mankind" that reappear in the "Saga of
+the Winged Disk". The king of Lower Egypt (Horus) was identified with a
+falcon, as Hathor was with the vulture (Mut): like her, he entered the
+sun-god's boat[198] and sailed up the river with him: he then mounted up
+to heaven as a winged disk, i.e. the sun of Re equipped with his own
+falcon's wings. The destructive force displayed by Hathor as the Eye of
+Re was symbolized by her identification with Tefnut, the fire-spitting
+uræus-snake. When Horus assumed the form of the winged disk he added to
+his insignia two fire-spitting serpents to destroy Re's enemies. The
+winged disk was at once the instrument of destruction and the god
+himself. It swooped (or flew) down from heaven like a bolt of destroying
+fire and killed the enemies of Re. By a confusion with Horus's other
+fight against the followers of Set, the enemies of Re become identified
+with Set's army and they are transformed into crocodiles, hippopotami
+and all the other kinds of creatures whose shapes the enemies of Osiris
+assume.
+
+In the course of the development of these legends a multitude of other
+factors played a part and gave rise to transformations of the meaning of
+the incidents.
+
+The goddess originally slaughtered mankind, or perhaps it would be truer
+to say, made _a_ human sacrifice, to obtain blood to rejuvenate the
+king. But, as we have seen already, when the sacrifice was no longer a
+necessary part of the programme, the incident of the slaughter was not
+dropped out of the story, but a new explanation of it was framed.
+Instead of simply making a human sacrifice, mankind as a whole was
+destroyed for rebelling against the gods, the act of rebellion being
+murmuring about the king's old age and loss of virility. The elixir soon
+became something more than a rejuvenator: it was transformed into the
+food of the gods, the ambrosia that gave them their immortality, and
+distinguished them from mere mortals. Now when the development of the
+story led to the replacement of the single victim by the whole of
+mankind, the blood produced by the wholesale slaughter was so abundant
+that the fields were flooded by the life-giving elixir. By the sacrifice
+of men the soil was renewed and refertilized. When the blood-coloured
+beer was substituted for the actual blood the conception was brought
+into still closer harmony with Egyptian ideas, because the beer was
+animated with the life-giving powers of Osiris. But Osiris was the Nile.
+The blood-coloured fertilizing fluid was then identified with the annual
+inundation of the red-coloured waters of the Nile. Now the Nile waters
+were supposed to come from the First Cataract at Elephantine. Hence by a
+familiar psychological process the previous phase of the legend was
+recast, and by confusion the red ochre (which was used to colour the
+beer red) was said to have come from Elephantine.[199]
+
+Thus we have arrived at the stage where, by a distortion of a series of
+phases, the new incident emerges that by means of a human sacrifice the
+Nile flood can be produced. By a further confusion the goddess, who
+originally did the slaughter, becomes the victim. Hence the story
+assumed the form that by means of the sacrifice of a beautiful and
+attractive maiden the annual inundation can be produced. As the most
+potent symbol of life-giving it is essential that the victim should be
+sexually attractive, i.e. that she should be a virgin and the most
+beautiful and desirable in the land. When the practice of human
+sacrifice was abandoned a figure or an animal was substituted for the
+maiden in ritual practice, and in legends the hero rescued the maiden,
+as Andromeda was saved from the dragon.[200] The dragon is the
+personification of the monsters that dwell in the waters as well as the
+destructive forces of the flood itself. But the monsters were no other
+than the followers of Set; they were the victims of the slaughter who
+became identified with the god's other traditional enemies, the
+followers of Set. Thus the monster from whom Andromeda is rescued is
+merely another representative of herself!
+
+But the destructive forces of the flood now enter into the programme.
+In the phases we have so far discussed it was the slaughter of
+mankind which caused the inundation: but in the next phase it is
+the flood itself which causes the destruction, as in the later Egyptian
+and the borrowed Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew--and in fact the
+world-wide--versions. Re's boat becomes the ark; the winged disk which
+was despatched by Re from the boat becomes the dove and the other birds
+sent out to spy the land, as the winged Horus spied the enemies of Re.
+
+Thus the new weapon of the gods--we have already noted Hathor's knife
+and Horus's winged disk, which is the fire from heaven, the lightning
+and the thunderbolt--is the flood. Like the others it can be either a
+beneficent giver of life or a force of destruction.
+
+But the flood also becomes a weapon of another kind. One of the earlier
+incidents of the story represents Hathor in opposition to Re. The
+goddess becomes so maddened with the zest of killing that the god
+becomes alarmed and asks her to desist and spare some representatives of
+the race. But she is deaf to entreaties. Hence the god is said to have
+sent to Elephantine for the red ochre to make a sedative draught to
+overcome her destructive zeal. We have already seen that this incident
+had an entirely different meaning--it was merely intended to explain the
+obtaining of the colouring matter wherewith to redden the sacred beer so
+as to make it resemble blood as an elixir for the god. It was brought
+from Elephantine, because the red waters of inundation of the Nile were
+supposed by the Egyptians to come from Elephantine.
+
+But according to the story inscribed in Seti Ist's tomb, the red ochre
+was an essential ingredient of the sedative mixture (prepared under the
+direction of Re by the Sekti[201] of Heliopolis) to calm Hathor's
+murderous spirit.
+
+It has been claimed that the story simply means that the goddess became
+intoxicated with beer and that she became genially inoffensive solely as
+the effect of such inebriation. But the incident in the Egyptian story
+closely resembles the legends of other countries in which some herb is
+used specifically as a sedative. In most books on Egyptian mythology the
+word (_d'd'_) for the substance put into the drink to colour it is
+translated "mandragora," from its resemblance to the Hebrew word
+_dudaim_ in the Old Testament, which is often translated "mandrakes" or
+"love-apples". But Gauthier has clearly demonstrated that the Egyptian
+word does not refer to a vegetable but to a mineral substance, which he
+translates "red clay".[202] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me, however, that
+it is "red ochre". In any case, mandrake is not found at Elephantine
+(which, however, for the reasons I have already given, is a point of no
+importance so far as the identification of the substance is concerned),
+nor in fact anywhere in Egypt.
+
+But if some foreign story of the action of a sedative drug had become
+blended with and incorporated in the highly complex and composite
+Egyptian legend the narrative would be more intelligible. The mandrake
+is such a sedative as might have been employed to calm the murderous
+frenzy of a maniacal woman. In fact it is closely allied to hyoscyamus,
+whose active principle, hyoscin, is used in modern medicine precisely
+for such purposes. I venture to suggest that a folk-tale describing the
+effect of opium or some other "drowsy syrup" has been absorbed into the
+legend of the Destruction of Mankind, and has provided the starting
+point of all those incidents in the dragon-story in which poison or
+some sleep-producing drug plays a part. For when Hathor defies Re and
+continues the destruction, she is playing the part of her Babylonian
+representative Tiamat, and is a dragon who has to be vanquished by the
+drink which the god provides.
+
+The red earth which was pounded in the mortar to make the elixir of life
+and the fertilizer of the soil also came to be regarded as the material
+out of which the new race of men was made to replace those who were
+destroyed.
+
+The god fashioned mankind of this earth and, instead of the red ochre
+being merely the material to give the blood-colour to the draught of
+immortality, the story became confused: actual blood was presented to
+the clay images to give them life and consciousness.
+
+In a later elaboration the remains of the former race of mankind were
+ground up to provide the material out of which their successors were
+created. This version is a favourite story in Northern Europe, and has
+obviously been influenced by an intermediate variant which finds
+expression in the Indian legend of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.
+Instead of the material for the elixir of the gods being pounded by the
+Sekti of Heliopolis and incidentally becoming a sedative for Hathor, it
+is the milk of the Divine Cow herself which is churned to provide the
+_amrita_.
+
+
+[178: G. Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 164.]
+
+[179: H. Brugsch, "Die Alraune als altägyptische Zauberpflanze," _Zeit.
+f. Ægypt. Sprache_, Bd. 29, 1891, pp. 31-3; and Henri Gauthier, "Le nom
+hiéroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Éléphantine," _Revue Égyptologique_,
+t. xi^e, Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]
+
+[180: These legends will be found in the works by Maspero, Erman and
+Budge, to which I have already referred. A very useful digest will be
+found in Donald A. Mackenzie's "Egyptian Myth and Legend". Mr. Mackenzie
+does not claim to have any first-hand knowledge of the subject, but his
+exceptionally wide and intimate knowledge of Scottish folk-lore, which
+has preserved a surprisingly large part of the same legends, has enabled
+him to present the Egyptian stories with exceptional clearness and
+sympathetic insight. But I refer to his book specially because he is one
+of the few modern writers who has made the attempt to compare the
+legends of Egypt, Babylonia, Crete, India and Western Europe. Hence the
+reader who is not familiar with the mythology of these countries will
+find his books particularly useful as works of reference in following
+the story I have to unfold: "Teutonic Myth and Legend," "Egyptian Myth
+and Legend," "Indian Myth and Legend," "Myths of Babylonia and Assyria"
+and "Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe".]
+
+[181: See Leonard W. King, "Babylonian Religion," 1899.]
+
+[182: For a useful collection of data see A. B. Cook, "Zeus".]
+
+[183: Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in connexion with
+Similar Babylonian Beliefs," _Journal of the American Oriental Society_,
+vol. xxxvi., 1916, pp. 300-20; and "The Moral Deities of Iran and India
+and their Origins," _The American Journal of Theology_, vol. xxi., No.
+i., January, 1917.]
+
+[184: Hopkins, "Religions of India".]
+
+[185: De Groot, "The Religious System of China".]
+
+[186: Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Manchester, 1918.]
+
+[187: H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archéologie Américaine," Paris, 1912; T. A.
+Joyce, "Mexican Archæology," and especially the memoir by Seler on the
+"Codex Vaticanus" and his articles in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_
+and elsewhere.]
+
+[188: I.e. the offspring of the Great Mother of gods and men, Hathor,
+the "Eye of Re".]
+
+[189: That is, Hathor, who as the moon is the "Eye of Re".]
+
+[190: Elsewhere in these pages I have used the more generally adopted
+spelling "_Sekhet_".]
+
+[191: Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the translation "flooding the
+land" is erroneous and misleading. Comparison of the whole series of
+stories, however, suggests that the amount of blood shed rapidly
+increased in the development of the narrative: at first the blood of a
+single victim; then the blood of mankind; then 7000 jars of a substitute
+for blood; then the red inundation of the Nile.]
+
+[192: This version I have quoted mainly from Erman, _op. cit._, pp.
+267-9, but with certain alterations which I shall mention later. In
+another version of the legend wine replaces the beer and is made out of
+"the blood of those who formerly fought against the gods," _cf._
+Plutarch, De Iside (ed. Parthey) 6.]
+
+[193: It is still the custom in many places, and among them especially
+the regions near the headwaters of the Nile itself, to regard the king
+or rain-maker as the impersonation of the life-giving properties of
+water and the source of all fertility. When his own vitality shows signs
+of failing he is killed, so as not to endanger the fruitfulness of the
+community by allowing one who is weak in life-giving powers to control
+its destinies. Much of the evidence relating to these matters has been
+collected by Sir James Frazer in "The Dying God," 1911, who quotes from
+Dr. Seligman the following account of the Dinka "Osiris":
+
+"While the mighty spirit Lerpiu is supposed to be embodied in the
+rain-maker, it is also thought to inhabit a certain hut which serves as
+a shrine. In front of the hut stands a post to which are fastened the
+horns of many bullocks that have been sacrificed to Lerpiu; and in the
+hut is kept a very sacred spear which bears the name of Lerpiu and is
+said to have fallen from heaven six generations ago. As fallen stars are
+also called Lerpiu, we may suspect that an intimate connexion is
+supposed to exist between meteorites and the spirit which animates the
+rain-maker" (Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 32). Here then we have a house of
+the dead inhabited by Lerpiu, who can also enter the body of the
+rain-maker and animate him, as well as the ancient spear and the falling
+stars, which are also animate forms of the same god, who obviously is
+the homologue of Osiris, and is identified with the spear and the
+falling stars.
+
+In spring when the April moon is a few days old bullocks are sacrificed
+to Lerpiu. "Two bullocks are led twice round the shrine and afterwards
+tied by the rain-maker to the post in front of it. Then the drums beat
+and the people, old and young, men and women, dance round the shrine and
+sing, while the beasts are being sacrificed, 'Lerpiu, our ancestor, we
+have brought you a sacrifice. Be pleased to cause rain to fall.' The
+blood of the bullocks is collected in a gourd, boiled in a pot on the
+fire, and eaten by the old and important people of the clan. The horns
+of the animals are attached to the post in front of the shrine" (pp. 32
+and 33).]
+
+[194: In Northern Nigeria an official who bore the title of Killer of
+the Elephant throttled the king "as soon as he showed signs of failing
+health or growing infirmity". The king-elect was afterwards conducted to
+the centre of the town, called Head of the Elephant, where he was made
+to lie down on a bed. Then a black ox was slaughtered and its blood
+allowed to pour all over his body. Next the ox was flayed, and the
+remains of the dead king, which had been disembowelled and smoked for
+seven days over a slow fire, were wrapped up in the hide and dragged
+along to the place of burial, where they were interred in a circular
+pit. (Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 35).]
+
+[195: "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 392.]
+
+[196: "The eye of the sun-god, which was subsequently called the eye of
+Horus and identified with the Uræus-snake on the forehead of Re and of
+the Pharaohs, the earthly representatives of Re, finally becoming
+synonymous with the crown of Lower Egypt, was a mighty goddess, Uto or
+Buto by name" (Alan Gardiner, Article "Magic (Egyptian)" in Hastings'
+_Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_, p. 268, quoting Sethe.)]
+
+[197: For an account of the distribution of this story see E. Sidney
+Hartland, "The Legend of Perseus"; also W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic
+Culture of Indonesia".]
+
+[198: The original "boat of the sky" was the crescent moon, which, from
+its likeness to the earliest form of Nile boat, was regarded as the
+vessel in which the moon (seen as a faint object upon the crescent), or
+the goddess who was supposed to be personified in the moon, travelled
+across the waters of the heavens. But as this "boat" was obviously part
+of the moon itself, it also was regarded as an animate form of the
+goddess, the "Eye of Re". When the Sun, as the other "Eye," assumed the
+chief rôle, Re was supposed to traverse the heavens in his own "boat,"
+which was also brought into relationship with the actual boat used in
+the Osirian burial ritual.
+
+The custom of employing the name "dragon" in reference to a boat is
+found in places as far apart as Scandinavia and China. It is the direct
+outcome of these identifications of the sun and moon with a boat
+animated by the respective deities. In India the _Makara_, the prototype
+of the dragon, was sometimes represented as a boat which was looked upon
+as the fish-_avatar_ of Vishnu, Buddha or some other deity.]
+
+[199: This is an instance of the well-known tendency of the human mind
+to blend numbers of different incidents into one story. An episode of
+one experience, having been transferred to an earlier one, becomes
+rationalized in adaptation to its different environment. This process of
+psychological transference is the explanation of the reference to
+Elephantine as the source of the _d'd'_, and has no relation to
+actuality. The naïve efforts of Brugsch and Gauthier to study the
+natural products of Elephantine for the purpose of identifying _d'd'_
+were therefore wholly misplaced.]
+
+[200: In Hartland's "Legend of Perseus" a collection of variants of this
+story will be found.]
+
+[201: In the version I have quoted from Erman he refers to "the god
+Sektet".]
+
+[202: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+
+The Thunder-Weapon.[203]
+
+In the development of the dragon-story we have seen that the instruments
+of destruction were of a most varied kind. Each of the three primary
+deities, Hathor, Osiris and Horus can be a destructive power as well as
+a giver of life and of all kinds of boons. Every homologue or surrogate
+of these three deities can become a weapon for dragon-destroying, such
+as the moon or the lotus of Hathor, the water or the beer of Osiris,
+the sun or the falcon of Horus. Originally Hathor used a flint knife or
+axe: then she did the execution as "the Eye of Re," the moon, the fiery
+bolt from heaven: Osiris sent the destroying flood and the intoxicating
+beer, each of which, like the knife, axe and moon of Hathor, were
+animated by the deity. Then Horus came as the winged disk, the falcon,
+the sun, the lightning and the thunderbolt. As the dragon-story was
+spread abroad in the world any one of these "weapons" was confused with
+any of (or all) the rest. The Eye of Re was the fire-spitting
+uræus-serpent; and foreign people, like the Greeks, Indians and others,
+gave the Egyptian verbal simile literal expression and converted it into
+an actual Cyclopean eye planted in the forehead, which shot out the
+destroying fire.
+
+The warrior god of Babylonia is called the bright one,[204] the sword or
+lightning of Ishtar, who was herself called both the sword or lightning
+of heaven.
+
+In the Ægean area also the sons of Zeus and the progeny of heaven may be
+axes, stone implements, meteoric stones and thunderbolts. In a Swahili
+tale the hero's weapon is "a sword like a flash of lightning".
+
+According to Bergaigne,[205] the myth of the celestial drink _soma_,
+brought down from heaven by a bird ordinarily called _cyena_, "eagle,"
+is parallel to that of Agni, the celestial fire brought by Mâtariçvan.
+This parallelism is even expressly stated in the Rig Veda, verse 6 of
+hymn 1 to Agni and Soma. Mâtariçvan brought the one from heaven, the
+eagle brought the other from the celestial mountain.
+
+Kuhn admits that the eagle represents Indra; and Lehmann regards the
+eagle who takes the fire as Agni himself. It is patent that both Indra
+and Agni are in fact merely specialized forms of Horus of the Winged
+Disk Saga, in one of which the warrior sun-god is represented, in the
+other the living fire. The elixir of life of the Egyptian story is
+represented by the _soma_, which by confusion is associated with the
+eagle: in other words, the god Soma is the homologue not only of Osiris,
+but also of Horus.
+
+Other incidents in the same original version are confused in the Greek
+story of Prometheus. He stole the fire from heaven and brought it to
+earth: but, in place of the episode of the elixir, which is adopted in
+the Indian story just mentioned, the creation of men from clay is
+accredited by the Greeks to the "flaming one," the "fire eagle"
+Prometheus.
+
+The double axe was the homologue of the winged disk which fell, or
+rather flew, from heaven as the tangible form of the god. This fire from
+heaven inevitably came to be identified with the lightning. According to
+Blinkenberg (_op. cit._, p. 19) "many points go to prove that the
+double-axe is a representation of the lightning (see Usener, p. 20)". He
+refers to the design on the famous gold ring from Mycenæ where "the sun,
+the moon, a double curved line presumably representing the rainbow, and
+the double-axe, i.e. the lightning": but "the latter is placed lower
+than the others, probably because it descends from heaven to earth,"
+like Horus when he assumed the form of the winged disk and flew down to
+earth as a fiery bolt to destroy the enemies of Re.
+
+The recognition of the homology of the winged disk with the double axe
+solves a host of problems which have puzzled classical scholars within
+recent years. The form of the double axe on the Mycenæan ring[206] and
+the painted sarcophagus from Hagia Triada in Crete (and especially the
+oblique markings upon the axe) is probably a suggestion of the double
+series of feathers and the outlines of the individual feathers
+respectively on the wings. The position of the axe upon a symbolic tree
+is not intended, as Blinkenberg claims (_op. cit._, p. 21), as "a ritual
+representation of the trees struck by lightning": but is the familiar
+scene of Mesopotamian culture-area, the tree of life surmounted by the
+winged disk.[207]
+
+The bird poised upon the axe in the Cretan picture is the homologue of
+the falcon of Horus: it is in fact a second representation of the winged
+disk itself. This interpretation is not affected by the consideration
+that the falcon may be replaced by the eagle, pigeon, woodpecker or
+raven, for these substitutions were repeatedly made by the ancient
+priesthoods in flagrant defiance of the properties of ornithological
+homologies. The same phenomenon is displayed even more obtrusively in
+Central America and Mexico, where the ancient sculptors and painters
+represented the bird perched upon the tree of life as a falcon, an
+eagle, a vulture, a macaw or even a turkey.[208]
+
+The incident of the winged disk descending to effect the sun-god's
+purposes upon earth probably represents the earliest record of the
+recognition of thunder and lightning and the phenomena of rain as
+manifestations of the god's powers. All gods of thunder, lightning, rain
+and clouds derive their attributes, and the arbitrary graphic
+representation of them, from the legend which the Egyptian scribe has
+preserved for us in the Saga of the Winged Disk.
+
+The sacred axe of Crete is represented elsewhere as a sword which became
+the visible impersonation of the deity.[209] There is a Hittite story of
+a sword-handle coming to life. Hose and McDougall refer to the same
+incident in certain Sarawak legends; and the story is true to the
+original in the fact that the sword fell from the sun.[210]
+
+Sir Arthur Evans describes as "the aniconic image of the god" a stone
+pillar on which crude pictures of a double axe have been scratched.
+These representations of the axe in fact serve the same purpose as the
+winged disk in Egypt, and, as we shall see subsequently, there was an
+actual confusion between the Egyptian symbol and the Cretan axe.
+
+The obelisk at Abusir was the aniconic representative of the sun-god Re,
+or rather, the support of the pyramidal apex, the gilded surface of
+which reflected the sun's rays and so made manifest the god's presence
+in the stone.
+
+The Hittites seem to have substituted the winged disk as a
+representation of the sun: for in a design copied from a seal[211] we
+find the Egyptian symbol borne upon the apex of a cone.
+
+The transition from this to the great double axe from Hagia Triada in
+the Candia Museum[212] is a relatively easy one, which was materially
+helped, as we shall see, by the fact that the winged disk was actually
+homologized with an axe or knife as alternative weapons used by the
+sun-god for the destruction of mankind.
+
+In Dr. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker (_supra_, p. 113) we
+have already seen that the Soudanese Osiris was identified with a spear
+and falling stars.
+
+According to Dr. Budge[213] the Egyptian hieroglyph used as the
+determinative of the word _neter_, meaning god or spirit, is the axe
+with a handle. Mr. Griffith, however, interprets it as a roll of yellow
+cloth ("Hieroglyphics," p. 46). On Hittite seals the axe sometimes takes
+the place of the god Teshub.[214]
+
+Sir Arthur Evans endeavours to explain these conceptions by a vague
+appeal to certain natural phenomena (_op. cit._, pp. 20 and 21); but the
+identical traditions of widespread peoples are much too arbitrary and
+specific to be interpreted by any such speculations.
+
+Sanchoniathon's story of Baetylos being the son of Ouranos is merely a
+poetical way of saying that the sun-god fell to earth in the form of a
+stone or a weapon, as a Zeus Kappôtas or a Horus in the form of a winged
+disk, flying down from heaven to destroy the enemies of Re.
+
+"The idea of their [the weapons] flying through the air or falling from
+heaven, and their supposed power of burning with inner fire or shining
+in the nighttime," was not primarily suggested, as Sir Arthur Evans
+claims (_op. cit._, p. 21), "by the phenomena associated with meteoric
+stones," but was a rationalization of the events described in the early
+Egyptian and Babylonian stories.
+
+They "shine at night" because the original weapon of destruction was the
+moon as the Eye of Re. They "burn with inward fire," like the Babylonian
+Marduk, when in the fight with the dragon Tiamat "he filled his body
+with burning flame" (King, _op. cit._, p. 71), because they _were_ fire,
+the fire of the sun and of lightning, the fire spat out by the Eye
+of Re.
+
+Further evidence in corroboration of these views is provided by the fact
+that in the Ægean area the double-axe replaces the moon between the
+cow's horns (Evans, _op. cit._, Fig. 3, p. 9).
+
+In King's "Babylonian Religion" (pp. 70 and 71) we are told how the gods
+provided Marduk with an invincible weapon in preparation for the combat
+with the dragon: and the ancient scribe himself sets forth a series of
+its homologues:--
+
+He made ready his bow ... He slung a spear ... The bow and quiver ... He
+set the lightning in front of him, With burning flame he filled his
+body.
+
+An ancient Egyptian writer has put on record further identifications of
+weapons. In the 95th Chapter of the Book of the Dead, the deceased is
+reported to have said: "I am he who sendeth forth terror into the powers
+of rain and thunder.... I have made to flourish my knife which is in the
+hand of Thoth in the powers of rain and thunder" (Budge, "Gods of the
+Egyptians," vol. i., p. 414).
+
+The identification of the winged disk with the thunderbolt which emerges
+so definitely from these homologies is not altogether new, for it was
+suggested some years ago by Count d'Alviella[215] in these words:--
+
+"On seeing some representations of the Thunderbolt which recall in a
+remarkable manner the outlines of the Winged Globe, it may be asked if
+it was not owing to this latter symbol that the Greeks transformed into
+a winged spindle the Double Trident derived from Assyria. At any rate
+the transition, or, if it be preferred, the combination of the two
+symbols is met with in those coins from Northern Africa where Greek art
+was most deeply impregnated with Phœnician types. Thus on coins of
+Bocchus II, King of Mauretania, figures are found which M. Lajard
+connected with the Winged Globe, and M. L. Müller calls Thunderbolts,
+but which are really the result of crossing between these two emblems".
+
+The thunderbolt, however, is not always, or even commonly, the direct
+representative of the winged disk. It is more often derived from
+lightning or some floral design.[216]
+
+According to Count d'Alviella[217] "the Trident of Siva at times
+exhibits the form of a lotus calyx depicted in the Egyptian manner".
+
+"Perhaps other transformations of the _trisula_ might still be found at
+Boro-Budur [in Java].... The same Disk which, when transformed into a
+most complicated ornament, is sometimes crowned by a Trident, is also
+met with between two serpents--which brings us back to the origin of the
+Winged Circle--the Globe of Egypt with the uræi" (see d'Alviella's Fig.
+158). "Moreover this ornament, between which and certain forms of the
+_trisula_ the transition is easily traced, commonly surmounts the
+entrance to the pagodas depicted in the bas-reliefs--in exactly the same
+manner as the Winged Globe adorns the lintel of the temples in Egypt and
+Phœnicia."
+
+Thus we find traces of a blending of the two homologous designs, derived
+independently from the lotus and the winged disk, which acquired the
+same symbolic significance.
+
+The weapon of Poseidon, the so-called "Trident of Neptune," is
+"sometimes crowned with a trilobate lotus flower, or with three lotus
+buds; in other cases it is depicted in a shape that may well represent a
+fishing spear" (Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, pp. 53 and 54).
+
+"Even if Jacobsthal's interpretation of the flower as a common Greek
+symbol for fire be not accepted, the conventionalization of the trident
+as a lotus blossom is quite analogous to the change, on Greek soil, of
+the Assyrian thunderweapon to two flowers pointing in opposite
+directions" (p. 54).
+
+But the conception of a flower as a symbol of fire cannot thus summarily
+be dismissed. For Sir Arthur Evans has collected all the stages in the
+transformation of Egyptian palmette pillars into the rayed pillars of
+Cyprus, in which the leaflets of the palmette become converted (in the
+Cypro-Mycenæan derivatives) into the rays which he calls "the natural
+concomitant of divinities of light".[218]
+
+The underlying motive which makes such a transference easy is the
+Egyptian conception of Hathor as a sacred lotus from which the sun-god
+Horus is born. The god of light is identified with the water-plant,
+whether lotus, iris or lily; and the lotus form of Horus can be
+correlated with its Hellenic surrogate, Apollo Hyakinthos. "The
+fleur-de-lys type now takes its place beside the sacred lotus" (_op.
+cit._, p. 50). The trident and the fleur-de-lys are thunderweapons
+because they represent forms of Horus or his mother.
+
+The classical keraunos is still preserved in Tibet as the _dorje_, which
+is identified with Indra's thunderbolt, the _vajra_.[219] This word is
+also applied to the diamond, the "king of stones," which in turn
+acquired many of the attributes of the pearl, another of the Great
+Mother's surrogates, which is reputed to have fallen from heaven like
+the thunderbolt.[220]
+
+The Tibetan _dorje_, like its Greek original, is obviously a
+conventionalized flower, the leaf-design about the base of the corona
+being quite clearly defined.
+
+The influence of the Winged-Disk Saga is clearly revealed in such Greek
+myths as that relating to Ixion. "Euripides is represented by
+Aristophanes as declaring that _Aithér_ at the creation devised
+
+  The eye to mimic the wheel of the sun."[221]
+
+When we read of Zeus in anger binding Ixion to a winged wheel made of
+fire, and sending him spinning through the air, we are merely dealing
+with a Greek variant of the Egyptian myth in which Re despatched Horus
+as a winged disk to slay his enemies. In the Hellenic version the
+sky-god is angry with the father of the centaurs for his ill-treatment
+of his father-in-law and his behaviour towards Hera and her
+cloud-manifestation: but though distorted all the incidents reveal their
+original inspiration in the Egyptian story and its early Aryan variants.
+
+It is remarkable that Mr. A. B. Cook, who compared the wheel of Ixion
+with the Egyptian winged disk (pp. 205-10), did not look deeper for a
+common origin of the two myths, especially when he got so far as to
+identify Ixion with the sun-god (p. 211).
+
+Blinkenberg sums up the development of the thunder-weapon thus: "From
+the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or three
+zigzag lines representing flames, a tripartite thunder-weapon was
+evolved and earned east and west from the ancient seat of civilization.
+Together with the axe (in Western Asia Minor the double-edged, and
+towards the centre of Asia the single-edged, axe) it became a regular
+attribute of the Asiatic thunder-gods.... The Indian trisula and the
+Greek triaina are both its descendants" (p. 57).
+
+Discussing the relationship of the sun-god to thunder, Dr. Rendel Harris
+refers to the fact that Apollo's "arrows are said to be lightnings," and
+he quotes Pausanias, Apollodorus and Mr. A. B. Cook in substantiation of
+his statements.[222] Both sons of Zeus, Dionysus and Apollo, are
+"concerned with the production of fire".
+
+According to Hyginus, Typhon was the son of Tartarus and the Earth: he
+made war against Jupiter for dominion, and, being struck by lightning,
+was thrown flaming to the earth, where Mount Ætna was placed upon
+him.[223]
+
+In this curious variant of the story of the winged disk, the conflict of
+Horus with Set is merged with the Destruction, for the son of Tartarus
+[Osiris] and the Earth [Isis] here is not Horus but his hostile brother
+Set. Instead of fighting for Jupiter (Re) as Horus did, he is against
+him. The lightning (which is Horus in the form of the winged disk)
+strikes Typhon and throws him flaming to earth. The episode of Mount
+Ætna is the antithesis of the incident in the Indian legend of the
+churning of the ocean: Mount Meru is placed in the sea upon the tortoise
+_avatar_ of Vishnu and is used to churn the food of immortality for the
+gods. In the Egyptian story the red ochre brought from Elephantine is
+pounded with the barley.
+
+The story told by Hyginus leads up to the vision in Revelations (xii., 7
+_et seq._): "There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought
+against the dragon; and the dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed
+not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great
+dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which
+deceiveth the whole world: he was cast into the earth, and his angels
+were cast out with him."
+
+In the later variants the original significance of the Destruction of
+Mankind seems to have been lost sight of. The life-giving Great Mother
+tends to drop out of the story and her son Horus takes her place. He
+becomes the warrior-god, but he not only assumes his mother's rôle but
+he also adopts her tactics. Just as she attacked Re's enemies in the
+capacity of the sky-god's "Eye," so Horus as the other "Eye," the sun,
+to which he gave his own falcon's wings, attacked in the form of the
+winged disk. The winged disk, like the other "Eye of Re," was not merely
+the sky weapon which shot down to destroy mankind, but also was the god
+Horus himself. This early conception involved the belief that the
+thunderbolt and lightning represented not merely the fiery weapon but
+the actual god.
+
+The winged disk thus exhibits the same confusion of attributes as we
+have already noticed in Osiris and Hathor. It is the commonest symbol of
+life-giving and beneficent protective power: yet it is the weapon used
+to slaughter mankind. It is in fact the healing caduceus as well as the
+baneful thunder-weapon.
+
+
+[203: The history of the thunder-weapon cannot wholly be ignored in
+discussing the dragon-myth because it forms an integral part of the
+story. It was animated both by the dragon and the dragon-slayer. But an
+adequate account of the weapon would be so highly involved and complex
+as to be unintelligible without a very large series of illustrations.
+Hence I am referring here only to certain aspects of the subject.
+Pending the preparation of a monograph upon the thunder-weapon, I may
+refer the reader to the works of Blinkenberg, d'Alviella, Ward, Evans
+and A. B. Cook (to which frequent reference is made in these pages) for
+material, especially in the form of illustrations, to supplement my
+brief and unavoidably involved summary.]
+
+[204: As in Egypt Osiris is described as "a ray of light" which issued
+from the moon (Hathor), _i.e._ was born of the Great Mother.]
+
+[205: "Religion védique," i., p. 173, quoted by S. Reinach, "Ætos
+Prometheus," _Revue archéologique_, 4^ie série, tome x., 1917, p. 72.]
+
+[206: Evans, _op. cit._, Fig. 4, p. 10.]
+
+[207: William Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," chapter
+xxxviii.]
+
+[208: Seler, "Codex Vaticanus, No. 3773," vol. i., p. 77 _et seq._]
+
+[209: Evans, _op. cit._, p. 8.]
+
+[210: "The Pagan Tribes of Borneo," 1912, vol. ii., p. 137.]
+
+[211: Evans, _op. cit._, Fig. 8, _c_, p. 17.]
+
+[212: There is an excellent photograph of this in Donald McKenzie's
+"Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe," facing p. 160.]
+
+[213: "The Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., pp. 63 _et seq_.]
+
+[214: See, for example, Ward, _op. cit._, p. 411.]
+
+[215: "The Migration of Symbols," pp. 220 and 221.]
+
+[216: Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, p. 53.]
+
+[217: _Op. cit._, p. 256.]
+
+[218: "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 51 and 52.]
+
+[219: See Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, pp. 45-8.]
+
+[220: I must defer consideration of the part played by certain of the
+Great Mother's surrogates in the development of the thunder-weapon's
+symbolism and the associated folk-lore. I have in mind especially the
+influence of the octopus and the cow. The former was responsible in part
+for the use of the spiral as a thunder-symbol; and the latter for the
+beliefs in the special protective power of thunder-stones over cows (see
+Blinkenberg, _op. cit._). The thunder-stone was placed over the lintel
+of the cow-shed for the same purpose as the winged disk over the door of
+an Egyptian temple. Until the relations of the octopus to the dragon
+have been set forth it is impossible adequately to discuss the question
+of the seven-headed dragon, which ranges from Scotland to Japan and from
+Scandinavia to the Zambesi. In "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall call
+attention to the basal factors in its evolution.]
+
+[221: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 198.]
+
+[222: "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 32.]
+
+[223: "Tartarus ex Terra procreavit Typhonem, immani magnitudine,
+specieque portentosa, cui centum capita draconum ex humeris enata erant.
+Hic Jovem provocavit, si vellet secum de regno centare. Jovis fulmine
+ardenti pectus ejus percussit. Cui cum flagraret, montem Ætnam, qui est
+in Siciliâ, super eum imposuit; qui ex eo adhuc ardere dicitur"
+(Hyginus, fab. 152).]
+
+
+The Deer.
+
+One of the most surprising features of the dragon in China, Japan and
+America, is the equipment of deer's horns.
+
+In Babylonia both Ea and Marduk are intimately associated with the
+antelope or gazelle, and the combination of the head of the antelope (or
+in other cases the goat) with the body of a fish is the most
+characteristic manifestation of either god. In Egypt both Osiris and
+Horus are at times brought into relationship with the gazelle or
+antelope, but more often it represents their enemy Set. Hence, in some
+parts of Africa, especially in the west, the antelope plays the part of
+the dragon in Asiatic stories.[224] The cow[225] of Hathor (Tiamat) may
+represent the dragon also. In East Africa the antelope assumes the rôle
+of the hero,[226] and is the representative of Horus. In the Ægean area,
+Asia Minor and Europe the antelope, gazelle or the deer, may be
+associated with the Great Mother.[227]
+
+In India the god Soma's chariot is drawn by an antelope. I have already
+suggested that Soma is only a specialized form of the Babylonian Ea,
+whose evil _avatar_ is the dragon: there is thus suggested another link
+between the antelope and the latter. The Ea-element explains the
+fish-scales and the antelope provides the horns. I shall return to the
+discussion of this point later.
+
+Vayu or Pavana, the Indian god of the winds, who afterwards became
+merged with Indra, rides upon an antelope like the Egyptian Horus.
+Soma's attributes also were in large measure taken over by Indra. Hence
+in this complex tissue of contradictions we once more find the
+dragon-slayer acquiring the insignia, in this case the antelope, of his
+mortal enemy.
+
+I have already referred to the fact that the early Babylonian deities
+could also be demons. Tiamat, the dragon whom Marduk fought, was merely
+the malevolent _avatar_ of the Great Mother. The dragon acquired his
+covering of fish-scales from an evil form of Ea.
+
+In his Hibbert Lectures Professor Sayce claimed that the name of Ea was
+expressed by an ideograph which signifies literally "the antelope" (p.
+280). "Ea was called 'the antelope of the deep,' 'the antelope the
+creator,' 'the lusty antelope'. We should have expected the animal of Ea
+to have been the fish: the fact that it is not so points to the
+conclusion that the culture-god of Southern Babylonia was an
+amalgamation of two earlier deities, one the divine antelope and the
+other the divine fish." Ea was "originally the god of the river and was
+also associated with the snake". Nina was also both the fish-goddess and
+the divinity whose name is interchanged with that of the deep. Professor
+Sayce then refers to "the curious process of development which
+transformed the old serpent-goddess, 'the lady Nina,' into the
+embodiment of all that was hostile to the powers of heaven; but after
+all, Nina had sprung from the fish-god of the deep [who also was both
+antelope and serpent as well, see p. 282], and Tiamat is herself 'the
+deep' in Semitic dress" (p. 283).
+
+"At times Ea was regarded as a gazelle rather than as an antelope." The
+position of the name in the list of animals shows what species of animal
+must be meant. _Lulim_, "a stag," seems to be a re-duplicated form of
+the same word. Both _lulim_ and _elim_ are said to be equivalent to
+_sarru_, king (p. 284).
+
+Certain Assyriologists, from whom I asked for enlightenment upon these
+philological matters, express some doubt as to the antiquity or to the
+reality of the association of the names of Ea and the word for an
+antelope, gazelle or stag. But whatever the value of the linguistic
+evidence, the archæological, at any rate as early as the time of
+Nebuchadnezzar I, brings both Ea and Marduk into close association with
+a strange creature equipped with the horns of an antelope or gazelle.
+The association with the antelope of the homologous deities in India and
+Egypt leaves the reality of the connexion in no doubt. I had hoped that
+Professor Sayce's evidence would have provided some explanation of the
+strange association of the antelope. But whether or not the philological
+data justify the inferences which Professor Sayce drew from them, there
+can be no doubt concerning the correctness of his statement that Ea was
+represented both by fish and antelope, for in the course of his
+excavations at Susa M. J. de Morgan brought to light representations of
+Ea's animal consisting of an antelope's head on the body of a fish.[228]
+He also makes the statement that the ideogram of Ea, _turahu-apsu_,
+means "antelope of the sea". I have already (p. 88) referred to the fact
+that this "antelope of the sea," the so-called "goat-fish," is identical
+with the prototype of the dragon.
+
+If his claim that the names of Ea meant both a "fish" and an "antelope"
+were well founded, the pun would have solved this problem, as it has
+done in the case of many other puzzles in the history of early
+civilization. But if this is not the case, the question is still open
+for solution. As Set was held to be personified in all the desert
+animals, the gazelle was identified with the demon of evil for this
+reason. In her important treatise on "The Asiatic Dionysos" Miss Gladys
+Davis tells us that "in his aspect of Moon 'the lord of stars' Soma has
+in this character the antelope as his symbol. In fact, one of the names
+given to the moon by the early Indians was 'má¹›iga-piplu' or marked
+like an antelope" (p. 202). Further she adds: "The Sanskrit name for the
+lunar mansion over which Soma presides is 'mṛiga-śiras' or the
+deer-headed." If it be admitted that Soma is merely the Aryan
+specialization of Ea and Osiris, as I have claimed, Sayce's association
+of Ea with the antelope is corroborated, even if it is not explained.
+
+In China the dragon was sometimes called "the celestial stag" (de Groot,
+_op. cit._, p. 1143). In Mexico the deer has the same intimate celestial
+relations as it has in the Old World (see Seler, _Zeit. f. Ethnologie_,
+Bd. 41, p. 414). I have already referred to the remarkable Maya
+deer-crocodile _makara_ in the Liverpool Museum (p. 103).
+
+The systematic zoology of the ancients was lacking in the precision of
+modern times; and there are reasons for supposing that the antelope and
+gazelle could exchange places the one with the other in their divine
+rôles; the deer and the rabbit were also their surrogates. In India a
+spotted rabbit can take the place of the antelope in playing the part of
+what we call "the man in the moon". This interpretation is common, not
+only in India, but also in China, and is repeatedly found in the ancient
+Mexican codices (Seler, _op. cit._). In the spread of the ideas we have
+just been considering from Babylonia towards the north we find that the
+deer takes the place of the antelope.
+
+In view of the close resemblance between the Indian god Soma and the
+Phrygian Dionysus, which has been demonstrated by Miss Gladys Davis, it
+is of interest to note that in the service of the Greek god a man was
+disguised as a stag, slain and eaten.[229]
+
+Artemis also, one of the many _avatars_ of the Great Mother, who was
+also related to the moon, was closely associated with the deer.
+
+I have already referred to the fact that in Africa the dragon rôle of
+the female antelope may be assumed by the cow or buffalo. In the case of
+the gods Soma and Dionysus their association with the antelope or deer
+may be extended to the bull. Miss Davis (_op. cit._) states that in the
+Homa Yasht the deer-headed lunar mansion over which the god presides is
+spoken of as "leading the Paurvas," i.e. Pleiades: "Mazda brought to
+thee (Homa) the star-studded spirit-fashioned girdle (the belt of Orion)
+leading the Paurvas. Now the Bull-Dionysus was especially associated
+with the Pleiades on ancient gems and in classical mythology--which form
+part of the sign Taurus." The bull is a sign of Haoma (Homa) or Soma.
+The belt of the thunder-god Thor corroborates the fact of the diffusion
+of these Babylonian ideas as far as Northern Europe.
+
+
+[224: Frobenius, "The Voice of Africa," vol. ii., p. 467 _inter alia_.]
+
+[225: _Op. cit._, p. 468.]
+
+[226: J. F. Campbell, "The Celtic Dragon Myth," with the "Geste of
+Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with Introduction by George
+Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 136.]
+
+[227: For example the red deer occupies the place usually taken by the
+goddess's lions upon a Cretan gem (Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar
+Cult," Fig. 32, p. 56): on the bronze plate from Heddemheim (A. B. Cook,
+"Zeus," vol. i., pl. xxxiv., and p. 620) Isis is represented standing on
+a hind: Artemis, another _avatar_ of the same Great Mother, was
+intimately associated with deer.]
+
+[228: J. de Morgan, article on "Koudourrous," _Mem. Del. en Perse_, t.
+7, 1905. Figures on p. 143 and p. 148: see also an earlier article on
+the same subject in tome i. of the same series.]
+
+[229: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 674.]
+
+
+The Ram.
+
+The close association of the ram with the thunder-god is probably
+related with the fact that the sun-god Amon in Egypt was represented by
+the ram with a distinctive spiral horn. This spiral became a distinctive
+feature of the god of thunder throughout the Hellenic and Phœnician
+worlds and in those parts of Africa which were affected by their
+influence or directly by Egypt.
+
+An account of the widespread influence of the ram-headed god of thunder
+in the Soudan and West Africa has been given by Frobenius.[230]
+
+But the ram also became associated with Agni, the Indian fire-god, and
+the spiral as a head-appendage became the symbol of thunder throughout
+China and Japan, and from Asia spread to America where such deities as
+Tlaloc still retain this distinctive token of their origin from the
+Old World.
+
+In Europe this association of the ram and its spiral horn played an even
+more obtrusive part.
+
+The octopus as a surrogate of the Great Mother was primarily responsible
+for the development of the life-giving attributes of the spiral motif.
+But the close connexion of the Great Mother with the dragon and the
+thunder-weapon prepared the way for the special association of the
+spiral with thunder, which was confirmed when the ram with its spiral
+horn became the God of Thunder.
+
+
+[230: _Op. cit._, vol. i., pp. 212-27.]
+
+
+The Pig.
+
+The relationship of the pig to the dragon is on the whole analogous to
+that of the cow and the stag, for it can play either a beneficent or a
+malevolent part. But the nature of the special circumstances which gave
+the pig a peculiar notoriety as an unclean animal are so intimately
+associated with the "Birth of Aphrodite" that I shall defer the
+discussion of them for my lecture on the history of the goddess.
+
+
+Certain Incidents in the Dragon Myth.
+
+Throughout the greater part of the area which tradition has peopled with
+dragons, iron is regarded as peculiarly lethal to the monsters. This
+seems to be due to the part played by the "smiths" who forged iron
+weapons with which Horus overcame Set and his followers,[231] or in the
+earlier versions of the legend the metal weapons by means of which the
+people of Upper Egypt secured their historic victory over the Lower
+Egyptians. But the association of meteoric iron with the thunderbolt,
+the traditional weapon for destroying dragons, gave added force to the
+ancient legend and made it peculiarly apt as an incident in the story.
+
+But though the dragon is afraid of iron, he likes precious gems and
+_k'ung-ts'ing_ ("The Stone of Darkness") and is fond of roasted
+swallows.
+
+The partiality of dragons for swallows was due to the transmission of a
+very ancient story of the Great Mother, who in the form of Isis was
+identified with the swallow. In China, so ravenous is the monster for
+this delicacy, that anyone who has eaten of swallows should avoid
+crossing the water, lest the dragon whose home is in the deep should
+devour the traveller to secure the dainty morsel of swallow. But those
+who pray for rain use swallows to attract the beneficent deity. Even in
+England swallows flying low are believed to be omens of coming rain--a
+tale which is about as reliable as the Chinese variant of the same
+ancient legend.
+
+"The beautiful gems remind us of the Indian dragons; the pearls of the
+sea were, of course, in India as well as China and Japan, considered to
+be in the special possession of the dragon-shaped sea-gods" (de Visser,
+p. 69). The cultural drift from West to East along the southern coast of
+India was effected mainly by sailors who were searching for pearls.
+Sharks constituted the special dangers the divers had to incur in
+exploiting pearl-beds to obtain the precious "giver of life". But at the
+time these great enterprises were first undertaken in the Indian Ocean
+the people dwelling in the neighbourhood of the chief pearl-beds
+regarded the sea as the great source of all life-giving virtues and the
+god who exercised these powers was incarnated in a fish. The sharks
+therefore had to be brought into harmony with this scheme, and they
+were rationalized as the guardians of the storehouse of life-giving
+pearls at the bottom of the sea.
+
+I do not propose to discuss at present the diffusion to the East of the
+beliefs concerning the shark and the modifications which they underwent
+in the course of these migrations in Melanesia and elsewhere; but in my
+lecture upon "the Birth of Aphrodite" I shall have occasion to refer to
+its spread to the West and explain how the shark's rôle was transferred
+to the dog-fish in the Mediterranean. The dog-fish then assumed a
+terrestrial form and became simply the dog who plays such a strange part
+in the magical ceremony of digging up the mandrake.
+
+At present we are concerned merely with the shark as the guardian of the
+stores of pearls at the bottom of the sea. He became identified with the
+Nâga and the dragon, and the store of pearls became a vast
+treasure-house which it became one of the chief functions of the dragon
+to guard. This episode in the wonder-beast's varied career has a place
+in most of the legends ranging from Western Europe to Farthest Asia.
+Sometimes the dragon carries a pearl under his tongue or in his chin as
+a reserve of life-giving substance.
+
+Mr. Donald Mackenzie has called attention[232] to the remarkable
+influence upon the development of the Dragon Myth of the familiar
+Egyptian representation of the child Horus with a finger touching his
+lips. On some pretence or other, many of the European dragon-slaying
+heroes, such as Sigurd and the Highland Finn, place their fingers in
+their mouths. This action is usually rationalized by the statement that
+the hero burnt his fingers while cooking the slain monster.
+
+
+[231: Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 476.]
+
+[232: "Egyptian Myth and Legend," pp. 340 _et seq._]
+
+
+The Ethical Aspect.
+
+So far in this discussion I have been dealing mainly with the problems
+of the dragon's evolution, the attainment of his or her distinctive
+anatomical features and physiological attributes. But during this
+process of development a moral and ethical aspect of the dragon's
+character was also emerging.
+
+Now that we have realized the fact of the dragon's homology with the
+moon-god it is important to remember that one of the primary functions
+of this deity, which later became specialized in the Egyptian god
+Thoth, was the measuring of time and the keeping of records. The moon,
+in fact, was the controller of accuracy, of truth, and order, and
+therefore the enemy of falsehood and chaos. The identification of the
+moon with Osiris, who from a dead king eventually developed into a king
+of the dead, conferred upon the great Father of Waters the power to
+exact from men respect for truth and order. For even if at first these
+ideas were only vaguely adumbrated and not expressed in set phrases, it
+must have been an incentive to good discipline when men remembered that
+the record-keeper and the guardian of law and order was also the deity
+upon whose tender mercies they would have to rely in the life after
+death. Set, the enemy of Osiris, who is the real prototype of the evil
+dragon, was the antithesis of the god of justice: he was the father of
+falsehood and the symbol of chaos. He was the prototype of Satan, as
+Osiris was the first definite representative of the Deity of which any
+record has been preserved.
+
+The history of the evil dragon is not merely the evolution of the devil,
+but it also affords the explanation of his traditional peculiarities,
+his bird-like features, his horns, his red colour, his wings and cloven
+hoofs, and his tail. They are all of them the dragon's distinctive
+features; and from time to time in the history of past ages we catch
+glimpses of the reality of these identifications. In one of the earliest
+woodcuts (Fig. 17) found in a printed book Satan is depicted as a monk
+with the bird's feet of the dragon. A most interesting intermediate
+phase is seen in a Chinese water-colour in the John Rylands Library, in
+which the thunder-dragon is represented in a form almost exactly
+reproducing that of the devil of European tradition (Fig. 16).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 16.--The God Of Thunder.
+
+(From a Chinese drawing (? 17th Century) in the John Rylands Library)]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 17.--From Joannes de Turrecremata's "Meditationes
+seu Contemplationes". _Romæ: Ulrich Hau_. 1467]
+
+Early in the Christian era, when ancient beliefs in Egypt became
+disguised under a thin veneer of Christianity, the story of the conflict
+between Horus and Set was converted into a conflict between Christ and
+Satan. M. Clermont-Ganneau has described an interesting bas-relief in
+the Louvre in which a hawk-headed St. George, clad in Roman military
+uniform and mounted on a horse, is slaying a dragon which is represented
+by Set's crocodile.[233] But the Biblical references to Satan leave no
+doubt as to his identity with the dragon, who is specifically mentioned
+in the Book of Revelations as "the old serpent which is the Devil and
+Satan" (xx. 2).
+
+The devil Set was symbolic of disorder and darkness, while the god
+Osiris was the maintainer of order and the giver of light. Although the
+moon-god, in the form of Osiris, Thoth and other deities, thus came to
+acquire the moral attributes of a just judge, who regulated the
+movements of the celestial bodies, controlled the waters upon the earth,
+and was responsible for the maintenance of order in the Universe, the
+ethical aspect of his functions was in large measure disguised by the
+material importance of his duties. In Babylonia similar views were held
+with respect to the beneficent water-god Ea, who was the giver of
+civilization, order and justice, and Sin, the moon-god, who "had
+attained a high position in the Babylonian pantheon," as "the guide of
+the stars and the planets, the overseer of the world at night". "From
+that conception a god of high moral character soon developed." "He is an
+extremely beneficent deity, he is a king, he is the ruler of men, he
+produces order and stability, like Shamash and like the Indian Varuṇa
+and Mitra, but besides that, he is also a judge, he loosens the bonds of
+the imprisoned, like Varuṇa. His light, like that of Varuṇa, is
+the symbol of righteousness.... Like the Indian Varuṇa and the
+Iranian Mazdâh, he is a god of wisdom."
+
+When these Egyptian and Babylonian ideas were borrowed by the Aryans,
+and the Iranian Mazdâh and the Indian Varuṇa assumed the rôle of the
+beneficent deity of the former more ancient civilizations, the material
+aspect of the functions of the moon-god became less obtrusive; and there
+gradually emerged the conception, to which Zarathushtra first gave
+concrete expression, of the beneficent god Ahura Mazdâh as "an
+omniscient protector of morality and creator of marvellous power and
+knowledge". "He is the most-knowing one, and the most-seeing one. No one
+can deceive him. He watches with radiant eyes everything that is done in
+open or in secret." "Although he has a strong personality he has no
+anthropomorphic features." He has shed the material aspects which loomed
+so large in his Egyptian, Babylonian and earlier Aryan prototypes, and a
+more ethereal conception of a God of the highest ethical qualities
+has emerged.
+
+The whole of this process of transformation has been described with deep
+insight and lucid exposition by Professor Cumont, from whose important
+and convincing memoir I have quoted so freely in the foregoing
+paragraphs.[234]
+
+The creation of a beneficent Deity of such moral grandeur inevitably
+emphasized the baseness and the malevolence of the "Power of Evil". No
+longer are the gods merely glorified human beings who can work good or
+evil as they will; but there is now an all-powerful God controlling the
+morals of the universe, and in opposition to Him "the dragon, the old
+serpent, which is the Devil and Satan".
+
+
+[233: "Horus et St. George d'après un bas-relief inedit du Louvre,"
+_Revue Archéologique_, Nouvelle Série, t. xxxii., 1876, p. 196, pl.
+xviii. It is right to explain that M. Clermont-Ganneau's interpretation
+of this relief has not been accepted by all scholars.]
+
+[234: Albert J. Carnoy, "The Moral Deities of Iran and India and their
+Origins," _The American Journal of Theology_, vol. xxi., No. 1, Jan.
+1917, p. 58.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE.[235]
+
+
+It may seem ungallant to discuss the birth of Aphrodite as part of the
+story of the evolution of the dragon. But the other chapters of this
+book, in which frequent references have been made to the early history
+of the Great Mother, have revealed how vital a part she played in the
+development of the dragon. The earliest real dragon was Tiamat, one of
+the forms assumed by the Great Mother; and an even earlier prototype was
+the lioness (Sekhet) manifestation of Hathor.
+
+Thus it becomes necessary to enquire more fully (than has been done in
+the other chapters) into the circumstances of the Great Mother's birth
+and development, and to investigate certain aspects of her ontogeny to
+which only scant attention has been paid in the preceding pages.
+
+Several reasons have led me to select Aphrodite from the vast legion of
+Great Mothers for special consideration. In spite of her high
+specialization in certain directions the Greek goddess of love retains
+in greater measure than any of her sisters some of the most primitive
+associations of her original parent. Like vestigial structures in
+biology, these traits afford invaluable evidence, not only of
+Aphrodite's own ancestry and early history, but also of that of the
+whole family of goddesses of which she is only a specialized type. For
+Aphrodite's connexion with shells is a survival of the circumstances
+which called into existence the first Great Mother and made her not only
+the Creator of mankind and the universe, but also the parent of all
+deities, as she was historically the first to be created by human
+inventiveness. In this lecture I propose to deal with the more general
+aspects of the evolution of all these daughters of the Great Mother:
+but I have used Aphrodite's name in the title because her
+shell-associations can be demonstrated more clearly and definitely than
+those of any of her sisters.
+
+In the past a vast array of learning has been brought to bear upon the
+problems of Aphrodite's origin; but this effort has, for the most part,
+been characterized by a narrowness of vision and a lack of adequate
+appreciation of the more vital factors in her embryological history. In
+the search for the deep human motives that found specific expression in
+the great goddess of love, too little attention has been paid to
+primitive man's psychology, and his persistent striving for an elixir of
+life to avert the risk of death, to renew youth and secure a continuance
+of existence after death. On the other hand, the possibility of
+obtaining any real explanation has been dashed aside by most scholars,
+who have been content simply to juggle with certain stereotyped
+catchphrases and baseless assumptions, simply because the traditions of
+classical scholarship have made these devices the pawns in a rather
+aimless game.
+
+It is unnecessary to cite specific illustrations in support of this
+statement. Reference to any of the standard works on classical
+archæology, such as Roscher's "Lexikon," will testify to the truth of my
+accusation. In her "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion" Miss
+Jane Harrison devotes a chapter (VI) to "The Making of a Goddess," and
+discusses "The Birth of Aphrodite". But she strictly observes the
+traditions of the classical method; and assumes that the meaning of the
+myth of Aphrodite's birth from the sea--the germs of which are at least
+fifty centuries old--can be decided by the omission of any
+representation of the sea in the decoration of a pot made in the fifth
+century B.C.!
+
+But apart from this general criticism, the lack of resourcefulness and
+open mindedness, certain more specific factors have deflected classical
+scholars from the true path. In the search for the ancestry of
+Aphrodite, they have concentrated their attention too exclusively upon
+the Mediterranean area and Western Asia, and so ignored the most ancient
+of the historic Great Mothers, the African Hathor, with whom (as Sir
+Arthur Evans[236] clearly demonstrated more than fifteen years ago) the
+Cypriote goddess has much closer affinities than with any of her
+Asiatic sisters. Yet no scholar, either on the Greek or Egyptian side,
+has seriously attempted to follow up this clue and really investigate
+the nature of the connexions between Aphrodite and Hathor, and the
+history of the development of their respective specializations of
+functions.[237]
+
+But some explanation must be given for my temerity in venturing to
+invade the intensively cultivated domains of Aphrodite "with a mind
+undebauched by classical learning". I have already explained how the
+study of Libations and Dragons brought me face to face with the problems
+of the Great Mother's attributes. At that stage of the enquiry two
+circumstances directed my attention specifically to Aphrodite. Mr.
+Wilfrid Jackson was collecting the data relating to the cultural uses of
+shells, which he has since incorporated in a book.[238] As the results
+of his search accumulated, the fact soon emerged that the original
+Great Mother was nothing more than a cowry-shell used as a life-giving
+amulet; and that Aphrodite's shell-associations were a survival of the
+earliest phase in the Great Mother's history. At this psychological
+moment Dr. Rendel Harris[239] claimed that Aphrodite was a
+personification of the mandrake. But the magical attributes of the
+mandrake, which he claimed to have been responsible for converting the
+amulet into a goddess, were identical with those which Jackson's
+investigations had previously led me to regard as the reasons for
+deriving Aphrodite from the cowry. The mandrake was clearly a surrogate
+of the shell or vice versa.[240] The problem to be solved was to decide
+which amulet was responsible for suggesting the process of life-giving.
+The goddess Aphrodite was closely related to Cyprus; the mandrake was a
+magical plant there; and the cowry is so intimately associated with the
+island as to be called _Cypræa_. So far as is known, however, the
+shell-amulet is vastly more ancient than the magical reputation of the
+plant. Moreover, we know why the cowry was regarded as feminine and
+accredited with life-giving attributes. There are no such reasons for
+assigning life-giving powers or the female sex to the mandrake. The
+claim that its magical properties are due to the fancied resemblance of
+its root to a human being is wholly untenable.[241] The roots of many
+plants are at least as manlike; and, even if this character was the
+exclusive property of the mandrake, how does it help to explain the
+remarkable repetory of quite arbitrary and fantastic properties and the
+female sex assigned to the plant? Sir James Frazer's claim[242] that
+"such beliefs and practices illustrate the primitive tendency to
+personify nature" is a gratuitous and quite irrelevant assumption, which
+offers no explanation whatsoever of the specific and arbitrary nature of
+the form assumed by the personification. But when we investigate the
+historical development of the peculiar attributes of the cowry-shell,
+and appreciate why and how they were acquired, any doubt as to the
+source from which the mandrake obtained its "magic" is removed; and
+with it the fallacy of Sir James Frazer's wholly unwarranted claims is
+also exposed.
+
+If we ignore Sir James Frazer's naïve speculations we can make use of
+the compilations of evidence which he makes with such remarkable
+assiduity. But it is more profitable to turn to the study of the
+remarkable lectures which Dr. Rendel Harris has been delivering in this
+room[243] during the last few years. Our genial friend has been
+cultivating his garden on the slopes of Olympus,[244] and has been
+plucking the rich fruits of his ripe scholarship and nimble wit. At the
+same time, with rougher implements and cruder methods, I have been
+burrowing in the depths of the earth, trying to recover information
+concerning the habits and thoughts of mankind many centuries before
+Dionysus and Apollo, and Artemis and Aphrodite, were dreamt of.
+
+In the course of these subterranean gropings no one was more surprised
+than I was to discover that I was getting entangled in the roots of the
+same plants whose golden fruit Dr. Rendel Harris was gathering from his
+Olympian heights. But the contrast in our respective points of view was
+perhaps responsible for the different appearance the growths assumed.
+
+To drop the metaphor, while he was searching for the origins of the
+deities a few centuries before the Christian era began, I was finding
+their more or less larval forms flourishing more than twenty centuries
+before the commencement of his story. For the gods and goddesses of his
+narrative were only the thinly disguised representatives of much more
+ancient deities decked out in the sumptuous habiliments of Greek
+culture.
+
+In his lecture on Aphrodite, Dr. Rendel Harris claimed that the goddess
+was a personification of the mandrake; and I think he made out a good
+prima facie case in support of his thesis. But other scholars have set
+forth equally valid reasons for associating Aphrodite with the argonaut,
+the octopus, the purpura, and a variety of other shells, both univalves
+and bivalves.[245]
+
+The goddess has also been regarded as a personification of water, the
+ocean, or its foam.[246] Then again she is closely linked with pigs,
+cows, lions, deer, goats, rams, dolphins, and a host of other creatures,
+not forgetting the dove, the swallow, the partridge, the sparling, the
+goose, and the swan.[247]
+
+The mandrake theory does not explain, or give adequate recognition to,
+any of these facts. Nor does Dr. Rendel Harris suggest why it is so
+dangerous an operation to dig up the mandrake which he identifies with
+the goddess, or why it is essential to secure the assistance of a
+dog[248] in the process. The explanation of this fantastic fable gives
+an important clue to Aphrodite's antecedents.
+
+
+[235: An elaboration of a lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library,
+on 14 November, 1917.]
+
+[236: "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 52. Compare also A. E. W.
+Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, p. 435.]
+
+[237: With a strange disregard of Sir Arthur Evans's "Mycenæan Tree and
+Pillar Cult," Mr. H. R. Hall makes the following remarks in his "Ægean
+Archæology" (p. 150): "The origin of the goddess Aphrodite has long been
+taken for granted. It has been regarded as a settled fact that she was
+Semitic, and came to Greece from Phœnicia or Cyprus. But the new
+discoveries have thrown this, like other received ideas, into the
+melting-pot, for the Minoans undoubtedly worshipped an Aphrodite. We see
+her, naked and with her doves, on gold plaques from one of the Mycenæan
+shaft-graves (Schuchhardt, _Schliemann_, Figs. 180, 181), which must be
+as old as the First Late Minoan period (_c._ 1600-1500 B.C.), and--not
+rising from the foam, but sailing over it--in a boat, naked, on the lost
+gold ring from Mochlos. It is evident now that she was not only a
+Canaanitish-Syrian goddess, but was common to all the people of the
+Levant. She is Aphrodite-Paphia in Cyprus, Ashtaroth-Astarte in Canaan,
+Atargatis in Syria, Derketo in Philistria, Hathor in Egypt; what the
+Minoans called her we do not know, unless she was Britomartis. She must
+take her place by the side of Rhea-Diktynna in the Minoan pantheon."
+
+It is not without interest to note that on the Mochlos ring the goddess
+is sailing in a papyrus float of Egyptian type, like the moon-goddess in
+her crescent moon.
+
+The association of this early representative of Aphrodite with doves is
+of special interest in view of Highnard's attempt ("Le Mythe de Venus,"
+_Annales du Musée Guimet_, T. 1, 1880, p. 23) to derive the name of "la
+déesse à la colombe" from the Chaldean and Phœnician _phrit_ or _phrut_
+meaning "a dove".
+
+Mr. Hall might have extended his list of homologues to Mesopotamia,
+Iran, and India, to Europe and Further Asia, to America, and, in fact,
+every part of the world that harbours goddesses.]
+
+[238: "Shells as Evidence of the Migration of Early Culture."]
+
+[239: "The Ascent of Olympus."]
+
+[240: A striking confirmation of the fact that the mandrake is really a
+surrogate of the cowry is afforded by the practice in modern Greece of
+using the mandrake carried in a leather bag in the same way (and for the
+same magical purpose as a love philtre) as the Baganda of East Africa
+use the cowry (in a leather bag) at the present time.]
+
+[241: Old Gerade was frank enough to admit that he "never could perceive
+shape of man or woman" (quoted by Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 110).]
+
+[242: "Jacob and the Mandrakes," _Proceedings of the British Academy_,
+Vol. VIII, p. 22.]
+
+[243: The John Rylands Library.]
+
+[244: "The Ascent of Olympus."]
+
+[245: See the memoirs by Tümpel, Jahn, Houssay, and Jackson, to which
+reference is made elsewhere in these pages.]
+
+[246: The well-known circumstantial story told in Hesiod's theogony.]
+
+[247: See the article "Aphrodite" in Roscher's "Lexikon".]
+
+[248: Sir James Frazer's claim that the incident of the ass in a late
+Jewish story of Jacob and the mandrakes (_op. cit._, p. 20) "helps us to
+understand the function of the dog," is quite unsupported. The learned
+guardian of the Golden Bough does not explain _how_ it helps us to
+understand.]
+
+
+The Search for the Elixir of Life. Blood as Life.
+
+In delving into the remotely distant history of our species we cannot
+fail to be impressed with the persistence with which, throughout the
+whole of his career, man (of the species _sapiens_) has been
+seeking[249] for an elixir of life, to give added "vitality" to the dead
+(whose existence was not consciously regarded as ended), to prolong the
+days of active life to the living, to restore youth, and to protect his
+own life from all assaults, not merely of time, but also of
+circumstance. In other words, the elixir he sought was something that
+would bring "good luck" in all the events of his life and its
+continuation. Most of the amulets, even of modern times, the lucky
+trinkets, the averters of the "Evil Eye," the practices and devices for
+securing good luck in love and sport, in curing bodily ills or mental
+distress, in attaining material prosperity, or a continuation of
+existence after death, are survivals of this ancient and persistent
+striving after those objects which our earliest forefathers called
+collectively the "givers of life".
+
+From statements in the earliest literature[250] that has come down to us
+from antiquity, no less than from the views that still prevail among
+the relatively more primitive peoples of the present day, it is clear
+that originally man did not consciously formulate a belief in
+immortality.
+
+It was rather the result of a defect of thinking, or as the modern
+psychologist would express it, an instinctive repression of the
+unpleasant idea that death would come to him personally, that primitive
+man refused to contemplate or to entertain the possibility of life
+coming to an end. So intense was his instinctive love of life and dread
+of such physical damage as would destroy his body that man unconsciously
+avoided thinking of the chance of his own death: hence his belief in the
+continuance of life cannot be regarded as the outcome of an active
+process of constructive thought.
+
+This may seem altogether paradoxical and incredible.
+
+How, it may be asked, can man be said to repress the idea of death, if
+he instinctively refused to admit its possibility? How did he escape the
+inevitable process of applying to himself the analogy he might have been
+supposed to make from other men's experience and recognize that he
+must die?
+
+Man appreciated the fact that he could kill an animal or another man by
+inflicting certain physical injuries on him. But at first he seems to
+have believed that if he could avoid such direct assaults upon himself,
+his life would flow on unchecked. When death does occur and the
+onlookers recognize the reality, it is still the practice among certain
+relatively primitive people to search for the man who has inflicted
+death on his fellow.
+
+It would, of course, be absurd to pretend that any people could fail to
+recognize the reality of death in the great majority of cases. The mere
+fact of burial is an indication of this. But the point of difference
+between the views of these early men and ourselves, was the tacit
+assumption on the part of the former, that in spite of the obvious
+changes in his body (which made inhumation or some other procedure
+necessary) the deceased was still continuing an existence not unlike
+that which he enjoyed previously, only somewhat duller, less eventful
+and more precarious. He still needed food and drink, as he did before,
+and all the paraphernalia of his mortal life, but he was dependent upon
+his relatives for the maintenance of his existence.
+
+Such views were difficult of acceptance by a thoughtful people, once
+they appreciated the fact of the disintegration of the corpse in the
+grave; and in course of time it was regarded as essential for continued
+existence that the body should be preserved. The idea developed, that so
+long as the body of the deceased was preserved and there were restored
+to it all the elements of vitality which it had lost at death, the
+continuance of existence was theoretically possible and worthy of
+acceptance as an article of faith.
+
+Let us consider for a moment what were considered to be elements of
+vitality by the earliest members of our species.[251]
+
+From the remotest times man seems to have been aware of the fact that he
+could kill animals or his fellow men by means of certain physical
+injuries. He associated these results with the effusion of blood. The
+loss of blood could cause unconsciousness and death. Blood, therefore,
+must be the vehicle of consciousness and life, the material whose escape
+from the body could bring life to an end.[252]
+
+The first pictures painted by man, with which we are at present
+acquainted, are found upon the walls and roofs of certain caves in
+Southern France and Spain. They were the work of the earliest known
+representatives of our own species, _Homo sapiens_, in the phase of
+culture now distinguished by the name "Aurignacian".
+
+The animals man was in the habit of hunting for food are depicted.[253]
+In some of them arrows are shown implanted in the animal's flank near
+the region of the heart; and in others the heart itself is represented.
+
+This implies that at this distant time in the history of our species, it
+was already realized how vital a spot in the animal's anatomy the heart
+was. But even long before man began to speculate about the functions of
+the heart, he must have learned to associate the loss of blood on the
+part of man or animals with death, and to regard the pouring out of
+blood as the escape of its vitality. Many factors must have contributed
+to the new advance in physiology which made the heart the centre or the
+chief habitation of vitality, volition, feeling, and knowledge.
+
+Not merely the empirical fact, acquired by experience in hunting, of the
+peculiarly vulnerable nature of the heart, but perhaps also the
+knowledge that the heart contained life-giving blood, helped in
+developing the ideas about its functions as the bestower of life and
+consciousness.
+
+The palpitation of the heart after severe exertion or under the
+influence of intense emotion would impress the early physiologist with
+the relationship of the heart to the feelings, and afford confirmation
+of his earlier ideas of its functions.
+
+But whatever the explanation, it is known from the folk-lore of even the
+most unsophisticated peoples that the heart was originally regarded as
+the seat of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge, and that the blood
+was the life-stream. The Aurignacian pictures in the caves of Western
+Europe suggest that these beliefs were extremely ancient.
+
+The evidence at our disposal seems to indicate that not only were such
+ideas of physiology current in Aurignacian times, but also certain
+cultural applications of them had been inaugurated even then. The
+remarkable method of blood-letting by chopping off part of a finger
+seems to have been practised even in Aurignacian times.[254]
+
+If it is legitimate to attempt to guess at the meaning these early
+people attached to so singular a procedure, we may be guided by the
+ideas associated with this act in outlying corners of the world at the
+present time. On these grounds we may surmise that the motive underlying
+this, and other later methods of blood-letting, such as circumcision,
+piercing the ears, lips, and tongue, gashing the limbs and body, et
+cetera, was the offering of the life-giving fluid.
+
+Once it was recognized that the state of unconsciousness or death was
+due to the loss of blood it was a not illogical or irrational procedure
+to imagine that offerings of blood might restore consciousness and life
+to the dead.[255] If the blood was seriously believed to be the vehicle
+of feeling and knowledge, the exchange of blood or the offering of blood
+to the community was a reasonable method for initiating anyone into the
+wider knowledge of and sympathy with his fellow-men.
+
+Blood-letting, therefore, played a part in a great variety of
+ceremonies, of burial and of initiation, and also those of a
+therapeutic[256] and, later, of a religious significance.
+
+But from Aurignacian times onwards, it seems to have been admitted that
+substitutes for blood might be endowed with a similar potency.
+
+The extensive use of red ochre or other red materials for packing around
+the bodies of the dead was presumably inspired by the idea that
+materials simulating blood-stained earth, were endowed with the same
+life-giving properties as actual blood poured out upon the ground in
+similar vitalizing ceremonies.
+
+As the shedding of blood produced unconsciousness, the offering of blood
+or red ochre was, therefore, a logical and practical means of restoring
+consciousness and reinforcing the element of vitality which was
+diminished or lost in the corpse.
+
+The common statement that primitive man was a fantastically irrational
+child is based upon a fallacy. He was probably as well endowed mentally
+as his modern successors; and was as logical and rational as they are;
+but many of his premises were wrong, and he hadn't the necessary body of
+accumulated wisdom to help him to correct his false assumptions.
+
+If primitive man regarded the dead as still existing, but with a reduced
+vitality, it was a not irrational procedure on the part of the people of
+the Reindeer Epoch in Europe to pack the dead in red ochre (which they
+regarded as a surrogate of the life-giving fluid) to make good the lack
+of vitality in the corpse.
+
+If blood was the vehicle of consciousness and knowledge, the exchange of
+blood was clearly a logical procedure for establishing communion of
+thought and feeling and so enabling an initiate to assimilate the
+traditions of his people.
+
+If red carnelian was a surrogate of blood the wearing of bracelets or
+necklaces of this life-giving material was a proper means of warding off
+danger to life and of securing good luck.
+
+If red paint or the colour red brought these magical results, it was
+clearly justifiable to resort to its use.
+
+All these procedures are logical. It is only the premises that were
+erroneous.
+
+The persistence of such customs in Ancient Egypt makes it possible for
+us to obtain literary evidence to support the inferences drawn from
+archæological data of a more remote age. For instance, the red jasper
+amulet sometimes called the "girdle-tie of Isis," was supposed to
+represent the blood of the goddess and was applied to the mummy "to
+stimulate the functions of his blood";[257] or perhaps it would be more
+accurate to say that it was intended to add to the vital substance which
+was so obviously lacking in the corpse.
+
+
+[249: In response to the prompting of the most fundamental of all
+instincts, that of the preservation of life.]
+
+[250: See Alan Gardiner, _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. IV,
+Parts II-III, April-July, 1917, p. 205. Compare also the Babylonian
+story of Gilgamesh.]
+
+[251: Some of these have been discussed in Chapter 1 ("Incense and
+Libations") and will not be further considered here.]
+
+[252: "The life which is the blood thereof" (Gen. ix. 4).]
+
+[253: See, for example, Sollas, "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, 1915,
+pp. 326 (fig. 163), 333 (fig. 171), and 36 (fig. 189).]
+
+[254: Sollas, _op. cit._, pp. 347 _et seq._]
+
+[255: The "redeeming blood," [Greek: Pharmakon athanasias].]
+
+[256: The practice of blood-letting for therapeutic purposes was
+probably first suggested by a confused rationalization. The act of
+blood-letting was a means of healing; and the victim himself supplied
+the vitalizing fluid!]
+
+[257: Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet," p. 112.]
+
+
+The Cowry as a Giver of Life.
+
+Blood and its substitutes, however, were not the only materials that had
+acquired a reputation for vitalizing qualities in the Reindeer Epoch.
+For there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that shells also were
+regarded, even in that remote time, as life-giving amulets.
+
+If the loss of blood was at first the only recognized cause of death,
+the act of birth was clearly the only process of life-giving. The portal
+by which a child entered the world was regarded, therefore, not only as
+the channel of birth, but also as the actual giver of life.[258] The
+large Red Sea cowry-shell, which closely simulates this "giver of life,"
+then came to be endowed by popular imagination with the same powers.
+Hence the shell was used in the same way as red ochre or carnelian: it
+was placed in the grave to confer vitality on the dead, and worn on
+bracelets and necklaces to secure good luck by using the "giver of life"
+to avert the risk of danger to life. Thus the general life-giving
+properties of blood, blood substitutes, and shells, came to be
+assimilated the one with the other.[259]
+
+At first it was probably its more general power of averting death or
+giving vitality to the dead that played the more obtrusive part in the
+magical use of the shell. But the circumstances which led to the
+development of the shell's symbolism naturally and inevitably conferred
+upon the cowry special power over women. It was the surrogate of the
+life-giving organ. It became an amulet to increase the fertility of
+women and to help them in childbirth. It was, therefore, worn by girls
+suspended from a girdle, so as to be as near as possible to the organ it
+was supposed to simulate and whose potency it was believed to be able to
+reinforce and intensify. Just as bracelets and necklaces of carnelian
+were used to confer on either sex the vitalizing virtues of blood, which
+it was supposed to simulate, so also cowries, or imitations of them made
+of metal or stone, were worn as bracelets, necklaces, or hair-ornaments,
+to confer health and good luck in both sexes. But these ideas received a
+much further extension.
+
+As the giver of life, the cowry came to have attributed to it by some
+people definite powers of creation. It was not merely an amulet to
+increase fertility: it was itself the actual parent of mankind, the
+creator of all living things; and the next step was to give these
+maternal functions material expression, and personify the cowry as an
+actual woman in the form of a statuette with the distinctly feminine
+characters grossly exaggerated;[260] and in the domain of belief to
+create the image of a Great Mother, who was the parent of the universe.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 18 (a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer
+showing, perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners of
+the palette) as a woman with cow's horns and ears (compare Flinders
+Petrie, "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part I, 1900, Plate
+XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt from which are suspended
+four cow-headed Hathor figures in place of the cowry-amulets of more
+primitive peoples. This affords corroboration of the view that Hathor
+assumed the functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell.
+
+(b) The king's _sporran_, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the
+cowries of the primitive girdle.]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 19.--The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic
+representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners), one of the
+ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America (after Maudslay's
+photograph and diagram).
+
+The girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (_Oliva_ or
+_Conus_) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to the
+Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18).]
+
+Thus gradually there developed out of the cowry-amulet the conception of
+a creator, the giver of life, health, and good luck. This Great Mother,
+at first with only vaguely defined traits, was probably the first deity
+that the wit of man devised to console him with her watchful care over
+his welfare in this life and to give him assurance as to his fate in
+the future.
+
+At this stage I should like to emphasize the fact that these beliefs had
+taken shape long before any definite ideas had been formulated as to the
+physiology of animal reproduction and before agriculture was practised.
+
+Man had not yet come to appreciate the importance of vegetable
+fertility, nor had he yet begun to frame theories of the fertilizing
+powers of water, or give specific expression to them by creating the god
+Osiris in his own image.
+
+Nor had he begun to take anything more than the most casual interest in
+the sun, the moon, and the stars. He had not yet devised a sky-world nor
+created a heaven. When, for reasons that I have already discussed,[261]
+the theory of the fertilizing and the animating power of water was
+formulated, the beliefs concerning this element were assimilated with
+those which many ages previously had grown up in explanation of the
+potency of blood and shells. In addition to fertilizing the earth, water
+could also animate the dead. The rivers and the seas were in fact a vast
+reservoir of this animating substance. The powers of the cowry, as a
+product of the sea, were rationalized into an expression of the great
+creative force of the water.
+
+A bowl of water became the symbol of the fruitfulness of woman. Such
+symbolism implied that woman, or her uterus, was a receptacle into which
+the seminal fluid was poured and from which a new being emerged in a
+flood of amniotic fluid.
+
+The burial of shells with the dead is an extremely ancient practice, for
+cowries have been found upon human skeletons of the so-called "Upper
+Palæolithic Age" of Southern Europe.
+
+At Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne) Mediterranean cowries were found arranged
+in pairs upon the body; two pairs on the forehead, one near each arm,
+four in the region of the thighs and knees, and two upon each foot.
+Others were found in the Mentone caves, and are peculiarly important,
+because, upon the same stratum as the skeleton with which they were
+associated, was found part of a _Cassis rufa_, a shell whose habitat
+does not extend any nearer than the Indian Ocean.[262]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts
+worn in (a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively.
+
+(c) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the
+Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones, and
+what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of cowries.
+
+(d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads of
+deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt between
+the heads recall Hathor's sistra.]
+
+These facts are very important. In the first place they reveal the great
+antiquity of the practice of burying shells with the dead, presumably
+for the purpose of "life-giving". Secondly, they suggest the possibility
+that their magical value as givers of life may be more ancient than
+their specific use as intensifiers of the fertility of women. Thirdly,
+the association of these practices with the use of the shell _Cassis
+rufa_ indicates a very early cultural contact between the people living
+upon the North-Western shores of the Mediterranean in the Reindeer Age
+and the dwellers on the coasts of the Indian Ocean; and the
+probability that these special uses of shells by the former were
+inspired by the latter.
+
+This hint assumes a special significance when we first get a clear view
+of the more fully-developed shell-cults of the Eastern Mediterranean
+many centuries later.[263] For then we find definite indications that
+the cultural uses of shells were obviously borrowed from the Erythræan
+area.
+
+Long before the shell-amulet became personified as a woman the
+Mediterranean people had definitely adopted the belief in the cowry's
+ability to give life and birth.
+
+
+[258: As it is still called in the Semitic languages. In the Egyptian
+Pyramid Texts there is a reference to a new being formed "by the vulva
+of Tefnut" (Breasted).]
+
+[259: Many customs and beliefs of primitive peoples suggest that this
+correlation of the attributes of blood and shells went much deeper than
+the similarity of their use in burial ceremonies and for making
+necklaces and bracelets. The fact that the monthly effusion of blood in
+women ceased during pregnancy seems to have given rise to the theory,
+that the new life of the child was actually formed from the blood thus
+retained. The beliefs that grew up in explanation of the placenta form
+part of the system of interpretation of these phenomena: for the
+placenta was regarded as a mass of clotted blood (intimately related to
+the child which was supposed to be derived from part of the same
+material) which harboured certain elements of the child's mentality
+(because blood was the substance of consciousness).]
+
+[260: See S. Reinach, "Les Déesses Nues dans l'Art Oriental et dans
+l'Art Grec," _Revue Archéol._, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 367. Compare also the
+figurines of the so-called Upper Palæolithic Period in Europe.]
+
+[261: Chapter I.]
+
+[262: The literature relating to these important discoveries has been
+summarized by Wilfrid Jackson in his "Shells as Evidence of the
+Migrations of Early Culture," pp. 135-7.]
+
+[263: Cowries were obtained in Neolithic sites at Hissarlik and Spain
+(Siret, _op. cit._, p. 18).]
+
+
+The Origin of Clothing.
+
+The cowry and its surrogates were supposed to be potent to confer
+fertility on maidens; and it became the practice for growing girls to
+wear a girdle on which to suspend the shells as near as possible to the
+organ their magic was supposed to stimulate. Among many peoples[264]
+this girdle was discarded as soon as the girls reached maturity.
+
+This practice probably represents the beginning of the history of
+clothing; but it had other far-reaching effects in the domain of belief.
+
+It has often been claimed that the feeling of modesty was not the reason
+for the invention of clothing, but that the clothes begat modesty.[265]
+This doctrine contains a certain element of truth, but is by no means
+the whole explanation. For true modesty is displayed by people who have
+never worn clothes.
+
+Before mankind could appreciate the psychological fact that the wearing
+of clothing might add to an individual's allurement and enhance her
+sexual attractiveness, some other circumstances must have been
+responsible for suggesting the experiments out of which this empirical
+knowledge emerged. The use of a girdle (a) as a protection against
+danger to life, and (b) as a means of conferring fecundity on
+girls[266] provided the circumstances which enabled men to discover that
+the sexual attractiveness of maidens, which in a state of nature was
+originally associated with modesty and coyness, was profoundly
+intensified by the artifices of clothing and adornment.
+
+Among people (such as those of East Africa and Southern Arabia) in which
+it was customary for unmarried girls to adorn themselves with a girdle,
+it is easy to understand how the meaning of the practice underwent a
+change, and developed into a device for enhancing their charms and
+stimulating the imaginations of their suitors.
+
+Out of such experience developed the idea of the magical girdle as an
+allurement and a love-provoking charm or philtre. Thus Aphrodite's
+girdle acquired the reputation of being able to _compel_ love. When
+Ishtar removed her girdle in the under-world reproduction ceased in the
+world. The Teutonic Brunhild's great strength lay in her girdle. In fact
+magic virtues were conferred upon most goddesses in every part of the
+world by means of a cestus of some sort.[267] But the outstanding
+feature of Aphrodite's character as a goddess of love is intimately
+bound up with these conceptions which developed from the wearing of a
+girdle of cowries.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh).
+
+(a) The mother-goddess standing upon a lioness (which is her Sekhet
+form): she is wearing her girdle, and upon her head is the moon and the
+cow's horns, conventionalized so as to simulate the crescent moon. Her
+hair is represented in the conventional form which is sometimes used as
+Hathor's symbol. In her hands are the serpent and the lotus, which again
+are merely forms of the goddess herself.
+
+(b) Another picture of Astarte (from Roscher's "Lexikon") holding the
+papyrus sceptre which at times is regarded as an animate form of the
+mother-goddess herself and as such a thunder weapon.]
+
+In the Biblical narrative, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden
+fruit, "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
+naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons,"
+or, as the Revised Version expresses it, "girdles". The girdle of
+fig-leaves, however, was originally a surrogate of the girdle of
+cowries: it was an amulet to give fertility. The consciousness of
+nakedness was part of the knowledge acquired as _the result_ of the
+wearing of such girdles (and the clothing into which they developed),
+and was not originally the motive that impelled our remote ancestors to
+clothe themselves.
+
+The use of fig-leaves for the girdle in Palestine is an interesting
+connecting link between the employment of the cowry and the mandrake for
+similar purposes in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and in Cyprus and
+Syria respectively (_vide infra_).
+
+In Greece and Italy, the sweet basil has a reputation for magical
+properties analogous to those of the cowry. Maidens collect the plant
+and wear bunches of it upon their body or upon their girdles; while
+married women fix basil upon their heads.[268] It is believed that the
+odour of the plant will attract admirers: hence in Italy it is called
+_Bacia-nicola_. "Kiss me, Nicholas".[269]
+
+In Crete it is a sign of mourning presumably because its life-prolonging
+attributes, as a means of conferring continued existence to the dead,
+have been so rationalized in explanation of its use at funerals.
+
+On New Year's day in Athens boys carry a boat and people remark, "St.
+Basil is come from Cæsarea".
+
+
+[264: See Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 139 _et seq._]
+
+[265: For a discussion of this subject see the chapter on "The
+Psychology of Modesty and Clothing," in William I. Thomas's "Sex and
+Society," Chicago, 1907; also S. Reinach, "Cults, Myths, and Religions,"
+p. 177; and Paton, "The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall," _Revue
+Archéol._, Serie IV. T. IX, 1907, p. 51.]
+
+[266: It is important to remember that shell-girdles were used by both
+sexes for general life-giving and luck-bringing purposes, in the
+funerary ritual of both sexes, in animating the dead or statues of the
+dead, to attain success in hunting, fishing, and head-hunting, as well
+as in games. Thus men also at times wore shells upon their belts or
+aprons, and upon their implements and fishing nets, and adorned their
+trophies of war and the chase with them. Such customs are found in all
+the continents of the Old World and also in America, as, for example, in
+the girdles of _Conus_- and _Oliva_-shells worn by the figures
+sculptured upon the Copan stelæ. See, for example, Maudslay's pictures
+of stele N, Plate 82 (Biologia Centrali-Americana; Archæology) _inter
+alia_. But they were much more widely used by women, not merely by
+maidens, but also by brides and married women, to heighten their
+fertility and cure sterility, and by pregnant women to ensure safe
+delivery in childbirth. It was their wider employment by women that
+gives these shells their peculiar cultural significance.]
+
+[267: Witness the importance of the girdle in early Indian and American
+sculptures: in the literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Western Europe, and
+the Mediterranean area. For important Indian analogies and Egyptian
+parallels see Moret, "Mystères Égyptiens," p. 91, especially note 3. The
+magic girdle assumed a great variety of forms as the number of
+surrogates of the cowry increased. The mugwort (Artemisia) of Artemis
+was worn in the girdle on St. John's Eve (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p.
+91): the people of Zante use vervain in the same way; the people of
+France (Creuse et Corrères) rye-stalks; Eve's fig-leaves; in Vedic India
+the initiate wore the "cincture of Munga's herbs"; and Kali had her
+girdle of hands. Breasted, ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p.
+29) says: "In the oldest fragments we hear of Isis the great, who
+_fastened on the girdle_ in Khemmis, when she brought her [censer] and
+burned incense before her son Horus."]
+
+[268: This distinction between the significance of the amulet when worn
+on the girdle and on the head (in the hair), or as a necklace or
+bracelet, is very widespread. On the girdle it _usually_ has the
+significance of stimulating the individual's fertility: worn elsewhere
+it was intended to ward off danger to life, _i.e._ to give good luck. An
+interesting surrogate of Hathor's distinctive emblem is the necklace of
+golden apples worn by a priestess of Apollo (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._,
+p. 42).]
+
+[269: De Gubernatis, "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 35.]
+
+
+Pearls.
+
+During the chequered history of the Great Mother the attributes of the
+original shell-amulet from which the goddess was sprung were also
+changing and being elaborated to fit into a more complex scheme. The
+magical properties of the cowry came to be acquired by other Red Sea
+shells, such as _Pterocera_, the pearl oyster, conch shells, and others.
+Each of these became intimately associated with the moon.[270] The
+pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little moons, drops of
+the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky into the gaping
+oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of "shining by night," like
+the moon from which they were believed to have come: and every surrogate
+of the Great Mother, whether plant, animal, mineral or mythical
+instrument, came to be endowed with the power of "shining by night". But
+pearls were also regarded as the quintessence of the shell's life-giving
+properties, which were considered to be all the more potent because they
+were sky-given emanations of the moon-goddess herself. Hence pearls
+acquired the reputation of being the "givers of life" _par excellence_,
+an idea which found literal expression in the ancient Persian word
+_margan_ (from _mar_, "giver" and _gan_, "life"). This word has been
+borrowed in all the Turanian languages (ranging from Hungary to
+Kamskatckha), but also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia,
+thence through Greek and Latin (_margarita_) to European languages.[271]
+The same life-giving attributes were also acquired by the other
+pearl-bearing shells; and at some subsequent period, when it was
+discovered that some of these shells could be used as trumpets, the
+sound produced was also believed to be life-giving or the voice of the
+great Giver of Life. The blast of the trumpet was also supposed to be
+able to animate the deity and restore his consciousness, so that he
+could attend to the appeals of supplicants. In other words the noise
+woke up the god from his sleep. Hence the shell-trumpet attained an
+important significance in early religious ceremonials for the ritual
+purpose of summoning the deity, especially in Crete and India, and
+ultimately in widely distant parts of the world.[272] Long before these
+shells are known to have been used as trumpets, they were employed like
+the other Red Sea shells as "givers of life" to the dead in Egypt. Their
+use as trumpets was secondary.
+
+And when it was discovered that purple dye could be obtained from
+certain of the trumpet-shells, the colouring-matter acquired the same
+life-giving powers as had already been conferred upon the trumpet and
+the pearls: thus it became regarded as a divine substance and as the
+exclusive property of gods and kings.
+
+Long before, the colour red had acquired magic potency as a surrogate of
+life-giving blood; and this colour-symbolism undoubtedly helped in the
+development of the similar beliefs concerning purple.
+
+
+[270: For the details see Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 57-69. Both the
+shells and the moon were identified with the Great Mother. Hence they
+were homologized the one with the other.]
+
+[271: Dr. Mingana has given me the following note: "It is very probable
+that the Græco-Latin _margarita_, the Aramæo-Syriac _margarita_, the
+Arabic _margan_, and the Turanian _margan_ are derived from the Persian
+_mar-gân_, meaning both 'pearl' and 'life,' or etymologically 'giver,
+owner, or possessor, of life'. The word _g�n_, in Zend _y�n_, is
+thoroughly Persian and is undoubtedly the original form of this
+expression."]
+
+[272: See Chapter II of Jackson's book, _op. cit._]
+
+
+Sharks and Dragons.
+
+When the life-giving attributes of water were confused with the same
+properties with which shells had independently been credited long
+before, the shell's reputation was rationalized as an expression of the
+vital powers of the ocean in which the mollusc was born. But the same
+explanation was also extended to include fishes, and other denizens of
+the water, as manifestations of similar divine powers. In the lecture on
+"Dragons and Rain Gods" I referred to the identification of Ea, the
+Babylonian Osiris, with a fish (p. 105). When the value of the pearl as
+the giver of life impelled men to incur any risks to obtain so precious
+an amulet, the chief dangers that threatened pearl-fishers were due to
+sharks. These came to be regarded as demons guarding the treasure-houses
+at the bottom of the sea. Out of these crude materials the imaginations
+of the early pearl-fishers created the picture of wonderful submarine
+palaces of Nâga kings in which vast wealth, not merely of pearls, but
+also of gold, precious stones, and beautiful maidens (all of them
+"givers of life," _vide infra_, p. 224), were placed under the
+protection of shark-dragons.[273] The conception of the pearl (which is
+a surrogate of the life-giving Great Mother) guarded by dragons is
+linked by many bonds of affinity with early Erythræan and Mediterranean
+beliefs. The more usual form of the story, both in Southern Arabian
+legend and in Minoan and Mycenæan art, represents the Mother Goddess
+incarnate in a sacred tree or pillar with its protecting dragons in the
+form of serpents or lions, or a variety of dragon-surrogates, either
+real animals, such as deer or cattle, or composite monsters (Fig.
+26).[274]
+
+There are reasons for believing that these stories were first invented
+somewhere on the shores of the Erythræan Sea, probably in Southern
+Arabia. The animation of the incense-tree by the Great Mother, for the
+reasons which I have already expounded,[275] formed the link of her
+identification with the pearl, which probably acquired its magical
+reputation in the same region.
+
+"In the Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing in the
+lake Vourukasha: the fish Khar-mâhi circles protectingly around it and
+defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life, children to
+women, husbands to girls, and horses to men. In the Minôkhired the tree
+is called 'the preparer of the corpse'" (Spiegel, "Eran. Altertumskunde,"
+II, 115--quoted by Jung, "Psychology of the Unconscious," p. 532). The
+idea of guarding the divine tree[276] by dragons was probably the result
+of the transference to that particular surrogate of the Great Mother of
+the shark-stories which originated from the experiences of the seekers
+after pearls, her other representatives.
+
+There are many other bits of corroborative evidence to suggest that
+these shell-cults and the legends derived from them were actually
+transmitted from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. Nor is it
+surprising that this should have happened, when it is recalled that
+Egyptian sailors were trafficking in both seas long before the Pyramid
+Age, and no doubt carried the beliefs and the legends of one region to
+the other. I have already referred to the adoption in the Mediterranean
+area of the idea of the dragon-protectors of the tree- and pillar-forms
+of the Great Mother, and suggested that this was merely a garbled
+version of the pearl-fisher's experience of the dangers of attacks by
+sharks. But the same legends also reached the Levant in a less modified
+form, and then underwent another kind of transformation (and confusion
+with the tree-version) in Cyprus or Syria.
+
+As the shark would be a not wholly appropriate actor in the
+Mediterranean, its rôle is taken by its smaller Selachian relative, the
+dog-fish. In the notes on Pliny's Natural History, Dr. Bostock and Mr.
+H. T. Riley[277] refer to the habits of dog-fishes ("Canes marini"), and
+quote from Procopius ("De Bell. Pers." B. I, c. 4) the following
+"wonderful story in relation to this subject": "Sea-dogs are wonderful
+admirers of the pearl-fish, and follow them out to sea.... A certain
+fisherman, having watched for the moment when the shell-fish was
+deprived of the attention of its attendant sea-dog, ... seized the
+shell-fish and made for the shore. The sea-dog, however, was soon aware
+of the theft, and making straight for the fisherman, seized him. Finding
+himself thus caught, he made a last effort, and threw the pearl-fish on
+shore, immediately on which he was torn to pieces by its
+protector."[278]
+
+Though the written record of this story is relatively modern the
+incident thus described probably goes back to much more ancient times.
+It is only a very slightly modified version of an ancient narrative of a
+shark's attack upon a pearl-diver.
+
+For reasons which I shall discuss in the following pages, the rôle of
+the cowry and pearl as representatives of the Great Mother was in the
+Levant assumed by the mandrake, just as we have already seen the
+Southern Arabian conception of her as a tree adopted in Mycenæan lands.
+Having replaced the sea-shell by a land plant it became necessary, in
+adapting the legend, to substitute for the "sea-dog" some land animal.
+Not unnaturally it became a dog. Thus the story of the dangers incurred
+in the process of digging up a mandrake assumed the well-known
+form.[279] The attempt to dig up the mandrake was said to be fraught
+with great danger. The traditional means of circumventing these risks
+has been described by many writers, ancient and modern, and preserved in
+the folk-lore of most European and western Asiatic countries. The story
+as told by Josephus is as follows: "They dig a trench round it till the
+hidden part of the root is very small, then they tie a dog to it, and
+when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily
+plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man
+that would take the plant away."[280] Thus the dog takes the place of
+the dog-fish when the mandrake becomes the pearl's surrogate. The only
+discrepancy between the two stories is the point to which Josephus calls
+specific attention. For instead of the dog killing the thief, as the
+shark (dog-fish) kills the stealer of pearls, the dog becomes the victim
+as a substitute for the man. As Josephus remarks, "the dog dies
+immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant
+away". This distortion of the story is true to the traditions of
+legend-making. The dog-incident is so twisted as to be transformed into
+a device for plucking the dangerous plant without risk.
+
+It is quite possible that earlier associations of the dog with the Great
+Mother may have played some part in this transference of meaning, if
+only by creating confusion which made such rationalization necessary. I
+refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the
+fragments of Osiris; and the rôle played by Anubis, and his Greek
+_avatar_ Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the association of
+the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with the confusion is
+uncertain.[281]
+
+There was an intimate association of the dog with the goddess of the
+under-world (Hecate) and the ritual of rebirth of the dead.[282] Perhaps
+the development of the story of the underworld-goddess Aphrodite's dog
+and the mandrake may have been helped by this survival of the
+association of Isis with Anubis, even if there is not a more definite
+causal relationship between the dog-incidents in the various legends.
+
+The divine dog Anubis is frequently represented in connexion with the
+ritual of rebirth,[283] where it is shown upon a standard in association
+with the placenta. The hieroglyphic sign for the Egyptian word _mes_,
+"to give birth," consists of the skins of three dogs (or jackals, or
+foxes). The three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded the portal of Hades
+may possibly be a distorted survival of this ancient symbolism of the
+three-fold dog-skin as the graphic sign for the act of emergence from
+the portal of birth. Elsewhere (p. 223) in this lecture I have referred
+to Charon's _obolus_ as a surrogate of the life-giving pearl or cowry
+placed in the mouth of the dead to provide "vital substance". Rohde[284]
+regards Charon as the second Cerberus, corresponding to the Egyptian
+dog-faced god Anubis: just as Charon received his _obolus_, so in Attic
+custom the dead were provided with [Greek: melitoutia] the object of
+which is usually said to be to pacify the dog of hell.
+
+What seems to link all these fantastic beliefs and customs with the
+story of the dog and the mandrake is the fact that they are closely
+bound up with the conception of the dog as the guardian of hidden
+treasure.
+
+The mandrake story may have arisen out of a mingling of these two
+streams of legend--the shark (dog-fish) protecting the treasures at the
+bottom of the sea, and the ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning the
+dog-headed god who presides at the embalmer's operations and
+superintends the process of rebirth.
+
+The dog of the story is a representative of the dragon guarding the
+goddess in the form of the mandrake, just as the lions over the gate at
+Mycenæ heraldically support her pillar-form, or the serpents in Southern
+Arabia protect her as an incense tree. Dog, Lion, and Serpent in these
+legends are all representatives of the goddess herself, i.e. merely her
+own _avatars_ (Fig. 26).
+
+At one time I imagined that the rôle of Anubis as a god of embalming and
+the restorer of the dead was merely an ingenuous device on the part of
+the early Egyptians to console themselves for the depredations of
+jackals in their cemeteries. For if the jackal were converted into a
+life-giving god it would be a comforting thought to believe that the
+dead man, even though devoured, was "in the bosom of his god" and
+thereby had attained a rebirth in the hereafter. In ancient Persia
+corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour. There was also the
+custom of leading a dog to the bed of a dying man who presented him with
+food, just as Cerberus was given honey-cakes by Hercules in his journey
+to hell. But I have not been able to obtain any corroboration of this
+supposition. It is a remarkable coincidence that the Great Mother has
+been identified with the necrophilic vulture as Mut; and it has been
+claimed by some writers[285] that, just as the jackal was regarded as a
+symbol of rebirth in Egypt and the dead were exposed for dogs to devour
+in Persia, so the vulture's corpse-devouring habits may have been
+primarily responsible for suggesting its identification with the Great
+Mother and for the motive behind the Indian practice of leaving the
+corpses of the dead for the vultures to dispose of.[286] It is not
+uncommon to find, even in English cathedrals, recumbent statues of
+bishops with dogs as footstools. Petronius ("Sat.," c. 71) makes the
+following statement: "valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae
+catellam pingas--ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem
+vivere".[287] The belief in the dog's service as a guide to the dead
+ranges from Western Europe to Peru.
+
+To return to the story of the dog and the mandrake: no doubt the demand
+will be made for further evidence that the mandrake actually assumed the
+rôle of the pearl in these stories. If the remarkable repertory of
+magical properties assigned to the mandrake[288] be compared with those
+which developed in connexion with the cowry and the pearl,[289] it will
+be found that the two series are identical. The mandrake also is the
+giver of life, of fertility to women, of safety in childbirth; and like
+the cowry and the pearl it exerts these magical influences only if it be
+worn in contact with the wearer's skin.[290] But the most definite
+indication of the mandrake's homology with the pearl is provided by the
+legend that "it shines by night". Some scholars,[291] both ancient and
+modern, have attempted to rationalize this tradition by interpreting it
+as a reference to the glow-worms that settle on the plant! But it is
+only one of many attributes borrowed by the mandrake from the pearl,
+which was credited with this remarkable reputation only when early
+scientists conceived the hypothesis that the gem was a bit of moon
+substance.
+
+As the memory of the real history of these beliefs grew dim, confusion
+was rapidly introduced into the stories. I have already explained how
+the diving for pearls started the story of the great palace of treasures
+under the waters which was guarded by dragons. As the pearl had the
+reputation of shining by night, it is not surprising that it or some of
+its surrogates should in course of time come to be credited with the
+power of "revealing hidden treasures," the treasures which in the
+original story were the pearls themselves. Thus the magic fern-seed and
+other treasure-disclosing vegetables[292] are surrogates of the
+mandrake, and like it derive their magical properties directly or
+indirectly from the pearl.
+
+The fantastic story of the dog and the mandrake provides the most
+definite evidence of the derivation of the mandrake-beliefs from the
+shell-cults of the Erythræan Sea. There are many other scraps of
+evidence to corroborate this. I shall refer here only to one of these.
+"The discovery of the art of purple-dyeing has been attributed to the
+Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many
+writers. According to Julius Pollux ('Onomasticon,' I, iv.) and Nonnus
+('Dionys.,' XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on the seashore
+accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom he was enamoured. The
+dog having found a _Murex_ with its head protruding from its shell,
+devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained with purple. The nymph,
+on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained with Hercules to provide her
+with a robe of like splendour."[293] This seems to be another variant of
+the same story.
+
+
+[273: In Eastern Asia (see, for example, Shinji Nishimura, "The
+Hisago-Bune," Tokio, 1918, published by the Tokio Society of Naval
+Architects, p. 18, where the dragon is identified with the _wani_, which
+can be either a crocodile or a shark); in Oceania (L. Frobenius, "Das
+Zeitalter des Sonnengottes," Bd. I., 1904, and C. E. Fox and F. H. Drew,
+"Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval," _Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 140); and in America (see
+Thomas Gann, "Mounds in Northern Honduras," _Nineteenth Annual Report of
+the Bureau of American Ethnology_, 1897-8, Part II, p. 661) the dragon
+assumes the form of a shark, a crocodile, or a variety of other
+animals.]
+
+[274: Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," _op. cit.
+supra_: W. Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," _op. cit._:
+and Robertson Smith, "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133: "In
+Hadramant it is still dangerous to touch the sensitive mimosa, because
+the spirit that resides in the plant will avenge the injury". When men
+interfere with the incense trees it is reported: "the demons of the
+place flew away with doleful cries in the shape of white serpents, and
+the intruders died soon afterwards".]
+
+[275: _Vide supra_, p. 38.]
+
+[276: In Western mythology the dragon guarding the fruit-bearing tree of
+life is also identified with the Mother of Mankind (Campbell, "Celtic
+Dragon Myth," pp. xli and 18). Thus the tree and its defender are both
+surrogates of the Great Mother. When Eve ate the apple from the tree of
+Paradise she was committing an act of cannibalism, for the plant was
+only another form of herself. Her "sin" consisted in aspiring to attain
+the immortality which was the exclusive privilege of the gods. This
+incident is analogous to that found in the Indian tales where mortals
+steal the _amrita_. By Eve's sin "death came into the world" for the
+paradoxical reason that she had eaten the food of the gods which gives
+immortality. The punishment meted out to her by the Almighty seems to
+have been to inhibit the life-giving and birth-facilitating action of
+the fruit of immortality, so that she and all her progeny were doomed to
+be mortal and to suffer the pangs of child-bearing.
+
+There was a widespread belief among the ancients that ceremonies in
+connexion with the gods must (to be efficacious) be done in the reverse
+of the usual human way (Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 201). So also
+an act which gives immortality to the gods, brings death to man.
+
+The full realization of the fact that man was mortal imposed upon the
+early theologians the necessity of explaining the immortality of the
+gods. The elixir of life was the food of the gods that conferred eternal
+life upon them. By one of those paradoxes so dear to the maker of myths
+this same elixir brought death to man.]
+
+[277: Bohn's Edition, 1855, Vol. II, p. 433.]
+
+[278: A Cretan scene depicts a man attacking a dog-headed sea-monster
+(Mackenzie, _op. cit._, "Myths of Crete," p. 139).]
+
+[279: A number of versions of this widespread fable have been collected
+by Dr. Rendel Harris (_op. cit._) and Sir James Frazer (_op. cit._). I
+quote here from the former (p. 118).]
+
+[280: Josephus, "Bell. Jud.," VII, 6, 3, quoted by Rendel Harris, _op.
+cit._, p. 118.]
+
+[281: The dog-star became associated with Hathor for reasons which are
+explained on p. 209. It was "the opener of the Way" for the birth of the
+sun and the New Year.]
+
+[282: When Artemis acquired the reputation as a huntress and her deer
+became her quarry the dog was rationalized into the new scheme.]
+
+[283: See, for example, Moret's "Mystères Égyptiens," pp. 77-80.]
+
+[284: "Psyche," p. 244.]
+
+[285: See, for example, Jung, _op. cit._, p. 268.]
+
+[286: Nekhebit, the Egyptian Vulture goddess, was identified by the
+Greeks with Eileithyia, the goddess of birth (Wiedemann, "Religion of
+the Ancient Egyptians," p. 141). She was usually represented as a
+vulture hovering over the king. Her place can be taken by the falcon of
+Horus or in the Babylonian story of Etana by the eagle. In the Indian
+Mahábhárata the Garuda is described as "the bird of life ... destroyer
+of all, creator of all".]
+
+[287: Quoted by Jung, _op. cit._, p. 530.]
+
+[288: See Rendel Harris (_op. cit._) and Sir James Frazer (_op. cit._).]
+
+[289: Jackson, _op. cit._]
+
+[290: An interesting rationalization (of which Mr. T. H. Pear has kindly
+reminded me) of this ancient Oriental belief is still alive amongst
+British women. It is maintained that pearls "lose their lustre" unless
+they are worn in contact with the skin. This of course is a pure myth,
+but also an illuminating survival.]
+
+[291: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 16, especially the references to the
+"devil's candle" and "the lamp of the elves".]
+
+[292: Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 113: Other factors played a part in
+the development of this legend of opening up treasure-houses. Both
+Artemis and Hecate are associated with a magical plant capable of
+opening locks and helping the process of birth. Artemis is a goddess of
+the portal and her life-giving symbol in a multitude of varied forms is
+found appropriately placed above the lintel of doors.]
+
+[293: Jackson, _op. cit._, p. 195.]
+
+
+The Octopus.
+
+Aphrodite was associated not only with the cowry, the pearl, and the
+mandrake, but also with the octopus, the argonaut, and other
+cephalopods. Tümpel seems to imagine that the identification of the
+goddess with the argonaut and the octopus necessarily excludes her
+association with molluscs; and Dr. Rendel Harris attributes an equally
+exclusive importance to the mandrake. But in such methods of argument
+due recognition is not given to the outstanding fact in the history of
+primitive beliefs. The early philosophers built up their great
+generalizations in the same way as their modern successors. They were
+searching for some explanation of, or a working hypothesis to include,
+most diverse natural phenomena within a concise scheme. The very essence
+of such attempts was the institution of a series of homologies and
+fancied analogies between dissimilar objects. Aphrodite was at one and
+the same time the personification of the cowry, the conch shell, the
+purple shell, the pearl, the lotus, and the lily, the mandrake and the
+bryony, the incense tree and the cedar, the octopus and the argonaut,
+the pig, and the cow.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 21.--(a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A.
+Reisner in the temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh
+Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess Hathor, represented
+as a woman with the moon and the cow's horns upon her head, and on the
+left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon her head the jackal-symbol of
+her nome.
+
+(b) The Ecuador Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro Jaboncillo (after
+Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907,
+Plate XXXVIII).
+
+A grotesque composite monster intended to represent a woman (compare
+Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a
+conventionalized Octopus, whose body is a _Loligo_, and whose limbs
+are human.]
+
+Every one of these identifications is the result of a long and chequered
+history, in which fancied resemblances and confusion of meaning play a
+very large part. But I cannot too strongly repudiate the claim made by
+Sir James Frazer that such events are merely so many evidences of the
+innate human tendency to personify nature. The history of the arbitrary
+circumstances that were responsible for the development of each one of
+these homologies is entirely fatal to this wholly unwarranted
+speculation.[294] Tümpel claims[295] the Aphrodite was associated more
+especially with "a species of _Sepia_". He refers to the attempts to
+associate the goddess of love with amulets of univalvular shells "in
+virtue of a certain peculiar and obscene symbolism".[296] Naturalists,
+however, designate with the term _Venus Cytherea_ certain gaping
+bivalve molluscs.
+
+But, according to Tümpel (p. 386), neither univalvular nor bivalve
+shells can be regarded as a real part of the goddess's cultural
+equipment. There is no representation of Aphrodite coming in a shell
+from across the sea.[297] The truly sacred Aphrodite-shell was entirely
+different, so Tümpel believes: it was obviously difficult to preserve,
+but for that reason more worthy of notice, for the small [Greek:
+choirinai] (pectines), virginalia marina (Apuleius de mag. 34, 35, and
+in reference thereto, Isidor. origg. 9, 5, 24) or spuria ([Greek:
+sporia]) were only the commoner and more readily obtained surrogates:
+the univalvular shells.
+
+([Greek: monothyra] of Aristotle), such as those just mentioned, and the
+other [Greek: ostrea] of Aphrodite, the Nerites (periwinkles, etc.), the
+purple shell and the Echineïs were also real Veneriae conchae. Among the
+Nerites Aelian enumerates (N.A. 14, 28): [Greek: Aphroditên de
+syndiaitômenên en tê thalattê hêsthênai te tô Nêritê tôde kai echein
+auton philon]. On account of their supposed medicinal value in cases of
+abortion and especially as a prophylactic for pregnant women the [Greek:
+Echenêis] (pure Latin re[mi]mora) was called [Greek: ôdinolytê][298]
+(Pliny, 32, 1, 5: pisciculus!). According to Mutianus (Pliny, 9, 25
+(41), 79 f.), it was a species of purple shell, but larger than the true
+_Murex purpura_. From this the sanctity of the Echineïs to the Cnidian
+Aphrodite is demonstrated: "quibus (conchis) inhaerentibus plenam ventis
+stetisse navem portantem Periandro, ut castrarentur nobilis pueros,
+conchasque, quae id praestiterint, apud Cnidiorum Venerem coli" (Pliny).
+
+Tümpel then (p. 387) accuses Stephani of being mistaken in his
+interpretation of Martial's Cytheriacae (Epign. II, 47, 1 = purple
+shells) as the amulets of Aphrodite, and claims that Jahn has given the
+correct solution of the following passages from Pliny (N.H., 9, 33 [52],
+103, compare 32, 11 [53]): "navigant ex his (conchis) veneriae,
+praebentesque concavam sui partem et aurae opponentes per summa aequorum
+velificant"; and further (9, 30[49], 94): "in Propontide concham esse
+acatii modo carinatam inflexa puppe, prora rostrata, in hac condi
+nauplium animal saepiae simile ludendi societate sola, duobus hoc fieri
+generibus: tranquillum enim vectorem demissis palmulis ferire ut remis;
+si vero flatus invitet, easdem in usu gubernaculi porrigi pandique
+buccarum sinus aurae".
+
+Tümpel claims (pp. 387 and 388) that this quotation settles the
+question. Aphrodite's "shell," according to him, is the _Nauplius_
+(depicted as a shell-fish, with its sail-like palmulæ spread out to the
+wind, but with the same sails flattened into plate-like arms for
+steering), clearly "a species of _Sepia_," wholly like Aphrodite
+herself, a ship-like shell-fish sailing over the surface of the water,
+the concha veneria. [The analogy to a ship bearing the Great Mother is
+extremely ancient and originally referred to the crescent moon carrying
+the moon-goddess across the heavenly ocean.]
+
+Elsewhere (p. 399) he discusses the reasons for the connexion of
+Aphrodite with the "nautilus," by which is meant the argonaut of
+zoologists.
+
+But if Jahn and Tümpel have thus clearly established the proof of the
+intimate association of Aphrodite with certain cephalopods, they are
+wholly unjustified in the assumption that their quotations from
+relatively modern authors disprove the reality of the equally close
+(though more ancient) relationship of the goddess to the cowry, the
+pearl-shell, the trumpet-shell, and the purple-shell.
+
+It must not be forgotten that, as we have already seen, the primitive
+shell-cults of the Erythræan Sea had been diffused throughout the
+Mediterranean area long before Aphrodite was born upon the shores of the
+Levant, and possibly before Hathor came into existence in the south. The
+use of the cowry and gold models of the cowry goes back to an early time
+in Ægean history.[299] And the influence of Aphrodite's early
+associations had become blurred and confused by the development of new
+links with other shells and their surrogates.
+
+But the connexion of Aphrodite with the octopus and its kindred played a
+very obtrusive part in Minoan and Mycenæan art; and its influence was
+spread abroad as far as Western Europe[300] and towards the East as far
+as America. In many ways it was a factor in the development of such
+artistic designs as the spiral and the volute, and not improbably also
+of the swastika.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 22.--(a) _Sepia officinalis_, after Tryon,
+"Cephalopoda".
+
+(b) _Loligo vulgaris_, after Tryon.
+
+(c) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after Tryon.]
+
+Starting from the researches of Tümpel, a distinguished French
+zoologist, Dr. Frédéric Houssay,[301] sought to demonstrate that the
+cult of Aphrodite was "based upon a pre-existing zoological philosophy".
+The argument in support of his claim that Aphrodite was a
+personification of the octopus must be sharply differentiated into two
+parts: first, the reality of the association of the octopus with the
+goddess, of which there can be no doubt; and secondly, his explanation
+of it, which (however popular it may be with classical writers and
+modern scholars)[302] is not only a gratuitous assumption, but also,
+even if it were based upon more valid evidence than the speculations
+of such recent writers as Pliny, would not really carry the explanation
+very far.
+
+I refer to his claim that "les premiers conquérants de la mer furent
+induits en vénération du poulpe nageur (octopus) parce qu'ils crurent
+que quelque-uns de ces céphalopodes, les poulpes sacrés (argonauta)
+avaient, comme eux et avant eux, inventé la navigation" (_op. cit._, p.
+15). Idle fancies of this sort do not help us to understand the
+arbitrary beliefs concerning the magical powers of the octopus.
+
+The real problem we have to solve is to discover why, among all the
+multitude of bizarre creatures to be found in the Mediterranean Sea, the
+octopus and its allies should thus have been singled out for distinctive
+appreciation, and also acquired the same remarkable attributes as the
+cowry.
+
+I believe that the Red Sea "Spider shell," _Pterocera_,[303] was the
+link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like the
+cowry, for funerary purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India.[304]
+But it was also depicted upon a series of remarkable primitive statues
+of the god Min, which were found at Coptos during the winter 1893-4 by
+Professor Flinders Petrie.[305] Some of these objects are now in the
+Cairo Museum and the others in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. They are
+supposed to be late predynastic representations of the god Min. If this
+supposition is correct they are the earliest idols (apart from mere
+amulets) that have been preserved from antiquity.
+
+Upon these statues, representations of the Red Sea shell _Pterocera
+bryonia_ are sculptured in low relief. Mr. F. Ll. Griffith is
+disinclined to accept my suggestion that the object of these pictures of
+the shell was to animate the statues. But whether this was their purpose
+or not, it is probably not without some significance that these
+life-giving shells were associated with so obtrusively phallic a deity
+as Min. In any case they afford concrete evidence of cultural contact
+between Coptos and the Red Sea, and indicate that these particular
+shells were chosen as symbols of that sea or its coast.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5--Pterocera Bryonia. the Red Sea Spider-shell.
+_Col._--the columella 1-7--the "claws".]
+
+The distinctive feature of the _Pterocera_ is that the mantle in the
+adult expands into a series of long finger-like processes each of which
+secretes a calcareous process or "claw". There are seven[306] of these
+claws as well as the long columella (Fig. 5). Hence, when the
+shell-cults were diffused from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean (where
+the _Pterocera_ is not found), it is quite likely that the people of the
+Levant may have confused with the octopus some sailor's account of the
+eight-rayed shell (or perhaps representations of it on some amulet or
+statue). Whether this is the explanation of the confusion or not, it is
+certain that the beliefs associated with the cowry and the octopus in
+the Ægean area are identical with those linked up with the cowry and the
+_Pterocera_ in the Red Sea.
+
+I have already mentioned that the mandrake is believed to possess the
+same magical powers. Sir James Frazer has called attention to the fact
+that in Armenia the bryony (_Bryonia alba_) is a surrogate of the
+mandrake and is credited with the same attributes.[307] Lovell Reeve
+("Conchologia Iconica," VI, 1851) refers to the Red Sea _Pterocera_ as
+the "Wild Vine Root" species, previously known as _Strombus radix
+bryoniae_; and Chemnitz ("Conch. Cab.," 1788, Vol. X, p. 227) says the
+French call it "Racine de brione femelle imparfaite," and refer to it as
+"the maiden". Here then is further evidence that this shell (a) was
+associated in some way with a surrogate of the mandrake (Aphrodite), and
+(b) was regarded as a maiden. Thus clearly it has a place in the
+chequered history of Aphrodite. I have suggested the possibility of its
+confusion with the octopus, which may have led to the inclusion of the
+latter within the scope of the marine creatures in Aphrodite's cultural
+equipment. According to Matthioli (Lib. 2, p. 135), another of
+Aphrodite's creatures, the purple shell-fish, was also known as "the
+maiden". By Pliny it is called Pelogia, in Greek [Greek: porphyra]; and
+[Greek: porphyrômata] was the term applied to the flesh of swine that
+had been sacrificed to Ceres and Proserpine (Hesych.). In fact, the
+purple-shell was "the maiden" and also "the sow": in other words it was
+Aphrodite. The use of the term "maiden" for the _Pterocera_ suggests a
+similar identification. To complete this web of proof it may be noted
+that an old writer has called the mandrake the plant of Circe, the
+sorceress who turned men into swine by a magic draught.[308] Thus we
+have a series of shells, plants, and marine creatures accredited with
+identical magical properties, and each of them known in popular
+tradition as "the maiden". They are all culturally associated with
+Aphrodite.
+
+I shall have occasion (_infra_, p. 177) to refer to M. Siret's account
+of the discovery of the Ægean octopus-motif upon Æneolithic objects in
+Spain, and of the widespread use in Western Europe of certain
+conventional designs derived from the octopus. M. Siret also (see the
+table, Fig. 6, on p. 34 of his book) makes the remarkable claim that the
+conventional form of the Egyptian Bes, which, according to Quibell,[309]
+is the god whose function it is to preside over sexual intercourse in
+its purely physical aspect, is derived from the octopus. If this is
+true--and I am bound to admit that it is far from being proved--it
+suggests that the Red Sea littoral may have been the place of origin of
+the cultural use of the octopus and an association with Hathor, for Bes
+and Hathor are said to have been introduced into Egypt from there.[310]
+
+That the octopus was actually identified with the Great Mother and also
+with the dragon is revealed by the fact of the latter assuming an
+octopus-form in Eastern Asia and Oceania, and by the occurrence of
+octopus-motifs in the representation of the goddess in America. One of
+the most remarkable series of pictures depicting the Great Mother is
+found sculptured in low relief upon a number of stone slabs from Manabi
+in Central America,[311] one of which I reproduce here (Fig. 21_b_).
+The head of the goddess is a conventionalized octopus; to that was added
+a body consisting of a _Loligo_; and, to give greater definiteness to
+this remarkable process of building up the form of the goddess,
+conventional representations of her arms and legs (and in some of the
+sculptures also the _pudendum muliebre_) were added. Thus there can
+be no doubt of the identification of this American Aphrodite and
+the octopus.
+
+In the Polynesian Rata-myth there is a very instructive series of
+manifestations of the dragon.[312] The first form assumed by the monster
+in this story was a gaping shell-fish of enormous size; then it appeared
+as a mighty octopus; and lastly, as a whale, into whose jaws the hero
+Nganaoa sprang, as his representatives are said to have done elsewhere
+throughout the world (Frobenius, _op. cit._, pp. 59-219).
+
+Houssay (_op. cit. infra_) calls attention to the fact that at times
+Astarte was shown carrying an octopus as her emblem,[313] and has
+suggested that it was mistaken for a hand, just as in America the
+thunderbolt of Chac was given a hand-like form in the Dresden Codex
+(_vide supra_. Fig. 13), and elsewhere (_e.g._ Fig. 12).
+
+If this suggestion should prove to be well founded it would provide a
+more convincing explanation of the girdle of hands worn by the Indian
+goddess Kali[314] than that usually given. If the "hands" really
+represent surrogates of the cowry, the wearing of such a girdle brings
+the Indian goddess into line, not only with Astarte and Aphrodite, but
+also with the East African maidens who still wear the girdle of cowries.
+Kali's exploits were in many respects identical with those of the
+bloodthirsty Sekhet-manifestation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Just
+as Sekhet had to be restrained by Re for her excess of zeal in murdering
+his foes, so Siva had to intervene with Kali upon the battlefield
+flooded with gore (as also in the Egyptian story) to spare the remnant
+of his enemies.[315]
+
+
+[294: Sir James Frazer, "Jacob and the Mandrakes," _Proc. Brit.
+Academy_.]
+
+[295: K. Tümpel, "Die 'Muschel der Aphrodite,'" _Philologus, Zeitschrift
+für das Classische Alterthum_, Bd. 51, 1892, p. 385: compare also, with
+reference to the "Muschel der Aphrodite," O. Jahn, _SB. d. k. Sächs. G.
+d. W._, VII, 1853, p. 16 ff.; also IX, 1855, p. 80; and Stephani,
+_Compte rendu pour l'an 1870-71_, p. 17 ff.]
+
+[296: See Jahn, _op. cit._, 1855, T. V, 6, and T. IV, 8: figures of the
+so-called [Greek: Choirinai] (from [Greek: Choiros] in the double sense
+as "pig" and "the female pudendum"): Aristophanes, Eq. 1147; Vesp. 332;
+Pollux, 8, 16; Hesch. s.v.]
+
+[297: The fact that no graphic representation of this event has been
+found is surely a wholly inadequate reason for refusing to credit the
+story. Very few episodes in the sacred history of the gods received
+concrete expression in pictures or sculptures until relatively late. A
+Hellenistic representation of the goddess emerging from a bivalve was
+found in Southern Russia (Minns, "Scythians and Greeks," p. 345).
+
+Tümpel cites the following statements: "te (Venus) ex concha natam esse
+autumant: cave tu harum conchas spernas!" Tibull. 3, 3, 24: "et faveas
+concha, Cypria, vecta tua"; Statius Silv. 1, 2, 117: Venus to
+Violentilla, "haec et caeruleïs mecum consurgere digna fluctibus et
+nostra potuit considere concha"; Fulgent. myth. 2, 4 "concha etiam
+marina pingitur (Venus) portari (I. HS:--am portare)"; Paulus Diacon. p.
+52, "M. Cytherea Venus ab urbe Cythera, in quam primum devecta esse
+dicitur concha, cum in mari esset concepta cet".]
+
+[298: From [Greek: ôdino]--"to have the pains of childbirth".]
+
+[299: See Schliemann, "Ilios," p. 455; and Siret, _op. cit_.]
+
+[300: Siret, _op. cit. supra_, p. 59.]
+
+[301: "Les Théories de la Genèse à Mycènes et le sens zoologique de
+certains symboles du culte d'Aphrodite," _Revue Archéologique_, 3^ie
+série, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 13.]
+
+[302: It was adduced also by Tümpel and others before him.]
+
+[303: or _Pteroceras_.]
+
+[304: Jackson, _op. cit._, p. 38.]
+
+[305: "Koptos," pp. 7-9, Pls. III. and IV.: for a discussion of the
+significance of these statues see Jean Capart, "Les Débuts de l'Art en
+Égypte," Brussels, 1904, p. 216 _et seq._]
+
+[306: This may help to explain the peculiar sanctity of the shell.]
+
+[307: Frazer, _op. cit._, 4.]
+
+[308: Just as Hathor (or her surrogate Horus) turned men into the
+creatures of Set, _i.e._ pigs, crocodiles, _et cetera_.]
+
+[309: "Excavations at Saqqara," 1905-1906, p. 14.]
+
+[310: Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 34.]
+
+[311: Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," 1907.]
+
+[312: A detailed summary of the literature relating to the world-wide
+distribution of certain phases of the dragon-myth is given by Frobenius,
+"Das Zeitalter des Sonnesgottes," Berlin, 1904: on pp. 63-5 he gives the
+Rata-myth.]
+
+[313: Which can also be compared with the conventional form of the
+thunderbolt.]
+
+[314: Of course the hands had the additional significance as trophies of
+her murderous zeal. But I think this is a secondary rationalization of
+their meaning. An excellent photograph of a bronze statue (in the
+Calcutta Art Gallery), representing Kali with her girdle of hands, is
+given by Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie, "Indian Myth and Legend," p. xl.]
+
+[315: F. T. Elworthy has summarized the extensive literature relating to
+hand-amulets ("The Evil Eye," 1895; and "Horns of Honour," 1900). Many
+of these hands have the definite reputation as fertility charms which
+one would expect if Houssay's hypothesis of their derivation from the
+octopus is well founded.]
+
+
+The Swastika.
+
+Houssay (_op. cit. supra_) has made the interesting suggestion that the
+swastika may have been derived from such conventionalized
+representations of the octopus as are shown in Fig. 23. This series of
+sketches is taken from Tümpel's memoir, which provided the foundation
+for Houssay's hypothesis.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 23.--A series of Mycenæan conventionalizations of
+the Argonaut and the Octopus (after Tümpel), which provided the basis
+for Houssay's theory of the origin of the triskele (_a_, _c_, and _d_)
+and swastika (b and e), and Siret's theory to explain the design of
+Bes's face (f and g)]
+
+A vast amount of attention has been devoted to this lucky symbol,[316]
+which still enjoys a widespread vogue at the present day, after a
+history of several thousand years. Although so much has been written in
+attempted explanation of the swastika since Houssay made his suggestion,
+so far as I am aware no one has paid the slightest attention to his
+hypothesis or made even a passing reference to his memoir.[317]
+Fantastic and far-fetched though it may seem at first sight (though
+surely not more so than the strictly orthodox solar theory advocated by
+Mr. Cook or Mrs. Nuttall's astral speculations) Houssay's suggestion
+offers an explanation of some of the salient attributes of the swastika
+on which the alternative hypotheses shed little or no light.
+
+Among the earliest known examples of the symbol are those engraved upon
+the so-called "owl-shaped" (but, as Houssay has conclusively
+demonstrated, really octopus-shaped) vases and a metal figurine found by
+Schliemann in his excavations of the hill at Hissarlik.[318] The
+swastika is represented upon the _mons Veneris_ of these figures, which
+represent the Great Mother in her form as a woman or as a pot, which is
+an anthropomorphized octopus, one of the avatars of the Great Mother.
+The symbol seems to have been intended as a fertility amulet like the
+cowry, either suspended from a girdle or depicted upon a pubic shield or
+conventionalized fig-leaf.
+
+Wherever it is found the swastika is supposed to be an amulet to confer
+"good luck" and long life. Both this reputation and the association with
+the female organs of reproduction link up the symbol with the cowry, the
+_Pterocera_, and the octopus. It is clear then that the swastika has the
+same reputation for magic and the same attributes and associations as
+the octopus; and it may be a conventionalized representation of it, as
+Houssay has suggested.
+
+It must not be assumed that the identification of the swastika with the
+Great Mother and her powers of giving life and resurrection
+_necessarily_ invalidates the solar and astral theories recently
+championed by Mr. Cook and Mrs. Nuttall respectively. I have already
+called attention to the fact that the Sun-god derived his existence and
+all his attributes from his mother. The whole symbolism of the Winged
+Disk and the Wheel of the Sun and their reputation for life-giving and
+destruction were adopted from the Great Mother. These well-established
+facts should prepare us to recognize that the admission of the truth of
+Houssay's suggestion would not necessarily invalidate the more widely
+accepted solar significance of the swastika.
+
+Tümpel called attention to the fact that, when they set about
+conventionalizing the octopus, the Mycenæan artists often resorted to
+the practice of representing pairs of "arms" as units and so making
+four-limbed and three-limbed forms (Fig. 23), which Houssay regards as
+the prototypes of the swastika and the triskele respectively. That such
+a process may have played a part in the development of the symbol is
+further suggested by the form of a Transcaucasian swastika found by
+Rössler,[319] who assigns it to the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age. Each
+of the four limbs is bifurcated at its extremity. Moreover they exhibit
+the series of spots, so often found upon or alongside the limbs of the
+symbol, which suggest the conventional way of representing the suckers
+of the octopus in the Mycenæan designs (Fig. 23).
+
+Another remarkable picture of a swastika-like emblem has been found in
+America.[320] The elephant-headed god sits in the centre and four pairs
+of arms radiate from him, each of them equipped with definite suckers.
+
+Another possible way in which the design of a four-limbed swastika may
+have been derived from an octopus is suggested by the gypsum weight
+found in 1901 by Sir Arthur Evans[321] in the West Magazine of the
+palace at Knossos (_circa_ 1500 B.C.). Upon the surface of this weight
+the form of an octopus has been depicted, four of the arms of which
+stand out in much stronger relief than the others.
+
+The number four has a peculiar mystical significance (_vide infra_, p.
+206) and is especially associated with the Sun-god Horus. This fact may
+have played some part in the process of reduction of the number of limbs
+of the octopus to four; or alternatively it may have helped to emphasize
+the solar associations of the symbol, which other considerations were
+responsible for suggesting. The designs upon the pots from Hissarlik
+show that at a relatively early epoch the swastika was confused with the
+sun's disc represented as a wheel with four spokes.[322] But the solar
+attributes of the swastika are secondary to those of life-giving and
+luck-bringing, with which it was originally endowed as a form of the
+Great Mother.
+
+The only serious fact which arouses some doubt as to the validity of
+Houssay's theory is the discovery of an early painted vase at Susa
+decorated with an unmistakable swastika. Edmond Pottier, who has
+described the ceramic ware from Susa,[323] regards this pot as
+Proto-Elamite of the earliest period. If Pottier's claim is justified we
+have in this isolated specimen from Susa the earliest example of the
+swastika. Moreover, it comes from a region in which the symbol was
+supposed to be wholly absent.
+
+This raises a difficult problem for solution. Is the Proto-Elamite
+swastika the prototype of the symbol whose world-wide migrations have
+been studied by Wilson (_op. cit. supra_)? Or is it an instance of
+independent evolution? If it falls within the first category and is
+really the parent of the early Anatolian swastikas, how is it to be
+explained? Was the conventionalization of the octopus design much more
+ancient than the earliest Trojan examples of the symbol? Or was the
+Susian design adopted in the West and given a symbolic meaning which it
+did not have before then?
+
+These are questions which we are unable to answer at present because the
+necessary information is lacking. I have enumerated them merely to
+suggest that any hasty inferences regarding the bearing of the Susian
+design upon the general problem are apt to be misleading. Vincent[324]
+claims that the fact of the swastika having been in use by ceramic
+artists in Crete and Susiana many centuries before the appearance of
+Mycenæan art is fatal to Houssay's hypothesis. But I think it is too
+soon to make such an assumption. The swastika was already a rigidly
+conventionalized symbol when we first know it both in the Mediterranean
+and in Susiana. It may therefore have a long history behind it. The
+octopus may possibly have begun to play a part in the development of
+this symbolism before the Egyptian Bes (_vide supra_, p. 171) was
+evolved, perhaps even before the time of the Coptos statues of Min
+(_supra_, p. 169), or in the early days of Sumerian history when the
+conventional form of the water-pot was being determined (_infra_, p.
+179). These are mere conjectures, which I mention merely for the purpose
+of suggesting that the time is not yet ripe for using such arguments as
+Vincent's finally to dispose of Houssay's octopus-theory.
+
+There can be no doubt that the symbolism of the Mycenæan spiral and the
+volute is closely related to the octopus. In fact, the evidence provided
+by Minoan paintings and Mycenæan decorative art demonstrates that the
+spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the
+octopus. The use of the volute on Egyptian scarabs[325] and also in the
+decoration of an early Thracian statuette of a nude goddess[326]
+indicate that it was employed like the spiral and octopus as a
+life-symbol.
+
+In Spanish graves of the Early and Middle Neolithic types M. Siret found
+cowry-shells in association with a series of flint implements, crude
+idols, and pottery almost precisely reproducing the forms of similar
+objects found with cowries and pecten shells at Hissarlik.[327] But when
+the Æneolithic phase of culture dawned in Spain, and the Ægean
+octopus-motif made its appearance there, the culture as a whole reveals
+unmistakable evidence of a predominantly Egyptian inspiration.
+
+M. Siret claims, however, that, even in the Neolithic phase in Spain,
+the crude idols represent forms derived from the octopus in the Eastern
+Mediterranean (p. 59 _et seq._). He regards the octopus as "a
+conventional symbol of the ocean, or, more precisely, of the fertilizing
+watery principle" (p. 19). He elucidates a very interesting feature of
+the Æneolithic representation of the octopus in Spain. The spiral-motif
+of the Ægean gives place to an angular design, which he claims to be due
+to the influence of the conventional Egyptian way of representing water
+(p. 40). If this interpretation is correct--and, in spite of the
+slenderness of the evidence, I am inclined to accept it--it affords a
+remarkable illustration of the effects of culture-contact in the
+conventionalization of designs, to which Dr. Rivers has called
+attention.[328] Whatever explanation may be provided of this method of
+representing the arms of the octopus with its angularly bent
+extremities, it seems to have an important bearing on Houssay's
+hypothesis of the swastika's origin. For it would reveal the means by
+which the spiral or volute shape of the limbs of the swastika became
+transformed into the angular form, which is so characteristic of the
+conventional symbol.[329]
+
+The significance of the spiral as a form of the Great Mother inevitably
+led to its identification with the thunder weapon, like all her other
+surrogates. I have already referred (Chapter II, p. 98) to the
+association of the spiral with thunder and lightning in Eastern Asia.
+But other factors played a significant part in determining this
+specialization. In Egypt the god Amen was identified with the ram; and
+this creature's spirally curved horn became the symbol of the
+thunder-god throughout the Mediterranean area,[330] and then further
+afield in Europe, Africa, and Asia, where, for instance, we see Agni's
+ram with the characteristic horn. This blending of the influence of the
+octopus- and the ram's-horn-motifs made the spiral a conventional
+representation of thunder. This is displayed in its most definite form
+in China, Japan, Indonesia, and America, where we find the separate
+spiral used as a thunder-symbol, and the spiral appendage on the side of
+the head as a token of the god of thunder.[331]
+
+
+[316: Thomas Wilson ("The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and its
+Migrations; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in
+Prehistoric Times," _Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1894_,
+Washington, 1896) has given a full and well-illustrated summary of most
+of the literature: further information is provided by Count d'Alviella
+(_op. cit. supra_), "The Migration of Symbols"; by Zelia Nuttall ("The
+Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations,"
+_Archæological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum_,
+Cambridge, Mass., 1901); and Arthur Bernard Cook ("Zeus, A Study in
+Ancient Religion," Vol. I, Cambridge, 1914, pp. 472 _et seq._).]
+
+[317: Since this has been printed Mr. W. J. Perry has called my
+attention to a short article by René Croste ("Le Svastika," _Bull.
+Trimestriel de la Société Bayonnaise d'Études Regionales_, 1918), in
+which Houssay's hypothesis is mentioned as having been adopted by
+Guilleminot ("Les Nouveaux Horizons de la Science").]
+
+[318: Wilson (_op. cit._, pp. 829-33 and Figs. 125, 128, and 129) has
+collected the relevant passages and illustrations from Schliemann's
+writings.]
+
+[319: _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Bd. 37, p. 148.]
+
+[320: Seler, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Bd., 41, p. 409.]
+
+[321: _Corolla Numismatica_, 1906, p. 342.]
+
+[322: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," pp. 198 _et seq_.]
+
+[323: "Etude Historique et Chronologique sur les Vases Peints de
+l'Acropole de Suse," _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, T. XIII,
+_Rech. Archéol._, 5^e série, 1912, Plate XLI, Fig. 3.]
+
+[324: "Canaan," p. 340, footnote.]
+
+[325: Alice Grenfell, _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. II, 1915,
+p. 217: and _Ancient Egypt_, 1916, Part I, p. 23.]
+
+[326: S. Reinach, _Revue Archéol._, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 369.]
+
+[327: L. Siret, "Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Ibériques,"
+1913, p. 18, Fig. 3.]
+
+[328: Rivers, "History of Melanesian Society," Vol. II, p. 374; also
+_Report Brit. Association_, 1912, p. 599.]
+
+[329: M. Siret assigns the date of the appearance in Spain of the highly
+conventionalized angular form of octopus to the time between the
+fifteenth and the twelfth centuries B.C.; and he attributes it to
+Phœnician influence (p. 63).]
+
+[330: Cook, "Zeus," p. 346 _et seq._]
+
+[331: This is well shown upon the Copan representations (Fig. 19) of the
+elephant-headed god--see _Nature_, November, 25, 1915, p. 340.]
+
+
+The Mother Pot.
+
+In the lecture on "Incense and Libations" (Chapter I) I referred to the
+enrichment of the conception of water's life-giving properties which the
+inclusion of the idea of human fertilization by water involved. When
+this event happened a new view developed in explanation of the part
+played by woman in reproduction. She was no longer regarded as the real
+parent of mankind, but as the matrix in which the seed was planted and
+nurtured during the course of its growth and development. Hence in the
+earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic writing the picture of a pot of water was
+taken as the symbol of womanhood, the "vessel" which received the seed.
+A globular water-pot, the common phonetic value of which is _Nw_ or
+_Nu_, was the symbol of the cosmic waters, the god _Nw (Nu)_, whose
+female counterpart was the goddess _Nut_.
+
+In his report, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs,"[332] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith
+discusses the bowl of water (a) and says that it stands for the female
+principle in the words for _vulva_ and woman. When it is recalled that
+the cowry (and other shells) had the same double significance, the
+possibility suggests itself whether at times confusion may not have
+arisen between the not very dissimilar hieroglyphic signs for "a shell"
+(h) and "the bowl of water" (woman) (f).[333]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6.
+
+(a) Picture of a bowl of water--the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to _hm_
+(the word _hmt_ means "woman")--Griffith, "Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate
+VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29.
+
+(b) "A basket of sycamore figs"--Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Vol.
+I, p. 323.
+
+(c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning
+"wife" and are apparently taken from (b). But (c) is identical with (i),
+which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve shell (g,
+from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely (h). The varying
+conventionalizations of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f)
+(Griffith, "Hieroglyphics," p. 34).
+
+(k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic equivalent of the
+sign (h), and, according to Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 26), "is
+probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like
+outline".
+
+(l) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as _Nu_
+and _Nut_.
+
+(m) A "pomegranate" (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column at
+Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 46).
+
+(n) The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the coins
+of Central Greece (compare Fig. 24 (d)). Its similarity to the Egyptian
+pot-sign (l) (which also has the significance of mother-goddess) is
+worthy of note.]
+
+Referring to the sign (g and h) for "a shell," Mr. Griffith says (p.
+25): "It is regularly found at all periods in the word _ḫaw·t_ =
+altar,[334] and perhaps only in this word: but it is a peculiarity of
+the Pyramid Texts that the sign shown in the text-figures _c_, _h_,
+and _i_ is in them used very commonly, not as a word-sign, but also
+as a phonetic equivalent to the sign labelled _k_ (in the text-figure)
+for _ḫ'_ (_kha_), or apparently for _ḫ_ alone in many words.
+
+"The name of the lotus leaf is probably derived from the same root, on
+account of its shell-like outline or _vice versa_."
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7.
+
+(a) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus emerging from a
+lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis).
+
+(b) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and animistically
+identified with them either as an instrument of life-giving or
+destruction.
+
+(c) Conventionalized lily--the prototype of the trident and the
+thunder-weapon.
+
+(d) A water-plant associated with the Nile-gods.]
+
+The familiar representation of Horus (and his homologues in India and
+elsewhere) being born from the lotus suggests that the flower represents
+his mother Hathor. But as the argument in these pages has led us towards
+the inference that the original form of Hathor was a shell-amulet,[335]
+it seems not unlikely that her identification with the lotus may have
+arisen from the confusion between the latter and the cowry, which no
+doubt was also in part due to the belief that both the shell and the
+plant were expressions of the vital powers of the water in which they
+developed.
+
+The identification of the Great Mother with a pot was one of the factors
+that played a part in the assimilation of her attributes with those of
+the Water God, who in early Sumerian pictures was usually represented
+pouring the life-giving waters from his pot (Fig. 24, _h_ and _l_).
+
+[Illustration:
+
+Fig. 24.
+
+(a) and (b) Two Mycenæan pots (after Schliemann).
+
+(a) The so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the
+Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
+
+(b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon
+her head and another in her hands--a three-fold representation of the
+Great Mother as a pot.
+
+(c) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is
+represented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form.
+
+(d), (e), (f), (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after
+Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with its
+pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f).
+
+(i) _Sepia officinalis_ (after Tryon).
+
+(k) and (l) The so-called "spouting vases" in the hands of the
+Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of
+Tello, after Ward ("Seal Cylinders, etc.," p. 215).
+
+The "spouting vases" have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia to
+suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of
+the latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and
+cephalopods in Western Asia and the Mediterranean.]
+
+This idea of the Mother Pot is found not only in Babylonia, Egypt,
+India,[336] and the Eastern Mediterranean, but wherever the influence of
+these ancient civilizations made itself felt. It is widespread among the
+Celtic-speaking peoples. In Wales the pot's life-giving powers are
+enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea spread, its
+meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a
+basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's cauldron, the
+magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the
+faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense
+as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so Mr. Donald
+Mackenzie tells me, is closely associated with cows, serpents, frogs,
+dragons, birds, pearls, and "nine maidens that blow the fire under the
+cauldron"; and, if the nature of these relationships be examined, each
+of them will be found to be a link between the pot and the Great Mother.
+
+The witch's cauldron and the maidens who assist in the preparation of
+the witch's medicine seem to be the descendants respectively of Hathor's
+pots (in the story of the Destruction of Mankind) and the Sekti who
+churn up the _didi_ and the barley with which to make the elixir of
+immortality and the sedative draught for the destructive goddess
+herself.
+
+Mr. Donald Mackenzie has given me a number of additional references from
+Celtic and Indian literature in corroboration of these widespread
+associations of the pot with the Great Mother; and he reminds me that in
+Oceania the coco-nut has the same reputation as the pot in the Indian
+_Mah�bh�rata_. It is the source of food and anything else that is
+wanted, and its supply can never be exhausted. [On some future occasion
+I hope to make use of the wonderful legends of the pot's life-giving
+powers, to which Mr. Mackenzie has directed my attention. At present,
+however, I must content myself with the statement that the pot's
+identity with the Great Mother is deeply rooted in ancient belief
+throughout the greater part of the world.[337]]
+
+The diverse conceptions of the Great Mother as a pot and as an octopus
+seem to have been blended in Mycenæan lands, where the so-called
+"owl-shaped" pots were clearly intended to represent the goddess in both
+these aspects united in one symbol. When the diffusion of these ideas
+into more remote parts of the world took place syntheses with other
+motives produced a great variety of most complex forms. In Honduras
+pottery vessels have been found[338] which give tangible expression to
+the blending of the ideas of the Mother Pot, the crocodile-like
+_Makara_, star-spangled like Hathor's cow, Aphrodite's pig, and Soma's
+deer, and provided with the deer's antlers of the Eastern Asiatic dragon
+(see Chapter II, p. 103).
+
+The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and
+rebirth. When Nicodemus asks: "How can a man be born again when he is
+old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" he
+is told: "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot
+enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh:
+and that which is born of the spirit is spirit" (John iii. 4, 5, and 6).
+
+The phrase "born of water" refers to the birth "of the flesh"; and the
+mother's womb is the vessel containing "the water" from which the new
+life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of Isis:
+"[Greek: tetartê de tên Isin en panygrois genesthai]". The great waters
+which produced all living things, the Egyptian god Nun and the goddess
+Nut, were expressed in hieroglyphic as pots of water. The goddess was
+identified with Hathor's celestial star-spangled cow, the original
+mother of the sun-god; and the word "Nun" was a symbol of all that was
+new, young, and fresh, and the fertilizing and life-giving waters of the
+annual inundation of the Nile. Hathor was the daughter of these waters,
+as Aphrodite was sprung from the sea-foam.
+
+
+[332: _Archæol. Survey of Egypt_, 1898, p. 3.]
+
+[333: Compare the two-fold meaning of the Latin _testa_ as "shell" and
+"bowl".]
+
+[334: Compare the association of shells with altars in Minoan Crete and
+the widespread use of large shells as bowls for "holy water" in
+Christian churches.]
+
+[335: Miss Winifred M. Crompton, Assistant Keeper of the Egyptian
+Department of the Manchester Museum, has called my attention to a
+remarkable piece of evidence which affords additional corroboration of
+the view that Hathor was a development of the cowry-amulet. Upon the
+famous archaic palette of Narmer (Fig. 18), a sporran, composed of four
+representations of Hathor's head, takes the place of the original
+cowries that were suspended from more primitive girdles.
+
+The cowries of the head ornament of primitive peoples of Africa and Asia
+(and of the Mediterranean area in early times--Schliemann's "Ilios,"
+Fig. 685) are often replaced in Egypt by lotus flowers (W. D. Spanton,
+"Water Lilies of Egypt," _Ancient Egypt_, 1917, Part I, Figs. 19, 20,
+and 21). Upon the head-band of the statue of Nefert, which I have
+reproduced in Chapter I (Fig. 4), a conventional lotus design is found
+(see Spanton's Fig. 19), which is almost identical with the classical
+thunder-weapon.]
+
+[336: Among the Dravidian people at the present day the seven goddesses
+(corresponding to the seven Hathors) are often represented by seven
+pots.]
+
+[337: The luxuriant crop of stories of the Holy Grail was not inspired
+originally by mere literary invention. A tradition sprung from the
+fountain-head of all mythology, the parent-story of the Destruction of
+Mankind, provided the materials which a series of writers elaborated
+into the varied assortment of legends of the Mother Pot. The true
+meaning of the Quest of the Holy Grail can be understood only by reading
+the fabled accounts of it in the light of the ancient search for the
+elixir of life and the historical development of the narrative
+describing that search.
+
+A concise summary of the Grail literature will be found in Jessie L.
+Weston's "The Quest of the Holy Grail" (1913). Her theory will be found,
+after some slight modifications, to fall into line with the general
+argument of this book.
+
+Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the verb
+"coire cum" gives frank expression to the real meaning of the symbolism
+of the pot as the matrix which receives the seed. The same idea provides
+the material for the incident of the birth of Drona (the pot-born) in
+the Adi Parva (Sections CXXXI, CXXXIX, and CLXVIII, in Roy's
+translation) of the Mahabharata, to which Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie has
+kindly called my attention. Drona was conceived in a pot from the seed
+of a Rishi. A widespread variant of the same story is the conception of
+a child from a drop of blood in a pot (see, for example, Hartland,
+"Legend of Perseus," Vol. I, pp. 98 and 144). If the pot can thus create
+a human being, it is easy to understand how it acquired its reputation
+of being also able to multiply food and provide an inexhaustible supply.
+Similarly, all substances, such as barley, rice, gold, pearls, and jade,
+to which the possession of a special vital essence or "soul substance"
+was attributed, were believed to be able to reproduce themselves and so
+increase in quantity of their own activities. As "givers of life" they
+were also able to add to their own life-substance, in other words to
+grow like any other living being.]
+
+[338: "An American Dragon," _Man_, November, 1918.]
+
+
+Artemis and the Guardian of the Portal.
+
+Sir Gardner Wilkinson states (see text-figure, p. 179, _b_) that "a
+basket of sycamore figs" was originally the hieroglyphic sign for a
+woman, a goddess, or a mother. Later on (p. 199) I shall refer to the
+possible bearing of this Egyptian idea upon the origin of the Hebrew
+word for mandrakes and the allusion to "a basket of figs" in the Book
+of Jeremiah.
+
+The life-giving powers attributed to "love-apples" and the association
+of these ideas with the fig-tree may have facilitated the transference
+of these attributes of "apples" to those actually growing upon a tree.
+
+We know that Aphrodite was intimately associated, not only with
+"love-apples," but also with real apples. The sun-god Apollo's connexion
+with the apple-tree, which Dr. Rendel Harris, with great daring, wants
+to convert into an identity of name, was probably only one of the
+results of that long series of confusions between the Great Mother
+(Hathor) and the Sun-god (Horus), to which I have referred in my
+discussion of the dragon-story.
+
+But when Apollo's form emerges more clearly he is associated not with
+Aphrodite but with Artemis, whom Dr. Rendel Harris has shown to be
+identified with the mugwort, _Artemisia_. The association of the goddess
+with this plant is probably related to the identification of Sekhet with
+the marsh-plants of the Egyptian Delta and of Hathor and Isis with the
+lotus and other water plants. Any doubt as to the reality of these
+associations and Egyptian connexions is banished by the evidence of
+Artemis's male counterpart Apollo Hyakinthos and his relations to the
+sacred lily and other water plants.[339] Artemis was a gynæcological
+specialist: for she assisted women not only in childbirth and the
+expulsion of the placenta, but also in cases of amenorrhœa and
+affections of the uterus. She was regarded as the goddess of the portal,
+not merely of birth,[340] but also of gold and treasure, of which she
+possessed the key, and of the year (January).
+
+This brings us back to the guardianship of gold and treasures which
+plays so vital a part in the evolution of the Mediterranean goddesses.
+For, like the story of the dog and the mandrake, it emphasizes the
+conchological ancestry of these deities and their connexion with the
+guardians of the subterranean palaces where pearls are found. But
+Artemis was not only the opener of the treasure-houses, but she also
+possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone: she could transmute
+base substances into gold,[341] for was she not the offspring of the
+Golden Hathor? To open the portal either of birth or wealth she used her
+magic wand or key. As _NÅ«b_, the lady of gold, the Great Mother could
+not only change other substances into gold, but she was also the
+guardian of the treasure house of gold, pearls, and precious stones.
+Hence she could grant riches. Elsewhere in this chapter (p. 221) I shall
+explain how the goddess came to be identified with gold.
+
+Just as Hathor, the Eye of Re, descended to provide the elixir of youth
+for the king who was the sun-god, so Artemis is described as
+travelling through the air in a car drawn by two serpents[342] seeking
+the most pious of kings in order that she might establish her cult with
+him and bless him with renewed youth.[343]
+
+Artemis was a moon-goddess closely related to Britomartis and Diktynna,
+the Cretan prototype of Aphrodite. These goddesses afforded help to
+women in childbirth and were regarded as guardians of the portal. The
+goddess of streams and marshes was identified with the mugwort
+(_Artemisia_), which was hung above the door in the place occupied at
+other times by the winged disk, the thunder-stone, or a crocodile
+(dragon). As the guardian of portals Artemis's magic plant could open
+locks and doors. As the giver of life she could also withhold the vital
+essence and so cause disease or death; but she possessed the means of
+curing the ills she inflicted. Artemis, in fact, like all the other
+goddesses, was a witch.
+
+In former lectures[344] I have often discussed the remarkable feature of
+Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate
+the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples
+become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways
+or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by
+this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the
+symbolic gateways of China and Japan.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 25.
+
+(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I.
+
+(b) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal
+Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109).
+
+(c) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life
+in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).
+
+(d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the
+design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670).
+
+(e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig.
+663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains:
+alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle.
+
+(f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig.
+9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe, into
+which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was the
+prototype of the Winged Disk has been added.
+
+(g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenæ (after
+Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10).
+
+(h) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the
+wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in _g_.
+
+(i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate" (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the
+Goddess of the Portal.
+
+(k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the form
+suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, _c_).
+
+(l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized
+(Ward, Fig. 695).
+
+(m) Assyrian Tree of Life and "Winged Disk" in which the god is riding
+in a crescent replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695).]
+
+This significance of gates was no doubt suggested by the idea that they
+represented the means of communication between the living and the dead,
+and, symbolically, the portal by which the dead acquired a rebirth into
+a new form of existence. It was presumably for this reason that the
+winged disk as a symbol of life-giving, was placed above the lintels of
+these doors, not merely in Egypt, Phœnicia, the Mediterranean Area, and
+Western Asia, but also in America,[345] and in modified forms in India,
+Indonesia, Melanesia, Cambodia, China, and Japan.
+
+The discussion (Chapter II) of the means by which the winged disk came
+to acquire the power of life-giving, "the healing in its wings," will
+have made it clear that the sun became accredited with these virtues
+only when it assumed the place of the other "Eye of Re," the Great
+Mother. In fact, it was a not uncommon practice in Egypt to represent
+the eyes of Re or of Horus himself in place of the more usual winged
+disk. In the Ægean area the original practice of representing the Great
+Mother was retained long after it was superseded in Egypt by the use of
+the winged disk (the sun-god).
+
+Over the lintel of the famous "Lion Gate" at Mycenæ, instead of the
+winged disk, we find a vertical pillar to represent the Mother Goddess,
+flanked by two lions which are nothing more than other representatives
+of herself (Fig. 26). [Illustration: Fig. 26.
+
+(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains of the horizon
+(on which trees are growing) (after Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," Vol.
+II, p. 101). [This is a part only of a scene in which the goddess Nut is
+giving birth to the sun, whose rays illuminate Hathor on the horizon, as
+Sothis, the "Opener of the Way" for the sun.]
+
+(b) The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a surrogate
+of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in the
+Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, _op. cit._, p. 39). This indicates the
+identity of what Evans calls "the horns of consecration" and the
+"mountains of the horizon," and also suggests how confusion may have
+arisen between the mountains and the cow's horns.
+
+(c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the Eastern
+Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, _op. cit._, p. 373).
+
+(d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the
+Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to "the
+ridiculous mouse"--Smintheus). The _ankh_ (life-sign) below the sun is
+the determinative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is
+heraldically supported by the Great Mother's lionesses.
+
+(e) Part of the design from a Mycenæan vase from Old Salamis (after
+Evans, p. 9). The cow's head and the Eastern Mountains are shown
+alongside one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe
+representing the god.
+
+(f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Idæan Cave, now in
+the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). If this design be compared
+with the Egyptian picture (a), it will be seen that Hathor's place is
+taken by the tree-form of the Great Mother, and the trees which in the
+former (a) are growing upon the Eastern Mountains are now placed
+alongside the "horns". In the complete design (_vide_ Evans, _op. cit._,
+p. 44) a votary is represented blowing a conch-shell trumpet to animate
+the deity in the sacred tree.
+
+(g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of the goddess
+(after Evans, Fig. 66).
+
+(h) Another Mycenæan design comparable with (e).
+
+(i) Design from a signet-ring from Mycenæ (after Evans, Fig. 34). If
+this be compared with the Egyptian picture (a) it will be noted that the
+Great Mother is now replaced by a tree: the Eastern Mountains by bulls,
+from whose backs the trees of the Eastern Mountains are sprouting. This
+design affords interesting corroboration of the suggestion that the
+Eastern Mountains may be confused with the cow's head (see _b_ and _c_)
+or with the cow itself. Newberry (_Annals of Archæology and
+Anthropology_, Liverpool, Vol. I, p. 28) has called attention to the
+intimate association (in Protodynastic Egypt) of the Eastern Mountains,
+the Bull and the Double Axe--a certain token of cultural contact
+with Crete.
+
+(k) The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycenæ. The pillar form
+of the Great Mother heraldically supported by her lioness-avatars, which
+correspond to the cattle of the design (i) and the Eastern Mountains of
+(a). The use of this design above the lintel of the gate brings it into
+homology with the Winged Disk. The Pillar represents the Goddess, as the
+Disk represents her Egyptian _locum tenens_, Horus; her destructive
+representatives (the lionesses) correspond to the two uræi of the Winged
+Disk design.]
+
+In his "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," Sir Arthur Evans has shown that
+all possible transitional forms can be found (in Crete and the Ægean
+area) between the representation of the actual goddess and her
+pillar-and tree-manifestations, until the stage is reached where the sun
+itself appears above the pillar between the lions.[346] In the large
+series of seals from Mesopotamia and Western Asia which have been
+described in Mr. William Hayes Ward's monograph,[347] we find manifold
+links between both the Egyptian and the Minoan cults.
+
+The tree-form of the Great Mother there becomes transformed into the
+"tree of life" and the winged disk is perched upon its summit. Thus we
+have a duplication of the life-giving deities. The "tree of life" of the
+Great Mother surmounted by the winged disk which is really her surrogate
+or that of the sun-god, who took over from her the power of life-giving
+(Figs. 25 and 26).
+
+In an interesting Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada[348] the
+life-giving power is _tripled_. There is not only the tree representing
+the Great Mother herself; but also the double axe (the winged-disk
+homologue of the sun-god); and the more direct representation of him as
+a bird perched upon the axe (Fig. 25, _f_).
+
+The identification of the Great Mother with the tree or pillar seems
+also to have led to her confusion with the pestle with which the
+materials for her draught of immortality was pounded. She was also the
+bowl or mortar in which the pestle worked.[349]
+
+As the Great Mother became confused with the pestle, so, "the
+Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the
+Soma-libation, becomes in the _Vedas_ itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a
+very characteristic and frequent Oriental conceit in accordance with
+which the agent and the person or thing acted on are identified".[350]
+
+"The pressing-stones by means of which Soma is crushed typify
+thunderbolts." "In the _Rig-Veda_, we read of him [Soma] as
+_jyotihrathah_, _i.e._ 'mounted on a car of light' (IX, 5, 86, verse
+43); or again: 'Like a hero he holds weapons in his hand ... mounted on
+a chariot' (IX, 4, 76, verse 2)"--(p. 171).
+
+"Soma was the giver of power, of riches and treasures, flocks and herds,
+but above all, the giver of immortality" (p. 140).
+
+Sir Arthur Evans is of opinion "that in the case of the Cypriote
+cylinders the attendant monsters and, to a certain extent, the symbolic
+column itself, are taken from an Egyptian solar cycle, and the inference
+has been drawn that the aniconic pillars among the Mycenæans of Cyprus
+were identified with divinities having some points in common with the
+sun-gods Ra, or Horus, and Hathor, the Great Mother" (_op. cit._, pp. 63
+and 64).
+
+In attempting to find some explanation of how the tree or pillar of the
+goddess came to be replaced in the Indian legend by Mount Meru, the
+possibility suggests itself whether the aniconic form of the Great
+Mother placed between two relatively diminutive hills may not have
+helped, by confusion, to convert the cone itself into a yet bigger hill,
+which was identified with Mount Meru, the summit of which in other
+legends produced the _amrita_ of the gods, either in the form of the
+soma plant that grew upon its heights, or the rain clouds which
+collected there. But, as the subsequent argument will make clear, the
+real reason for the identification of the Great Mother with a mountain
+was the belief that the sun was born from the splitting of the eastern
+mountain, which thus assumed the function of the sun-god's mother.
+Possibly the association of the tops of mountains with cloud- and
+rain-phenomena and the gods that controlled them played some part in
+the development of the symbolism of mountains. [When I referred (in
+Chapter II, p. 98) to the fact that what Sir Arthur Evans calls "the
+horns of consecration" was primarily the split mountain of the dawn, I
+was not aware that Professor Newberry ("Two Cults of the Old Kingdom,"
+_Annals of Archæology and Anthropology_, Liverpool, Vol. I, 1908, p. 28)
+had already suggested this identification.]
+
+In the Egyptian story the god Re instructed the Sekti of Heliopolis to
+pound the materials for the food of immortality. In the Indian version,
+the gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover some elixir
+which would make them immortal. To this end, Mount Meru [the Great
+Mother] was cast into the sea [of milk]. Vishnu, in his second avatar as
+a tortoise[351] supported the mountain on his back; and the Nâga serpent
+Vasuki was then twisted around the mountain, the gods seizing its head
+and the demons his tail twirled the mountain until they had churned the
+amrita or water of life. Wilfrid Jackson has called attention to the
+fact that this scene has been depicted, not only in India and Japan, but
+also in the Precolumbian _Codex Cortes_ drawn by some Maya artist in
+Central America.[352]
+
+The horizon is the birthplace of the gods; and the birth of the deity is
+depicted with literal crudity as an emergence from the portal between
+its two mountains. The mountain splits to give birth to the sun-god,
+just as in the later fable the parturient mountain produced the
+"ridiculous mouse" (Apollo Smintheus). The Great Mother is described as
+giving birth--"the gates of the firmament are undone for Teti himself at
+break of day" [that is when the sun-god is born on the horizon]. "He
+comes forth from the Field of Earu" (Egyptian Pyramid Texts--Breasted's
+translation).
+
+In the domain of Olympian obstetrics the analogy between birth and the
+emergence from the door of a house or the gateway of a temple is a
+common theme of veiled reference. Artemis, for instance, is a goddess of
+the portal, and is not only a helper in childbirth, but also grows in
+her garden a magical herb which is capable of opening locks. This
+reputation, however, was acquired not merely by reason of her skill in
+midwifery, but also as an outcome of the legend[353] of the
+treasure-house of pearls which was under the guardianship of the great
+"giver of life" and of which she kept the magic key. She was in fact
+the feminine form of Janus, the doorkeeper who presided over all
+beginnings, whether of birth, or of any kind of enterprise or new
+venture, or the commencement of the year (like Hathor). Janus was the
+guardian of the door of Olympus itself, the gate of rebirth into the
+immortality of the gods.
+
+The ideas underlying these conceptions found expression in an endless
+variety of forms, material, intellectual, and moral, wherever the
+influence of civilization made itself felt. I shall refer only to one
+group of these expressions that is directly relevant to the
+subject-matter of this book. I mean the custom of suspending or
+representing the life-giving symbol above the portal of temples and
+houses. Thus the plant peculiar to Artemis herself, the mugwort or
+Artemisia, was hung above the door,[354] just as the winged disk was
+sculptured upon the lintel, or the thunder-stone was placed above the
+door of the cowhouse[355] to afford the protection of the Great Mother's
+powers of life-giving to her own cattle.
+
+In the Pyramid Texts the rebirth of a dead pharaoh is described with
+vivid realism and directness. "The waters of life which are in the sky
+come. The waters of life which are in the earth come. The sky burns for
+thee, the earth trembles for thee, before the birth of the god. The two
+hills are divided, the god comes into being, the god takes possession of
+his body. The two hills are divided, this Neferkere comes into being,
+this Neferkere takes possession of his body. Behold this Neferkere--his
+feet are kissed by the pure waters which are from Atum, which the
+phallus of Shu made, which the vulva of Tefnut brought into being. They
+have come, they have brought for thee the pure waters from their
+father."[356]
+
+The Egyptians entertained the belief[357] that the sun-god was born of
+the celestial cow Mehetwēret, a name which means "Great Flood," and
+is the equivalent of the primeval ocean Nun. In other words the
+celestial cow Hathor, the embodiment of the life-giving waters of heaven
+and earth, is the mother of Horus. So also Aphrodite was born of the
+"Great Flood" which is the ocean.
+
+In his report upon the hieroglyphs of Beni Hasan,[358] Mr. Griffith
+refers to the picture of "a woman of the marshes," which is read
+_sekht_, and is "used to denote the goddess Sekhet, the goddess of the
+marshes, who presided over the occupations of the dwellers there. Chief
+among these occupations must have been the capture of fish and fowl and
+the culture and gathering of water-plants, especially the papyrus and
+the lotus". Sekhet was in fact a rude prototype of Artemis in the
+character depicted by Dr. Rendel Harris.[359]
+
+It is perhaps not without significance that the root of a marsh plant,
+the _Iris pseudacorus_[360] is regarded in Germany as a luck-bringer
+which can take the place of the mandrake.[361]
+
+The Great Mother wields a magic wand which the ancient Egyptian scribes
+called the "Great Magician". It was endowed with the two-fold powers of
+life-giving and opening, which from the beginning were intimately
+associated the one with the other from the analogy of the act of birth,
+which was both an opening and a giving of life. Hence the "magic wand"
+was a key or "opener of the ways," wherewith, at the ceremonies of
+resurrection, the mouth was opened for speech and the taking of food, as
+well as for the passage of the breath of life, the eyes were opened for
+sight, and the ears for hearing. Both the physical act of opening (the
+"key" aspect) as well as the vital aspect of life-giving (which we may
+call the "uterine" aspect) were implied in this symbolism. Mr. Griffith
+suggests that the form of the magic wand may have been derived from that
+of a conventionalized picture of the uterus,[362] in its aspect as a
+giver of life. But it is possible also that its other significance as an
+"opener of the ways" may have helped in the confusion of the
+hieroglyphic uterus-symbol with the key-symbol, and possibly also with
+double-axe symbol which the vaguely defined early Cretan Mother-Goddess
+wielded. For, as we have already seen (_supra_, p. 122), the axe also
+was a life-giving divinity and a magic wand (Fig. 8).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8.
+
+(a) "Ceremonial forked object," or "magic wand," used in the ceremony of
+"opening the mouth," possibly connected with (b) (a bicornuate uterus),
+according to Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 60).
+
+(c) The Egyptian sign for a key.
+
+(d) The double axe of Crete and Egypt.]
+
+
+In his chapter on "the Origin of the Cult of Artemis," Dr. Rendel Harris
+refers to the reputation of Artemis as the patron of travellers, and to
+Parkinson's statement: "It is said of Pliny that if a traveller binde
+some of the hearbe [Artemisia] with him, he shall feele no weariness at
+all in his journey" (p. 72). Hence the high Dutch name _Beifuss_ is
+applied to it.
+
+The left foot of the dead was called "the staff of Hathor" by the
+Egyptians; and the goddess was said "to make the deceased's legs to
+walk".[363]
+
+It was a common practice to tie flowers to a mummy's feet, as I
+discovered in unwrapping the royal mummies. According to Moret (_op.
+cit._) the flowers of Upper and Lower Egypt were tied under the king's
+feet at the celebration of the Sed festival.
+
+Mr. Battiscombe Gunn (quoted by Dr. Alan Gardiner) states that the
+familiar symbol of life known as the _ankh_ represents the string of a
+sandal.[364]
+
+It seems to be worth considering whether the symbolism of the
+sandal-string may not have been derived from the life-girdle, which in
+ancient Indian medical treatises was linked in name with the female
+organs of reproduction and the pubic bones. According to Moret (_op.
+cit._, p. 91) a girdle furnished with a tail was used as a sign of
+consecration or attainment of the divine life after death. Jung (_op.
+cit._, p. 270), who, however, tries to find a phallic meaning in all
+symbolism, claims that reference to the foot has such a significance.
+
+
+[339: Evans, _op. cit._, p. 50.]
+
+[340: Her Latin representative, Diana, had a male counterpart and
+conjugate, Dianus, _i.e._ Janus, of whom it was said: "Ipse primum Janus
+cum puerperium concipitur ... aditum aperit recipiendo semini". For
+other quotations see Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 88 and the article
+"Janus" in Roscher's "Lexikon".]
+
+[341: Rendel Harris, p. 73.]
+
+[342: No doubt the two uræi of the Saga of the Winged Disk.]
+
+[343: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 244.]
+
+[344: _Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society_, 1916.]
+
+[345: "The Influence of Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
+America," _Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, 1916.]
+
+[346: Evans's, Fig. 41, p. 63.]
+
+[347: "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," 1910.]
+
+[348: Paribeni, "Monumenti antichi dell'accademia dei Lincei," XIX,
+punt. 1, pll. 1-3; and V. Duhn, "Arch. f. Religionswissensch.," XII, p.
+161, pll. 2-4; quoted by Blinkenberg, "The Thunder Weapon," pp. 20 and
+21, Fig. 9.]
+
+[349: Without just reason, many writers have assumed that the pestle,
+which was identified with the handle used in the churning of the ocean
+(see de Gubernatis, "Zoological Mythology," Vol II, p. 361), was a
+phallic emblem. This meaning may have been given to the handle of the
+churn at a later period, when the churn itself was regarded as the
+Mother Pot or uterus; but we are not justified in assuming that this was
+its primary significance.]
+
+[350: Gladys M. N. Davis, "The Asiatic Dionysos," p. 172.]
+
+[351: The tortoise was the vehicle of Aphrodite also and her
+representatives in Central America.]
+
+[352: Jackson, "Shells, etc.," pp. 57 _et seq._]
+
+[353: _Vide supra_, p. 158.]
+
+[354: Rendel Harris, "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 80. In the building up
+of the idea of rebirth the ancients kept constantly before their minds a
+very concrete picture of the actual process of parturition and of the
+anatomy of the organs concerned in this physiological process. This is
+not the place to enter into a discussion of the anatomical facts
+represented in the symbolism of the "giver of life" presiding over the
+portal and the "two hills" which are divided at the birth of the deity:
+but the real significance of the primitive imagery cannot be wholly
+ignored if we want to understand the meaning of the phraseology used by
+the ancient writers.]
+
+[355: Blinkenberg, "The Thunder-weapon," p. 72.]
+
+[356: Aylward M. Blackman, "Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient
+Egypt," _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, March,
+1918, p. 64.]
+
+[357: _Op. cit._, p. 60.]
+
+[358: "Archæol. Survey of Egypt," 5th Memoir, 1896, p. 31.]
+
+[359: See especially _op. cit._, p. 35, the goddess of streams and
+marshes, who was also herself "the mother plant," like the mother of
+Horus.]
+
+[360: Whose cultural associations with the Great Mother in the Eastern
+Mediterranean littoral has been discussed by Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan
+Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 49 _et seq._ Compare also _Apollo hyakinthos_
+as further evidence of the link with Artemis.]
+
+[361: P. J. Veth, "Internat. Arch. f. Ethnol.," Bd. 7, pp. 203 and 204.]
+
+[362: "Hieroglyphics," p. 60.]
+
+[363: Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, pp. 436 and 437.]
+
+[364: Alan Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings'
+_Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]
+
+
+The Mandrake.
+
+We have now given reasons for believing that the personification of the
+mandrake was in some way brought about by the transference to the plant
+of the magical virtues that originally belonged to the cowry shell.
+
+The problem that still awaits solution is the nature of the process by
+which the transference was effected.
+
+When I began this investigation the story of the Destruction of Mankind
+(see Chapter II) seemed to offer an explanation of the confusion.
+Brugsch, Naville, Maspero, Erman, and in fact most Egyptologists, seemed
+to be agreed that the magical substance from which the Egyptian elixir
+of life was made was the mandrake. As there was no hint[365] in the
+Egyptian story of the derivation of its reputation from the fancied
+likeness to the human form, its identification with Hathor seemed to be
+merely another instance of those confusions with which the pathway of
+mythology is so thickly strewn. In other words, the plant seemed to have
+been used merely to soothe the excited goddess: then the other
+properties of "the food of the gods," of which it was an ingredient,
+became transferred to the mandrake, so that it acquired the reputation
+of being a "giver of life" as well as a sedative. If this had been true
+it would have been a simple process to identify this "giver of life"
+with the goddess herself in her rôle as the "giver of life," and her
+cowry-ancestor which was credited with the same reputation.
+
+But this hypothesis is no longer tenable, because the word _d'd'_
+(variously transliterated _doudou_ or _didi_), which Brugsch[366] and
+his followers interpreted as "mandragora," is now believed to have
+another meaning.
+
+In a closely reasoned memoir, Henri Gauthier[367] has completely
+demolished Brugsch's interpretation of this word. He says there are
+numerous instances of the use of _d'd'_ (which he transliterates
+_doudouiou_) in the medical papyri. In the Ebers papyrus "_doudou_
+d'Eléphantine broyé" is prescribed as a remedy for external application
+in diseases of the heart, and as an astringent and emollient dressing
+for ulcers. He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the
+interior of Africa and the coasts of Arabia.
+
+Mr. F. Ll. Griffith informs me that Gauthier's criticism of the
+translation "mandrakes" is undoubtedly just: but that the substance
+referred to was most probably "red ochre" or "hæmatite".[368]
+
+The relevant passage in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind (in Seti
+I's tomb) will then read as follows: "When they had brought the red
+ochre, the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded it, and the priestesses mixed the
+pulverized substance with the beer, so that the mixture resembled human
+blood".
+
+I would call special attention to Gauthier's comment that the
+blood-coloured beer "had _some magical and marvellous property which is
+unknown to us_".[369]
+
+In his dictionary Brugsch considered the determinative [Symbol: circle
+over three vertical lines] to refer to the fruits of a tree which he
+called "apple tree," on the supposed analogy with the Coptic [jiji
+(janja iota janja iota)], _fructus autumnalis_, _pomus_, the Greek
+[Greek: opôra]; and he proposed to identify the supposed fruit, then
+transliterated _doudou_, with the Hebrew _doudaïm_, and translate it
+_poma amatoria_, mandragora, or in German, _Alraune_. This
+interpretation was adopted by most scholars until Gauthier raised
+objections to it.
+
+As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in
+Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley.[370]
+
+But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew
+_dūd�'im_ by [Greek: mandragoras] and the Copts did not use the
+word [Coptic: jiji] in their translations, but either the Greek word or
+a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff
+has shown (_Zeitsch. f. Ægypt. Sprache_, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that
+the word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated "_didi_"
+instead of "_doudou_".
+
+Finally, in a letter Mr. Griffith tells me the identification of _didi_
+with the Coptic [Coptic: jiji], "apple (?)" is philologically
+impossible.
+
+Although this red colouring matter is thus definitely proved not to be
+the fruit of a plant, there are reasons to suggest that when the story
+of the Destruction of Mankind spread abroad--and the whole argument of
+this book establishes the fact that it did spread abroad--the substance
+_didi_ was actually confused in the Levant with the mandrake. We have
+already seen that in the Delta a prototype of Artemis was already
+identified with certain plants.
+
+In all probability _didi_ was originally brought into the Egyptian
+legend merely as a surrogate of the life-blood, and the mixture of which
+it was an ingredient was simply a restorer of youth to the king. But the
+determinative (in the tomb of Seti I)--a little yellow disc with a red
+border, which misled Naville into believing the substance to be yellow
+berries--may also have created confusion in the minds of ancient
+Levantine visitors to Egypt, and led them to believe that reference was
+being made to their own yellow-berried drug, the mandrake. Such an
+incident might have had a two-fold effect. It would explain the
+introduction into the Egyptian story of the sedative effects of _didi_,
+which would easily be rationalized as a means of soothing the maniacal
+goddess; and in the Levant it would have added to the real properties of
+mandrake[371] the magical virtues which originally belonged to _didi_
+(and blood, the cowry, and water).
+
+In my lecture on "Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II) I explained that
+the Egyptian story of the Destruction of Mankind is merely one version
+of a saga of almost world-wide currency. In many of the non-Egyptian
+versions[372] the rôle of _didi_ in the Egyptian story is taken by some
+_vegetable_ product of a _red_ colour; and many of these versions reveal
+a definite confusion between the red fruit and the red clay, thus
+proving that the confusion of _didi_ with the mandrake is no mere
+hypothetical device to evade a difficulty on my part, but did actually
+occur.
+
+In the course of the development of the Egyptian story the red clay from
+Elephantine became the colouring matter of the Nile flood, and this in
+turn was rationalized as the blood or red clay into which the bodies of
+the slaughtered enemies of Re were transformed,[373] and the material
+out of which the new race of mankind was created.[374] In other words,
+the new race was formed of _didi_. There is a widespread legend that the
+mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies[375] often
+represented as innocent or chaste men wrongly killed, just as the red
+clay was the substance of mankind killed to appease Re's wrath, "the
+blood of the slaughtered saints".[376]
+
+But the original belief is found in a more definite form in the ancient
+story that "the mandrake was fashioned out of the same earth whereof God
+formed Adam".[377] In other words the mandrake was part of the same
+substance as the earth _didi_.[378]
+
+Further corroboration of this confusion is afforded by a story from
+Little Russia, quoted by de Gubernatis.[379] If bryony (a widely
+recognized surrogate of mandrake) be suspended from the girdle all the
+dead Cossacks (who, like the enemies of Re in the Egyptian story, had
+been killed and broken to pieces in the earth) will come to life again.
+_Thus we have positive evidence of the homology of the mandrake with red
+clay or hæmatite._
+
+The transference to the mandrake of the properties of the cowry (and the
+goddesses who were personifications of the shell) and blood (and its
+surrogates) was facilitated by the manifold homologies of the Great
+Mother with plants. We have already seen that the goddess was identified
+with: (a) incense-trees and other trees, such as the sycamore, which
+played some definite part in the burial ceremonies, either by providing
+the divine incense, the materials for preserving the body, or for making
+coffins to ensure the protection of the dead, and so make it possible
+for them to continue their existence; and (b) the lotus, the lily, the
+iris, and other marsh plants,[380] for reasons that I have already
+mentioned (p. 184).
+
+The Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh represents one of the innumerable
+versions of the great theme which has engaged the attention of writers
+in every age and country attempting to express the deepest longings of
+the human spirit. It is the search for the elixir of life. The object of
+Gilgamesh's search is a magic _plant_ to prolong life and restore youth.
+The hero of the story went on a voyage by water in order to obtain what
+appears to have been a marsh plant called _dittu_.[381] The question
+naturally arises whether this Babylonian story and the name of the plant
+played any part in Palestine in blending the Egyptian and Babylonian
+stories and confusing the Egyptian elixir of life, the red earth _didi_,
+with the Babylonian elixir, the plant _dittu_?
+
+In the Babylonian story a serpent-demon steals the magic plant, just as
+in India _soma_, the food of immortality, is stolen. In Egypt Isis
+steals Re's name,[382] and in Babylonia the Zu bird steals the tablets
+of destiny, the _logos_. In Greek legend apples are stolen from the
+garden of Hesperides. Apples are surrogates of the mandrake and _didi_.
+
+We have now seen that the mandrake is definitely a surrogate (a) of the
+cowry and a series of its shell-homologues, and (b) of the red substance
+in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind.
+
+There still remain to be determined (i) the means by which the mandrake
+became identified with the goddess, (ii) the significance of the Hebrew
+word _dūd�-īm_, and (iii) the origin of the Greek word
+_mandragora_.
+
+The answer to the first of these three queries should now be obvious
+enough. As the result of the confusion of the life-giving magical
+substance _didi_ with the sedative drug, mandrake, the latter acquired
+the reputation of being a "giver of life" and became identified with
+_the_ "giver of life," the Great Mother, the story of whose exploits was
+responsible for the confusion.
+
+The erroneous identification of _didi_ with the mandrake was originally
+suggested by Brugsch from the likeness of the word (then transliterated
+_doudou_) with the Hebrew word _dūd�-īm_ in Genesis, usually
+translated "mandrakes". I have already quoted the opinion of Gauthier
+and Griffith as to the error of such identification. But the evidence
+now at our disposal seems to me to leave no doubt as to the reality of
+the confusion of the Egyptian red substance with the mandrake. This
+naturally suggests the possibility that the similarity of the sounds of
+the words _may_ have played some part in creating the confusion: but it
+is impossible to admit this as a factor in the development of the story,
+because the Hebrew word probably arose out of the identification of the
+mandrake with the Great Mother and not by any confusion of names. In
+other words the similarity of the names of these homologous substances
+is a mere coincidence.
+
+Dr. Rendel Harris claims (and Sir James Frazer seems to approve of the
+suggestion) that the Hebrew word _dūd�-īm_ was derived from
+_d�dīm_, "love"; and, on the strength of this derivation, he soars
+into a lofty flight of philological conjecture to transmute
+_d�dīm_, into _Aphrodite_, "love" into the "goddess of love". It
+would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to follow these
+excursions into unknown heights of cloudland.
+
+But my colleagues Professor Canney and Principal Bennett tell me that
+the derivation of _dūd�-īm_ from _d�dīm_ is improbable;
+and the former authority suggests that _dūd�-īm_ may be merely
+the plural of _dūd_, a "pot".[383] Now I have already explained how a
+pot came to symbolize a woman or a goddess, not merely in Egypt, but
+also in Southern India, and in Mycenæan Greece, and, in fact, the
+Mediterranean generally.[384] Hence the use of the term _dūd_ for the
+mandrake implies either (a) an identification of the plant with the
+goddess who is the giver of life, or (b) an analogy between the form of
+the mandrake-fruit and a pot, which in turn led to it being called a
+pot, and from that being identified with the goddess.[385]
+
+I should explain that when Professor Canney gave me this statement he
+was not aware of the fact that I had already arrived at the conclusion
+that the Great Mother was identified with a pot and also with the
+mandrake; but in ignorance of the meaning of the Hebrew words I had
+hesitated to equate the pot with the mandrake. As soon as I received his
+note, and especially when I read his reference to the second meaning,
+"basket of figs," in Jeremiah, I recalled Mr. Griffith's discussion of
+the Egyptian hieroglyphic ("a pot of water") for woman, wife, or
+goddess, and the claim made by Sir Gardner Wilkinson that this manner of
+representing the word for "wife" was apparently taken from a
+conventionalized picture of "a basket of sycamore figs".[386] The
+interpretation has now clearly emerged that the mandrake was called
+_dūd�'īm_ by the Hebrews because it was identified with the
+Mother Pot. The symbolism involved in the use of the Hebrew word also
+suggests that the inspiration may have come from Egypt, where a woman
+was called "a pot of water" or "a basket of figs".
+
+When the mandrake acquired the definite significance as a symbol of the
+Great Mother and the power of life-giving, its fruit, "the love apple,"
+became the quintessence of vitality and fertility. The apple and the
+pomegranate became surrogates of the "love apple," and were graphically
+represented in forms hardly distinguishable from pots, occupying places
+which mark them out clearly as homologues of the Great Mother
+herself.[387]
+
+But once the mandrake was identified with the Great Mother in the Levant
+the attributes of the plant were naturally acquired from her local
+reputation there. This explains the pre-eminently conchological aspect
+of the magical properties of the mandrake and the bryony.
+
+I shall not attempt to refer in detail to the innumerable stories of red
+and brown apples, of rowan berries, and a variety of other red fruits
+that play a part in the folk-lore of so many peoples, such as _didi_
+played in the Egyptian myth. These fruits can be either elixirs of life
+and food of the gods, or weapons for overcoming the dragon as Hathor
+(Sekhet) was conquered by her sedative draught.[388]
+
+In his account of the peony, Pliny ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXVIII, Chap. LX)
+says it has "a stem two cubits in length, accompanied by two or three
+others, and of a reddish colour, with a bark like that of the laurel ...
+the seed is enclosed in capsules, _some being red_ and some black ... it
+has an _astringent taste_. The leaves of the female plant _smell like
+myrrh_". Bostock and Riley, from whose translation I have made this
+quotation, add that in reality the plant is destitute of smell. In the
+Ebers papyrus _didi_ was mixed with incense in one of the
+prescriptions;[389] and in the Berlin medical papyrus it was one of the
+ingredients of a fumigation used for treating heart disease. If my
+contention is justified, it may provide the explanation of how the
+confusion arose by which the peony came to have attributed to it a
+"smell like myrrh".
+
+Pliny proceeds: "Both plants [_i.e._ male and female] grow in the woods,
+and they should always be taken up at night, it is said; as it would be
+dangerous to do so in the day-time, the woodpecker of Mars being sure to
+attack the person so engaged.[390] It is stated also that the person,
+while taking up the root, runs great risk of being attacked with
+[prolapsus ani].... Both plants are used[391] for various purposes: the
+red seed, taken in red wine, about fifteen in number, arrest
+menstruation; while the black seed, taken in the same proportion, in
+either raisin or other wine, are curative of diseases of the uterus." I
+refer to these red-coloured beverages and their therapeutic use in
+women's complaints to suggest the analogy with that other red drink
+administered to the Great Mother, Hathor.
+
+In his essay, "Jacob and the Mandrakes,"[392] Sir James Frazer has
+called attention to the homologies between the attributes of the peony
+and the mandrake and to the reasons for regarding the former as Aelian's
+_aglaophotis_.
+
+Pliny states ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXIV, Chap. CII) that the
+_aglaophotis_ "is found growing among the marble quarries of Arabia, on
+the side of Persia," just as the Egyptian _didi_ was obtained near the
+granite quarries at Aswan. "By means of this plant [aglaophotis],
+according to Democritus, the Magi can summon the deities into their
+presence when they please, "just as the users of the conch-shell trumpet
+believed they could do with this instrument. I have already (p. 196)
+emphasized the fact that all of these plants, mandrake, bryony, peony,
+and the rest, were really surrogates of the cowry, the pearl, and the
+conch-shell. The first is the ultimate source of their influence on
+womankind, the second the origin of their attribute of _aglaophotis_,
+and the third of their supposed power of summoning the deity. The
+attributes of some of the plants which Pliny discusses along with the
+peony are suggestive. Pieces of the root of the _achaemenis_ (? perhaps
+_Euphorbia antiquorum_ or else a night-shade) taken in wine, torment the
+guilty to such an extent in their dreams as to extort from them a
+confession of their crimes. He gives it the name also of "hippophobas,"
+it being an especial object of terror to mares. The complementary story
+is told of the mandrake in mediæval Europe. The decomposing tissues of
+the body of an innocent victim on the gallows when they fall upon the
+earth can become reincarnated in a mandrake--the _main de gloire_ of old
+French writers.
+
+Then there is the plant _adamantis_, grown in Armenia and
+Cappadocia, which when _presented to a lion makes the beast fall upon
+its back_, and drop its jaws. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the
+lion-manifestation of Hathor who was calmed by the substance _didi_? A
+more direct link with the story of the destruction of mankind is
+suggested by the account of the _ophiusa_, "which is found in
+Elephantine, an island of Ethiopia". This plant is of a livid colour,
+and hideous to the sight. Taken by a person in drink, it inspires such a
+horror of serpents, which his imagination continually represents as
+menacing him that he commits suicide at last: hence it is that persons
+guilty of sacrilege are compelled to drink an infusion of it (Pliny,
+"Nat. Hist.," XXIV, 102). I am inclined to regard this as a variant of
+the myth of the Destruction of Mankind in which the "snake-plant" from
+Elephantine takes the place of the uræi of the Winged Disk Saga, and
+punishes the act of sacrilege by driving the delinquent into a state of
+delirium tremens.
+
+The next problem to be considered is the derivation of the word
+_mandragora_. Dr. Mingana tells me it is a great puzzle to discover any
+adequate meaning. The attempt to explain it through the Sanskrit _mand_,
+"joy," "intoxication," or _mantasana_, "sleep," "life," or _mandra_,
+"pleasure," or _mantara_, "paradise tree," and _agru_, "unmarried,
+violently passionate," is hazardous and possibly far-fetched.
+
+The Persian is _mardumgiah_, "man-like plant".
+
+The Syro-Arabic word for it is _Yabrouh_, Aramaic _Yahb-kouh_, "giver of
+life". This is possibly the source of the Chinese _Yah-puh-lu_ (Syriac
+_ya-bru-ha_) and _Yah-puh-lu-Yak_. The termination _Yak_ is merely the
+Turanian termination meaning "diminutive".
+
+The interest of the Levantine terms for the mandrake lies in the fact
+that they have the same significance as the word for pearl, _i.e._
+"giver of life". This adds another argument (to those which I have
+already given) for regarding the mandrake as a surrogate of the pearl.
+But they also reveal the essential fact that led to the identification
+of the plant with the Mother-Goddess, which I have already discussed.
+
+In Arabic the mandrake is called _abou ruhr_, "father of life," _i.e._
+"giver of life".[393]
+
+In Arabic _margan_ means "coral" as well as "pearl". In the
+Mediterranean area coral is explained as a new and marvellous plant
+sprung from the petrified blood-stained branches on which Perseus hung
+the bleeding head of Medusa. Eustathius ("Comment. ad Dionys. Perieget."
+1097) derives [Greek: koralion] from [Greek: korê], personifying the
+monstrous virgin: but Chæroboscos claims that it comes from [Greek:
+korê] and [Greek: alion], because it is a maritime product used to make
+ornaments for maidens. In any case coral is a "giver of life" and as
+such identified with a maiden,[394] as the most potential embodiment of
+life-giving force. But this specific application of the word for "giver
+of life" was due to the fact that in all the Semitic languages, as well
+as in literary references in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, this phrase was
+understood as a reference to the female organs of reproduction. The
+same _double entendre_ is implied in the use of the Greek word for "pig"
+and "cowry," these two surrogates of the Great Mother, each of which can
+be taken to mean the "giver of life" or the "pudendum muliebre".
+
+Perhaps the most plausible suggestion that has been made as to the
+derivation of the word "mandragora" is Delâtre's claim[395] that it is
+compounded of the words _mandros_, "sleep," and _agora_, "object or
+substance," and that mandragora means "the sleep-producing substance".
+
+This derivation is in harmony with my suggestion as to the means by
+which the plant acquired its magical properties. The sedative substance
+that, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs (of the Story of the Destruction of
+Mankind), was represented by yellow spheres with a red covering was
+confused in Western Asia with the yellow-berried plant which was known
+to have sedative properties. Hence the plant was confused with the
+mineral and so acquired all the magical properties of the Great Mother's
+elixir. But the Indian name is descriptive of the actual properties of
+the plant and is possibly the origin of the Greek word.
+
+Another suggestion that has been made deserves some notice. It has been
+claimed that the first syllable of the name is derived from the Sanskrit
+_mandara_, one of the trees in the Indian paradise, and the instrument
+with which the churning of the ocean was accomplished.[396] The mandrake
+has been claimed to be the tree of the Hebrew paradise; and a connexion
+has thus been instituted between it and the _mandara_. This hypothesis,
+however, does not offer any explanation of how either the mandrake or
+the _mandara_ acquired its magical attributes. The Indian tree of life
+was supposed to "sweat" _amrita_ just as the incense trees of Arabia
+produce the divine life-giving incense.
+
+But there are reasons[397] for the belief that the Indian story of the
+churning of the sea of milk is a much modified version of the old
+Egyptian story of the pounding of the materials for the elixir of life.
+The _mandara_ churn-stick, which is often supposed to represent the
+phallus,[398] was originally the tree of life, the tree or pillar which
+was animated by the Great Mother herself.[399] So that the _mandara_ is
+homologous with the _mandragora_. But so far as I am aware, there is no
+adequate reason for deriving the latter word from the former.
+
+The derivation from the Sanskrit words _mandros_ and _agora_ seems to
+fit naturally into the scheme of explanation which I have been
+formulating.
+
+In the Egyptian story the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded the _didi_ in a
+mortar to make "the giver of life," which by a simple confusion might be
+identified with the goddess herself in her capacity as "the giver of
+life". This seems to have occurred in the Indian legend. Lakshmi, or
+Sri, was born at the churning of the ocean. Like Aphrodite, who was born
+from the sea-foam churned from the ocean, Lakshmi was the goddess of
+beauty, love, and prosperity.
+
+Before leaving the problems of mandrake and the homologous plants and
+substances, it is important that I should emphasize the rôle of blood
+and blood-substitutes, red-stained beer, red wine, red earth, and red
+berries in the various legends. These life-giving and death-dealing
+substances were all associated with the colour red, and the destructive
+demons Sekhet and Set were given red forms, which in turn were
+transmitted to the dragon, and to that specialized form of the dragon
+which has become the conventional way of representing Satan.
+
+[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became attached to
+the plants _ginseng_ and _shang-luh_--see de Groot, Vol. II, p. 316 _et
+seq._; also Kumagusu Minakata, _Nature_, Vol. LI, April 25, 1895, p.
+608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The fact that the Chinese
+make use of the Syriac word _yabruha_ (_vide supra_) suggests the source
+of these Chinese legends.]
+
+
+[365: As Maspero has specifically mentioned ("Dawn of Civilization," p.
+166).]
+
+[366: "Die Alraune als altägyptische Zauberpflanze," _Zeitsch. f. Ægypt.
+Sprache_, Bd. XXIX, 1891, pp. 31-3.]
+
+[367: "Le nom hiéroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Eléphantine," _Revue
+Égyptologique_, XI^e Vol., Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]
+
+[368: It is quite possible that the use of the name "hæmatite" for this
+ancient substitute for blood may itself be the result of the survival of
+the old tradition.]
+
+[369: It is very important to keep in mind the two distinct properties
+of _didi_: (a) its magical life-giving powers, and (b) its sedative
+influence.]
+
+[370: In Chapter II, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a
+psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical
+question.]
+
+[371: For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the _British Medical
+Journal_, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.]
+
+[372: Even in Egypt itself _didi_ may be replaced by fruit in the more
+specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in the Saga of
+the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: "Thou didst put
+grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu". Wiedemann ("Religion
+of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 70) interprets this as meaning: "thou
+didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it". But by analogy
+with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation of
+_didi_, it should read: "thou didst make the water blood-red with
+grape-juice"; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two
+meanings.]
+
+[373: In the Babylonian story of the Deluge "Ishtar cried aloud like a
+woman in travail, the Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice
+(saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I
+assented to an evil thing in the council of the gods, and agreed to a
+storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth" (King,
+"Babylonian Religion," p. 134).
+
+The Nile god, Knum, Lord of Elephantine, was reputed to have formed the
+world of alluvial soil. The coming of the waters from Elephantine
+brought life to the earth.]
+
+[374: In the Babylonian story, BÄ“l "bade one of the gods cut off his
+head and mix the earth with the blood that flowed from him, and from the
+mixture he directed him to fashion men and animals" (King, "Babylonian
+Religion," p. 56). BÄ“l (Marduk) represents the Egyptian Horus who
+assumes his mother's rôle as the Creator. The red earth as a surrogate
+of blood in the Egyptian story is here replaced by earth _and_ blood.
+
+But Marduk created not only men and animals but heaven and earth also.
+To do this he split asunder the carcase of the dragon which he had
+slain, the Great Mother Tiamat, the evil _avatar_ of the Mother-Goddess
+whose mantle had fallen upon his own shoulders. In other words, he
+created the world out of the substance of the "giver of life" who was
+identified with the red earth, which was the elixir of life in the
+Egyptian story. This is only one more instance of the way in which the
+same fundamental idea was twisted and distorted in every conceivable
+manner in the process of rationalization. In one version of the Osirian
+myth Horus cut off the head of his mother Isis and the moon-god Thoth
+replaced it with a cow's head, just as in the Indian myth Ganesa's head
+was replaced by an elephant's.]
+
+[375: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 9.]
+
+[376: Compare with this the story of Picus the giant who fled to Kirke's
+isle and there was slain by Helios, the plant [Greek: môly] springing
+from his blood (A. B. Cook, "Zeus," p. 241, footnote 15). For a
+discussion of _moly_ see Andrew Lang's "Custom and Myth".]
+
+[377: Frazer, p. 6.]
+
+[378: In Socotra a tree (dracæna) has been identified with the dragon,
+and its exudation, "dragon's blood," was called cinnabar, and confused
+with the mineral (red sulphide of mercury), or simply with red ochre. In
+the Socotran dragon-myth the elephant takes the hero's rôle, as in the
+American stories of Chac and Tlaloc (see Chapter II). The word
+_kinnabari_ was applied to the thick matter that issues from the dragon
+when crushed beneath the weight of the dying elephant during these
+combats (Pliny, XXXIII, 28 and VIII, 12). The dragon had a passion for
+elephant's blood. Any thick red earth attributed to such combats was
+called _kinnabari_ (Schoff, _op. cit._, p. 137). This is another
+illustration of the ancient belief in the identification of blood and
+red ochre.]
+
+[379: "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 101.]
+
+[380: In an interesting article on "The Water Lilies of Ancient Egypt"
+(_Ancient Egypt_, 1917, Part I, p. 1) Mr. W. D. Spanton has collected a
+series of illustrations of the symbolic use of these plants. In view of
+the fact that the papyrus- and lotus-sceptres and the lotus-designs
+played so prominent a part in the evolution of the Greek thunder-weapon,
+it is peculiarly interesting to find (in the remote times of the Pyramid
+Age) lotus designs built up into the form of the double-axe (Spanton's
+Figs. 28 and 29) and the classical _keraunos_ (his Fig. 19).]
+
+[381: The Babylonian magic plant to prolong life and renew youth, like
+the red mineral _didi_ of the Egyptian story. It was also "the plant of
+birth" and "the plant of life".]
+
+[382: Müller, Quibell, Maspero, and Sethe regard the "round cartouche,"
+which the divine falcon often carries in place of the _ankh_-symbol of
+life, as a representation of the royal name (R. Weill, "Les Origines de
+l'Egypte pharaonique," _Annales du Musée Guimet_, 1908, p. 111). The
+analogous Babylonian sign known as "the rod and ring" is described by
+Ward (_op. cit._, p. 413) as "the emblem of the sun-god's supremacy," a
+"symbol of majesty and power, like the tablets of destiny".
+
+As it was believed in Egypt and Babylonia that the possession of a name
+"was equivalent to being in existence," we can regard the object carried
+by the hawk or vulture as a token of the giving of life and the
+controlling of destiny. It can probably be equated with the "tablets of
+destiny" so often mentioned in the Babylonian stories, which the bird
+god _Zu_ stole from BÄ“l and was compelled by the sun-god to restore
+again. Marduk was given the power to destroy or to create, _to speak the
+word of command_ and to control fate, to wield the invincible weapon and
+to be able to render objects invisible. This form of the weapon, "the
+word" or _logos_, like all the other varieties of the thunder-weapon,
+could "become flesh," in other words, be an animate form of the god.
+
+In Egyptian art it is usually the hawk of Horus (the homologue of
+Marduk) which carries the "round cartouche," which is the _logos_, the
+tablets of destiny.]
+
+[383: I quote Professor Canney's notes on the word _dūd�'im_
+(Genesis xxx. 14) verbatim: "The _Encyclopædia Biblica_ says (s.v.
+'Mandrakes'): 'The Hebrew name, _dūd�'im_, was no doubt popularly
+associated with _d�dīm_, [Hebrew: dodim], "love"; but its real
+etymology (like that of [Greek: mandragoras]) is obscure".
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The same word is translated 'mandrakes' in Song of Songs vii. 13.
+
+"_Dūd�'īm_ occurs also in Jeremiah xxiv, 1, where it is usually
+translated 'baskets' ('baskets of figs'). Here it is the plural of a
+word _dūd_, which means sometimes a 'pot' or 'kettle,' sometimes a
+'basket'. The etymology is again doubtful.
+
+"I should imagine that the words in Jeremiah and Genesis have somehow or
+other the same etymology, and that _dūd�-īm_ in Genesis has no
+real connexion with _d�dīm_ 'love'.
+
+"The meaning 'pot' (_dūd_, plur. _dūd�-īm_) is probably more
+original than 'basket'. Does _dūd�-īm_ in Genesis and Song of
+Songs denote some kind of pot or caldron-shaped flower or fruit?"]
+
+[384: The Mother Pot is really a fundamental conception of all religious
+beliefs and is almost world-wide in its distribution.]
+
+[385: The fruit of the lotus (which is a form of Hathor) assumes a form
+(Spanton, _op. cit._, Fig. 51) that is identical with a common
+Mediterranean symbol of the Great Mother, called "pomegranate" by Sir
+Arthur Evans (see my text-fig. 6, p. 179, _m_), which is a surrogate of
+the apple and mandrake. The likeness to the Egyptian hieroglyph for a
+jar of water (text-fig. 6, _l_) and the goddess _Nu_ of the fruit of the
+poppy (which was closely associated with the mandrake by reason of its
+soporific properties) may have assisted in the transference of their
+attributes. The design of the water-plant (text-fig. 7, _d_) associated
+with the Nile god may have helped such a confusion and exchange.]
+
+[386: "A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians," revised and
+abridged, 1890, Vol. I, p. 323.]
+
+[387: See, for example, Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar
+Worship," Fig. 27, p. 46.]
+
+[388: In a Japanese dragon-story the dragon drinks "sake" from pots set
+out on the shore (as Hathor drank the _didi_ mixture from pots
+associated with the river); and the intoxicated monster was then slain.
+From its tail the hero extracted a sword (as in the case of the Western
+dragons), which is now said to be the Mikado's state sword.]
+
+[389: See Gauthier, _op. cit._, pp. 2 and 3.]
+
+[390: Compare the dog-incident in the mandrake story.]
+
+[391: Bostock and Riley add the comment that "the peony has no medicinal
+virtues whatever".]
+
+[392: _Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol. VIII, 1917, p. 16 (in
+the reprint).]
+
+[393: I am indebted to Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this information. But
+the philological question is discussed in a learned memoir by the late
+Professor P. J. Veth, "De Leer der Signatuur," _Internationales Archiv
+für Ethnographie_, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75 and 105, and especially
+the appendix, p. 199 _et seq._, "De Mandragora, Naschrift op het tweede
+Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling over de Leer der Signatuur".]
+
+[394: Like the _Purpura_ and the _Pterocera_, the bryony and other
+shells and plants.]
+
+[395: Larousse, Article "Mandragore".]
+
+[396: I have already referred to another version of the churning of the
+ocean in which Mount Meru was used as a churn-stick and identified with
+the Great Mother, of whom the _mandara_ was also an avatar.]
+
+[397: Which I shall discuss in my forthcoming book on "The Story of the
+Flood".]
+
+[398: The phallic interpretation is certainly a secondary
+rationalization of an incident which had no such implication
+originally.]
+
+[399: The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis ii. 17)
+produced fruit the eating of which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, so
+that they realized their nakedness: they became conscious of sex and
+made girdles of fig-leaves (_vide supra_, p. 155). In other words, the
+tree of life had the power of love-provoking like the mandrake. In
+Henderson's "Celtic Dragon Myth" (p. xl) we read: "The berries for which
+she [Medb] craved were from the Tree of Life, the food of the gods, the
+eating of which by mortals brings death," and further: "The berries of
+the rowan tree are the berries of the gods" (p. xliii). I have already
+suggested the homology between these red berries, the mandrake, and the
+red ochre of Hathor's elixir. Thus we have another suggestion of the
+identity of the tree of paradise and the mandrake.]
+
+
+The Measurement of Time.
+
+It was the similarity of the periodic phases of the moon and of
+womankind that originally suggested the identification of the Great
+Mother with the moon, and originated the belief that the moon was the
+regulator of human beings.[400] This was the starting-point of the
+system of astrology and the belief in Fates. The goddess of birth and
+death controlled and measured the lives of mankind.
+
+But incidentally the moon determined the earliest subdivision of time
+into months; and the moon-goddess lent the sanctity of her divine
+attributes to the number twenty-eight.
+
+The sun was obviously the determiner of day and night, and its rising
+and setting directed men's attention to the east and the west as
+cardinal points intimately associated with the daily birth and death of
+the sun. We have no certain clue as to the factors which first brought
+the north and the south into prominence. But it seems probable that the
+direction of the river Nile,[401] which was the guide to the orientation
+of the corpse in its grave, may have been responsible for giving special
+sanctity to these other cardinal points. The association of the
+direction of the deceased's head with the position of the original
+homeland and the eventual home of the dead would have made the south a
+"divine" region in Predynastic times. For similar reasons the north may
+have acquired special significance in the Early Dynastic period.[402]
+
+When the north and the south were added to the other two cardinal points
+the intimate association of the east and the west with the measurement
+of time would be extended to include all the four cardinal points.[403]
+Four became a sacred number associated with time-measurement, and
+especially with the sun.[404]
+
+Many other factors played a part in the establishment of the sanctity
+of the number four. Professor Lethaby has suggested[405] that the
+four-sided building was determined by certain practical factors, such as
+the desirability of fashioning a room to accommodate a woven mat, which
+was necessarily of a square or oblong form. But the study of the
+evolution of the early Egyptian grave and tomb-superstructures suggests
+that the early use of slabs of stone, wooden boards, and mud-bricks
+helped in the process of determining the four-sided form of house and
+room.
+
+When, out of these rude beginnings, the vast four-sided pyramid was
+developed, the direction of its sides was brought into relationship with
+the four cardinal points; and there was a corresponding development and
+enrichment of the symbolism of the number four. The form of the divine
+house of the dead king, who was the god, was thus assimilated to the
+form of the universe, which was conceived as an oblong area at the four
+corners of which pillars supported the sky, as the four legs supported
+the Celestial Cow.
+
+Having invested the numbers four and twenty-eight with special sanctity
+and brought them into association with the measurement of time, it was a
+not unnatural proceeding to subdivide the month into four parts and so
+bring the number seven into the sacred scheme. Once this was done the
+moon's phases were used to justify and rationalize this procedure, and
+the length of the week was incidentally brought into association with
+the moon-goddess, who had seven _avatars_, perhaps originally one for
+each day of the week. At a later period the number seven was arbitrarily
+brought into relationship with the Pleiades.
+
+The seven Hathors were not only mothers but fates also. Aphrodite was
+chief of the fates.
+
+The number seven is associated with the pots used by Hathor's
+priestesses at the celebration inaugurating the new year; and it plays a
+prominent part in the Story of the Flood. In Babylonia the sanctity of
+the number received special recognition. When the goddess became the
+destroyer of mankind, the device seems to have been adopted of
+intensifying her powers of destruction by representing her at times as
+seven demons.[406]
+
+But the Great Mother was associated not only with the week and month but
+also with the year. The evidence at our disposal seems to suggest that
+the earliest year-count was determined by the annual inundation of the
+river. The annual recurrence of the alternation of winter and summer
+would naturally suggest in a vague way such a subdivision of time as the
+year; but the exact measurement of that period and the fixing of an
+arbitrary commencement, a New Year's day, were due to other reasons. In
+the Story of the Destruction of Mankind it is recorded that the incident
+of the soothing of Hathor by means of the blood-coloured beer (which, as
+I have explained elsewhere,[407] is a reference to the annual Nile
+flood) was celebrated annually on New Year's day.
+
+Hathor was regarded in tradition as the cause of the inundation. She
+slaughtered mankind and so caused the original "flood": in the next
+phase she was associated with the 7000 jars of red beer; and in the
+ultimate version with the red-coloured river flood, which in another
+story was reputed to be "the tears of Isis".
+
+Hathor's day was in fact the date of the commencement of the inundation
+and of the year; and the former event marked the beginning of the year
+and enabled men for the first time to measure its duration. Thus
+Hathor[408] was the measurer of the year, the month, and the week; while
+her son Horus (Chronus) was the day-measurer.
+
+In Tylor's "Early History of Mankind" (pp. 352 _et seq._) there is a
+concise summary of some of the widespread stories of the Fountain of
+Youth which restores youthfulness to the aged who drank of it or bathed
+in it. He cites instances from India, Ethiopia, Europe, Indonesia,
+Polynesia, and America. "The Moslem geographer, Ibn-el-Wardi, places the
+Fountain of Life in the dark south-western regions of the earth"
+(p. 353).
+
+The star Sothis rose heliacally on the first day of the Egyptian New
+Year.[409] Hence it became "the second sun in heaven," and was
+identified with the goddess of the New Year's Day. The identification of
+Hathor with this "second sun"[410] may explain why the goddess is said
+to have entered Re's boat. She took her place as a crown upon his
+forehead, which afterwards was assumed by her surrogate, the
+fire-spitting uræus-serpent. When Horus took his mother's place in the
+myth, he also entered the sun-god's boat, and became the prototype of
+Noah seeking refuge from the Flood in the ship the Almighty instructed
+him to make.
+
+In memory of the beer-drinking episode in the Destruction of Mankind,
+New Year's Day was celebrated by Hathor's priestesses in wild orgies of
+beer drinking.
+
+This event was necessarily the earliest celebration of an anniversary,
+and the prototype of all the incidents associated with some special day
+in the year which have been so many milestones in the historical
+progress of civilization.
+
+The first measurement of the year also naturally forms the
+starting-point in the framing of a calendar.
+
+Similar celebrations took place to inaugurate the commencement of the
+year in all countries which came, either directly or indirectly, under
+Egyptian influence.
+
+The month [Greek: Aphrodisia] (so-called from the festival of the
+goddess) began the calendar of Bithynia, Cyprus, and Iasos, just as
+Hathor's feast was a New Year's celebration in Egypt.
+
+In the celebration of these anniversaries the priestesses of Aphrodite
+worked themselves up in a wild state of frenzy; and the term [Greek:
+hystêria][411] became identified with the state of emotional derangement
+associated with such orgies. The common belief that the term "hysteria"
+is derived directly from the Greek word for uterus is certainly
+erroneous. The word [Greek: hystêria] was used in the same sense as
+[Greek: Aphrodisia], that is as a synonym for the festivals of the
+goddess. The "hysteria" was the name for the orgy in celebration of the
+goddess on New Year's day: then it was applied to the condition produced
+by these excesses; and ultimately it was adopted in medicine to apply to
+similar emotional disturbances. Thus both the terms "hysteria" and
+"lunacy"[412] are intimately associated with the earliest phases in the
+moon-goddess's history; and their survival in modern medicine is a
+striking tribute to the strong hold of effete superstition in this
+branch of the diagnosis and treatment of disease.[413]
+
+I have already referred to the association of Artemis with the portal of
+birth and rebirth. As the guardian of the door her Roman representative
+Diana and her masculine _avatar_ Dianus or Janus gave the name to the
+commencement of the year. The Great Mother not only initiated the
+measurement of the year, but she (or her representative) lent her name
+to the opening of the year in various countries.
+
+But the story of the Destruction of Mankind has preserved the record not
+only of the circumstances which were responsible for originating the
+measurement of the year and the making of a calendar, but also of the
+materials out of which were formed the mythical epochs preserved in the
+legends of Greece and India and many other countries further removed
+from the original centre of civilization. When the elaboration of the
+early story involved the destruction of mankind, it became necessary to
+provide some explanation of the continued existence of man upon the
+earth. This difficulty was got rid of by creating a new race of men from
+the fragments of the old or from the clay into which they had been
+transformed (_supra_, p. 196). In course of time this _secondary_
+creation became the basis of the familiar story of the _original_
+creation of mankind. But the story also became transformed in other
+ways. Different versions of the process of destruction were blended into
+one narrative, and made into a series of catastrophes and a succession
+of acts of creation. I shall quote (from Mr. T. A. Joyce's "Mexican
+Archæology," p. 50) one example of these series of mythical epochs or
+world ages to illustrate the method of synthesis:--
+
+When all was dark Tezcatlipoca transformed himself into the sun to give
+light to men.
+
+1. This sun terminated in the destruction of mankind, including a race
+of giants, by _jaguars_.
+
+2. The second sun was Quetzalcoatl, and his age terminated in a terrible
+_hurricane_, during which mankind was transformed into monkeys.
+
+3. The third sun was Tlaloc, and the destruction came by a _rain of
+fire_.
+
+4. The fourth was Chalchintlicue, and mankind was finally destroyed by a
+_deluge_, during which they became fishes.
+
+The first episode is clearly based upon the story of the lioness-form of
+Hathor destroying mankind: the second is the Babylonian story of Tiamat,
+modified by such Indian influences as are revealed in the _Ramayana_:
+the third is inspired by the Saga of the Winged Disk; and the fourth by
+the story of the Deluge.
+
+Similar stories of world ages have been preserved in the mythologies of
+Eastern Asia, India, Western Asia, and Greece, and no doubt were derived
+from the same original source.
+
+
+[400: The Greek Chronus was the son of Selene.]
+
+[401: Or possibly the situations of Upper and Lower Egypt.]
+
+[402: See G. Elliot Smith, "The Ancient Egyptians".]
+
+[403: The association of north and south with the primary subdivision of
+the state probably led to the inclusion of the other two cardinal points
+to make the subdivision four-fold.]
+
+[404: The number four was associated with the sun-god. There were four
+"children of Horus" and four spokes to the wheel of the sun.]
+
+[405: "Architecture," p. 24.]
+
+[406: See the chapter on "Magic" in Jevons, "Comparative Religion". In
+his article "Magic (Egyptian)," in Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion
+and Ethics_ (p. 266), Dr. Alan Gardiner makes the following statement:
+"The mystical potency attaching to certain _numbers_ doubtless
+originated in associations of thought that to us are obscure. The number
+seven, in Egyptian magic, was regarded as particularly efficacious. Thus
+we find references to the seven Hathors: _cf._ [Greek: ai hepta Tychai
+tou ouranou] (A. Dieterich, _Eine Mithrasliturgie_, Leipzig, 1910, p.
+71): 'the seven daughters of Re,' who 'stand and weep and make seven
+knots in their seven tunics'; and similarly 'the seven hawks who are in
+front of the barque of Re'."
+
+Are the seven daughters of Re the seven days of the week, or the
+representatives of Hathor corresponding to the seven days?]
+
+[407: Chapter II, p. 118.]
+
+[408: We have already seen that the primitive aspect of life-giving that
+played an essential part in the development of the story we are
+considering was the search for the means by which youth could be
+restored. It is significant that Hathor's reputed ability to restore
+youth is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts in association with her
+functions as the measurer of years: for she is said "to turn back the
+years from King Teti," so that they pass over him without increasing his
+age (Breasted, "Thought and Religion in Ancient Egypt," p. 124).]
+
+[409: Breasted ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 22) states
+that as the inundation began at the rising of Sothis, the star of Isis,
+sister of Osiris, they said to him [_i.e._ Osiris]: "The beloved
+daughter, Sothis, makes thy fruits (rnpwt) in her name of 'Year'
+(rnpt)".]
+
+[410: The Great Mother was identified with the moon, but when she became
+specialized, her representative adopted Sothis or Venus as her star.]
+
+[411: "At Argos the principal fête of Aphrodite was called [Greek:
+hystêria] because they offered sacrifices of pigs ("Athen." III, 49, 96;
+"Clem. Alex. Protr." 33)"--Article "Aphrodisia," _Dict. des Antiquités_,
+p. 308. The Greek word for pig had the double significance of "pig" and
+"female organs of reproduction".]
+
+[412: Aphrodite sends Aphrodisiac "mania" (see Tümpel, _op. cit._, pp.
+394 and 395).]
+
+[413: There is still widely prevalent the belief in the possibility of
+being "moonstruck," and many people, even medical men who ought to know
+better, solemnly expound to their students the influence of the moon in
+producing "lunacy". If it were not invidious one could cite instances of
+this from the writings of certain teachers of psychological medicine in
+this country within the last few months. The persistence of these kinds
+of traditions is one of the factors that make it so difficult to effect
+any real reform in the treatment of mental disease in this country.]
+
+
+The Seven-headed Dragon.
+
+I have already referred to the magical significance attached to the
+number seven and the widespread references to the seven Hathors, the
+seven winds to destroy Tiamat, the seven demons, and the seven fates.
+In the story of the Flood there is a similar insistence on the
+seven-fold nature of many incidents of good and ill meaning in the
+narrative. But the dragon with this seven-fold power of wreaking
+vengeance came to be symbolized by a creature with seven heads.
+
+A Japanese story told in Henderson's notes to Campbell's "Celtic Dragon
+Myth"[414] will serve as an introduction to the seven-headed monster:--
+
+"A man came to a house where all were weeping, and learned that the last
+daughter of the house was to be given to a dragon with _seven or
+eight_[415] heads who came to the sea-shore yearly to claim a victim. He
+went with her, enticed the dragon to drink _sake_ from pots set out on
+the shore, and then he slew the monster. From the end of his tail he
+took out a sword, which is supposed to be the Mikado's state sword. He
+married the maiden, and with her got a jewel or talisman which is
+preserved with the regalia. A third thing of price so preserved is a
+mirror."
+
+The seven-headed dragon is found also in the Scottish dragon-myth, and
+the legends of Cambodia, India, Persia, Western Asia, East Africa, and
+the Mediterranean area.
+
+The seven-headed dragon probably originated from the seven Hathors. In
+Southern India the Dravidian people seem to have borrowed the Egyptian
+idea of the seven Hathors. "There are seven Mari deities, all sisters,
+who are worshipped in Mysore. All the seven sisters are regarded vaguely
+as wives or sisters of Siva."[416] At one village in the Trichinopoly
+district Bishop Whitehead found that the goddess K�līamma was
+represented by seven brass pots, and adds: "It is possible that the
+seven brass pots represent seven sisters or the seven virgins sometimes
+found in Tamil shrines" (p. 36). But the goddess who animates seven
+pots, who is also the seven Hathors, is probably well on the way to
+becoming a dragon with seven heads.
+
+There is a close analogy between the Swahili and the Gaelic stories that
+reveals their ultimate derivation from Babylonia. In the Scottish story
+the seven-headed dragon comes in a storm of wind and spray. The East
+African serpent comes in a storm of wind and dust.[417] In the
+Babylonian story seven winds destroy Tiamat.
+
+"The famous legend of the seven devils current in antiquity was of
+Babylonian origin, and belief in these evil spirits, who fought against
+the gods for the possession of the souls and bodies of men, was
+widespread throughout the lands of the Mediterranean basin. Here is one
+of the descriptions of the seven demons:--
+
+"Of the seven the first is the south wind....
+
+"The second is a dragon whose open mouth....
+
+"The third is a panther whose mouth spares not.
+
+"The fourth is a frightful python....
+
+"The fifth is a wrathful ... who knows no turning back.
+
+"The sixth is an on-rushing ... who against god and king [attacks].
+
+"The seventh is a hurricane, an evil wind which [has no mercy].
+
+"The Babylonians were inconsistent in their description of the seven
+devils, describing them in various passages in different ways. In fact
+they actually conceived of a very large number of these demons, and
+their visions of the other evil spirits are innumerable. According to
+the incantation of Shamash-shum-ukin fifteen evil spirits had come into
+his body and
+
+"'My God who walks at my side they drove away.'
+
+"The king calls himself 'the son of his God'. We have here the most
+fundamental doctrines of Babylonian theology, borrowed originally from
+the religious beliefs of the Sumerians. For them man in his natural
+condition, at peace with the gods and in a state of atonement, is
+protected by a divine spirit whom they conceived of as dwelling in their
+bodies along with their souls or 'the breath of life'. In many ways the
+Egyptians held the same doctrine, in their belief concerning the
+_ka_[418] or the soul's double. According to the beliefs of the
+Sumerians and Babylonians these devils, evil spirits, and all evil
+powers stand for ever waiting to attach (_sic_) (? attack) the divine
+genius with each man. By means of insinuating snares they entrap mankind
+in the meshes of their magic. They secure possession of his soul and
+body by leading him into sin, or bringing him into contact with tabooed
+things, or by overcoming his divine protector with sympathetic
+magic.... These adversaries of humanity thus expel a man's god, or
+genius, or occupy his body. These rituals of atonement have as their
+primary object the ejection of the demons and the restoration of the
+divine protector. Many of the prayers end with the petition, 'Into the
+kind hands of his god and goddess restore him'.
+
+"Representations of the seven devils are somewhat rare.... The Brit.
+Mus. figurine represents the demon of the winds with body of a dog,
+scorpion tail, bird legs and feet" (S. Langdon, "A Ritual of Atonement
+for a Babylonian King," _The Museum Journal_ [University of
+Pennsylvania], Vol. VIII, No. 1, March, 1917, pp. 39-44).
+
+But the Babylonians not only adopted the Egyptian conception of the
+power of evil as being seven demons, but they also seem to have fused
+these seven into one, or rather given the real dragon seven-fold
+attributes.[419]
+
+In "The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia"[420] (British Museum),
+Marduk's weapon is compared to "the fish with seven wings".
+
+The god himself is represented as addressing it in these words: "The
+tempest of battle, my weapon of fifty heads, which like the great
+serpent of seven heads is yoked with seven heads, which like the strong
+serpent of the sea (sweeps away) the foe".
+
+In the Japanese story which I have quoted, the number of the dragon's
+heads is given as _seven_ or _eight_; and de Visser is at a loss to know
+why "the number eight should be stereotyped in these stories of
+[Japanese] dragons".[421]
+
+I have already emphasized the world-wide association of the
+seven-headed dragon with storms. The Argonaut (usually called
+"Nautilus" by classical scholars) was the prophet of ill-luck and the
+storm-bringer: but, true to the paradox that runs through the whole
+tissue of mythology, this form of the Great Mother is also a benevolent
+warner against storms. This seems to be another link between the
+seven-headed dragon and these cephalopoda.
+
+I would suggest, merely as a tentative working hypothesis, that the
+process of blending the seven _avatars_ of the dragon into a
+seven-headed dragon may have been facilitated by its identification with
+the _Pterocera_ and the octopus. We know that the octopus and the
+shell-fish were forms assumed by the dragon (see p. 172): the confusion
+between the numbers seven and eight is such as might have been created
+during the transference of the _Pterocera's_ attributes to the octopus
+(_vide supra_, p. 170); and the Babylonian reference to "the fish with
+seven wings," which was afterwards rationalized into "a great serpent
+with seven heads," seems to provide the clue which explains the origin
+of the seven-headed dragon. If Hathor was a seven-fold goddess and at
+the same time was identified with the seven-spiked spider-shell
+(_Pterocera_), the process of converting the shell-fish's seven "wings"
+into seven heads would be a very simple one for an ancient story-teller.
+If this hypothesis has any basis in fact, the circumstance that the
+beliefs concerning the _Pterocera_ must (from the habitat of the
+shell-fish) have come into existence upon the shores of Southern Arabia
+would explain the appearance of the derived myth of the seven-headed
+dragon in Babylonia.
+
+My attention was first called to the possibility of the octopus being
+the parent of the seven-headed dragon, and one of the forms assumed by
+the thunderbolt, by the design upon a krater from Apulia.[422] The
+weapon seemed to be a conventionalization of the octopus. Though further
+research has led me to distrust this interpretation, it has convinced me
+of the intimate association of the octopus and the derived spiral
+ornament with thunder and the dragon, and has suggested that the process
+of blending the seven demons into a seven-headed demon has been assisted
+by the symbolism of the octopus and the _Pterocera_.
+
+
+[414: "The Celtic Dragon Myth," by J. F. Campbell, with the "Geste of
+Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with introduction by George
+Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 134.]
+
+[415: My italics.]
+
+[416: Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Gods of South
+India," Oxford, 1916, p. 24.]
+
+[417: "The Celtic Dragon Myth," p. 136.]
+
+[418: See Chapter I, p. 47.]
+
+[419: I do not propose to discuss here the interesting problems raised
+by this identification of the dragon with a man's good or evil spirit.
+But it is worthy of note that while the Babylonian might be possessed by
+seven evil spirits, the Egyptian could have as many as fourteen good
+spirits or _kas_. In a form somewhat modified by the Indian and
+Indonesian channels, through which they must have passed, these beliefs
+still persist in Melanesia; and the illuminating account of them given
+by C. E. Fox and F. W. Drew ("Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval,"
+_Journ. Roy. Anthropol. Inst._, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 161), makes it easier
+to us to form some conception of their original meaning in ancient
+Babylonia and Egypt. The _ataro_ which possesses a man (and there may be
+as many as a hundred of these "ghosts") leaves his body at death and
+usually enters a shark (or in other cases an octopus, skate, turtle,
+crocodile, hawk, kingfisher, tree, or stone).]
+
+[420: Vol. II, 19, 11-18, and 65, quoted by Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_,
+p. 282.]
+
+[421: _Op. cit._, p. 150.]
+
+[422: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 337, in which (Fig. 269) the rider
+in the car is _welcoming_ the thunderbolt as a divine gift from heaven,
+_i.e._ as a life-amulet, a giver of fertility and good luck. For a
+design representing the octopus as a weapon of the god Eros see the
+title-page of Usener's "Die Sintfluthsagen," 1899.]
+
+
+The Pig.
+
+I have already referred to the circumstances that were responsible for
+the identification of the cow with the Great Mother, the sky, and the
+moon. Once this had happened, the process seems to have been extended to
+include other animals which were used as food, such as the sheep, goat,
+pig, and antelope (or gazelle and deer). In Egypt the cow continued to
+occupy the pre-eminent place as a divine animal; and the cow-cult
+extended from the Mediterreanean to equatorial Africa, to Western
+Europe, and as far East as India. But in the Mediterranean area the pig
+played a more prominent part than it did in Egypt.[423] In the latter
+country Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with the pig;
+and in Syria the place of Set as the enemy of Osiris (Adonis) was taken
+by an actual pig. But throughout the Eastern Mediterranean the pig was
+also identified with the Great Mother and associated with lunar and sky
+phenomena. In fact at Troy the pig was represented[424] with the
+star-shaped decorations with which Hathor's divine cow (in her rôle as a
+sky-goddess) was embellished in Egypt. To complete the identification
+with the cow-mother Cretan fable represents a sow suckling the infant
+Minos or the youthful Zeus-Dionysus as his Egyptian prototype was
+suckled by the divine cow.
+
+Now the cowry-shell was called [Greek: choiros] by the Greeks. The pig,
+in fact, was identified both with the Great Mother and the shell; and it
+is clear from what has been said already in these pages that the reason
+for this strange homology was the fact that originally the Great Mother
+was nothing more than the cowry-shell.
+
+But it was not only with the shell itself that the pig was identified
+but also with what the shell symbolized. Thus the term [Greek: choiros]
+had an obscene significance in addition to its usual meaning "pig" and
+its acquired meaning "cowry". This fact seems to have played some part
+in fixing upon the pig the notoriety of being "an unclean animal".[425]
+But it was mainly for other reasons of a very different kind that the
+eating of swine-flesh was forbidden. The tabu seems to have arisen
+originally because the pig was a sacred animal identified with the Great
+Mother and the Water God, and especially associated with both these
+deities in their lunar aspects.
+
+According to a Cretan legend the youthful god Zeus-Dionysus was suckled
+by a sow. For this reason "the Cretans consider this animal sacred, and
+will not taste of its flesh; and the men of Præsos perform sacred rites
+with the sow, making her the first offering at the sacrifice".[426]
+
+But when the pig also assumed the rôle of Set, as the enemy of Osiris,
+and became the prototype of the devil, an active aversion took the place
+of the sacred tabu, and inspired the belief in the unwholesomeness of
+pig flesh. To this was added the unpleasant reputation as a dirty animal
+which the pig itself acquired, for the reasons which I have already
+stated.
+
+I have already referred to the irrelevance of Miss Jane Harrison's
+denial of the birth of Aphrodite from the sea (p. 141). Miss Harrison
+does not seem to have realized that in her book[427] she has collected
+evidence which is much more relevant to the point at issue. For, in the
+interesting account of the Eleusinian Mysteries (pp. 150 _et seq._), she
+has called attention to the important rite upon the day "called in
+popular parlance '[Greek: halade mystai],' 'to the sea ye mystics'" (p.
+152), which, I think, has a direct bearing upon the myth of Aphrodite's
+birth from the sea.
+
+The Mysteries were celebrated at full moon; and each of the candidates
+for admission "took with him his own pharmakos,[428] a young pig".
+
+"Arrived at the sea, each man bathed with his pig" (p. 152). On one
+occasion, so it is said, "when a mystic was bathing his pig, a
+sea-monster ate off the lower part of his body" (p. 153). So important
+was the pig in this ritual "that when Eleusis was permitted (B.C.
+350-327) to issue her autonomous coinage it is the pig she chooses as
+the sign and symbol of her mysteries" (p. 153).
+
+"On the final day of the Mysteries, according to Athenæus, two vessels
+called _plemochoæ_ are emptied, one towards the East and the other
+towards the West, and at the moment of outpouring a mystic formulary
+was pronounced.... What the mystic formulary was we cannot certainly
+say, but it is tempting to connect the libation of the _plemochoæ_ with
+a formulary recorded by Proclos. He says 'In the Eleusinian mysteries,
+looking up to the sky they cried aloud "Rain," and looking down to earth
+they cried "Be fruitful"'" (p. 161).
+
+In these latter incidents we see, perhaps, a distant echo of Hathor's
+pots of blood-coloured beer that were poured out upon the soil, which in
+a later version of the story became the symbol of the inundation of the
+river and the token of the earth's fruitfulness. The personification in
+the Great Mother of these life-giving powers of the river occurred at
+about the same time; and this was rationalized by the myth that she was
+born of the sea. She was also identified with the moon and a sow. Hence
+these Mysteries were celebrated, both in Egypt and in the Mediterranean,
+at full moon, and the pig played a prominent part in them. The
+candidates washed the sacrificial pig in the sea, not primarily as a
+rite of purification,[429] as is commonly claimed, but because the
+sacrificial animal was merely a surrogate of the cowry, which lived in
+the sea, and of the Great Mother,[430] who was sprung from the cowry and
+hence born of the sea. In the story of the man carrying the pig being
+attacked by a sea-monster, perhaps we have an incident of that
+widespread story of the shark guarding the pearls. We have already seen
+how it was distorted into the fantastic legend of the dog's rôle in the
+digging up of mandrakes. In the version we are now considering the
+pearl's place is taken by the pig, both of them surrogates of the cowry.
+
+The object of the ceremony of carrying the pig into the sea was not the
+cleansing of "the unclean animal," nor was it _primarily_ a rite of
+purification in any sense of the term: it was simply a ritual procedure
+for identifying the sacrifice with the goddess by putting it in her own
+medium, and so transforming the surrogate of the sea-shell, the
+prototype of the sea-born goddess, into the actual Great Mother.
+
+The question naturally arises: what was the real purpose of the
+sacrifice of the pig?
+
+In the story of the Destruction of Mankind we have seen that originally
+a human victim was slain for the purpose of obtaining the life-giving
+human blood to rejuvenate the ageing king. Two circumstances were
+responsible for the modification of this procedure. In the first place,
+there was the abandonment of human sacrifice and the substitution of
+either beer coloured red with ochre to resemble blood (or in other cases
+red wine) or the actual blood of an animal sacrifice in place of the
+human blood. Secondly, the blood of the Great Mother herself
+(personified in the special _avatar_ that was recognized in a particular
+locality, the cow in one place, the pig in another, and so on) was
+regarded as more potent as a life-giving force than that of a mere
+mortal human being. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that this was
+the real reason for the abandoning of human sacrifice and the
+substitution of an animal for a human being. For it is unlikely that, in
+the rude state of society which had become familiarized with and
+brutalized by the practice of these bloody rites of homicide, ethical
+motives alone would have prompted the abolition of the custom of human
+sacrifice, to which such deep significance was attached. The
+substitution of the animal was prompted rather by the idea of obtaining
+a more potent elixir from the life-blood of the Great Mother herself in
+her cow- or sow-forms.
+
+In the transitional stage of the process of substitution of an animal
+for a human being some confusion seems to have arisen as to the ritual
+meaning of the new procedure. If Moret's account of the Egyptian
+Mysteries[431] is correct--and without a knowledge of Egyptian philology
+I am not competent to express an opinion upon this matter--the attempt
+was made to identify the animal victim of sacrifice with the human being
+whose place it had taken. In the procession a human being wore the skin
+of an animal; and, according to Moret, there was a ceremony of passing a
+human being through the skin as a ritual procedure for transforming the
+mock victim into the animal which was to be sacrificed in his place. If
+there is any truth in this interpretation, such a ceremony must have
+been prompted by a misunderstanding of the meaning of the sacrifice,
+unless the identification of the sacrificial animal with the goddess was
+merely a secondary rationalization of the substitution which had been
+made for ethical or some other reasons.
+
+We know that the dead were often buried in the skins of sacrificial
+animals, and so identified with the life-giving deities and given
+rebirth. We know also that in certain ceremonies the appropriate skins
+were worn by those who were impersonating particular gods or goddesses.
+The wearing of these skins of divine animals seems to have been prompted
+not so much by the idea of a reincarnation in animal form as by the
+desire for identification and communion with the particular deity which
+the animal represented. The whole question, however, is one of great
+complexity, which can only be settled by a critical study of the texts
+by some scholar who keeps clearly before his mind the real issues, and
+refuses to take refuge in the stereotyped evasions of conventional
+methods of interpretation.
+
+The sacrifice of the sow to Demeter is merely a late variant of Hathor's
+sacrifice of a human being to rejuvenate the king Re. How the real
+meaning of the story became distorted I have already explained in
+Chapter II ("Dragons and Rain Gods"). The killing of the sow to obtain a
+good harvest is homologous with the sacrifice of a maiden to obtain a
+good inundation of the river. The sow is the surrogate of the beautiful
+princess of the fairy tale. Instead of the maiden being slain, in one
+case, as Andromeda, she is rescued by the hero, in the other her place
+is taken by a sow. These late rationalizations are merely glosses of the
+deep motives which more than fifty centuries ago seem to have prompted
+early pharmacologists to obtain a more potent elixir than human blood by
+stealing from the heights of Olympus the divine blood of the life-giving
+deities themselves.
+
+The pig was identified not only with the Great Mother, but with Osiris
+and Set also. With the pig's lunar and astral associations I do not
+propose to deal in these pages, as the astronomical aspects of the
+problems are so vast as to need much more space than the limits imposed
+in this statement. But it is important to note that the identification
+of Set with a pig was perhaps the main factor in riveting upon this
+creature the fetters of a reputation for evil. The evil dragon was the
+representative of both Set and the Great Mother (Sekhet or Tiamat); and
+both of them were identified with the pig. Just as Set killed Osiris, so
+the pig gave Adonis his mortal injury.[432] When these earthly incidents
+were embellished with a celestial significance, the conflict of Horus
+with Set was interpreted as the struggle between the forces of light and
+order and the powers of darkness and chaos. When worshipped as a
+tempest-god the Mesopotamian Rimmon was known as "the pig"[433] and, as
+"the wild boar of the desert," was a form of Set.
+
+I have discussed the pig at this length because the use of the words
+[Greek: choiros] by the Greeks, and _porcus_ and _porculus_ by the
+Romans, reveals the fact that the terms had the double significance of
+"pig" and "cowry-shell". As it is manifestly impossible to derive the
+word "cowry" from the Greek word for "pig," the only explanation that
+will stand examination is that the two meanings must have been acquired
+from the identification of both the cowry and the pig with the Great
+Mother and the female reproductive organs. In other words, the
+pig-associations of Aphrodite afford clear evidence that the goddess was
+originally a personification of the cowry.[434]
+
+The fundamental nature of the identification of the cowry, the pig, and
+the Great Mother, the one with the other, is revealed not merely in the
+archæology of the Ægean, but also in the modern customs and ancient
+pictures of the most distant peoples. For example, in New Guinea the
+place of the sacrificial pig may be taken by the cowry-shell;[435] and
+upon the chief façade of the east wing of the ancient American monument,
+known as the Casa de las Monjas at Chichen Itza, the hieroglyph of the
+planet Venus is placed in conjunction with a picture of a wild pig.[436]
+
+
+[423: And also, in a misunderstood form, even as far as America.]
+
+[424: Schliemann, "Ilios," Fig. 1450, p. 616.]
+
+[425: This is seen in the case of the Persian word _khor_, which means
+both "pig" and "harlot" or "filthy woman". The possibility of the
+derivation of the old English word "[w]hore" from the same source is
+worth considering.]
+
+[426: L. R. Farnell, "Cults of the Greek States," Vol. I, p. 37.]
+
+[427: "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion."]
+
+[428: Which, in fact, was intended as the equivalent of [Greek:
+pharmakon athanasias], "the redeeming blood".]
+
+[429: Blackman ("Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt,"
+_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, March, 1918, p. 57;
+and May, 1918, p. 85) has shown that the idea of purification was
+certainly entertained.]
+
+[430: In some places an image of the goddess was washed in the sea.]
+
+[431: "Mystères Égyptiens."]
+
+[432: Mr. Donald Mackenzie has collected a good deal of folk-lore
+concerning the pig ("Myths of Egypt," pp. 66 _et seq._; also his books
+on Babylonian, Indian, and Cretan myths, _op. cit. supra_).]
+
+[433: According to Sayce, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 153, note 6.]
+
+[434: In Egypt not only was the sow identified with Isis, but "lucky
+pigs" were worn on necklaces just like the earlier cowry-amulets (Budge,
+"Guide to the Egyptian Collections" (British Museum), p. 96).]
+
+[435: Malinowski, _Trans. and Proc. Royal Society, South Australia_,
+XXXIX, 1915, p. 587 _et. seq._]
+
+[436: Seler, "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der
+Maya-Handschriften," _Zeitsch. f. Ethnologie_, Bd. 41, 1909, p. 405, and
+Fig. 242 in Maudslay, "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Vol. III, Pl. 13.]
+
+
+Gold and the Golden Aphrodite.
+
+The evidence which has been collected by Mr. Wilfrid Jackson seems to
+suggest that the shell-cults originated in the neighbourhood of the
+Red Sea.
+
+With the introduction of the practice of wearing shells on girdles and
+necklaces and as hair ornaments the time arrived when people living some
+distance from the sea experienced difficulty in obtaining these amulets
+in quantities sufficient to meet their demands. Hence they resorted to
+the manufacture of imitations of these shells in clay and stone. But at
+an early period in their history the inhabitants of the deserts between
+the Nile and the Red Sea (Hathor's special province) discovered that
+they could make more durable and attractive models of cowries and other
+shells by using the plastic yellow metal which was lying about in these
+deserts unused and unappreciated. This practice first gave to the metal
+gold an arbitrary value which it did not possess before. For the
+peculiar life-giving attributes of the shells modelled in the yellow
+metal came to be transferred to the gold itself. No doubt the lightness
+and especially the beauty of such gold models appealed to the early
+Egyptians, and were in large measure responsible for the hold gold
+acquired over mankind. But this was an outcome of the empirical
+knowledge gained from a practice that originally was inspired purely by
+cultural and not æsthetic motives. The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic
+sign for gold was a picture of a necklace of such amulets; and this
+emblem became the determinative of the Great Mother Hathor, not only
+because she was originally the personification of the life-giving
+shells, but also because she was the guardian deity both of the Eastern
+wadys where the gold was found and of the Red Sea coasts where the
+cowries were obtained. Hence she became the "Golden Hathor," the
+prototype of the "Golden Aphrodite".
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9.--The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign _nub_. It
+represents a collar from which golden amulets, probably representing
+cowries, are suspended.]
+
+It is a significant token of the influence of these Egyptian incidents
+upon the history of the Ægean that among the earliest gold ornaments
+found by Schliemann at Troy were a series of crude representations of
+cowries worn as pendants to a hair ornament.[437]
+
+It is hardly necessary to insist upon the vast influence upon the
+history of civilization which this arbitrary value of gold has been
+responsible for exerting. For more than fifty centuries men have been
+searching for the precious metal, and have been spreading abroad
+throughout the world the elements of our civilization. It has been not
+only the chief factor in bringing about the contact of peoples[438] and
+incidentally in building up our culture, but it has been the cause,
+directly or indirectly, of most of the warfare which has afflicted
+mankind. Yet these mighty forces were let loose upon the world as the
+result of the circumstance that early searchers for an elixir of life
+used the valueless metal to make imitations of their shell amulets!
+
+The identification of gold with cowries may not have been the primary
+reason for the invention of gold currency. In fact, Professor Ridgeway
+has called attention to certain historical events which in his opinion
+forced men to convert their jewellery into coinage. But the fact that
+cowries were the earliest form of currency may have prepared the way for
+the recognition of the use of gold for a similar purpose. Moreover, we
+know that long before a real gold currency came into being rings of gold
+were in Egypt a form of tribute and a sign of wealth. Cowries acquired
+their significance as currency as the result of incidents in some
+respects analogous to those which impelled the early Egyptians to make
+gold models of the shells. In places in Africa far removed from the sea
+where the practice has grown up of offering vast numbers of cowries to
+brides on the occasion of their marriage (as fertility amulets) or of
+putting the shells in the grave (to secure for the dead fresh vital
+energy), the people offered their most treasured possessions, such as
+their cattle, in exchange for the amulets which were believed to confer
+such priceless social and religious boons. Cattle were therefore given
+in exchange for cowries, or the shells were used for the purchase of
+wives. When the new significance as currency developed a remarkable
+confusion occurred. In many places cowries were placed in the mouth of
+the dead to confer the breath of life: but when the cowries acquired the
+new meaning as currency, the people who had lost all knowledge of the
+original significance of this practice explained the cowries as money
+with which to pay Charon's fare to the other world. Then, in many
+places, the cowry was replaced by an actual metallic coin. Most scholars
+fall into the same error as these ancient rationalists, and accept
+their explanation of the _obolus_ as though it were the real meaning of
+the act.
+
+Another result of the use of gold models of shells as life-giving
+amulets was that the metal also acquired the reputation of being a giver
+of life,[439] which originally belonged merely to the shell or the
+imitation of its form, whatever the substance used for making the model.
+
+Thus gold came to share the same magical reputation as the cowry and the
+pearl. It was also put to the same use: it was buried with the dead to
+confer a continuation of existence.
+
+Not only was Hathor called _NÅ«b_, _i.e._ "gold" or the golden Hathor:
+but the place where the funerary statue was made ("born") in Egypt was
+called the "House of Gold" and personified as a goddess who gave rebirth
+to the dead (Alan Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhēt," p. 95; and A. M.
+Blackman, _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. IV, p. 127).
+
+When ancient prospectors from the South exploited the rivers of
+Turkestan for alluvial gold and fresh water pearls, incidentally they
+also collected pebbles of jade for the purpose of making seals. The
+local inhabitants confused the properties of the stone with the magical
+reputation of the gold and the pearls. One outcome of this jade-fishing
+in Turkestan was the transference of the credit of life-giving to jade.
+Prospectors searching for these precious materials gradually made their
+way east past Lob Nor, and eventually discovered the deposits of gold
+and jade in the Shensi province. Thus jade became the nucleus around
+which the distinctive civilization of China became crystallized. It
+played an obtrusive part not only in attracting men from the West and in
+determining the locality where the germs of Western civilization were
+planted in China, but also in giving Chinese culture its distinctive
+shape.
+
+"The ancient Chinese, wishing to facilitate the resurrection of the
+dead, surrounded them with jade, gold, pearls, timber, and other things
+imbued with influences emitted from the heavens, or, in other words,
+with such objects as are pervaded with vital energy derived from the
+_Yang_ matter of which the heavens are the principal depository." (De
+Groot, _op. cit._, p. 316).
+
+By a similar process diamonds acquired the same reputation in India when
+searchers after gold discovered the precious metal in Hyderabad, and
+the diamonds of Golconda came to be accredited with life-giving
+powers.[440]
+
+According to the beliefs of the Indians "the Nâga owns riches, the water
+of life, and a jewel that restores the dead to life".
+
+Thus gold, pearls, jade, and diamonds in course of time acquired the
+reputation of elixirs of life, but the hold they established upon
+mankind was due to the fact (a) that the amulets made of these materials
+made a strong appeal to the æsthetic sense, and (b) the arbitrary value
+assigned to them made them desirable objects to search for.
+
+In his "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult" (1901) Sir Arthur Evans gives
+cogent reasons for the view that at the time when Mycenæan influence was
+powerful in Cyprus "the 'golden Aphroditê' of the Egyptians seems to
+play a much more important part than any form of Astarte or Mylitta"
+(p. 52). "The Cypriote parallels will be found to have a fundamental
+importance as demonstrating in detail that these ['a simple form of the
+palmette pillar, approaching a fleur-de-lys in outline,' in association
+with its guardian monsters] are in fact taken over from the cult of
+Mentu-Ra, the Warrior Sun-god of Egypt, of Hathor, and of Horus"
+(p. 52).
+
+
+[437: So far as I am aware the fact that these objects were intended to
+represent cowries does not appear to have been recognized hitherto. I am
+indebted to Mr. Wilfrid Jackson for calling my attention to the figures
+685 and 832 in Schliemann's "Ilios" (1880), and for identifying the
+objects.]
+
+[438: See Perry, "Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," _Proceedings
+and Memorials of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society_,
+1916; also "War and Civilization," _Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library_, 1918.]
+
+[439: "Danæ pregnant with immortal gold."]
+
+[440: See Laufer, "The Diamond," also Munn, "The Ancient Gold Mines of
+Hyderabad," paper now being published in the _Proceedings of the
+Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society_.]
+
+
+Aphrodite as the Thunder-stone.
+
+As a surrogate of the Great Mother, the Eye of Re, the thunder-weapon
+was also identified with any of her varied manifestations.
+
+The thunderbolt is one of the manifestations of the life-giving and
+death-dealing Divine Cow, and therefore is able specially to protect
+mundane cows.[441]
+
+There are numerous hints in the ancient literature of other countries in
+confirmation of the association of the Great Mother with "falling
+stars". "In a fragment of Sanchoniathon, Astarte, travelling about the
+habitable world, is said to have found a star falling through the air,
+which she took up and consecrated."[442]
+
+Aphrodite also was looked upon as a meteoric stone that fell from the
+moon. In the "Iliad," Zeus is said to have sent Athena as a meteorite
+from heaven to earth.[443]
+
+The association of Aphrodite with meteoric stones and the ancient belief
+that they fell from the moon serve to confirm the identification of
+these life-giving and death-dealing objects with the pearl and the
+thunderbolt. In Southern India the goddesses may be represented either
+by small stones or by pots of water, usually seven in number. During the
+ceremony around the stone-form of the goddess the _kappukaran_ runs
+thrice around the stone, as the mandrake-digger does around the plant.
+The _pujari_ who represents the goddess is painted like a leopard
+(Hathor's lioness) and kills the sacrificial sheep. The goddess (like
+Hathor) is supposed to drink the blood of the sacrificial victims
+(Whitehead, _op. cit._, pp. 164-8).
+
+Many factors played a part in the development of the beliefs about the
+origin of mankind from stones, with which the identification of the
+thunderbolt with the winged disk plays a part.
+
+The idea that the cowry was the giver of life and the parent of men was
+also transferred to crude stone imitations of the shell. Perhaps the
+belief in such stones as creators of human beings may have been
+reinforced by finding actual fossilized shells within pebbles.[444]
+
+A further corroboration of this theory was provided when the pearl came
+to be regarded as the quintessence of the life-giving substance of
+shells and as a little particle of moon-substance which fell as a drop
+of dew into the gaping oyster. Perry (_op. cit._, p. 78) refers to an
+Indonesian belief among the Tsalisen that their ancestors came out of
+the moon; and the chief of this people has a spherical stone which is
+said to represent the moon.
+
+This association of the moon with round stones may be connected with the
+identification of the sun (as the winged disk) with a stone axe, when
+they came to be regarded as alternative weapons for the destruction or
+the creation of men. Perry records a story of a rock being lowered down
+from the sun, from which it was born, and out of a cleft in it man and
+woman emerged, as they were believed to have been born from the cleft in
+the cowry.
+
+Then there are the Egyptian beliefs concerning stone statues, obelisks,
+or even unshaped blocks of stone which could be animated by human beings
+or gods.[445]
+
+The cycle of these stories was completed when the "Eye of Re"
+slaughtered the enemies of the god and they became identified with the
+followers of Set, "creatures of stone". Thus the evil eye petrified
+rebellious men: and so was launched upon its course the peculiar group
+of legends which in time encircled the world.
+
+It is particularly significant that in Indonesia, in association with
+these ideas about stone-origins and petrifaction, Perry (p. 133) found
+also the clear-cut belief that the thunder-weapon was a stone, or the
+tooth of a cloud-dragon in the sky.
+
+In Indonesia also petrifaction, thunder-stones, rain, floods, lightning,
+and an arrow shot to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning were the
+punishments traditionally assigned for certain offences, such as incest
+and laughing at animals.
+
+The same people who introduced into the Malay Archipelago these
+characteristic fragments of the dragon-myth also believed that certain
+animals were impersonations of their gods: they also brought stories of
+incestuous unions on the part of their deities and rulers. To laugh at
+their sacred animals, or to imitate privileged customs permitted to
+their deities, but not to ordinary mortals, merited the same sort of
+punishments as were meted out to those other rebels against the ruling
+class and the gods in the home of these beliefs.[446]
+
+To laugh at the divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a divine
+prerogative, was analogous to "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,"
+which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable offence, and in
+pagan legend was punished by the divine wrath, thunder, lightning, rain,
+floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instruments. Oedipus put out
+his own eyes to forestall the traditional wrath of the gods.
+
+
+[441: Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, p. 70 _et seq._]
+
+[442: Quoted by Layard, "Nineveh and its Remains," Vol. II, p. 457.]
+
+[443: Cook, "Zeus," I, p. 760.]
+
+[444: Striking examples of these stories about birth from split stones
+have been given by Perry, "Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Chapter X,
+and de Groot's "Religious System of China". It is possible that the
+double meaning of the Egyptian word _set_, as "stone" and "mountain"
+played a part in originating these stories. I have already quoted from
+the Pyramid Texts the account of the daily birth of the sun-god by a
+splitting of the "mountain" of the dawn. By a pun on this word the god's
+origin might have been interpreted as having taken place from a split
+"stone". The fact that the Great Mother was identified with a "mountain"
+(_set_) may also have facilitated the homology with the other meaning of
+_set_, _i.e._ "a stone".]
+
+[445: "Incense and Libations".]
+
+[446: As the character and attributes of the early goddesses became more
+complex, and contradictory traits were more sharply contrasted, the
+inevitable tendency developed to differentiate the goddesses themselves,
+and provide distinctive names for the new personalities thus split off
+from the common parent. We see this in Egypt in the case of Hathor and
+Sekhet, and in Babylonia in Ishtar and Tiamat. But the process of
+specialization and differentiation might even involve a change of sex.
+There can be no doubt that the _god_ Horus was originally a
+differentiation of certain of the aspects of the sky-goddess Hathor, at
+first as a brother "Eye". But as the _king_ Horus was the son of Osiris
+(as the dead king), when the confusion of the attributes of Osiris and
+Hathor--the actual father and the divine mother of Horus--made their
+marriage inevitable, the maternal relationship of the goddess to her
+"brother" was emphasized. But as the Great Mother, Hathor was the parent
+of the universe, and the mother not only of Horus but also of his father
+Osiris. This complicated rationalization made Hathor the sister, mother,
+and grandmother of Horus, and was responsible for originating the belief
+in the incestuous practices of the divine family. When the royal family
+assumed the rôle of gods and goddesses they were bound by these
+traditions (which had their origin purely in theological sophistry) and
+were driven to indulge in actual incest, as we know from the records of
+the Egyptian royal family and their imitators in other countries. But
+incest became a royal and divine prerogative which was sternly forbidden
+to mere mortals and regarded as a peculiarly detestable sin.]
+
+
+The Serpent and the Lioness.
+
+When the development of the story of the Destruction of Mankind
+necessitated the finding of a human sacrifice and drove the Great Mother
+to homicide, this side of her character was symbolized by identifying
+her with a man-slaying lion and the venomous uræus-serpent.
+
+She had previously been represented by such beneficent food-providing
+and life-sustaining creatures as the cow, the sow, and the gazelle
+(antelope or deer): but when she developed into a malevolent creature
+and became the destroyer of mankind it was appropriate that she should
+assume the form of such man-destroyers as the lion and the cobra.
+
+Once the reason for such identifications grew dim, the uræus-form of the
+Great Mother became her symbol in either of her aspects, good or bad,
+although the legend of her poison-spitting, man-destroying powers
+persisted.[447] The identification of the destroying-goddess with the
+moon, "the Eye of the Sun-god," prepared the way for the rationalization
+of her character as a uræus-serpent spitting venom and the sun's Eye
+spitting fire at the Sun-god's enemies. Such was the goddess of Buto in
+Lower Egypt, whose uræus-symbol was worn on the king's forehead, and was
+misinterpreted by the Greeks as not merely a symbolic "eye," but an
+actual median eye upon the king's or the god's forehead.
+
+It is not without special significance that in the ancient legend (see
+Sethe, _op. cit._) the lioness-goddess Tefnut was reputed to have come
+from Elephantine (or at any rate the region of Sehêl and Biga, which has
+the same significance), which serves to demonstrate her connexion with
+the story of the Destruction of Mankind and to corroborate the inference
+as to its remote antiquity. She was identified with Hathor, Sekhet,
+Bast, and other goddesses.
+
+But the uræus was not merely the goddess who destroyed the king's
+enemies and the emblem of his kingship: in course of time the cobra
+became identified with the ruler himself and the dead king, who was the
+god Osiris. When this happened the snake acquired the god's reputation
+of being the controller of water.
+
+The fashionable speculation of modern scholars that the movements of the
+snake naturally suggest rippling water[448] and provide "the obvious
+reason" which led many people quite independently the one of the other
+to associate the snake with water, is thus shown to have no foundation
+in fact.
+
+One would have imagined that, if any natural association between snakes
+and water was the reason for this association, a water-snake would have
+been chosen to express the symbolism; or, if it was the mere rippling
+motion of the reptile, that all snakes or any snake would have been
+drawn into the analogy. But primarily only one kind of snake, a cobra,
+was selected[449]; and it is not a water snake, and cannot live in or
+under water. It was selected _because it was venomous_ and the
+appropriate symbol of man-slaying.
+
+The circumstances which led to the identification of this particular
+serpent with water were the result of a process of legend-making of so
+arbitrary and eccentric a nature as to make it impossible seriously to
+pretend that so tortuous a ratiocination should have been exactly
+followed to the same unexpected destination also in Crete and Western
+Europe, in Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia, and in America, without
+prompting the one of the other. No serious investigator who is capable
+of estimating the value of evidence can honestly deny that the belief in
+the serpent's control over water was diffused abroad from one centre
+where a concatenation of peculiar circumstances and beliefs led to the
+identification of the ruler with the cobra and the control of water.
+
+We are surely on safe ground in assuming the improbability of such a
+wholly fortuitous set of events happening a second time and producing
+the same result elsewhere. Thus when we find in India the Nâga rajas
+identified with the cobra, and credited with the ability to control the
+waters, we can confidently assume that in some way the influence of
+these early Egyptian events made itself felt in India. As we compare the
+details of the Nâga worship in India[450] with early Egyptian beliefs,
+all doubt as to their common origin disappears.
+
+The Nâga rulers were closely associated with springs, streams, and
+lakes. "To this day the rulers of the Hindu Kush states, Hunza and
+Nagar, though now Mohammedans, are believed, by their subjects, to be
+able to command the elements."
+
+Oldham adds: "This power is still ascribed to the serpent-gods of the
+sun-worshipping countries of China, Manchuria, and Korea, and was so,
+until the introduction of Christianity, in Mexico and Peru". This is put
+forward in support of his argument that the Nâga kings' "supposed
+ability to control the elements, and especially the waters," arose "from
+their connexion with the sun". But this is not so.[451] The belief in
+the Egyptian king's power over water was certainly older than
+sun-worship, which did not begin until Osirian beliefs and the
+personification of the moon as the Great Mother brought the sky-deities
+and the control of water into correlation the one with the other. The
+association of the sun and the serpent in the royal insignia was a later
+development.
+
+The early Egyptian goddess was identified with the uræus-serpent in that
+vitally important nodal point of primitive civilization, Buto, in Lower
+Egypt. The earliest deity in Crete and the Eastern Mediterranean seems
+to have been a goddess who was also closely associated with the serpent.
+According to Langdon "the ophidian nature of the earliest Sumerian
+mother-goddess _Innini_ is unmistakable.... She carries the caduceus in
+her hand, two serpents twining about a staff."[452]
+
+The earliest Indian deities also were goddesses, and the first rulers of
+whom any record has been preserved were regarded as divine cobras, to
+whom was attributed the power of controlling water. These Nâgas, whether
+kings or queens, gods or goddesses, were the prototypes of the Eastern
+Asiatic dragon, whose origin is discussed in Chapter II.
+
+In Japan the earliest sun-deity was a goddess who was identified with a
+snake. Elsewhere in this volume (Chapter II) I have referred to the
+completeness of the transference to America of these Old World ideas of
+the serpent. Right on the route taken by the main stream of cultural
+diffusion across the Pacific we still find in their fully-developed form
+the old beliefs concerning the good Mother Serpent of the ancient
+civilizations (C. E. Fox and F. H. Drew, _op. cit. supra_, p. 139). She
+could be re-incarnated as a coconut: she controlled crops; she was
+associated with the coming of death into the world, with the
+introduction of agriculture and the discovery of fire. Like her
+predecessors in the West she was also a Mother Pot or Basket that
+never emptied.
+
+All the _hiona_ or _figona_ (_i.e._ spirits) of San Cristoval have a
+serpent incarnation from Agunua the creator, worshipped by every one, to
+Oharimae and others, only known to particular persons. Other spirits,
+called _ataro_, might be incarnate in almost any animal. Agunua, who
+took the form of a serpent, was good, not evil (p. 134). Very many
+pools, rocks, water-falls, or large trees were thought to be the abode
+of _figona_. These serpent spirits could take the form of a stone, or
+retire within a stone, and sacred stones seem to be connected with
+_figona_ rather than with _ataro_ (p. 135). Almost all the local
+_figona_ are represented as female snakes, but Agunua is a male snake
+(p. 137).
+
+As the real significance of the snake's symbolism originated from its
+identification with the Great Mother in her destructive aspect, it is
+not surprising that the snake is the most primitive form of the evil
+dragon. The Babylonian Tiamat was originally represented as a huge
+serpent,[453] and throughout the world the serpent is pre-eminently a
+symbol of the evil dragon and the powers of evil.
+
+The serpent that tempted Eve was the homologue both of the mother of
+mankind herself and also of the tree of paradise. It was the
+representative of the dragon-protector of pearls and of other kinds of
+treasure: it was also the goddess who animated the sacred tree as well
+as the protector who attacked all who approached it. It was the evil
+dragon that tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit which brought
+her mortality.
+
+The identification of the Great Mother with the lioness (and the
+secondary association of her husband and son with the lion) was
+responsible for a widespread relationship of these creatures with the
+gods and goddesses in Egypt and the Mediterranean, in Western Asia, in
+Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia [tiger] and America [ocelot, and
+forms borrowed from the conventionalized lions and tigers of the Old
+World].
+
+The account of the Great Mother's attributes and associations throws
+into clear relief certain aspects of the evolution of the dragon which
+were left in a somewhat nebulous state in Chapter II. The earliest form
+assumed by the power of evil was the serpent or the lion, because these
+death-dealing creatures were adopted as symbols of the Great Mother in
+her rôle as the Destroyer of Mankind. When Horus was differentiated from
+the Great Mother and became her _locum tenens_, his falcon (or eagle)
+was blended with Hathor's lioness to make the composite monster which is
+represented on Elamite and Babylonian monuments (see p. 79). But when
+the rôle of water as the instrument of destruction became prominent,
+Ea's antelope and fish were blended to make a monster, usually known as
+the "goat-fish," which in India and elsewhere assumed a great variety of
+forms. Some of the varieties of _makara_ were sufficiently like a
+crocodile to be confused or identified with this representative of the
+followers of Set.
+
+The real dragon was created when all three larval types--serpent,
+eagle-lion, and antelope-fish--were blended to form a monster with
+bird's feet and wings, a lion's forelimbs and head, the fish's scales,
+the antelope's horns, and a more or less serpentine form of trunk and
+tail, and sometimes also of head. Repeated substitution of parts of
+other animals, such as the spiral horn of Amen's ram, a deer's antlers,
+and the elephant's head, led to endless variation in the dragon's
+traits.
+
+The essential unity of the motives and incidents of the myths of all
+peoples and of every age is a token, not of independent origin or the
+result of "the similarity of the working of the human mind," but of
+their derivation from the same ultimate source.
+
+The question naturally arises: what is a myth? The dragon-myth of the
+West is the religion of China. The literature of every religion is
+saturated with the influence of the myth. In what respect does religion
+differ from myth? In Chapter I, I attempted to explain how originally
+science and religion were not differentiated. Both were the outcome of
+man's attempt to peer into the meaning of natural phenomena, and to
+extract from such knowledge practical measures for circumventing fate.
+His ever-insistent aim was to combat danger to life.
+
+Religion was differentiated from science when the measures for
+controlling fate became invested with the assurance of supernatural
+help, for which the growth of a knowledge of natural phenomena made it
+impossible for the mere scientist to be the sponsor. It became a
+question of faith rather than knowledge; and man's instinctive struggle
+against the risk of extinction impelled him to cling to this larger hope
+of salvation, and to embellish it with an ethical and moral significance
+which at first was lacking in the eternal search for the elixir of life.
+
+If religion can be regarded as archaic science enriched with the belief
+in supernatural control, the myth can be regarded as effete religion
+which has been superseded by the growth of a loftier ethical purpose.
+The myth is to religion what alchemy is to chemistry or astrology is to
+astronomy. Like these sciences, religion retains much of the material of
+the cruder phase of thought that is displayed in myth, alchemy, and
+astrology, but it has been refined and elaborated. The dross has been to
+a large extent eliminated, and the pure metal has been moulded into a
+more beautiful and attractive form. In searching for the elixir of life,
+the makers of religion have discovered the philosopher's stone, and with
+its aid have transmuted the base materials of myth into the gold of
+religion.
+
+If we seek for the deep motives which have prompted men in all ages so
+persistently to search for the elixir of life, for some means of
+averting the dangers to which their existence is exposed, it will be
+found in the instinct of self-preservation, which is the fundamental
+factor in the behaviour of all living beings, the means of preservation
+of the life which is their distinctive attribute and the very essence of
+their being.
+
+The dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine powers of
+life-giving; but with the development of a higher conception of
+religious ideals it became relegated to a baser rôle, and eventually
+became the symbol of the powers of evil.
+
+
+[447: Sethe, "Zur altägyptische Sage von Sonnenaugen das im Fremde war,"
+_Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ægyptens_, V, p. 23.
+[Transcriber's note: the title of the paper has been misprinted. It
+should read "...vom Sonnenauge, das..."]]
+
+[448: See especially the claims put forward by Brinton, which have been
+accepted by Spinden, Joyce, and many other recent writers.]
+
+[449: Possibly also the Cerastes. At a relatively late period other
+snakes were adopted as surrogates of the cobra and Cerastes.]
+
+[450: See Oldham, "Sun and Serpent," p. 51 _inter alia_.]
+
+[451: Blackman, however, has recently advanced this claim in reference
+to Egypt (_op. cit._, _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archæology_, 1918, p. 57), as
+Breasted and others have done before.]
+
+[452: S. Langdon, "A Seal of Nidaba, the Goddess of Vegetation,"
+_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, Vol. XXXVI, 1914,
+p. 281.]
+
+[453: L. W. King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 58.]
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Numerous obvious printing errors have been corrected.
+However, inconsistent hyphenation in the original has been retained.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith
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diff --git a/22038-0.zip b/22038-0.zip
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+Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Evolution of the Dragon
+
+Author: G. Elliot Smith
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2007 [EBook #22038]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Colin Bell, Dave Maddock and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file made using scans of public domain works at the
+University of Georgia.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
+
+BY G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
+
+PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
+
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+
+Manchester: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
+
+LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY
+
+London, New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Some explanation is due to the reader of the form and scope of these
+elaborations of the lectures which I have given at the John Rylands
+Library during the last three winters.
+
+They deal with a wide range of topics, and the thread which binds them
+more or less intimately into one connected story is only imperfectly
+expressed in the title "The Evolution of the Dragon".
+
+The book has been written in rare moments of leisure snatched from a
+variety of arduous war-time occupations; and it reveals only too plainly
+the traces of this disjointed process of composition. On 23 February,
+1915, I presented to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society
+an essay on the spread of certain customs and beliefs in ancient times
+under the title "On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of
+the Practice of Mummification," and in my Rylands Lecture two weeks
+later I summed up the general conclusions.[1] In view of the lively
+controversies that followed the publication of the former of these
+addresses, I devoted my next Rylands Lecture (9 February, 1916) to the
+discussion of "The Relationship of the Egyptian Practice of
+Mummification to the Development of Civilization". In preparing this
+address for publication in the _Bulletin_ some months later so much
+stress was laid upon the problems of "Incense and Libations" that I
+adopted this more concise title for the elaboration of the lecture which
+forms the first chapter of this book. This will explain why so many
+matters are discussed in that chapter which have little or no
+connexion either with "Incense and Libations" or with "The Evolution
+of the Dragon".
+
+The study of the development of the belief in water's life-giving
+attributes, and their personification in the gods Osiris, Ea, Soma
+[Haoma] and Varuna, prepared the way for the elucidation of the history
+of "Dragons and Rain Gods" in my next lecture (Chapter II). What played
+a large part in directing my thoughts dragon-wards was the discussion of
+certain representations of the Indian Elephant upon Precolumbian
+monuments in, and manuscripts from, Central America (_Nature_, 25 Nov.,
+1915; 16 Dec., 1915; and 27 Jan., 1916). For in the course of
+investigating the meaning of these remarkable designs I discovered that
+the Elephant-headed rain-god of America had attributes identical with
+those of the Indian Indra (and of Varuna and Soma) and the Chinese
+dragon. The investigation of these identities established the fact
+that the American rain-god was transmitted across the Pacific from India
+via Cambodia.
+
+The intensive study of dragons impressed upon me the importance of the
+part played by the Great Mother, especially in her Babylonian _avatar_
+as Tiamat, in the evolution of the famous wonder-beast. Under the
+stimulus of Dr. Rendel Harris's Rylands Lecture on "The Cult of
+Aphrodite," I therefore devoted my next address (14 November, 1917) to
+the "Birth of Aphrodite" and a general discussion of the problems of
+Olympian obstetrics.
+
+Each of these addresses was delivered as an informal demonstration of
+large series of lantern projections; and, as Mr. Guppy insisted upon the
+publication of the lectures in the _Bulletin_, it became necessary,
+as a rule, many months after the delivery of each address, to rearrange
+my material and put into the form of a written narrative the story
+which had previously been told mainly by pictures and verbal comments
+upon them.
+
+In making these elaborations additional facts were added and new points
+of view emerged, so that the printed statements bear little resemblance
+to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such
+transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written
+report of what was essentially an ocular demonstration, unless every one
+of the numerous pictures is reproduced.
+
+Each of the first two lectures was printed before the succeeding lecture
+was set up in type. For these reasons there is a good deal of
+repetition, and in successive lectures a wider interpretation of
+evidence mentioned in the preceding addresses. Had it been possible to
+revise the whole book at one time, and if the pressure of other duties
+had permitted me to devote more time to the work, these blemishes might
+have been eliminated and a coherent story made out of what is little
+more than a collection of data and tags of comment. No one is more
+conscious than the writer of the inadequacy of this method of presenting
+an argument of such inherent complexity as the dragon story: but my
+obligation to the Rylands Library gave me no option in the matter: I had
+to attempt the difficult task in spite of all the unpropitious
+circumstances. This book must be regarded, then, not as a coherent
+argument, but merely as some of the raw material for the study of the
+dragon's history. In my lecture (13 November, 1918) on "The Meaning of
+Myths," which will be published in the _Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library_, I have expounded the general conclusions that emerge from the
+studies embodied in these three lectures; and in my forthcoming book,
+"The Story of the Flood," I have submitted the whole mass of evidence to
+examination in detail, and attempted to extract from it the real story
+of mankind's age-long search for the elixir of life.
+
+In the earliest records from Egypt and Babylonia it is customary to
+portray a king's beneficence by representing him initiating irrigation
+works. In course of time he came to be regarded, not merely as the giver
+of the water which made the desert fertile, but as himself the
+personification and the giver of the vital powers of water. The
+fertility of the land and the welfare of the people thus came to be
+regarded as dependent upon the king's vitality. Hence it was not
+illogical to kill him when his virility showed signs of failing and so
+imperilled the country's prosperity. But when the view developed that
+the dead king acquired a new grant of vitality in the other world he
+became the god Osiris, who was able to confer even greater boons of
+life-giving to the land and people than was the case before. He was the
+Nile, and he fertilized the land. The original dragon was a beneficent
+creature, the personification of water, and was identified with kings
+and gods.
+
+But the enemy of Osiris became an evil dragon, and was identified with
+Set.
+
+The dragon-myth, however, did not really begin to develop until an
+ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother, as
+the giver of life, to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood;
+and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her
+murderous act led to her being compared with and ultimately identified
+with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of the
+dragon is a much distorted rumour of this incident; and in the process
+of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of
+interpretation and also confusion with the legendary account of the
+conflict between Horus and Set.
+
+When a substitute was obtained to replace the blood the slaying of a
+human victim was no longer logically necessary: but an explanation had
+to be found for the persistence of this incident in the story. Mankind
+(no longer a mere individual human sacrifice) had become sinful and
+rebellious (the act of rebellion being complaints that the king or god
+was growing old) and had to be destroyed as a punishment for this
+treason. The Great Mother continued to act as the avenger of the king or
+god. But the enemies of the god were also punished by Horus in the
+legend of Horus and Set. The two stories hence became confused the one
+with the other. The king Horus took the place of the Great Mother as the
+avenger of the gods. As she was identified with the moon, he became the
+Sun-god, and assumed many of the Great Mother's attributes, and also
+became her son. In the further development of the myth, when the Sun-god
+had completely usurped his mother's place, the infamy of her deeds of
+destruction seems to have led to her being confused with the rebellious
+men who were now called the followers of Set, Horus's enemy. Thus an
+evil dragon emerged from this blend of the attributes of the Great
+Mother and Set. This is the Babylonian Tiamat. From the amazingly
+complex jumble of this tissue of confusion all the incidents of the
+dragon-myth were derived.
+
+When attributes of the Water-god or his enemy became assimilated with
+those of the Great Mother and the Warrior Sun-god, the animals with
+which these deities were identified came to be regarded individually and
+collectively as concrete expressions of the Water-god's powers. Thus the
+cow and the gazelle, the falcon and the eagle, the lion and the serpent,
+the fish and the crocodile became symbols of the life-giving and the
+life-destroying powers of water, and composite monsters or dragons were
+invented by combining parts of these various creatures to express the
+different manifestations of the vital powers of water. The process of
+elaboration of the attributes of these monsters led to the development
+of an amazingly complex myth: but the story became still further
+involved when the dragon's life-controlling powers became confused with
+man's vital spirit and identified with the good or evil genius which was
+regarded as the guest, welcome or unwelcome, of every individual's body,
+and the arbiter of his destiny. In my remarks on the _ka_ and the
+_fravashi_ I have merely hinted at the vast complexity of these elements
+of confusion.
+
+Had I been familiar with [Archbishop] Söderblom's important
+monograph,[2] when I was writing Chapters I and III, I might have
+attempted to indicate how vital a part the confusion of the individual
+_genius_ with the mythical wonder-beast has played in the history of the
+myths relating to the latter. For the identification of the dragon with
+the vital spirit of the individual explains why the stories of the
+former appealed to the selfish interest of every human being. At the
+time the lecture on "Incense and Libations" was written, I had no idea
+that the problems of the _ka_ and the _fravashi_ had any connexion with
+those relating to the dragon. But in the third chapter a quotation from
+Professor Langdon's account of "A Ritual of Atonement for a Babylonian
+King" indicates that the Babylonian equivalent of the _ka_ and the
+_fravashi_, "my god who walks at my side," presents many points of
+affinity to a dragon.
+
+When in the lecture on "Incense and Libations" I ventured to make the
+daring suggestion that the ideas underlying the Egyptian conception of
+the _ka_ were substantially identical with those entertained by the
+Iranians in reference to the _fravashi_, I was not aware of the fact
+that such a comparison had already been made. In [Archbishop]
+Söderblom's monograph, which contains a wealth of information in
+corroboration of the views set forth in Chapter I, the following
+statement occurs: "L'analyse, faite par M. Brede-Kristensen (_Ægypternes
+forestillinger om livet efter döden_, 14 ss. Kristiania, 1896) du _ka_
+égyptien, jette une vive lumière sur notre question, par la frappante
+analogie qui semble exister entre le sens originaire de ces deux termes
+_ka_ et _fravashi_" (p. 58, note 4). "La similitude entre le _ka_ et la
+_fravashi_ a été signalée dejà par Nestor Lhote, _Lettres écrites
+d'Égypte_, note, selon Maspero, _Études de mythologie et d'archéologie
+égyptiennes_, I, 47, note 3."
+
+In support of the view, which I have submitted in Chapter I, that the
+original idea of the _fravashi_, like that of the _ka_, was suggested by
+the placenta and the foetal membranes, I might refer to the specific
+statement (Farvardin-Yasht, XXIII, 1) that "les fravashis tiennent en
+ordre l'enfant dans le sein de sa mère et l'enveloppent de sorte qu'il
+ne meurt pas" (_op. cit._, Söderblom, p. 41, note 1). The _fravashi_
+"nourishes and protects" (p. 57): it is "the nurse" (p. 58): it is
+always feminine (p. 58). It is in fact the placenta, and is also
+associated with the functions of the Great Mother. "Nous voyons dans
+fravashi une personification de la force vitale, conservée et exercée
+aussi après la mort. La fravashi est le principe de vie, la faculté qu'a
+l'homme de se soutenir par la nourriture, de manger, d'absorber et ainsi
+d'exister et de se développer. Cette étymologie et le rôle attributé à
+la fravashi dans le développement de l'embryon, des animaux, des plantes
+rappellent en quelque sorte, comme le remarque M. Foucher, l'idée
+directrice de Claude Bernard. Seulement la fravashi n'a jamais été une
+abstraction. La fravashi est une puissance vivante, un _homunculus in
+homine_, un être personnifié comme du reste toutes les sources de vie et
+de mouvement que l'homme non civilisé aperçoit dans son organisme.
+
+"Il ne faut pas non plus considérer la fravashi comme un double de
+l'homme, elle en est plutôt une partie, un hôte intime qui continue son
+existence après la mort aux mêmes conditions qu'avant, et qui oblige
+les vivants à lui fournir les aliments nécessaires" (_op. cit._, p. 59).
+
+Thus the _fravashi_ has the same remarkable associations with
+nourishment and placental functions as the _ka_. As a further suggestion
+of its connexion with the Great Mother as the inaugurator of the year,
+and in virtue of her physiological (uterine) functions the
+moon-controlled measurer of the month, it is important to note that "Le
+19^e jour de chaque mois est également consecré aux fravashis en
+général. Le premier mois porte aussi le nom de Farvardîn. Quant aux
+formes des fêtes mensuelles, elles semblent conformes à celles que nous
+allons rappeler [les fêtes célébrées en l'honneur des mortes]" (_op.
+cit._, p. 10).
+
+But the _fravashi_ was not only associated with the Great Mother, but
+also with the Water-god or Good Dragon, for it controlled the waters of
+irrigation and gave fertility to the soil (_op. cit._, p. 36). The
+_fravashi_ was also identified with the third member of the primitive
+Trinity, the Warrior Sun-god, not merely in the general sense as the
+adversary of the powers of evil, but also in the more definite form of
+the Winged Disk (_op. cit._, pp. 67 and 68).
+
+In all these respects the _fravashi_ is brought into close association
+with the dragon, so that in addition to being "the divine and immortal
+element" (_op. cit._, p. 51), it became the genius or spirit that
+possesses a man and shapes his conduct and regulates his behaviour. It
+was in fact the expression of a crude attempt on the part of the early
+psychologists of Iran to explain the working of the instinct of
+self-preservation.
+
+In the text of Chapters I and III I have referred to the Greek,
+Babylonian, Chinese, and Melanesian variants of essentially the same
+conception. Söderblom refers to an interesting parallel among the
+Karens, whose _kelah_ corresponds to the Iranian _fravashi_ (p. 54, Note
+2: compare also A. E. Crawley, "The Idea of the Soul," 1909).
+
+In the development of the dragon-myth astronomical factors played a very
+obtrusive part: but I have deliberately refrained from entering into a
+detailed discussion of them, because they were not primarily the real
+causal agents in the origin of the myth. When the conception of a
+sky-world or a heaven became drawn into the dragon story it came to
+play so prominent a part as to convince most writers that the myth was
+primarily and essentially astronomical. But it is clear that originally
+the myth was concerned solely with the regulation of irrigation systems
+and the search upon earth for an elixir of life.
+
+When I put forward the suggestion that the annual inundation of the Nile
+provided the information for the first measurement of the year, I was
+not aware of the fact that Sir Norman Lockyer ("The Dawn of Astronomy,"
+1894, p. 209), had already made the same claim and substantiated it by
+much fuller evidence than I have brought together here.
+
+In preparing these lectures I have received help from so large a number
+of correspondents that it is difficult to enumerate all of them. But I
+am under a special debt of gratitude to Dr. Alan Gardiner for calling my
+attention to the fact that the common rendering of the Egyptian word
+_didi_ as "mandrake" was unjustifiable, and to Mr. F. Ll. Griffith for
+explaining its true meaning and for lending me the literature relating
+to this matter. Miss Winifred M. Crompton, the Assistant Keeper of the
+Egyptian Department in the Manchester Museum, gave me very material
+assistance by bringing to my attention some very important literature
+which otherwise would have been overlooked; and both she and Miss
+Dorothy Davison helped me with the drawings that illustrate this volume.
+Mr. Wilfrid Jackson gave me much of the information concerning shells
+and cephalopods which forms such an essential part of the argument, and
+he also collected a good deal of the literature which I have made use
+of. Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., of Cambridge, lent me a number of books
+and journals which I was unable to obtain in Manchester; and Mr. Donald
+A. Mackenzie, of Edinburgh, has poured in upon me a stream of
+information, especially upon the folk-lore of Scotland and India. Nor
+must I forget to acknowledge the invaluable help and forbearance of
+Mr. Henry Guppy, of the John Rylands Library, and Mr. Charles W. E.
+Leigh, of the University Library. To all of these and to the still
+larger number of correspondents who have helped me I offer my most
+grateful thanks.
+
+During the three years in which these lectures were compiled I have
+been associated with Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, F.R.S., and Mr. T. H. Pear in
+their psychological work in the military hospitals, and the influence of
+this interesting experience is manifest upon every page of this volume.
+
+But perhaps the most potent factor of all in shaping my views and
+directing my train of thought has been the stimulating influence of Mr.
+W. J. Perry's researches, which are converting ethnology into a real
+science and shedding a brilliant light upon the early history of
+civilization.
+
+G. ELLIOT SMITH.
+
+9 December, 1918.
+
+
+[1: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilisation in the East and in
+America," _Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, January-March, 1916.]
+
+[2: Nathan Söderblom, "Les Fravashis Étude sur les Traces dans le
+Mazdéisme d'une Ancienne Conception sur la Survivance des Morts," Paris,
+1899.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.   INCENSE AND LIBATIONS                                    1
+
+ CHAPTER II.  DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS                                   76
+
+ CHAPTER III. THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE                                 140
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                             FACING PAGE
+ Fig. 1.--The conventional Egyptian representation of the burning
+     of incense and the pouring of libations                           2
+
+ Fig. 2.--Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth, representing a
+     restoration of the early mummy found at Medûm by Professor
+     Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of
+     Surgeons in London                                               16
+
+ Fig. 3.--A mould taken from a life-mask found in the Pyramid of Teta
+     by Mr. Quibell                                                   17
+
+ Fig. 4.--Portrait statue of an Egyptian lady of the Pyramid Age      18
+
+ Fig. 5.--Statue of an Egyptian noble of the Pyramid Age to show the
+     technical skill in the representation of life-like eyes          52
+
+ Fig. 6.--Representation of the ancient Mexican worship of the Sun    70
+
+ Fig. 7.--A mediæval picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its cloud
+     (after the late Professor W. Anderson)                           80
+
+ Fig. 8.--A Chinese Dragon (after de Groot)                           80
+
+ Fig. 9.--Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon                      81
+
+ Fig. 10.--Babylonian Weather God                                     81
+
+ Fig. 11.--Reproduction of a picture in the Maya Codex Troano
+     representing the Rain-god _Chac_ treading upon the Serpent's
+     head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the
+     god is pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-goddess stands upon the
+     Serpent's tail                                                   84
+
+ Fig. 12.--Another representation of the elephant-headed Rain-god. He
+     is holding thunderbolts, conventionalized in a hund-like form.
+     The serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the
+     rain-waters.                                                     84
+
+ Fig. 13.--A page (the 36th) of the Dresden Maya Codex.               86
+
+ Fig. 14.--A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature
+     compounded of the antelope and fish of Ea.--B. The "sea-goat"
+     as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.--C to K--a series of varieties
+     of the _makara_ from the Buddhist Rails at Buddha Gaya and
+     Mathura, circa 70 B.C.--70 A.D., after Cunningham
+     ("Archæological Survey of India," Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX and
+     XXIX).--L. The _makara_ as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir
+     George Birdwood. It is not difficult to understand how, in the
+     course of the easterly diffusion of culture, such a picture
+     should develop into the Chinese Dragon or the American
+     elephant-headed god                                              88
+
+ Fig. 15.--Photograph of a Chinese embroidery in the Manchester
+     School of Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon
+     Symbol                                                           98
+
+ Fig. 16.--The God of Thunder (from a Chinese drawing (? 17th
+     Century) in the John Rylands Library)                           136
+
+ Fig. 17.--From Joannes de Turrecremata's "Meditationes seu
+     Contemplationes". _Rome: Ulrich Han_, 1467                      137
+
+ Fig. 18.--(a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer showing,
+     perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners
+     of the palette) as a woman with cow's horns and ears (compare
+     Flinders Petrie "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part
+     I, 1900, Plate XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt
+     from which are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in
+     place of the cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This
+     affords corroboration of the view that Hathor assumed the
+     functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell. (b) The
+     king's _sporran_, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the
+     cowries of the primitive girdle                                 150
+
+ Fig. 19.--The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic
+     representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners),
+     one of the ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America
+     (after Maudslay's photograph and diagram). The girdle of the
+     chief figure is decorated both with shells (_Oliva_ or
+     _Conus_) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to
+     the Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18)                151
+
+ Fig. 20.--Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts worn in
+     (a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively. (c) Ancient
+     Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the Bharat
+     Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones,
+     and what  seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of
+     cowries. (d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both
+     shells and heads of deities are represented. The two objects
+     suspended from the belt between the heads recall Hathor's
+     sistra                                                          153
+
+ Fig. 21.--(a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A. Reisner in the
+     temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh
+     Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess Hathor,
+     represented as a woman with the moon and the cow's horns upon
+     her head, and on the left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon
+     her head the jackal-symbol of her nome. (b) The Ecuador
+     Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro-Jaboncillo (after Saville,
+     "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907,
+     Plate XXXVIII). A grotesque composite monster intended to
+     represent a woman (compare Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and
+     XXXIX), whose head is a conventionalized Octopus, whose body
+     is a _Loligo_, and whose limbs are human                        164
+
+ Fig. 22.--(a) _Sepia officinalis_, after Tryon, "Cephalopoda".
+     (b) _Loligo vulgaris_, after Tryon. (c) The position usually
+     adopted by the resting Octopus, after Tryon                     168
+
+ Fig. 23.--A series of Mycenæan conventionalizations of the Argonaut
+     and the Octopus (after Tümpel), which provided the basis for
+     Houssay's theory of the origin of the triskele (a, c, and d)
+     and swastika (b and e), and Siret's theory to explain the
+     design of Bes's face (f and g)                                  172
+
+ Fig. 24.--(a) and (b) Two Mycenæan pots (after Schliemann). (a) The
+     so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the
+     Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
+     (b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a
+     jar upon her head and another in her hands--a three-fold
+     representation of the Great Mother as a pot. (c) A Cretan vase
+     from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a
+     decoration upon the pot instead of in its form, (d), (e), (f),
+     (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after Head)
+     showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with
+     its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f). (i) _Sepia
+     officinalis_ (after Tryon). (h) and (l) The so-called "spouting
+     vases" in the hands of the Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder
+     seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of Tello, after Ward ("Seal
+     Cylinders, etc.," p. 215)                                       180
+
+ Fig 25.--(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I. (b) Persian
+     design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal
+     Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109). (c) Assyrian or
+     Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life in an
+     extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).
+     (d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life,
+     from the design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig.
+     670). (e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of
+     Dungi (Ward, Fig. 663). (f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from
+     Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig. 9). (g) Double axe from a gold
+     signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenæ (after Sir Arthur Evans,
+     "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10). (h) Assyrian Winged
+     Disk (Ward, Fig. 608). (i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate"
+     (Ward, Fig. 349). (k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144).
+     (l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely
+     conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 691). (m) Assyrian Tree of Life
+     and Winged Disk in which the god is riding in a crescent
+     replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695)                             184
+
+ Fig. 26.--(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains
+     of the horizon (on which trees are growing) (after Budge,
+     "Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. II, p. 101). (b) The mountains
+     of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a surrogate of
+     Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in
+     the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, _op. cit._, p. 39).
+     (c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the
+     Eastern Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, _op. cit._, p.
+     373). (d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun
+     rising between the Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the
+     mountain giving birth to "the ridiculous mouse"--Smintheus).
+     (e) Part of the design from a Mycenæan vase from Old Salamis
+     (after Evans, p. 9). (f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem
+     from the Idæan Cave, now in the Candia Museum (after Evans,
+     Fig. 25). (g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form
+     of the goddess (after Evans, Fig. 66). (h) Another Mycenæan
+     design comparable with (e). (i) Design from a signet-ring from
+     Mycenæ; (after Evans, Fig. 34). (k) The famous sculpture above
+     the Lion Gate at Mycenæ                                         188
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+ Fig 1.--Early representation of a "Dragon" compounded of the
+    forepart of an eagle and the hindpart of a lion (from an
+    Archaic Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier)                   79
+
+ Fig. 2.--The earliest Babylonian conception of the Dragon Tiamat
+    (from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after L. W. King)    79
+
+ Fig. 3.--Wm. Dennis's drawing of the "Flying Dragon" depicted on the
+    rocks at Piasa, Illinois                                          94
+
+ Fig. 4.--Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh)                    155
+
+ Fig. 5.--_Pterocera bryonia_, the Red Sea spider-shell              170
+
+ Fig. 6.--(a) Picture of a bowl of water--the hieroglyphic sign
+     equivalent to _hm_ (the word _hmt_ means "woman"--Griffith,
+     "Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29). (b) "A
+     basket of sycamore figs"--Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Vol.
+     I, p. 323. (c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic
+     signs meaning "wife" and are apparently taken from (b). But (c)
+     is identical with (i), which, according to Griffith (p. 14),
+     represents a bivalve shell (g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more
+     usually placed obliquely (h). The varying conventionalizations
+     of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f) (Griffith,
+     "Hieroglyphics," p. 34). (k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which
+     is a phonetic equivalent of the sign (h), and, according to
+     Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 26), "is probably derived from
+     the same root, on account of its shell-like outline". (l) The
+     hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as _Nu_ and
+     _Nut_. (m) A "pomegranate" (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a
+     sacred column at Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and
+     Pillar Cult," p. 46). (n) The form of the body of an octopus as
+     conventionalized on the coins of Central Greece (compare Fig.
+     24 (d))                                                         179
+
+ Fig. 7.--(a) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus
+     emerging from a lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis).
+     (b) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and
+     animistically identified with them either as an instrument of
+     life-giving or destruction. (c) Conventionalized lily--the
+     prototype of the trident and the thunder-weapon. (d) A
+     water-plant associated with the Nile-gods                       180
+
+ Fig. 8.--(a) "Ceremonial forked object," or "magic wand," used in
+     the ceremony of "opening the mouth," possibly connected with
+     (b) (a bicornuate uterus), according to Griffith
+     ("Hieroglyphics," p. 60). (c) The Egyptian sign for a key.
+     (d) The double axe of Crete and Egypt                           191
+
+ Fig. 9.--The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign _nub_               222
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+INCENSE AND LIBATIONS.[3]
+
+
+The dragon was primarily a personification of the life-giving and
+life-destroying powers of water. This chapter is concerned with the
+genesis of this biological theory of water and its relationship to the
+other germs of civilisation.
+
+It is commonly assumed that many of the elementary practices of
+civilization, such as the erection of rough stone buildings, whether
+houses, tombs, or temples, the crafts of the carpenter and the
+stonemason, the carving of statues, the customs of pouring out libations
+or burning incense, are such simple and obvious procedures that any
+people might adopt them without prompting or contact of any kind with
+other populations who do the same sort of things. But if such apparently
+commonplace acts be investigated they will be found to have a long and
+complex history. None of these things that seem so obvious to us was
+attempted until a multitude of diverse circumstances became focussed in
+some particular community, and constrained some individual to make the
+discovery. Nor did the quality of obviousness become apparent even when
+the enlightened discoverer had gathered up the threads of his
+predecessor's ideas and woven them into the fabric of a new invention.
+For he had then to begin the strenuous fight against the opposition of
+his fellows before he could induce them to accept his discovery. He had,
+in fact, to contend against their preconceived ideas and their lack of
+appreciation of the significance of the progress he had made before he
+could persuade them of its "obviousness". That is the history of most
+inventions since the world began. But it is begging the question to
+pretend that because tradition has made such inventions seem simple and
+obvious to us it is unnecessary to inquire into their history or to
+assume that any people or any individual simply did these things without
+any instruction when the spirit moved it or him so to do.
+
+The customs of burning incense and making libations in religious
+ceremonies are so widespread and capable of being explained in such
+plausible, though infinitely diverse, ways that it has seemed
+unnecessary to inquire more deeply into their real origin and
+significance. For example, Professor Toy[4] disposes of these questions
+in relation to incense in a summary fashion. He claims that "when burnt
+before the deity" it is "to be regarded as food, though in course of
+time, when the recollection of this primitive character was lost, a
+conventional significance was attached to the act of burning. A more
+refined period demanded more refined food for the gods, such as ambrosia
+and nectar, but these also were finally given up."
+
+This, of course, is a purely gratuitous assumption, or series of
+assumptions, for which there is no real evidence. Moreover, even if
+there were any really early literature to justify such statements, they
+explain nothing. Incense-burning is just as mysterious if Prof. Toy's
+claim be granted as it was before.
+
+But a bewildering variety of other explanations, for all of which the
+merit of being "simple and obvious" is claimed, have been suggested. The
+reader who is curious about these things will find a luxurious crop of
+speculations by consulting a series of encyclopædias.[5] I shall content
+myself by quoting only one more. "Frankincense and other spices were
+indispensable in temples where bloody sacrifices formed part of the
+religion. The atmosphere of Solomon's temple must have been that of a
+sickening slaughter-house, and the fumes of incense could alone enable
+the priests and worshippers to support it. This would apply to thousands
+of other temples through Asia, and doubtless the palaces of kings and
+nobles suffered from uncleanliness and insanitary arrangements and
+required an antidote to evil smells to make them endurable."[6]
+
+It is an altogether delightful anachronism to imagine that religious
+ritual in the ancient and aromatic East was inspired by such
+squeamishness as a British sanitary inspector of the twentieth century
+might experience!
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.--The conventional Egyptian representation of the
+Burning of Incense and the Pouring of Libations (Period of the New
+Empire)--after Lepsius]
+
+But if there are these many diverse and mutually destructive reasons in
+explanation of the origin of incense-burning, it follows that the
+meaning of the practice cannot be so "simple and obvious". For scholars
+in the past have been unable to agree as to the sense in which these
+adjectives should be applied.
+
+But no useful purpose would be served by enumerating a collection of
+learned fallacies and exposing their contradictions when the true
+explanation has been provided in the earliest body of literature that
+has come down from antiquity. I refer to the Egyptian "Pyramid Texts".
+
+Before this ancient testimony is examined certain general principles
+involved in the discussion of such problems should be considered. In
+this connexion it is appropriate to quote the apt remarks made, in
+reference to the practice of totemism, by Professor Sollas.[7] "If it is
+difficult to conceive how such ideas ... originated at all, it is still
+more difficult to understand how they should have arisen repeatedly and
+have developed in much the same way among races evolving independently
+in different environments. It is at least simpler to suppose that all
+[of them] have a common source ... and may have been carried ... to
+remote parts of the world."
+
+I do not think that anyone who conscientiously and without bias examines
+the evidence relating to incense-burning, the arbitrary details of the
+ritual and the peculiar circumstances under which it is practised in
+different countries, can refuse to admit that so artificial a custom
+must have been dispersed throughout the world from some one centre where
+it was devised.
+
+The remarkable fact that emerges from an examination of these so-called
+"obvious explanations" of ethnological phenomena is the failure on the
+part of those who are responsible for them to show any adequate
+appreciation of the nature of the problems to be solved. They know that
+incense has been in use for a vast period of time, and that the practice
+of burning it is very widespread. They have been so familiarized with
+the custom and certain more or less vague excuses for its perpetuation
+that they show no realization of how strangely irrational and devoid of
+obvious meaning the procedure is. The reasons usually given in
+explanation of its use are for the most part merely paraphrases of the
+traditional meanings that in the course of history have come to be
+attached to the ritual act or the words used to designate it. Neither
+the ethnologist nor the priestly apologist will, as a rule, admit that
+he does not know why such ritual acts as pouring out water or burning
+incense are performed, and that they are wholly inexplicable and
+meaningless to him. Nor will they confess that the real inspiration to
+perform such rites is the fact of their predecessors having handed them
+down as sacred acts of devotion, the meaning of which has been entirely
+forgotten during the process of transmission from antiquity. Instead of
+this they simply pretend that the significance of such acts is obvious.
+Stripped of the glamour which religious emotion and sophistry have woven
+around them, such pretended explanations become transparent subterfuges,
+none the less real because the apologists are quite innocent of any
+conscious intention to deceive either themselves or their disciples. It
+should be sufficient for them that such ritual acts have been handed
+down by tradition as right and proper things to do. But in response to
+the instinctive impulse of all human beings, the mind seeks for reasons
+in justification of actions of which the real inspiration is unknown.
+
+It is a common fallacy to suppose that men's actions are inspired mainly
+by reason. The most elementary investigation of the psychology of
+everyday life is sufficient to reveal the truth that man is not, as a
+rule, the pre-eminently rational creature he is commonly supposed to
+be.[8] He is impelled to most of his acts by his instincts, the
+circumstances of his personal experience, and the conventions of the
+society in which he has grown up. But once he has acted or decided upon
+a course of procedure he is ready with excuses in explanation and
+attempted justification of his motives. In most cases these are not the
+real reasons, for few human beings attempt to analyse their motives or
+in fact are competent without help to understand their own feelings and
+the real significance of their actions. There is implanted in man the
+instinct to interpret for his own satisfaction his feelings and
+sensations, i.e. the meaning of his experience. But of necessity this is
+mostly of the nature of rationalizing, i.e. providing satisfying
+interpretations of thoughts and decisions the real meaning of which
+is hidden.
+
+Now it must be patent that the nature of this process of rationalization
+will depend largely upon the mental make-up of the individual--of the
+body of knowledge and traditions with which his mind has become stored
+in the course of his personal experience. The influences to which he has
+been exposed, daily and hourly, from the time of his birth onward,
+provide the specific determinants of most of his beliefs and views.
+Consciously and unconsciously he imbibes certain definite ideas, not
+merely of religion, morals, and politics, but of what is the correct and
+what is the incorrect attitude to assume in most of the circumstances of
+his daily life. These form the staple currency of his beliefs and his
+conversation. Reason plays a surprisingly small part in this process,
+for most human beings acquire from their fellows the traditions of their
+society which relieves them of the necessity of undue thought. The very
+words in which the accumulated traditions of his community are conveyed
+to each individual are themselves charged with the complex symbolism
+that has slowly developed during the ages, and tinges the whole of his
+thoughts with their subtle and, to most men, vaguely appreciated shades
+of meaning.[9] During this process of acquiring the fruits of his
+community's beliefs and experiences every individual accepts without
+question a vast number of apparently simple customs and ideas. He is apt
+to regard them as obvious, and to assume that reason led him to accept
+them or be guided by them, although when the specific question is put to
+him he is unable to give their real history.
+
+Before leaving these general considerations[10] I want to emphasize
+certain elementary facts of psychology which are often ignored by those
+who investigate the early history of civilization.
+
+First, the multitude and the complexity of the circumstances that are
+necessary to lead men to make even the simplest invention render the
+concatenation of all of these conditions wholly independently on a
+second occasion in the highest degree improbable. Until very definite
+and conclusive evidence is forthcoming in any individual case it can
+safely be assumed that no ethnologically significant innovation in
+customs or beliefs has ever been made twice.
+
+Those critics who have recently attempted to dispose of this claim by
+referring to the work of the Patent Office thereby display a singular
+lack of appreciation of the real point at issue. For the ethnological
+problem is concerned with different populations who are assumed _not_ to
+share any common heritage of acquired knowledge, nor to have had any
+contact, direct or indirect, the one with the other. But the inventors
+who resort to the Patent Office are all of them persons supplied with
+information from the storehouse of our common civilization; and the
+inventions which they seek to protect from imitation by others are
+merely developments of the heritage of all civilized peoples. Even when
+similar inventions are made apparently independently under such
+circumstances, in most cases they can be explained by the fact that two
+investigators have followed up a line of advance which has been
+determined by the development of the common body of knowledge.
+
+This general discussion suggests another factor in the working of the
+human mind.
+
+When certain vital needs or the force of circumstances compel a man to
+embark upon a certain train of reasoning or invention the results to
+which his investigations lead depend upon a great many circumstances.
+Obviously the range of his knowledge and experience and the general
+ideas he has acquired from his fellows will play a large part in shaping
+his inferences. It is quite certain that even in the simplest problem of
+primitive physics or biology his attention will be directed only to some
+of, and not all, the factors involved, and that the limitations of his
+knowledge will permit him to form a wholly inadequate conception even of
+the few factors that have obtruded themselves upon his attention. But he
+may frame a working hypothesis in explanation of the factors he had
+appreciated, which may seem perfectly exhaustive and final, as well as
+logical and rational to him, but to those who come after him, with a
+wider knowledge of the properties of matter and the nature of living
+beings, and a wholly different attitude towards such problems, the
+primitive man's solution may seem merely a ludicrous travesty.
+
+But once a tentative explanation of one group of phenomena has been made
+it is the method of science no less than the common tendency of the
+human mind to buttress this theory with analogies and fancied
+homologies. In other words the isolated facts are built up into a
+generalisation. It is important to remember that in most cases this
+mental process begins very early; so that the analogies play a very
+obtrusive part in the building up of theories. As a rule a multitude of
+such influences play a part consciously or unconsciously in shaping any
+belief. Hence the historian is faced with the difficulty, often quite
+insuperable, of ascertaining (among scores of factors that definitely
+played some part in the building up of a great generalization) the real
+foundation upon which the vast edifice has been erected. I refer to
+these elementary matters here for two reasons. First, because they are
+so often overlooked by ethnologists; and secondly, because in these
+pages I shall have to discuss a series of historical events in which a
+bewildering number of factors played their part. In sifting out a
+certain number of them, I want to make it clear that I do not pretend to
+have discovered more than a small minority of the most conspicuous
+threads in the complex texture of the fabric of early human thought.
+
+Another fact that emerges from these elementary psychological
+considerations is the vital necessity of guarding against the
+misunderstandings necessarily involved in the use of words. In the
+course of long ages the originally simple connotation of the words used
+to denote many of our ideas has become enormously enriched with a
+meaning which in some degree reflects the chequered history of the
+expression of human aspirations. Many writers who in discussing ancient
+peoples make use of such terms, for example, as "soul," "religion," and
+"gods," without stripping them of the accretions of complex symbolism
+that have collected around them within more recent times, become
+involved in difficulty and misunderstanding.
+
+For example, the use of the terms "soul" or "soul-substance" in much of
+the literature relating to early or relatively primitive people is
+fruitful of misunderstanding. For it is quite clear from the context
+that in many cases such people meant to imply nothing more than "life"
+or "vital principle," the absence of which from the body for any
+prolonged period means death. But to translate such a word simply as
+"life" is inadequate because all of these people had some theoretical
+views as to its identity with the "breath" or to its being in the nature
+of a material substance or essence. It is naturally impossible to find
+any one word or phrase in our own language to express the exact idea,
+for among every people there are varying shades of meaning which cannot
+adequately express the symbolism distinctive of each place and society.
+To meet this insuperable difficulty perhaps the term "vital essence" is
+open to least objection.
+
+In my last Rylands lecture[11] I sketched in rough outline a tentative
+explanation of the world-wide dispersal of the elements of the
+civilization that is now the heritage of the world at large, and
+referred to the part played by Ancient Egypt in the development of
+certain arts, customs, and beliefs. On the present occasion I propose to
+examine certain aspects of this process of development in greater
+detail, and to study the far-reaching influence exerted by the Egyptian
+practice of mummification, and the ideas that were suggested by it, in
+starting new trains of thought, in stimulating the invention of arts
+and crafts that were unknown before then, and in shaping the complex
+body of customs and beliefs that were the outcome of these potent
+intellectual ferments.
+
+In speaking of the relationship of the practice of mummification to the
+development of civilization, however, I have in mind not merely the
+influence it exerted upon the moulding of culture, but also the part
+played by the trend of philosophy in the world at large in determining
+the Egyptian's conceptions of the wider significance of embalming, and
+the reaction of these effects upon the current doctrines of the meaning
+of natural phenomena.
+
+No doubt it will be asked at the outset, what possible connexion can
+there be between the practice of so fantastic and gruesome an art as the
+embalming of the dead and the building up of civilization? Is it
+conceivable that the course of the development of the arts and crafts,
+the customs and beliefs, and the social and political organizations--in
+fact any of the essential elements of civilization--has been deflected a
+hair's breadth to the right or left as the outcome, directly or
+indirectly, of such a practice?
+
+In previous essays and lectures[12] I have indicated how intimately this
+custom was related, not merely to the invention of the arts and crafts
+of the carpenter and stonemason and all that is implied in the building
+up of what Professor Lethaby has called the "matrix of civilization,"
+but also to the shaping of religious beliefs and ritual practices,
+which developed in association with the evolution of the temple and the
+conception of a material resurrection. I have also suggested the
+far-reaching significance of an indirect influence of the practice of
+mummification in the history of civilization. It was mainly responsible
+for prompting the earliest great maritime expeditions of which the
+history has been preserved.[13] For many centuries the quest of resins
+and balsams for embalming and for use in temple ritual, and wood for
+coffin-making, continued to provide the chief motives which induced the
+Egyptians to undertake sea-trafficking in the Mediterranean and the Red
+Sea. The knowledge and experience thus acquired ultimately made it
+possible for the Egyptians and their pupils to push their adventures
+further afield. It is impossible adequately to estimate the vastness of
+the influence of such intercourse, not merely in spreading abroad
+throughout the world the germs of our common civilization, but also, by
+bringing into close contact peoples of varied histories and traditions,
+in stimulating progress. Even if the practice of mummification had
+exerted no other noteworthy effect in the history of the world, this
+fact alone would have given it a pre-eminent place.
+
+Another aspect of the influence of mummification I have already
+discussed, and do not intend to consider further in this lecture. I
+refer to the manifold ways in which it affected the history of medicine
+and pharmacy. By accustoming the Egyptians, through thirty centuries, to
+the idea of cutting the human corpse, it made it possible for Greek
+physicians of the Ptolemaic and later ages to initiate in Alexandria the
+systematic dissection of the human body which popular prejudice forbade
+elsewhere, and especially in Greece itself. Upon this foundation the
+knowledge of anatomy and the science of medicine has been built up.[14]
+But in many other ways the practice of mummification exerted
+far-reaching effects, directly and indirectly, upon the development of
+medical and pharmaceutical knowledge and methods.[15]
+
+There is then this _prima-facie_ evidence that the Egyptian practice of
+mummification was closely related to the development of architecture,
+maritime trafficking, and medicine. But what I am chiefly concerned with
+in the present lecture is the discussion of the much vaster part it
+played in shaping the innermost beliefs of mankind and directing the
+course of the religious aspirations and the scientific opinions, not
+merely of the Egyptians themselves, but also of the world at large, for
+many centuries afterward.
+
+It had a profound influence upon the history of human thought. The vague
+and ill-defined ideas of physiology and psychology, which had probably
+been developing since Aurignacian times[16] in Europe, were suddenly
+crystallized into a coherent structure and definite form by the musings
+of the Egyptian embalmer. But at the same time, if the new philosophy
+did not find expression in the invention of the first deities, it gave
+them a much more concrete form than they had previously presented, and
+played a large part in the establishment of the foundations upon which
+all religious ritual was subsequently built up, and in the initiation of
+a priesthood to administer the rites which were suggested by the
+practice of mummification.
+
+
+[3: An elaboration of a Lecture on the relationship of the Egyptian
+practice of mummification to the development of civilization delivered
+in the John Rylands Library, on 9 February, 1916.]
+
+[4: "Introduction to the History of Religions," p. 486.]
+
+[5: He might start upon this journey of adventure by reading the article
+on "Incense" in Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]
+
+[6: Samuel Laing, "Human Origins," Revised by Edward Clodd, 1903, p.
+38.]
+
+[7: "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, pp. 234 and 235.]
+
+[8: On this subject see Elliot Smith and Pear, "Shell Shock and its
+Lessons," Manchester University Press, 1917, p. 59.]
+
+[9: An interesting discussion of this matter by the late Professor
+William James will be found in his "Principles of Psychology," Vol. I,
+pp. 261 _et seq._]
+
+[10: For a fuller discussion of certain phases of this matter see my
+address on "Primitive Man," in the _Proceedings of the British Academy_,
+1917, especially pp. 23-50.]
+
+[11: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
+America," _The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, Jan.-March, 1916.]
+
+[12: "The Migrations of Early Culture," 1915, Manchester University
+Press: "The Evolution of the Rock-cut Tomb and the Dolmen," _Essays and
+Studies Presented to William Ridgeway_, Cambridge, 1913, p. 493:
+"Oriental Tombs and Temples," _Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and
+Oriental Society_, 1914-1915, p. 55.]
+
+[13: "Ships as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture," Manchester
+University Press, 1917, p. 37.]
+
+[14: "Egyptian Mummies," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, Part
+III, July, 1914, p. 189.]
+
+[15: Such, for example, as its influence in the acquisition of the means
+of preserving the tissues of the body, which has played so large a part
+in the development of the sciences of anatomy, pathology, and in fact
+biology in general. The practice of mummification was largely
+responsible for the attainment of a knowledge of the properties of many
+drugs and especially of those which restrain putrefactive changes. But
+it was not merely in the acquisition of a knowledge of material facts
+that mummification exerted its influence. The humoral theory of
+pathology and medicine, which prevailed for so many centuries and the
+effects of which are embalmed for all time in our common speech, was
+closely related in its inception to the ideas which I shall discuss in
+these pages. The Egyptians themselves did not profit to any appreciable
+extent from the remarkable opportunities which their practice of
+embalming provided for studying human anatomy. The sanctity of these
+ritual acts was fatal to the employment of such opportunities to gain
+knowledge. Nor was the attitude of mind of the Egyptians such as to
+permit the acquisition of a real appreciation of the structure of the
+body.]
+
+[16: See my address, "Primitive Man," _Proc. Brit. Academy_, 1917.]
+
+
+Beginning of Stone-Working.
+
+During the last few years I have repeatedly had occasion to point out
+the fundamental fallacy underlying much of the modern speculation in
+ethnology, and I have no intention of repeating these strictures
+here.[17] But it is a significant fact that, when one leaves the
+writings of professed ethnologists and turns to the histories of their
+special subjects written by scholars in kindred fields of investigation,
+views such as I have been setting forth will often be found to be
+accepted without question or comment as the obvious truth.
+
+There is an excellent little book entitled "Architecture," written by
+Professor W. R. Lethaby for the Home University Library, that affords an
+admirable illustration of this interesting fact. I refer to this
+particular work because it gives lucid expression to some of the ideas
+that I wish to submit for consideration. "Two arts have changed the
+surface of the world, Agriculture and Architecture" (p. 1). "To a large
+degree architecture" [which he defines as "the matrix of civilization"]
+"is an Egyptian art" (p. 66): for in Egypt "we shall best find the
+origins of architecture as a whole" (p. 21).
+
+Nevertheless Professor Lethaby bows the knee to current tradition when
+he makes the wholly unwarranted assumption that Egypt probably learnt
+its art from Babylonia. He puts forward this remarkable claim in spite
+of his frank confession that "little or nothing is known of a primitive
+age in Mesopotamia. At a remote time the art of Babylonia was that of a
+civilized people. As has been said, there is a great similarity between
+this art and that of dynastic times in Egypt. Yet it appears that Egypt
+borrowed of Asia, rather than the reverse." [He gives no reasons for
+this opinion, for which there is no evidence, except possibly the
+invention of bricks for building.] "If the origins of art in Babylonia
+were as fully known as those in Egypt, the story of architecture might
+have to begin in Asia instead of Egypt" (p. 67).
+
+But later on he speaks in a more convincing manner of the known facts
+when he says (p. 82):--
+
+When Greece entered on her period of high-strung life the time of first
+invention in the arts was over--the heroes of Craft, like Tubal Cain and
+Daedalus, necessarily belong to the infancy of culture. The phenomenon
+of Egypt could not occur again; the mission of Greece was rather to
+settle down to a task of gathering, interpreting, and bringing to
+perfection Egypt's gifts. The arts of civilization were never developed
+in watertight compartments, as is shown by the uniformity of custom over
+the modern world. Further, if any new nation enters into the circle of
+culture it seems that, like Japan, it must 'borrow the capital'. The art
+of Greece could hardly have been more self-originated than is the
+science of Japan. Ideas of the temple and of the fortified town must
+have spread from the East, the square-roomed house, columnar orders,
+fine masonry, were all Egyptian.
+
+Elsewhere[18] I have pointed out that it was the importance which the
+Egyptian came to attach to the preservation of the dead and to the
+making of adequate provision for the deceased's welfare that gradually
+led to the aggrandisement of the tomb. In course of time this impelled
+him to cut into the rock,[19] and, later still, suggested the
+substitution of stone for brick in erecting the chapel of offerings
+above ground. The Egyptian burial customs were thus intimately related
+to the conceptions that grew up with the invention of embalming. The
+evidence in confirmation of this is so precise that every one who
+conscientiously examines it must be forced to the conclusion that man
+did not instinctively select stone as a suitable material with which to
+erect temples and houses, and forthwith begin to quarry and shape it for
+such purposes.
+
+There was an intimate connexion between the first use of stone for
+building and the practice of mummification. It was probably for this
+reason, and not from any abstract sense of "wonder at the magic of art,"
+as Professor Lethaby claims, that "ideas of sacredness, of ritual
+rightness, of magic stability and correspondence with the universe,
+and of perfection of form and proportion" came to be associated with
+stone buildings.
+
+At first stone was used only for such sacred purposes, and the pharaoh
+alone was entitled to use it for his palaces, in virtue of the fact that
+he was divine, the son and incarnation on earth of the sun-god. It was
+only when these Egyptian practices were transplanted to other countries,
+where these restrictions did not obtain, that the rigid wall of
+convention was broken down.
+
+Even in Rome until well into the Christian era "the largest domestic and
+civil buildings were of plastered brick". "Wrought masonry seems to have
+been demanded only for the great monuments, triumphal arches, theatres,
+temples and above all for the Coliseum." (Lethaby, _op. cit._ p. 120).
+
+Nevertheless Rome was mainly responsible for breaking down the hieratic
+tradition which forbade the use of stone for civil purposes. "In Roman
+architecture the engineering element became paramount. It was this which
+broke the moulds of tradition and recast construction into modern form,
+and made it free once more" (p. 130).
+
+But Egypt was not only responsible for inaugurating the use of stone for
+building. For another forty centuries she continued to be the inventor
+of new devices in architecture. From time to time methods of building
+which developed in Egypt were adopted by her neighbours and spread far
+and wide. The shaft-tombs and _mastabas_ of the Egyptian Pyramid Age
+were adopted in various localities in the region of the Eastern
+Mediterranean,[20] with certain modifications in each place, and in turn
+became the models which were roughly copied in later ages by the
+wandering dolmen-builders. The round tombs of Crete and Mycenæ were
+clearly only local modifications of their square prototypes, the
+Egyptian Pyramids of the Middle Kingdom. "While this Ægean art gathered
+from, and perhaps gave to, Egypt, it passed on its ideals to the north
+and west of Europe, where the productions of the Bronze Age clearly show
+its influence" (Lethaby, p. 78) in the chambered mounds of the Iberian
+peninsula and Brittany, of New Grange in Ireland and of Maes Howe in the
+Orkneys.[21] In the East the influence of these Ægean modifications may
+possibly be seen in the Indian _stupas_ and the _dagabas_ of Ceylon,
+just as the stone stepped pyramids there reveal the effects of contact
+with the civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt.
+
+Professor Lethaby sees the influence of Egypt in the orientation of
+Christian churches (p. 133), as well as in many of their structural
+details (p. 142); in the domed roofs, the iconography, the symbolism,
+and the decoration of Byzantine architecture (p. 138); and in Mohammedan
+buildings wherever they are found.
+
+For it was not only the architecture of Greece, Rome, and Christendom
+that received its inspiration from Egypt, but that of Islâm also. These
+buildings were not, like the religion itself, in the main Arabic in
+origin. "Primitive Arabian art itself is quite negligible. When the new
+strength of the followers of the Prophet was consolidated with great
+rapidity into a rich and powerful empire, it took over the arts and
+artists of the conquered lands, extending from North Africa to Persia"
+(p. 158); and it is known how this influence spread as far west as Spain
+and as far east as Indonesia. "The Pharos at Alexandria, the great
+lighthouse built about 280 B.C., almost appears to have been the parent
+of all high and isolated towers.... Even on the coast of Britain, at
+Dover, we had a Pharos which was in some degree an imitation of the
+Alexandrian one." The Pharos at Boulogne, the round towers of Ravenna,
+and the imitations of it elsewhere in Europe, even as far as Ireland,
+are other examples of its influence. But in addition the Alexandrian
+Pharos had "as great an effect as the prototype of Eastern minarets as
+it had for Western towers" (p. 115).
+
+I have quoted so extensively from Professor Lethaby's brilliant little
+book to give this independent testimony of the vastness of the influence
+exerted by Egypt during a span of nearly forty centuries in creating and
+developing the "matrix of civilization". Most of this wider dispersal
+abroad was effected by alien peoples, who transformed their gifts from
+Egypt before they handed on the composite product to some more distant
+peoples. But the fact remains that the great centre of original
+inspiration in architecture was Egypt.
+
+The original incentive to the invention of this essentially Egyptian art
+was the desire to protect and secure the welfare of the dead. The
+importance attached to this aim was intimately associated with the
+development of the practice of mummification.
+
+With this tangible and persistent evidence of the general scheme of
+spread of the arts of building I can now turn to the consideration of
+some of the other, more vital, manifestations of human thought and
+aspirations, which also, like the "matrix of civilization" itself, grew
+up in intimate association with the practice of embalming the dead.
+
+I have already mentioned Professor Lethaby's reference to architecture
+and agriculture as the two arts that have changed the surface of the
+world. It is interesting to note that the influence of these two
+ingredients of civilization was diffused abroad throughout the world in
+intimate association the one with the other. In most parts of the world
+the use of stone for building and Egyptian methods of architecture made
+their first appearance along with the peculiarly distinctive form of
+agriculture and irrigation so intimately associated with early Babylonia
+and Egypt.[22]
+
+But agriculture also exerted a most profound influence in shaping the
+early Egyptian body of beliefs.
+
+I shall now call attention to certain features of the earliest mummies,
+and then discuss how the ideas suggested by the practice of the art of
+embalming the dead were affected by the early theories of agriculture
+and the mutual influence they exerted one upon the other.
+
+
+[17: See, however, _op. cit. supra_; also "The Origin of the
+Pre-Columbian Civilization of America," _Science_, N.S., Vol. XLV, No.
+1158, pp. 241-246, 9 March, 1917.]
+
+[18: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+[19: For the earliest evidence of the cutting of stone for architectural
+purposes, see my statement in the _Report of the British Association for
+1914_, p. 212.]
+
+[20: Especially in Crete, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Southern Russia,
+and the North African Littoral.]
+
+[21: For an account of the evidence relating to these monuments, with
+full bibliographical references, see Déchelette, "Manuel d'Archéologie
+préhistorique Celtique et Gallo-Romaine," T. 1, 1912, pp. 390 _et seq._;
+also Sophus Müller, "Urgeschichte Europas," 1905, pp. 74 and 75; and
+Louis Siret, "Les Cassitérides et l'Empire Colonial des Phéniciens,"
+_L'Anthropologie_, T. 20, 1909, p. 313.]
+
+[22: W. J. Perry, "The Geographical Distribution of Terraced Cultivation
+and Irrigation," _Memoirs and Proc. Manch. Lit. and Phil. Soc._, Vol.
+60, 1916.]
+
+
+The Origin of Embalming.
+
+I have already explained[23] how the increased importance that came to
+be attached to the corpse as the means of securing a continuance of
+existence led to the aggrandizement of the tomb. Special care was taken
+to protect the dead and this led to the invention of coffins, and to the
+making of a definite tomb, the size of which rapidly increased as more
+and more ample supplies of food and other offerings were made. But the
+very measures thus taken the more efficiently to protect and tend the
+dead defeated the primary object of all this care. For, when buried in
+such an elaborate tomb, the body no longer became desiccated and
+preserved by the forces of nature, as so often happened when it was
+placed in a simple grave directly in the hot dry sand.
+
+It is of fundamental importance in the argument set forth here to
+remember that these factors came into operation before the time of the
+First Dynasty. They were responsible for impelling the Proto-Egyptians
+not only to invent the wooden coffin, the stone sarcophagus, the
+rock-cut tomb, and to begin building in stone, but also to devise
+measures for the artificial preservation of the body.
+
+But in addition to stimulating the development of the first real
+architecture and the art of mummification other equally far-reaching
+results in the region of ideas and beliefs grew out of these practices.
+
+From the outset the Egyptian embalmer was clearly inspired by two
+ideals: (a) to preserve the actual tissues of the body with a minimum
+disturbance of its superficial appearance; and (b) to preserve a
+likeness of the deceased as he was in life. At first it was naturally
+attempted to make this simulacrum of the body itself if it were
+possible, or alternatively, when this ideal was found to be
+unattainable, from its wrappings or by means of a portrait statue. It
+was soon recognized that it was beyond the powers of the early embalmer
+to succeed in mummifying the body itself so as to retain a recognizable
+likeness to the man when alive: although from time to time such attempts
+were repeatedly made,[24] until the period of the XXI Dynasty, when the
+operator clearly was convinced that he had at last achieved what his
+predecessors, for perhaps twenty-five centuries, had been trying in vain
+to do.
+
+
+[23: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+[24: See my volume on "The Royal Mummies," General Catalogue of the
+Cairo Museum.]
+
+
+Early Mummies.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth,
+representing a restoration of the early mummy found at Medûm by Prof.
+Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in
+London]
+
+In the earliest known (Second Dynasty) examples of Egyptian attempts at
+mummification[25] the corpse was swathed in a large series of bandages,
+which were moulded into shape to represent the form of the body. In a
+later (probably Fifth Dynasty) mummy, found in 1892 by Professor
+Flinders Petrie at Medûm, the superficial bandages had been impregnated
+with a resinous paste, which while still plastic was moulded into the
+form of the body, special care being bestowed upon the modelling of the
+face[26] and the organs of reproduction, so as to leave no room for
+doubt as to the identity and the sex. Professor Junker has described[27]
+an interesting series of variations of these practices. In two graves
+the bodies were covered with a layer of stucco plaster. First the corpse
+was covered with a fine linen cloth: then the plaster was put on, and
+modelled into the form of the body (p. 252). But in two other cases it
+was not the whole body that was covered with this layer of stucco,
+but only the head. Professor Junker claims that this was done
+"apparently because the head was regarded as the most important part, as
+the organs of taste, sight, smell, and hearing were contained in it".
+But surely there was the additional and more obtrusive reason that the
+face affords the means of identifying the individual! For this modelling
+of the features was intended primarily as a restoration of the form of
+the body which had been altered, if not actually destroyed. In other
+cases, where no attempt was made to restore the features in such durable
+materials as resin or stucco, the linen-enveloped head was modelled, and
+a representation of the eyes painted upon it so as to enhance the
+life-like appearance of the face.
+
+These facts prove quite conclusively that the earliest attempts to
+reproduce the features of the deceased and so preserve his likeness,
+were made upon the wrapped mummy itself. Thus the mummy was intended to
+be the portrait as well as the actual bodily remains of the dead. In
+view of certain differences of opinion as to the original significance
+of the funerary ritual, which I shall have occasion to discuss later on
+(see p. 20), it is important to keep these facts clearly in mind.
+
+A discovery made by Mr. J. E. Quibell in the course of his excavations
+at Sakkara[28] suggests that, as an outcome of these practices a new
+procedure may have been devised in the Pyramid Age--the making of a
+death-mask. For he discovered what may be the mask taken directly from
+the face of the Pharaoh Teta (Fig. 3).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.--A mould taken from a life-mask found in the
+Pyramid of Teta by Mr. Quibell]
+
+About this time also the practice originated of making a life-size
+portrait statue of the dead man's head and placing it along with the
+actual body in the burial chamber. These "reserve heads," as they have
+been called, were usually made of fine limestone, but Junker found one
+made of Nile mud.[29]
+
+Junker believes that there was an intimate relationship between the
+plaster-covered heads and the reserve-heads. They were both expressions
+of the same idea, to preserve a simulacrum of the deceased when his
+actual body had lost all recognizable likeness to him as he was when
+alive. The one method aimed at combining in the same object the actual
+body and the likeness; the other at making a more life-like portrait
+apart from the corpse, which could take the place of the latter when
+it decayed.
+
+Junker states further that "it is no chance that the substitute-heads
+... entirely, or at any rate chiefly, are found in the tombs that have
+no statue-chamber and probably possessed no statues. The statues [of the
+whole body] certainly were made, at any rate partly, with the intention
+that they should take the place of the decaying body, although later the
+idea was modified. The placing of the substitute-head in [the burial
+chamber of] the mastaba therefore became unnecessary at the moment when
+the complete figure of the dead [placed in a special hidden chamber, now
+commonly called the _serdab_] was introduced." The ancient Egyptians
+themselves called the _serdab_ the _pr-twt_ or "statue-house," and the
+group of chambers, forming the tomb-chapel in the mastaba, was known to
+them as the "_ka_-house".[30]
+
+It is important to remember that, even when the custom of making a
+statue of the deceased became fully established, the original idea of
+restoring the form of the mummy itself or its wrappings was never
+abandoned. The attempts made in the XVIII, and XXI and XXII Dynasties to
+pack the body of the mummy itself and by artificial means give it a
+life-like appearance afford evidence of this. In the New Empire and in
+Roman times the wrapped mummy was sometimes modelled into the form of a
+statue. But throughout Egyptian history it was a not uncommon practice
+to provide a painted mask for the wrapped mummy, or in early Christian
+times simply a portrait of the deceased.
+
+With this custom there also persisted a remembrance of its original
+significance. Professor Garstang records the fact that in the XII
+Dynasty,[31] when a painted mask was placed upon the wrapped mummy, no
+statue or statuette was found in the tomb. The undertakers apparently
+realized that the mummy[32] which was provided with a life-like mask was
+therefore fulfilling the purposes for which statues were devised. So
+also in the New Empire the packing and modelling of the actual mummy so
+as to restore its life-like appearance were regarded as obviating the
+need for a statue.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Portrait Statue of an Egyptian Lady of the
+Pyramid Age]
+
+I must now return to the further consideration of the Old Kingdom
+statues. All these varied experiments were inspired by the same desire,
+to preserve the likeness of the deceased. But when the sculptors
+attained their object, and created those marvellous life-like portraits,
+which must ever remain marvels of technical skill and artistic feeling
+(Fig. 4), the old ideas that surged through the minds of the Predynastic
+Egyptians, as they contemplated the desiccated remains of the dead, were
+strongly reinforced. The earlier people's thoughts were turned more
+specifically than heretofore to the contemplation of the nature of life
+and death by seeing the bodies of their dead preserved whole and
+incorruptible; and, if their actions can be regarded as an expression of
+their ideas, they began to wonder what was lacking in these physically
+complete bodies to prevent them from feeling and acting like living
+beings. Such must have been the results of their puzzled contemplation
+of the great problems of life and death. Otherwise the impulse to make
+more certain the preservation of the body by the invention of
+mummification and to retain a life-like representation of the deceased
+by means of a sculptured statue remains inexplicable. But when the
+corpse had been rendered incorruptible and the deceased's portrait had
+been fashioned with realistic perfection the old ideas would recur with
+renewed strength. The belief then took more definite shape that if the
+missing elements of vitality could be restored to the statue, it might
+become animated and the dead man would live again in his vitalized
+statue. This prompted a more intense and searching investigation of the
+problems concerning the nature of the elements of vitality of which the
+corpse was deprived at the time of death. Out of these inquiries in
+course of time a highly complex system of philosophy developed.[33]
+
+But in the earlier times with which I am now concerned it found
+practical expression in certain ritual procedures, invented to convey to
+the statue the breath of life, the vitalising fluids, and the odour and
+sweat of the living body. The seat of knowledge and of feeling was
+believed to be retained in the body when the heart was left _in situ_:
+so that the only thing needed to awaken consciousness, and make it
+possible for the dead man to take heed of his friends and to act
+voluntarily, was to present offerings of blood to stimulate the
+physiological functions of the heart. But the element of vitality which
+left the body at death had to be restored to the statue, which
+represented the deceased in the _ka_-house.[34]
+
+In my earlier attempts[35] to interpret these problems, I adopted the
+view that the making of portrait statues was the direct outcome of the
+practice of mummification. But Dr. Alan Gardiner, whose intimate
+knowledge of the early literature enables him to look at such problems
+from the Egyptian's own point of view, has suggested a modification of
+this interpretation. Instead of regarding the custom of making statues
+as an outcome of the practice of mummification, he thinks that the two
+customs developed simultaneously, in response to the two-fold desire to
+preserve both the actual body and a representation of the features of
+the dead. But I think this suggestion does not give adequate recognition
+to the fact that the earliest attempts at funerary portraiture were made
+upon the wrappings of the actual mummies.[36] This fact and the evidence
+which I have already quoted from Junker make it quite clear that from
+the beginning the embalmer's aim was to preserve the body and to convert
+the mummy itself into a simulacrum of the deceased. When he realized
+that his technical skill was not adequate to enable him to accomplish
+this double aim, he fell back upon the device of making a more perfect
+and realistic portrait statue apart from the mummy. But, as I have
+already pointed out, he never completely renounced his ambition of
+transforming the mummy itself; and in the time of the New Empire he
+actually attained the result which he had kept in view for nearly twenty
+centuries.
+
+In these remarks I have been referring only to funerary portrait
+statues. Centuries before the attempt was made to fashion them modellers
+had been making of clay and stone representations of cattle and human
+beings, which have been found not only in Predynastic graves in Egypt
+but also in so-called "Upper Palæolithic" deposits in Europe.
+
+But the fashioning of realistic and life-size human portrait-statues for
+funerary purposes was a new art, which gradually developed in the way I
+have tried to depict. No doubt the modellers made use of the skill they
+had acquired in the practice of the older art of rough impressionism.
+
+Once the statue was made a stone-house (the _serdab_) was provided for
+it above ground[37]. As the dolmen is a crude copy of the _serdab_[38]
+it can be claimed as one of the ultimate results of the practice of
+mummification. It is clear that the conception of the possibility of a
+life beyond the grave assumed a more concrete form when it was realized
+that the body itself could be rendered incorruptible and its distinctive
+traits could be kept alive by means of a portrait statue. There are
+reasons for supposing that primitive man did not realize or contemplate
+the possibility of his own existence coming to an end.[39] Even when he
+witnessed the death of his fellows he does not appear to have
+appreciated the fact that it was really the end of life and not merely a
+kind of sleep from which the dead might awake. But if the corpse were
+destroyed or underwent a process of natural disintegration the fact was
+brought home to him that death had occurred. If these considerations,
+which early Egyptian literature seems to suggest, be borne in mind, the
+view that the preservation of the body from corruption implied a
+continuation of existence becomes intelligible. At first the
+subterranean chambers in which the actual body was housed were developed
+into a many-roomed house for the deceased, complete in every detail.[40]
+But when the statue took over the function of representing the deceased,
+a dwelling was provided for it above ground. This developed into the
+temple where the relatives and friends of the dead came and made the
+offerings of food which were regarded as essential for the maintenance
+of existence.
+
+The evolution of the temple was thus the direct outcome of the ideas
+that grew up in connexion with the preservation of the dead. For at
+first it was nothing more than the dwelling place of the reanimated
+dead. But when, for reasons which I shall explain later (see p. 30), the
+dead king became deified, his temple of offerings became the building
+where food and drink were presented to the god, not merely to maintain
+his existence, but also to restore his consciousness, and so afford an
+opportunity for his successor, the actual king, to consult him and
+obtain his advice and help. The presentation of offerings and the ritual
+procedures for animating and restoring consciousness to the dead king
+were at first directed solely to these ends. But in course of time, as
+their original purpose became obscured, these services in the temple
+altered in character, and their meaning became rationalized into acts
+of homage and worship, and of prayer and supplication, and in much later
+times, acquired an ethical and moral significance that was wholly absent
+from the original conception of the temple services. The earliest idea
+of the temple as a place of offering has not been lost sight of. Even in
+our times the offertory still finds a place in temple services.
+
+
+[25: G. Elliot Smith, "The Earliest Evidence of Attempts at
+Mummification in Egypt," _Report British Association_, 1912, p. 612:
+compare also J. Garstang, "Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt," London,
+1907, pp. 29 and 30. Professor Garstang did not recognize that
+mummification had been attempted.]
+
+[26: G. Elliot Smith, "The History of Mummification in Egypt," _Proc.
+Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow_, 1910: also "Egyptian Mummies,"
+_Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, Part III, July, 1914, Plate
+XXXI.]
+
+[27: "Excavations of the Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences at the
+Pyramids of Gizah, 1914," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. I, Oct.
+1914, p. 250.]
+
+[28: "Excavations at Saqqara," 1907-8, p. 113.]
+
+[29: The great variety of experiments that were being made at the
+beginning of the Pyramid Age bears ample testimony to the fact that the
+original inventors of these devices were actually at work in Lower Egypt
+at that time.]
+
+[30: Aylward M. Blackman, "The _Ka_-House and the Serdab," _Journal of
+Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250. The word
+_serdab_ is merely the Arabic word used by the native workmen, which has
+been adopted and converted into a technical term by European
+archæologists.]
+
+[31: _Op. cit._ p. 171.]
+
+[32: It is a remarkable fact that Professor Garstang, who brought to
+light perhaps the best, and certainly the best-preserved, collection of
+Middle Kingdom mummies ever discovered, failed to recognize the fact
+that they had really been embalmed (_op. cit._ p. 171).]
+
+[33: The reader who wishes for fuller information as to the reality of
+these beliefs and how seriously they were held will find them still in
+active operation in China. An admirable account of Chinese philosophy
+will be found in De Groot's "Religious System of China," especially Vol.
+IV, Book II. It represents the fully developed (New Empire) system of
+Egyptian belief modified in various ways by Babylonian, Indian and
+Central Asiatic influences, as well as by accretions developed locally
+in China.]
+
+[34: A. M. Blackman, "The _Ka_-House and the Serdab," _The Journal of
+Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250.]
+
+[35: "Migrations of Early Culture," p. 37.]
+
+[36: Dr. Alan Gardiner (Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet,"
+1915, p. 83, footnote) has, I think, overlooked certain statements in my
+writings and underestimated the antiquity of the embalmer's art; for he
+attributes to me the opinion that "mummification was a custom of
+relatively late growth".
+
+The presence in China of the characteristically Egyptian beliefs
+concerning the animation of statues (de Groot, _op. cit._ pp. 339-356),
+whereas the practice of mummification, though not wholly absent, is not
+obtrusive, might perhaps be interpreted by some scholars as evidence in
+favour of the development of the custom of making statues independently
+of mummification. But such an inference is untenable. Not only is it the
+fact that in most parts of the world the practices of making statues and
+mummifying the dead are found in association the one with the other, but
+also in China the essential beliefs concerning the dead are based upon
+the supposition that the body is fully preserved (_see_ de Groot, chap.
+XV.). It is quite evident that the Chinese customs have been derived
+directly or indirectly from some people who mummified their dead as a
+regular practice. There can be no doubt that the ultimate source of
+their inspiration to do these things was Egypt.
+
+I need mention only one of many identical peculiarities that makes this
+quite certain. De Groot says it is "strange to see Chinese fancy depict
+the souls of the viscera as distinct individuals with animal forms" (p.
+71). The same custom prevailed in Egypt, where the "souls" or protective
+deities were first given animal forms in the Nineteenth Dynasty
+(Reisner).]
+
+[37: The Arabic word conveys the idea of being "hidden underground,"
+because the house is exposed by excavation.]
+
+[38: _Op. cit. supra_, Ridgeway Essays; also _Man_, 1913, p. 193.]
+
+[39: See Alan H. Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings'
+_Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]
+
+[40: See the quotation from Mr. Quibell's account in my statement in the
+_Report of the British Association for 1914_, p. 215.]
+
+
+The Significance of Libations.
+
+The central idea of this lecture was suggested by Mr. Aylward M.
+Blackman's important discovery of the actual meaning of incense and
+libations to the Egyptians themselves.[41] The earliest body of
+literature preserved from any of the peoples of antiquity is comprised
+in the texts inscribed in the subterranean chambers of the Sakkara
+Pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. These documents, written
+forty-five centuries ago, were first brought to light in modern times in
+1880-81; and since the late Sir Gaston Maspero published the first
+translation of them, many scholars have helped in the task of
+elucidating their meaning. But it remained for Blackman to discover the
+explanation they give of the origin and significance of the act of
+pouring out libations. "The general meaning of these passages is quite
+clear. The corpse of the deceased is dry and shrivelled. To revivify it
+the vital fluids that have exuded from it [in the process of
+mummification] must be restored, for not till then will life return and
+the heart beat again. This, so the texts show us, was believed to be
+accomplished by offering libations to the accompaniment of incantations"
+(_op. cit._ p. 70).
+
+In the first three passages quoted by Blackman from the Pyramid Texts
+"the libations are said to be the actual fluids that have issued from
+the corpse". In the next four quotations "a different notion is
+introduced. It is not the deceased's own exudations that are to revive
+his shrunken frame but those of a divine body, the [god's fluid][42]
+that came from the corpse of Osiris himself, the juices that dissolved
+from his decaying flesh, which are communicated to the dead
+sacrament-wise under the form of these libations."
+
+This dragging-in of Osiris is especially significant. For the analogy of
+the life-giving power of water that is specially associated with Osiris
+played a dominant part in suggesting the ritual of libations. Just as
+water, when applied to the apparently dead seed, makes it germinate and
+come to life, so libations can reanimate the corpse. These general
+biological theories of the potency of water were current at the time,
+and, as I shall explain later (see p. 28), had possibly received
+specific application to man long before the idea of libations developed.
+For, in the development of the cult of Osiris[43] the general
+fertilizing power of water when applied to the soil found specific
+exemplification in the potency of the seminal fluid to fertilize human
+beings. Malinowski has pointed out that certain Papuan people, who are
+ignorant of the fact that women are fertilized by sexual connexion,
+believe that they can be rendered pregnant by rain falling upon them
+(_op. cit. infra_). The study of folk-lore and early beliefs makes it
+abundantly clear that in the distant past which I am now discussing no
+clear distinction was made between fertilization and vitalization,
+between bringing new life into being and reanimating the body which had
+once been alive. The process of fertilization of the female and
+animating a corpse or a statue were regarded as belonging to the same
+category of biological processes. The sculptor who carved the
+portrait-statues for the Egyptian's tomb was called _sa'nkh_, "he who
+causes to live," and "the word 'to fashion' (_ms_) a statue is to all
+appearances identical with _ms_, 'to give birth'".[44]
+
+Thus the Egyptians themselves expressed in words the ideas which an
+independent study of the ethnological evidence showed many other peoples
+to entertain, both in ancient and modern times.[45]
+
+The interpretation of ancient texts and the study of the beliefs of less
+cultured modern peoples indicate that our expressions: "to give birth,"
+"to give life," "to maintain life," "to ward off death," "to insure good
+luck," "to prolong life," "to give life to the dead," "to animate a
+corpse or a representation of the dead," "to give fertility," "to
+impregnate," "to create," represent a series of specializations of
+meaning which were not clearly differentiated the one from the other in
+early times or among relatively primitive modern people.
+
+The evidence brought together in Jackson's work clearly suggests that at
+a very early period in human history, long before the ideas that found
+expression in the Osiris story had materialized, men entertained in all
+its literal crudity the belief that the external organ of reproduction
+from which the child emerged at birth was the actual creator of the
+child, not merely the giver of birth but also the source of life.
+
+The widespread tendency of the human mind to identify similar objects
+and attribute to them the powers of the things they mimic led primitive
+men to assign to the cowry-shell all these life-giving and birth-giving
+virtues. It became an amulet to give fertility, to assist at birth, to
+maintain life, to ward off danger, to ensure the life hereafter, to
+bring luck of any sort. Now, as the giver of birth, the cowry-shell also
+came to be identified with, or regarded as, the mother and creator of
+the human family; and in course of time, as this belief became
+rationalized, the shell's maternity received visible expression and it
+became personified as an actual woman, the Great Mother, at first nameless
+and with ill-defined features. But at a later period, when the dead king
+Osiris gradually acquired his attributes of divinity, and a god emerged
+with the form of a man, the vagueness of the Great Mother who had been
+merely the personified cowry-shell soon disappeared and the amulet assumed,
+as Hathor, the form of a real woman, or, for reasons to be explained
+later, a cow.
+
+The influence of these developments reacted upon the nascent conception
+of the water-controlling god, Osiris; and his powers of fertility were
+enlarged to include many of the life-giving attributes of Hathor.
+
+
+[41: "The Significance of Incense and Libations in Funerary and Temple
+Ritual," _Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde_, Bd.
+50, 1912, p. 69.]
+
+[42: Mr. Blackman here quotes the actual word in hieroglyphics and adds
+the translation "god's fluid" and the following explanation in a
+footnote: "The Nile was supposed to be the fluid which issued from
+Osiris. The expression in the Pyramid texts may refer to this
+belief--the dead" [in the Pyramid Age it would have been more accurate
+if he had said the dead king, in whose Pyramid the inscriptions were
+found] "being usually identified with Osiris--since the water used in
+the libations was Nile water."]
+
+[43: The voluminous literature relating to Osiris will be found
+summarized in the latest edition of "The Golden Bough" by Sir James
+Frazer. But in referring the reader to this remarkable compilation of
+evidence it is necessary to call particular attention to the fact that
+Sir James Frazer's interpretation is permeated with speculations based
+upon the modern ethnological dogma of independent evolution of similar
+customs and beliefs without cultural contact between the different
+localities where such similarities make their appearance.
+
+The complexities of the motives that inspire and direct human activities
+are entirely fatal to such speculations, as I have attempted to indicate
+(see above, p. 195). But apart from this general warning, there are
+other objections to Sir James Frazer's theories. In his illuminating
+article upon Osiris and Horus, Dr. Alan Gardiner (in a criticism of Sir
+James Frazer's "The Golden Bough: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the
+History of Oriental Religion," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol.
+II, 1915, p. 122) insists upon the crucial fact that Osiris was
+primarily a king, and that "it is always as a _dead_ king," "the rôle of
+the living king being invariably played by Horus, his son and heir".
+
+He states further: "What Egyptologists wish to know about Osiris beyond
+anything else is how and by what means he became associated with the
+processes of vegetable life". An examination of the literature relating
+to Osiris and the large series of homologous deities in other countries
+(which exhibit _prima facie_ evidence of a common origin) suggests the
+idea that the king who first introduced the practice of systematic
+irrigation thereby laid the foundation of his reputation as a beneficent
+reformer. When, for reasons which I shall discuss later on (see p. 220),
+the dead king became deified, his fame as the controller of water and
+the fertilization of the earth became apotheosized also. I venture to
+put forward this suggestion only because none of the alternative
+hypotheses that have been propounded seem to be in accordance with,
+or to offer an adequate explanation of, the body of known facts
+concerning Osiris.
+
+It is a remarkable fact that in his lectures on "The Development of
+Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," which are based upon his own
+studies of the Pyramid Texts, and are an invaluable storehouse of
+information, Professor J. H. Breasted should have accepted Sir James
+Frazer's views. These seem to me to be altogether at variance with the
+renderings of the actual Egyptian texts and to confuse the exposition.]
+
+[44: Dr. Alan Gardiner, quoted in my "Migrations of Early Culture," p.
+42: see also the same scholar's remarks in Davies and Gardiner, "The
+Tomb of Amenemhet," 1915, p. 57, and "A new Masterpiece of Egyptian
+Sculpture," _The Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. IV, Part I,
+Jan., 1917.]
+
+[45: See J. Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of
+Early Culture," 1917, Manchester University Press.]
+
+
+Early Biological Theories.
+
+Before the full significance of these procedures can be appreciated it
+is essential to try to get at the back of the Proto-Egyptian's mind and
+to understand his general trend of thought. I specially want to make it
+clear that the ritual use of water for animating the corpse or the
+statue was merely a specific application of the general principles of
+biology which were then current. It was no mere childish make-believe or
+priestly subterfuge to regard the pouring out of water as a means of
+animating a block of stone. It was a conviction for which the
+Proto-Egyptians considered there was a substantial scientific basis; and
+their faith in the efficacy of water to animate the dead is to be
+regarded in the same light as any scientific inference which is made at
+the present time to give a specific application of some general theory
+considered to be well founded. The Proto-Egyptians clearly believed in
+the validity of the general biological theory of the life-giving
+properties of water. Many facts, no doubt quite convincing to them,
+testified to the soundness of their theory. They accepted the principle
+with the same confidence that modern people have adopted Newton's Law of
+Gravitation, and Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species, and applied
+it to explain many phenomena or to justify certain procedures, which in
+the light of fuller knowledge seem to modern people puerile and
+ludicrous. But the early people obviously took these procedures
+seriously and regarded their actions as rational. The fact that their
+early biological theory was inadequate ought not to mislead modern
+scholars and encourage them to fall into the error of supposing that the
+ritual of libations was not based upon a serious inference. Modern
+scientists do not accept the whole of Darwin's teaching, or possibly
+even Newton's "Law," but this does not mean that in the past innumerable
+inferences have been honestly and confidently made in specific
+application of these general principles.
+
+It is important, then, that I should examine more closely the
+Proto-Egyptian body of doctrine to elucidate the mutual influence of it
+and the ideas suggested by the practice of mummification. It is not
+known where agriculture was first practised or the circumstances which
+led men to appreciate the fact that plants could be cultivated. In many
+parts of the world agriculture can be carried on without artificial
+irrigation, and even without any adequate appreciation on the part of
+the farmer of the importance of water. But when it came to be practised
+under such conditions as prevail in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the
+cultivator would soon be forced to realize that water was essential for
+the growth of plants, and that it was imperative to devise artificial
+means by which the soil might be irrigated. It is not known where or by
+whom this cardinal fact first came to be appreciated, whether by the
+Sumerians or the Egyptians or by some other people. But it is known that
+in the earliest records both of Egypt and Sumer the most significant
+manifestations of a ruler's wisdom were the making of irrigation canals
+and the controlling of water. Important as these facts are from their
+bearing upon the material prospects of the people, they had an
+infinitely more profound and far-reaching effect upon the beliefs of
+mankind. Groping after some explanation of the natural phenomenon that
+the earth became fertile when water was applied to it, and that seed
+burst into life under the same influence, the early biologist formulated
+the natural and not wholly illogical idea that water was the repository
+of life-giving powers. Water was equally necessary for the production of
+life and for the maintenance of life.
+
+At an early stage in the development of this biological theory man and
+other animals were brought within the scope of the generalization. For
+the drinking of water was a condition of existence in animals. The idea
+that water played a part in reproduction was co-related with this fact.
+
+Even at the present time many aboriginal peoples in Australia, New
+Guinea, and elsewhere, are not aware of the fact that in the process of
+animal reproduction the male exercises the physiological rôle of
+fertilization.[46]
+
+There are widespread indications throughout the world that the
+appreciation of this elementary physiological knowledge was acquired at
+a relatively recent period in the history of mankind. It is difficult to
+believe that the fundamental facts of the physiology of fertilization in
+animals could long have remained unknown when men became breeders of
+cattle. The Egyptian hieroglyphs leave no doubt that the knowledge was
+fully appreciated at the period when the earliest picture-symbols were
+devised, for the verb "to beget" is represented by the male organs of
+generation. But, as the domestication of animals may have been earlier
+than the invention of agriculture, it is possible that the appreciation
+of the fertilizing powers of the male animal may have been definitely
+more ancient than the earliest biological theory of the fertilizing
+power of water.
+
+I have discussed this question to suggest that the knowledge that
+animals could be fertilized by the seminal fluid was certainly brought
+within the scope of the wider generalization that water itself was
+endowed with fertilizing properties. Just as water fertilized the earth,
+so the semen fertilized the female. Water was necessary for the
+maintenance of life in plants and was also essential in the form of
+drink for animals. As both the earth and women could be fertilized by
+water they were homologized one with the other. The earth came to be
+regarded as a woman, the Great Mother.[47] When the fertilizing water
+came to be personified in the person of Osiris his consort Isis was
+identified with the earth which was fertilized by water.[48]
+
+One of the earliest pictures of an Egyptian king represents him using
+the hoe to inaugurate the making of an irrigation-canal.[49] This was
+the typical act of benevolence on the part of a wise ruler. It is not
+unlikely that the earliest organization of a community under a definite
+leader may have been due to the need for some systematized control of
+irrigation. In any case the earliest rulers of Egypt and Sumer were
+essentially the controllers and regulators of the water supply and as
+such the givers of fertility and prosperity.
+
+Once men first consciously formulated the belief that death was not the
+end of all things,[50] that the body could be re-animated and
+consciousness and the will restored, it was natural that a wise ruler
+who, when alive, had rendered conspicuous services should after death
+continue to be consulted. The fame of such a man would grow with age;
+his good deeds and his powers would become apotheosized; he would become
+an oracle whose advice might be sought and whose help be obtained in
+grave crises. In other words the dead king would be "deified," or at any
+rate credited with the ability to confer even greater boons than he was
+able to do when alive.
+
+It is no mere coincidence that the first "god" should have been a dead
+king, Osiris, nor that he controlled the waters of irrigation and was
+specially interested in agriculture. Nor, for the reasons that I have
+already suggested, is it surprising that he should have had phallic
+attributes, and in himself have personified the virile powers of
+fertilization.[51]
+
+In attempting to explain the origin of the ritual procedures of burning
+incense and offering libations it is essential to realize that the
+creation of the first deities was not primarily an expression of
+religious belief, but rather an application of science to national
+affairs. It was the logical interpretation of the dominant scientific
+theory of the time for the practical benefit of the living; or in other
+words, the means devised for securing the advice and the active help of
+wise rulers after their death. It was essentially a matter of practical
+politics and applied science. It became "religion" only when the
+advancement of knowledge superseded these primitive scientific theories
+and left them as soothing traditions for the thoughts and aspirations of
+mankind to cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories of
+knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and
+had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's
+conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral
+precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that
+no force was able to strip away this body of consolatory beliefs; and
+they have persisted for all time, although the reasoning by which they
+were originally built up has been demolished and forgotten several
+millennia ago.
+
+It is not known where Osiris was born. In other countries there are
+homologous deities, such as Ea, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, which are
+certainly manifestations of the same idea and sprung from the same
+source. Certain recent writers assume that the germ of the
+Osiris-conception was introduced into Egypt from abroad. But if so,
+nothing is known for certain of its place of origin. In any case there
+can be no doubt that the distinctive features of Osiris, his real
+personality and character, were developed in Egypt.
+
+For reasons which I have suggested already it is probable that the
+significance of water in cultivation was not realized until cereals were
+cultivated in some such place as Babylonia or Egypt. But there are very
+definite legends of the Babylonian Ea coming from abroad by way of the
+Persian Gulf.[52] The early history of Tammuz is veiled in obscurity.
+
+Somewhere in South Western Asia or North Eastern Africa, probably within
+a few years of the development of the art of agriculture, some
+scientific theorist, interpreting the body of empirical knowledge
+acquired by cultivating cereals, propounded the view that water was the
+great life-giving element. This view eventually found expression in the
+Osiris-group of legends.
+
+This theory found specific application in the invention of libations and
+incense. These practices in turn reacted upon the general body of
+doctrine and gave it a more sharply defined form. The dead king also
+became more real when he was represented by an actual embalmed body and
+a life-like statue, sitting in state upon his throne and holding in his
+hands the emblems of his high office.
+
+Thus while, in the present state of knowledge, it would be unjustifiable
+to claim that the Osiris-group of deities was invented in Egypt, and
+certainly erroneous to attribute the general theory of the fertilizing
+properties of water to the practice of embalming, it is true that the
+latter was responsible for giving Osiris a much more concrete and
+clearly-defined shape, of "making a god in the image of man", and for
+giving to the water-theory a much richer and fuller significance than it
+had before.
+
+The symbolism so created has had a most profound influence upon the
+thoughts and aspirations of the human race. For Osiris was the prototype
+of all the gods; his ritual was the basis of all religious ceremonial;
+his priests who conducted the animating ceremonies were the pioneers of
+a long series of ministers who for more than fifty centuries, in spite
+of the endless variety of details of their ritual and the character of
+their temples, have continued to perform ceremonies that have undergone
+remarkably little essential change. Though the chief functions of the
+priest as the animator of the god and the restorer of his consciousness
+have now fallen into the background in most religions, the ritual acts
+(the incense and libations, the offerings of food and blood and the
+rest) still persist in many countries: the priest still appeals by
+prayer and supplication for those benefits, which the Proto-Egyptian
+aimed at securing when he created Osiris as a god to give advice and
+help. The prayer for rain is one of the earliest forms of religious
+appeal, but the request for a plentiful inundation was earlier still.
+
+I have already said that in using the terms "god" and "religion" with
+reference to the earliest form of Osiris and the beliefs that grew up
+with reference to him a potent element of confusion is introduced.
+
+During the last fifty centuries the meanings of those two words have
+become so complexly enriched with the glamour of a mystic symbolism that
+the Proto-Egyptian's conception of Osiris and the Osirian beliefs must
+have been vastly different from those implied in the words "god" and
+"religion" at the present time. Osiris was regarded as an actual king
+who had died and been reanimated. In other words he was a _man_ who
+could bestow upon his former subjects the benefits of his advice and
+help, but could also display such human weaknesses as malice, envy, and
+all uncharitableness. Much modern discussion completely misses the mark
+by the failure to recognize that these so-called "gods" were really men,
+equally capable of acts of beneficence and of outbursts of hatred, and
+as one or the other aspect became accentuated the same deity could
+become a Vedic _deva_ or an Avestan _dæva_, a _deus_ or a devil, a god
+of kindness or a demon of wickedness.
+
+The acts which the earliest "gods" were supposed to perform were not at
+first regarded as supernatural. They were merely the boons which the
+mortal ruler was supposed to be able to confer, by controlling the
+waters of irrigation and rendering the land fertile. It was only when
+his powers became apotheosized with a halo of accumulated glory (and the
+growth of knowledge revealed the insecurity of the scientific basis upon
+which his fame was built up) that a priesthood reluctant to abandon any
+of the attributes which had captured the popular imagination, made it an
+obligation of belief to accept these supernatural powers of the gods for
+which the student of natural phenomena refused any longer to be a
+sponsor. This was the parting of the ways between science and religion;
+and thenceforth the attributes of the "gods" became definitely and
+admittedly superhuman.
+
+As I have already stated (p. 23) the original object of the offering of
+libations was thus clearly for the purpose of animating the statue of
+the deceased and so enabling him to continue the existence which had
+merely been interrupted by the incident of death. In course of time,
+however, as definite gods gradually materialized and came to be
+represented by statues, they also had to be vitalized by offerings of
+water from time to time. Thus the pouring out of libations came to be an
+act of worship of the deity; and in this form it has persisted until our
+own times in many civilized countries.
+
+But not only was water regarded as a means of animating the dead, or
+statues representing the dead, and an appropriate act of worship, in
+that it vitalized an idol and the god dwelling in it was thus able to
+hear and answer supplications. Water also became an essential part of
+any act of ritual rebirth.[53] As a baptism it also symbolized the
+giving of life. The initiate was re-born into a new communion of faith.
+In scores of other ways the same conception of the life-giving
+properties of water was responsible for as many applications of the use
+of libations in inaugurating new enterprises, such as "baptising" ships
+and blessing buildings. It is important to remember that, according to
+early Egyptian beliefs, the continued existence of the dead was wholly
+dependent upon the attentions of the living. Unless this animating
+ceremony was performed not merely at the time of the funeral, but also
+at stated periods afterwards, and unless the friends of the deceased
+periodically supplied food and drink, such a continuation of existence
+was impossible.
+
+The development of these beliefs had far-reaching effects in other
+directions. The idea that a stone statue could be animated ultimately
+became extended to mean that the dead man could enter into and dwell in
+a block of stone, which he could leave or return to at will. From this
+arose the beliefs, which spread far and wide, that the dead ancestors,
+kings, or deified kings, dwelt in stones; and that they could be
+consulted as oracles, who gave advice and counsel. The acceptance of
+this idea that the dead could be reanimated in a stone statue no doubt
+prepared the minds of the people to credit the further belief, which
+other circumstances were responsible for creating, that men could be
+turned into stone. In the next chapter I shall explain how these
+petrifaction stories developed.[54]
+
+All the rich crop of myths concerning men and animals dwelling in stones
+which are to be found encircling the globe from Ireland to America, can
+be referred back to these early Egyptian attempts to solve the mysteries
+of death, and to acquire the means of circumventing fate.[55]
+
+These beliefs at first may have concerned human beings only. But in
+course of time, as the duty of revictualling an increasingly large
+number of tombs and temples tended to tax the resources of the people,
+the practice developed of substituting for the real things models, or
+even pictures, of food-animals, vegetables, and other requisites of the
+dead. And these objects and pictures were restored to life or reality by
+means of a ritual which was essentially identical with that used for
+animating the statue or the mummy of the deceased himself.
+
+It is well worth considering whether this may not be one of the basal
+factors in explanation of the phenomena which the late Sir Edward Tylor
+labelled "animism".
+
+So far from being a phase of culture through which many, if not all,
+peoples have passed in the course of their evolution, may it not have
+been merely an artificial conception of certain things, which was given
+so definite a form in Egypt, for the specific reasons at which I have
+just hinted, and from there spread far and wide?
+
+Against this view may be urged the fact that our own children talk in an
+animistic fashion. But is not this due in some measure to the
+unconscious influence of their elders? Or at most is it not a vague and
+ill-defined attitude of anthropomorphism necessarily involved in all
+spoken languages, which is vastly different from what the ethnologist
+understands by "animism"[56]?
+
+But whether this be so or not, there can be no doubt that the "animism"
+of the early Egyptians assumed its precise and clear-cut distinctive
+features as the result of the growth of ideas suggested by the attempts
+to make mummies and statues of the dead and symbolic offerings of food
+and other funerary requisites.
+
+Thus incidentally there grew up the belief in a power of magic by means
+of which these make-believe offerings could be transformed into
+realities. But it is important to emphasize the fact that originally the
+conviction of the genuineness of this transubstantiation was a logical
+and not unnatural inference based upon the attempt to interpret natural
+phenomena, and then to influence them by imitating what were regarded as
+the determining factors.[57]
+
+In China these ideas still retain much of their primitive influence and
+directness of expression. Referring to the Chinese "belief in the
+identity of pictures or images with the beings they represent" de Groot
+states that the _kwan shuh_ or "magic art" is a "main branch of Chinese
+witchcraft". It consists essentially of "the infusion of a soul, life,
+and activity into likenesses of beings, to thus render them fit to work
+in some direction desired ... this infusion is effected by blowing or
+breathing, or spurting water over the likeness: indeed breath or _khi_,
+or water from the mouth imbued with breath, is identical with _yang_
+substance or life."[58]
+
+
+[46: Baldwin Spencer and Gillen, "The Northern Tribes of Central
+Australia"; "Across Australia"; and Spencer's "Native Tribes of the
+Northern Territory of Australia". For a very important study of the
+whole problem with special reference to New Guinea, see B. Malinowski,
+"Baloma: the Spirits of the Dead," etc., _Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute_, 1916, p. 415.]
+
+[47: The idea of the earth's maternal function spread throughout the
+greater part of the world.]
+
+[48: With reference to the assimilation of the conceptions of human
+fertilization and watering the soil and the widespread idea among the
+ancients of regarding the male as "he who irrigates," Canon van
+Hoonacker gave M. Louis Siret the following note:--
+
+"In Assyrian the cuneiform sign for water is also used, _inter alia_, to
+express the idea of begetting (_banú_). Compare with this the references
+from Hebrew and Arabic writings. In Isaiah xlviii. 1, we read 'Hear ye
+this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are
+come forth out of the waters of Judah'; and in Numbers xxiv. 7, 'Water
+shall flow from his buckets and his seed shall be in many waters'.
+
+"The Hebrew verb (_shangal_) which denotes sexual intercourse has, in
+Arabic (_sadjala_), the meaning 'to spill water'. In the Koran, Sur. 36,
+v. 6, the word _mâ'un_ (water) is used to designate semen" (L. Siret,
+"Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Ibériques," Tome I, 1913, p.
+250).]
+
+[49: Quibell, "Hieraconpolis", Vol. I, 260, 4.]
+
+[50: In using this phrase I want to make a clear distinction between the
+phase of culture in which it had never occurred to man that, in his
+individual case, life would come to an end, and the more enlightened
+stage, in which he fully realized that death would inevitably be his
+fate, but that in spite of it his real existence would continue.
+
+It is clear that at quite an early stage in his history man appreciated
+the fact that he could kill an animal or his fellow-man. But for a long
+time he failed to realize that he himself, if he could avoid the process
+of mechanical destruction by which he could kill an animal or a
+fellow-man, would not continue to exist. The dead are supposed by many
+people to be still in existence so long as the body is preserved. Once
+the body begins to disintegrate even the most unimaginative of men can
+entirely repress the idea of death. But to primitive people the
+preservation of the body is equally a token that existence has not come
+to an end. The corpse is merely sleeping.]
+
+[51: Breasted, _op. cit._, p. 28.]
+
+[52: The possibility, or even the probability, must be borne in mind
+that the legend of Ea arising from the waters may be merely another way
+of expressing his primary attribute as the personification of the
+fertilizing powers of water.]
+
+[53: This occurred at a later epoch when the attributes of the
+water-controlling deity of fertility became confused with those of the
+birth-giving mother goddess (_vide infra_, p. 40).]
+
+[54: For a large series of these stories see E. Sidney Hartland's
+"Legend of Perseus". But even more instructive, as revealing the
+intimate connexion of such ideas with the beliefs regarding the
+preservation of the body, see J. J. M. de Groot, "The Religious System
+of China," Vol. IV, Book II, 1901.]
+
+[55: In this connexion see de Groot, _op. cit._ pp. 356 and 415.
+[Transcriber's Note: the original text contained no marker for this
+footnote, so a guess has been made as to what it referred]]
+
+[56: The child certainly resembles primitive man in the readiness with
+which it attributes to even the crudest models of animals or human
+beings the feelings of living creatures.]
+
+[57: It became "magical" in our sense of the term only when the growth
+of knowledge revealed the fact that the measures taken were inadequate
+to attain the desired end; while the "magician" continued to make the
+pretence that he could attain that end by ultra-physical means.]
+
+[58: De Groot, _op. cit._ p. 356.]
+
+
+Incense.
+
+So far I have referred in detail only to the offering of libations. But
+this was only one of several procedures for animating statues, mummies,
+and food-offerings. I have still to consider the ritual procedures of
+incense-burning and "opening the mouth".
+
+From Mr. Blackman's translations of the Egyptian texts it is clear that
+the burning of incense was intended to restore to the statue (or the
+mummy) the odour of the living body, and that this was part of the
+procedure considered necessary to animate the statue. He says "the
+belief about incense [which is explained by a later document, the
+_Ritual of Amon_] apparently does not occur in the Old Kingdom religious
+texts that are preserved to us, yet it may quite well be as ancient as
+that period. That is certainly Erman's view" (_op. cit._ p. 75).
+
+He gives the following translation of the relevant passage in the
+_Ritual of Amon_ (XII, 11): "The god comes with body adorned which he
+has fumigated with the eye of his body, the incense of the god which has
+issued from his flesh, the sweat of the god which has fallen to the
+ground, which he has given to all the gods.... It is the Horus eye. If
+it lives, the people live, thy flesh lives, thy members are vigorous"
+(_op. cit._ p. 72). In his comments upon this passage Mr. Blackman
+states: "In the light of the Pyramid libation-formulæ the expressions in
+this text are quite comprehensible. Like the libations the grains of
+incense are the exudations of a divinity,[59] the fluid which issued
+from his flesh, the god's sweat descending to the ground.... Here
+incense is not merely the 'odour of the god,' but the grains of resin
+are said to be the god's sweat" (_op. cit._ p. 72). "Both rites, the
+pouring of libations and the burning of incense, are performed for the
+same purpose--to revivify the body [or the statue] of god and man by
+restoring to it its lost moisture" (p. 75).
+
+In attempting to reconstitute the circumstances which led to the
+invention of incense-burning as a ritual act, the nature of the problem
+to be solved must be recalled. Among the most obtrusive evidences of
+death were the coldness of the skin, the lack of perspiration and of the
+odour of the living. It is important to realize what the phrase "odour
+of the living" would convey to the Proto-Egyptian. From the earliest
+Predynastic times in Egypt it had been the custom to make extensive use
+of resinous material as an essential ingredient (what a pharmacist would
+call the adhesive "vehicle") of cosmetics. One of the results of this
+practice in a hot climate must have been the association of a strong
+aroma of resin or balsam with a living person.[60] Whether or not it was
+the practice to burn incense to give pleasure to the living is not
+known. The fact that such a procedure was customary among their
+successors may mean that it was really archaic; or on the other hand the
+possibility must not be overlooked that it may be merely the later
+vulgarization of a practice which originally was devised for purely
+ritual purposes. The burning of incense before a corpse or statue was
+intended to convey to it the warmth, the sweat, and the odour of life.
+
+When the belief became well established that the burning of incense was
+potent as an animating force, and especially a giver of life to the
+dead, it naturally came to be regarded as a divine substance in the
+sense that it had the power of resurrection. As the grains of incense
+consisted of the exudation of trees, or, as the ancient texts express
+it, "their sweat," the divine power of animation in course of time
+became transferred to the trees. They were no longer merely the source
+of the life-giving incense, but were themselves animated by the deity
+whose drops of sweat were the means of conveying life to the mummy.
+
+The reason why the deity which dwelt in these trees was usually
+identified with the Mother-Goddess will become clear in the course of
+the subsequent discussion (p. 38). It is probable that this was due
+mainly to the geographical circumstance that the chief source of incense
+was Southern Arabia, which was also the home of the primitive goddesses
+of fertility. For they were originally nothing more than
+personifications of the life-giving cowry amulets from the Red Sea.
+
+Thus Robertson Smith's statement that "the value of the gum of the
+acacia as an amulet is connected with the idea that it is a clot of
+menstruous blood, i.e., that the tree is a woman"[61] is probably an
+inversion of cause and effect. It was the value attached to the gum that
+conferred animation upon the tree. The rest of the legend is merely a
+rationalization based upon the idea that the tree was identified with
+the mother-goddess. The same criticism applies to his further contention
+(p. 427) with reference to "the religious value of incense" which he
+claims to be due to the fact that "like the gum of the _samora_ (acacia)
+tree, ... it was an animate or divine plant".
+
+Many factors played a part in the development of tree-worship but it is
+probable the origin of the sacredness of trees must be assigned to the
+fact that it was acquired from the incense and the aromatic woods which
+were credited with the power of animating the dead. But at a very early
+epoch many other considerations helped to confirm and extend the
+conception of deification. When Osiris was buried, a sacred sycamore
+grew up as "the visible symbol of the imperishable life of Osiris".[62]
+But the sap of trees was brought into relationship with life-giving
+water and thus constituted another link with Osiris. The sap was also
+regarded as the blood of trees and the incense that exuded as the sweat.
+Just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid of the body of
+Osiris, so also, by this process of rationalization, the incense came to
+possess a similar significance.
+
+For reasons precisely analogous to those already explained in the case
+of libations, the custom of burning incense, from being originally a
+ritual act for animating the funerary statue, ultimately developed into
+an act of homage to the deity.
+
+But it also acquired a special significance when the cult of sky-gods
+developed,[63] for the smoke of the burning incense then came to be
+regarded as the vehicle which wafted the deceased's soul to the sky or
+conveyed there the requests of the dwellers upon earth.[64]
+
+"The soul of a human being is generally conceived [by the Chinese] as
+possessing the shape and characteristics of a human being, and
+occasionally those of an animal; ... the spirit of an animal is the shape
+of this animal or of some being with human attributes and speech. But
+plant spirits are never conceived as plant-shaped, nor to have
+plant-characters ... whenever forms are given them, they are mostly
+represented as a man, a woman, or a child, and often also as an animal,
+dwelling in or near the plant, and emerging from it at times to do harm,
+or to dispense blessings.... Whether conceptions on the animation of
+plants have never developed in Chinese thought and worship before ideas
+about human ghosts ... had become predominant in mind and custom, we
+cannot say: but the matter seems probable" (De Groot, _op. cit._ pp.
+272, 273). Tales of trees that shed blood and that cry out when hurt are
+common in Chinese literature (p. 274) [as also in Southern Arabia]; also
+of trees that lodge or can change into maidens of transcendent beauty
+(p. 276).
+
+It is further significant that amongst the stories of souls of men
+taking up their residence in and animating trees and plants, the human
+being is usually a woman, accompanied by "a fox, a dog, an old raven or
+the like" (p. 276).
+
+Thus in China are found all the elements out of which Dr. Rendel Harris
+believes the Aphrodite cult was compounded in Cyprus,[65] the animation
+of the anthropoid plant, its human cry, its association with a beautiful
+maiden and a dog.[66]
+
+The immemorial custom of planting trees on graves in China is supposed
+by De Groot (p. 277) to be due to "the desire to strengthen the soul of
+the buried person, thus to save his body from corruption, for which
+reason trees such as pines and cypresses, deemed to be bearers of great
+vitality for being possessed of more _shen_ than other trees, were used
+preferably for such purposes". But may not such beliefs also be an
+expression of the idea that a tree growing upon a grave is developed
+from and becomes the personification of the deceased? The significance
+of the selection of pines and cypresses may be compared to that
+associated with the so-called "cedars" in Babylonia, Egypt, and
+Phoenicia, and the myrrh- and frankincense-producing trees in Arabia and
+East Africa. They have come to be accredited with "soul-substance,"
+since their use in mummification and as incense and for making coffins,
+has made them the means for attaining a future existence. Hence in
+course of time they came to be regarded as charged with the spirit of
+vitality, the _shen_ or "soul-substance".
+
+In China also it was because the woods of the pine or fir and the cyprus
+were used for making coffins and grave-vaults and that pine-resin was
+regarded as a means of attaining immortality (De Groot, _op. cit._ pp.
+296 and 297) that such veneration was bestowed upon these trees. "At an
+early date, Taoist seekers after immortality transplanted that animation
+[of the hardy long-lived fir and cypress[67]] into themselves by
+consuming the resin of those trees, which, apparently, they looked upon
+as coagulated soul-substance, the counterpart of the blood in men and
+animals" (p. 296).
+
+In India the _amrita_, the god's food of immortality, was sometimes
+regarded as the sap exuded from the sacred trees of paradise.
+
+Elsewhere in these pages it is explained how the vaguely defined Mother
+"Goddess" and the more distinctly anthropoid Water "God," which
+originally developed quite independently the one of the other,
+ultimately came to exert a profound and mutual influence, so that many
+of the attributes which originally belonged to one of them came to be
+shared with the other. Many factors played a part in this process of
+blending and confusion of sex. As I shall explain later, when the moon
+came to be regarded as the dwelling or the impersonation of Hathor, the
+supposed influence of the moon over water led to a further assimilation
+of her attributes with those of Osiris as the controller of water, which
+received definite expression in a lunar form of Osiris.
+
+But the link that is most intimately related to the subject of this
+address is provided by the personification of the Mother-Goddess in
+incense-trees. For incense thus became the sweat or the tears of the
+Great Mother just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid
+of Osiris.
+
+
+[59: As I shall explain later (see page 38), the idea of the divinity of
+the incense-tree was a result of, and not the reason for, the practice
+of incense-burning. As one of the means by which the resurrection was
+attained incense became a giver of divinity; and by a simple process
+of rationalization the tree which produced this divine substance became
+a god.
+
+The reference to the "eye of the body" (see p. 55) means the life-giving
+god or goddess who is the "eye" of the sky, _i.e._ the god with whom the
+dead king is identified.]
+
+[60: It would lead me too far afield to enter into a discussion of the
+use of scents and unguents, which is closely related to this question.]
+
+[61: "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133.]
+
+[62: Breasted, p. 28.]
+
+[63: For reasons explained on a subsequent page (56).]
+
+[64: It is also worth considering whether the extension of this idea may
+not have been responsible for originating the practice of cremation--as
+a device for transferring, not merely the animating incense and the
+supplications of the living, but also the body of the deceased to the
+sky-world. This, of course, did not happen in Egypt, but in some other
+country which adopted the Egyptian practice of incense-burning, but was
+not hampered by the religious conservatism that guarded the sacredness
+of the corpse.]
+
+[65: "The Ascent of Olympus," 1917.]
+
+[66: For a collection of stories relating to human beings, generally
+women, dwelling in trees, see Hartland's "Legend of Perseus".]
+
+[67: The fact that the fir and cypress are "hardy and long-lived" is not
+the reason for their being accredited with these life-prolonging
+qualities. But once the latter virtues had become attributed to them the
+fact that the trees were "hardy and long-lived" may have been used to
+bolster up the belief by a process of rationalization.]
+
+
+The Breath of Life.
+
+Although the pouring of libations and the burning of incense played so
+prominent a part in the ritual of animating the statue or the mummy, the
+most important incident in the ceremony was the "opening of the mouth,"
+which was regarded as giving it the breath of life.
+
+Elsewhere[68] I have suggested that the conception of the heart and
+blood as the vehicles of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge may have
+been extremely ancient. It is not known when or under what circumstances
+the idea of the breath being the "life" was first entertained. The fact
+that in certain primitive systems of philosophy the breath was supposed
+to have something to do with the heart suggests that these beliefs may
+be a constituent element of the ancient heart-theory. In some of the
+rock-pictures in America, Australia, and elsewhere the air-passages are
+represented leading to the heart. But there can be little doubt that the
+practice of mummification gave greater definiteness to the ideas
+regarding the "heart" and "breath," which eventually led to a
+differentiation between their supposed functions.[69] As the heart and
+the blood were obviously present in the dead body they could no longer
+be regarded as the "life". The breath was clearly the "element" the lack
+of which rendered the body inanimate. It was therefore regarded as
+necessary to set the heart working. The heart then came to be looked
+upon as the seat of knowledge, the organ that feels and wills during
+waking life. All the pulsating motions of the body seem to have been
+regarded, like the act of respiration, as expressions of the vital
+principle or "life," which Dutch ethnological writers refer to as "soul
+substance". The neighbourhood of certain joints where the pulse can be
+felt most readily, and the top of the head, where pulsation can be felt
+in the infant's fontanelle, were therefore regarded by some Asiatic
+peoples as the places where the substance of life could leave or enter
+the body.
+
+It is possible that in ancient times this belief was more widespread
+than it is now. It affords an explanation of the motive for trephining
+the skull among ancient peoples, to afford a more ready passage for the
+"vital essence" to and from the skull.
+
+In his lecture on "The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul,"[70] Professor
+John Burnet has expounded the meaning of early Greek conceptions of the
+soul with rare insight and lucidity. Originally, the word [Greek:
+psychê] meant "breath," but, by historical times, it had already been
+specialized in two distinct ways. It had come to mean _courage_ in the
+first place, and secondly the _breath of life_, the presence or absence
+of which is the most obvious distinction between the animate and the
+inanimate, the "ghost" which a man "gives up" at death. But it may also
+quit the body temporarily, which explains the phenomenon of swooning
+([Greek: lipopsychia]). It seemed natural to suppose it was also the
+thing that can roam at large when the body is asleep, and even appear to
+another sleeping person in his dream. Moreover, since we can dream of
+the dead, what then appears to us must be just what leaves the body at
+the moment of death. These considerations explain the world-wide belief
+in the "soul" as a sort of double of the real bodily man, the Egyptian
+_ka_,[71] the Italian _genius_, and the Greek [Greek: psychê].
+
+Now this double is not identical with whatever it is in us that feels
+and wills during our waking life. That is generally supposed to be blood
+and not breath.
+
+What we feel and perceive have their seat in the heart: they belong to
+the body and perish with it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is only when the shades have been allowed to drink blood that
+consciousness returns to them for a while.
+
+At one time the [Greek: psychê] was supposed to dwell with the body in
+the grave, where it had to be supported by the offerings of the
+survivors, especially by libations ([Greek: choai]).
+
+An Egyptian psychologist has carried the story back long before the
+times of which Professor Burnet writes. He has explained "his conception
+of the functions of the 'heart (mind) and tongue'. 'When the eyes see,
+the ears hear, and the nose breathes, they transmit to the heart. It is
+he (the heart) who brings forth every issue and it is the tongue which
+repeats the thought of the heart.'"[72]
+
+"There came the saying that Atum, who created the gods, stated
+concerning Ptah-Tatenen: 'He is the fashioner of the gods.... He made
+likenesses of their bodies to the satisfaction of their hearts. Then the
+gods entered into their bodies of every wood and every stone and every
+metal.'"[73]
+
+That these ideas are really ancient is shown by the fact that in the
+Pyramid Texts Isis is represented conveying the breath of life to Osiris
+by "causing a wind with her wings".[74] The ceremony of "opening the
+mouth" which aimed at achieving this restoration of the breath of life
+was the principal part of the ritual procedure before the statue or
+mummy. As I have already mentioned (p. 25), the sculptor who modelled
+the portrait statue was called "he who causes to live," and the word "to
+fashion" a statue is identical with that which means "to give birth".
+The god Ptah created man by modelling his form in clay. Similarly the
+life-giving sculptor made the portrait which was to be the means of
+securing a perpetuation of existence, when it was animated by the
+"opening of the mouth," by libations and incense.
+
+As the outcome of this process of rationalization in Egypt a vast crop
+of creation-legends came into existence, which have persisted with
+remarkable completeness until the present day in India, Indonesia,
+China, America, and elsewhere. A statue of stone, wood, or clay is
+fashioned, and the ceremony of animation is performed to convey to it
+the breath of life, which in many places is supposed to be brought down
+from the sky.[75]
+
+In the Egyptian beliefs, as well as in most of the world-wide legends
+that were derived from them, the idea assumed a definite form that the
+vital principle (often referred to as the "soul," "soul-substance," or
+"double") could exist apart from the body. Whatever the explanation, it
+is clear that the possibility of the existence of the vital principle
+apart from the body was entertained. It was supposed that it could
+return to the body and temporarily reanimate it. It could enter into and
+dwell within the stone representation of the deceased. Sometimes this
+so-called "soul" was identified[76] with the breath of life, which
+could enter into the statue as the result of the ceremony of "opening
+the mouth".
+
+It has been commonly assumed by Sir Edward Tyler and those who accept
+his theory of animism that the idea of the "soul" was based upon the
+attempts to interpret the phenomena of dreams and shadows, to which
+Burnet has referred in the passage quoted above. The fact that when a
+person is sleeping he may dream of seeing absent people and of having a
+variety of adventures is explained by many peoples by the hypothesis
+that these are real experiences which befell the "soul" when it wandered
+abroad during its owner's sleep. A man's shadow or his reflection in
+water or a mirror has been interpreted as his double. But what these
+speculations leave out of account is the fact that these dream- and
+shadow-phenomena were probably merely the predisposing circumstances
+which helped in the development of (or the corroborative details which
+were added to and, by rationalization, incorporated in) the
+"soul-theory," which other circumstances were responsible for
+creating.[77]
+
+I have already called attention (p. 5) to the fact that in many of the
+psychological speculations in ethnology too little account is taken of
+the enormous complexity of the factors which determine even the simplest
+and apparently most obvious and rational actions of men. I must again
+remind the reader that a vast multitude of influences, many of them of a
+subconscious and emotional nature, affect men's decisions and opinions.
+But once some definite state of feeling inclines a man to a certain
+conclusion, he will call up a host of other circumstances to buttress
+his decision, and weave them into a complex net of rationalization. Some
+such process undoubtedly took place in the development of "animism"; and
+though it is not possible yet to reconstruct the whole history of the
+growth of the idea, there can be no question that these early strivings
+after an understanding of the nature of life and death, and the attempts
+to put the theories into practice to reanimate the dead, provided the
+foundations upon which has been built up during the last fifty centuries
+a vast and complex theory of the soul. In the creation of this edifice
+the thoughts and the aspirations of countless millions of peoples have
+played a part: but the foundation was laid down when the Egyptian king
+or priest claimed that he could restore to the dead the "breath of life"
+and, by means of the wand which he called "the great magician,"[78]
+could enable the dead to be born again. The wand is supposed by some
+scholars[79] to be a conventionalized representation of the uterus, so
+that its power of giving birth is expressed with literal directness.
+Such beliefs and stories of the "magic wand" are found to-day in
+scattered localities from the Scottish Highlands to Indonesia and
+America.
+
+In this sketch I have referred merely to one or two aspects of a
+conception of vast complexity. But it must be remembered that, once the
+mind of man began to play with the idea of a vital essence capable of
+existing apart from the body and to identify it with the breath of life,
+an illimitable field was opened up for speculation. The vital principle
+could manifest itself in all the varied expressions of human
+personality, as well as in all the physiological indications of life.
+Experience of dreams led men to believe that the "soul" could also leave
+the body temporarily and enjoy varied experiences. But the
+concrete-minded Egyptian demanded some physical evidence to buttress
+these intangible ideas of the wandering abroad of his vital essence. He
+made a statue for it to dwell in after his death, because he was not
+able to make an adequately life-like reproduction of the dead man's
+features upon the mummy itself or its wrappings. Then he gradually
+persuaded himself that the life-substance could exist apart from the
+body as a "double" or "twin" which animated the statue.
+
+Searching for material evidence to support his faith primitive man not
+unnaturally turned to the contemplation of the circumstances of his
+birth. All his beliefs concerning the nature of life can ultimately be
+referred back to the story of his own origin, his birth or creation.
+
+When an infant is born it is accompanied by the after-birth or placenta
+to which it is linked by the umbilical cord. The full comprehension of
+the significance of these structures is an achievement of modern
+science. To primitive man they were an incomprehensible marvel. But once
+he began to play with the idea that he had a double, a vital essence in
+his own shape which could leave the sleeping body and lead a separate
+existence, the placenta obviously provided tangible evidence of its
+reality. The considerations set forth by Blackman,[80] supplementing
+those of Moret, Murray and Seligman and others, have been claimed as
+linking the placenta with the _ka_.
+
+Much controversy has waged around the interpretation of the Egyptian
+word _ka_, especially during recent years. An excellent summary of the
+arguments brought forward by the various disputants up to 1912 will be
+found in Morel's "Mystères Égyptiens". Since then more or less
+contradictory views have been put forward by Alan Gardiner, Breasted,
+and Blackman. It is not my intention to intervene in a dispute as to the
+meaning of certain phrases in ancient literature; but there are certain
+aspects of the problems at issue which are so intimately related to my
+main theme as to make some reference to them unavoidable.
+
+The development of the custom of making statues of the dead necessarily
+raised for solution the problem of explaining the deceased's two bodies,
+his actual mummy and his portrait statue. During life on earth his vital
+principle dwelt in the former, except on those occasions when the man
+was asleep. His actual body also gave expression to all the varied
+attributes of his personality. But after death the statue became the
+dwelling place of these manifestations of the spirit of vitality.
+
+Whether or not the conception arose out of the necessities unavoidably
+created by the making of statues, it seems clear that this custom must
+have given more concrete shape to the belief that all of those elements
+of the dead man's individuality which left his body at the time of death
+could shift as a shadowy double into his statue.
+
+At the birth of a king he is accompanied by a comrade or twin exactly
+reproducing all his features. This double or _ka_ is intimately
+associated throughout life and in the life to come with the king's
+welfare. In fact Breasted claims that the _ka_ "was a kind of superior
+genius intended to guide the fortunes of the individual _in the
+hereafter_" ... there "he had his abode and awaited the coming of his
+earthly companion".[81] At death the deceased "goes to his _ka_, to the
+sky". The _ka_ controls and protects the deceased: he brings him food
+which they eat together.
+
+It is important clearly to keep in mind the different factors involved
+in the conception of the _ka_:--
+
+(a) The statue of the deceased is animated by restoring to it the breath
+of life and all the other vital attributes of which the early Egyptian
+physiologist took cognisance.
+
+(b) At the time of birth there came into being along with the child a
+"twin" whose destinies were closely linked with the child's.
+
+(c) As the result of animating the statue the deceased also has restored
+to him his character, "the sum of his attributes," his individuality,
+later raised to the position of a protecting genius or god, a Providence
+who watches over his well-being.[82]
+
+The _ka_ is not simply identical with the breath of life or _animus_, as
+Burnet supposes (_op. cit. supra_), but has a wider significance. The
+adoption of the conception of the _ka_ as a sort of guardian angel which
+finds its appropriate habitation in a statue that has been animated does
+not necessarily conflict with the view so concretely and unmistakably
+represented in the tomb-pictures that the _ka_ is also a double who is
+born along with the individual.
+
+This material conception of the _ka_ as a double who is born with and
+closely linked to the individual is, as Blackman has emphasized,[83]
+very suggestive of Baganda beliefs and rites connected with the
+placenta. At death the circumstances of the act of birth are
+reconstituted, and for this rebirth the placenta which played an
+essential part in the original process is restored to the deceased. May
+not the original meaning of the expression "he goes to his _ka_" be a
+literal description of this reunion with his placenta? The
+identification of the _ka_ with the moon, the guardian of the dead man's
+welfare, may have enriched the symbolism.
+
+Blackman makes the suggestion that "on the analogy of the beliefs
+entertained by the Hamitic ruling caste in Uganda," according to Roscoe,
+"the placenta,[84] or rather its ghost, would have been supposed by the
+Ancient Egyptians to be closely connected with the individual's
+personality, as" he maintains was also the case with the god or
+protecting genius of the Babylonians.[85] "Unless united with his twin's
+[i.e. his placenta's] ghost the dead king was an imperfect deity, i.e.
+his directing intelligence was impaired or lacking," presumably because
+the placenta was composed of blood, which was regarded as the material
+of consciousness and intelligence.
+
+In China, as the quotations from de Groot (see footnote) show, the
+placenta when placed under felicitous circumstances is able to ensure
+the child a long life and to control his mental and physical welfare.
+
+In view of the claims put forward by Blackman to associate the placenta
+with the _ka_, it is of interest to note Moret's suggestion concerning
+the fourteen forms of the _ka_, to which von Bissing assigns the
+general significance "nourishment or offerings". He puts the question
+whether they do not "personify the elements of material and intellectual
+prosperity, all that is necessary for the health of body and spirit"
+(_op. cit._, p. 209).
+
+The placenta is credited with all the varieties of life-giving potency
+that are attributed to the Mother-Goddess. It therefore controls the
+welfare of the individual and, like all maternal amulets (_vide supra_),
+ensures his good fortune. But, probably by virtue of its supposed
+derivation from and intimate association with blood, it also ministered
+to his mental welfare.
+
+In my last Rylands Lecture I referred to the probability that the
+essential elements of Chinese civilization were derived from the West. I
+had hoped that, before the present statement went to the printer, I
+would have found time to set forth in detail the evidence in
+substantiation of the reality of that diffusion of culture.
+
+Briefly the chain of proof is composed of the following links: (a) the
+intimate cultural contact between Egypt, Southern Arabia, Sumer, and
+Elam from a period at least as early as the First Egyptian Dynasty; (b)
+the diffusion of Sumerian and Elamite culture in very early times at
+least as far north as Russian Turkestan and as far east as Baluchistan;
+(c) at some later period the quest of gold, copper, turquoise, and jade
+led the Babylonians (and their neighbours) as far north as the Altai and
+as far east as Khotan and the Tarim Valley, where their pathways were
+blazed with the distinctive methods of cultivation and irrigation; (d)
+at some subsequent period there was an easterly diffusion of culture
+from Turkestan into the Shensi Province of China proper; and (e) at
+least as early as the seventh century B.C. there was also a spread of
+Western culture to China by sea.[86]
+
+I have already referred to some of the distinctively Egyptian traits in
+Chinese beliefs concerning the dead. Mingled with them are other equally
+definitely Babylonian ideas concerning the liver.
+
+It must be apparent that in the course of the spread of a complex system
+of religious beliefs to so great a distance, only certain of their
+features would survive the journey. Handed on from people to people,
+each of whom would unavoidably transform them to some extent, the
+tenets of the Western beliefs would become shorn of many of their
+details and have many excrescences added to them before the Chinese
+received them. In the crucible of the local philosophy they would be
+assimilated with Chinese ideas until the resulting compound assumed a
+Chinese appearance. When these inevitable circumstances are recalled the
+value of any positive evidence of Western influence is of special
+significance.
+
+According to the ancient Chinese, man has two souls, the _kwei_ and the
+_shen_. The former, which according to de Groot is definitely the more
+ancient of the two (p. 8), is the material, substantial soul, which
+emanates from the terrestrial part of the universe, and is formed of
+_yin_ substance. In living man it operates under the name of _p'oh_,
+and on his death it returns to the earth and abides with the deceased
+in his grave.
+
+The _shen_ or immaterial soul emanates from the ethereal celestial part
+of the cosmos and consists of _yang_ substance. When operating actively
+in the living human body, it is called _khi_ or "breath," and _hwun_;
+when separated from it after death it lives forth as a refulgent spirit,
+styled _ming_.[87]
+
+But the _shen_ also, in spite of its sky-affinities, hovers about the
+grave and may dwell in the inscribed grave-stone (p. 6). There may be a
+multitude of _shen_ in one body and many "soul-tablets" may be provided
+for them (p. 74).
+
+Just as in Egypt the _ka_ is said to "symbolize the force of life which
+resides in nourishment" (Moret, p. 212), so the Chinese refer to the
+ethereal part of the food as its _khi_, i.e. the "breath" of its _shen_.
+
+The careful study of the mass of detailed evidence so lucidly set forth
+by de Groot in his great monograph reveals the fact that, in spite of
+many superficial differences and apparent contradictions, the early
+Chinese conceptions of the soul and its functions are essentially
+identical with the Egyptian, and must have been derived from the
+same source.
+
+From the quotations which I have already given in the foregoing pages,
+it appears that the Chinese entertain views regarding the functions of
+the placenta which are identical with those of the Baganda, and a
+conception of the souls of man which presents unmistakable analogies
+with Egyptian beliefs. Yet these Chinese references do not shed any
+clearer light than Egyptian literature does upon the problem of the
+possible relationship between the _ka_ and the _placenta_.
+
+In the Iranian domain, however, right on the overland route from the
+Persian Gulf to China, there seems to be a ray of light. According to
+the late Professor Moulton, "The later Parsi books tell us that the
+Fravashi is a part of a good man's identity, living in heaven and
+reuniting with the soul at death. It is not exactly a guardian angel,
+for it shares in the development or deterioration of the rest of the
+man."[88]
+
+In fact the Fravashi is not unlike the Egyptian _ka_ on the one side and
+the Chinese _shen_ on the other. "They are the _Manes_, 'the good folk'"
+(p. 144): they are connected with the stars in their capacity as spirits
+of the dead (p. 143), and they "showed their paths to the sun, the moon,
+the sun, and the endless lights," just as the _kas_ guide the dead in
+the hereafter.
+
+The Fravashis play a part in the annual All Soul's feast (p. 144), for
+which Breasted has provided an almost exact parallel in Egypt during the
+Middle Kingdom.[89] All the circumstances of the two ceremonies are
+essentially identical.
+
+Now Professor Moulton suggests that the word Fravashi may be derived
+from the Avestan root _var_, "to impregnate," and _fravasi_ mean
+"birth-promotion" (p. 142). As he associates this with childbirth the
+possibility suggests itself whether the "birth-promoter" may not be
+simply the placenta.
+
+Loret (quoted by Moret, p. 202), however, derives the word _ka_ from a
+root signifying "to beget," so that the Fravashi may be nothing more
+than the Iranian homologue of the Egyptian _ka_.
+
+The connecting link between the Iranian and Egyptian conceptions may be
+the Sumerian instances given to Blackman[90] by Dr. Langdon.
+
+The whole idea seems to have originated out of the belief that the sum
+of the individual attributes or vital expressions of a man's personality
+could exist apart from the physical body. The contemplation of the
+phenomena of sleep and death provided the evidence in corroboration
+of this.
+
+At birth the newcomer came into the world physically connected with the
+placenta, which was accredited with the attributes of the life-giving
+and birth-promoting Great Mother and intimately related to the moon and
+the earliest totem. It was obviously, also, closely concerned in the
+nutrition of the embryo, for was it not the stalk upon which the latter
+was growing like some fruit on its stem? It was a not unnatural
+inference to suppose that, as the elements of the personality were not
+indissolubly connected with the body, they were brought into existence
+at the time of birth and that the placenta was their vehicle.
+
+The Egyptians' own terms of reference to the sculptor of a statue show
+that the ideas of birth were uppermost in their minds when the custom of
+statue-making was first devised. Moret has brought together (_op. cit.
+supra_) a good deal of evidence to suggest the far-reaching significance
+of the conception of ritual rebirth in early Egyptian religious
+ceremonial. With these ideas in his mind the Egyptian would naturally
+attach great importance to the placenta in any attempt to reconstruct
+the act of rebirth, which would be regarded in a literal sense. The
+placenta which played an essential part in the original act would have
+an equally important rôle in the ritual of rebirth. [For a further
+comment upon the problem discussed in the preceding ten pages, see
+Appendix A, p. 73.]
+
+
+[68: "Primitive Man," _Proceedings of the British Academy_, 1917, p. 41.
+
+It is important to remember that the real meaning of respiration was
+quite unknown until modern science revealed the part played by oxygen.]
+
+[69: The enormous complexity and intricacy of the interrelation between
+the functions of the "heart," and the "breath" is revealed in Chinese
+philosophy (see de Groot, _op. cit._ Chapter VII. _inter alia_).]
+
+[70: Second Annual Philosophical Lecture, Henriette Hertz Trust,
+_Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol. VII, 26 Jan., 1916.]
+
+[71: The Egyptian _ka_, however, was a more complex entity than this
+comparison suggests.]
+
+[72: Breasted, _op. cit._ pp. 44 and 45.]
+
+[73: _Op. cit._ pp. 45 and 46.]
+
+[74: _Ibid._ p. 28.]
+
+[75: W. J. Perry has collected the evidence preserved in a remarkable
+series of Indonesian legends in his recent book, "The Megalithic Culture
+of Indonesia". But the fullest exposition of the whole subject is
+provided in the Chinese literature summarized by de Groot (_op. cit._).]
+
+[76: See, however, the reservations in the subsequent pages.]
+
+[77: The thorough analysis of the beliefs of any people makes this
+abundantly clear. De Groot's monograph is an admirable illustration of
+this (_op. cit._ Chapter VII.). Both in Egypt and China the conceptions
+of the significance of the shadow are later and altogether subsidiary.]
+
+[78: Alan H. Gardiner, Davies and Gardiner, _op. cit._ p. 59.]
+
+[79: F. Ll. Griffith, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs," 1898, p. 60.]
+
+[80: Aylward M. Blackman, "Some Remarks on an Emblem upon the Head of an
+Ancient Egyptian Birth-Goddess," _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol.
+III, Part III, July, 1916, p. 199; and "The Pharaoh's Placenta and the
+Moon-God Khons," _ibid._ Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 235.]
+
+[81: "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 52. Breasted denies
+that the _ka_ was an element of the personality.]
+
+[82: For an abstruse discussion of this problem see Alan H. Gardiner,
+"Personification (Egyptian)," Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and
+Ethics_, pp. 790 and 792.]
+
+[83: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+[84: Mr. Blackman is puzzled to explain what "possible connexion there
+could be between the Pharaoh's placenta and the moon beyond the fact
+that it is the custom in Uganda to expose the king's placenta each new
+moon and anoint it with butter."
+
+To those readers who follow my argument in the later pages of this
+discussion the reasoning at the back of this association should be plain
+enough. The moon was regarded as the controller of menstruation. The
+placenta (and also the child) was considered to be formed of menstrual
+blood. The welfare of the placenta was therefore considered to be under
+the control of the moon.
+
+The anointing with butter is an interesting illustration of the close
+connexion of these lunar and maternal phenomena with the cow.
+
+The placenta was associated with the moon also in China, as the
+following quotation shows.
+
+According to de Groot (_op. cit._ p. 396), "in the _Siao 'rh fang_ or
+Medicament for Babies, by the hand of Ts'ui Hing-kung [died 674 A.D.],
+it is said: 'The placenta should be stored away in a felicitous spot
+under the salutary influences of the sky or the moon ... in order that
+the child may be ensured a long life'". He then goes on to explain how
+any interference with the placenta will entail mental or physical
+trouble to the child.
+
+The placenta also is used as the ingredient of pills to increase
+fertility, facilitate parturition, to bring back life to people on the
+brink of death and it is the main ingredient "in medicines for lunacy,
+convulsions, epilepsy, etc." (p. 397). "It gives rest to the heart,
+nourishes the blood, increases the breath, and strengthens the _tsing_"
+(p. 396).
+
+These attributes of the placenta indicate that the beliefs of the
+Baganda are not merely local eccentricities, but widespread and sharply
+defined interpretations of the natural phenomena of birth.]
+
+[85: _Op. cit._ p. 241.]
+
+[86: See "The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization," now being
+published in the _Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and
+Philosophical Society_.]
+
+[87: De Groot, p. 5.]
+
+[88: _Early Religious Poetry of Persia_, p. 145.]
+
+[89: _Op. cit._ p. 264.]
+
+[90: _Ibid._ p. 240.]
+
+
+The Power of the Eye.
+
+In attempting to understand the peculiar functions attributed to the eye
+it is essential that the inquirer should endeavour to look at the
+problem from the early Egyptian's point of view. After moulding into
+shape the wrappings of the mummy so as to restore as far as possible the
+form of the deceased the embalmer then painted eyes upon the face. So
+also when the sculptor had learned to make finished models in stone or
+wood, and by the addition of paint had enhanced the life-like
+appearance, the statue was still merely a dead thing. What were needed
+above all to enliven it, literally and actually, in other words, to
+animate it, were the eyes; and the Egyptian artist set to work and with
+truly marvellous skill reproduced the appearance of living eyes (Fig.
+5). How ample was the justification for this belief will be appreciated
+by anyone who glances at the remarkable photographs recently published
+by Dr. Alan H. Gardiner.[91] The wonderful eyes will be seen to make the
+statue sparkle and live. To the concrete mind of the Egyptian this
+triumph of art was regarded not as a mere technical success or
+æsthetic achievement. The artist was considered to have made the statue
+really live; in fact, literally and actually converted it into a "living
+image". The eyes themselves were regarded as one of the chief sources of
+the vitality which had been conferred upon the statue.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5--Statue of an Egyptian Noble of the Pyramid Age to
+show the technical skill in the representation of life-like eyes]
+
+This is the explanation of all the elaborate care and skill bestowed
+upon the making of artificial eyes. No doubt also it was largely
+responsible for giving definition to the remarkable belief in the
+animating power of the eye. But so many other factors of most diverse
+kinds played a part in building up the complex theory of the eye's
+fertilizing potency that all the stages in the process of
+rationalization cannot yet be arranged in orderly sequence.
+
+I refer to the question here and suggest certain aspects of it that seem
+worthy of investigation merely for the purpose of stimulating some
+student of early Egyptian literature to look into the matter
+further.[92]
+
+As death was regarded as a kind of sleep and the closing of the eyes was
+the distinctive sign of the latter condition the open eyes were not
+unnaturally regarded as clear evidence of wakefulness and life. In fact,
+to a matter-of-fact people the restoration of the eyes to the mummy or
+statue was equivalent to an awakening to life.
+
+At a time when a reflection in a mirror or in a sheet of water was
+supposed to afford quite positive evidence of the reality of each
+individual's "double," and when the "soul," or more concretely, "life,"
+was imagined to be a minute image or homunculus, it is quite likely that
+the reflection in the eye may have been interpreted as the "soul"
+dwelling within it. The eye was certainly regarded as peculiarly rich in
+"soul substance". It was not until Osiris received from Horus the eye
+which had been wrenched out in the latter's combat with Set that he
+"became a soul".[93]
+
+It is a remarkable fact that this belief in the animating power of the
+eye spread as far east as Polynesia and America, and as far west as the
+British Islands.
+
+Of course the obvious physiological functions of the eyes as means of
+communication between their possessor and the world around him; the
+powerful influence of the eyes for expressing feeling and emotion
+without speech; the analogy between the closing and opening of the eyes
+and the changes of day and night, are all hinted at in Egyptian
+literature.
+
+But there were certain specific factors that seem to have helped to give
+definiteness to these general ideas of the physiology of the eyes. The
+tears, like all the body moisture, came to share the life-giving
+attributes of water in general. And when it is recalled that at funeral
+ceremonies emotion found natural expression in the shedding of tears, it
+is not unlikely that this came to be assimilated with all the other
+water-symbolism of the funerary ritual. The early literature of Egypt,
+in fact, refers to the part played by Isis and Nephthys in the
+reanimation of Osiris, when the tears they shed as mourners brought
+life back to the god. But the fertilizing tears of Isis were life-giving
+in the wider sense. They were said to cause the inundation which
+fertilized the soil of Egypt, meaning presumably that the "Eye of Re"
+sent the rain.
+
+There is the further possibility that the beliefs associated with the
+cowry may have played some part, if not in originating, at any rate in
+emphasizing the conception of the fertilizing powers of the eye. I have
+already mentioned the outstanding features of the symbolism of the
+cowry. In many places in Africa and elsewhere the similarity of this
+shell to the half-closed eyelids led to its use as an artificial "eye"
+in mummies. The use of the same objects to symbolize the female
+reproductive organs and the eyes may have played some part in
+transferring to the latter the fertility of the former. The gods were
+born of the eyes of Ptah. Might not the confusion of the eye with the
+genitalia have given a meaning to this statement? There is evidence of
+this double symbolism of these shells. Cowry shells have also been
+employed, both in the Persian Gulf and the Pacific, to decorate the bows
+of boats, probably for the dual purpose of representing eyes and
+conferring vitality upon the vessel. These facts suggest that the belief
+in the fertilizing power of the eyes may to some extent be due to this
+cowry-association. Even if it be admitted that all the known cases of
+the use of cowries as eyes of mummies are relatively late, and that it
+is not known to have been employed for such a purpose in Egypt, the mere
+fact that the likeness to the eyelids so readily suggests itself may
+have linked together the attributes of the cowry and the eye even in
+Predynastic times, when cowries were placed with the dead in the grave.
+
+Hathor's identification with the "Eye of Re" may possibly have been an
+expression of the same idea. But the rôle of the "Eye of Re" was due
+primarily to her association with the moon (_vide infra_, p. 56).
+
+The apparently hopeless tangle of contradictions involved in these
+conceptions of Hathor will have to be unravelled. For "no eye is to be
+feared more than thine (Re's) when it attacketh in the form of Hathor"
+(Maspero, _op. cit._ p. 165). If it was the beneficent life-giving
+aspect of the eye which led to its identification with Hathor, in course
+of time, when the reason for this connexion was lost sight of, it became
+associated with the malevolent, death-dealing _avatar_ of the goddess,
+and became the expression of the god's anger and hatred toward his
+enemies. It is not unlikely that such a confusion may have been
+responsible for giving concrete expression to the general psychological
+fact that the eyes are obviously among the chief means for expressing
+hatred for and intimidating and "brow-beating" one's fellows. [In my
+lecture on "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall explain the explicit
+circumstances that gave rise to these contradictions.]
+
+It is significant that, in addition to the widespread belief in the
+"evil eye"--which in itself embodies the same confusion, the expression
+of admiration that works evil--in a multitude of legends it is the eye
+that produces petrifaction. The "stony stare" causes death and the dead
+become transformed into statues, which, however, usually lack their
+original attribute of animation. These stories have been collected by
+Mr. E. S. Hartland in his "Legend of Perseus".
+
+There is another possible link in the chain of associations between the
+eye and the idea of fertility. I have already referred to the
+development of the belief that incense, which plays so prominent a part
+in the ritual for conferring vitality upon the dead, is itself replete
+with animating properties. "Glaser has already shown the _anti_ incense
+of the Egyptian Punt Reliefs to be an Arabian word, _a-a-netc_,
+'tree-eyes' (_Punt und die Südarabischen Reiche_, p. 7), and to refer to
+the large lumps ... as distinguished from the small round drops, which
+are supposed to be tree-tears or the tree-blood."[94]
+
+
+[91: "A New Masterpiece of Egyptian Sculpture," _The Journal of Egyptian
+Archæology_, Vol. IV, Part I, Jan., 1917.]
+
+[92: In all probability the main factor that was responsible for
+conferring such definite life-giving powers upon the eye was the
+identification of the moon with the Great Mother. The moon was the Eye
+of Re, the sky-god.]
+
+[93: Breasted, "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 59. The
+meaning of the phrase rendered "a soul" here would be more accurately
+given by the word "reanimated".]
+
+[94: Wilfred H. Schoff, "The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea," 1912, p.
+164.]
+
+
+The Moon and the Sky-World.
+
+There are reasons for believing that the chief episodes in Aphrodite's
+past point to the Red Sea for their inspiration, though many other
+factors, due partly to local circumstances and partly to contact with
+other civilizations, contributed to the determination of the traits of
+the Mediterranean goddess of love. In Babylonia and India there are very
+definite signs of borrowing from the same source. It is important,
+therefore, to look for further evidence to Arabia as the obvious bond of
+union both with Phoenicia and Babylonia.
+
+The claim made in Roscher's _Lexicon der Mythologie_ that the Assyrian
+Ishtar, the Phoenician Ashtoreth (Astarte), the Syrian Atargatis
+(Derketo), the Babylonian Belit (Mylitta) and the Arabian Ilat (Al-ilat)
+were all moon-goddesses has given rise to much rather aimless
+discussion, for there can be no question of their essential homology
+with Hathor and Aphrodite. Moreover, from the beginning, all
+goddesses--and especially this most primitive stratum of fertility
+deities--were for obvious reasons intimately associated with the
+moon.[95] But the cyclical periodicity of the moon which suggested the
+analogy with the similar physiological periodicity of women merely
+explains the association of the moon with women. The influence of the
+moon upon dew and the tides, perhaps, suggested its controlling power
+over water and emphasized the life-giving function which its association
+with women had already suggested. For reasons which have been explained
+already, water was associated more especially with fertilization by the
+male. Hence the symbolism of the moon came to include the control of
+both the male and the female processes of reproduction.[96]
+
+The literature relating to the development of these ideas with
+reference to the moon has been summarized by Professor Hutton
+Webster.[97] He shows that "there is good reason for believing that
+among many primitive peoples the moon, rather than the sun, the planets
+or any of the constellations, first excited the imagination and aroused
+feelings of superstitious awe or of religious veneration".
+
+Special attention was first devoted to the moon when agricultural
+pursuits compelled men to measure time and determine the seasons. The
+influence of the moon on water, both the tides and dew, brought it
+within the scope of the then current biological theory of fertilization.
+This conception was powerfully corroborated by the parallelism of the
+moon's cycles and those of womankind, which was interpreted by regarding
+the moon as the controlling power of the female reproductive functions.
+Thus all of the earliest goddesses who were personifications of the
+powers of fertility came to be associated, and in some cases identified,
+with the moon.
+
+In this way the animation and deification of the moon was brought about:
+and the first sky deity assumed not only all the attributes of the
+cowry, i.e. the female reproductive functions, but also, as the
+controller of water, many of those which afterwards were associated with
+Osiris. The confusion of the male fertilizing powers of Osiris with the
+female reproductive functions of Hathor and Isis may explain how in some
+places the moon became a masculine deity, who, however, still retained
+his control over womankind, and caused the phenomena of menstruation by
+the exercise of his virile powers.[98] But the moon-god was also a
+measurer of time and in this aspect was specially personified in Thoth.
+
+The assimilation of the moon with these earth-deities was probably
+responsible for the creation of the first sky-deity. For once the
+conception developed of identifying a deity with the moon, and the
+Osirian beliefs associated with the deification of a dead king grew up,
+the moon became the impersonation of the spirit of womankind, some
+mortal woman who by death had acquired divinity.
+
+After the idea had developed of regarding the moon as the spirit of a
+dead person, it was only natural that, in course of time, the sun and
+stars should be brought within the scope of the same train of thought,
+and be regarded as the deified dead. When this happened the sun not
+unnaturally soon leapt into a position of pre-eminence. As the moon
+represented the deified female principle the sun became the dominant
+male deity Re. The stars also became the spirits of the dead.
+
+Once this new conception of a sky-world was adumbrated a luxuriant crop
+of beliefs grew up to assimilate the new beliefs with the old, and to
+buttress the confused mixture of incompatible ideas with a complex
+scaffolding of rationalization.
+
+The sun-god Horus was already the son of Osiris. Osiris controlled not
+only the river and the irrigation canals, but also the rain-clouds. The
+fumes of incense conveyed to the sky-gods the supplications of the
+worshippers on earth. Incense was not only "the perfume that deities,"
+but also the means by which the deities and the dead could pass to their
+doubles in the newly invented sky-heaven. The sun-god Re was represented
+in his temple not by an anthropoid statue, but by an obelisk,[99] the
+gilded apex of which pointed to heaven and "drew down" the dazzling rays
+of the sun, reflected from its polished surface, so that all the
+worshippers could see the manifestations of the god in his temple.
+
+These events are important, not only for creating the sky-gods and the
+sky-heaven, but possibly also for suggesting the idea that even a mere
+pillar of stone, whether carved or uncarved, upon which no attempt had
+been made to model the human form, could represent the deity, or rather
+could become the "body" to be animated by the god.[100] For once it was
+admitted, even in the home of these ancient ideas concerning the
+animation of statues, that it was not essential for the idol to be
+shaped into human form, the way was opened for less cultured peoples,
+who had not acquired the technical skill to carve statues, simply to
+erect stone pillars or unshaped masses of stone or wood for their gods
+to enter, when the appropriate ritual of animation was performed.[101]
+
+This conception of the possibility of gods, men, or animals dwelling in
+stones spread in course of time throughout the world, but in every place
+where it is found certain arbitrary details of the methods of animating
+the stone reveal the fact that all these legends must have been derived
+from the same source.
+
+The complementary belief in the possibility of the petrifaction of men
+and animals has a similarly extensive geographical distribution. The
+history of this remarkable incident I shall explain in the lecture on
+"Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II.).[102]
+
+
+[95: I am not concerned here with the explanation of the means by which
+their home became transferred to the planet Venus.]
+
+[96: In his discussion of the functions of the Fravashis in the Iranian
+Yasht, the late Professor Moulton suggested the derivation of the word
+from the Avestan root _var_, "to impregnate," so that _fravasi_ might
+mean "birth-promotion". But he was puzzled by a reference to water.
+"Less easy to understand is their intimate connexion with the Waters"
+("Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 142 and 143). But the Waters
+were regarded as fertilizing agents. This is seen in the Avestan
+Anahita, who was "the presiding genie of Fertility and more especially
+of the Waters" (W. J. Phythian-Adams, "Mithraism," 1915, p. 13).]
+
+[97: "Rest Days," New York, 1916, pp. 124 _et seq._]
+
+[98: Wherever these deities of fertility are found, whether in Egypt,
+Babylonia, the Mediterranean Area, Eastern Asia, and America,
+illustrations of this confusion of sex are found. The explanation which
+Dr. Rendel Harris offers of this confusion in the case of Aphrodite
+seems to me not to give due recognition to its great antiquity and
+almost world-wide distribution.]
+
+[99: L. Borchardt, "Das Re-heiligtum des Königs Ne-woser-re". For a good
+exposition of this matter see A. Moret, "Sanctuaires de l'ancien Empire
+Égyptien,"; _Annales du Musée Guimet_, 1912, p. 265.]
+
+[100: It is possible that the ceremony of erecting the _dad_ columns may
+have played some part in the development of these beliefs. (On this see
+A. Moret, "Mystères Égyptiens," 1913, pp. 13-17.)]
+
+[101: Many other factors played a part in the development of the stories
+of the birth of ancestors from stones. I have already referred to the
+origin of the idea of the cowry (or some other shell) as the parent of
+mankind. The place of the shell was often taken by roughly carved
+stones, which of course were accredited with the same power of being
+able to produce men, or of being a sort of egg from which human beings
+could be hatched. It is unlikely that the finding of fossilized animals
+played any leading rôle in the development of these beliefs, beyond
+affording corroborative evidence in support of them after other
+circumstances had been responsible for originating the stories. The more
+circumstantial Oriental stories of the splitting of stones giving birth
+to heroes and gods may have been suggested by the finding in pebbles of
+fossilized shells--themselves regarded already as the parents of
+mankind. But such interpretations were only possible because all the
+predisposing circumstances had already prepared the way for the
+acceptance of these specific illustrations of a general theory.
+
+These beliefs may have developed before and quite independently of the
+ideas concerning the animation of statues; but if so the latter event
+would have strengthened and in some places become merged with the other
+story.]
+
+[102: For an extensive collection of these remarkable petrifaction
+legends in almost every part of the world, see E. Sidney Hartland's "The
+Legend of Perseus," especially Volumes I and III. These distinctive
+stories will be found to be complexly interwoven with all the matters
+discussed in this address.]
+
+
+The Worship of the Cow.
+
+Intimately linked with the subjects I have been discussing is the
+worship of the cow. It would lead me too far afield to enter into the
+details of the process by which the earliest Mother-Goddesses became so
+closely associated or even identified with the cow, and why the cow's
+horns became associated with the moon among the emblems of Hathor.
+But it is essential that reference should be made to certain aspects of
+the subject.
+
+I do not think there is any evidence to justify the common theory that
+the likeness of the crescent moon to a cow's horns was the reason for
+the association. On the other hand, it is clear that both the moon and
+the cow became identified with the Mother-Goddess quite independently
+the one of the other, and at a very remote period.
+
+It is probable that the fundamental factor in the development of this
+association of the cow and the Mother-Goddess was the fact of the use of
+milk as food for human beings. For if the cow could assume this maternal
+function she was in fact a sort of foster-mother of mankind; and in
+course of time she came to be regarded as the actual mother of the human
+race and to be identified with the Great Mother.
+
+Many other considerations helped in this process of assimilation. The
+use of cattle not merely as meat for the sustenance of the living but as
+the usual and most characteristic life-giving food for the dead
+naturally played a part in conferring divinity upon the cow, just as an
+analogous relationship made incense a holy substance and was responsible
+for the personification of the incense-tree as a goddess. This influence
+was still further emphasized in the case of cattle because they also
+supplied the blood which was used for the ritual purpose of bestowing
+consciousness upon the dead, and in course of time upon the gods also,
+so that they might hear and attend to the prayers of supplicants.
+
+Other circumstances emphasize the significance attached to the cow: but
+it is difficult to decide whether they contributed in any way to the
+development of these beliefs or were merely some of the practices which
+were the result of the divination of the cow. The custom of placing
+butter in the mouths of the dead, in Egypt, Uganda, and India, the
+various ritual uses of milk, the employment of a cow's hide as a
+wrapping for the dead in the grave, and also in certain mysterious
+ceremonies,[103] all indicate the intimate connexion between the cow and
+the means of attaining a rebirth in the life to come.
+
+I think there are definite reasons for believing that once the cow
+became identified with the Mother-Goddess as the parent of mankind the
+first step was taken in the development of the curious system of ideas
+now known as "totemism".
+
+This, however, is a complex problem which I cannot stay to discuss here.
+
+When the cow became identified with the Great Mother and the moon was
+regarded as the dwelling or the personification of the same goddess, the
+Divine Cow by a process of confused syncretism came to be regarded as
+the sky or the heavens, to which the dead were raised up on the cow's
+back. When Re became the dominant deity, he was identified with the sky,
+and the sun and moon were then regarded as his eyes. Thus the moon, as
+the Great Mother as well as the Eye of Re, was the bond of
+identification of the Great Mother with an eye. This was probably how
+the eye acquired the animating powers of the Giver of Life.
+
+A whole volume might be written upon the almost world-wide diffusion of
+these beliefs regarding the cow, as far as Scotland and Ireland in the
+west, and in their easterly migration probably as far as America, to the
+confusion alike of its ancient artists and its modern ethnologists.[104]
+
+As an illustration of the identification of the cow's attributes with
+those of the life-giving Great Mother, I might refer to the late
+Professor Moulton's commentary[105] on the ancient Iranian Gâthâs, where
+cow's flesh is given to mortals by Yima to make them immortal. "May we
+connect it with another legend whereby at the Regeneration Mithra is to
+make men immortal by giving them to eat the fat of the ... primeval Cow
+from whose slain body, according to the Aryan legends adopted by
+Mithraism, mankind was first created?"[106]
+
+
+[103: See A. Moret, _op. cit._ p. 81, _inter alia_.]
+
+[104: See the Copan sculptured monuments described by Maudslay in Godman
+and Salvin's "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Archæology, Plate 46,
+representing "Stela D," with two serpents in the places occupied by the
+Indian elephants in Stela B--concerning which see _Nature_, November 25,
+1915. To one of these intertwined serpents is attached a cow-headed
+human dæmon. Compare also the Chiriqui figure depicted by MacCurdy,
+"A Study of Chiriquian Antiquities," Yale University Press, 1911, fig.
+361, p. 209.]
+
+[105: "Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 42 and 43.]
+
+[106: _Op. cit._ p. 43. But I think these legends accredited to the
+Aryans owe their parentage to the same source as the Egyptian beliefs
+concerning the cow, and especially the remarkable mysteries upon which
+Moret has been endeavouring to throw some light--"Mystères Égyptiens,"
+p. 43.]
+
+
+The Diffusion of Culture.
+
+In these pages I have made no attempt to deal with the far-reaching and
+intricate problems of the diffusion abroad of the practices and beliefs
+which I have been discussing. But the thoughts and the aspirations of
+every cultured people are permeated through and through with their
+influence.
+
+It is important to remember that in almost every stage of the
+development of these complex customs and ideas not merely the "finished
+product" but also the ingredients out of which it was built up were
+being scattered abroad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall briefly refer to certain evidence from Asia and America in
+illustration of this fact and in substantiation of the reality of the
+diffusion to the East of some of the beliefs I have been discussing.
+
+The unity of Egyptian and Babylonian ideas is nowhere more strikingly
+demonstrated than in the essential identity of the attributes of Osiris
+and Ea. It affords the most positive proof of the derivation of the
+beliefs from some common source, and reveals the fact that Egyptian and
+Sumerian civilizations must have been in intimate cultural contact at
+the beginning of their developmental history. "In Babylonia, as in
+Egypt, there were differences of opinion regarding the origin of life
+and the particular natural element which represented the vital
+principle." "One section of the people, who were represented by the
+worshippers of Ea, appear to have believed that the essence of life was
+contained in water. The god of Eridu was the source of the 'water of
+life'."[107]
+
+"Offerings of water and food were made to the dead," not primarily so
+that they might be "prevented from troubling the living,"[108] but to
+supply them with the means of sustenance and to reanimate them to help
+the suppliants. It is a common belief that these and other procedures
+were inspired by fear of the dead. But such a statement does not
+accurately represent the attitude of mind of the people who devised
+these funerary ceremonies. For it is not the enemies of the dead or
+those against whom he had a grudge that run a risk at funerals, but
+rather his friends; and the more deeply he was attached to a particular
+person the greater the danger for the latter. For among many people
+the belief obtains that when a man dies he will endeavour to steal
+the "soul-substance" of those who are dearest to him so that they
+may accompany him to the other world. But as stealing the
+"soul-substance"[109] means death, it is easy to misunderstand such a
+display of affection. Hence most people who long for life and hate death
+do their utmost to evade such embarrassing tokens of love; and most
+ethnologists, misjudging such actions, write about "appeasing the dead".
+It was those whom the gods _loved_ who died young.
+
+Ea was not only the god of the deep, but also "lord of life," king of
+the river and god of creation. Like Osiris "he fertilized parched and
+sunburnt wastes through rivers and irrigating canals, and conferred upon
+man the sustaining 'food of life'.... The goddess of the dead commanded
+her servant to 'sprinkle the Lady Ishtar with the water of life'" (_op.
+cit._, p. 44).
+
+In Chapter III. of Mr. Mackenzie's book, from which I have just quoted,
+there is an interesting collection of quotations clearly showing that
+the conception of the vitalizing properties of the body moisture of gods
+is not restricted to Egypt, but is found also in Babylonia and India, in
+Western Asia and Greece, and also in Western Europe.
+
+It has been suggested that the name Ishtar has been derived from Semitic
+roots implying "she who waters," "she who makes fruitful".[110]
+
+Barton claims that: "The beginnings of Semitic religion as they were
+conceived by the Semites themselves go back to sexual relations ... the
+Semitic conception of deity ... embodies the truth--grossly indeed, but
+nevertheless embodies it--that 'God is love'" (_op. cit._ p. 107). [This
+statement, however, is very misleading--see Appendix C, p. 75.]
+
+Throughout the countries where Semitic[111] influence spread the
+primitive Mother-Goddesses or some of their specialized variants are
+found. But in every case the goddess is associated with many distinctive
+traits which reveal her identity with her homologues in Cyprus,
+Babylonia, and Egypt.
+
+Among the Sumerians "life comes on earth through the introduction of
+water and irrigation".[112] "Man also results from a union between the
+water-gods."
+
+The Akkadians held views which were almost the direct antithesis of
+these. To them "the watery deep is disorder, and the cosmos, the order
+of the world, is due to the victory of a god of light and spring over
+the monster of winter and water; man is directly made by the gods".[113]
+
+"The Sumerian account of Beginnings centres around the production by the
+gods of water, Enki and his consort Nin-ella (or Dangal), of a great
+number of canals bringing rain to the desolate fields of a dry
+continent. Life both of vegetables and animals follows the profusion of
+the vivifying waters.... In the process of life's production besides
+Enki, the personality of his consort is very conspicuous. She is called
+_Nin-Ella_, 'the pure Lady,' _Damgal-Nunna_, the 'great Lady of the
+Waters,' _Nin-Tu_, 'the Lady of Birth'" (p. 301). The child of Enki and
+Nin-ella was the ancestor of mankind.[114]
+
+"In later traditions, the personality of that Great Lady seems to have
+been overshadowed by that of Ishtar, who absorbed several of her
+functions" (p. 301).
+
+Professor Carnoy fully demonstrates the derivation of certain early
+so-called "Aryan" beliefs from Chaldea. In the Iranian account of the
+creation "the great spring Ardvi Sura Anahita is the
+life-increasing, the herd-increasing, the fold-increasing who makes
+prosperity for all countries (Yt. 5, 1) ... that precious spring is
+worshipped as a goddess ... and is personified as a handsome and stately
+woman. She is a fair maid, most strong, tall of form, high-girded. Her
+arms are white and thick as a horse's shoulder or still thicker. She is
+full of gracefulness" (Yt. 5, 7, 64, 78). "Professor Cumont thinks that
+Anahita is Ishtar ... she is a goddess of fecundation and birth.
+Moreover in Achæmenian inscriptions Anahita is associated with Ahura
+Mazdah and Mithra, a triad corresponding to the Chaldean triad:
+Sin-Shamash-Ishtar. [Greek: Anaitis] in Strabo and other Greek writers
+is treated as [Greek: Aphroditê]" (p. 302).
+
+But in Mesopotamia also the same views were entertained as in Egypt of
+the functions of statues.
+
+"The statues hidden in the recesses of the temples or erected on the
+summits of the 'Ziggurats' became imbued, by virtue of their
+consecration, with the actual body of the god whom they represented."
+Thus Marduk is said to "inhabit his image" (Maspero, _op. cit._ p. 64).
+
+This is precisely the idea which the Egyptians had. Even at the present
+day it survives among the Dravidian peoples of India.[115] They make
+images of their village deities, which may be permanent or only
+temporary, but in any case they are regarded not as actual deities but
+as the "bodies" so to speak into which these deities can enter. They are
+sacred only when they are so animated by the goddess. The ritual of
+animation is essentially identical with that found in Ancient Egypt.
+Libations are poured out; incense is burnt; the bleeding right fore-leg
+of a buffalo constitutes the blood-offering.[116] When the deity is
+reanimated by these procedures and its consciousness restored by the
+blood-offering it can hear appeals and speak.
+
+The same attitude towards their idols was adopted by the Polynesians.
+"The priest usually addressed the image, into which it was imagined the
+god entered when anyone came to inquire his will."[117]
+
+But there are certain other aspects of these Indian customs that are of
+peculiar interest. In my Ridgeway essay (_op. cit. supra_) I referred to
+the means by which in Nubia the degradation of the oblong Egyptian
+_mastaba_ gave rise to the simple stone circle. This type spread to the
+west along the North African littoral, and also to the Eastern desert
+and Palestine. At some subsequent time mariners from the Red Sea
+introduced this practice into India.
+
+[It is important to bear in mind that two other classes of stone circles
+were invented. One of them was derived, not from the _mastaba_ itself,
+but from the enclosing wall surrounding it (see my Ridgeway essay, Fig.
+13, p. 531, and compare with Figs. 3 and 4, p. 510, for illustrations of
+the transformed _mastaba_-type). This type of circle (enclosing a
+dolmen) is found both in the Caucasus-Caspian area as well as in India.
+A highly developed form of this encircling type of structure is seen in
+the famous rails surrounding the Buddhist _stupas_ and _dagabas_. A
+third and later form of circle, of which Stonehenge is an example, was
+developed out of the much later New Empire Egyptian conception of
+a temple.]
+
+But at the same time, as in Nubia, and possibly in Libya, the _mastaba_
+was being degraded into the first of the three main varieties of stone
+circle, other, though less drastic, forms of simplification of the
+_mastaba_ were taking place, possibly in Egypt itself, but certainly
+upon the neighbouring Mediterranean coasts. In some respects the least
+altered copies of the _mastaba_ are found in the so-called "giant's
+graves" of Sardinia and the "horned cairns" of the British Isles. But
+the real features of the Egyptian _serdab_, which was the essential
+part, the nucleus so to speak, of the _mastaba_, are best preserved in
+the so-called "holed dolmens" of the Levant, the Caucasus, and India.
+[They also occur sporadically in the West, as in France and Britain.]
+
+Such dolmens and more simplified forms are scattered in Palestine,[118]
+but are seen to best advantage upon the Eastern Littoral of the Black
+Sea, the Caucasus, and the neighbourhood of the Caspian. They are found
+only in scattered localities between the Black and Caspian Seas. As de
+Morgan has pointed out,[119] their distribution is explained by their
+association with ancient gold and copper mines. They were the tombs of
+immigrant mining colonies who had settled in these definite localities
+to exploit these minerals.
+
+Now the same types of dolmens, also associated with ancient mines,[120]
+are found in India. There is some evidence to suggest that these
+degraded types of Egyptian _mastabas_ were introduced into India at some
+time after the adoption of the other, the Nubian modification of the
+_mastaba_ which is represented by the first variety of stone
+circle.[121]
+
+I have referred to these Indian dolmens for the specific purpose of
+illustrating the complexities of the processes of diffusion of culture.
+For not only have several variously specialized degradation-products of
+the same original type of Egyptian _mastaba_ reached India, possibly by
+different routes and at different times, but also many of the ideas
+that developed out of the funerary ritual in Egypt--of which the
+_mastaba_ was merely one of the manifestations--made their way to India
+at various times and became secondarily blended with other expressions
+of the same or associated ideas there. I have already referred to the
+essential elements of the Egyptian funerary ritual--the statues,
+incense, libations, and the rest--as still persisting among the
+Dravidian peoples.
+
+But in the Madras Presidency dolmens are found converted into Siva
+temples.[122] Now in the inner chamber of the shrine--which represents
+the homologue of the _serdab_--in place of the statue or bas-relief of
+the deceased or of the deity, which is found in some of them (see Plate
+I), there is the stone _linga-yoni_ emblem in the position corresponding
+to that in which, in the later temple in the same locality (Kambaduru),
+there is an image of Parvati, the consort of Siva.
+
+The earliest deities in Egypt, both Osiris and Hathor, were really
+expressions of the creative principle. In the case of Hathor, the
+goddess was, in fact, the personification of the female organs of
+reproduction.[123] In these early Siva temples in India these principles
+of creation were given their literal interpretation, and represented
+frankly as the organs of reproduction of the two sexes. The gods of
+creation were symbolized by models in stone of the creating organs.
+Further illustrations of the same principle are witnessed in the
+Indonesian megalithic monuments which Perry calls "dissoliths".[124]
+
+The later Indian temples, both Buddhist and Hindu, were developed from
+these early dolmens, as Mr. Longhurst's reports so clearly demonstrate.
+But from time to time there was an influx of new ideas from the West
+which found expression in a series of modifications of the architecture.
+Thus India provides an admirable illustration of this principle of
+culture contact. A series of waves of megalithic culture introduced
+purely Western ideas. These were developed by the local people in their
+own way, constantly intermingling a variety of cultural influences to
+weave them into a distinctive fabric, which was compounded partly of
+imported, partly of local threads, woven locally into a truly Indian
+pattern. In this process of development one can detect the effects of
+Mycenæan accretions (see for example Longhurst's Plate XIII), probably
+modified during its indirect transmission by Phoenician and later
+influences; and also the more intimate part played by Babylonian,
+Egyptian, and, later, Greek and Persian art and architecture in
+directing the course of development of Indian culture.
+
+Incidentally, in the course of the discussions in the foregoing pages, I
+have referred to the profound influence of Egyptian, Babylonian and
+Indian ideas in Eastern Asia. Perry's important book (_op. cit. supra_)
+reveals their efforts in Indonesia. Thence they spread across the
+Pacific to America.
+
+In the "Migrations of Early Culture" (p. 114) I called attention to the
+fact that among the Aztecs water was poured upon the head of the mummy.
+This ritual procedure was inspired by the Egyptian idea of libations,
+for, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg, the pouring out of the water
+was accompanied by the remark "C'est cette eau que tu as reçue en venant
+an monde".
+
+But incense-burning and blood-offering were also practised in America.
+In an interesting memoir[125] on the practice of blood-letting by
+piercing the ears and tongue, Mrs. Zelia Nuttall reproduces a remarkable
+picture from a "partly unpublished MS. of Sahagun's work preserved in
+Florence". "The image of the sun is held up by a man whose body is
+partly hidden, and two men, seated opposite to each other in the
+foreground, are in the act of piercing the helices or external borders
+of their ears." But in addition to these blood-offerings to the sun, two
+priests are burning incense in remarkably Egyptian-like censers, and
+another pair are blowing conch-shell trumpets.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Representation of the ancient Mexican Worship of
+the Sun.
+
+The image of the sun is held up by a man in front of his face; two men
+blow conch-shell trumpets; another pair burn incense; and a third pair
+make blood-offerings by piercing their ears--after Zelia Nuttall.]
+
+But it was not merely the use of incense and libations and the
+identities in the wholly arbitrary attributes of the American pantheon
+that reveal the sources of their derivation in the Old World. When the
+Spaniards first visited Yucatan they found traces of a Maya baptismal
+rite which the natives called _zihil_, signifying "to be born again". At
+the ceremony also incense was burnt.[126]
+
+The forehead, the face, the fingers and toes were moistened. "After they
+had been thus sprinkled with water, the priest arose and removed the
+cloths from the heads of the children, and then cut off with a stone
+knife a certain bead that was attached to the head from childhood."[127]
+
+[The custom of wearing such a bead during childhood is found in Egypt at
+the present day.]
+
+In the case of the girls, their mothers "divested them of a cord which
+was worn during their childhood, fastened round the loins, having a
+small shell that hung in front ('una conchuela asida que les venia a dar
+encima de la parte honesta'--Landa). The removal of this signified that
+they could marry."[128]
+
+This use of shells is found in the Soudan and East Africa at the present
+day.[129] The girdle upon which the shells were hung is the prototype of
+the cestus of Hathor, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Kali and all the goddesses of
+fertility in the Old World. It is an admirable illustration of the fact
+that not only were the finished products, the goddesses and their
+fantastic repertory of attributes, transmitted to the New World, but
+also the earliest and most primitive ingredients out of which the
+complexities of their traits were compounded.
+
+In Chapter III ("The Birth of Aphrodite") I shall explain what an
+important part the invention of this girdle played in the development of
+the material side of civilization and the even vaster influence it
+exerted upon beliefs and ethics. It represents the first stage in the
+evolution of clothing; and it was responsible for originating the belief
+in love-philtres and in the possibility of foretelling the future.
+
+It would lead me too far from my main purpose in this book to discuss
+the widespread geographical distribution and historical associations of
+the customs of baptism and pouring libations among different peoples. I
+may, however, refer the reader to an article by Mr. Elsdon Best,
+entitled "Ceremonial Performances Pertaining to Birth, as Performed by
+the Maori of New Zealand in Past Times" (_Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XLIV, 1914, p. 127), which sheds a
+clear light upon the general problem.
+
+The whole subject of baptismal ceremonies is well worth detailed study
+as a remarkable demonstration of the spread of culture in early times.
+
+
+[107: Donald A. Mackenzie, "Myths of Babylonia and Assyria," p. 44 _et
+seq._]
+
+[108: Dr. Alan Gardiner has protested against the assertions of "some
+Egyptologists, influenced more by anthropological theorists than by the
+unambiguous evidence of the Egyptian texts," to the effect that "the
+funerary rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main
+precautionary measures serving to protect the living against the dead"
+(Article "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings' _Encyclopædia of
+Religion and Ethics_). I should like to emphasize the fact that the
+"anthropological theorists," who so frequently put forward these claims
+have little more justification for them than "some Egyptologists".
+Careful study of the best evidence from Babylonia, India, Indonesia, and
+Japan, reveals the fact that anthropologists who make such claims have
+in many cases misinterpreted the facts. In an article on "Ancestor
+Worship" by Professor Nobushige Hozumi in A. Stead's "Japan by the
+Japanese" (1904) the true point of view is put very clearly: "The origin
+of ancestor-worship is ascribed by many eminent writers to the _dread of
+ghosts_ and the sacrifices made to the souls of ancestors for the
+purpose of _propitiating_ them. It appears to me more correct to
+attribute the origin of ancestor-worship to a contrary cause. It was the
+_love_ of ancestors, not the _dread_ of them" [Here he quotes the
+Chinese philosophers Shiu-ki and Confucius in corroboration] that
+impelled men to worship. "We celebrate the anniversary of our ancestors,
+pay visits to their graves, offer flowers, food and drink, burn incense
+and bow before their tombs, entirely from a feeling of love and respect
+for their memory, and no question of 'dread' enters our minds in doing
+so" (pp. 281 and 282). [See, however, Appendix B, p. 74.]]
+
+[109: For, as I have already explained, the idea so commonly and
+mistakenly conveyed by the term "soul-substance" by writers on
+Indonesian and Chinese beliefs would be much more accurately rendered
+simply by the word "life," so that the stealing of it necessarily means
+death.]
+
+[110: Barton, _op. cit._ p. 105.]
+
+[111: The evidence set forth in these pages makes it clear that such
+ideas are not restricted to the Semites: nor is there any reason to
+suppose that they originated amongst them.]
+
+[112: Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in Connexion with
+Similar Babylonian Beliefs," _Journal of the American Oriental Society_,
+Vol. XXXVI, 1916, pp. 300-20.]
+
+[113: This is Professor Carnoy's summary of Professor Jastrow's views as
+expressed in his article "Sumerian and Akkadian Views of Beginnings".]
+
+[114: Jastrow's interpretation of a recently-discovered tablet published
+by Langdon under the title _The Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the Flood and
+the Fall of Man_.]
+
+[115: I have already (p. 43) mentioned the fact that it is still
+preserved in China also.]
+
+[116: Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Deities of
+Southern India," Madras Government Museum, Bull., Vol. V, No. 3, 1907;
+Wilber Theodore Elmore, "Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism: A Study of
+the Local and Village Deities of Southern India," University Studies:
+University of Nebraska, Vol. XV, No. 1, Jan., 1915. Compare the
+sacrifice of the fore-leg of a living calf in Egypt--A. E. P. B.
+Weigall, "An Ancient Egyptian Funeral Ceremony," _Journal of Egyptian
+Archæology_, Vol. II, 1915, p. 10. Early literary references from
+Babylonia suggest that a similar method of offering blood was practised
+there.]
+
+[117: William Ellis, "Polynesian Researches," 2nd edition, 1832, Vol. I,
+p. 373.]
+
+[118: See H. Vincent, "Canaan d'après l'exploration récente," Paris,
+1907, p. 395.]
+
+[119: "Les Premières Civilizations," Paris, 1909, p. 404: Mémoires de la
+Délégation en Perse, Tome VIII, archéol.; and Mission Scientifique au
+Caucase, Tome I.]
+
+[120: W. J. Perry, "The Relationship between the Geographical
+Distribution of Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," _Memoirs and
+Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society_, Vol.
+60, Part I, 24th Nov., 1915.]
+
+[121: The evidence for this is being prepared for publication by Captain
+Leonard Munn, R.E., who has personally collected the data in Hyderabad.]
+
+[122: Annual Report of the Archæological Department, Southern Circle,
+Madras, for the year 1915-1916. See for example Mr. A. H. Longhurst's
+photographs and plans (Plates I-IV) and especially that of the old Siva
+temple at Kambaduru, Plate IV (b).]
+
+[123: As I shall show in "The Birth of Aphrodite" (Chapter III).]
+
+[124: W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia".]
+
+[125: "A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans," Archæological and
+Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. I,
+No. 7, 1904.]
+
+[126: Bancroft, _op. cit._ Vol. II, pp. 682 and 683.]
+
+[127: _Op. cit._ p. 684.]
+
+[128: _Ibid._]
+
+[129: See J. Wilfrid Jackson, _op. cit. supra_.]
+
+
+Summary.
+
+In these pages I have ranged over a very wide field of speculation,
+groping in the dim shadows of the early history of civilization. I have
+been attempting to pick up a few of the threads which ultimately became
+woven into the texture of human beliefs and aspirations, and to suggest
+that the practice of mummification was the woof around which the web of
+civilization was intimately intertwined.
+
+I have already explained how closely that practice was related to the
+origin and development of architecture, which Professor Lethaby has
+called the "matrix of civilization," and how nearly the ideas that grew
+up in explanation and in justification of the ritual of embalming were
+affected by the practice of agriculture, the second great pillar of
+support for the edifice of civilization. It has also been shown how
+far-reaching was the influence exerted by the needs of the embalmer,
+which impelled men, probably for the first time in history, to plan and
+carry out great expeditions by sea and land to obtain the necessary
+resins and the balsams, the wood and the spices. Incidentally also in
+course of time the practice of mummification came to exert a profound
+effect upon the means for the acquisition of a knowledge of medicine and
+all the sciences ancillary to it.
+
+But I have devoted chief attention to the bearing of the ideas which
+developed out of the practice and ritual of embalming upon the spirit of
+man. It gave shape and substance to the belief in a future life; it was
+perhaps the most important factor in the development of a definite
+conception of the gods: it laid the foundation of the ideas which
+subsequently were built up into a theory of the soul: in fact, it was
+intimately connected with the birth of all those ideals and aspirations
+which are now included in the conception of religious belief and ritual.
+A multitude of other trains of thought were started amidst the
+intellectual ferment of the formulation of the earliest concrete system
+of biological theory. The idea of the properties and functions of water
+which had previously sprung up in connexion with the development of
+agriculture became crystallized into a more definite form as the result
+of the development of mummification, and this has played an obtrusive
+part in religion, in philosophy and in medicine ever since. Moreover its
+influence has become embalmed for all time in many languages and in the
+ritual of every religion.
+
+But it was a factor in the development not merely of religious beliefs,
+temples and ritual, but it was also very closely related to the origin
+of much of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular beliefs.
+The swastika and the thunderbolt, dragons and demons, totemism and the
+sky-world are all of them conceptions that were more or less closely
+connected with the matters I have been discussing.
+
+The ideas which grew up in association with the practice of
+mummification were responsible for the development of the temple and its
+ritual and for a definite formulation of the conception of deities. But
+they were also responsible for originating a priesthood. For the
+resuscitation of the dead king, Osiris, and for the maintenance of his
+existence it was necessary for his successor, the reigning king, to
+perform the ritual of animation and the provision of food and drink. The
+king, therefore, was the first priest, and his functions were not
+primarily acts of worship but merely the necessary preliminaries for
+restoring life and consciousness to the dead seer so that he could
+consult him and secure his advice and help.
+
+It was only when the number of temples became so great and their ritual
+so complex and elaborate as to make it a physical impossibility for the
+king to act in this capacity in all of them and on every occasion that
+he was compelled to delegate some of his priestly functions to others,
+either members of the royal family or high officials. In course of time
+certain individuals devoted themselves exclusively to these duties and
+became professional priests; but it is important to remember that at
+first it was the exclusive privilege of Horus, the reigning king, to
+intercede with Osiris, the dead king, on behalf of men, and that the
+earliest priesthood consisted of those individuals to whom he had
+delegated some of these duties.
+
+In conclusion I should like to express in words what must be only too
+apparent to every reader of this statement. It claims to be nothing more
+than a contribution to the study of some of the most difficult problems
+in the history of human thought. For one so ill-equipped for a task of
+such a nature as I am to attempt it calls for a word of explanation. The
+clear light that recent research has shed upon the earliest literature
+in the world has done much to destroy the foundations upon which the
+theories propounded by scholars have been built up. It seemed to be
+worth while to attempt to read afresh the voluminous mass of old
+documents with the illumination of this new information.
+
+The other reason for making such an attempt is that almost every modern
+scholar who has discussed the matters at issue has assumed that the
+fashionable doctrine of the independent development of human beliefs and
+practices was a safe basis upon which to construct his theories. At best
+it is an unproven and reckless speculation. I am convinced it is utterly
+false. Holding such views I have attempted to read the evidence afresh.
+
+
+APPENDIX A.
+
+On re-reading the discussion of the significance of the _ka_ I realize
+that, in striving after brevity and conciseness--to keep the size of my
+statement within the limits of the _Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library_, generously elastic though it is--I have left the argument in a
+rather nebulous form.
+
+It must not be imagined that a concrete-minded people like the ancient
+Egyptians entertained highly abstract and ethereal ideas about "the
+soul". They recognized that all the expressions of consciousness and
+personality could cease during sleep; and at the same time the phenomena
+of dreams seemed to afford evidence that these absent elements of the
+individual's being were enjoying real experiences elsewhere. Thus there
+was an _alter ego_, identified by this matter-of-fact people with the
+twin (placenta) which was born with the child and was clearly concerned
+with its physical and intellectual nourishment--for it was obviously
+connected by its stalk to the embryo like a tree to its roots, and it
+seemed to be composed of blood, which was regarded as the vehicle of
+mind. But this intellectual "twin" kept pace in its growth with the
+physical body. When a statue was made to represent the latter the _ka_
+could dwell in the real body or the statue.
+
+The identification of the placenta with the moon helped the growth of
+the conception that this "birth-promoter" could not only bring about a
+re-birth in the life to come, but also facilitate a transference to the
+sky-world. The placenta had already been superintending the deceased's
+welfare upon earth and would continue to do so when he rejoined his _ka_
+in the sky world.
+
+The complexity of the conception is due to the fact that the simple
+early belief in "a double" was gradually elaborated, as one new idea
+after another became added to it, and rationalized to blend with the
+former complex in an increasingly involved synthesis. It was only when
+the elaborate scaffolding of material factors was cleared away that a
+more ethereal conception of "the soul" was sublimated.
+
+
+APPENDIX B.
+
+I should like to emphasize the fact that my protest (on p. 63) was
+directed against the claim that the custom of offering food and drink to
+the dead was inspired _primarily_ to prevent them from troubling the
+living. Its original purpose was to sustain and reanimate the dead; but,
+of course, when its real meaning was forgotten, it was explained in a
+great variety of ways by the people who made a practice of presenting
+offerings to the dead without really knowing why they did so.
+
+Dr. Alan Gardiner himself has made a statement which casual readers
+(i.e., those who do not discriminate between the motive for the
+invention of a procedure and the reasons subsequently given for its
+continuance) might regard as a contradiction of my quotation from his
+writings on p. 62. Thus he says: "Any god could doubtless attack human
+beings, but savage and malicious deities, like Seth [Set], the murderer
+of Osiris, or Sakhmet, [Sekhet], the 'lady of pestilence' (_nb-t 'idw_),
+were doubtless most to be feared." [This attitude of the malignant
+goddesses is revealed in a most obtrusive form in the village deities of
+the Dravidians of Southern India.] "The dead were specially to be
+feared; nor was it only those dead who were unhappy or unburied that
+might torment the living, for the magician sometimes warns them that
+their tombs are endangered" (Article "Magic (Egyptian)," _Hastings'
+Encycl. Ethics and Religion_, p. 264).
+
+But it is important to bear in mind, as the same scholar has explained
+elsewhere ["Life and Death (Egyptian)," _Hastings' Encycl._, p. 23]:
+"Nothing could be farther from the truth [than the statement that 'the
+funerary rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main
+precautionary measures serving to protect the living against the dead'];
+it is of fundamental importance to realize that the vast stores of
+wealth and thought expended by the Egyptians on their tombs--that wealth
+and that thought which created not only the pyramids, but also the
+practice of mummification and a very extensive funerary literature--were
+due to the anxiety of each member of the community with regard to his
+own individual future welfare, and not to feelings of respect, or fear,
+or duty felt towards the other dead."
+
+It was only in response to certain binding obligations that the living
+observed all those costly and troublesome rules which were believed to
+insure the welfare of the deceased. But this recognition of the primary
+and real purpose of the food offerings as sustenance for the dead or the
+gods must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that there is
+widespread throughout the world a real fear of the dead and ghosts, and
+that in many places food-offerings are made for the specific purpose "of
+appeasing the fairies".
+
+Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me that offerings of milk and porridge are
+made at the stone monuments in Scotland, and children carry meal in
+their pockets to protect themselves from the fairies. For the dead went
+to Fairyland.
+
+Beliefs of a similar kind can be collected from most parts of the world:
+but the point I specially want to emphasize is that they are _secondary_
+rationalizations of a custom which originally had an utterly different
+significance.
+
+
+APPENDIX C.
+
+Prof. Barton's statement (_supra_, p. 64) is typical of a widespread
+misapprehension, resulting from the confusion between sexual relations
+and the giving of life. At first primitive people did not realize that
+the manifestations of the sex instinct had anything whatever to do with
+reproduction. They were aware of the fact that women gave birth to
+children; and the organ concerned in this process was regarded as the
+giver of life, the creator. The apotheosis of these powers led to the
+conception of the first deity. But it was only secondarily that these
+life-giving attributes were brought into association with the sexual act
+and the masculine powers of fertilization. Much confusion has been
+created by those writers who see manifestations of the sexual factor and
+phallic ideas in every aspect of primitive religion, where in most cases
+only the power of life-giving plays a part.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS.[130]
+
+
+An adequate account of the development of the dragon-legend would
+represent the history of the expression of mankind's aspirations and
+fears during the past fifty centuries and more. For the dragon was
+evolved along with civilization itself. The search for the elixir of
+life, to turn back the years from old age and confer the boon of
+immortality, has been the great driving force that compelled men to
+build up the material and the intellectual fabric of civilization. The
+dragon-legend is the history of that search which has been preserved by
+popular tradition: it has grown up and kept pace with the constant
+struggle to grasp the unattainable goal of men's desires; and the story
+has been constantly growing in complexity, as new incidents were drawn
+within its scope and confused with old incidents whose real meaning was
+forgotten or distorted. It has passed through all the phases with which
+the study of the spreading of rumours or the development of dreams has
+familiarized students of psychology. The simple original stories, which
+become blended and confused, their meaning distorted and reinterpreted
+by the rationalizing of incoherent incidents, are given the dramatic
+form with which the human mind invests all stories that make a strong
+appeal to its emotions, and then secondarily elaborated with a wealth of
+circumstantial detail. This is the history of popular legends and the
+development of rumours. But these phenomena are displayed in their most
+emphatic form in dreams.[131] In his waking state man restrains his
+roving fancies and exercises what Freud has called a "censorship" over
+the stream of his thoughts: but when he falls asleep, the "censor" dozes
+also; and free rein is given to his unrestrained fancies to make a
+hotch-potch of the most varied and unrelated incidents, and to create a
+fantastic mosaic built up from fragments of his actual experience, bound
+together by the cement of his aspirations and fears. The myth resembles
+the dream because it has developed without any consistent and effective
+censorship. The individual who tells one particular phase of the story
+may exert the controlling influence of his mind over the version he
+narrates: but as it is handed on from man to man and generation to
+generation the "censorship" also is constantly changing. This lack of
+unity of control implies that the development of the myth is not unlike
+the building-up of a dream-story. But the dragon-myth is vastly more
+complex than any dream, because mankind as a whole has taken a hand in
+the process of shaping it; and the number of centuries devoted to this
+work of elaboration has been far greater than the years spent by the
+average individual in accumulating the stuff of which most of his dreams
+have been made. But though the myth is enormously complex, so vast a
+mass of detailed evidence concerning every phase and every detail of its
+history has been preserved, both in the literature and the folk-lore of
+the world, that we are able to submit it to psychological analysis and
+determine the course of its development and the significance of every
+incident in its tortuous rambling.
+
+In instituting these comparisons between the development of myths and
+dreams, I should like to emphasize the fact that the interpretation of
+the _myth_ proposed in these pages is almost diametrically opposed to
+that suggested by Freud, and pushed to a _reductio ad absurdum_ by his
+more reckless followers, and especially by Yung.
+
+The dragon has been described as "the most venerable symbol employed in
+ornamental art and the favourite and most highly decorative motif in
+artistic design". It has been the inspiration of much, if not most, of
+the world's great literature in every age and clime, and the nucleus
+around which a wealth of ethical symbolism has accumulated throughout
+the ages. The dragon-myth represents also the earliest doctrine or
+systematic theory of astronomy and meteorology.
+
+In the course of its romantic and chequered history the dragon has been
+identified with all of the gods and all of the demons of every religion.
+But it is most intimately associated with the earliest stratum of
+divinities, for it has been homologized with each of the members of the
+earliest Trinity, the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun
+God, both individually and collectively. To add to the complexities of
+the story, the dragon-slayer is also represented by the same deities,
+either individually or collectively; and the weapon with which the hero
+slays the dragon is also homologous both with him and his victim, for it
+is animated by him who wields it, and its powers of destruction make it
+a symbol of the same power of evil which it itself destroys.
+
+Such a fantastic paradox of contradictions has supplied the materials
+with which the fancies of men of every race and land, and every stage of
+knowledge and ignorance, have been playing for all these centuries. It
+is not surprising, therefore, that an endless series of variations of
+the story has been evolved, each decked out with topical allusions and
+distinctive embellishments. But throughout the complex tissue of this
+highly embroidered fabric the essential threads of the web and woof of
+its foundation can be detected with surprising constancy and regularity.
+
+Within the limits of such an account as this it is obvious that I can
+deal only with the main threads of the argument and leave the
+interesting details of the local embellishments until some other time.
+
+The fundamental element in the dragon's powers is the control of water.
+Both in its beneficent and destructive aspects water was regarded as
+animated by the dragon, who thus assumed the rôle of Osiris or his enemy
+Set. But when the attributes of the Water God became confused with those
+of the Great Mother, and her evil avatar, the lioness (Sekhet) form of
+Hathor in Egypt, or in Babylonia the destructive Tiamat, became the
+symbol of disorder and chaos, the dragon became identified with
+her also.
+
+Similarly the third member of the Earliest Trinity also became the
+dragon. As the son and successor of the dead king Osiris the living king
+Horus became assimilated with him. When the belief became more and more
+insistent that the dead king had acquired the boon of immortality and
+was really alive, the distinction between him and the actually living
+king Horus became correspondingly minimized. This process of
+assimilation was advanced a further stage when the king became a god and
+was thus more closely identified with his father and predecessor. Hence
+Horus assumed many of the functions of Osiris; and amongst them those
+which in foreign lands contributed to making a dragon of the Water God.
+But if the distinction between Horus and Osiris became more and more
+attenuated with the lapse of time, the identification with his mother
+Hathor (Isis) was more complete still. For he took her place and assumed
+many of her attributes in the later versions of the great saga which is
+the nucleus of all the literature of mythology--I refer to the story of
+"The Destruction Of Mankind".
+
+The attributes of these three members of the Trinity, Hathor, Osiris,
+and Horus, thus became intimately linked the one with the other; and in
+Susa, where the earliest pictorial representation of a real dragon
+developed, it received concrete form (Fig. 1) as a monster compounded of
+the lioness of Hathor (Sekhet) with the falcon (or eagle) of Horus, but
+with the human attributes and water-controlling powers which originally
+belonged to Osiris. In some parts of Africa the earliest "dragon" was
+nothing more than Hathor's cow or the gazelle or antelope of Horus
+(Osiris) or of Set.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Early Representation of a "Dragon" Compounded of
+the Forepart of an Eagle and the Hindpart of a Lion--(from an Archaic
+Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier).]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2.--The Earliest Babylonian Conception of the Dragon
+Tiamat--(from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after L. W. King).]
+
+But if the dragon was compounded of all three deities, who was the
+slayer of the evil dragon?
+
+The story of the dragon-conflict is really a recital of Horus's vendetta
+against Set, intimately blended and confused with different versions of
+"The Destruction of Mankind".[132] The commonplace incidents of the
+originally prosaic stories were distorted into an almost unrecognizable
+form, then secondarily elaborated without any attention to their
+original meaning, but with a wealth of circumstantial embellishment, in
+accordance with the usual methods of the human mind that I have already
+mentioned. The history of the legend is in fact the most complete,
+because it is the oldest and the most widespread, illustration of those
+instinctive tendencies of the human spirit to bridge the gaps in its
+disjointed experience, and to link together in a kind of mental mosaic
+the otherwise isolated incidents in the facts of daily life and the
+rumours and traditions that have been handed down from the
+story-teller's predecessors.
+
+In the "Destruction of Mankind," which I shall discuss more fully in the
+following pages (p. 109 _et seq._), Hathor does the slaying: in the
+later stories Horus takes his mother's place and earns his spurs as the
+Warrior Sun-god:[133] hence confusion was inevitably introduced between
+the enemies of Re, the original victims in the legend, and Horus's
+traditional enemies, the followers of Set. Against the latter it was
+Osiris himself who fought originally; and in many of the non-Egyptian
+variants of the legend it is the rain-god himself who is the warrior.
+
+Hence all three members of the Trinity were identified, not only with
+the dragon, but also with the hero who was the dragon-slayer.
+
+But the weapon used by the latter was also animated by the same Trinity,
+and in fact identified with them. In the Saga of the Winged Disk, Horus
+assumed the form of the sun equipped with the wings of his own falcon
+and the fire-spitting uræus serpents. Flying down from heaven in this
+form he was at the same time the god and the god's weapon. As a fiery
+bolt from heaven he slew the enemies of Re, who were now identified with
+his own personal foes, the followers of Set. But in the earlier versions
+of the myth (i.e. the "Destruction of Mankind"), it was Hathor who was
+the "Eye of Re" and descended from heaven to destroy mankind with fire;
+she also was the vulture (Mut); and in the earliest version she did the
+slaughter with a knife or an axe with which she was animistically
+identified.
+
+But Osiris also was the weapon of destruction, both in the form of the
+flood (for he was the personification of the river) and the rain-storms
+from heaven. But he was also an instrument for vanquishing the demon,
+when the intoxicating beer or the sedative drink (the potency of which
+was due to the indwelling spirit of the god) was the chosen means of
+overcoming the dragon.
+
+This, in brief, is the framework of the dragon-story. The early Trinity
+as the hero, armed with the Trinity as weapon, slays the dragon,
+which again is the same Trinity. With its illimitable possibilities for
+dramatic development and fantastic embellishment with incident and
+ethical symbolism, this theme has provided countless thousands of
+story-tellers with the skeleton which they clothed with the living flesh
+of their stories, representing not merely the earliest theories of
+astronomy and meteorology, but all the emotional conflicts of daily
+life, the struggle between light and darkness, heat and cold, right and
+wrong, justice and injustice, prosperity and adversity, wealth and
+poverty. The whole gamut of human strivings and emotions was drawn
+into the legend until it became the great epic of the human spirit and
+the main theme that has appealed to the interest of all mankind in
+every age.
+
+An ancient Chinese philosopher, Wang Fu, writing in the time of the Han
+Dynasty, enumerates the "nine resemblances" of the dragon. "His horns
+resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes those of a
+demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam, his scales
+those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a
+tiger, his ears those of a cow."[134] But this list includes only a
+small minority of the menagerie of diverse creatures which at one time
+or another have contributed their quota to this truly astounding
+hotch-potch.
+
+This composite wonder-beast ranges from Western Europe to the Far East
+of Asia, and as we shall see, also even across the Pacific to America.
+Although in the different localities a great number of most varied
+ingredients enter into its composition, in most places where the dragon
+occurs the substratum of its anatomy consists of a serpent or a
+crocodile, usually with the scales of a fish for covering, and the feet
+and wings, and sometimes also the head, of an eagle, falcon, or hawk,
+and the forelimbs and sometimes the head of a lion. An association of
+anatomical features of so unnatural and arbitrary a nature can only mean
+that all dragons are the progeny of the same ultimate ancestors.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7.--A Mediæval Picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its
+cloud (After the late Professor W. Anderson)]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8.--A Chinese Dragon (After de Groot)]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 10.--Babylonian Weather God]
+
+But it is not merely a case of structural or anatomical similarity, but
+also of physiological identity, that clinches the proof of the
+derivation of this fantastic brood from the same parents. Wherever the
+dragon is found, it displays a special partiality for water. It controls
+the rivers or seas, dwells in pools or wells, or in the clouds on the
+tops of mountains, regulates the tides, the flow of streams, or the
+rainfall, and is associated with thunder and lightning. Its home is a
+mansion at the bottom of the sea, where it guards vast treasures,
+usually pearls, but also gold and precious stones. In other instances
+the dwelling is upon the top of a high mountain; and the dragon's breath
+forms the rain-clouds. It emits thunder and lightning. Eating the
+dragon's heart enables the diner to acquire the knowledge stored in this
+"organ of the mind" so that he can understand the language of birds,
+and in fact of all the creatures that have contributed to the making
+of a dragon.
+
+It should not be necessary to rebut the numerous attempts that have been
+made to explain the dragon-myth as a story relating to extinct monsters.
+Such fantastic claims can be made only by writers devoid of any
+knowledge of palæontology or of the distinctive features of the dragon
+and its history. But when the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian
+Antiquities in the British Museum, in a book that is not intended to be
+humorous,[135] seriously claims Dr. Andrews' discovery of a gigantic
+fossil snake as "proof" of the former existence of "the great
+serpent-devil Apep," it is time to protest.
+
+Those who attempt to derive the dragon from such living creatures as
+lizards like _Draco volans_ or _Moloch horridus_[136] ignore the
+evidence of the composite and unnatural features of the monsters.
+
+"Whatever be the origin of the Northern dragon, the myths, when they
+first became articulate for us, show him to be in all essentials the
+same as that of the South and East. He is a power of evil, guardian of
+hoards, the greedy withholder of good things from men; and the slaying
+of a dragon is the crowning achievement of heroes--of Siegmund, of
+Beowulf, of Sigurd, of Arthur, of Tristam--even of Lancelot, the _beau
+ideal_ of mediæval chivalry" (_Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. viii., p.
+467). But if in the West the dragon is usually a "power of evil," in the
+far East he is equally emphatically a symbol of beneficence. He is
+identified with emperors and kings; he is the son of heaven the bestower
+of all bounties, not merely to mankind directly, but also to the earth
+as well.
+
+Even in our country his symbolism is not always wholly malevolent,
+otherwise--if for the moment we shut our eyes to the history of the
+development of heraldic ornament--dragons would hardly figure as the
+supporters of the arms of the City of London, and as the symbol of many
+of our aristocratic families, among which the Royal House of Tudor is
+included. It is only a few years since the Red Dragon of Cadwallader was
+added as an additional badge to the achievement of the Prince of Wales.
+But, "though a common ensign in war, both in the East and the West, as
+an ecclesiastical emblem his opposite qualities have remained
+consistently until the present day. Whenever the dragon is represented,
+it symbolizes the power of evil, the devil and his works. Hell in
+mediæval art is a dragon with gaping jaws, belching fire."
+
+And in the East the dragon's reputation is not always blameless. For it
+figures in some disreputable incidents and does not escape the sort of
+punishment that tradition metes out to his European cousins.
+
+
+[130: An elaboration of a Lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library
+on 8 November, 1916.]
+
+[131: In his lecture, "Dreams and Primitive Culture," delivered at the
+John Rylands Library on 10 April, 1918, Dr. Rivers has expounded the
+principles of dream-development.]
+
+[132: _Vide infra_, p. 109 _et seq._]
+
+[133: Hence soldiers killed in battle and women dying in childbirth
+receive special consideration in the exclusive heaven of (Osiris's)
+Horus's Indian and American representatives, Indra and Tlaloc.]
+
+[134: M. W. de Visser, "The Dragon in China and Japan," _Verhandelingen
+der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam_, Afdeeling
+Letterkunde, Deel XIII, No. 2, 1913, p. 70.]
+
+[135: E. A. Wallis Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," 1904, vol. i,
+p. 11]
+
+[136: Gould's "Mythical Monsters," 1886.]
+
+
+The Dragon in America and Eastern Asia.
+
+In the early centuries of the Christian era, and probably also even for
+two or three hundred years earlier still, the leaven of the ancient
+civilizations of the Old World was at work in Mexico, Central America
+and Peru. The most obtrusive influences that were brought to bear,
+especially in the area from Yucatan to Mexico, were inspired by the
+Cambodian and Indonesian modifications of Indian beliefs and practices.
+The god who was most often depicted upon the ancient Maya and Aztec
+codices was the Indian rain-god Indra, who in America was provided with
+the head of the Indian elephant[137] (i.e. seems to have been confused
+with the Indian Ganesa) and given other attributes more suggestive of
+the Dravidian Nâga than his enemy, the Aryan deity. In other words the
+character of the American god, known as _Chac_ by the Maya people and as
+_Tlaloc_ by the Aztecs, is an interesting illustration of the effects of
+such a mixture of cultures as Dr. Rivers has studied in Melanesia.[138]
+Not only does the elephant-headed god in America represent a blend of
+the two great Indian rain-gods which in the Old World are mortal
+enemies, the one of the other (partly for the political reason that the
+Dravidians and Aryans were rival and hostile peoples), but all the
+traits of each deity, even those depicting the old Aryan conception of
+their deadly combat, are reproduced in America under circumstances which
+reveal an ignorance on the part of the artists of the significance of
+the paradoxical contradictions they are representing. But even many
+incidents in the early history of the Vedic gods, which were due to
+arbitrary circumstances in the growth of the legends, reappear in
+America. To cite one instance (out of scores which might be quoted), in
+the Vedic story Indra assumed many of the attributes of the god Soma. In
+America the name of the god of rain and thunder, the Mexican Indra, is
+_Tlaloc_, which is generally translated "pulque of the earth," from
+_tlal[l]i_, "earth," and _oc[tli]_, "pulque, a fermented drink (like the
+Indian drink _soma_) made from the juice of the agave".[139]
+
+The so-called "long-nosed god" (the elephant-headed rain-god) has been
+given the non-committal designation "god B," by Schellhas.[140]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Reproduction of a Picture in the Maya Codex
+Troano representing the Rain-god _Chac_ treading upon the Serpent's
+head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the god is
+pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-goddess stands upon the Serpent's tail.]
+
+I reproduce here a remarkable drawing (Fig. 11) from the Codex Troano,
+in which this god, whom the Maya people called _Chac_, is shown pouring
+the rain out of a water-jar (just as the deities of Babylonia and India
+are often represented), and putting his foot upon the head of a serpent,
+who is preventing the rain from reaching the earth. Here we find
+depicted with childlike simplicity and directness the Vedic conception
+of Indra overcoming the demon Vritra. Stempell describes this scene as
+"the elephant-headed god B standing upon the head of a serpent";[141]
+while Seler, who claims that god B is a tortoise, explains it as the
+serpent forming a footstool for the rain-god.[142] In the
+Codex Cortes the same theme is depicted in another way, which is truer
+to the Indian conception of Vritra, as "the restrainer"[143] (Fig. 12).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 12.--Another representation of the Elephant-headed
+Rain god. He is holding thunderbolts, conventionalised in a hand-like
+form. The Serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the rain-waters.]
+
+The serpent (the American rattlesnake) restrains the water by coiling
+itself into a sac to hold up the rain and so prevent it from reaching
+the earth. In the various American codices this episode is depicted in
+as great a variety of forms as the Vedic poets of India described when
+they sang of the exploits of Indra. The Maya Chac is, in fact, Indra
+transferred to the other side of the Pacific and there only thinly
+disguised by a veneer of American stylistic design.
+
+But the Aztec god Tlaloc is merely the Chac of the Maya people
+transferred to Mexico. Schellhas declares that the "god B," the "most
+common figure in the codices," is a "universal deity to whom the most
+varied elements, natural phenomena, and activities are subject". "Many
+authorities consider God B to represent Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent,
+whose Aztec equivalent is Quetzalcoatl. Others identify him with
+Itzamna, the Serpent God of the East, or with Chac, the Rain God of the
+four quarters and the equivalent of Tlaloc of the Mexicans."[144]
+
+From the point of view of its Indian analogies these confusions are
+peculiarly significant, for the same phenomena are found in India. The
+snake and the dragon can be either the rain-god of the East or the enemy
+of the rain-god; either the dragon-slayer or the evil dragon who has to
+be slain. The Indian word _Nâga_, which is applied to the beneficent god
+or king identified with the cobra, can also mean "elephant," and this
+double significance probably played a part in the confusion of the
+deities in America.
+
+In the Dresden Codex the elephant-headed god is represented in one place
+grasping a serpent, in another issuing from a serpent's mouth, and again
+as an actual serpent (Fig. 13). Turning next to the attributes of these
+American gods we find that they reproduce with amazing precision those
+of Indra. Not only were they the divinities who controlled rain,
+thunder, lightning, and vegetation, but they also carried axes and
+thunderbolts (Fig. 13) like their homologues in the Old World. Like
+Indra, Tlaloc was intimately associated with the East and with the tops
+of mountains, where he had a special heaven, reserved for warriors who
+fell in battle and women who died in childbirth. As a water-god also he
+presided over the souls of the drowned and those who in life suffered
+from dropsical affections. Indra also specialized in the same branch
+of medicine.
+
+In fact, if one compares the account of Tlaloc's attributes and
+achievements, such as is given in Mr. Joyce's "Mexican Archæology" or
+Professor Seler's monograph on the "Codex Vaticanus," with Professor
+Hopkins's summary of Indra's character ("Religions of India") the
+identity is so exact, even in the most arbitrary traits and confusions
+with other deities' peculiarities, that it becomes impossible for any
+serious investigator to refuse to admit that Tlaloc and Chac are merely
+American forms of Indra. Even so fantastic a practice as the
+representation of the American rain-god's face as composed of contorted
+snakes[145] finds its analogy in Siam, where in relatively recent times
+this curious device was still being used by artists.[146]
+
+"As the god of fertility maize belonged to him [Tlaloc], though not
+altogether by right, for according to one legend he stole it after it
+had been discovered by other gods concealed in the heart of a
+mountain."[147] Indra also obtained soma from the mountain by similar
+means.[148]
+
+In the ancient civilization of America one of the most prominent deities
+was called the "Feathered Serpent," in the Maya language, Kukulkan,
+Quiché Gukumatz, Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the Pueblo "Mother of Waters".
+Throughout a very extensive part of America the snake, like the Indian
+Nâga, is the emblem of rain, clouds, thunder and lightning. But it is
+essentially and pre-eminently the symbol of rain; and the god who
+controls the rain, Chac of the Mayas, Tlaloc of the Aztecs, carried the
+axe and the thunderbolt like his homologues and prototypes in the Old
+World. In America also we find reproduced in full, not only the legends
+of the antagonism between the thunder-bird and the serpent, but also
+the identification of these two rivals in one composite monster, which,
+as I have already mentioned, is seen in the winged disks, both in the
+Old World and the New.[149] Hardly any incident in the history of the
+Egyptian falcon or the thunder-birds of Babylonia, Greece or India,
+fails to reappear in America and find pictorial expression in the Maya
+and Aztec codices.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 13.
+
+A photographic reproduction of the 36th page of the Dresden Maya Codex.
+
+Of the three pictures in the top row one represents the elephant-headed
+god _Chac_ with a snake's body. He is pouring out rain. The central
+picture represents the lightning animal carrying fire down from heaven
+to earth. On the right _Chac_ is shown in human guise carrying
+thunder-weapons in the form of burning torches.
+
+In the second row a goddess sits in the rain: her head is prolonged into
+that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows
+_Chac_ in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The
+third illustration depicts the familiar conflict between the vulture and
+serpent.
+
+In the third row _Chac_ is seen with his axe: in the central picture he
+is standing in the water looking up towards a rain-cloud; and on the
+right he is shown sitting in a hut resting from his labours.]
+
+What makes America such a rich storehouse of historical data is the fact
+that it is stretched across the world almost from pole to pole; and for
+many centuries the jetsam and flotsam swept on to this vast strand has
+made it a museum of the cultural history of the Old World, much of which
+would have been lost for ever if America had not saved it. But a record
+preserved in this manner is necessarily in a highly confused state. For
+essentially the same materials reached America in manifold forms. The
+original immigrants into America brought from North-Eastern Asia such
+cultural equipment as had reached the area east of the Yenesei at the
+time when Europe was in the Neolithic phase of culture. Then when
+ancient mariners began to coast along the Eastern Asiatic littoral and
+make their way to America by the Aleutian route there was a further
+infiltration of new ideas. But when more venturesome sailors began to
+navigate the open seas and exploit Polynesia, for centuries[150] there
+was a more or less constant influx of customs and beliefs, which were
+drawn from Egypt and Babylonia, from the Mediterranean and East Africa,
+from India and Indonesia, China and Japan, Cambodia and Oceania. One and
+the same fundamental idea, such as the attributes of the serpent as a
+water-god, reached America in an infinite variety of guises, Egyptian,
+Babylonian, Indian, Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese, and from this
+amazing jumble of confusion the local priesthood of Central America
+built up a system of beliefs which is distinctively American, though
+most of the ingredients and the principles of synthetic composition were
+borrowed from the Old World.
+
+Every possible phase of the early history of the dragon-story and all
+the ingredients which in the Old World went to the making of it have
+been preserved in American pictures and legends in a bewildering variety
+of forms and with an amazing luxuriance of complicated symbolism and
+picturesque ingenuity. In America, as in India and Eastern Asia, the
+power controlling water was identified both with a serpent (which in the
+New World, as in the Old, was often equipped with such inappropriate and
+arbitrary appendages, as wings, horns and crests) and a god, who was
+either associated or confused with an elephant. Now many of the
+attributes of these gods, as personifications of the life-giving powers
+of water, are identical with those of the Babylonian god Ea and the
+Egyptian Osiris, and their reputations as warriors with the respective
+sons and representatives, Marduk and Horus. The composite animal of
+Ea-Marduk, the "sea-goat" (the Capricornus of the Zodiac), was also the
+vehicle of Varuna in India whose relationship to Indra was in some
+respects analogous to that of Ea to Marduk in Babylonia.[151] The Indian
+"sea-goat" or _Makara_ was in fact intimately associated both with
+Varuna and with Indra. This monster assumed a great variety of forms,
+such as the crocodile, the dolphin, the sea-serpent or dragon, or
+combinations of the heads of different animals with a fish's body (Fig.
+14). Amongst these we find an elephant-headed form of the _makara_,
+which was adopted as far east as Indonesia and as far west as Scotland.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 14.
+
+A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature compounded of the
+antelope and fish of Ea.
+
+B. The "sea-goat" as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.
+
+C to K--a series of varieties of the _makara_ from the Buddhist Rails at
+Buddha Gaya and Mathura, circa 70 B.C.-70 A.D., after Cunningham
+("Archæological Survey of India," Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX and XXIX).
+
+L. The _makara_ as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood. It
+is not difficult to understand how, in the course of the easterly
+diffusion of culture, such a picture should develop into the Chinese
+Dragon or the American Elephant-headed God.]
+
+I have already called attention[152] to the part played by the _makara_
+in determining the development of the form of the elephant-headed god in
+America. Another form of the _makara_ is described in the following
+American legend, which is interesting also as a mutilated version of the
+original dragon-story of the Old World.
+
+In 1912 Hernández translated and published a Maya manuscript[153] which
+had been written out in Spanish characters in the early days of the
+conquest of the Americas, but had been overlooked until six years ago.
+It is an account of the creation, and includes the following passages:
+"All at once came the water [? rain] after the dragon was carried away.
+The heaven was broken up; it fell upon the earth; and they say that
+_Cantul-ti-ku_ (four gods), the four Baccab, were those who destroyed
+it.... 'The whole world', said _Ah-uuc-chek-nale_ (he who seven times
+makes fruitful), 'proceeded from the seven bosoms of the earth.' And he
+descended to make fruitful _Itzam-kab-uin_ (the female whale with
+alligator-feet), when he came down from the central angle of the
+heavenly region" (p. 171).
+
+Hernández adds that "the old fishermen of Yucatan still call the whale
+_Itzam_: this explains the name of _Itzaes_, by which the Mayas were
+known before the founding of Mayapan".
+
+The close analogy to the Indra-story is suggested by the phrase
+describing the coming of the water "after the dragon was carried away".
+Moreover, the Indian sea-elephant _makara_, which was confused in the
+Old World with the dolphin of Aphrodite, and was sometimes also regarded
+as a crocodile, naturally suggests that the "female whale with the
+alligator-feet" was only an American version of the old Indian legend.
+
+All this serves, not only to corroborate the inferences drawn from the
+other sources of information which I have already indicated, but also to
+suggest that, in addition to borrowing the chief divinities of their
+pantheon from India, the Maya people's original name was derived from
+the same mythology.[154]
+
+It is of considerable interest and importance to note that in the
+earliest dated example of Maya workmanship (from Tuxtla, in the Vera
+Cruz State of Mexico), for which Spinden assigns a tentative date of 235
+B.C., an unmistakable elephant figures among the four hieroglyphs which
+Spinden reproduces (_op. cit._, p. 171). A similar hieroglyphic sign is
+found in the Chinese records of the Early Chow Dynasty (John Ross, "The
+Origin of the Chinese People," 1916, P. 152).
+
+The use of the numerals four and seven in the narrative translated by
+Hernández, as in so many other American documents, is itself, as Mrs.
+Zelia Nuttall has so conclusively demonstrated,[155] a most striking and
+conclusive demonstration of the link with the Old World.
+
+Indra was not the only Indian god who was transferred to America, for
+all the associated deities, with the characteristic stories of their
+exploits,[156] are also found depicted with childlike directness of
+incident, but amazingly luxuriant artistic phantasy, in the Maya and
+Aztec codices.
+
+We find scattered throughout the islands of the Pacific the familiar
+stories of the dragon. One mentioned by the Bishop of Wellington refers
+to a New Zealand dragon with jaws like a crocodile's, which spouted
+water like a whale. It lived in a fresh-water lake.[157] In the same
+number of the same _Journal_ Sir George Grey gives extracts from a Maori
+legend of the dragon, which he compares with corresponding passages from
+Spenser's "Faery Queen". "Their strict verbal and poetical conformity
+with the New Zealand legends are such as at first to lead to the
+impression either that Spenser must have stolen his images and language
+from the New Zealand poets, or that they must have acted unfairly by the
+English bard" (p. 362). The Maori legend describes the dragon as "in
+size large as a monstrous whale, in shape like a hideous lizard; for in
+its huge head, its limbs, its tail, its scales, its tough skin, its
+sharp spines, yes, in all these it resembled a lizard" (p. 364).
+
+Now the attributes of the Chinese and Japanese dragon as the controller
+of rain, thunder and lightning are identical with those of the American
+elephant-headed god. It also is associated with the East and with the
+tops of mountains. It is identified with the Indian Nâga, but the
+conflict involved in this identification is less obtrusive than it is
+either in America or in India. In Dravidian India the rulers and the
+gods are identified with the serpent: but among the Aryans, who were
+hostile to the Dravidians, the rain-god is the enemy of the Nâga. In
+America the confusion becomes more pronounced because Tlaloc (Chac)
+represents both Indra and his enemy the serpent. The representation in
+the codices of his conflict with the serpent is merely a tradition
+which the Maya and Aztec scribes followed, apparently without
+understanding its meaning.
+
+In China and Japan the Indra-episode plays a much less prominent part,
+for the dragon is, like the Indian Nâga, a beneficent creature, which
+approximates more nearly to the Babylonian Ea or the Egyptian Osiris. It
+is not only the controller of water, but the impersonation of water and
+its life-giving powers: it is identified with the emperor, with his
+standard, with the sky, and with all the powers that give, maintain, and
+prolong life and guard against all kinds of danger to life. In other
+words, it is the bringer of good luck, the rejuvenator of mankind, the
+giver of immortality.
+
+But if the physiological functions of the dragon of the Far East can
+thus be assimilated to those of the Indian Nâga and the Babylonian and
+Egyptian Water God, who is also the king, anatomically he is usually
+represented in a form which can only be regarded as the Babylonian
+composite monster, as a rule stripped of his wings, though not of his
+avian feet.
+
+In America we find preserved in the legends of the Indians an accurate
+and unmistakable description of the Japanese dragon (which is mainly
+Chinese in origin). Even Spinden, who "does not care to dignify by
+refutation the numerous empty theories of ethnic connections between
+Central America" [and in fact America as a whole] "and the Old World,"
+makes the following statement (in the course of a discussion of the
+myths relating to horned snakes in California): "a similar monster,
+possessing antlers, and sometimes wings, is also very common in Algonkin
+and Iroquois legends, although rare in art. As a rule the horned serpent
+is a water spirit and an enemy of the thunder bird. Among the Pueblo
+Indians the horned snake seems to have considerable prestige in
+religious belief.... It lives in the water or in the sky and is
+connected with rain or lightning."[158]
+
+Thus we find stories of a dragon equipped with those distinctive tokens
+of Chinese origin, the deer's antlers; and along with it a snake with
+less specialized horns suggesting the Cerastes of Egypt and Babylonia. A
+horned viper distantly akin to the Cerastes of the Old World does occur
+in California; but its "horns" are so insignificant as to make it highly
+improbable that they could have been in any way responsible for the
+obtrusive rôle played by horns in these widespread American stories.
+But the proof of the foreign origin of these stories is established by
+the horned serpent's achievements.
+
+It "lives in the water or the sky" like its homologue in the Old World,
+and it is "a water spirit". Now neither the Cobra nor the Cerastes is
+actually a water serpent. Their achievements in the myths therefore have
+no possible relationship with the natural habits of the real snakes.
+They are purely arbitrary attributes which they have acquired as the
+result of a peculiar and fortuitous series of historical incidents.
+
+It is therefore utterly inconceivable and in the highest degree
+improbable that this long chain of chance circumstances should have
+happened a second time in America, and have been responsible for the
+creation of the same bizarre story in reference to one of the rarer
+American snakes of a localized distribution, whose horns are mere
+vestiges, which no one but a trained morphologist is likely to have
+noticed or recognized as such.
+
+But the American horned serpent, like its Babylonian and Indian
+homologues, is also the enemy of the thunder bird. Here is a further
+corroboration of the transmission to America of ideas which were the
+chance result of certain historical events in the Old World, which I
+have mentioned in this lecture.
+
+In the figure on page 94 I reproduce a remarkable drawing of an American
+dragon. If the Algonkin Indians had not preserved legends of a winged
+serpent equipped with deer's antlers, no value could be assigned to this
+sketch: but as we know that this particular tribe retains the legend of
+just such a wonder-beast, we are justified in treating this drawing as
+something more than a jest.
+
+"Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. John Criley as occurring near Ava,
+Jackson County, Illinois. The outlines of the characters observed by him
+were drawn from memory and submitted to Mr. Charles S. Mason, of Toledo,
+Ohio, through whom they were furnished to the Bureau of Ethnology.
+Little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of such drawing, but
+from the general appearance of the sketches the originals of which they
+are copies were probably made by one of the middle Algonquin tribes of
+Indians.[159]
+
+"The 'Piasa' rock, as it is generally designated, was referred to by the
+missionary explorer Marquette in 1675. Its situation was immediately
+above the city of Alton, Illinois."
+
+Marquette's remarks are translated by Dr. Francis Parkman as follows:--
+
+"On the flat face of a high rock were painted, in red, black, and green,
+a pair of monsters, each 'as large as a calf, with horns like a deer,
+red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression of
+countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body covered
+with scales; and the tail so long that it passes entirely round the
+body, over the head, and between the legs, ending like that of a fish.'"
+
+Another version, by Davidson and Struve, of the discovery of the
+petroglyph is as follows:--
+
+"Again they (Joliet and Marquette) were floating on the broad bosom of
+the unknown stream. Passing the mouth of the Illinois, they soon fell
+into the shadow of a tall promontory, and with great astonishment beheld
+the representation of two monsters painted on its lofty limestone front.
+According to Marquette, each of these frightful figures had the face of
+a man, the horns of a deer, the beard of a tiger, and the tail of a fish
+so long that it passed around the body, over the head, and between the
+legs. It was an object of Indian worship and greatly impressed the mind
+of the pious missionary with the necessity of substituting for this
+monstrous idolatry the worship of the true God."
+
+A footnote connected with the foregoing quotation gives the following
+description of the same rock:--
+
+"Near the mouth of the Piasa creek, on the bluff, there is a smooth rock
+in a cavernous cleft, under an overhanging cliff, on whose face 50 feet
+from the base, are painted some ancient pictures or hieroglyphics, of
+great interest to the curious. They are placed in a horizontal line from
+east to west, representing men, plants and animals. The paintings,
+though protected from dampness and storms, are in great part destroyed,
+marred by portions of the rock becoming detached and falling down."
+
+Mr. McAdams, of Alton, Illinois, says, "The name Piasa is Indian and
+signifies, in the Illini, the bird which devours men". He furnishes a
+spirited pen-and-ink sketch, 12 by 15 inches in size and purporting to
+represent the ancient painting described by Marquette. On the picture
+is inscribed the following in ink: "Made by Wm. Dennis, April 3rd,
+1825". The date is in both letters and figures. On the top of the
+picture in large letters are the two words, "FLYING DRAGON". This
+picture, which has been kept in the old Gilham family of Madison county
+and bears the evidence of its age, is reproduced as Fig. 3.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Wm. Dennis's Drawing of the "Flying Dragon"
+Depicted on the Rocks at Piasa, Illinois.]
+
+He also publishes another representation with the following remarks:--
+
+"One of the most satisfactory pictures of the Piasa we have ever seen is
+in an old German publication entitled 'The Valley of the Mississippi
+Illustrated. Eighty illustrations from Nature, by H. Lewis, from the
+Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico,' published about the year
+1839 by Arenz & Co., Dusseldorf, Germany. One of the large full-page
+plates in this work gives a fine view of the bluff at Alton, with the
+figure of the Piasa on the face of the rock. It is represented to have
+been taken on the spot by artists from Germany.... In the German picture
+there is shown just behind the rather dim outlines of the second face a
+ragged crevice, as though of a fracture. Part of the bluff's face might
+have fallen and thus nearly destroyed one of the monsters, for in later
+years writers speak of but one figure. The whole face of the bluff was
+quarried away in 1846-47."
+
+The close agreement of this account with that of the Chinese and
+Japanese dragon at once arrests attention. The anatomical peculiarities
+are so extraordinary that if Père Marquette's account is trustworthy
+there is no longer any room for doubt of the Chinese or Japanese
+derivation of this composite creature. If the account is not accepted we
+will be driven, not only to attribute to the pious seventeenth-century
+missionary serious dishonesty or culpable gullibility, but also to
+credit him with a remarkably precise knowledge of Mongolian archæology.
+When Algonkin legends are recalled, however, I think we are bound to
+accept the missionary's account as substantially accurate.
+
+Minns claims that representations of the dragon are unknown in China
+before the Han dynasty. But the legend of the dragon is much more
+ancient. The evidence has been given in full by de Visser.[160]
+
+He tells us that the earliest reference is found in the _Yih King_, and
+shows that the dragon was "a water animal akin to the snake, which
+[used] to sleep in pools during winter and arises in the spring." "It is
+the god of thunder, who brings good crops when he appears in the rice
+fields (as rain) or in the sky (as dark and yellow clouds), in other
+words when he makes the rain fertilize the ground" (p. 38).
+
+In the _Shu King_ there is a reference to the dragon as one of the
+symbolic figures painted on the upper garment of the emperor Hwang Ti
+(who according to the Chinese legends, which of course are not above
+reproach, reigned in the twenty-seventh century B.C.). In this ancient
+literature there are numerous references to the dragon, and not merely
+to the legends, _but also to representations_ of the benign monster on
+garments, banners and metal tablets.[161] "The ancient texts ... are
+short, but sufficient to give us the main conceptions of Old China with
+regard to the dragon. In those early days [just as at present] he was
+the god of water, thunder, clouds, and rain, the harbinger of blessings,
+and the symbol of holy men. As the emperors are the holy beings on
+earth, the idea of the dragon being the symbol of Imperial power is
+based upon this ancient conception" (_op. cit._, p. 42).
+
+In the fifth appendix to the _Yih King_, which has been ascribed to
+Confucius, (i.e. three centuries earlier than the Han dynasty mentioned
+by Mr. Minns), it is stated that "_K'ien_ (Heaven) is a horse, _Kw'un_
+(Earth) is a cow, _Chen (Thunder) is a dragon_." (_op. cit._, p.
+37).[162]
+
+The philosopher Hwai Nan Tsze (who died 122 B.C.) declared that the
+dragon is the origin of all creatures, winged, hairy, scaly, and
+mailed; and he propounded a scheme of evolution (de Visser, p. 65). He
+seems to have tried to explain away the fact that he had never actually
+witnessed the dragon performing some of the remarkable feats attributed
+to it: "Mankind cannot see the dragons rise: wind and rain assist them
+to ascend to a great height" (_op. cit._, p. 65). Confucius also is
+credited with the frankness of a similar confession: "As to the dragon,
+we cannot understand his riding on the wind and clouds and his ascending
+to the sky. To-day I saw Lao Tsze; is he not like the dragon?" (p. 65).
+
+This does not necessarily mean that these learned men were sceptical of
+the beliefs which tradition had forged in their minds, but that the
+dragon had the power of hiding itself in a cloak of invisibility, just
+as clouds (in which the Chinese saw dragons) could be dissipated in the
+sky. The belief in these powers of the dragon was as sincere as that of
+learned men of other countries in the beneficent attributes which
+tradition had taught them to assign to their particular deities. In the
+passages I have quoted the Chinese scholars were presumably attempting
+to bridge the gap between the ideas inculcated by faith and the evidence
+of their senses, in much the same sort of spirit as, for instance,
+actuated Dean Buckland last century, when he claimed that the glacial
+deposits of this country afforded evidence in confirmation of the Deluge
+described in the Book of Genesis.
+
+The tiger and the dragon, the gods of wind and water, are the keystones
+of the doctrine called _fung shui_, which Professor de Groot has
+described in detail.[163]
+
+He describes it "as a quasi-scientific system, supposed to teach men
+where and how to build graves, temples, and dwellings, in order that the
+dead, the gods, and the living may be located therein exclusively, or as
+far as possible, under the auspicious influences of Nature". The dragon
+plays a most important part in this system, being "the chief spirit of
+water and rain, and at the same time representing one of the four
+quarters of heaven (i.e. the East, called the Azure Dragon, and the
+first of the seasons, spring)." The word Dragon comprises the high
+grounds in general, and the water streams which have their sources
+therein or wind their way through them.[164]
+
+The attributes thus assigned to the Blue Dragon, his control of water
+and streams, his dwelling on high mountains whence they spring, and his
+association with the East, will be seen to reveal his identity with the
+so-called "god B" of American archæologists, the elephant-headed god
+_Tlaloc_ of the Aztecs, _Chac_ of the Mayas, whose more direct parent
+was Indra.
+
+It is of interest to note that, according to Gerini,[165] the word
+_Nâga_ denotes not only a snake but also an elephant. Both the Chinese
+dragon and the Mexican elephant-god are thus linked with the Nâga, who
+is identified both with Indra himself and Indra's enemy Vritra. This is
+another instance of those remarkable contradictions that one meets at
+every step in pursuing the dragon. In the confusion resulting from the
+blending of hostile tribes and diverse cultures the Aryan deity who,
+both for religious and political reasons, is the enemy of the Nâgas
+becomes himself identified with a Nâga!
+
+I have already called attention (_Nature_, Jan. 27, 1916) to the fact
+that the graphic form of representation of the American elephant-headed
+god was derived from Indonesian pictures of the _makara_. In India
+itself the _makara_ (see Fig. 14) is represented in a great variety of
+forms, most of which are prototypes of different kinds of dragons. Hence
+the homology of the elephant-headed god with the other dragons is
+further established and shown to be genetically related to the evolution
+of the protean manifestations of the dragon's form.
+
+The dragon in China is "the heavenly giver of fertilizing rain" (_op.
+cit._, p. 36). In the _Shu King_ "the emblematic figures of the ancients
+are given as the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountain, the _dragon_,
+and the variegated animals (pheasants) which are depicted on the upper
+sacrificial garment of the Emperor" (p. 39). In the _Li Ki_ the unicorn,
+the phoenix, the tortoise, and the dragon are called the four _ling_
+(p. 39), which de Visser translates "spiritual beings," creatures with
+enormously strong vital spirit. The dragon possesses the most _ling_ of
+all creatures (p. 64). The tiger is the deadly enemy of the dragon
+(p. 42).
+
+The dragon sheds a brilliant light at night (p. 44), usually from his
+glittering eyes. He is the giver of omens (p. 45), good and bad, rains
+and floods. The dragon-horse is a vital spirit of Heaven and Earth (p.
+58) and also of river water: it has the tail of a huge serpent.
+
+The ecclesiastical vestments of the Wu-ist priests are endowed with
+magical properties which are considered to enable the wearer to control
+the order of the world, to avert unseasonable and calamitous events,
+such as drought, untimely and superabundant rainfall, and eclipses.
+These powers are conferred by the decoration upon the dress. Upon the
+back of the chief vestment the representation of a range of mountains is
+embroidered as a symbol of the world: on each side (the right and left)
+of it a large dragon arises above the billows to represent the
+fertilizing rain. They are surrounded by gold-thread figures
+representing clouds and spirals typifying rolling thunder.[166]
+
+A ball, sometimes with a spiral decoration, is commonly represented in
+front of the Chinese dragon. The Chinese writer Koh Hung tells us that
+"a spiral denotes the rolling of thunder from which issues a flash of
+lightning".[167] De Visser discusses this question at some length and
+refers to Hirth's claim that the Chinese triquetrum, i.e., the
+well-known three-comma shaped figure, the Japanese _mitsu-tomoe_, the
+ancient spiral, represents thunder also.[168] Before discussing this
+question, which involves the consideration of the almost world-wide
+belief in a thunder-weapon and its relationship to the spiral ornament,
+the octopus, the pearl, the swastika and triskele, let us examine
+further the problem of the dragon's ball (see Fig. 15).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Photograph of a Chinese Embroidery in the
+Manchester School of Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon
+Symbol.]
+
+De Groot regards the dragon as a thunder-god and therefore, like Hirth,
+assumes that the supposed thunder-ball is being _belched forth_ and not
+being _swallowed_ by the dragon. But de Visser, as the result of a
+conversation with Mr. Kramp and the study of a Chinese picture in
+Blacker's "Chats on Oriental China" (1908, p. 54), puts forward the
+suggestion that the ball is the moon or the pearl-moon which the dragon
+is swallowing, thereby causing the fertilizing rain. The Chinese
+themselves refer to the ball as the "precious pearl," which, under the
+influence of Buddhism in China, was identified with "the pearl that
+grants all desires" and is under the special protection of the Nâga,
+i.e., the dragon. Arising out of this de Visser puts the conundrum: "Was
+the ball originally also a pearl, not of Buddhism but of Taoism?"
+
+In reply to this question I may call attention to the fact that the
+germs of civilization were first planted in China by people strongly
+imbued with the belief that the pearl was the quintessence of
+life-giving and prosperity-conferring powers:[169] it was not only
+identified with the moon, but also was itself a particle of
+moon-substance which fell as dew into the gaping oyster. It was the very
+people who held such views about pearls and gold who, when searching for
+alluvial gold and fresh-water pearls in Turkestan, were responsible for
+transferring these same life-giving properties to jade; and the magical
+value thus attached to jade was the nucleus, so to speak, around which
+the earliest civilization of China was crystallized.
+
+As we shall see, in the discussion of the thunder-weapon (p. 121), the
+luminous pearl, which was believed to have fallen from the sky, was
+homologized with the thunderbolt, with the functions of which its own
+magical properties were assimilated.
+
+Kramp called de Visser's attention to the fact that the Chinese
+hieroglyphic character for the dragon's ball is compounded of the signs
+for _jewel_ and _moon_, which is also given in a Japanese lexicon as
+_divine pearl_, the pearl of the bright moon.
+
+"When the clouds approached and covered the moon, the ancient Chinese
+may have thought that the dragons had seized and swallowed this pearl,
+more brilliant than all the pearls of the sea" (de Visser, p. 108).
+
+The difficulty de Visser finds in regarding his own theory as wholly
+satisfactory is, first, the red colour of the ball, and secondly, the
+spiral pattern upon it. He explains the colour as possibly an attempt to
+represent the pearl's lustre. But de Visser seems to have overlooked the
+fact that red and rose-coloured pearls obtained from the conch-shell
+were used in China and Japan.[170]
+
+"The spiral is much used in delineating the sacred pearls of Buddhism,
+so that it might have served also to design those of Taoism; although I
+must acknowledge that the spiral of the Buddhist pearl goes upward,
+while the spiral of the dragon is flat" (p. 103).
+
+De Visser sums up the whole argument in these words:--
+
+"These are, however, all mere suppositions. The only facts we know are:
+the eager attitude of the dragons, ready to grasp and swallow the ball;
+the ideas of the Chinese themselves as to the ball being the moon or a
+pearl; the existence of a kind of sacred "moon-pearl"; the red colour of
+the ball, its emitting flames and its spiral-like form. As the three
+last facts are in favour of the thunder theory, I should be inclined to
+prefer the latter. Yet I am convinced that the dragons do not _belch
+out_ the thunder. If their trying to _grasp_ or _swallow_ the thunder
+could be explained, I should immediately accept the theory concerning
+the thunder-spiral, especially on account of the flames it emits. But I
+do not see the reason why the god of thunder should persecute thunder
+itself. Therefore, after having given the above facts that the reader
+may take them into consideration, I feel obliged to say: 'non liquet'"
+(p. 108).
+
+It does not seem to have occurred to the distinguished Dutch scholar,
+who has so lucidly put the issue before us, that his demonstration of
+the fact of the ball being the pearl-moon about to be swallowed by the
+dragon does not preclude it being also confused with the thunder.
+Elsewhere in this volume I have referred to the origin of the spiral
+symbolism and have shown that it became associated with the pearl
+_before_ it became the symbol of thunder. The pearl-association in fact
+was one of the links in the chain of events which made the pearl and
+the spirally-coiled arm of the octopus the sign of thunder.[171]
+
+It seems quite clear to me that de Visser's pearl-moon theory is the
+true interpretation. But when the pearl-ball was provided with the
+spiral, painted red, and given flames to represent its power of emitting
+light and shining by night, the fact of the spiral ornamentation and of
+the pearl being one of the surrogates of the thunder-weapon was
+rationalized into an identification of the ball with thunder and the
+light it was emitting as lightning. It is, of course, quite irrational
+for a thunder-god to swallow his own thunder: but popular
+interpretations of subtle symbolism, the true explanation of which is
+deeply buried in the history of the distant past, are rarely logical and
+almost invariably irrelevant.
+
+In his account of the state of Brahmanism in India after the times of
+the two earlier Vedas, Professor Hopkins[172] throws light upon the real
+significance of the ball in the dragon-symbolism. "Old legends are
+varied. The victory over Vritra is now expounded thus: Indra, who slays
+Vritra, is the sun. Vritra is the moon, who swims into the sun's mouth
+on the night of the new moon. The sun rises after swallowing him, and
+the moon is invisible because he is swallowed. The sun vomits out the
+moon, and the latter is then seen in the west, and increases again, to
+serve the sun as food. In another passage it is said that when the moon
+is invisible he is hiding in plants and waters."
+
+This seems to clear away any doubt as to the significance of the ball.
+It is the pearl-moon, which is both swallowed and vomited by the dragon.
+
+The snake takes a more obtrusive part in the Japanese than in the
+Chinese dragon and it frequently manifests itself as a god of the sea.
+The old Japanese sea-gods were often female water-snakes. The cultural
+influences which reached Japan from the south by way of Indonesia--many
+centuries before the coming of Buddhism--naturally emphasized the
+serpent form of the dragon and its connexion with the ocean.
+
+But the river-gods, or "water-fathers," were real four-footed dragons
+identified with the dragon-kings of Chinese myth, but at the same time
+were strictly homologous with the Nâga Rajas or cobra-kings of India.
+
+The Japanese "Sea Lord" or "Sea Snake" was also called
+"Abundant-Pearl-Prince," who had a magnificent palace at the bottom of
+the sea. His daughter ("Abundant-Pearl-Princess") married a youth whom
+she observed, reflected in the well, sitting on a cassia tree near the
+castle gate. Ashamed at his presence at her lying-in she was changed
+into a _wani_ or crocodile (de Visser, p. 139), elsewhere described as a
+dragon (_makara_). De Visser gives it as his opinion that the _wani_ is
+"an old Japanese dragon, or serpent-shaped sea-god, and the legend is an
+ancient Japanese tale, dressed in an Indian garb by later generations"
+(p. 140). He is arguing that the Japanese dragon existed long before
+Japan came under Indian influence. But he ignores the fact that at a
+very early date both India and China were diversely influenced by
+Babylonia, the great breeding place of dragons; and, secondly, that
+Japan was influenced by Indonesia, and through it by the West, for many
+centuries before the arrival of such later Indian legends as those
+relating to the palace under the sea, the castle gate and the cassia
+tree. As Aston (quoted by de Visser) remarks, all these incidents and
+also the well that serves as a mirror, "form a combination not unknown
+to European folk-lore".
+
+After de Visser had given his own views, he modified them (on p. 141)
+when he learned that essentially the same dragon-stories had been
+recorded in the Kei Islands and Minahassa (Celebes). In the light of
+this new information he frankly admits that "the resemblance of several
+features of this myth with the Japanese one is so striking, that we may
+be sure that the latter is of Indonesian origin." He goes further when
+he recognizes that "probably the foreign invaders, who in prehistoric
+times conquered Japan, came from Indonesia, and brought the myth with
+them" (p. 141). The evidence recently brought together by W. J. Perry in
+his book "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia" makes it certain that the
+people of Indonesia in turn got it from the West.
+
+An old painting reproduced by F. W. K. Müller,[173] who called de
+Visser's attention to these interesting stories, shows Hohodemi (the
+youth on the cassia tree who married the princess) returning home
+mounted on the back of a crocodile, like the Indian Varuna upon the
+_makara_ in a drawing reproduced by the late Sir George Birdwood.[174]
+
+The _wani_ or crocodile thus introduced from India, _via_ Indonesia, is
+really the Chinese and Japanese dragon, as Aston has claimed. Aston
+refers to Japanese pictures in which the Abundant-Pearl-Prince and his
+daughter are represented with dragon's heads appearing over their human
+ones, but in the old Indonesian version they maintain their forms as
+_wani_ or crocodiles.
+
+The dragon's head appearing over a human one is quite an Indian motive,
+transferred to China and from there to Korea and Japan (de Visser, p.
+142), and, I may add, also to America.
+
+[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been printed, the Curator of the
+Liverpool Museum has kindly called my attention to a remarkable series
+of Maya remains in the collection under his care, which were obtained in
+the course of excavations made by Mr. T. W. F. Gann, M.R.C.S., an
+officer in the Medical Service of British Honduras (see his account of
+the excavations in Part II. of the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of
+Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution of Washington). Among them is a
+pottery figure of a _wani_ or _makara_ in the form of an alligator,
+equipped with diminutive deer's horns (like the dragon of Eastern Asia);
+and its skin is studded with circular elevations, presumably meant to
+represent the spots upon the star-spangled "Celestial Stag" of the
+Aryans (p. 130). As in the Japanese pictures mentioned by Aston, a human
+head is seen emerging from the creature's throat. It affords a most
+definite and convincing demonstration of the sources of American
+culture.]
+
+The jewels of flood and ebb in the Japanese legends consist of the
+pearls of flood and ebb obtained from the dragon's palace at the bottom
+of the sea. By their aid storms and floods could be created to destroy
+enemies or calm to secure safety for friends. Such stories are the
+logical result of the identification of pearls with the moon, the
+influence of which upon the tides was probably one of the circumstances
+which was responsible for bringing the moon into the circle of the great
+scientific theory of the life-giving powers of water. This in turn
+played a great, if not decisive, part in originating the earliest belief
+in a sky world, or heaven.
+
+
+[137: "Precolumbian Representations of the Elephant in America,"
+_Nature_, Nov. 25, 1915, p. 340; Dec. 16, 1915, p. 425; and Jan. 27,
+1916, p. 593.]
+
+[138: "History of Melanesian Society," Cambridge, 1914.]
+
+[139: H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archéologie Américaine," 1912, p. 319.]
+
+[140: "Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts," _Papers of
+the Peabody Museum_, vol. iv., 1904.]
+
+[141: _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Bd. 40, 1908, p. 716.]
+
+[142: "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Handschriften,"
+_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Bd. 42, 1910, pp. 75 and 77. In the
+remarkable series of drawings from Maya and Aztec sources reproduced by
+Seler in his articles in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, the _Peabody
+Museum Papers_, and his monograph on the _Codex Vaticanus_, not only is
+practically every episode of the dragon-myth of the Old World
+graphically depicted, but also every phase and incident of the legends
+from India (and Babylonia, Egypt and the Ægean) that contributed to the
+building-up of the myth.]
+
+[143: Compare Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 94.]
+
+[144: Herbert J. Spinden, "Maya Art," p. 62.]
+
+[145: Seler, "Codex Vaticanus," Figs. 299-304.]
+
+[146: See, for example, F. W. K. Müller, "Nang," _Int. Arch. f.
+Ethnolog._, 1894, Suppl. zu Bd. vii., Taf. vii., where the mask of
+_Ravana_ (a late surrogate of Indra in the _Ramayana_) reveals a
+survival of the prototype of the Mexican designs.]
+
+[147: Joyce, _op. cit._, p. 37.]
+
+[148: For the incident of the stealing of the soma by Garuda, who in
+this legend is the representative of Indra, see Hopkins, "Religions of
+India," pp. 360-61.]
+
+[149: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
+America," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1916, Fig. 4, "The
+Serpent-Bird".]
+
+[150: Probably from about 300 B.C. to 700 A.D.]
+
+[151: For information concerning Ea's "Goat-Fish," which can truly be
+called the "Father of Dragons," as well as the prototype of the Indian
+_makara_, the mermaid, the "sea-serpent," the "dolphin of Aphrodite,"
+and of most composite sea-monsters, see W. H. Ward's "Seal Cylinders of
+Western Asia," pp. 382 _et seq._ and 399 _et seq._; and especially the
+detailed reports in de Morgan's _Mémoires_ (Délégation en Perse).]
+
+[152: _Nature, op. cit., supra_.]
+
+[153: Juan Martinez Hernández, "La Creación del Mundo segun los Mayas,"
+Páginas Inéditas del MS. De Chumayel, _International Congress of
+Americanists, Proceedings of the XVIII. Session_, London, 1912, p. 164.]
+
+[154: From the folk-lore of America I have collected many interesting
+variants of the Indra story and other legends (and artistic designs) of
+the elephant. I hope to publish these in the near future.]
+
+[155: _Peabody Museum Papers_, 1901.]
+
+[156: See, for example, Wilfrid Jackson's "Shells as Evidence of the
+Migration of Early Culture," pp. 50-66.]
+
+[157: "Notes on the Maoris, etc.," _Journal of the Ethnological
+Society_, vol. i., 1869, p. 368.]
+
+[158: _Op. cit._, p. 231.]
+
+[159: I quote this and the following paragraphs verbatim from Garrick
+Mallery, "Picture Writing of the American Indians," _10th Annual Report,
+1888-89, Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institute)_. p. 78.]
+
+[160: _Op. cit._, pp. 35 _et seq._]
+
+[161: See de Visser, p. 41.]
+
+[162: There can be no doubt that the Chinese dragon is the descendant of
+the early Babylonian monster, and that the inspiration to create it
+probably reached Shensi during the third millennium B.C. by the route
+indicated in my "Incense and Libations" (_Bull. John Rylands Library_,
+vol. iv., No. 2, p. 239). Some centuries later the Indian dragon reached
+the Far East via Indonesia and mingled with his Babylonian cousin in
+Japan and China.]
+
+[163: "Religious System of China," vol. iii., chap, xii., pp. 936-1056.]
+
+[164: This paragraph is taken almost verbatim from de Visser, _op. cit._
+pp. 59 and 60.]
+
+[165: G. E. Gerini, "Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia,"
+_Asiatic Society's Monographs_, No. 1, 1909, p. 146.]
+
+[166: De Visser, p. 102, and de Groot, vi., p. 1265, Plate XVIII. The
+reference to "a range of mountains ... as a symbol of the world" recalls
+the Egyptian representation of the eastern horizon as two hills between
+which Hathor or her son arises (see Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol.
+ii., p. 101; and compare Griffith's "Hieroglyphs," p. 30): the same
+conception was adopted in Mesopotamia (see Ward, "Seal Cylinders of
+Western Asia," fig. 412, p. 156) and in the Mediterranean (see Evans,
+"Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 37 _et seq._). It is a remarkable
+fact that Sir Arthur Evans, who, upon p. 64 of his memoir, reproduces
+two drawings of the Egyptian "horizon" supporting the sun's disk, should
+have failed to recognize in it the prototype of what he calls "the horns
+of consecration". Even if the confusion of the "horizon" with a cow's
+horns was very ancient (for the horns of the Divine Cow supporting the
+moon made this inevitable), this rationalization should not blind us as
+to the real origin of the idea, which is preserved in the ancient
+Egyptian, Babylonian, Cretan and Chinese pictures (see Fig. 26, facing
+p. 188).]
+
+[167: De Visser, p. 103.]
+
+[168: P. 104. The Chinese triquetrum has a circle in the centre and five
+or eight commas.]
+
+[169: See on this my paper "The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization,"
+now being published in the _Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester
+Literary and Philosophical Society_.]
+
+[170: Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early
+Culture," p. 106.]
+
+[171: I shall discuss this more fully in "The Birth of Aphrodite".]
+
+[172: "Religions of India," p. 197.]
+
+[173: "Mythe der Kei-Insulaner und Verwandtes," _Zeitsch. f.
+Ethnologie_, vol. xxv., 1893, pp. 533 _et seq._]
+
+[174: See Fig. 14.]
+
+
+The Evolution of the Dragon.
+
+The American and Indonesian dragons can be referred back primarily to
+India, the Chinese and Japanese varieties to India and Babylonia. The
+dragons of Europe can be traced through Greek channels to the same
+ultimate source. But the cruder dragons of Africa are derived either
+from Egypt, from the Ægean, or from India. All dragons that strictly
+conform to the conventional idea of what such a wonder-beast should be
+can be shown to be sprung from the fertile imagination of ancient Sumer,
+the "great breeding place of monsters" (Minns).
+
+But the history of the dragon's evolution and transmission to other
+countries is full of complexities; and the dragon-myth is made up of
+many episodes, some of which were not derived from Babylonia.
+
+In Egypt we do not find the characteristic dragon and dragon-story. Yet
+all of the ingredients out of which both the monster and the legends are
+compounded have been preserved in Egypt, and in perhaps a more primitive
+and less altered form than elsewhere. Hence, if Egypt does not provide
+dragons for us to dissect, it does supply us with the evidence without
+which the dragon's evolution would be quite unintelligible.
+
+Egyptian literature affords a clearer insight into the development of
+the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun God than we can
+obtain from any other writings of the origin of this fundamental stratum
+of deities. And in the three legends: The Destruction of Mankind, The
+Story of the Winged Disk, and The Conflict between Horus and Set, it has
+preserved the germs of the great Dragon Saga. Babylonian literature has
+shown us how this raw material was worked up into the definite and
+familiar story, as well as how the features of a variety of animals were
+blended to form the composite monster. India and Greece, as well as more
+distant parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia, and even America have
+preserved many details that have been lost in the real home of the
+monster.
+
+In the earliest literature that has come down to us from antiquity a
+clear account is given of the original attributes of Osiris. "Horus
+comes, he recognizes his father in thee [Osiris], youthful in thy name
+of 'Fresh Water'." "Thou art indeed the Nile, great on the fields at the
+beginning of the seasons; gods and men live by the moisture that is in
+thee." He is also identified with the inundation of the river. "It is
+Unis [the dead king identified with Osiris] who inundates the land." He
+also brings the wind and guides it. It is the breath of life which
+raises the king from the dead as an Osiris. The wine-press god comes to
+Osiris bearing wine-juice and the great god becomes "Lord of the
+overflowing wine": he is also identified with barley and with the beer
+made from it. Certain trees also are personifications of the god.
+
+But Osiris was regarded not only as the waters upon earth, the rivers
+and streams, the moisture in the soil and in the bodies of animals and
+plants, but also as "the waters of life that are in the sky".
+
+"As Osiris was identified with the waters of earth and sky, he may even
+become the sea and the ocean itself. We find him addressed thus: 'Thou
+art great, thou art green, in thy name of Great Green (Sea); lo, thou
+art round as the Great Circle (Okeanos); lo, thou art turned about, thou
+art round as the circle that encircles the Haunebu (Ægeans)."
+
+This series of interesting extracts from Professor Breasted's "Religion
+and Thought in Ancient Egypt" (pp. 18-26) gives the earliest Egyptians'
+own ideas of the attributes of Osiris. The Babylonians regarded Ea in
+almost precisely the same light and endowed him with identical powers.
+But there is an important and significant difference between Osiris and
+Ea. The former was usually represented as a man, that is, as a dead
+king, whereas Ea was represented as a man wearing a fish-skin, as a
+fish, or as the composite monster with a fish's body and tail, which was
+the prototype of the Indian _makara_ and "the father of dragons".
+
+In attempting to understand the creation of the dragon it is important
+to remember that, although Osiris and Ea were regarded primarily as
+personifications of the beneficent life-giving powers of water, as the
+bringers of fertility to the soil and the givers of life and immortality
+to living creatures, they were also identified with the destructive
+forces of water, by which men were drowned or their welfare affected in
+various ways by storms of sea and wind.
+
+Thus Osiris or the fish-god Ea could destroy mankind. In other words the
+fish-dragon, or the composite monster formed of a fish and an antelope,
+could represent the destructive forces of wind and water. Thus even the
+malignant dragon can be the homologue of the usually beneficent gods
+Osiris and Ea, and their Aryan surrogates Mazdah and Varuna.
+
+By a somewhat analogous process of archaic rationalization the sons
+respectively of Osiris and Ea, the sun-gods Horus and Marduk, acquired a
+similarly confused reputation. Although their outstanding achievements
+were the overcoming of the powers of evil, and, as the givers of light,
+conquering darkness, their character as warriors made them also powers
+of destruction. The falcon of Horus thus became also a symbol of chaos,
+and as the thunder-bird became the most obtrusive feature in the weird
+anatomy of the composite Mesopotamian dragon and his more modern
+bird-footed brood, which ranges from Western Europe to the Far East of
+Asia and America.
+
+That the sun-god derived his functions directly or indirectly from
+Osiris and Hathor is shown by his most primitive attributes, for in "the
+earliest sun-temples at Abusir, he appears as the source of life and
+increase". "Men said of him: 'Thou hast driven away the storm, and hast
+expelled the rain, and hast broken up the clouds'." Horus was in fact
+the son of Osiris and Hathor, from whom he derived his attributes. The
+invention of the sun-god was not, as most scholars pretend, an attempt
+to give direct expression to the fact that the sun is the source of
+fertility. That is a discovery of modern science. The sun-god acquired
+his attributes secondarily (and for definite historical reasons) from
+his parents, who were responsible for his birth.
+
+The quotation from the Pyramid Texts is of special interest as an
+illustration of one of the results of the assimilation of the idea of
+Osiris as the controller of water with that of a sky-heaven and a
+sun-god. The sun-god's powers are rationalized so as to bring them
+into conformity with the earliest conception of a god as a power
+controlling water.
+
+Breasted attempts to interpret the statements concerning the storm and
+rain-clouds as references to the enemies of the sun, who steal the
+sky-god's eye, i.e., obscure the sun or moon.[175] The incident of
+Horus's loss of an eye, which looms so large in Egyptian legends, is
+possibly more closely related to the earliest attempts at explaining
+eclipses of the sun and moon, the "eyes" of the sky. The obscuring of
+the sun and moon by clouds is a matter of little significance to the
+Egyptian: but the modern Egyptian _fellah_, and no doubt his
+predecessors also, regard eclipses with much concern. Such events
+excite great alarm, for the peasants consider them as actual combats
+between the powers of good and evil.
+
+In other countries where rain is a blessing and not, as in Egypt, merely
+an unwelcome inconvenience, the clouds play a much more prominent part
+in the popular beliefs. In the Rig-Veda the power that holds up the
+clouds is evil: as an elaboration of the ancient Egyptian conception of
+the sky as a Divine Cow, the Great Mother, the Aryan Indians regarded
+the clouds as a herd of cattle which the Vedic warrior-god Indra (who in
+this respect is the homologue of the Egyptian warrior Horus) stole from
+the powers of evil and bestowed upon mankind. In other words, like
+Horus, he broke up the clouds and brought rain.
+
+The antithesis between the two aspects of the character of these ancient
+deities is most pronounced in the case of the other member of this most
+primitive Trinity, the Great Mother. She was the great beneficent giver
+of life, but also the controller of life, which implies that she was the
+death-dealer. But this evil aspect of her character developed only under
+the stress of a peculiar dilemma in which she was placed. On a famous
+occasion in the very remote past the great Giver of Life was summoned to
+rejuvenate the ageing king. The only elixir of life that was known to
+the pharmacopoeia of the times was human blood: but to obtain this
+life-blood the Giver of Life was compelled to slaughter mankind. She
+thus became the destroyer of mankind in her lioness _avatar_ as Sekhet.
+
+The earliest known pictorial representation of the dragon (Fig. 1)
+consists of the forepart of the sun-god's falcon or eagle united with
+the hindpart of the mother-goddess's lioness. The student of modern
+heraldry would not regard this as a dragon at all, but merely a gryphon
+or griffin. A recent writer on heraldry has complained that, "in spite
+of frequent corrections, this creature is persistently confused in the
+popular mind with the _dragon_, which is even more purely
+imaginary."[176] But the investigator of the early history of these
+wonder-beasts is compelled, even at the risk of incurring the herald's
+censure, to regard the gryphon as one of the earliest known tentative
+efforts at dragon-making. But though the fish, the falcon or eagle, and
+the composite eagle-lion monster are early known pictorial
+representations of the dragon, good or bad, the serpent is probably more
+ancient still (Fig. 2).
+
+The earliest form assumed by the power of evil was the serpent: but it
+is important to remember that, as each of the primary deities can be a
+power of either good or evil, any of the animals representing them can
+symbolize either aspect. Though Hathor in her cow manifestation is
+usually benevolent and as a lioness a power of destruction, the cow may
+become a demon in certain cases and the lioness a kindly creature. The
+falcon of Horus (or its representatives, eagle, hawk, woodpecker, dove,
+redbreast, etc) may be either good or bad: so also the gazelle (antelope
+or deer), the crocodile, the fish, or any of the menagerie of creatures
+that enter into the composition of good or bad demons.
+
+"The Nâgas are semi-divine serpents which very often assume human shapes
+and whose kings live with their retinues in the utmost luxury in their
+magnificent abodes at the bottom of the sea or in rivers or lakes. When
+leaving the Nâga world they are in constant danger of being grasped and
+killed by the gigantic semi-divine birds, the Garudas, which also change
+themselves into men" (de Visser, p. 7).
+
+"The Nâgas are depicted in three forms: common snakes, guarding jewels;
+human beings with four snakes in their necks; and winged sea-dragons,
+the upper part of the body human, but with a horned, ox-like head, the
+lower part of the body that of a coiling-dragon. Here we find a link
+between the snake of ancient India and the four-legged Chinese dragon"
+(p. 6), hidden in the clouds, which the dragon himself emitted, like a
+modern battleship, for the purpose of rendering himself invisible. In
+other words, the rain clouds were the dragon's breath. The fertilizing
+rain was thus in fact the vital essence of the dragon, being both water
+and the breath of life.
+
+"We find the Nâga king not only in the possession of numberless jewels
+and beautiful girls, but also of mighty charms, bestowing supernatural
+vision and hearing. The palaces of the Nâga kings are always described
+as extremely splendid, abounding with gold and silver and precious
+stones, and the Nâga women, when appearing in human shape, were
+beautiful beyond description" (p. 9).
+
+De Visser records the story of an evil Nâga protecting a big tree that
+grew in a pond, who failed to emit clouds and thunder when the tree was
+cut down, because he was neither despised nor wounded: for his body
+became the support of the stupa and the tree became a beam of the
+stupa (p. 16). This aspect of the Nâga as a tree-demon is rare in
+India, but common in China and Japan. It seems to be identical with the
+Mediterranean conception of the pillar of wood or stone, which is both a
+representative of the Great Mother and the chief support of a
+temple.[177]
+
+In the magnificent city that king Yacahketu saw, when he dived into
+the sea, "wishing trees that granted every desire" were among the
+objects that met his vision. There were also palaces of precious stones
+and gardens and tanks, and, of course, beautiful maidens (de Visser, p.
+20).
+
+In the Far Eastern stories it is interesting to note the antagonism of
+the dragon to the tiger, when we recall that the lioness-form of Hathor
+was the prototype of the earliest malevolent dragon.
+
+There are five sorts of dragons: serpent-dragons; lizard-dragons;
+fish-dragons; elephant-dragons; and toad-dragons (de Visser, p. 23).
+
+"According to de Groot, the blue colour is chosen in China because this
+is the colour of the East, from where the rain must come; this quarter
+is represented by the Azure Dragon, the highest in rank among all the
+dragons. We have seen, however, that the original sutra already
+prescribed to use the blue colour and to face the East.... Indra, the
+rain-god, is the patron of the East, and Indra-colour is _nila_, dark
+blue or rather blue-black, the regular epithet of the rain clouds. If
+the priest had not to face the East but the West, this would agree with
+the fact that the Nâgas were said to live in the western quarter and
+that in India the West corresponds with the blue colour. Facing the
+East, however, seems to point to an old rain ceremony in which Indra was
+invoked to raise the blue-black clouds" (de Visser, pp. 30 and 31).
+
+
+[175: Breasted, _op. cit._, p. 11.]
+
+[176: G. W. Eve, "Decorative Heraldry," 1897, p. 35.]
+
+[177: Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 88 _et
+seq._]
+
+
+The Dragon Myth.
+
+The most important and fundamental legend in the whole history of
+mythology is the story of the "Destruction of Mankind". "It was
+discovered, translated, and commented upon by Naville ("La Destruction
+des hommes par les Dieux," in the _Transactions of the Society of
+Biblical Archæology_, vol. iv., pp. 1-19, reproducing Hay's copies made
+at the beginning of [the nineteenth] century; and "L'Inscription de la
+Destruction des hommes dans le tombeau de Ramsés III," in the
+_Transactions_, vol. viii., pp. 412-20); afterwards published anew by
+Herr von Bergmann (_Hieroglyphische Inscriften_, pls. lxxv.-lxxxii., and
+pp. 55, 56); completely translated by Brugsch (_Die neue Weltordnung
+nach Vernichtung des sündigen Menschengeschlechts nach einer
+Altägyptischen Ueberlieferung_, 1881); and partly translated by Lauth
+(_Aus Ægyptens Vorzeit_, pp. 70-81) and by Lefèbure ("Une chapitre de la
+chronique solaire," in the _Zeitschrift für Ægyptische Sprache_, 1883,
+pp 32, 33)".[178]
+
+Important commentaries upon this story have been published also by
+Brugsch and Gauthier.[179]
+
+As the really important features of the story consist of the incoherent
+and contradictory details, and it would take up too much space to
+reproduce the whole legend here, I must refer the reader to Maspero's
+account of it (_op. cit._), or to the versions given by Erman in his
+"Life in Ancient Egypt" (p. 267, from which I quote) or Budge in "The
+Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 388.
+
+Although the story as we know it was not written down until the time of
+Seti I (_circa_ 1300 B.C.), it is very old and had been circulating as a
+popular legend for more than twenty centuries before that time. The
+narrative itself tells its own story because it is composed of many
+contradictory interpretations of the same incidents flung together in a
+highly confused and incoherent form.
+
+The other legends to which I shall have constantly to refer are "The
+Saga of the Winged Disk," "The Feud between Horus and Set," "The
+Stealing of Re's Name by Isis," and a series of later variants and
+confusions of these stories.[180]
+
+The Egyptian legends cannot be fully appreciated unless they are in
+conjunction with those of Babylonia and Assyria,[181] the mythology of
+Greece,[182] Persia,[183] India,[184] China,[185] Indonesia,[186] and
+America.[187]
+
+For it will be found that essentially the same stream of legends was
+flowing in all these countries, and that the scribes and painters have
+caught and preserved certain definite phases of this verbal currency.
+The legends which have thus been preserved are not to be regarded as
+having been directly derived the one from the other but as collateral
+phases of a variety of waves of story spreading out from one centre.
+Thus the comparison of the whole range of homologous legends is
+peculiarly instructive and useful; because the gaps in the Egyptian
+series, for example, can be filled in by necessary phases which are
+missing in Egypt itself, but are preserved in Babylonia or Greece,
+Persia or India, China or Britain, or even Oceania and America.
+
+The incidents in the Destruction of Mankind may be briefly summarized:
+
+As Re grows old "the men who were begotten of his eye"[188] show signs
+of rebellion. Re calls a council of the gods and they advise him to
+"shoot forth his Eye[189] that it may slay the evil conspirators.... Let
+the goddess Hathor descend [from heaven] and slay the men on the
+mountains [to which they had fled in fear]." As the goddess complied she
+remarked: "it will be good for me when I subject mankind," and Re
+replied, "I shall subject them and slay them". Hence the goddess
+received the additional name of _Sekhmet_ from the word "to subject".
+The destructive Sekhmet[190] _avatar_ of Hathor is represented as a
+fierce lion-headed goddess of war wading in blood. For the goddess set
+to work slaughtering mankind and the land was flooded with blood[191].
+Re became alarmed and determined to save at least some remnant of
+mankind. For this purpose he sent messengers to Elephantine to obtain a
+substance called _d'd'_ in the Egyptian text, which he gave to the god
+Sektet of Heliopolis to grind up in a mortar. When the slaves had
+crushed barley to make beer the powdered _d'd'_ was mixed with it so as
+to make it red like human blood. Enough of this blood-coloured beer was
+made to fill 7000 jars. At nighttime this was poured out upon the
+fields, so that when the goddess came to resume her task of destruction
+in the morning she found the fields inundated and her face was mirrored
+in the fluid. She drank of the fluid and became intoxicated so that she
+no longer recognized mankind.[192]
+
+Thus Re saved a remnant of mankind from the bloodthirsty, terrible
+Hathor. But the god was weary of life on earth and withdrew to heaven
+upon the back of the Divine Cow.
+
+There can be no doubt as to the meaning of this legend, highly confused
+as it is. The king who was responsible for introducing irrigation came
+to be himself identified with the life-giving power of water. He was the
+river: his own vitality was the source of all fertility and prosperity.
+Hence when he showed signs that his vital powers were failing it became
+a logical necessity that he should be killed to safeguard the welfare of
+his country and people.[193]
+
+The time came when a king, rich in power and the enjoyment of life,
+refused to comply with this custom. When he realized that his virility
+was failing he consulted the Great Mother, as the source and giver of
+life, to obtain an elixir which would rejuvenate him and obviate the
+necessity of being killed. The only medicine in the pharmacopoeia of
+those times that was believed to be useful in minimizing danger to life
+was human blood. Wounds that gave rise to severe hæmorrhage were known
+to produce unconsciousness and death. If the escape of the blood of
+life could produce these results it was not altogether illogical to
+assume that the exhibition of human blood could also add to the vitality
+of living men and so "turn back the years from their old age," as the
+Pyramid Texts express it.
+
+Thus the Great Mother, the giver of life to all mankind, was faced with
+the dilemma that, to provide the king with the elixir to restore his
+youth, she had to slay mankind, to take the life she herself had given
+to her own children. Thus she acquired an evil reputation which was to
+stick to her throughout her career. She was not only the beneficent
+creator of all things and the bestower of all blessings: but she was
+also a demon of destruction who did not hesitate to slaughter even her
+own children.
+
+In course of time the practice of human sacrifice was abandoned and
+substitutes were adopted in place of the blood of mankind. Either the
+blood of cattle,[194] who by means of appropriate ceremonies could be
+transformed into human beings (for the Great Mother herself was the
+Divine Cow and her offspring cattle), was employed in its stead; or red
+ochre was used to colour a liquid which was used ritually to replace the
+blood of sacrifice. When this phase of culture was reached the goddess
+provided for the king an elixir of life consisting of beer stained red
+by means of red ochre, so as to simulate human blood.
+
+But such a mixture was doubly potent, for the barley from which the beer
+was made and the drink itself was supposed to be imbued with the
+life-giving powers of Osiris, and the blood-colour reinforced its
+therapeutic usefulness. The legend now begins to become involved and
+confused. For the goddess is making the rejuvenator for the king, who in
+the meantime has died and become deified as Osiris; and the beer, which
+is the vehicle of the life-giving powers of Osiris, is now being used to
+rejuvenate his son and successor, the living king Horus, who in the
+version that has come down to us is replaced by the sun-god Re.
+
+It is Re who is king and is growing old: he asks Hathor, the Great
+Mother, to provide him with the elixir of life. But comparison with some
+of the legends of other countries suggests that Re has usurped the place
+previously occupied by Horus and originally by Osiris, who as the real
+personification of the life-giving power of water is obviously the
+appropriate person to be slain when his virility begins to fail. Dr.
+C. G. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker Lerpiu, which I have
+already quoted (p. 113) from Sir James Frazer's "Dying God," suggests
+that the slain king or god was originally Osiris.
+
+The introduction of Re into the story marks the beginning of the belief
+in the sky-world or heaven. Hathor was originally nothing more than an
+amulet to enhance fertility and vitality. Then she was personified as a
+woman and identified with a cow. But when the view developed that the
+moon controlled the powers of life-giving in women and exercised a
+direct influence upon their life-blood, the Great Mother was identified
+with the moon. But how was such a conception to be brought into harmony
+with the view that she was also a cow? The human mind displays an
+irresistible tendency to unify its experience and to bridge the gaps
+that necessarily exist in its broken series of scraps of knowledge and
+ideas. No break is too great to be bridged by this instinctive impulse
+to rationalize the products of diverse experience. Hence, early man,
+having identified the Great Mother both with a cow and the moon, had no
+compunction in making "the cow jump over the moon" to become the sky.
+The moon then became the "Eye" of the sky and the sun necessarily became
+its other "Eye". But, as the sun was clearly the more important "Eye,"
+seeing that it determined the day and gave warmth and light for man's
+daily work, it was the more important deity. Therefore Re, at first the
+Brother-Eye of Hathor, and afterwards her husband, became the supreme
+sky-deity, and Hathor merely one of his Eyes.
+
+When this stage of theological evolution was reached, the story of the
+"Destruction of Mankind" was re-edited, and Hathor was called the "Eye
+of Re". In the earlier versions she was called into consultation solely
+as the giver of life and, to obtain the life-blood, she cut men's
+throats with a knife.
+
+But as the Eye of Re she was identified with the fire-spitting
+uræus-serpent which the king or god wore on his forehead. She was both
+the moon and the fiery bolt which shot down from the sky to slay the
+enemies of Re. For the men who were originally slaughtered to provide
+the blood for an elixir now became the enemies of Re. The reason for
+this was that, human sacrifice having been abandoned and substitutes
+provided to replace the human blood, the story-teller was at a loss to
+know why the goddess killed mankind. A reason had to be found--and the
+rationalization adopted was that men had rebelled against the gods and
+had to be killed. This interpretation was probably the result of a
+confusion with the old legend of the fight between Horus and Set, the
+rulers of the two kingdoms of Egypt. The possibility also suggests
+itself that a pun made by some priestly jester may have been the real
+factor that led to this mingling of two originally separate stories. In
+the "Destruction of Mankind" the story runs, according to Budge,[195]
+that Re, referring to his enemies, said: _ma-ten set uar er set_,
+"Behold ye them (_set_) fleeing into the mountain (_set_)". The enemies
+were thus identified with the mountain or stone and with Set, the enemy
+of the gods.[196]
+
+In Egyptian hieroglyphics the symbol for stone is used as the
+determinative for Set. When the "Eye of Re" destroyed mankind and the
+rebels were thus identified with the followers of Set, they were
+regarded as creatures of "stone". In other words the Medusa-eye
+petrified the enemies. From this feeble pun on the part of some ancient
+Egyptian scribe has arisen the world-wide stories of the influence of
+the "Evil Eye" and the petrification of the enemies of the gods.[197] As
+the name for Isis in Egyptian is "_Set_" it is possible that the
+confusion of the Power of Evil with the Great Mother may also have been
+facilitated by an extension of the same pun.
+
+It is important to recognize that the legend of Hathor descending from
+the moon or the sky in the form of destroying fire had nothing whatever
+to do, in the first instance, with the phenomena of lightning and
+meteorites. It was the result of verbal quibbling after the destructive
+goddess came to be identified with the moon, the sky and the "Eye of
+Re". But once the evolution of the story on these lines prepared the
+way, it was inevitable that in later times the powers of destruction
+exerted by the fire from the sky should have been identified with the
+lightning and meteorites.
+
+When the destructive force of the heavens was attributed to the "Eye of
+Re" and the god's enemies were identified with the followers of Set, it
+was natural that the traditional enemy of Set who was also the more
+potent other "Eye of Re" should assume his mother's rôle of punishing
+rebellious mankind. That Horus did in fact take the place at first
+occupied by Hathor in the story is revealed by the series of trivial
+episodes from the "Destruction of Mankind" that reappear in the "Saga of
+the Winged Disk". The king of Lower Egypt (Horus) was identified with a
+falcon, as Hathor was with the vulture (Mut): like her, he entered the
+sun-god's boat[198] and sailed up the river with him: he then mounted up
+to heaven as a winged disk, i.e. the sun of Re equipped with his own
+falcon's wings. The destructive force displayed by Hathor as the Eye of
+Re was symbolized by her identification with Tefnut, the fire-spitting
+uræus-snake. When Horus assumed the form of the winged disk he added to
+his insignia two fire-spitting serpents to destroy Re's enemies. The
+winged disk was at once the instrument of destruction and the god
+himself. It swooped (or flew) down from heaven like a bolt of destroying
+fire and killed the enemies of Re. By a confusion with Horus's other
+fight against the followers of Set, the enemies of Re become identified
+with Set's army and they are transformed into crocodiles, hippopotami
+and all the other kinds of creatures whose shapes the enemies of Osiris
+assume.
+
+In the course of the development of these legends a multitude of other
+factors played a part and gave rise to transformations of the meaning of
+the incidents.
+
+The goddess originally slaughtered mankind, or perhaps it would be truer
+to say, made _a_ human sacrifice, to obtain blood to rejuvenate the
+king. But, as we have seen already, when the sacrifice was no longer a
+necessary part of the programme, the incident of the slaughter was not
+dropped out of the story, but a new explanation of it was framed.
+Instead of simply making a human sacrifice, mankind as a whole was
+destroyed for rebelling against the gods, the act of rebellion being
+murmuring about the king's old age and loss of virility. The elixir soon
+became something more than a rejuvenator: it was transformed into the
+food of the gods, the ambrosia that gave them their immortality, and
+distinguished them from mere mortals. Now when the development of the
+story led to the replacement of the single victim by the whole of
+mankind, the blood produced by the wholesale slaughter was so abundant
+that the fields were flooded by the life-giving elixir. By the sacrifice
+of men the soil was renewed and refertilized. When the blood-coloured
+beer was substituted for the actual blood the conception was brought
+into still closer harmony with Egyptian ideas, because the beer was
+animated with the life-giving powers of Osiris. But Osiris was the Nile.
+The blood-coloured fertilizing fluid was then identified with the annual
+inundation of the red-coloured waters of the Nile. Now the Nile waters
+were supposed to come from the First Cataract at Elephantine. Hence by a
+familiar psychological process the previous phase of the legend was
+recast, and by confusion the red ochre (which was used to colour the
+beer red) was said to have come from Elephantine.[199]
+
+Thus we have arrived at the stage where, by a distortion of a series of
+phases, the new incident emerges that by means of a human sacrifice the
+Nile flood can be produced. By a further confusion the goddess, who
+originally did the slaughter, becomes the victim. Hence the story
+assumed the form that by means of the sacrifice of a beautiful and
+attractive maiden the annual inundation can be produced. As the most
+potent symbol of life-giving it is essential that the victim should be
+sexually attractive, i.e. that she should be a virgin and the most
+beautiful and desirable in the land. When the practice of human
+sacrifice was abandoned a figure or an animal was substituted for the
+maiden in ritual practice, and in legends the hero rescued the maiden,
+as Andromeda was saved from the dragon.[200] The dragon is the
+personification of the monsters that dwell in the waters as well as the
+destructive forces of the flood itself. But the monsters were no other
+than the followers of Set; they were the victims of the slaughter who
+became identified with the god's other traditional enemies, the
+followers of Set. Thus the monster from whom Andromeda is rescued is
+merely another representative of herself!
+
+But the destructive forces of the flood now enter into the programme.
+In the phases we have so far discussed it was the slaughter of
+mankind which caused the inundation: but in the next phase it is
+the flood itself which causes the destruction, as in the later Egyptian
+and the borrowed Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew--and in fact the
+world-wide--versions. Re's boat becomes the ark; the winged disk which
+was despatched by Re from the boat becomes the dove and the other birds
+sent out to spy the land, as the winged Horus spied the enemies of Re.
+
+Thus the new weapon of the gods--we have already noted Hathor's knife
+and Horus's winged disk, which is the fire from heaven, the lightning
+and the thunderbolt--is the flood. Like the others it can be either a
+beneficent giver of life or a force of destruction.
+
+But the flood also becomes a weapon of another kind. One of the earlier
+incidents of the story represents Hathor in opposition to Re. The
+goddess becomes so maddened with the zest of killing that the god
+becomes alarmed and asks her to desist and spare some representatives of
+the race. But she is deaf to entreaties. Hence the god is said to have
+sent to Elephantine for the red ochre to make a sedative draught to
+overcome her destructive zeal. We have already seen that this incident
+had an entirely different meaning--it was merely intended to explain the
+obtaining of the colouring matter wherewith to redden the sacred beer so
+as to make it resemble blood as an elixir for the god. It was brought
+from Elephantine, because the red waters of inundation of the Nile were
+supposed by the Egyptians to come from Elephantine.
+
+But according to the story inscribed in Seti Ist's tomb, the red ochre
+was an essential ingredient of the sedative mixture (prepared under the
+direction of Re by the Sekti[201] of Heliopolis) to calm Hathor's
+murderous spirit.
+
+It has been claimed that the story simply means that the goddess became
+intoxicated with beer and that she became genially inoffensive solely as
+the effect of such inebriation. But the incident in the Egyptian story
+closely resembles the legends of other countries in which some herb is
+used specifically as a sedative. In most books on Egyptian mythology the
+word (_d'd'_) for the substance put into the drink to colour it is
+translated "mandragora," from its resemblance to the Hebrew word
+_dudaim_ in the Old Testament, which is often translated "mandrakes" or
+"love-apples". But Gauthier has clearly demonstrated that the Egyptian
+word does not refer to a vegetable but to a mineral substance, which he
+translates "red clay".[202] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me, however, that
+it is "red ochre". In any case, mandrake is not found at Elephantine
+(which, however, for the reasons I have already given, is a point of no
+importance so far as the identification of the substance is concerned),
+nor in fact anywhere in Egypt.
+
+But if some foreign story of the action of a sedative drug had become
+blended with and incorporated in the highly complex and composite
+Egyptian legend the narrative would be more intelligible. The mandrake
+is such a sedative as might have been employed to calm the murderous
+frenzy of a maniacal woman. In fact it is closely allied to hyoscyamus,
+whose active principle, hyoscin, is used in modern medicine precisely
+for such purposes. I venture to suggest that a folk-tale describing the
+effect of opium or some other "drowsy syrup" has been absorbed into the
+legend of the Destruction of Mankind, and has provided the starting
+point of all those incidents in the dragon-story in which poison or
+some sleep-producing drug plays a part. For when Hathor defies Re and
+continues the destruction, she is playing the part of her Babylonian
+representative Tiamat, and is a dragon who has to be vanquished by the
+drink which the god provides.
+
+The red earth which was pounded in the mortar to make the elixir of life
+and the fertilizer of the soil also came to be regarded as the material
+out of which the new race of men was made to replace those who were
+destroyed.
+
+The god fashioned mankind of this earth and, instead of the red ochre
+being merely the material to give the blood-colour to the draught of
+immortality, the story became confused: actual blood was presented to
+the clay images to give them life and consciousness.
+
+In a later elaboration the remains of the former race of mankind were
+ground up to provide the material out of which their successors were
+created. This version is a favourite story in Northern Europe, and has
+obviously been influenced by an intermediate variant which finds
+expression in the Indian legend of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.
+Instead of the material for the elixir of the gods being pounded by the
+Sekti of Heliopolis and incidentally becoming a sedative for Hathor, it
+is the milk of the Divine Cow herself which is churned to provide the
+_amrita_.
+
+
+[178: G. Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 164.]
+
+[179: H. Brugsch, "Die Alraune als altägyptische Zauberpflanze," _Zeit.
+f. Ægypt. Sprache_, Bd. 29, 1891, pp. 31-3; and Henri Gauthier, "Le nom
+hiéroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Éléphantine," _Revue Égyptologique_,
+t. xi^e, Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]
+
+[180: These legends will be found in the works by Maspero, Erman and
+Budge, to which I have already referred. A very useful digest will be
+found in Donald A. Mackenzie's "Egyptian Myth and Legend". Mr. Mackenzie
+does not claim to have any first-hand knowledge of the subject, but his
+exceptionally wide and intimate knowledge of Scottish folk-lore, which
+has preserved a surprisingly large part of the same legends, has enabled
+him to present the Egyptian stories with exceptional clearness and
+sympathetic insight. But I refer to his book specially because he is one
+of the few modern writers who has made the attempt to compare the
+legends of Egypt, Babylonia, Crete, India and Western Europe. Hence the
+reader who is not familiar with the mythology of these countries will
+find his books particularly useful as works of reference in following
+the story I have to unfold: "Teutonic Myth and Legend," "Egyptian Myth
+and Legend," "Indian Myth and Legend," "Myths of Babylonia and Assyria"
+and "Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe".]
+
+[181: See Leonard W. King, "Babylonian Religion," 1899.]
+
+[182: For a useful collection of data see A. B. Cook, "Zeus".]
+
+[183: Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in connexion with
+Similar Babylonian Beliefs," _Journal of the American Oriental Society_,
+vol. xxxvi., 1916, pp. 300-20; and "The Moral Deities of Iran and India
+and their Origins," _The American Journal of Theology_, vol. xxi., No.
+i., January, 1917.]
+
+[184: Hopkins, "Religions of India".]
+
+[185: De Groot, "The Religious System of China".]
+
+[186: Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Manchester, 1918.]
+
+[187: H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archéologie Américaine," Paris, 1912; T. A.
+Joyce, "Mexican Archæology," and especially the memoir by Seler on the
+"Codex Vaticanus" and his articles in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_
+and elsewhere.]
+
+[188: I.e. the offspring of the Great Mother of gods and men, Hathor,
+the "Eye of Re".]
+
+[189: That is, Hathor, who as the moon is the "Eye of Re".]
+
+[190: Elsewhere in these pages I have used the more generally adopted
+spelling "_Sekhet_".]
+
+[191: Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the translation "flooding the
+land" is erroneous and misleading. Comparison of the whole series of
+stories, however, suggests that the amount of blood shed rapidly
+increased in the development of the narrative: at first the blood of a
+single victim; then the blood of mankind; then 7000 jars of a substitute
+for blood; then the red inundation of the Nile.]
+
+[192: This version I have quoted mainly from Erman, _op. cit._, pp.
+267-9, but with certain alterations which I shall mention later. In
+another version of the legend wine replaces the beer and is made out of
+"the blood of those who formerly fought against the gods," _cf._
+Plutarch, De Iside (ed. Parthey) 6.]
+
+[193: It is still the custom in many places, and among them especially
+the regions near the headwaters of the Nile itself, to regard the king
+or rain-maker as the impersonation of the life-giving properties of
+water and the source of all fertility. When his own vitality shows signs
+of failing he is killed, so as not to endanger the fruitfulness of the
+community by allowing one who is weak in life-giving powers to control
+its destinies. Much of the evidence relating to these matters has been
+collected by Sir James Frazer in "The Dying God," 1911, who quotes from
+Dr. Seligman the following account of the Dinka "Osiris":
+
+"While the mighty spirit Lerpiu is supposed to be embodied in the
+rain-maker, it is also thought to inhabit a certain hut which serves as
+a shrine. In front of the hut stands a post to which are fastened the
+horns of many bullocks that have been sacrificed to Lerpiu; and in the
+hut is kept a very sacred spear which bears the name of Lerpiu and is
+said to have fallen from heaven six generations ago. As fallen stars are
+also called Lerpiu, we may suspect that an intimate connexion is
+supposed to exist between meteorites and the spirit which animates the
+rain-maker" (Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 32). Here then we have a house of
+the dead inhabited by Lerpiu, who can also enter the body of the
+rain-maker and animate him, as well as the ancient spear and the falling
+stars, which are also animate forms of the same god, who obviously is
+the homologue of Osiris, and is identified with the spear and the
+falling stars.
+
+In spring when the April moon is a few days old bullocks are sacrificed
+to Lerpiu. "Two bullocks are led twice round the shrine and afterwards
+tied by the rain-maker to the post in front of it. Then the drums beat
+and the people, old and young, men and women, dance round the shrine and
+sing, while the beasts are being sacrificed, 'Lerpiu, our ancestor, we
+have brought you a sacrifice. Be pleased to cause rain to fall.' The
+blood of the bullocks is collected in a gourd, boiled in a pot on the
+fire, and eaten by the old and important people of the clan. The horns
+of the animals are attached to the post in front of the shrine" (pp. 32
+and 33).]
+
+[194: In Northern Nigeria an official who bore the title of Killer of
+the Elephant throttled the king "as soon as he showed signs of failing
+health or growing infirmity". The king-elect was afterwards conducted to
+the centre of the town, called Head of the Elephant, where he was made
+to lie down on a bed. Then a black ox was slaughtered and its blood
+allowed to pour all over his body. Next the ox was flayed, and the
+remains of the dead king, which had been disembowelled and smoked for
+seven days over a slow fire, were wrapped up in the hide and dragged
+along to the place of burial, where they were interred in a circular
+pit. (Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 35).]
+
+[195: "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 392.]
+
+[196: "The eye of the sun-god, which was subsequently called the eye of
+Horus and identified with the Uræus-snake on the forehead of Re and of
+the Pharaohs, the earthly representatives of Re, finally becoming
+synonymous with the crown of Lower Egypt, was a mighty goddess, Uto or
+Buto by name" (Alan Gardiner, Article "Magic (Egyptian)" in Hastings'
+_Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_, p. 268, quoting Sethe.)]
+
+[197: For an account of the distribution of this story see E. Sidney
+Hartland, "The Legend of Perseus"; also W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic
+Culture of Indonesia".]
+
+[198: The original "boat of the sky" was the crescent moon, which, from
+its likeness to the earliest form of Nile boat, was regarded as the
+vessel in which the moon (seen as a faint object upon the crescent), or
+the goddess who was supposed to be personified in the moon, travelled
+across the waters of the heavens. But as this "boat" was obviously part
+of the moon itself, it also was regarded as an animate form of the
+goddess, the "Eye of Re". When the Sun, as the other "Eye," assumed the
+chief rôle, Re was supposed to traverse the heavens in his own "boat,"
+which was also brought into relationship with the actual boat used in
+the Osirian burial ritual.
+
+The custom of employing the name "dragon" in reference to a boat is
+found in places as far apart as Scandinavia and China. It is the direct
+outcome of these identifications of the sun and moon with a boat
+animated by the respective deities. In India the _Makara_, the prototype
+of the dragon, was sometimes represented as a boat which was looked upon
+as the fish-_avatar_ of Vishnu, Buddha or some other deity.]
+
+[199: This is an instance of the well-known tendency of the human mind
+to blend numbers of different incidents into one story. An episode of
+one experience, having been transferred to an earlier one, becomes
+rationalized in adaptation to its different environment. This process of
+psychological transference is the explanation of the reference to
+Elephantine as the source of the _d'd'_, and has no relation to
+actuality. The naïve efforts of Brugsch and Gauthier to study the
+natural products of Elephantine for the purpose of identifying _d'd'_
+were therefore wholly misplaced.]
+
+[200: In Hartland's "Legend of Perseus" a collection of variants of this
+story will be found.]
+
+[201: In the version I have quoted from Erman he refers to "the god
+Sektet".]
+
+[202: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+
+The Thunder-Weapon.[203]
+
+In the development of the dragon-story we have seen that the instruments
+of destruction were of a most varied kind. Each of the three primary
+deities, Hathor, Osiris and Horus can be a destructive power as well as
+a giver of life and of all kinds of boons. Every homologue or surrogate
+of these three deities can become a weapon for dragon-destroying, such
+as the moon or the lotus of Hathor, the water or the beer of Osiris,
+the sun or the falcon of Horus. Originally Hathor used a flint knife or
+axe: then she did the execution as "the Eye of Re," the moon, the fiery
+bolt from heaven: Osiris sent the destroying flood and the intoxicating
+beer, each of which, like the knife, axe and moon of Hathor, were
+animated by the deity. Then Horus came as the winged disk, the falcon,
+the sun, the lightning and the thunderbolt. As the dragon-story was
+spread abroad in the world any one of these "weapons" was confused with
+any of (or all) the rest. The Eye of Re was the fire-spitting
+uræus-serpent; and foreign people, like the Greeks, Indians and others,
+gave the Egyptian verbal simile literal expression and converted it into
+an actual Cyclopean eye planted in the forehead, which shot out the
+destroying fire.
+
+The warrior god of Babylonia is called the bright one,[204] the sword or
+lightning of Ishtar, who was herself called both the sword or lightning
+of heaven.
+
+In the Ægean area also the sons of Zeus and the progeny of heaven may be
+axes, stone implements, meteoric stones and thunderbolts. In a Swahili
+tale the hero's weapon is "a sword like a flash of lightning".
+
+According to Bergaigne,[205] the myth of the celestial drink _soma_,
+brought down from heaven by a bird ordinarily called _cyena_, "eagle,"
+is parallel to that of Agni, the celestial fire brought by Mâtariçvan.
+This parallelism is even expressly stated in the Rig Veda, verse 6 of
+hymn 1 to Agni and Soma. Mâtariçvan brought the one from heaven, the
+eagle brought the other from the celestial mountain.
+
+Kuhn admits that the eagle represents Indra; and Lehmann regards the
+eagle who takes the fire as Agni himself. It is patent that both Indra
+and Agni are in fact merely specialized forms of Horus of the Winged
+Disk Saga, in one of which the warrior sun-god is represented, in the
+other the living fire. The elixir of life of the Egyptian story is
+represented by the _soma_, which by confusion is associated with the
+eagle: in other words, the god Soma is the homologue not only of Osiris,
+but also of Horus.
+
+Other incidents in the same original version are confused in the Greek
+story of Prometheus. He stole the fire from heaven and brought it to
+earth: but, in place of the episode of the elixir, which is adopted in
+the Indian story just mentioned, the creation of men from clay is
+accredited by the Greeks to the "flaming one," the "fire eagle"
+Prometheus.
+
+The double axe was the homologue of the winged disk which fell, or
+rather flew, from heaven as the tangible form of the god. This fire from
+heaven inevitably came to be identified with the lightning. According to
+Blinkenberg (_op. cit._, p. 19) "many points go to prove that the
+double-axe is a representation of the lightning (see Usener, p. 20)". He
+refers to the design on the famous gold ring from Mycenæ where "the sun,
+the moon, a double curved line presumably representing the rainbow, and
+the double-axe, i.e. the lightning": but "the latter is placed lower
+than the others, probably because it descends from heaven to earth,"
+like Horus when he assumed the form of the winged disk and flew down to
+earth as a fiery bolt to destroy the enemies of Re.
+
+The recognition of the homology of the winged disk with the double axe
+solves a host of problems which have puzzled classical scholars within
+recent years. The form of the double axe on the Mycenæan ring[206] and
+the painted sarcophagus from Hagia Triada in Crete (and especially the
+oblique markings upon the axe) is probably a suggestion of the double
+series of feathers and the outlines of the individual feathers
+respectively on the wings. The position of the axe upon a symbolic tree
+is not intended, as Blinkenberg claims (_op. cit._, p. 21), as "a ritual
+representation of the trees struck by lightning": but is the familiar
+scene of Mesopotamian culture-area, the tree of life surmounted by the
+winged disk.[207]
+
+The bird poised upon the axe in the Cretan picture is the homologue of
+the falcon of Horus: it is in fact a second representation of the winged
+disk itself. This interpretation is not affected by the consideration
+that the falcon may be replaced by the eagle, pigeon, woodpecker or
+raven, for these substitutions were repeatedly made by the ancient
+priesthoods in flagrant defiance of the properties of ornithological
+homologies. The same phenomenon is displayed even more obtrusively in
+Central America and Mexico, where the ancient sculptors and painters
+represented the bird perched upon the tree of life as a falcon, an
+eagle, a vulture, a macaw or even a turkey.[208]
+
+The incident of the winged disk descending to effect the sun-god's
+purposes upon earth probably represents the earliest record of the
+recognition of thunder and lightning and the phenomena of rain as
+manifestations of the god's powers. All gods of thunder, lightning, rain
+and clouds derive their attributes, and the arbitrary graphic
+representation of them, from the legend which the Egyptian scribe has
+preserved for us in the Saga of the Winged Disk.
+
+The sacred axe of Crete is represented elsewhere as a sword which became
+the visible impersonation of the deity.[209] There is a Hittite story of
+a sword-handle coming to life. Hose and McDougall refer to the same
+incident in certain Sarawak legends; and the story is true to the
+original in the fact that the sword fell from the sun.[210]
+
+Sir Arthur Evans describes as "the aniconic image of the god" a stone
+pillar on which crude pictures of a double axe have been scratched.
+These representations of the axe in fact serve the same purpose as the
+winged disk in Egypt, and, as we shall see subsequently, there was an
+actual confusion between the Egyptian symbol and the Cretan axe.
+
+The obelisk at Abusir was the aniconic representative of the sun-god Re,
+or rather, the support of the pyramidal apex, the gilded surface of
+which reflected the sun's rays and so made manifest the god's presence
+in the stone.
+
+The Hittites seem to have substituted the winged disk as a
+representation of the sun: for in a design copied from a seal[211] we
+find the Egyptian symbol borne upon the apex of a cone.
+
+The transition from this to the great double axe from Hagia Triada in
+the Candia Museum[212] is a relatively easy one, which was materially
+helped, as we shall see, by the fact that the winged disk was actually
+homologized with an axe or knife as alternative weapons used by the
+sun-god for the destruction of mankind.
+
+In Dr. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker (_supra_, p. 113) we
+have already seen that the Soudanese Osiris was identified with a spear
+and falling stars.
+
+According to Dr. Budge[213] the Egyptian hieroglyph used as the
+determinative of the word _neter_, meaning god or spirit, is the axe
+with a handle. Mr. Griffith, however, interprets it as a roll of yellow
+cloth ("Hieroglyphics," p. 46). On Hittite seals the axe sometimes takes
+the place of the god Teshub.[214]
+
+Sir Arthur Evans endeavours to explain these conceptions by a vague
+appeal to certain natural phenomena (_op. cit._, pp. 20 and 21); but the
+identical traditions of widespread peoples are much too arbitrary and
+specific to be interpreted by any such speculations.
+
+Sanchoniathon's story of Baetylos being the son of Ouranos is merely a
+poetical way of saying that the sun-god fell to earth in the form of a
+stone or a weapon, as a Zeus Kappôtas or a Horus in the form of a winged
+disk, flying down from heaven to destroy the enemies of Re.
+
+"The idea of their [the weapons] flying through the air or falling from
+heaven, and their supposed power of burning with inner fire or shining
+in the nighttime," was not primarily suggested, as Sir Arthur Evans
+claims (_op. cit._, p. 21), "by the phenomena associated with meteoric
+stones," but was a rationalization of the events described in the early
+Egyptian and Babylonian stories.
+
+They "shine at night" because the original weapon of destruction was the
+moon as the Eye of Re. They "burn with inward fire," like the Babylonian
+Marduk, when in the fight with the dragon Tiamat "he filled his body
+with burning flame" (King, _op. cit._, p. 71), because they _were_ fire,
+the fire of the sun and of lightning, the fire spat out by the Eye
+of Re.
+
+Further evidence in corroboration of these views is provided by the fact
+that in the Ægean area the double-axe replaces the moon between the
+cow's horns (Evans, _op. cit._, Fig. 3, p. 9).
+
+In King's "Babylonian Religion" (pp. 70 and 71) we are told how the gods
+provided Marduk with an invincible weapon in preparation for the combat
+with the dragon: and the ancient scribe himself sets forth a series of
+its homologues:--
+
+He made ready his bow ... He slung a spear ... The bow and quiver ... He
+set the lightning in front of him, With burning flame he filled his
+body.
+
+An ancient Egyptian writer has put on record further identifications of
+weapons. In the 95th Chapter of the Book of the Dead, the deceased is
+reported to have said: "I am he who sendeth forth terror into the powers
+of rain and thunder.... I have made to flourish my knife which is in the
+hand of Thoth in the powers of rain and thunder" (Budge, "Gods of the
+Egyptians," vol. i., p. 414).
+
+The identification of the winged disk with the thunderbolt which emerges
+so definitely from these homologies is not altogether new, for it was
+suggested some years ago by Count d'Alviella[215] in these words:--
+
+"On seeing some representations of the Thunderbolt which recall in a
+remarkable manner the outlines of the Winged Globe, it may be asked if
+it was not owing to this latter symbol that the Greeks transformed into
+a winged spindle the Double Trident derived from Assyria. At any rate
+the transition, or, if it be preferred, the combination of the two
+symbols is met with in those coins from Northern Africa where Greek art
+was most deeply impregnated with Phoenician types. Thus on coins of
+Bocchus II, King of Mauretania, figures are found which M. Lajard
+connected with the Winged Globe, and M. L. Müller calls Thunderbolts,
+but which are really the result of crossing between these two emblems".
+
+The thunderbolt, however, is not always, or even commonly, the direct
+representative of the winged disk. It is more often derived from
+lightning or some floral design.[216]
+
+According to Count d'Alviella[217] "the Trident of Siva at times
+exhibits the form of a lotus calyx depicted in the Egyptian manner".
+
+"Perhaps other transformations of the _trisula_ might still be found at
+Boro-Budur [in Java].... The same Disk which, when transformed into a
+most complicated ornament, is sometimes crowned by a Trident, is also
+met with between two serpents--which brings us back to the origin of the
+Winged Circle--the Globe of Egypt with the uræi" (see d'Alviella's Fig.
+158). "Moreover this ornament, between which and certain forms of the
+_trisula_ the transition is easily traced, commonly surmounts the
+entrance to the pagodas depicted in the bas-reliefs--in exactly the same
+manner as the Winged Globe adorns the lintel of the temples in Egypt and
+Phoenicia."
+
+Thus we find traces of a blending of the two homologous designs, derived
+independently from the lotus and the winged disk, which acquired the
+same symbolic significance.
+
+The weapon of Poseidon, the so-called "Trident of Neptune," is
+"sometimes crowned with a trilobate lotus flower, or with three lotus
+buds; in other cases it is depicted in a shape that may well represent a
+fishing spear" (Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, pp. 53 and 54).
+
+"Even if Jacobsthal's interpretation of the flower as a common Greek
+symbol for fire be not accepted, the conventionalization of the trident
+as a lotus blossom is quite analogous to the change, on Greek soil, of
+the Assyrian thunderweapon to two flowers pointing in opposite
+directions" (p. 54).
+
+But the conception of a flower as a symbol of fire cannot thus summarily
+be dismissed. For Sir Arthur Evans has collected all the stages in the
+transformation of Egyptian palmette pillars into the rayed pillars of
+Cyprus, in which the leaflets of the palmette become converted (in the
+Cypro-Mycenæan derivatives) into the rays which he calls "the natural
+concomitant of divinities of light".[218]
+
+The underlying motive which makes such a transference easy is the
+Egyptian conception of Hathor as a sacred lotus from which the sun-god
+Horus is born. The god of light is identified with the water-plant,
+whether lotus, iris or lily; and the lotus form of Horus can be
+correlated with its Hellenic surrogate, Apollo Hyakinthos. "The
+fleur-de-lys type now takes its place beside the sacred lotus" (_op.
+cit._, p. 50). The trident and the fleur-de-lys are thunderweapons
+because they represent forms of Horus or his mother.
+
+The classical keraunos is still preserved in Tibet as the _dorje_, which
+is identified with Indra's thunderbolt, the _vajra_.[219] This word is
+also applied to the diamond, the "king of stones," which in turn
+acquired many of the attributes of the pearl, another of the Great
+Mother's surrogates, which is reputed to have fallen from heaven like
+the thunderbolt.[220]
+
+The Tibetan _dorje_, like its Greek original, is obviously a
+conventionalized flower, the leaf-design about the base of the corona
+being quite clearly defined.
+
+The influence of the Winged-Disk Saga is clearly revealed in such Greek
+myths as that relating to Ixion. "Euripides is represented by
+Aristophanes as declaring that _Aithér_ at the creation devised
+
+  The eye to mimic the wheel of the sun."[221]
+
+When we read of Zeus in anger binding Ixion to a winged wheel made of
+fire, and sending him spinning through the air, we are merely dealing
+with a Greek variant of the Egyptian myth in which Re despatched Horus
+as a winged disk to slay his enemies. In the Hellenic version the
+sky-god is angry with the father of the centaurs for his ill-treatment
+of his father-in-law and his behaviour towards Hera and her
+cloud-manifestation: but though distorted all the incidents reveal their
+original inspiration in the Egyptian story and its early Aryan variants.
+
+It is remarkable that Mr. A. B. Cook, who compared the wheel of Ixion
+with the Egyptian winged disk (pp. 205-10), did not look deeper for a
+common origin of the two myths, especially when he got so far as to
+identify Ixion with the sun-god (p. 211).
+
+Blinkenberg sums up the development of the thunder-weapon thus: "From
+the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or three
+zigzag lines representing flames, a tripartite thunder-weapon was
+evolved and earned east and west from the ancient seat of civilization.
+Together with the axe (in Western Asia Minor the double-edged, and
+towards the centre of Asia the single-edged, axe) it became a regular
+attribute of the Asiatic thunder-gods.... The Indian trisula and the
+Greek triaina are both its descendants" (p. 57).
+
+Discussing the relationship of the sun-god to thunder, Dr. Rendel Harris
+refers to the fact that Apollo's "arrows are said to be lightnings," and
+he quotes Pausanias, Apollodorus and Mr. A. B. Cook in substantiation of
+his statements.[222] Both sons of Zeus, Dionysus and Apollo, are
+"concerned with the production of fire".
+
+According to Hyginus, Typhon was the son of Tartarus and the Earth: he
+made war against Jupiter for dominion, and, being struck by lightning,
+was thrown flaming to the earth, where Mount Ætna was placed upon
+him.[223]
+
+In this curious variant of the story of the winged disk, the conflict of
+Horus with Set is merged with the Destruction, for the son of Tartarus
+[Osiris] and the Earth [Isis] here is not Horus but his hostile brother
+Set. Instead of fighting for Jupiter (Re) as Horus did, he is against
+him. The lightning (which is Horus in the form of the winged disk)
+strikes Typhon and throws him flaming to earth. The episode of Mount
+Ætna is the antithesis of the incident in the Indian legend of the
+churning of the ocean: Mount Meru is placed in the sea upon the tortoise
+_avatar_ of Vishnu and is used to churn the food of immortality for the
+gods. In the Egyptian story the red ochre brought from Elephantine is
+pounded with the barley.
+
+The story told by Hyginus leads up to the vision in Revelations (xii., 7
+_et seq._): "There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought
+against the dragon; and the dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed
+not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great
+dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which
+deceiveth the whole world: he was cast into the earth, and his angels
+were cast out with him."
+
+In the later variants the original significance of the Destruction of
+Mankind seems to have been lost sight of. The life-giving Great Mother
+tends to drop out of the story and her son Horus takes her place. He
+becomes the warrior-god, but he not only assumes his mother's rôle but
+he also adopts her tactics. Just as she attacked Re's enemies in the
+capacity of the sky-god's "Eye," so Horus as the other "Eye," the sun,
+to which he gave his own falcon's wings, attacked in the form of the
+winged disk. The winged disk, like the other "Eye of Re," was not merely
+the sky weapon which shot down to destroy mankind, but also was the god
+Horus himself. This early conception involved the belief that the
+thunderbolt and lightning represented not merely the fiery weapon but
+the actual god.
+
+The winged disk thus exhibits the same confusion of attributes as we
+have already noticed in Osiris and Hathor. It is the commonest symbol of
+life-giving and beneficent protective power: yet it is the weapon used
+to slaughter mankind. It is in fact the healing caduceus as well as the
+baneful thunder-weapon.
+
+
+[203: The history of the thunder-weapon cannot wholly be ignored in
+discussing the dragon-myth because it forms an integral part of the
+story. It was animated both by the dragon and the dragon-slayer. But an
+adequate account of the weapon would be so highly involved and complex
+as to be unintelligible without a very large series of illustrations.
+Hence I am referring here only to certain aspects of the subject.
+Pending the preparation of a monograph upon the thunder-weapon, I may
+refer the reader to the works of Blinkenberg, d'Alviella, Ward, Evans
+and A. B. Cook (to which frequent reference is made in these pages) for
+material, especially in the form of illustrations, to supplement my
+brief and unavoidably involved summary.]
+
+[204: As in Egypt Osiris is described as "a ray of light" which issued
+from the moon (Hathor), _i.e._ was born of the Great Mother.]
+
+[205: "Religion védique," i., p. 173, quoted by S. Reinach, "Ætos
+Prometheus," _Revue archéologique_, 4^ie série, tome x., 1917, p. 72.]
+
+[206: Evans, _op. cit._, Fig. 4, p. 10.]
+
+[207: William Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," chapter
+xxxviii.]
+
+[208: Seler, "Codex Vaticanus, No. 3773," vol. i., p. 77 _et seq._]
+
+[209: Evans, _op. cit._, p. 8.]
+
+[210: "The Pagan Tribes of Borneo," 1912, vol. ii., p. 137.]
+
+[211: Evans, _op. cit._, Fig. 8, _c_, p. 17.]
+
+[212: There is an excellent photograph of this in Donald McKenzie's
+"Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe," facing p. 160.]
+
+[213: "The Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., pp. 63 _et seq_.]
+
+[214: See, for example, Ward, _op. cit._, p. 411.]
+
+[215: "The Migration of Symbols," pp. 220 and 221.]
+
+[216: Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, p. 53.]
+
+[217: _Op. cit._, p. 256.]
+
+[218: "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 51 and 52.]
+
+[219: See Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, pp. 45-8.]
+
+[220: I must defer consideration of the part played by certain of the
+Great Mother's surrogates in the development of the thunder-weapon's
+symbolism and the associated folk-lore. I have in mind especially the
+influence of the octopus and the cow. The former was responsible in part
+for the use of the spiral as a thunder-symbol; and the latter for the
+beliefs in the special protective power of thunder-stones over cows (see
+Blinkenberg, _op. cit._). The thunder-stone was placed over the lintel
+of the cow-shed for the same purpose as the winged disk over the door of
+an Egyptian temple. Until the relations of the octopus to the dragon
+have been set forth it is impossible adequately to discuss the question
+of the seven-headed dragon, which ranges from Scotland to Japan and from
+Scandinavia to the Zambesi. In "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall call
+attention to the basal factors in its evolution.]
+
+[221: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 198.]
+
+[222: "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 32.]
+
+[223: "Tartarus ex Terra procreavit Typhonem, immani magnitudine,
+specieque portentosa, cui centum capita draconum ex humeris enata erant.
+Hic Jovem provocavit, si vellet secum de regno centare. Jovis fulmine
+ardenti pectus ejus percussit. Cui cum flagraret, montem Ætnam, qui est
+in Siciliâ, super eum imposuit; qui ex eo adhuc ardere dicitur"
+(Hyginus, fab. 152).]
+
+
+The Deer.
+
+One of the most surprising features of the dragon in China, Japan and
+America, is the equipment of deer's horns.
+
+In Babylonia both Ea and Marduk are intimately associated with the
+antelope or gazelle, and the combination of the head of the antelope (or
+in other cases the goat) with the body of a fish is the most
+characteristic manifestation of either god. In Egypt both Osiris and
+Horus are at times brought into relationship with the gazelle or
+antelope, but more often it represents their enemy Set. Hence, in some
+parts of Africa, especially in the west, the antelope plays the part of
+the dragon in Asiatic stories.[224] The cow[225] of Hathor (Tiamat) may
+represent the dragon also. In East Africa the antelope assumes the rôle
+of the hero,[226] and is the representative of Horus. In the Ægean area,
+Asia Minor and Europe the antelope, gazelle or the deer, may be
+associated with the Great Mother.[227]
+
+In India the god Soma's chariot is drawn by an antelope. I have already
+suggested that Soma is only a specialized form of the Babylonian Ea,
+whose evil _avatar_ is the dragon: there is thus suggested another link
+between the antelope and the latter. The Ea-element explains the
+fish-scales and the antelope provides the horns. I shall return to the
+discussion of this point later.
+
+Vayu or Pavana, the Indian god of the winds, who afterwards became
+merged with Indra, rides upon an antelope like the Egyptian Horus.
+Soma's attributes also were in large measure taken over by Indra. Hence
+in this complex tissue of contradictions we once more find the
+dragon-slayer acquiring the insignia, in this case the antelope, of his
+mortal enemy.
+
+I have already referred to the fact that the early Babylonian deities
+could also be demons. Tiamat, the dragon whom Marduk fought, was merely
+the malevolent _avatar_ of the Great Mother. The dragon acquired his
+covering of fish-scales from an evil form of Ea.
+
+In his Hibbert Lectures Professor Sayce claimed that the name of Ea was
+expressed by an ideograph which signifies literally "the antelope" (p.
+280). "Ea was called 'the antelope of the deep,' 'the antelope the
+creator,' 'the lusty antelope'. We should have expected the animal of Ea
+to have been the fish: the fact that it is not so points to the
+conclusion that the culture-god of Southern Babylonia was an
+amalgamation of two earlier deities, one the divine antelope and the
+other the divine fish." Ea was "originally the god of the river and was
+also associated with the snake". Nina was also both the fish-goddess and
+the divinity whose name is interchanged with that of the deep. Professor
+Sayce then refers to "the curious process of development which
+transformed the old serpent-goddess, 'the lady Nina,' into the
+embodiment of all that was hostile to the powers of heaven; but after
+all, Nina had sprung from the fish-god of the deep [who also was both
+antelope and serpent as well, see p. 282], and Tiamat is herself 'the
+deep' in Semitic dress" (p. 283).
+
+"At times Ea was regarded as a gazelle rather than as an antelope." The
+position of the name in the list of animals shows what species of animal
+must be meant. _Lulim_, "a stag," seems to be a re-duplicated form of
+the same word. Both _lulim_ and _elim_ are said to be equivalent to
+_sarru_, king (p. 284).
+
+Certain Assyriologists, from whom I asked for enlightenment upon these
+philological matters, express some doubt as to the antiquity or to the
+reality of the association of the names of Ea and the word for an
+antelope, gazelle or stag. But whatever the value of the linguistic
+evidence, the archæological, at any rate as early as the time of
+Nebuchadnezzar I, brings both Ea and Marduk into close association with
+a strange creature equipped with the horns of an antelope or gazelle.
+The association with the antelope of the homologous deities in India and
+Egypt leaves the reality of the connexion in no doubt. I had hoped that
+Professor Sayce's evidence would have provided some explanation of the
+strange association of the antelope. But whether or not the philological
+data justify the inferences which Professor Sayce drew from them, there
+can be no doubt concerning the correctness of his statement that Ea was
+represented both by fish and antelope, for in the course of his
+excavations at Susa M. J. de Morgan brought to light representations of
+Ea's animal consisting of an antelope's head on the body of a fish.[228]
+He also makes the statement that the ideogram of Ea, _turahu-apsu_,
+means "antelope of the sea". I have already (p. 88) referred to the fact
+that this "antelope of the sea," the so-called "goat-fish," is identical
+with the prototype of the dragon.
+
+If his claim that the names of Ea meant both a "fish" and an "antelope"
+were well founded, the pun would have solved this problem, as it has
+done in the case of many other puzzles in the history of early
+civilization. But if this is not the case, the question is still open
+for solution. As Set was held to be personified in all the desert
+animals, the gazelle was identified with the demon of evil for this
+reason. In her important treatise on "The Asiatic Dionysos" Miss Gladys
+Davis tells us that "in his aspect of Moon 'the lord of stars' Soma has
+in this character the antelope as his symbol. In fact, one of the names
+given to the moon by the early Indians was 'mriga-piplu' or marked
+like an antelope" (p. 202). Further she adds: "The Sanskrit name for the
+lunar mansion over which Soma presides is 'mriga-siras' or the
+deer-headed." If it be admitted that Soma is merely the Aryan
+specialization of Ea and Osiris, as I have claimed, Sayce's association
+of Ea with the antelope is corroborated, even if it is not explained.
+
+In China the dragon was sometimes called "the celestial stag" (de Groot,
+_op. cit._, p. 1143). In Mexico the deer has the same intimate celestial
+relations as it has in the Old World (see Seler, _Zeit. f. Ethnologie_,
+Bd. 41, p. 414). I have already referred to the remarkable Maya
+deer-crocodile _makara_ in the Liverpool Museum (p. 103).
+
+The systematic zoology of the ancients was lacking in the precision of
+modern times; and there are reasons for supposing that the antelope and
+gazelle could exchange places the one with the other in their divine
+rôles; the deer and the rabbit were also their surrogates. In India a
+spotted rabbit can take the place of the antelope in playing the part of
+what we call "the man in the moon". This interpretation is common, not
+only in India, but also in China, and is repeatedly found in the ancient
+Mexican codices (Seler, _op. cit._). In the spread of the ideas we have
+just been considering from Babylonia towards the north we find that the
+deer takes the place of the antelope.
+
+In view of the close resemblance between the Indian god Soma and the
+Phrygian Dionysus, which has been demonstrated by Miss Gladys Davis, it
+is of interest to note that in the service of the Greek god a man was
+disguised as a stag, slain and eaten.[229]
+
+Artemis also, one of the many _avatars_ of the Great Mother, who was
+also related to the moon, was closely associated with the deer.
+
+I have already referred to the fact that in Africa the dragon rôle of
+the female antelope may be assumed by the cow or buffalo. In the case of
+the gods Soma and Dionysus their association with the antelope or deer
+may be extended to the bull. Miss Davis (_op. cit._) states that in the
+Homa Yasht the deer-headed lunar mansion over which the god presides is
+spoken of as "leading the Paurvas," i.e. Pleiades: "Mazda brought to
+thee (Homa) the star-studded spirit-fashioned girdle (the belt of Orion)
+leading the Paurvas. Now the Bull-Dionysus was especially associated
+with the Pleiades on ancient gems and in classical mythology--which form
+part of the sign Taurus." The bull is a sign of Haoma (Homa) or Soma.
+The belt of the thunder-god Thor corroborates the fact of the diffusion
+of these Babylonian ideas as far as Northern Europe.
+
+
+[224: Frobenius, "The Voice of Africa," vol. ii., p. 467 _inter alia_.]
+
+[225: _Op. cit._, p. 468.]
+
+[226: J. F. Campbell, "The Celtic Dragon Myth," with the "Geste of
+Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with Introduction by George
+Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 136.]
+
+[227: For example the red deer occupies the place usually taken by the
+goddess's lions upon a Cretan gem (Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar
+Cult," Fig. 32, p. 56): on the bronze plate from Heddemheim (A. B. Cook,
+"Zeus," vol. i., pl. xxxiv., and p. 620) Isis is represented standing on
+a hind: Artemis, another _avatar_ of the same Great Mother, was
+intimately associated with deer.]
+
+[228: J. de Morgan, article on "Koudourrous," _Mem. Del. en Perse_, t.
+7, 1905. Figures on p. 143 and p. 148: see also an earlier article on
+the same subject in tome i. of the same series.]
+
+[229: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 674.]
+
+
+The Ram.
+
+The close association of the ram with the thunder-god is probably
+related with the fact that the sun-god Amon in Egypt was represented by
+the ram with a distinctive spiral horn. This spiral became a distinctive
+feature of the god of thunder throughout the Hellenic and Phoenician
+worlds and in those parts of Africa which were affected by their
+influence or directly by Egypt.
+
+An account of the widespread influence of the ram-headed god of thunder
+in the Soudan and West Africa has been given by Frobenius.[230]
+
+But the ram also became associated with Agni, the Indian fire-god, and
+the spiral as a head-appendage became the symbol of thunder throughout
+China and Japan, and from Asia spread to America where such deities as
+Tlaloc still retain this distinctive token of their origin from the
+Old World.
+
+In Europe this association of the ram and its spiral horn played an even
+more obtrusive part.
+
+The octopus as a surrogate of the Great Mother was primarily responsible
+for the development of the life-giving attributes of the spiral motif.
+But the close connexion of the Great Mother with the dragon and the
+thunder-weapon prepared the way for the special association of the
+spiral with thunder, which was confirmed when the ram with its spiral
+horn became the God of Thunder.
+
+
+[230: _Op. cit._, vol. i., pp. 212-27.]
+
+
+The Pig.
+
+The relationship of the pig to the dragon is on the whole analogous to
+that of the cow and the stag, for it can play either a beneficent or a
+malevolent part. But the nature of the special circumstances which gave
+the pig a peculiar notoriety as an unclean animal are so intimately
+associated with the "Birth of Aphrodite" that I shall defer the
+discussion of them for my lecture on the history of the goddess.
+
+
+Certain Incidents in the Dragon Myth.
+
+Throughout the greater part of the area which tradition has peopled with
+dragons, iron is regarded as peculiarly lethal to the monsters. This
+seems to be due to the part played by the "smiths" who forged iron
+weapons with which Horus overcame Set and his followers,[231] or in the
+earlier versions of the legend the metal weapons by means of which the
+people of Upper Egypt secured their historic victory over the Lower
+Egyptians. But the association of meteoric iron with the thunderbolt,
+the traditional weapon for destroying dragons, gave added force to the
+ancient legend and made it peculiarly apt as an incident in the story.
+
+But though the dragon is afraid of iron, he likes precious gems and
+_k'ung-ts'ing_ ("The Stone of Darkness") and is fond of roasted
+swallows.
+
+The partiality of dragons for swallows was due to the transmission of a
+very ancient story of the Great Mother, who in the form of Isis was
+identified with the swallow. In China, so ravenous is the monster for
+this delicacy, that anyone who has eaten of swallows should avoid
+crossing the water, lest the dragon whose home is in the deep should
+devour the traveller to secure the dainty morsel of swallow. But those
+who pray for rain use swallows to attract the beneficent deity. Even in
+England swallows flying low are believed to be omens of coming rain--a
+tale which is about as reliable as the Chinese variant of the same
+ancient legend.
+
+"The beautiful gems remind us of the Indian dragons; the pearls of the
+sea were, of course, in India as well as China and Japan, considered to
+be in the special possession of the dragon-shaped sea-gods" (de Visser,
+p. 69). The cultural drift from West to East along the southern coast of
+India was effected mainly by sailors who were searching for pearls.
+Sharks constituted the special dangers the divers had to incur in
+exploiting pearl-beds to obtain the precious "giver of life". But at the
+time these great enterprises were first undertaken in the Indian Ocean
+the people dwelling in the neighbourhood of the chief pearl-beds
+regarded the sea as the great source of all life-giving virtues and the
+god who exercised these powers was incarnated in a fish. The sharks
+therefore had to be brought into harmony with this scheme, and they
+were rationalized as the guardians of the storehouse of life-giving
+pearls at the bottom of the sea.
+
+I do not propose to discuss at present the diffusion to the East of the
+beliefs concerning the shark and the modifications which they underwent
+in the course of these migrations in Melanesia and elsewhere; but in my
+lecture upon "the Birth of Aphrodite" I shall have occasion to refer to
+its spread to the West and explain how the shark's rôle was transferred
+to the dog-fish in the Mediterranean. The dog-fish then assumed a
+terrestrial form and became simply the dog who plays such a strange part
+in the magical ceremony of digging up the mandrake.
+
+At present we are concerned merely with the shark as the guardian of the
+stores of pearls at the bottom of the sea. He became identified with the
+Nâga and the dragon, and the store of pearls became a vast
+treasure-house which it became one of the chief functions of the dragon
+to guard. This episode in the wonder-beast's varied career has a place
+in most of the legends ranging from Western Europe to Farthest Asia.
+Sometimes the dragon carries a pearl under his tongue or in his chin as
+a reserve of life-giving substance.
+
+Mr. Donald Mackenzie has called attention[232] to the remarkable
+influence upon the development of the Dragon Myth of the familiar
+Egyptian representation of the child Horus with a finger touching his
+lips. On some pretence or other, many of the European dragon-slaying
+heroes, such as Sigurd and the Highland Finn, place their fingers in
+their mouths. This action is usually rationalized by the statement that
+the hero burnt his fingers while cooking the slain monster.
+
+
+[231: Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 476.]
+
+[232: "Egyptian Myth and Legend," pp. 340 _et seq._]
+
+
+The Ethical Aspect.
+
+So far in this discussion I have been dealing mainly with the problems
+of the dragon's evolution, the attainment of his or her distinctive
+anatomical features and physiological attributes. But during this
+process of development a moral and ethical aspect of the dragon's
+character was also emerging.
+
+Now that we have realized the fact of the dragon's homology with the
+moon-god it is important to remember that one of the primary functions
+of this deity, which later became specialized in the Egyptian god
+Thoth, was the measuring of time and the keeping of records. The moon,
+in fact, was the controller of accuracy, of truth, and order, and
+therefore the enemy of falsehood and chaos. The identification of the
+moon with Osiris, who from a dead king eventually developed into a king
+of the dead, conferred upon the great Father of Waters the power to
+exact from men respect for truth and order. For even if at first these
+ideas were only vaguely adumbrated and not expressed in set phrases, it
+must have been an incentive to good discipline when men remembered that
+the record-keeper and the guardian of law and order was also the deity
+upon whose tender mercies they would have to rely in the life after
+death. Set, the enemy of Osiris, who is the real prototype of the evil
+dragon, was the antithesis of the god of justice: he was the father of
+falsehood and the symbol of chaos. He was the prototype of Satan, as
+Osiris was the first definite representative of the Deity of which any
+record has been preserved.
+
+The history of the evil dragon is not merely the evolution of the devil,
+but it also affords the explanation of his traditional peculiarities,
+his bird-like features, his horns, his red colour, his wings and cloven
+hoofs, and his tail. They are all of them the dragon's distinctive
+features; and from time to time in the history of past ages we catch
+glimpses of the reality of these identifications. In one of the earliest
+woodcuts (Fig. 17) found in a printed book Satan is depicted as a monk
+with the bird's feet of the dragon. A most interesting intermediate
+phase is seen in a Chinese water-colour in the John Rylands Library, in
+which the thunder-dragon is represented in a form almost exactly
+reproducing that of the devil of European tradition (Fig. 16).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 16.--The God Of Thunder.
+
+(From a Chinese drawing (? 17th Century) in the John Rylands Library)]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 17.--From Joannes de Turrecremata's "Meditationes
+seu Contemplationes". _Romæ: Ulrich Hau_. 1467]
+
+Early in the Christian era, when ancient beliefs in Egypt became
+disguised under a thin veneer of Christianity, the story of the conflict
+between Horus and Set was converted into a conflict between Christ and
+Satan. M. Clermont-Ganneau has described an interesting bas-relief in
+the Louvre in which a hawk-headed St. George, clad in Roman military
+uniform and mounted on a horse, is slaying a dragon which is represented
+by Set's crocodile.[233] But the Biblical references to Satan leave no
+doubt as to his identity with the dragon, who is specifically mentioned
+in the Book of Revelations as "the old serpent which is the Devil and
+Satan" (xx. 2).
+
+The devil Set was symbolic of disorder and darkness, while the god
+Osiris was the maintainer of order and the giver of light. Although the
+moon-god, in the form of Osiris, Thoth and other deities, thus came to
+acquire the moral attributes of a just judge, who regulated the
+movements of the celestial bodies, controlled the waters upon the earth,
+and was responsible for the maintenance of order in the Universe, the
+ethical aspect of his functions was in large measure disguised by the
+material importance of his duties. In Babylonia similar views were held
+with respect to the beneficent water-god Ea, who was the giver of
+civilization, order and justice, and Sin, the moon-god, who "had
+attained a high position in the Babylonian pantheon," as "the guide of
+the stars and the planets, the overseer of the world at night". "From
+that conception a god of high moral character soon developed." "He is an
+extremely beneficent deity, he is a king, he is the ruler of men, he
+produces order and stability, like Shamash and like the Indian Varuna
+and Mitra, but besides that, he is also a judge, he loosens the bonds of
+the imprisoned, like Varuna. His light, like that of Varuna, is
+the symbol of righteousness.... Like the Indian Varuna and the
+Iranian Mazdâh, he is a god of wisdom."
+
+When these Egyptian and Babylonian ideas were borrowed by the Aryans,
+and the Iranian Mazdâh and the Indian Varuna assumed the rôle of the
+beneficent deity of the former more ancient civilizations, the material
+aspect of the functions of the moon-god became less obtrusive; and there
+gradually emerged the conception, to which Zarathushtra first gave
+concrete expression, of the beneficent god Ahura Mazdâh as "an
+omniscient protector of morality and creator of marvellous power and
+knowledge". "He is the most-knowing one, and the most-seeing one. No one
+can deceive him. He watches with radiant eyes everything that is done in
+open or in secret." "Although he has a strong personality he has no
+anthropomorphic features." He has shed the material aspects which loomed
+so large in his Egyptian, Babylonian and earlier Aryan prototypes, and a
+more ethereal conception of a God of the highest ethical qualities
+has emerged.
+
+The whole of this process of transformation has been described with deep
+insight and lucid exposition by Professor Cumont, from whose important
+and convincing memoir I have quoted so freely in the foregoing
+paragraphs.[234]
+
+The creation of a beneficent Deity of such moral grandeur inevitably
+emphasized the baseness and the malevolence of the "Power of Evil". No
+longer are the gods merely glorified human beings who can work good or
+evil as they will; but there is now an all-powerful God controlling the
+morals of the universe, and in opposition to Him "the dragon, the old
+serpent, which is the Devil and Satan".
+
+
+[233: "Horus et St. George d'après un bas-relief inedit du Louvre,"
+_Revue Archéologique_, Nouvelle Série, t. xxxii., 1876, p. 196, pl.
+xviii. It is right to explain that M. Clermont-Ganneau's interpretation
+of this relief has not been accepted by all scholars.]
+
+[234: Albert J. Carnoy, "The Moral Deities of Iran and India and their
+Origins," _The American Journal of Theology_, vol. xxi., No. 1, Jan.
+1917, p. 58.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE.[235]
+
+
+It may seem ungallant to discuss the birth of Aphrodite as part of the
+story of the evolution of the dragon. But the other chapters of this
+book, in which frequent references have been made to the early history
+of the Great Mother, have revealed how vital a part she played in the
+development of the dragon. The earliest real dragon was Tiamat, one of
+the forms assumed by the Great Mother; and an even earlier prototype was
+the lioness (Sekhet) manifestation of Hathor.
+
+Thus it becomes necessary to enquire more fully (than has been done in
+the other chapters) into the circumstances of the Great Mother's birth
+and development, and to investigate certain aspects of her ontogeny to
+which only scant attention has been paid in the preceding pages.
+
+Several reasons have led me to select Aphrodite from the vast legion of
+Great Mothers for special consideration. In spite of her high
+specialization in certain directions the Greek goddess of love retains
+in greater measure than any of her sisters some of the most primitive
+associations of her original parent. Like vestigial structures in
+biology, these traits afford invaluable evidence, not only of
+Aphrodite's own ancestry and early history, but also of that of the
+whole family of goddesses of which she is only a specialized type. For
+Aphrodite's connexion with shells is a survival of the circumstances
+which called into existence the first Great Mother and made her not only
+the Creator of mankind and the universe, but also the parent of all
+deities, as she was historically the first to be created by human
+inventiveness. In this lecture I propose to deal with the more general
+aspects of the evolution of all these daughters of the Great Mother:
+but I have used Aphrodite's name in the title because her
+shell-associations can be demonstrated more clearly and definitely than
+those of any of her sisters.
+
+In the past a vast array of learning has been brought to bear upon the
+problems of Aphrodite's origin; but this effort has, for the most part,
+been characterized by a narrowness of vision and a lack of adequate
+appreciation of the more vital factors in her embryological history. In
+the search for the deep human motives that found specific expression in
+the great goddess of love, too little attention has been paid to
+primitive man's psychology, and his persistent striving for an elixir of
+life to avert the risk of death, to renew youth and secure a continuance
+of existence after death. On the other hand, the possibility of
+obtaining any real explanation has been dashed aside by most scholars,
+who have been content simply to juggle with certain stereotyped
+catchphrases and baseless assumptions, simply because the traditions of
+classical scholarship have made these devices the pawns in a rather
+aimless game.
+
+It is unnecessary to cite specific illustrations in support of this
+statement. Reference to any of the standard works on classical
+archæology, such as Roscher's "Lexikon," will testify to the truth of my
+accusation. In her "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion" Miss
+Jane Harrison devotes a chapter (VI) to "The Making of a Goddess," and
+discusses "The Birth of Aphrodite". But she strictly observes the
+traditions of the classical method; and assumes that the meaning of the
+myth of Aphrodite's birth from the sea--the germs of which are at least
+fifty centuries old--can be decided by the omission of any
+representation of the sea in the decoration of a pot made in the fifth
+century B.C.!
+
+But apart from this general criticism, the lack of resourcefulness and
+open mindedness, certain more specific factors have deflected classical
+scholars from the true path. In the search for the ancestry of
+Aphrodite, they have concentrated their attention too exclusively upon
+the Mediterranean area and Western Asia, and so ignored the most ancient
+of the historic Great Mothers, the African Hathor, with whom (as Sir
+Arthur Evans[236] clearly demonstrated more than fifteen years ago) the
+Cypriote goddess has much closer affinities than with any of her
+Asiatic sisters. Yet no scholar, either on the Greek or Egyptian side,
+has seriously attempted to follow up this clue and really investigate
+the nature of the connexions between Aphrodite and Hathor, and the
+history of the development of their respective specializations of
+functions.[237]
+
+But some explanation must be given for my temerity in venturing to
+invade the intensively cultivated domains of Aphrodite "with a mind
+undebauched by classical learning". I have already explained how the
+study of Libations and Dragons brought me face to face with the problems
+of the Great Mother's attributes. At that stage of the enquiry two
+circumstances directed my attention specifically to Aphrodite. Mr.
+Wilfrid Jackson was collecting the data relating to the cultural uses of
+shells, which he has since incorporated in a book.[238] As the results
+of his search accumulated, the fact soon emerged that the original
+Great Mother was nothing more than a cowry-shell used as a life-giving
+amulet; and that Aphrodite's shell-associations were a survival of the
+earliest phase in the Great Mother's history. At this psychological
+moment Dr. Rendel Harris[239] claimed that Aphrodite was a
+personification of the mandrake. But the magical attributes of the
+mandrake, which he claimed to have been responsible for converting the
+amulet into a goddess, were identical with those which Jackson's
+investigations had previously led me to regard as the reasons for
+deriving Aphrodite from the cowry. The mandrake was clearly a surrogate
+of the shell or vice versa.[240] The problem to be solved was to decide
+which amulet was responsible for suggesting the process of life-giving.
+The goddess Aphrodite was closely related to Cyprus; the mandrake was a
+magical plant there; and the cowry is so intimately associated with the
+island as to be called _Cypræa_. So far as is known, however, the
+shell-amulet is vastly more ancient than the magical reputation of the
+plant. Moreover, we know why the cowry was regarded as feminine and
+accredited with life-giving attributes. There are no such reasons for
+assigning life-giving powers or the female sex to the mandrake. The
+claim that its magical properties are due to the fancied resemblance of
+its root to a human being is wholly untenable.[241] The roots of many
+plants are at least as manlike; and, even if this character was the
+exclusive property of the mandrake, how does it help to explain the
+remarkable repetory of quite arbitrary and fantastic properties and the
+female sex assigned to the plant? Sir James Frazer's claim[242] that
+"such beliefs and practices illustrate the primitive tendency to
+personify nature" is a gratuitous and quite irrelevant assumption, which
+offers no explanation whatsoever of the specific and arbitrary nature of
+the form assumed by the personification. But when we investigate the
+historical development of the peculiar attributes of the cowry-shell,
+and appreciate why and how they were acquired, any doubt as to the
+source from which the mandrake obtained its "magic" is removed; and
+with it the fallacy of Sir James Frazer's wholly unwarranted claims is
+also exposed.
+
+If we ignore Sir James Frazer's naïve speculations we can make use of
+the compilations of evidence which he makes with such remarkable
+assiduity. But it is more profitable to turn to the study of the
+remarkable lectures which Dr. Rendel Harris has been delivering in this
+room[243] during the last few years. Our genial friend has been
+cultivating his garden on the slopes of Olympus,[244] and has been
+plucking the rich fruits of his ripe scholarship and nimble wit. At the
+same time, with rougher implements and cruder methods, I have been
+burrowing in the depths of the earth, trying to recover information
+concerning the habits and thoughts of mankind many centuries before
+Dionysus and Apollo, and Artemis and Aphrodite, were dreamt of.
+
+In the course of these subterranean gropings no one was more surprised
+than I was to discover that I was getting entangled in the roots of the
+same plants whose golden fruit Dr. Rendel Harris was gathering from his
+Olympian heights. But the contrast in our respective points of view was
+perhaps responsible for the different appearance the growths assumed.
+
+To drop the metaphor, while he was searching for the origins of the
+deities a few centuries before the Christian era began, I was finding
+their more or less larval forms flourishing more than twenty centuries
+before the commencement of his story. For the gods and goddesses of his
+narrative were only the thinly disguised representatives of much more
+ancient deities decked out in the sumptuous habiliments of Greek
+culture.
+
+In his lecture on Aphrodite, Dr. Rendel Harris claimed that the goddess
+was a personification of the mandrake; and I think he made out a good
+prima facie case in support of his thesis. But other scholars have set
+forth equally valid reasons for associating Aphrodite with the argonaut,
+the octopus, the purpura, and a variety of other shells, both univalves
+and bivalves.[245]
+
+The goddess has also been regarded as a personification of water, the
+ocean, or its foam.[246] Then again she is closely linked with pigs,
+cows, lions, deer, goats, rams, dolphins, and a host of other creatures,
+not forgetting the dove, the swallow, the partridge, the sparling, the
+goose, and the swan.[247]
+
+The mandrake theory does not explain, or give adequate recognition to,
+any of these facts. Nor does Dr. Rendel Harris suggest why it is so
+dangerous an operation to dig up the mandrake which he identifies with
+the goddess, or why it is essential to secure the assistance of a
+dog[248] in the process. The explanation of this fantastic fable gives
+an important clue to Aphrodite's antecedents.
+
+
+[235: An elaboration of a lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library,
+on 14 November, 1917.]
+
+[236: "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 52. Compare also A. E. W.
+Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, p. 435.]
+
+[237: With a strange disregard of Sir Arthur Evans's "Mycenæan Tree and
+Pillar Cult," Mr. H. R. Hall makes the following remarks in his "Ægean
+Archæology" (p. 150): "The origin of the goddess Aphrodite has long been
+taken for granted. It has been regarded as a settled fact that she was
+Semitic, and came to Greece from Phoenicia or Cyprus. But the new
+discoveries have thrown this, like other received ideas, into the
+melting-pot, for the Minoans undoubtedly worshipped an Aphrodite. We see
+her, naked and with her doves, on gold plaques from one of the Mycenæan
+shaft-graves (Schuchhardt, _Schliemann_, Figs. 180, 181), which must be
+as old as the First Late Minoan period (_c._ 1600-1500 B.C.), and--not
+rising from the foam, but sailing over it--in a boat, naked, on the lost
+gold ring from Mochlos. It is evident now that she was not only a
+Canaanitish-Syrian goddess, but was common to all the people of the
+Levant. She is Aphrodite-Paphia in Cyprus, Ashtaroth-Astarte in Canaan,
+Atargatis in Syria, Derketo in Philistria, Hathor in Egypt; what the
+Minoans called her we do not know, unless she was Britomartis. She must
+take her place by the side of Rhea-Diktynna in the Minoan pantheon."
+
+It is not without interest to note that on the Mochlos ring the goddess
+is sailing in a papyrus float of Egyptian type, like the moon-goddess in
+her crescent moon.
+
+The association of this early representative of Aphrodite with doves is
+of special interest in view of Highnard's attempt ("Le Mythe de Venus,"
+_Annales du Musée Guimet_, T. 1, 1880, p. 23) to derive the name of "la
+déesse à la colombe" from the Chaldean and Phoenician _phrit_ or _phrut_
+meaning "a dove".
+
+Mr. Hall might have extended his list of homologues to Mesopotamia,
+Iran, and India, to Europe and Further Asia, to America, and, in fact,
+every part of the world that harbours goddesses.]
+
+[238: "Shells as Evidence of the Migration of Early Culture."]
+
+[239: "The Ascent of Olympus."]
+
+[240: A striking confirmation of the fact that the mandrake is really a
+surrogate of the cowry is afforded by the practice in modern Greece of
+using the mandrake carried in a leather bag in the same way (and for the
+same magical purpose as a love philtre) as the Baganda of East Africa
+use the cowry (in a leather bag) at the present time.]
+
+[241: Old Gerade was frank enough to admit that he "never could perceive
+shape of man or woman" (quoted by Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 110).]
+
+[242: "Jacob and the Mandrakes," _Proceedings of the British Academy_,
+Vol. VIII, p. 22.]
+
+[243: The John Rylands Library.]
+
+[244: "The Ascent of Olympus."]
+
+[245: See the memoirs by Tümpel, Jahn, Houssay, and Jackson, to which
+reference is made elsewhere in these pages.]
+
+[246: The well-known circumstantial story told in Hesiod's theogony.]
+
+[247: See the article "Aphrodite" in Roscher's "Lexikon".]
+
+[248: Sir James Frazer's claim that the incident of the ass in a late
+Jewish story of Jacob and the mandrakes (_op. cit._, p. 20) "helps us to
+understand the function of the dog," is quite unsupported. The learned
+guardian of the Golden Bough does not explain _how_ it helps us to
+understand.]
+
+
+The Search for the Elixir of Life. Blood as Life.
+
+In delving into the remotely distant history of our species we cannot
+fail to be impressed with the persistence with which, throughout the
+whole of his career, man (of the species _sapiens_) has been
+seeking[249] for an elixir of life, to give added "vitality" to the dead
+(whose existence was not consciously regarded as ended), to prolong the
+days of active life to the living, to restore youth, and to protect his
+own life from all assaults, not merely of time, but also of
+circumstance. In other words, the elixir he sought was something that
+would bring "good luck" in all the events of his life and its
+continuation. Most of the amulets, even of modern times, the lucky
+trinkets, the averters of the "Evil Eye," the practices and devices for
+securing good luck in love and sport, in curing bodily ills or mental
+distress, in attaining material prosperity, or a continuation of
+existence after death, are survivals of this ancient and persistent
+striving after those objects which our earliest forefathers called
+collectively the "givers of life".
+
+From statements in the earliest literature[250] that has come down to us
+from antiquity, no less than from the views that still prevail among
+the relatively more primitive peoples of the present day, it is clear
+that originally man did not consciously formulate a belief in
+immortality.
+
+It was rather the result of a defect of thinking, or as the modern
+psychologist would express it, an instinctive repression of the
+unpleasant idea that death would come to him personally, that primitive
+man refused to contemplate or to entertain the possibility of life
+coming to an end. So intense was his instinctive love of life and dread
+of such physical damage as would destroy his body that man unconsciously
+avoided thinking of the chance of his own death: hence his belief in the
+continuance of life cannot be regarded as the outcome of an active
+process of constructive thought.
+
+This may seem altogether paradoxical and incredible.
+
+How, it may be asked, can man be said to repress the idea of death, if
+he instinctively refused to admit its possibility? How did he escape the
+inevitable process of applying to himself the analogy he might have been
+supposed to make from other men's experience and recognize that he
+must die?
+
+Man appreciated the fact that he could kill an animal or another man by
+inflicting certain physical injuries on him. But at first he seems to
+have believed that if he could avoid such direct assaults upon himself,
+his life would flow on unchecked. When death does occur and the
+onlookers recognize the reality, it is still the practice among certain
+relatively primitive people to search for the man who has inflicted
+death on his fellow.
+
+It would, of course, be absurd to pretend that any people could fail to
+recognize the reality of death in the great majority of cases. The mere
+fact of burial is an indication of this. But the point of difference
+between the views of these early men and ourselves, was the tacit
+assumption on the part of the former, that in spite of the obvious
+changes in his body (which made inhumation or some other procedure
+necessary) the deceased was still continuing an existence not unlike
+that which he enjoyed previously, only somewhat duller, less eventful
+and more precarious. He still needed food and drink, as he did before,
+and all the paraphernalia of his mortal life, but he was dependent upon
+his relatives for the maintenance of his existence.
+
+Such views were difficult of acceptance by a thoughtful people, once
+they appreciated the fact of the disintegration of the corpse in the
+grave; and in course of time it was regarded as essential for continued
+existence that the body should be preserved. The idea developed, that so
+long as the body of the deceased was preserved and there were restored
+to it all the elements of vitality which it had lost at death, the
+continuance of existence was theoretically possible and worthy of
+acceptance as an article of faith.
+
+Let us consider for a moment what were considered to be elements of
+vitality by the earliest members of our species.[251]
+
+From the remotest times man seems to have been aware of the fact that he
+could kill animals or his fellow men by means of certain physical
+injuries. He associated these results with the effusion of blood. The
+loss of blood could cause unconsciousness and death. Blood, therefore,
+must be the vehicle of consciousness and life, the material whose escape
+from the body could bring life to an end.[252]
+
+The first pictures painted by man, with which we are at present
+acquainted, are found upon the walls and roofs of certain caves in
+Southern France and Spain. They were the work of the earliest known
+representatives of our own species, _Homo sapiens_, in the phase of
+culture now distinguished by the name "Aurignacian".
+
+The animals man was in the habit of hunting for food are depicted.[253]
+In some of them arrows are shown implanted in the animal's flank near
+the region of the heart; and in others the heart itself is represented.
+
+This implies that at this distant time in the history of our species, it
+was already realized how vital a spot in the animal's anatomy the heart
+was. But even long before man began to speculate about the functions of
+the heart, he must have learned to associate the loss of blood on the
+part of man or animals with death, and to regard the pouring out of
+blood as the escape of its vitality. Many factors must have contributed
+to the new advance in physiology which made the heart the centre or the
+chief habitation of vitality, volition, feeling, and knowledge.
+
+Not merely the empirical fact, acquired by experience in hunting, of the
+peculiarly vulnerable nature of the heart, but perhaps also the
+knowledge that the heart contained life-giving blood, helped in
+developing the ideas about its functions as the bestower of life and
+consciousness.
+
+The palpitation of the heart after severe exertion or under the
+influence of intense emotion would impress the early physiologist with
+the relationship of the heart to the feelings, and afford confirmation
+of his earlier ideas of its functions.
+
+But whatever the explanation, it is known from the folk-lore of even the
+most unsophisticated peoples that the heart was originally regarded as
+the seat of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge, and that the blood
+was the life-stream. The Aurignacian pictures in the caves of Western
+Europe suggest that these beliefs were extremely ancient.
+
+The evidence at our disposal seems to indicate that not only were such
+ideas of physiology current in Aurignacian times, but also certain
+cultural applications of them had been inaugurated even then. The
+remarkable method of blood-letting by chopping off part of a finger
+seems to have been practised even in Aurignacian times.[254]
+
+If it is legitimate to attempt to guess at the meaning these early
+people attached to so singular a procedure, we may be guided by the
+ideas associated with this act in outlying corners of the world at the
+present time. On these grounds we may surmise that the motive underlying
+this, and other later methods of blood-letting, such as circumcision,
+piercing the ears, lips, and tongue, gashing the limbs and body, et
+cetera, was the offering of the life-giving fluid.
+
+Once it was recognized that the state of unconsciousness or death was
+due to the loss of blood it was a not illogical or irrational procedure
+to imagine that offerings of blood might restore consciousness and life
+to the dead.[255] If the blood was seriously believed to be the vehicle
+of feeling and knowledge, the exchange of blood or the offering of blood
+to the community was a reasonable method for initiating anyone into the
+wider knowledge of and sympathy with his fellow-men.
+
+Blood-letting, therefore, played a part in a great variety of
+ceremonies, of burial and of initiation, and also those of a
+therapeutic[256] and, later, of a religious significance.
+
+But from Aurignacian times onwards, it seems to have been admitted that
+substitutes for blood might be endowed with a similar potency.
+
+The extensive use of red ochre or other red materials for packing around
+the bodies of the dead was presumably inspired by the idea that
+materials simulating blood-stained earth, were endowed with the same
+life-giving properties as actual blood poured out upon the ground in
+similar vitalizing ceremonies.
+
+As the shedding of blood produced unconsciousness, the offering of blood
+or red ochre was, therefore, a logical and practical means of restoring
+consciousness and reinforcing the element of vitality which was
+diminished or lost in the corpse.
+
+The common statement that primitive man was a fantastically irrational
+child is based upon a fallacy. He was probably as well endowed mentally
+as his modern successors; and was as logical and rational as they are;
+but many of his premises were wrong, and he hadn't the necessary body of
+accumulated wisdom to help him to correct his false assumptions.
+
+If primitive man regarded the dead as still existing, but with a reduced
+vitality, it was a not irrational procedure on the part of the people of
+the Reindeer Epoch in Europe to pack the dead in red ochre (which they
+regarded as a surrogate of the life-giving fluid) to make good the lack
+of vitality in the corpse.
+
+If blood was the vehicle of consciousness and knowledge, the exchange of
+blood was clearly a logical procedure for establishing communion of
+thought and feeling and so enabling an initiate to assimilate the
+traditions of his people.
+
+If red carnelian was a surrogate of blood the wearing of bracelets or
+necklaces of this life-giving material was a proper means of warding off
+danger to life and of securing good luck.
+
+If red paint or the colour red brought these magical results, it was
+clearly justifiable to resort to its use.
+
+All these procedures are logical. It is only the premises that were
+erroneous.
+
+The persistence of such customs in Ancient Egypt makes it possible for
+us to obtain literary evidence to support the inferences drawn from
+archæological data of a more remote age. For instance, the red jasper
+amulet sometimes called the "girdle-tie of Isis," was supposed to
+represent the blood of the goddess and was applied to the mummy "to
+stimulate the functions of his blood";[257] or perhaps it would be more
+accurate to say that it was intended to add to the vital substance which
+was so obviously lacking in the corpse.
+
+
+[249: In response to the prompting of the most fundamental of all
+instincts, that of the preservation of life.]
+
+[250: See Alan Gardiner, _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. IV,
+Parts II-III, April-July, 1917, p. 205. Compare also the Babylonian
+story of Gilgamesh.]
+
+[251: Some of these have been discussed in Chapter 1 ("Incense and
+Libations") and will not be further considered here.]
+
+[252: "The life which is the blood thereof" (Gen. ix. 4).]
+
+[253: See, for example, Sollas, "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, 1915,
+pp. 326 (fig. 163), 333 (fig. 171), and 36 (fig. 189).]
+
+[254: Sollas, _op. cit._, pp. 347 _et seq._]
+
+[255: The "redeeming blood," [Greek: Pharmakon athanasias].]
+
+[256: The practice of blood-letting for therapeutic purposes was
+probably first suggested by a confused rationalization. The act of
+blood-letting was a means of healing; and the victim himself supplied
+the vitalizing fluid!]
+
+[257: Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet," p. 112.]
+
+
+The Cowry as a Giver of Life.
+
+Blood and its substitutes, however, were not the only materials that had
+acquired a reputation for vitalizing qualities in the Reindeer Epoch.
+For there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that shells also were
+regarded, even in that remote time, as life-giving amulets.
+
+If the loss of blood was at first the only recognized cause of death,
+the act of birth was clearly the only process of life-giving. The portal
+by which a child entered the world was regarded, therefore, not only as
+the channel of birth, but also as the actual giver of life.[258] The
+large Red Sea cowry-shell, which closely simulates this "giver of life,"
+then came to be endowed by popular imagination with the same powers.
+Hence the shell was used in the same way as red ochre or carnelian: it
+was placed in the grave to confer vitality on the dead, and worn on
+bracelets and necklaces to secure good luck by using the "giver of life"
+to avert the risk of danger to life. Thus the general life-giving
+properties of blood, blood substitutes, and shells, came to be
+assimilated the one with the other.[259]
+
+At first it was probably its more general power of averting death or
+giving vitality to the dead that played the more obtrusive part in the
+magical use of the shell. But the circumstances which led to the
+development of the shell's symbolism naturally and inevitably conferred
+upon the cowry special power over women. It was the surrogate of the
+life-giving organ. It became an amulet to increase the fertility of
+women and to help them in childbirth. It was, therefore, worn by girls
+suspended from a girdle, so as to be as near as possible to the organ it
+was supposed to simulate and whose potency it was believed to be able to
+reinforce and intensify. Just as bracelets and necklaces of carnelian
+were used to confer on either sex the vitalizing virtues of blood, which
+it was supposed to simulate, so also cowries, or imitations of them made
+of metal or stone, were worn as bracelets, necklaces, or hair-ornaments,
+to confer health and good luck in both sexes. But these ideas received a
+much further extension.
+
+As the giver of life, the cowry came to have attributed to it by some
+people definite powers of creation. It was not merely an amulet to
+increase fertility: it was itself the actual parent of mankind, the
+creator of all living things; and the next step was to give these
+maternal functions material expression, and personify the cowry as an
+actual woman in the form of a statuette with the distinctly feminine
+characters grossly exaggerated;[260] and in the domain of belief to
+create the image of a Great Mother, who was the parent of the universe.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 18 (a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer
+showing, perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners of
+the palette) as a woman with cow's horns and ears (compare Flinders
+Petrie, "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part I, 1900, Plate
+XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt from which are suspended
+four cow-headed Hathor figures in place of the cowry-amulets of more
+primitive peoples. This affords corroboration of the view that Hathor
+assumed the functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell.
+
+(b) The king's _sporran_, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the
+cowries of the primitive girdle.]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 19.--The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic
+representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners), one of the
+ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America (after Maudslay's
+photograph and diagram).
+
+The girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (_Oliva_ or
+_Conus_) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to the
+Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18).]
+
+Thus gradually there developed out of the cowry-amulet the conception of
+a creator, the giver of life, health, and good luck. This Great Mother,
+at first with only vaguely defined traits, was probably the first deity
+that the wit of man devised to console him with her watchful care over
+his welfare in this life and to give him assurance as to his fate in
+the future.
+
+At this stage I should like to emphasize the fact that these beliefs had
+taken shape long before any definite ideas had been formulated as to the
+physiology of animal reproduction and before agriculture was practised.
+
+Man had not yet come to appreciate the importance of vegetable
+fertility, nor had he yet begun to frame theories of the fertilizing
+powers of water, or give specific expression to them by creating the god
+Osiris in his own image.
+
+Nor had he begun to take anything more than the most casual interest in
+the sun, the moon, and the stars. He had not yet devised a sky-world nor
+created a heaven. When, for reasons that I have already discussed,[261]
+the theory of the fertilizing and the animating power of water was
+formulated, the beliefs concerning this element were assimilated with
+those which many ages previously had grown up in explanation of the
+potency of blood and shells. In addition to fertilizing the earth, water
+could also animate the dead. The rivers and the seas were in fact a vast
+reservoir of this animating substance. The powers of the cowry, as a
+product of the sea, were rationalized into an expression of the great
+creative force of the water.
+
+A bowl of water became the symbol of the fruitfulness of woman. Such
+symbolism implied that woman, or her uterus, was a receptacle into which
+the seminal fluid was poured and from which a new being emerged in a
+flood of amniotic fluid.
+
+The burial of shells with the dead is an extremely ancient practice, for
+cowries have been found upon human skeletons of the so-called "Upper
+Palæolithic Age" of Southern Europe.
+
+At Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne) Mediterranean cowries were found arranged
+in pairs upon the body; two pairs on the forehead, one near each arm,
+four in the region of the thighs and knees, and two upon each foot.
+Others were found in the Mentone caves, and are peculiarly important,
+because, upon the same stratum as the skeleton with which they were
+associated, was found part of a _Cassis rufa_, a shell whose habitat
+does not extend any nearer than the Indian Ocean.[262]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts
+worn in (a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively.
+
+(c) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the
+Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones, and
+what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of cowries.
+
+(d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads of
+deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt between
+the heads recall Hathor's sistra.]
+
+These facts are very important. In the first place they reveal the great
+antiquity of the practice of burying shells with the dead, presumably
+for the purpose of "life-giving". Secondly, they suggest the possibility
+that their magical value as givers of life may be more ancient than
+their specific use as intensifiers of the fertility of women. Thirdly,
+the association of these practices with the use of the shell _Cassis
+rufa_ indicates a very early cultural contact between the people living
+upon the North-Western shores of the Mediterranean in the Reindeer Age
+and the dwellers on the coasts of the Indian Ocean; and the
+probability that these special uses of shells by the former were
+inspired by the latter.
+
+This hint assumes a special significance when we first get a clear view
+of the more fully-developed shell-cults of the Eastern Mediterranean
+many centuries later.[263] For then we find definite indications that
+the cultural uses of shells were obviously borrowed from the Erythræan
+area.
+
+Long before the shell-amulet became personified as a woman the
+Mediterranean people had definitely adopted the belief in the cowry's
+ability to give life and birth.
+
+
+[258: As it is still called in the Semitic languages. In the Egyptian
+Pyramid Texts there is a reference to a new being formed "by the vulva
+of Tefnut" (Breasted).]
+
+[259: Many customs and beliefs of primitive peoples suggest that this
+correlation of the attributes of blood and shells went much deeper than
+the similarity of their use in burial ceremonies and for making
+necklaces and bracelets. The fact that the monthly effusion of blood in
+women ceased during pregnancy seems to have given rise to the theory,
+that the new life of the child was actually formed from the blood thus
+retained. The beliefs that grew up in explanation of the placenta form
+part of the system of interpretation of these phenomena: for the
+placenta was regarded as a mass of clotted blood (intimately related to
+the child which was supposed to be derived from part of the same
+material) which harboured certain elements of the child's mentality
+(because blood was the substance of consciousness).]
+
+[260: See S. Reinach, "Les Déesses Nues dans l'Art Oriental et dans
+l'Art Grec," _Revue Archéol._, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 367. Compare also the
+figurines of the so-called Upper Palæolithic Period in Europe.]
+
+[261: Chapter I.]
+
+[262: The literature relating to these important discoveries has been
+summarized by Wilfrid Jackson in his "Shells as Evidence of the
+Migrations of Early Culture," pp. 135-7.]
+
+[263: Cowries were obtained in Neolithic sites at Hissarlik and Spain
+(Siret, _op. cit._, p. 18).]
+
+
+The Origin of Clothing.
+
+The cowry and its surrogates were supposed to be potent to confer
+fertility on maidens; and it became the practice for growing girls to
+wear a girdle on which to suspend the shells as near as possible to the
+organ their magic was supposed to stimulate. Among many peoples[264]
+this girdle was discarded as soon as the girls reached maturity.
+
+This practice probably represents the beginning of the history of
+clothing; but it had other far-reaching effects in the domain of belief.
+
+It has often been claimed that the feeling of modesty was not the reason
+for the invention of clothing, but that the clothes begat modesty.[265]
+This doctrine contains a certain element of truth, but is by no means
+the whole explanation. For true modesty is displayed by people who have
+never worn clothes.
+
+Before mankind could appreciate the psychological fact that the wearing
+of clothing might add to an individual's allurement and enhance her
+sexual attractiveness, some other circumstances must have been
+responsible for suggesting the experiments out of which this empirical
+knowledge emerged. The use of a girdle (a) as a protection against
+danger to life, and (b) as a means of conferring fecundity on
+girls[266] provided the circumstances which enabled men to discover that
+the sexual attractiveness of maidens, which in a state of nature was
+originally associated with modesty and coyness, was profoundly
+intensified by the artifices of clothing and adornment.
+
+Among people (such as those of East Africa and Southern Arabia) in which
+it was customary for unmarried girls to adorn themselves with a girdle,
+it is easy to understand how the meaning of the practice underwent a
+change, and developed into a device for enhancing their charms and
+stimulating the imaginations of their suitors.
+
+Out of such experience developed the idea of the magical girdle as an
+allurement and a love-provoking charm or philtre. Thus Aphrodite's
+girdle acquired the reputation of being able to _compel_ love. When
+Ishtar removed her girdle in the under-world reproduction ceased in the
+world. The Teutonic Brunhild's great strength lay in her girdle. In fact
+magic virtues were conferred upon most goddesses in every part of the
+world by means of a cestus of some sort.[267] But the outstanding
+feature of Aphrodite's character as a goddess of love is intimately
+bound up with these conceptions which developed from the wearing of a
+girdle of cowries.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh).
+
+(a) The mother-goddess standing upon a lioness (which is her Sekhet
+form): she is wearing her girdle, and upon her head is the moon and the
+cow's horns, conventionalized so as to simulate the crescent moon. Her
+hair is represented in the conventional form which is sometimes used as
+Hathor's symbol. In her hands are the serpent and the lotus, which again
+are merely forms of the goddess herself.
+
+(b) Another picture of Astarte (from Roscher's "Lexikon") holding the
+papyrus sceptre which at times is regarded as an animate form of the
+mother-goddess herself and as such a thunder weapon.]
+
+In the Biblical narrative, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden
+fruit, "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
+naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons,"
+or, as the Revised Version expresses it, "girdles". The girdle of
+fig-leaves, however, was originally a surrogate of the girdle of
+cowries: it was an amulet to give fertility. The consciousness of
+nakedness was part of the knowledge acquired as _the result_ of the
+wearing of such girdles (and the clothing into which they developed),
+and was not originally the motive that impelled our remote ancestors to
+clothe themselves.
+
+The use of fig-leaves for the girdle in Palestine is an interesting
+connecting link between the employment of the cowry and the mandrake for
+similar purposes in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and in Cyprus and
+Syria respectively (_vide infra_).
+
+In Greece and Italy, the sweet basil has a reputation for magical
+properties analogous to those of the cowry. Maidens collect the plant
+and wear bunches of it upon their body or upon their girdles; while
+married women fix basil upon their heads.[268] It is believed that the
+odour of the plant will attract admirers: hence in Italy it is called
+_Bacia-nicola_. "Kiss me, Nicholas".[269]
+
+In Crete it is a sign of mourning presumably because its life-prolonging
+attributes, as a means of conferring continued existence to the dead,
+have been so rationalized in explanation of its use at funerals.
+
+On New Year's day in Athens boys carry a boat and people remark, "St.
+Basil is come from Cæsarea".
+
+
+[264: See Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 139 _et seq._]
+
+[265: For a discussion of this subject see the chapter on "The
+Psychology of Modesty and Clothing," in William I. Thomas's "Sex and
+Society," Chicago, 1907; also S. Reinach, "Cults, Myths, and Religions,"
+p. 177; and Paton, "The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall," _Revue
+Archéol._, Serie IV. T. IX, 1907, p. 51.]
+
+[266: It is important to remember that shell-girdles were used by both
+sexes for general life-giving and luck-bringing purposes, in the
+funerary ritual of both sexes, in animating the dead or statues of the
+dead, to attain success in hunting, fishing, and head-hunting, as well
+as in games. Thus men also at times wore shells upon their belts or
+aprons, and upon their implements and fishing nets, and adorned their
+trophies of war and the chase with them. Such customs are found in all
+the continents of the Old World and also in America, as, for example, in
+the girdles of _Conus_- and _Oliva_-shells worn by the figures
+sculptured upon the Copan stelæ. See, for example, Maudslay's pictures
+of stele N, Plate 82 (Biologia Centrali-Americana; Archæology) _inter
+alia_. But they were much more widely used by women, not merely by
+maidens, but also by brides and married women, to heighten their
+fertility and cure sterility, and by pregnant women to ensure safe
+delivery in childbirth. It was their wider employment by women that
+gives these shells their peculiar cultural significance.]
+
+[267: Witness the importance of the girdle in early Indian and American
+sculptures: in the literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Western Europe, and
+the Mediterranean area. For important Indian analogies and Egyptian
+parallels see Moret, "Mystères Égyptiens," p. 91, especially note 3. The
+magic girdle assumed a great variety of forms as the number of
+surrogates of the cowry increased. The mugwort (Artemisia) of Artemis
+was worn in the girdle on St. John's Eve (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p.
+91): the people of Zante use vervain in the same way; the people of
+France (Creuse et Corrères) rye-stalks; Eve's fig-leaves; in Vedic India
+the initiate wore the "cincture of Munga's herbs"; and Kali had her
+girdle of hands. Breasted, ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p.
+29) says: "In the oldest fragments we hear of Isis the great, who
+_fastened on the girdle_ in Khemmis, when she brought her [censer] and
+burned incense before her son Horus."]
+
+[268: This distinction between the significance of the amulet when worn
+on the girdle and on the head (in the hair), or as a necklace or
+bracelet, is very widespread. On the girdle it _usually_ has the
+significance of stimulating the individual's fertility: worn elsewhere
+it was intended to ward off danger to life, _i.e._ to give good luck. An
+interesting surrogate of Hathor's distinctive emblem is the necklace of
+golden apples worn by a priestess of Apollo (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._,
+p. 42).]
+
+[269: De Gubernatis, "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 35.]
+
+
+Pearls.
+
+During the chequered history of the Great Mother the attributes of the
+original shell-amulet from which the goddess was sprung were also
+changing and being elaborated to fit into a more complex scheme. The
+magical properties of the cowry came to be acquired by other Red Sea
+shells, such as _Pterocera_, the pearl oyster, conch shells, and others.
+Each of these became intimately associated with the moon.[270] The
+pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little moons, drops of
+the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky into the gaping
+oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of "shining by night," like
+the moon from which they were believed to have come: and every surrogate
+of the Great Mother, whether plant, animal, mineral or mythical
+instrument, came to be endowed with the power of "shining by night". But
+pearls were also regarded as the quintessence of the shell's life-giving
+properties, which were considered to be all the more potent because they
+were sky-given emanations of the moon-goddess herself. Hence pearls
+acquired the reputation of being the "givers of life" _par excellence_,
+an idea which found literal expression in the ancient Persian word
+_margan_ (from _mar_, "giver" and _gan_, "life"). This word has been
+borrowed in all the Turanian languages (ranging from Hungary to
+Kamskatckha), but also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia,
+thence through Greek and Latin (_margarita_) to European languages.[271]
+The same life-giving attributes were also acquired by the other
+pearl-bearing shells; and at some subsequent period, when it was
+discovered that some of these shells could be used as trumpets, the
+sound produced was also believed to be life-giving or the voice of the
+great Giver of Life. The blast of the trumpet was also supposed to be
+able to animate the deity and restore his consciousness, so that he
+could attend to the appeals of supplicants. In other words the noise
+woke up the god from his sleep. Hence the shell-trumpet attained an
+important significance in early religious ceremonials for the ritual
+purpose of summoning the deity, especially in Crete and India, and
+ultimately in widely distant parts of the world.[272] Long before these
+shells are known to have been used as trumpets, they were employed like
+the other Red Sea shells as "givers of life" to the dead in Egypt. Their
+use as trumpets was secondary.
+
+And when it was discovered that purple dye could be obtained from
+certain of the trumpet-shells, the colouring-matter acquired the same
+life-giving powers as had already been conferred upon the trumpet and
+the pearls: thus it became regarded as a divine substance and as the
+exclusive property of gods and kings.
+
+Long before, the colour red had acquired magic potency as a surrogate of
+life-giving blood; and this colour-symbolism undoubtedly helped in the
+development of the similar beliefs concerning purple.
+
+
+[270: For the details see Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 57-69. Both the
+shells and the moon were identified with the Great Mother. Hence they
+were homologized the one with the other.]
+
+[271: Dr. Mingana has given me the following note: "It is very probable
+that the Græco-Latin _margarita_, the Aramæo-Syriac _margarita_, the
+Arabic _margan_, and the Turanian _margan_ are derived from the Persian
+_mar-gân_, meaning both 'pearl' and 'life,' or etymologically 'giver,
+owner, or possessor, of life'. The word _gan_, in Zend _yan_, is
+thoroughly Persian and is undoubtedly the original form of this
+expression."]
+
+[272: See Chapter II of Jackson's book, _op. cit._]
+
+
+Sharks and Dragons.
+
+When the life-giving attributes of water were confused with the same
+properties with which shells had independently been credited long
+before, the shell's reputation was rationalized as an expression of the
+vital powers of the ocean in which the mollusc was born. But the same
+explanation was also extended to include fishes, and other denizens of
+the water, as manifestations of similar divine powers. In the lecture on
+"Dragons and Rain Gods" I referred to the identification of Ea, the
+Babylonian Osiris, with a fish (p. 105). When the value of the pearl as
+the giver of life impelled men to incur any risks to obtain so precious
+an amulet, the chief dangers that threatened pearl-fishers were due to
+sharks. These came to be regarded as demons guarding the treasure-houses
+at the bottom of the sea. Out of these crude materials the imaginations
+of the early pearl-fishers created the picture of wonderful submarine
+palaces of Nâga kings in which vast wealth, not merely of pearls, but
+also of gold, precious stones, and beautiful maidens (all of them
+"givers of life," _vide infra_, p. 224), were placed under the
+protection of shark-dragons.[273] The conception of the pearl (which is
+a surrogate of the life-giving Great Mother) guarded by dragons is
+linked by many bonds of affinity with early Erythræan and Mediterranean
+beliefs. The more usual form of the story, both in Southern Arabian
+legend and in Minoan and Mycenæan art, represents the Mother Goddess
+incarnate in a sacred tree or pillar with its protecting dragons in the
+form of serpents or lions, or a variety of dragon-surrogates, either
+real animals, such as deer or cattle, or composite monsters (Fig.
+26).[274]
+
+There are reasons for believing that these stories were first invented
+somewhere on the shores of the Erythræan Sea, probably in Southern
+Arabia. The animation of the incense-tree by the Great Mother, for the
+reasons which I have already expounded,[275] formed the link of her
+identification with the pearl, which probably acquired its magical
+reputation in the same region.
+
+"In the Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing in the
+lake Vourukasha: the fish Khar-mâhi circles protectingly around it and
+defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life, children to
+women, husbands to girls, and horses to men. In the Minôkhired the tree
+is called 'the preparer of the corpse'" (Spiegel, "Eran. Altertumskunde,"
+II, 115--quoted by Jung, "Psychology of the Unconscious," p. 532). The
+idea of guarding the divine tree[276] by dragons was probably the result
+of the transference to that particular surrogate of the Great Mother of
+the shark-stories which originated from the experiences of the seekers
+after pearls, her other representatives.
+
+There are many other bits of corroborative evidence to suggest that
+these shell-cults and the legends derived from them were actually
+transmitted from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. Nor is it
+surprising that this should have happened, when it is recalled that
+Egyptian sailors were trafficking in both seas long before the Pyramid
+Age, and no doubt carried the beliefs and the legends of one region to
+the other. I have already referred to the adoption in the Mediterranean
+area of the idea of the dragon-protectors of the tree- and pillar-forms
+of the Great Mother, and suggested that this was merely a garbled
+version of the pearl-fisher's experience of the dangers of attacks by
+sharks. But the same legends also reached the Levant in a less modified
+form, and then underwent another kind of transformation (and confusion
+with the tree-version) in Cyprus or Syria.
+
+As the shark would be a not wholly appropriate actor in the
+Mediterranean, its rôle is taken by its smaller Selachian relative, the
+dog-fish. In the notes on Pliny's Natural History, Dr. Bostock and Mr.
+H. T. Riley[277] refer to the habits of dog-fishes ("Canes marini"), and
+quote from Procopius ("De Bell. Pers." B. I, c. 4) the following
+"wonderful story in relation to this subject": "Sea-dogs are wonderful
+admirers of the pearl-fish, and follow them out to sea.... A certain
+fisherman, having watched for the moment when the shell-fish was
+deprived of the attention of its attendant sea-dog, ... seized the
+shell-fish and made for the shore. The sea-dog, however, was soon aware
+of the theft, and making straight for the fisherman, seized him. Finding
+himself thus caught, he made a last effort, and threw the pearl-fish on
+shore, immediately on which he was torn to pieces by its
+protector."[278]
+
+Though the written record of this story is relatively modern the
+incident thus described probably goes back to much more ancient times.
+It is only a very slightly modified version of an ancient narrative of a
+shark's attack upon a pearl-diver.
+
+For reasons which I shall discuss in the following pages, the rôle of
+the cowry and pearl as representatives of the Great Mother was in the
+Levant assumed by the mandrake, just as we have already seen the
+Southern Arabian conception of her as a tree adopted in Mycenæan lands.
+Having replaced the sea-shell by a land plant it became necessary, in
+adapting the legend, to substitute for the "sea-dog" some land animal.
+Not unnaturally it became a dog. Thus the story of the dangers incurred
+in the process of digging up a mandrake assumed the well-known
+form.[279] The attempt to dig up the mandrake was said to be fraught
+with great danger. The traditional means of circumventing these risks
+has been described by many writers, ancient and modern, and preserved in
+the folk-lore of most European and western Asiatic countries. The story
+as told by Josephus is as follows: "They dig a trench round it till the
+hidden part of the root is very small, then they tie a dog to it, and
+when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily
+plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man
+that would take the plant away."[280] Thus the dog takes the place of
+the dog-fish when the mandrake becomes the pearl's surrogate. The only
+discrepancy between the two stories is the point to which Josephus calls
+specific attention. For instead of the dog killing the thief, as the
+shark (dog-fish) kills the stealer of pearls, the dog becomes the victim
+as a substitute for the man. As Josephus remarks, "the dog dies
+immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant
+away". This distortion of the story is true to the traditions of
+legend-making. The dog-incident is so twisted as to be transformed into
+a device for plucking the dangerous plant without risk.
+
+It is quite possible that earlier associations of the dog with the Great
+Mother may have played some part in this transference of meaning, if
+only by creating confusion which made such rationalization necessary. I
+refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the
+fragments of Osiris; and the rôle played by Anubis, and his Greek
+_avatar_ Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the association of
+the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with the confusion is
+uncertain.[281]
+
+There was an intimate association of the dog with the goddess of the
+under-world (Hecate) and the ritual of rebirth of the dead.[282] Perhaps
+the development of the story of the underworld-goddess Aphrodite's dog
+and the mandrake may have been helped by this survival of the
+association of Isis with Anubis, even if there is not a more definite
+causal relationship between the dog-incidents in the various legends.
+
+The divine dog Anubis is frequently represented in connexion with the
+ritual of rebirth,[283] where it is shown upon a standard in association
+with the placenta. The hieroglyphic sign for the Egyptian word _mes_,
+"to give birth," consists of the skins of three dogs (or jackals, or
+foxes). The three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded the portal of Hades
+may possibly be a distorted survival of this ancient symbolism of the
+three-fold dog-skin as the graphic sign for the act of emergence from
+the portal of birth. Elsewhere (p. 223) in this lecture I have referred
+to Charon's _obolus_ as a surrogate of the life-giving pearl or cowry
+placed in the mouth of the dead to provide "vital substance". Rohde[284]
+regards Charon as the second Cerberus, corresponding to the Egyptian
+dog-faced god Anubis: just as Charon received his _obolus_, so in Attic
+custom the dead were provided with [Greek: melitoutia] the object of
+which is usually said to be to pacify the dog of hell.
+
+What seems to link all these fantastic beliefs and customs with the
+story of the dog and the mandrake is the fact that they are closely
+bound up with the conception of the dog as the guardian of hidden
+treasure.
+
+The mandrake story may have arisen out of a mingling of these two
+streams of legend--the shark (dog-fish) protecting the treasures at the
+bottom of the sea, and the ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning the
+dog-headed god who presides at the embalmer's operations and
+superintends the process of rebirth.
+
+The dog of the story is a representative of the dragon guarding the
+goddess in the form of the mandrake, just as the lions over the gate at
+Mycenæ heraldically support her pillar-form, or the serpents in Southern
+Arabia protect her as an incense tree. Dog, Lion, and Serpent in these
+legends are all representatives of the goddess herself, i.e. merely her
+own _avatars_ (Fig. 26).
+
+At one time I imagined that the rôle of Anubis as a god of embalming and
+the restorer of the dead was merely an ingenuous device on the part of
+the early Egyptians to console themselves for the depredations of
+jackals in their cemeteries. For if the jackal were converted into a
+life-giving god it would be a comforting thought to believe that the
+dead man, even though devoured, was "in the bosom of his god" and
+thereby had attained a rebirth in the hereafter. In ancient Persia
+corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour. There was also the
+custom of leading a dog to the bed of a dying man who presented him with
+food, just as Cerberus was given honey-cakes by Hercules in his journey
+to hell. But I have not been able to obtain any corroboration of this
+supposition. It is a remarkable coincidence that the Great Mother has
+been identified with the necrophilic vulture as Mut; and it has been
+claimed by some writers[285] that, just as the jackal was regarded as a
+symbol of rebirth in Egypt and the dead were exposed for dogs to devour
+in Persia, so the vulture's corpse-devouring habits may have been
+primarily responsible for suggesting its identification with the Great
+Mother and for the motive behind the Indian practice of leaving the
+corpses of the dead for the vultures to dispose of.[286] It is not
+uncommon to find, even in English cathedrals, recumbent statues of
+bishops with dogs as footstools. Petronius ("Sat.," c. 71) makes the
+following statement: "valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae
+catellam pingas--ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem
+vivere".[287] The belief in the dog's service as a guide to the dead
+ranges from Western Europe to Peru.
+
+To return to the story of the dog and the mandrake: no doubt the demand
+will be made for further evidence that the mandrake actually assumed the
+rôle of the pearl in these stories. If the remarkable repertory of
+magical properties assigned to the mandrake[288] be compared with those
+which developed in connexion with the cowry and the pearl,[289] it will
+be found that the two series are identical. The mandrake also is the
+giver of life, of fertility to women, of safety in childbirth; and like
+the cowry and the pearl it exerts these magical influences only if it be
+worn in contact with the wearer's skin.[290] But the most definite
+indication of the mandrake's homology with the pearl is provided by the
+legend that "it shines by night". Some scholars,[291] both ancient and
+modern, have attempted to rationalize this tradition by interpreting it
+as a reference to the glow-worms that settle on the plant! But it is
+only one of many attributes borrowed by the mandrake from the pearl,
+which was credited with this remarkable reputation only when early
+scientists conceived the hypothesis that the gem was a bit of moon
+substance.
+
+As the memory of the real history of these beliefs grew dim, confusion
+was rapidly introduced into the stories. I have already explained how
+the diving for pearls started the story of the great palace of treasures
+under the waters which was guarded by dragons. As the pearl had the
+reputation of shining by night, it is not surprising that it or some of
+its surrogates should in course of time come to be credited with the
+power of "revealing hidden treasures," the treasures which in the
+original story were the pearls themselves. Thus the magic fern-seed and
+other treasure-disclosing vegetables[292] are surrogates of the
+mandrake, and like it derive their magical properties directly or
+indirectly from the pearl.
+
+The fantastic story of the dog and the mandrake provides the most
+definite evidence of the derivation of the mandrake-beliefs from the
+shell-cults of the Erythræan Sea. There are many other scraps of
+evidence to corroborate this. I shall refer here only to one of these.
+"The discovery of the art of purple-dyeing has been attributed to the
+Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many
+writers. According to Julius Pollux ('Onomasticon,' I, iv.) and Nonnus
+('Dionys.,' XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on the seashore
+accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom he was enamoured. The
+dog having found a _Murex_ with its head protruding from its shell,
+devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained with purple. The nymph,
+on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained with Hercules to provide her
+with a robe of like splendour."[293] This seems to be another variant of
+the same story.
+
+
+[273: In Eastern Asia (see, for example, Shinji Nishimura, "The
+Hisago-Bune," Tokio, 1918, published by the Tokio Society of Naval
+Architects, p. 18, where the dragon is identified with the _wani_, which
+can be either a crocodile or a shark); in Oceania (L. Frobenius, "Das
+Zeitalter des Sonnengottes," Bd. I., 1904, and C. E. Fox and F. H. Drew,
+"Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval," _Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 140); and in America (see
+Thomas Gann, "Mounds in Northern Honduras," _Nineteenth Annual Report of
+the Bureau of American Ethnology_, 1897-8, Part II, p. 661) the dragon
+assumes the form of a shark, a crocodile, or a variety of other
+animals.]
+
+[274: Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," _op. cit.
+supra_: W. Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," _op. cit._:
+and Robertson Smith, "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133: "In
+Hadramant it is still dangerous to touch the sensitive mimosa, because
+the spirit that resides in the plant will avenge the injury". When men
+interfere with the incense trees it is reported: "the demons of the
+place flew away with doleful cries in the shape of white serpents, and
+the intruders died soon afterwards".]
+
+[275: _Vide supra_, p. 38.]
+
+[276: In Western mythology the dragon guarding the fruit-bearing tree of
+life is also identified with the Mother of Mankind (Campbell, "Celtic
+Dragon Myth," pp. xli and 18). Thus the tree and its defender are both
+surrogates of the Great Mother. When Eve ate the apple from the tree of
+Paradise she was committing an act of cannibalism, for the plant was
+only another form of herself. Her "sin" consisted in aspiring to attain
+the immortality which was the exclusive privilege of the gods. This
+incident is analogous to that found in the Indian tales where mortals
+steal the _amrita_. By Eve's sin "death came into the world" for the
+paradoxical reason that she had eaten the food of the gods which gives
+immortality. The punishment meted out to her by the Almighty seems to
+have been to inhibit the life-giving and birth-facilitating action of
+the fruit of immortality, so that she and all her progeny were doomed to
+be mortal and to suffer the pangs of child-bearing.
+
+There was a widespread belief among the ancients that ceremonies in
+connexion with the gods must (to be efficacious) be done in the reverse
+of the usual human way (Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 201). So also
+an act which gives immortality to the gods, brings death to man.
+
+The full realization of the fact that man was mortal imposed upon the
+early theologians the necessity of explaining the immortality of the
+gods. The elixir of life was the food of the gods that conferred eternal
+life upon them. By one of those paradoxes so dear to the maker of myths
+this same elixir brought death to man.]
+
+[277: Bohn's Edition, 1855, Vol. II, p. 433.]
+
+[278: A Cretan scene depicts a man attacking a dog-headed sea-monster
+(Mackenzie, _op. cit._, "Myths of Crete," p. 139).]
+
+[279: A number of versions of this widespread fable have been collected
+by Dr. Rendel Harris (_op. cit._) and Sir James Frazer (_op. cit._). I
+quote here from the former (p. 118).]
+
+[280: Josephus, "Bell. Jud.," VII, 6, 3, quoted by Rendel Harris, _op.
+cit._, p. 118.]
+
+[281: The dog-star became associated with Hathor for reasons which are
+explained on p. 209. It was "the opener of the Way" for the birth of the
+sun and the New Year.]
+
+[282: When Artemis acquired the reputation as a huntress and her deer
+became her quarry the dog was rationalized into the new scheme.]
+
+[283: See, for example, Moret's "Mystères Égyptiens," pp. 77-80.]
+
+[284: "Psyche," p. 244.]
+
+[285: See, for example, Jung, _op. cit._, p. 268.]
+
+[286: Nekhebit, the Egyptian Vulture goddess, was identified by the
+Greeks with Eileithyia, the goddess of birth (Wiedemann, "Religion of
+the Ancient Egyptians," p. 141). She was usually represented as a
+vulture hovering over the king. Her place can be taken by the falcon of
+Horus or in the Babylonian story of Etana by the eagle. In the Indian
+Mahábhárata the Garuda is described as "the bird of life ... destroyer
+of all, creator of all".]
+
+[287: Quoted by Jung, _op. cit._, p. 530.]
+
+[288: See Rendel Harris (_op. cit._) and Sir James Frazer (_op. cit._).]
+
+[289: Jackson, _op. cit._]
+
+[290: An interesting rationalization (of which Mr. T. H. Pear has kindly
+reminded me) of this ancient Oriental belief is still alive amongst
+British women. It is maintained that pearls "lose their lustre" unless
+they are worn in contact with the skin. This of course is a pure myth,
+but also an illuminating survival.]
+
+[291: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 16, especially the references to the
+"devil's candle" and "the lamp of the elves".]
+
+[292: Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 113: Other factors played a part in
+the development of this legend of opening up treasure-houses. Both
+Artemis and Hecate are associated with a magical plant capable of
+opening locks and helping the process of birth. Artemis is a goddess of
+the portal and her life-giving symbol in a multitude of varied forms is
+found appropriately placed above the lintel of doors.]
+
+[293: Jackson, _op. cit._, p. 195.]
+
+
+The Octopus.
+
+Aphrodite was associated not only with the cowry, the pearl, and the
+mandrake, but also with the octopus, the argonaut, and other
+cephalopods. Tümpel seems to imagine that the identification of the
+goddess with the argonaut and the octopus necessarily excludes her
+association with molluscs; and Dr. Rendel Harris attributes an equally
+exclusive importance to the mandrake. But in such methods of argument
+due recognition is not given to the outstanding fact in the history of
+primitive beliefs. The early philosophers built up their great
+generalizations in the same way as their modern successors. They were
+searching for some explanation of, or a working hypothesis to include,
+most diverse natural phenomena within a concise scheme. The very essence
+of such attempts was the institution of a series of homologies and
+fancied analogies between dissimilar objects. Aphrodite was at one and
+the same time the personification of the cowry, the conch shell, the
+purple shell, the pearl, the lotus, and the lily, the mandrake and the
+bryony, the incense tree and the cedar, the octopus and the argonaut,
+the pig, and the cow.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 21.--(a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A.
+Reisner in the temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh
+Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess Hathor, represented
+as a woman with the moon and the cow's horns upon her head, and on the
+left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon her head the jackal-symbol of
+her nome.
+
+(b) The Ecuador Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro Jaboncillo (after
+Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907,
+Plate XXXVIII).
+
+A grotesque composite monster intended to represent a woman (compare
+Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a
+conventionalized Octopus, whose body is a _Loligo_, and whose limbs
+are human.]
+
+Every one of these identifications is the result of a long and chequered
+history, in which fancied resemblances and confusion of meaning play a
+very large part. But I cannot too strongly repudiate the claim made by
+Sir James Frazer that such events are merely so many evidences of the
+innate human tendency to personify nature. The history of the arbitrary
+circumstances that were responsible for the development of each one of
+these homologies is entirely fatal to this wholly unwarranted
+speculation.[294] Tümpel claims[295] the Aphrodite was associated more
+especially with "a species of _Sepia_". He refers to the attempts to
+associate the goddess of love with amulets of univalvular shells "in
+virtue of a certain peculiar and obscene symbolism".[296] Naturalists,
+however, designate with the term _Venus Cytherea_ certain gaping
+bivalve molluscs.
+
+But, according to Tümpel (p. 386), neither univalvular nor bivalve
+shells can be regarded as a real part of the goddess's cultural
+equipment. There is no representation of Aphrodite coming in a shell
+from across the sea.[297] The truly sacred Aphrodite-shell was entirely
+different, so Tümpel believes: it was obviously difficult to preserve,
+but for that reason more worthy of notice, for the small [Greek:
+choirinai] (pectines), virginalia marina (Apuleius de mag. 34, 35, and
+in reference thereto, Isidor. origg. 9, 5, 24) or spuria ([Greek:
+sporia]) were only the commoner and more readily obtained surrogates:
+the univalvular shells.
+
+([Greek: monothyra] of Aristotle), such as those just mentioned, and the
+other [Greek: ostrea] of Aphrodite, the Nerites (periwinkles, etc.), the
+purple shell and the Echineïs were also real Veneriae conchae. Among the
+Nerites Aelian enumerates (N.A. 14, 28): [Greek: Aphroditên de
+syndiaitômenên en tê thalattê hêsthênai te tô Nêritê tôde kai echein
+auton philon]. On account of their supposed medicinal value in cases of
+abortion and especially as a prophylactic for pregnant women the [Greek:
+Echenêis] (pure Latin re[mi]mora) was called [Greek: ôdinolytê][298]
+(Pliny, 32, 1, 5: pisciculus!). According to Mutianus (Pliny, 9, 25
+(41), 79 f.), it was a species of purple shell, but larger than the true
+_Murex purpura_. From this the sanctity of the Echineïs to the Cnidian
+Aphrodite is demonstrated: "quibus (conchis) inhaerentibus plenam ventis
+stetisse navem portantem Periandro, ut castrarentur nobilis pueros,
+conchasque, quae id praestiterint, apud Cnidiorum Venerem coli" (Pliny).
+
+Tümpel then (p. 387) accuses Stephani of being mistaken in his
+interpretation of Martial's Cytheriacae (Epign. II, 47, 1 = purple
+shells) as the amulets of Aphrodite, and claims that Jahn has given the
+correct solution of the following passages from Pliny (N.H., 9, 33 [52],
+103, compare 32, 11 [53]): "navigant ex his (conchis) veneriae,
+praebentesque concavam sui partem et aurae opponentes per summa aequorum
+velificant"; and further (9, 30[49], 94): "in Propontide concham esse
+acatii modo carinatam inflexa puppe, prora rostrata, in hac condi
+nauplium animal saepiae simile ludendi societate sola, duobus hoc fieri
+generibus: tranquillum enim vectorem demissis palmulis ferire ut remis;
+si vero flatus invitet, easdem in usu gubernaculi porrigi pandique
+buccarum sinus aurae".
+
+Tümpel claims (pp. 387 and 388) that this quotation settles the
+question. Aphrodite's "shell," according to him, is the _Nauplius_
+(depicted as a shell-fish, with its sail-like palmulæ spread out to the
+wind, but with the same sails flattened into plate-like arms for
+steering), clearly "a species of _Sepia_," wholly like Aphrodite
+herself, a ship-like shell-fish sailing over the surface of the water,
+the concha veneria. [The analogy to a ship bearing the Great Mother is
+extremely ancient and originally referred to the crescent moon carrying
+the moon-goddess across the heavenly ocean.]
+
+Elsewhere (p. 399) he discusses the reasons for the connexion of
+Aphrodite with the "nautilus," by which is meant the argonaut of
+zoologists.
+
+But if Jahn and Tümpel have thus clearly established the proof of the
+intimate association of Aphrodite with certain cephalopods, they are
+wholly unjustified in the assumption that their quotations from
+relatively modern authors disprove the reality of the equally close
+(though more ancient) relationship of the goddess to the cowry, the
+pearl-shell, the trumpet-shell, and the purple-shell.
+
+It must not be forgotten that, as we have already seen, the primitive
+shell-cults of the Erythræan Sea had been diffused throughout the
+Mediterranean area long before Aphrodite was born upon the shores of the
+Levant, and possibly before Hathor came into existence in the south. The
+use of the cowry and gold models of the cowry goes back to an early time
+in Ægean history.[299] And the influence of Aphrodite's early
+associations had become blurred and confused by the development of new
+links with other shells and their surrogates.
+
+But the connexion of Aphrodite with the octopus and its kindred played a
+very obtrusive part in Minoan and Mycenæan art; and its influence was
+spread abroad as far as Western Europe[300] and towards the East as far
+as America. In many ways it was a factor in the development of such
+artistic designs as the spiral and the volute, and not improbably also
+of the swastika.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 22.--(a) _Sepia officinalis_, after Tryon,
+"Cephalopoda".
+
+(b) _Loligo vulgaris_, after Tryon.
+
+(c) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after Tryon.]
+
+Starting from the researches of Tümpel, a distinguished French
+zoologist, Dr. Frédéric Houssay,[301] sought to demonstrate that the
+cult of Aphrodite was "based upon a pre-existing zoological philosophy".
+The argument in support of his claim that Aphrodite was a
+personification of the octopus must be sharply differentiated into two
+parts: first, the reality of the association of the octopus with the
+goddess, of which there can be no doubt; and secondly, his explanation
+of it, which (however popular it may be with classical writers and
+modern scholars)[302] is not only a gratuitous assumption, but also,
+even if it were based upon more valid evidence than the speculations
+of such recent writers as Pliny, would not really carry the explanation
+very far.
+
+I refer to his claim that "les premiers conquérants de la mer furent
+induits en vénération du poulpe nageur (octopus) parce qu'ils crurent
+que quelque-uns de ces céphalopodes, les poulpes sacrés (argonauta)
+avaient, comme eux et avant eux, inventé la navigation" (_op. cit._, p.
+15). Idle fancies of this sort do not help us to understand the
+arbitrary beliefs concerning the magical powers of the octopus.
+
+The real problem we have to solve is to discover why, among all the
+multitude of bizarre creatures to be found in the Mediterranean Sea, the
+octopus and its allies should thus have been singled out for distinctive
+appreciation, and also acquired the same remarkable attributes as the
+cowry.
+
+I believe that the Red Sea "Spider shell," _Pterocera_,[303] was the
+link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like the
+cowry, for funerary purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India.[304]
+But it was also depicted upon a series of remarkable primitive statues
+of the god Min, which were found at Coptos during the winter 1893-4 by
+Professor Flinders Petrie.[305] Some of these objects are now in the
+Cairo Museum and the others in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. They are
+supposed to be late predynastic representations of the god Min. If this
+supposition is correct they are the earliest idols (apart from mere
+amulets) that have been preserved from antiquity.
+
+Upon these statues, representations of the Red Sea shell _Pterocera
+bryonia_ are sculptured in low relief. Mr. F. Ll. Griffith is
+disinclined to accept my suggestion that the object of these pictures of
+the shell was to animate the statues. But whether this was their purpose
+or not, it is probably not without some significance that these
+life-giving shells were associated with so obtrusively phallic a deity
+as Min. In any case they afford concrete evidence of cultural contact
+between Coptos and the Red Sea, and indicate that these particular
+shells were chosen as symbols of that sea or its coast.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5--Pterocera Bryonia. the Red Sea Spider-shell.
+_Col._--the columella 1-7--the "claws".]
+
+The distinctive feature of the _Pterocera_ is that the mantle in the
+adult expands into a series of long finger-like processes each of which
+secretes a calcareous process or "claw". There are seven[306] of these
+claws as well as the long columella (Fig. 5). Hence, when the
+shell-cults were diffused from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean (where
+the _Pterocera_ is not found), it is quite likely that the people of the
+Levant may have confused with the octopus some sailor's account of the
+eight-rayed shell (or perhaps representations of it on some amulet or
+statue). Whether this is the explanation of the confusion or not, it is
+certain that the beliefs associated with the cowry and the octopus in
+the Ægean area are identical with those linked up with the cowry and the
+_Pterocera_ in the Red Sea.
+
+I have already mentioned that the mandrake is believed to possess the
+same magical powers. Sir James Frazer has called attention to the fact
+that in Armenia the bryony (_Bryonia alba_) is a surrogate of the
+mandrake and is credited with the same attributes.[307] Lovell Reeve
+("Conchologia Iconica," VI, 1851) refers to the Red Sea _Pterocera_ as
+the "Wild Vine Root" species, previously known as _Strombus radix
+bryoniae_; and Chemnitz ("Conch. Cab.," 1788, Vol. X, p. 227) says the
+French call it "Racine de brione femelle imparfaite," and refer to it as
+"the maiden". Here then is further evidence that this shell (a) was
+associated in some way with a surrogate of the mandrake (Aphrodite), and
+(b) was regarded as a maiden. Thus clearly it has a place in the
+chequered history of Aphrodite. I have suggested the possibility of its
+confusion with the octopus, which may have led to the inclusion of the
+latter within the scope of the marine creatures in Aphrodite's cultural
+equipment. According to Matthioli (Lib. 2, p. 135), another of
+Aphrodite's creatures, the purple shell-fish, was also known as "the
+maiden". By Pliny it is called Pelogia, in Greek [Greek: porphyra]; and
+[Greek: porphyrômata] was the term applied to the flesh of swine that
+had been sacrificed to Ceres and Proserpine (Hesych.). In fact, the
+purple-shell was "the maiden" and also "the sow": in other words it was
+Aphrodite. The use of the term "maiden" for the _Pterocera_ suggests a
+similar identification. To complete this web of proof it may be noted
+that an old writer has called the mandrake the plant of Circe, the
+sorceress who turned men into swine by a magic draught.[308] Thus we
+have a series of shells, plants, and marine creatures accredited with
+identical magical properties, and each of them known in popular
+tradition as "the maiden". They are all culturally associated with
+Aphrodite.
+
+I shall have occasion (_infra_, p. 177) to refer to M. Siret's account
+of the discovery of the Ægean octopus-motif upon Æneolithic objects in
+Spain, and of the widespread use in Western Europe of certain
+conventional designs derived from the octopus. M. Siret also (see the
+table, Fig. 6, on p. 34 of his book) makes the remarkable claim that the
+conventional form of the Egyptian Bes, which, according to Quibell,[309]
+is the god whose function it is to preside over sexual intercourse in
+its purely physical aspect, is derived from the octopus. If this is
+true--and I am bound to admit that it is far from being proved--it
+suggests that the Red Sea littoral may have been the place of origin of
+the cultural use of the octopus and an association with Hathor, for Bes
+and Hathor are said to have been introduced into Egypt from there.[310]
+
+That the octopus was actually identified with the Great Mother and also
+with the dragon is revealed by the fact of the latter assuming an
+octopus-form in Eastern Asia and Oceania, and by the occurrence of
+octopus-motifs in the representation of the goddess in America. One of
+the most remarkable series of pictures depicting the Great Mother is
+found sculptured in low relief upon a number of stone slabs from Manabi
+in Central America,[311] one of which I reproduce here (Fig. 21_b_).
+The head of the goddess is a conventionalized octopus; to that was added
+a body consisting of a _Loligo_; and, to give greater definiteness to
+this remarkable process of building up the form of the goddess,
+conventional representations of her arms and legs (and in some of the
+sculptures also the _pudendum muliebre_) were added. Thus there can
+be no doubt of the identification of this American Aphrodite and
+the octopus.
+
+In the Polynesian Rata-myth there is a very instructive series of
+manifestations of the dragon.[312] The first form assumed by the monster
+in this story was a gaping shell-fish of enormous size; then it appeared
+as a mighty octopus; and lastly, as a whale, into whose jaws the hero
+Nganaoa sprang, as his representatives are said to have done elsewhere
+throughout the world (Frobenius, _op. cit._, pp. 59-219).
+
+Houssay (_op. cit. infra_) calls attention to the fact that at times
+Astarte was shown carrying an octopus as her emblem,[313] and has
+suggested that it was mistaken for a hand, just as in America the
+thunderbolt of Chac was given a hand-like form in the Dresden Codex
+(_vide supra_. Fig. 13), and elsewhere (_e.g._ Fig. 12).
+
+If this suggestion should prove to be well founded it would provide a
+more convincing explanation of the girdle of hands worn by the Indian
+goddess Kali[314] than that usually given. If the "hands" really
+represent surrogates of the cowry, the wearing of such a girdle brings
+the Indian goddess into line, not only with Astarte and Aphrodite, but
+also with the East African maidens who still wear the girdle of cowries.
+Kali's exploits were in many respects identical with those of the
+bloodthirsty Sekhet-manifestation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Just
+as Sekhet had to be restrained by Re for her excess of zeal in murdering
+his foes, so Siva had to intervene with Kali upon the battlefield
+flooded with gore (as also in the Egyptian story) to spare the remnant
+of his enemies.[315]
+
+
+[294: Sir James Frazer, "Jacob and the Mandrakes," _Proc. Brit.
+Academy_.]
+
+[295: K. Tümpel, "Die 'Muschel der Aphrodite,'" _Philologus, Zeitschrift
+für das Classische Alterthum_, Bd. 51, 1892, p. 385: compare also, with
+reference to the "Muschel der Aphrodite," O. Jahn, _SB. d. k. Sächs. G.
+d. W._, VII, 1853, p. 16 ff.; also IX, 1855, p. 80; and Stephani,
+_Compte rendu pour l'an 1870-71_, p. 17 ff.]
+
+[296: See Jahn, _op. cit._, 1855, T. V, 6, and T. IV, 8: figures of the
+so-called [Greek: Choirinai] (from [Greek: Choiros] in the double sense
+as "pig" and "the female pudendum"): Aristophanes, Eq. 1147; Vesp. 332;
+Pollux, 8, 16; Hesch. s.v.]
+
+[297: The fact that no graphic representation of this event has been
+found is surely a wholly inadequate reason for refusing to credit the
+story. Very few episodes in the sacred history of the gods received
+concrete expression in pictures or sculptures until relatively late. A
+Hellenistic representation of the goddess emerging from a bivalve was
+found in Southern Russia (Minns, "Scythians and Greeks," p. 345).
+
+Tümpel cites the following statements: "te (Venus) ex concha natam esse
+autumant: cave tu harum conchas spernas!" Tibull. 3, 3, 24: "et faveas
+concha, Cypria, vecta tua"; Statius Silv. 1, 2, 117: Venus to
+Violentilla, "haec et caeruleïs mecum consurgere digna fluctibus et
+nostra potuit considere concha"; Fulgent. myth. 2, 4 "concha etiam
+marina pingitur (Venus) portari (I. HS:--am portare)"; Paulus Diacon. p.
+52, "M. Cytherea Venus ab urbe Cythera, in quam primum devecta esse
+dicitur concha, cum in mari esset concepta cet".]
+
+[298: From [Greek: ôdino]--"to have the pains of childbirth".]
+
+[299: See Schliemann, "Ilios," p. 455; and Siret, _op. cit_.]
+
+[300: Siret, _op. cit. supra_, p. 59.]
+
+[301: "Les Théories de la Genèse à Mycènes et le sens zoologique de
+certains symboles du culte d'Aphrodite," _Revue Archéologique_, 3^ie
+série, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 13.]
+
+[302: It was adduced also by Tümpel and others before him.]
+
+[303: or _Pteroceras_.]
+
+[304: Jackson, _op. cit._, p. 38.]
+
+[305: "Koptos," pp. 7-9, Pls. III. and IV.: for a discussion of the
+significance of these statues see Jean Capart, "Les Débuts de l'Art en
+Égypte," Brussels, 1904, p. 216 _et seq._]
+
+[306: This may help to explain the peculiar sanctity of the shell.]
+
+[307: Frazer, _op. cit._, 4.]
+
+[308: Just as Hathor (or her surrogate Horus) turned men into the
+creatures of Set, _i.e._ pigs, crocodiles, _et cetera_.]
+
+[309: "Excavations at Saqqara," 1905-1906, p. 14.]
+
+[310: Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 34.]
+
+[311: Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," 1907.]
+
+[312: A detailed summary of the literature relating to the world-wide
+distribution of certain phases of the dragon-myth is given by Frobenius,
+"Das Zeitalter des Sonnesgottes," Berlin, 1904: on pp. 63-5 he gives the
+Rata-myth.]
+
+[313: Which can also be compared with the conventional form of the
+thunderbolt.]
+
+[314: Of course the hands had the additional significance as trophies of
+her murderous zeal. But I think this is a secondary rationalization of
+their meaning. An excellent photograph of a bronze statue (in the
+Calcutta Art Gallery), representing Kali with her girdle of hands, is
+given by Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie, "Indian Myth and Legend," p. xl.]
+
+[315: F. T. Elworthy has summarized the extensive literature relating to
+hand-amulets ("The Evil Eye," 1895; and "Horns of Honour," 1900). Many
+of these hands have the definite reputation as fertility charms which
+one would expect if Houssay's hypothesis of their derivation from the
+octopus is well founded.]
+
+
+The Swastika.
+
+Houssay (_op. cit. supra_) has made the interesting suggestion that the
+swastika may have been derived from such conventionalized
+representations of the octopus as are shown in Fig. 23. This series of
+sketches is taken from Tümpel's memoir, which provided the foundation
+for Houssay's hypothesis.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 23.--A series of Mycenæan conventionalizations of
+the Argonaut and the Octopus (after Tümpel), which provided the basis
+for Houssay's theory of the origin of the triskele (_a_, _c_, and _d_)
+and swastika (b and e), and Siret's theory to explain the design of
+Bes's face (f and g)]
+
+A vast amount of attention has been devoted to this lucky symbol,[316]
+which still enjoys a widespread vogue at the present day, after a
+history of several thousand years. Although so much has been written in
+attempted explanation of the swastika since Houssay made his suggestion,
+so far as I am aware no one has paid the slightest attention to his
+hypothesis or made even a passing reference to his memoir.[317]
+Fantastic and far-fetched though it may seem at first sight (though
+surely not more so than the strictly orthodox solar theory advocated by
+Mr. Cook or Mrs. Nuttall's astral speculations) Houssay's suggestion
+offers an explanation of some of the salient attributes of the swastika
+on which the alternative hypotheses shed little or no light.
+
+Among the earliest known examples of the symbol are those engraved upon
+the so-called "owl-shaped" (but, as Houssay has conclusively
+demonstrated, really octopus-shaped) vases and a metal figurine found by
+Schliemann in his excavations of the hill at Hissarlik.[318] The
+swastika is represented upon the _mons Veneris_ of these figures, which
+represent the Great Mother in her form as a woman or as a pot, which is
+an anthropomorphized octopus, one of the avatars of the Great Mother.
+The symbol seems to have been intended as a fertility amulet like the
+cowry, either suspended from a girdle or depicted upon a pubic shield or
+conventionalized fig-leaf.
+
+Wherever it is found the swastika is supposed to be an amulet to confer
+"good luck" and long life. Both this reputation and the association with
+the female organs of reproduction link up the symbol with the cowry, the
+_Pterocera_, and the octopus. It is clear then that the swastika has the
+same reputation for magic and the same attributes and associations as
+the octopus; and it may be a conventionalized representation of it, as
+Houssay has suggested.
+
+It must not be assumed that the identification of the swastika with the
+Great Mother and her powers of giving life and resurrection
+_necessarily_ invalidates the solar and astral theories recently
+championed by Mr. Cook and Mrs. Nuttall respectively. I have already
+called attention to the fact that the Sun-god derived his existence and
+all his attributes from his mother. The whole symbolism of the Winged
+Disk and the Wheel of the Sun and their reputation for life-giving and
+destruction were adopted from the Great Mother. These well-established
+facts should prepare us to recognize that the admission of the truth of
+Houssay's suggestion would not necessarily invalidate the more widely
+accepted solar significance of the swastika.
+
+Tümpel called attention to the fact that, when they set about
+conventionalizing the octopus, the Mycenæan artists often resorted to
+the practice of representing pairs of "arms" as units and so making
+four-limbed and three-limbed forms (Fig. 23), which Houssay regards as
+the prototypes of the swastika and the triskele respectively. That such
+a process may have played a part in the development of the symbol is
+further suggested by the form of a Transcaucasian swastika found by
+Rössler,[319] who assigns it to the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age. Each
+of the four limbs is bifurcated at its extremity. Moreover they exhibit
+the series of spots, so often found upon or alongside the limbs of the
+symbol, which suggest the conventional way of representing the suckers
+of the octopus in the Mycenæan designs (Fig. 23).
+
+Another remarkable picture of a swastika-like emblem has been found in
+America.[320] The elephant-headed god sits in the centre and four pairs
+of arms radiate from him, each of them equipped with definite suckers.
+
+Another possible way in which the design of a four-limbed swastika may
+have been derived from an octopus is suggested by the gypsum weight
+found in 1901 by Sir Arthur Evans[321] in the West Magazine of the
+palace at Knossos (_circa_ 1500 B.C.). Upon the surface of this weight
+the form of an octopus has been depicted, four of the arms of which
+stand out in much stronger relief than the others.
+
+The number four has a peculiar mystical significance (_vide infra_, p.
+206) and is especially associated with the Sun-god Horus. This fact may
+have played some part in the process of reduction of the number of limbs
+of the octopus to four; or alternatively it may have helped to emphasize
+the solar associations of the symbol, which other considerations were
+responsible for suggesting. The designs upon the pots from Hissarlik
+show that at a relatively early epoch the swastika was confused with the
+sun's disc represented as a wheel with four spokes.[322] But the solar
+attributes of the swastika are secondary to those of life-giving and
+luck-bringing, with which it was originally endowed as a form of the
+Great Mother.
+
+The only serious fact which arouses some doubt as to the validity of
+Houssay's theory is the discovery of an early painted vase at Susa
+decorated with an unmistakable swastika. Edmond Pottier, who has
+described the ceramic ware from Susa,[323] regards this pot as
+Proto-Elamite of the earliest period. If Pottier's claim is justified we
+have in this isolated specimen from Susa the earliest example of the
+swastika. Moreover, it comes from a region in which the symbol was
+supposed to be wholly absent.
+
+This raises a difficult problem for solution. Is the Proto-Elamite
+swastika the prototype of the symbol whose world-wide migrations have
+been studied by Wilson (_op. cit. supra_)? Or is it an instance of
+independent evolution? If it falls within the first category and is
+really the parent of the early Anatolian swastikas, how is it to be
+explained? Was the conventionalization of the octopus design much more
+ancient than the earliest Trojan examples of the symbol? Or was the
+Susian design adopted in the West and given a symbolic meaning which it
+did not have before then?
+
+These are questions which we are unable to answer at present because the
+necessary information is lacking. I have enumerated them merely to
+suggest that any hasty inferences regarding the bearing of the Susian
+design upon the general problem are apt to be misleading. Vincent[324]
+claims that the fact of the swastika having been in use by ceramic
+artists in Crete and Susiana many centuries before the appearance of
+Mycenæan art is fatal to Houssay's hypothesis. But I think it is too
+soon to make such an assumption. The swastika was already a rigidly
+conventionalized symbol when we first know it both in the Mediterranean
+and in Susiana. It may therefore have a long history behind it. The
+octopus may possibly have begun to play a part in the development of
+this symbolism before the Egyptian Bes (_vide supra_, p. 171) was
+evolved, perhaps even before the time of the Coptos statues of Min
+(_supra_, p. 169), or in the early days of Sumerian history when the
+conventional form of the water-pot was being determined (_infra_, p.
+179). These are mere conjectures, which I mention merely for the purpose
+of suggesting that the time is not yet ripe for using such arguments as
+Vincent's finally to dispose of Houssay's octopus-theory.
+
+There can be no doubt that the symbolism of the Mycenæan spiral and the
+volute is closely related to the octopus. In fact, the evidence provided
+by Minoan paintings and Mycenæan decorative art demonstrates that the
+spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the
+octopus. The use of the volute on Egyptian scarabs[325] and also in the
+decoration of an early Thracian statuette of a nude goddess[326]
+indicate that it was employed like the spiral and octopus as a
+life-symbol.
+
+In Spanish graves of the Early and Middle Neolithic types M. Siret found
+cowry-shells in association with a series of flint implements, crude
+idols, and pottery almost precisely reproducing the forms of similar
+objects found with cowries and pecten shells at Hissarlik.[327] But when
+the Æneolithic phase of culture dawned in Spain, and the Ægean
+octopus-motif made its appearance there, the culture as a whole reveals
+unmistakable evidence of a predominantly Egyptian inspiration.
+
+M. Siret claims, however, that, even in the Neolithic phase in Spain,
+the crude idols represent forms derived from the octopus in the Eastern
+Mediterranean (p. 59 _et seq._). He regards the octopus as "a
+conventional symbol of the ocean, or, more precisely, of the fertilizing
+watery principle" (p. 19). He elucidates a very interesting feature of
+the Æneolithic representation of the octopus in Spain. The spiral-motif
+of the Ægean gives place to an angular design, which he claims to be due
+to the influence of the conventional Egyptian way of representing water
+(p. 40). If this interpretation is correct--and, in spite of the
+slenderness of the evidence, I am inclined to accept it--it affords a
+remarkable illustration of the effects of culture-contact in the
+conventionalization of designs, to which Dr. Rivers has called
+attention.[328] Whatever explanation may be provided of this method of
+representing the arms of the octopus with its angularly bent
+extremities, it seems to have an important bearing on Houssay's
+hypothesis of the swastika's origin. For it would reveal the means by
+which the spiral or volute shape of the limbs of the swastika became
+transformed into the angular form, which is so characteristic of the
+conventional symbol.[329]
+
+The significance of the spiral as a form of the Great Mother inevitably
+led to its identification with the thunder weapon, like all her other
+surrogates. I have already referred (Chapter II, p. 98) to the
+association of the spiral with thunder and lightning in Eastern Asia.
+But other factors played a significant part in determining this
+specialization. In Egypt the god Amen was identified with the ram; and
+this creature's spirally curved horn became the symbol of the
+thunder-god throughout the Mediterranean area,[330] and then further
+afield in Europe, Africa, and Asia, where, for instance, we see Agni's
+ram with the characteristic horn. This blending of the influence of the
+octopus- and the ram's-horn-motifs made the spiral a conventional
+representation of thunder. This is displayed in its most definite form
+in China, Japan, Indonesia, and America, where we find the separate
+spiral used as a thunder-symbol, and the spiral appendage on the side of
+the head as a token of the god of thunder.[331]
+
+
+[316: Thomas Wilson ("The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and its
+Migrations; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in
+Prehistoric Times," _Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1894_,
+Washington, 1896) has given a full and well-illustrated summary of most
+of the literature: further information is provided by Count d'Alviella
+(_op. cit. supra_), "The Migration of Symbols"; by Zelia Nuttall ("The
+Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations,"
+_Archæological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum_,
+Cambridge, Mass., 1901); and Arthur Bernard Cook ("Zeus, A Study in
+Ancient Religion," Vol. I, Cambridge, 1914, pp. 472 _et seq._).]
+
+[317: Since this has been printed Mr. W. J. Perry has called my
+attention to a short article by René Croste ("Le Svastika," _Bull.
+Trimestriel de la Société Bayonnaise d'Études Regionales_, 1918), in
+which Houssay's hypothesis is mentioned as having been adopted by
+Guilleminot ("Les Nouveaux Horizons de la Science").]
+
+[318: Wilson (_op. cit._, pp. 829-33 and Figs. 125, 128, and 129) has
+collected the relevant passages and illustrations from Schliemann's
+writings.]
+
+[319: _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Bd. 37, p. 148.]
+
+[320: Seler, _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Bd., 41, p. 409.]
+
+[321: _Corolla Numismatica_, 1906, p. 342.]
+
+[322: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," pp. 198 _et seq_.]
+
+[323: "Etude Historique et Chronologique sur les Vases Peints de
+l'Acropole de Suse," _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, T. XIII,
+_Rech. Archéol._, 5^e série, 1912, Plate XLI, Fig. 3.]
+
+[324: "Canaan," p. 340, footnote.]
+
+[325: Alice Grenfell, _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. II, 1915,
+p. 217: and _Ancient Egypt_, 1916, Part I, p. 23.]
+
+[326: S. Reinach, _Revue Archéol._, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 369.]
+
+[327: L. Siret, "Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Ibériques,"
+1913, p. 18, Fig. 3.]
+
+[328: Rivers, "History of Melanesian Society," Vol. II, p. 374; also
+_Report Brit. Association_, 1912, p. 599.]
+
+[329: M. Siret assigns the date of the appearance in Spain of the highly
+conventionalized angular form of octopus to the time between the
+fifteenth and the twelfth centuries B.C.; and he attributes it to
+Phoenician influence (p. 63).]
+
+[330: Cook, "Zeus," p. 346 _et seq._]
+
+[331: This is well shown upon the Copan representations (Fig. 19) of the
+elephant-headed god--see _Nature_, November, 25, 1915, p. 340.]
+
+
+The Mother Pot.
+
+In the lecture on "Incense and Libations" (Chapter I) I referred to the
+enrichment of the conception of water's life-giving properties which the
+inclusion of the idea of human fertilization by water involved. When
+this event happened a new view developed in explanation of the part
+played by woman in reproduction. She was no longer regarded as the real
+parent of mankind, but as the matrix in which the seed was planted and
+nurtured during the course of its growth and development. Hence in the
+earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic writing the picture of a pot of water was
+taken as the symbol of womanhood, the "vessel" which received the seed.
+A globular water-pot, the common phonetic value of which is _Nw_ or
+_Nu_, was the symbol of the cosmic waters, the god _Nw (Nu)_, whose
+female counterpart was the goddess _Nut_.
+
+In his report, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs,"[332] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith
+discusses the bowl of water (a) and says that it stands for the female
+principle in the words for _vulva_ and woman. When it is recalled that
+the cowry (and other shells) had the same double significance, the
+possibility suggests itself whether at times confusion may not have
+arisen between the not very dissimilar hieroglyphic signs for "a shell"
+(h) and "the bowl of water" (woman) (f).[333]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6.
+
+(a) Picture of a bowl of water--the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to _hm_
+(the word _hmt_ means "woman")--Griffith, "Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate
+VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29.
+
+(b) "A basket of sycamore figs"--Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Vol.
+I, p. 323.
+
+(c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning
+"wife" and are apparently taken from (b). But (c) is identical with (i),
+which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve shell (g,
+from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely (h). The varying
+conventionalizations of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f)
+(Griffith, "Hieroglyphics," p. 34).
+
+(k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic equivalent of the
+sign (h), and, according to Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 26), "is
+probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like
+outline".
+
+(l) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as _Nu_
+and _Nut_.
+
+(m) A "pomegranate" (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column at
+Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 46).
+
+(n) The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the coins
+of Central Greece (compare Fig. 24 (d)). Its similarity to the Egyptian
+pot-sign (l) (which also has the significance of mother-goddess) is
+worthy of note.]
+
+Referring to the sign (g and h) for "a shell," Mr. Griffith says (p.
+25): "It is regularly found at all periods in the word _haw·t_ =
+altar,[334] and perhaps only in this word: but it is a peculiarity of
+the Pyramid Texts that the sign shown in the text-figures _c_, _h_,
+and _i_ is in them used very commonly, not as a word-sign, but also
+as a phonetic equivalent to the sign labelled _k_ (in the text-figure)
+for _h'_ (_kha_), or apparently for _h_ alone in many words.
+
+"The name of the lotus leaf is probably derived from the same root, on
+account of its shell-like outline or _vice versa_."
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7.
+
+(a) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus emerging from a
+lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis).
+
+(b) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and animistically
+identified with them either as an instrument of life-giving or
+destruction.
+
+(c) Conventionalized lily--the prototype of the trident and the
+thunder-weapon.
+
+(d) A water-plant associated with the Nile-gods.]
+
+The familiar representation of Horus (and his homologues in India and
+elsewhere) being born from the lotus suggests that the flower represents
+his mother Hathor. But as the argument in these pages has led us towards
+the inference that the original form of Hathor was a shell-amulet,[335]
+it seems not unlikely that her identification with the lotus may have
+arisen from the confusion between the latter and the cowry, which no
+doubt was also in part due to the belief that both the shell and the
+plant were expressions of the vital powers of the water in which they
+developed.
+
+The identification of the Great Mother with a pot was one of the factors
+that played a part in the assimilation of her attributes with those of
+the Water God, who in early Sumerian pictures was usually represented
+pouring the life-giving waters from his pot (Fig. 24, _h_ and _l_).
+
+[Illustration:
+
+Fig. 24.
+
+(a) and (b) Two Mycenæan pots (after Schliemann).
+
+(a) The so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the
+Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
+
+(b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon
+her head and another in her hands--a three-fold representation of the
+Great Mother as a pot.
+
+(c) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is
+represented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form.
+
+(d), (e), (f), (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after
+Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with its
+pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f).
+
+(i) _Sepia officinalis_ (after Tryon).
+
+(k) and (l) The so-called "spouting vases" in the hands of the
+Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of
+Tello, after Ward ("Seal Cylinders, etc.," p. 215).
+
+The "spouting vases" have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia to
+suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of
+the latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and
+cephalopods in Western Asia and the Mediterranean.]
+
+This idea of the Mother Pot is found not only in Babylonia, Egypt,
+India,[336] and the Eastern Mediterranean, but wherever the influence of
+these ancient civilizations made itself felt. It is widespread among the
+Celtic-speaking peoples. In Wales the pot's life-giving powers are
+enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea spread, its
+meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a
+basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's cauldron, the
+magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the
+faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense
+as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so Mr. Donald
+Mackenzie tells me, is closely associated with cows, serpents, frogs,
+dragons, birds, pearls, and "nine maidens that blow the fire under the
+cauldron"; and, if the nature of these relationships be examined, each
+of them will be found to be a link between the pot and the Great Mother.
+
+The witch's cauldron and the maidens who assist in the preparation of
+the witch's medicine seem to be the descendants respectively of Hathor's
+pots (in the story of the Destruction of Mankind) and the Sekti who
+churn up the _didi_ and the barley with which to make the elixir of
+immortality and the sedative draught for the destructive goddess
+herself.
+
+Mr. Donald Mackenzie has given me a number of additional references from
+Celtic and Indian literature in corroboration of these widespread
+associations of the pot with the Great Mother; and he reminds me that in
+Oceania the coco-nut has the same reputation as the pot in the Indian
+_Mahabharata_. It is the source of food and anything else that is
+wanted, and its supply can never be exhausted. [On some future occasion
+I hope to make use of the wonderful legends of the pot's life-giving
+powers, to which Mr. Mackenzie has directed my attention. At present,
+however, I must content myself with the statement that the pot's
+identity with the Great Mother is deeply rooted in ancient belief
+throughout the greater part of the world.[337]]
+
+The diverse conceptions of the Great Mother as a pot and as an octopus
+seem to have been blended in Mycenæan lands, where the so-called
+"owl-shaped" pots were clearly intended to represent the goddess in both
+these aspects united in one symbol. When the diffusion of these ideas
+into more remote parts of the world took place syntheses with other
+motives produced a great variety of most complex forms. In Honduras
+pottery vessels have been found[338] which give tangible expression to
+the blending of the ideas of the Mother Pot, the crocodile-like
+_Makara_, star-spangled like Hathor's cow, Aphrodite's pig, and Soma's
+deer, and provided with the deer's antlers of the Eastern Asiatic dragon
+(see Chapter II, p. 103).
+
+The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and
+rebirth. When Nicodemus asks: "How can a man be born again when he is
+old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" he
+is told: "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot
+enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh:
+and that which is born of the spirit is spirit" (John iii. 4, 5, and 6).
+
+The phrase "born of water" refers to the birth "of the flesh"; and the
+mother's womb is the vessel containing "the water" from which the new
+life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of Isis:
+"[Greek: tetartê de tên Isin en panygrois genesthai]". The great waters
+which produced all living things, the Egyptian god Nun and the goddess
+Nut, were expressed in hieroglyphic as pots of water. The goddess was
+identified with Hathor's celestial star-spangled cow, the original
+mother of the sun-god; and the word "Nun" was a symbol of all that was
+new, young, and fresh, and the fertilizing and life-giving waters of the
+annual inundation of the Nile. Hathor was the daughter of these waters,
+as Aphrodite was sprung from the sea-foam.
+
+
+[332: _Archæol. Survey of Egypt_, 1898, p. 3.]
+
+[333: Compare the two-fold meaning of the Latin _testa_ as "shell" and
+"bowl".]
+
+[334: Compare the association of shells with altars in Minoan Crete and
+the widespread use of large shells as bowls for "holy water" in
+Christian churches.]
+
+[335: Miss Winifred M. Crompton, Assistant Keeper of the Egyptian
+Department of the Manchester Museum, has called my attention to a
+remarkable piece of evidence which affords additional corroboration of
+the view that Hathor was a development of the cowry-amulet. Upon the
+famous archaic palette of Narmer (Fig. 18), a sporran, composed of four
+representations of Hathor's head, takes the place of the original
+cowries that were suspended from more primitive girdles.
+
+The cowries of the head ornament of primitive peoples of Africa and Asia
+(and of the Mediterranean area in early times--Schliemann's "Ilios,"
+Fig. 685) are often replaced in Egypt by lotus flowers (W. D. Spanton,
+"Water Lilies of Egypt," _Ancient Egypt_, 1917, Part I, Figs. 19, 20,
+and 21). Upon the head-band of the statue of Nefert, which I have
+reproduced in Chapter I (Fig. 4), a conventional lotus design is found
+(see Spanton's Fig. 19), which is almost identical with the classical
+thunder-weapon.]
+
+[336: Among the Dravidian people at the present day the seven goddesses
+(corresponding to the seven Hathors) are often represented by seven
+pots.]
+
+[337: The luxuriant crop of stories of the Holy Grail was not inspired
+originally by mere literary invention. A tradition sprung from the
+fountain-head of all mythology, the parent-story of the Destruction of
+Mankind, provided the materials which a series of writers elaborated
+into the varied assortment of legends of the Mother Pot. The true
+meaning of the Quest of the Holy Grail can be understood only by reading
+the fabled accounts of it in the light of the ancient search for the
+elixir of life and the historical development of the narrative
+describing that search.
+
+A concise summary of the Grail literature will be found in Jessie L.
+Weston's "The Quest of the Holy Grail" (1913). Her theory will be found,
+after some slight modifications, to fall into line with the general
+argument of this book.
+
+Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the verb
+"coire cum" gives frank expression to the real meaning of the symbolism
+of the pot as the matrix which receives the seed. The same idea provides
+the material for the incident of the birth of Drona (the pot-born) in
+the Adi Parva (Sections CXXXI, CXXXIX, and CLXVIII, in Roy's
+translation) of the Mahabharata, to which Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie has
+kindly called my attention. Drona was conceived in a pot from the seed
+of a Rishi. A widespread variant of the same story is the conception of
+a child from a drop of blood in a pot (see, for example, Hartland,
+"Legend of Perseus," Vol. I, pp. 98 and 144). If the pot can thus create
+a human being, it is easy to understand how it acquired its reputation
+of being also able to multiply food and provide an inexhaustible supply.
+Similarly, all substances, such as barley, rice, gold, pearls, and jade,
+to which the possession of a special vital essence or "soul substance"
+was attributed, were believed to be able to reproduce themselves and so
+increase in quantity of their own activities. As "givers of life" they
+were also able to add to their own life-substance, in other words to
+grow like any other living being.]
+
+[338: "An American Dragon," _Man_, November, 1918.]
+
+
+Artemis and the Guardian of the Portal.
+
+Sir Gardner Wilkinson states (see text-figure, p. 179, _b_) that "a
+basket of sycamore figs" was originally the hieroglyphic sign for a
+woman, a goddess, or a mother. Later on (p. 199) I shall refer to the
+possible bearing of this Egyptian idea upon the origin of the Hebrew
+word for mandrakes and the allusion to "a basket of figs" in the Book
+of Jeremiah.
+
+The life-giving powers attributed to "love-apples" and the association
+of these ideas with the fig-tree may have facilitated the transference
+of these attributes of "apples" to those actually growing upon a tree.
+
+We know that Aphrodite was intimately associated, not only with
+"love-apples," but also with real apples. The sun-god Apollo's connexion
+with the apple-tree, which Dr. Rendel Harris, with great daring, wants
+to convert into an identity of name, was probably only one of the
+results of that long series of confusions between the Great Mother
+(Hathor) and the Sun-god (Horus), to which I have referred in my
+discussion of the dragon-story.
+
+But when Apollo's form emerges more clearly he is associated not with
+Aphrodite but with Artemis, whom Dr. Rendel Harris has shown to be
+identified with the mugwort, _Artemisia_. The association of the goddess
+with this plant is probably related to the identification of Sekhet with
+the marsh-plants of the Egyptian Delta and of Hathor and Isis with the
+lotus and other water plants. Any doubt as to the reality of these
+associations and Egyptian connexions is banished by the evidence of
+Artemis's male counterpart Apollo Hyakinthos and his relations to the
+sacred lily and other water plants.[339] Artemis was a gynæcological
+specialist: for she assisted women not only in childbirth and the
+expulsion of the placenta, but also in cases of amenorrhoea and
+affections of the uterus. She was regarded as the goddess of the portal,
+not merely of birth,[340] but also of gold and treasure, of which she
+possessed the key, and of the year (January).
+
+This brings us back to the guardianship of gold and treasures which
+plays so vital a part in the evolution of the Mediterranean goddesses.
+For, like the story of the dog and the mandrake, it emphasizes the
+conchological ancestry of these deities and their connexion with the
+guardians of the subterranean palaces where pearls are found. But
+Artemis was not only the opener of the treasure-houses, but she also
+possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone: she could transmute
+base substances into gold,[341] for was she not the offspring of the
+Golden Hathor? To open the portal either of birth or wealth she used her
+magic wand or key. As _Nub_, the lady of gold, the Great Mother could
+not only change other substances into gold, but she was also the
+guardian of the treasure house of gold, pearls, and precious stones.
+Hence she could grant riches. Elsewhere in this chapter (p. 221) I shall
+explain how the goddess came to be identified with gold.
+
+Just as Hathor, the Eye of Re, descended to provide the elixir of youth
+for the king who was the sun-god, so Artemis is described as
+travelling through the air in a car drawn by two serpents[342] seeking
+the most pious of kings in order that she might establish her cult with
+him and bless him with renewed youth.[343]
+
+Artemis was a moon-goddess closely related to Britomartis and Diktynna,
+the Cretan prototype of Aphrodite. These goddesses afforded help to
+women in childbirth and were regarded as guardians of the portal. The
+goddess of streams and marshes was identified with the mugwort
+(_Artemisia_), which was hung above the door in the place occupied at
+other times by the winged disk, the thunder-stone, or a crocodile
+(dragon). As the guardian of portals Artemis's magic plant could open
+locks and doors. As the giver of life she could also withhold the vital
+essence and so cause disease or death; but she possessed the means of
+curing the ills she inflicted. Artemis, in fact, like all the other
+goddesses, was a witch.
+
+In former lectures[344] I have often discussed the remarkable feature of
+Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate
+the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples
+become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways
+or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by
+this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the
+symbolic gateways of China and Japan.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 25.
+
+(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I.
+
+(b) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal
+Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109).
+
+(c) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life
+in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).
+
+(d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the
+design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670).
+
+(e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig.
+663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains:
+alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle.
+
+(f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig.
+9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe, into
+which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was the
+prototype of the Winged Disk has been added.
+
+(g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenæ (after
+Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10).
+
+(h) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the
+wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in _g_.
+
+(i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate" (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the
+Goddess of the Portal.
+
+(k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the form
+suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, _c_).
+
+(l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized
+(Ward, Fig. 695).
+
+(m) Assyrian Tree of Life and "Winged Disk" in which the god is riding
+in a crescent replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695).]
+
+This significance of gates was no doubt suggested by the idea that they
+represented the means of communication between the living and the dead,
+and, symbolically, the portal by which the dead acquired a rebirth into
+a new form of existence. It was presumably for this reason that the
+winged disk as a symbol of life-giving, was placed above the lintels of
+these doors, not merely in Egypt, Phoenicia, the Mediterranean Area, and
+Western Asia, but also in America,[345] and in modified forms in India,
+Indonesia, Melanesia, Cambodia, China, and Japan.
+
+The discussion (Chapter II) of the means by which the winged disk came
+to acquire the power of life-giving, "the healing in its wings," will
+have made it clear that the sun became accredited with these virtues
+only when it assumed the place of the other "Eye of Re," the Great
+Mother. In fact, it was a not uncommon practice in Egypt to represent
+the eyes of Re or of Horus himself in place of the more usual winged
+disk. In the Ægean area the original practice of representing the Great
+Mother was retained long after it was superseded in Egypt by the use of
+the winged disk (the sun-god).
+
+Over the lintel of the famous "Lion Gate" at Mycenæ, instead of the
+winged disk, we find a vertical pillar to represent the Mother Goddess,
+flanked by two lions which are nothing more than other representatives
+of herself (Fig. 26). [Illustration: Fig. 26.
+
+(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains of the horizon
+(on which trees are growing) (after Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," Vol.
+II, p. 101). [This is a part only of a scene in which the goddess Nut is
+giving birth to the sun, whose rays illuminate Hathor on the horizon, as
+Sothis, the "Opener of the Way" for the sun.]
+
+(b) The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a surrogate
+of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in the
+Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, _op. cit._, p. 39). This indicates the
+identity of what Evans calls "the horns of consecration" and the
+"mountains of the horizon," and also suggests how confusion may have
+arisen between the mountains and the cow's horns.
+
+(c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the Eastern
+Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, _op. cit._, p. 373).
+
+(d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the
+Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to "the
+ridiculous mouse"--Smintheus). The _ankh_ (life-sign) below the sun is
+the determinative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is
+heraldically supported by the Great Mother's lionesses.
+
+(e) Part of the design from a Mycenæan vase from Old Salamis (after
+Evans, p. 9). The cow's head and the Eastern Mountains are shown
+alongside one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe
+representing the god.
+
+(f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Idæan Cave, now in
+the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). If this design be compared
+with the Egyptian picture (a), it will be seen that Hathor's place is
+taken by the tree-form of the Great Mother, and the trees which in the
+former (a) are growing upon the Eastern Mountains are now placed
+alongside the "horns". In the complete design (_vide_ Evans, _op. cit._,
+p. 44) a votary is represented blowing a conch-shell trumpet to animate
+the deity in the sacred tree.
+
+(g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of the goddess
+(after Evans, Fig. 66).
+
+(h) Another Mycenæan design comparable with (e).
+
+(i) Design from a signet-ring from Mycenæ (after Evans, Fig. 34). If
+this be compared with the Egyptian picture (a) it will be noted that the
+Great Mother is now replaced by a tree: the Eastern Mountains by bulls,
+from whose backs the trees of the Eastern Mountains are sprouting. This
+design affords interesting corroboration of the suggestion that the
+Eastern Mountains may be confused with the cow's head (see _b_ and _c_)
+or with the cow itself. Newberry (_Annals of Archæology and
+Anthropology_, Liverpool, Vol. I, p. 28) has called attention to the
+intimate association (in Protodynastic Egypt) of the Eastern Mountains,
+the Bull and the Double Axe--a certain token of cultural contact
+with Crete.
+
+(k) The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycenæ. The pillar form
+of the Great Mother heraldically supported by her lioness-avatars, which
+correspond to the cattle of the design (i) and the Eastern Mountains of
+(a). The use of this design above the lintel of the gate brings it into
+homology with the Winged Disk. The Pillar represents the Goddess, as the
+Disk represents her Egyptian _locum tenens_, Horus; her destructive
+representatives (the lionesses) correspond to the two uræi of the Winged
+Disk design.]
+
+In his "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," Sir Arthur Evans has shown that
+all possible transitional forms can be found (in Crete and the Ægean
+area) between the representation of the actual goddess and her
+pillar-and tree-manifestations, until the stage is reached where the sun
+itself appears above the pillar between the lions.[346] In the large
+series of seals from Mesopotamia and Western Asia which have been
+described in Mr. William Hayes Ward's monograph,[347] we find manifold
+links between both the Egyptian and the Minoan cults.
+
+The tree-form of the Great Mother there becomes transformed into the
+"tree of life" and the winged disk is perched upon its summit. Thus we
+have a duplication of the life-giving deities. The "tree of life" of the
+Great Mother surmounted by the winged disk which is really her surrogate
+or that of the sun-god, who took over from her the power of life-giving
+(Figs. 25 and 26).
+
+In an interesting Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada[348] the
+life-giving power is _tripled_. There is not only the tree representing
+the Great Mother herself; but also the double axe (the winged-disk
+homologue of the sun-god); and the more direct representation of him as
+a bird perched upon the axe (Fig. 25, _f_).
+
+The identification of the Great Mother with the tree or pillar seems
+also to have led to her confusion with the pestle with which the
+materials for her draught of immortality was pounded. She was also the
+bowl or mortar in which the pestle worked.[349]
+
+As the Great Mother became confused with the pestle, so, "the
+Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the
+Soma-libation, becomes in the _Vedas_ itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a
+very characteristic and frequent Oriental conceit in accordance with
+which the agent and the person or thing acted on are identified".[350]
+
+"The pressing-stones by means of which Soma is crushed typify
+thunderbolts." "In the _Rig-Veda_, we read of him [Soma] as
+_jyotihrathah_, _i.e._ 'mounted on a car of light' (IX, 5, 86, verse
+43); or again: 'Like a hero he holds weapons in his hand ... mounted on
+a chariot' (IX, 4, 76, verse 2)"--(p. 171).
+
+"Soma was the giver of power, of riches and treasures, flocks and herds,
+but above all, the giver of immortality" (p. 140).
+
+Sir Arthur Evans is of opinion "that in the case of the Cypriote
+cylinders the attendant monsters and, to a certain extent, the symbolic
+column itself, are taken from an Egyptian solar cycle, and the inference
+has been drawn that the aniconic pillars among the Mycenæans of Cyprus
+were identified with divinities having some points in common with the
+sun-gods Ra, or Horus, and Hathor, the Great Mother" (_op. cit._, pp. 63
+and 64).
+
+In attempting to find some explanation of how the tree or pillar of the
+goddess came to be replaced in the Indian legend by Mount Meru, the
+possibility suggests itself whether the aniconic form of the Great
+Mother placed between two relatively diminutive hills may not have
+helped, by confusion, to convert the cone itself into a yet bigger hill,
+which was identified with Mount Meru, the summit of which in other
+legends produced the _amrita_ of the gods, either in the form of the
+soma plant that grew upon its heights, or the rain clouds which
+collected there. But, as the subsequent argument will make clear, the
+real reason for the identification of the Great Mother with a mountain
+was the belief that the sun was born from the splitting of the eastern
+mountain, which thus assumed the function of the sun-god's mother.
+Possibly the association of the tops of mountains with cloud- and
+rain-phenomena and the gods that controlled them played some part in
+the development of the symbolism of mountains. [When I referred (in
+Chapter II, p. 98) to the fact that what Sir Arthur Evans calls "the
+horns of consecration" was primarily the split mountain of the dawn, I
+was not aware that Professor Newberry ("Two Cults of the Old Kingdom,"
+_Annals of Archæology and Anthropology_, Liverpool, Vol. I, 1908, p. 28)
+had already suggested this identification.]
+
+In the Egyptian story the god Re instructed the Sekti of Heliopolis to
+pound the materials for the food of immortality. In the Indian version,
+the gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover some elixir
+which would make them immortal. To this end, Mount Meru [the Great
+Mother] was cast into the sea [of milk]. Vishnu, in his second avatar as
+a tortoise[351] supported the mountain on his back; and the Nâga serpent
+Vasuki was then twisted around the mountain, the gods seizing its head
+and the demons his tail twirled the mountain until they had churned the
+amrita or water of life. Wilfrid Jackson has called attention to the
+fact that this scene has been depicted, not only in India and Japan, but
+also in the Precolumbian _Codex Cortes_ drawn by some Maya artist in
+Central America.[352]
+
+The horizon is the birthplace of the gods; and the birth of the deity is
+depicted with literal crudity as an emergence from the portal between
+its two mountains. The mountain splits to give birth to the sun-god,
+just as in the later fable the parturient mountain produced the
+"ridiculous mouse" (Apollo Smintheus). The Great Mother is described as
+giving birth--"the gates of the firmament are undone for Teti himself at
+break of day" [that is when the sun-god is born on the horizon]. "He
+comes forth from the Field of Earu" (Egyptian Pyramid Texts--Breasted's
+translation).
+
+In the domain of Olympian obstetrics the analogy between birth and the
+emergence from the door of a house or the gateway of a temple is a
+common theme of veiled reference. Artemis, for instance, is a goddess of
+the portal, and is not only a helper in childbirth, but also grows in
+her garden a magical herb which is capable of opening locks. This
+reputation, however, was acquired not merely by reason of her skill in
+midwifery, but also as an outcome of the legend[353] of the
+treasure-house of pearls which was under the guardianship of the great
+"giver of life" and of which she kept the magic key. She was in fact
+the feminine form of Janus, the doorkeeper who presided over all
+beginnings, whether of birth, or of any kind of enterprise or new
+venture, or the commencement of the year (like Hathor). Janus was the
+guardian of the door of Olympus itself, the gate of rebirth into the
+immortality of the gods.
+
+The ideas underlying these conceptions found expression in an endless
+variety of forms, material, intellectual, and moral, wherever the
+influence of civilization made itself felt. I shall refer only to one
+group of these expressions that is directly relevant to the
+subject-matter of this book. I mean the custom of suspending or
+representing the life-giving symbol above the portal of temples and
+houses. Thus the plant peculiar to Artemis herself, the mugwort or
+Artemisia, was hung above the door,[354] just as the winged disk was
+sculptured upon the lintel, or the thunder-stone was placed above the
+door of the cowhouse[355] to afford the protection of the Great Mother's
+powers of life-giving to her own cattle.
+
+In the Pyramid Texts the rebirth of a dead pharaoh is described with
+vivid realism and directness. "The waters of life which are in the sky
+come. The waters of life which are in the earth come. The sky burns for
+thee, the earth trembles for thee, before the birth of the god. The two
+hills are divided, the god comes into being, the god takes possession of
+his body. The two hills are divided, this Neferkere comes into being,
+this Neferkere takes possession of his body. Behold this Neferkere--his
+feet are kissed by the pure waters which are from Atum, which the
+phallus of Shu made, which the vulva of Tefnut brought into being. They
+have come, they have brought for thee the pure waters from their
+father."[356]
+
+The Egyptians entertained the belief[357] that the sun-god was born of
+the celestial cow Mehetweret, a name which means "Great Flood," and
+is the equivalent of the primeval ocean Nun. In other words the
+celestial cow Hathor, the embodiment of the life-giving waters of heaven
+and earth, is the mother of Horus. So also Aphrodite was born of the
+"Great Flood" which is the ocean.
+
+In his report upon the hieroglyphs of Beni Hasan,[358] Mr. Griffith
+refers to the picture of "a woman of the marshes," which is read
+_sekht_, and is "used to denote the goddess Sekhet, the goddess of the
+marshes, who presided over the occupations of the dwellers there. Chief
+among these occupations must have been the capture of fish and fowl and
+the culture and gathering of water-plants, especially the papyrus and
+the lotus". Sekhet was in fact a rude prototype of Artemis in the
+character depicted by Dr. Rendel Harris.[359]
+
+It is perhaps not without significance that the root of a marsh plant,
+the _Iris pseudacorus_[360] is regarded in Germany as a luck-bringer
+which can take the place of the mandrake.[361]
+
+The Great Mother wields a magic wand which the ancient Egyptian scribes
+called the "Great Magician". It was endowed with the two-fold powers of
+life-giving and opening, which from the beginning were intimately
+associated the one with the other from the analogy of the act of birth,
+which was both an opening and a giving of life. Hence the "magic wand"
+was a key or "opener of the ways," wherewith, at the ceremonies of
+resurrection, the mouth was opened for speech and the taking of food, as
+well as for the passage of the breath of life, the eyes were opened for
+sight, and the ears for hearing. Both the physical act of opening (the
+"key" aspect) as well as the vital aspect of life-giving (which we may
+call the "uterine" aspect) were implied in this symbolism. Mr. Griffith
+suggests that the form of the magic wand may have been derived from that
+of a conventionalized picture of the uterus,[362] in its aspect as a
+giver of life. But it is possible also that its other significance as an
+"opener of the ways" may have helped in the confusion of the
+hieroglyphic uterus-symbol with the key-symbol, and possibly also with
+double-axe symbol which the vaguely defined early Cretan Mother-Goddess
+wielded. For, as we have already seen (_supra_, p. 122), the axe also
+was a life-giving divinity and a magic wand (Fig. 8).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8.
+
+(a) "Ceremonial forked object," or "magic wand," used in the ceremony of
+"opening the mouth," possibly connected with (b) (a bicornuate uterus),
+according to Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 60).
+
+(c) The Egyptian sign for a key.
+
+(d) The double axe of Crete and Egypt.]
+
+
+In his chapter on "the Origin of the Cult of Artemis," Dr. Rendel Harris
+refers to the reputation of Artemis as the patron of travellers, and to
+Parkinson's statement: "It is said of Pliny that if a traveller binde
+some of the hearbe [Artemisia] with him, he shall feele no weariness at
+all in his journey" (p. 72). Hence the high Dutch name _Beifuss_ is
+applied to it.
+
+The left foot of the dead was called "the staff of Hathor" by the
+Egyptians; and the goddess was said "to make the deceased's legs to
+walk".[363]
+
+It was a common practice to tie flowers to a mummy's feet, as I
+discovered in unwrapping the royal mummies. According to Moret (_op.
+cit._) the flowers of Upper and Lower Egypt were tied under the king's
+feet at the celebration of the Sed festival.
+
+Mr. Battiscombe Gunn (quoted by Dr. Alan Gardiner) states that the
+familiar symbol of life known as the _ankh_ represents the string of a
+sandal.[364]
+
+It seems to be worth considering whether the symbolism of the
+sandal-string may not have been derived from the life-girdle, which in
+ancient Indian medical treatises was linked in name with the female
+organs of reproduction and the pubic bones. According to Moret (_op.
+cit._, p. 91) a girdle furnished with a tail was used as a sign of
+consecration or attainment of the divine life after death. Jung (_op.
+cit._, p. 270), who, however, tries to find a phallic meaning in all
+symbolism, claims that reference to the foot has such a significance.
+
+
+[339: Evans, _op. cit._, p. 50.]
+
+[340: Her Latin representative, Diana, had a male counterpart and
+conjugate, Dianus, _i.e._ Janus, of whom it was said: "Ipse primum Janus
+cum puerperium concipitur ... aditum aperit recipiendo semini". For
+other quotations see Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 88 and the article
+"Janus" in Roscher's "Lexikon".]
+
+[341: Rendel Harris, p. 73.]
+
+[342: No doubt the two uræi of the Saga of the Winged Disk.]
+
+[343: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 244.]
+
+[344: _Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society_, 1916.]
+
+[345: "The Influence of Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
+America," _Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, 1916.]
+
+[346: Evans's, Fig. 41, p. 63.]
+
+[347: "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," 1910.]
+
+[348: Paribeni, "Monumenti antichi dell'accademia dei Lincei," XIX,
+punt. 1, pll. 1-3; and V. Duhn, "Arch. f. Religionswissensch.," XII, p.
+161, pll. 2-4; quoted by Blinkenberg, "The Thunder Weapon," pp. 20 and
+21, Fig. 9.]
+
+[349: Without just reason, many writers have assumed that the pestle,
+which was identified with the handle used in the churning of the ocean
+(see de Gubernatis, "Zoological Mythology," Vol II, p. 361), was a
+phallic emblem. This meaning may have been given to the handle of the
+churn at a later period, when the churn itself was regarded as the
+Mother Pot or uterus; but we are not justified in assuming that this was
+its primary significance.]
+
+[350: Gladys M. N. Davis, "The Asiatic Dionysos," p. 172.]
+
+[351: The tortoise was the vehicle of Aphrodite also and her
+representatives in Central America.]
+
+[352: Jackson, "Shells, etc.," pp. 57 _et seq._]
+
+[353: _Vide supra_, p. 158.]
+
+[354: Rendel Harris, "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 80. In the building up
+of the idea of rebirth the ancients kept constantly before their minds a
+very concrete picture of the actual process of parturition and of the
+anatomy of the organs concerned in this physiological process. This is
+not the place to enter into a discussion of the anatomical facts
+represented in the symbolism of the "giver of life" presiding over the
+portal and the "two hills" which are divided at the birth of the deity:
+but the real significance of the primitive imagery cannot be wholly
+ignored if we want to understand the meaning of the phraseology used by
+the ancient writers.]
+
+[355: Blinkenberg, "The Thunder-weapon," p. 72.]
+
+[356: Aylward M. Blackman, "Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient
+Egypt," _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, March,
+1918, p. 64.]
+
+[357: _Op. cit._, p. 60.]
+
+[358: "Archæol. Survey of Egypt," 5th Memoir, 1896, p. 31.]
+
+[359: See especially _op. cit._, p. 35, the goddess of streams and
+marshes, who was also herself "the mother plant," like the mother of
+Horus.]
+
+[360: Whose cultural associations with the Great Mother in the Eastern
+Mediterranean littoral has been discussed by Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan
+Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 49 _et seq._ Compare also _Apollo hyakinthos_
+as further evidence of the link with Artemis.]
+
+[361: P. J. Veth, "Internat. Arch. f. Ethnol.," Bd. 7, pp. 203 and 204.]
+
+[362: "Hieroglyphics," p. 60.]
+
+[363: Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, pp. 436 and 437.]
+
+[364: Alan Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings'
+_Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]
+
+
+The Mandrake.
+
+We have now given reasons for believing that the personification of the
+mandrake was in some way brought about by the transference to the plant
+of the magical virtues that originally belonged to the cowry shell.
+
+The problem that still awaits solution is the nature of the process by
+which the transference was effected.
+
+When I began this investigation the story of the Destruction of Mankind
+(see Chapter II) seemed to offer an explanation of the confusion.
+Brugsch, Naville, Maspero, Erman, and in fact most Egyptologists, seemed
+to be agreed that the magical substance from which the Egyptian elixir
+of life was made was the mandrake. As there was no hint[365] in the
+Egyptian story of the derivation of its reputation from the fancied
+likeness to the human form, its identification with Hathor seemed to be
+merely another instance of those confusions with which the pathway of
+mythology is so thickly strewn. In other words, the plant seemed to have
+been used merely to soothe the excited goddess: then the other
+properties of "the food of the gods," of which it was an ingredient,
+became transferred to the mandrake, so that it acquired the reputation
+of being a "giver of life" as well as a sedative. If this had been true
+it would have been a simple process to identify this "giver of life"
+with the goddess herself in her rôle as the "giver of life," and her
+cowry-ancestor which was credited with the same reputation.
+
+But this hypothesis is no longer tenable, because the word _d'd'_
+(variously transliterated _doudou_ or _didi_), which Brugsch[366] and
+his followers interpreted as "mandragora," is now believed to have
+another meaning.
+
+In a closely reasoned memoir, Henri Gauthier[367] has completely
+demolished Brugsch's interpretation of this word. He says there are
+numerous instances of the use of _d'd'_ (which he transliterates
+_doudouiou_) in the medical papyri. In the Ebers papyrus "_doudou_
+d'Eléphantine broyé" is prescribed as a remedy for external application
+in diseases of the heart, and as an astringent and emollient dressing
+for ulcers. He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the
+interior of Africa and the coasts of Arabia.
+
+Mr. F. Ll. Griffith informs me that Gauthier's criticism of the
+translation "mandrakes" is undoubtedly just: but that the substance
+referred to was most probably "red ochre" or "hæmatite".[368]
+
+The relevant passage in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind (in Seti
+I's tomb) will then read as follows: "When they had brought the red
+ochre, the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded it, and the priestesses mixed the
+pulverized substance with the beer, so that the mixture resembled human
+blood".
+
+I would call special attention to Gauthier's comment that the
+blood-coloured beer "had _some magical and marvellous property which is
+unknown to us_".[369]
+
+In his dictionary Brugsch considered the determinative [Symbol: circle
+over three vertical lines] to refer to the fruits of a tree which he
+called "apple tree," on the supposed analogy with the Coptic [jiji
+(janja iota janja iota)], _fructus autumnalis_, _pomus_, the Greek
+[Greek: opôra]; and he proposed to identify the supposed fruit, then
+transliterated _doudou_, with the Hebrew _doudaïm_, and translate it
+_poma amatoria_, mandragora, or in German, _Alraune_. This
+interpretation was adopted by most scholars until Gauthier raised
+objections to it.
+
+As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in
+Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley.[370]
+
+But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew
+_duda'im_ by [Greek: mandragoras] and the Copts did not use the
+word [Coptic: jiji] in their translations, but either the Greek word or
+a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff
+has shown (_Zeitsch. f. Ægypt. Sprache_, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that
+the word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated "_didi_"
+instead of "_doudou_".
+
+Finally, in a letter Mr. Griffith tells me the identification of _didi_
+with the Coptic [Coptic: jiji], "apple (?)" is philologically
+impossible.
+
+Although this red colouring matter is thus definitely proved not to be
+the fruit of a plant, there are reasons to suggest that when the story
+of the Destruction of Mankind spread abroad--and the whole argument of
+this book establishes the fact that it did spread abroad--the substance
+_didi_ was actually confused in the Levant with the mandrake. We have
+already seen that in the Delta a prototype of Artemis was already
+identified with certain plants.
+
+In all probability _didi_ was originally brought into the Egyptian
+legend merely as a surrogate of the life-blood, and the mixture of which
+it was an ingredient was simply a restorer of youth to the king. But the
+determinative (in the tomb of Seti I)--a little yellow disc with a red
+border, which misled Naville into believing the substance to be yellow
+berries--may also have created confusion in the minds of ancient
+Levantine visitors to Egypt, and led them to believe that reference was
+being made to their own yellow-berried drug, the mandrake. Such an
+incident might have had a two-fold effect. It would explain the
+introduction into the Egyptian story of the sedative effects of _didi_,
+which would easily be rationalized as a means of soothing the maniacal
+goddess; and in the Levant it would have added to the real properties of
+mandrake[371] the magical virtues which originally belonged to _didi_
+(and blood, the cowry, and water).
+
+In my lecture on "Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II) I explained that
+the Egyptian story of the Destruction of Mankind is merely one version
+of a saga of almost world-wide currency. In many of the non-Egyptian
+versions[372] the rôle of _didi_ in the Egyptian story is taken by some
+_vegetable_ product of a _red_ colour; and many of these versions reveal
+a definite confusion between the red fruit and the red clay, thus
+proving that the confusion of _didi_ with the mandrake is no mere
+hypothetical device to evade a difficulty on my part, but did actually
+occur.
+
+In the course of the development of the Egyptian story the red clay from
+Elephantine became the colouring matter of the Nile flood, and this in
+turn was rationalized as the blood or red clay into which the bodies of
+the slaughtered enemies of Re were transformed,[373] and the material
+out of which the new race of mankind was created.[374] In other words,
+the new race was formed of _didi_. There is a widespread legend that the
+mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies[375] often
+represented as innocent or chaste men wrongly killed, just as the red
+clay was the substance of mankind killed to appease Re's wrath, "the
+blood of the slaughtered saints".[376]
+
+But the original belief is found in a more definite form in the ancient
+story that "the mandrake was fashioned out of the same earth whereof God
+formed Adam".[377] In other words the mandrake was part of the same
+substance as the earth _didi_.[378]
+
+Further corroboration of this confusion is afforded by a story from
+Little Russia, quoted by de Gubernatis.[379] If bryony (a widely
+recognized surrogate of mandrake) be suspended from the girdle all the
+dead Cossacks (who, like the enemies of Re in the Egyptian story, had
+been killed and broken to pieces in the earth) will come to life again.
+_Thus we have positive evidence of the homology of the mandrake with red
+clay or hæmatite._
+
+The transference to the mandrake of the properties of the cowry (and the
+goddesses who were personifications of the shell) and blood (and its
+surrogates) was facilitated by the manifold homologies of the Great
+Mother with plants. We have already seen that the goddess was identified
+with: (a) incense-trees and other trees, such as the sycamore, which
+played some definite part in the burial ceremonies, either by providing
+the divine incense, the materials for preserving the body, or for making
+coffins to ensure the protection of the dead, and so make it possible
+for them to continue their existence; and (b) the lotus, the lily, the
+iris, and other marsh plants,[380] for reasons that I have already
+mentioned (p. 184).
+
+The Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh represents one of the innumerable
+versions of the great theme which has engaged the attention of writers
+in every age and country attempting to express the deepest longings of
+the human spirit. It is the search for the elixir of life. The object of
+Gilgamesh's search is a magic _plant_ to prolong life and restore youth.
+The hero of the story went on a voyage by water in order to obtain what
+appears to have been a marsh plant called _dittu_.[381] The question
+naturally arises whether this Babylonian story and the name of the plant
+played any part in Palestine in blending the Egyptian and Babylonian
+stories and confusing the Egyptian elixir of life, the red earth _didi_,
+with the Babylonian elixir, the plant _dittu_?
+
+In the Babylonian story a serpent-demon steals the magic plant, just as
+in India _soma_, the food of immortality, is stolen. In Egypt Isis
+steals Re's name,[382] and in Babylonia the Zu bird steals the tablets
+of destiny, the _logos_. In Greek legend apples are stolen from the
+garden of Hesperides. Apples are surrogates of the mandrake and _didi_.
+
+We have now seen that the mandrake is definitely a surrogate (a) of the
+cowry and a series of its shell-homologues, and (b) of the red substance
+in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind.
+
+There still remain to be determined (i) the means by which the mandrake
+became identified with the goddess, (ii) the significance of the Hebrew
+word _duda-im_, and (iii) the origin of the Greek word
+_mandragora_.
+
+The answer to the first of these three queries should now be obvious
+enough. As the result of the confusion of the life-giving magical
+substance _didi_ with the sedative drug, mandrake, the latter acquired
+the reputation of being a "giver of life" and became identified with
+_the_ "giver of life," the Great Mother, the story of whose exploits was
+responsible for the confusion.
+
+The erroneous identification of _didi_ with the mandrake was originally
+suggested by Brugsch from the likeness of the word (then transliterated
+_doudou_) with the Hebrew word _duda-im_ in Genesis, usually
+translated "mandrakes". I have already quoted the opinion of Gauthier
+and Griffith as to the error of such identification. But the evidence
+now at our disposal seems to me to leave no doubt as to the reality of
+the confusion of the Egyptian red substance with the mandrake. This
+naturally suggests the possibility that the similarity of the sounds of
+the words _may_ have played some part in creating the confusion: but it
+is impossible to admit this as a factor in the development of the story,
+because the Hebrew word probably arose out of the identification of the
+mandrake with the Great Mother and not by any confusion of names. In
+other words the similarity of the names of these homologous substances
+is a mere coincidence.
+
+Dr. Rendel Harris claims (and Sir James Frazer seems to approve of the
+suggestion) that the Hebrew word _duda-im_ was derived from
+_dodim_, "love"; and, on the strength of this derivation, he soars
+into a lofty flight of philological conjecture to transmute
+_dodim_, into _Aphrodite_, "love" into the "goddess of love". It
+would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to follow these
+excursions into unknown heights of cloudland.
+
+But my colleagues Professor Canney and Principal Bennett tell me that
+the derivation of _duda-im_ from _dodim_ is improbable;
+and the former authority suggests that _duda-im_ may be merely
+the plural of _dud_, a "pot".[383] Now I have already explained how a
+pot came to symbolize a woman or a goddess, not merely in Egypt, but
+also in Southern India, and in Mycenæan Greece, and, in fact, the
+Mediterranean generally.[384] Hence the use of the term _dud_ for the
+mandrake implies either (a) an identification of the plant with the
+goddess who is the giver of life, or (b) an analogy between the form of
+the mandrake-fruit and a pot, which in turn led to it being called a
+pot, and from that being identified with the goddess.[385]
+
+I should explain that when Professor Canney gave me this statement he
+was not aware of the fact that I had already arrived at the conclusion
+that the Great Mother was identified with a pot and also with the
+mandrake; but in ignorance of the meaning of the Hebrew words I had
+hesitated to equate the pot with the mandrake. As soon as I received his
+note, and especially when I read his reference to the second meaning,
+"basket of figs," in Jeremiah, I recalled Mr. Griffith's discussion of
+the Egyptian hieroglyphic ("a pot of water") for woman, wife, or
+goddess, and the claim made by Sir Gardner Wilkinson that this manner of
+representing the word for "wife" was apparently taken from a
+conventionalized picture of "a basket of sycamore figs".[386] The
+interpretation has now clearly emerged that the mandrake was called
+_duda'im_ by the Hebrews because it was identified with the
+Mother Pot. The symbolism involved in the use of the Hebrew word also
+suggests that the inspiration may have come from Egypt, where a woman
+was called "a pot of water" or "a basket of figs".
+
+When the mandrake acquired the definite significance as a symbol of the
+Great Mother and the power of life-giving, its fruit, "the love apple,"
+became the quintessence of vitality and fertility. The apple and the
+pomegranate became surrogates of the "love apple," and were graphically
+represented in forms hardly distinguishable from pots, occupying places
+which mark them out clearly as homologues of the Great Mother
+herself.[387]
+
+But once the mandrake was identified with the Great Mother in the Levant
+the attributes of the plant were naturally acquired from her local
+reputation there. This explains the pre-eminently conchological aspect
+of the magical properties of the mandrake and the bryony.
+
+I shall not attempt to refer in detail to the innumerable stories of red
+and brown apples, of rowan berries, and a variety of other red fruits
+that play a part in the folk-lore of so many peoples, such as _didi_
+played in the Egyptian myth. These fruits can be either elixirs of life
+and food of the gods, or weapons for overcoming the dragon as Hathor
+(Sekhet) was conquered by her sedative draught.[388]
+
+In his account of the peony, Pliny ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXVIII, Chap. LX)
+says it has "a stem two cubits in length, accompanied by two or three
+others, and of a reddish colour, with a bark like that of the laurel ...
+the seed is enclosed in capsules, _some being red_ and some black ... it
+has an _astringent taste_. The leaves of the female plant _smell like
+myrrh_". Bostock and Riley, from whose translation I have made this
+quotation, add that in reality the plant is destitute of smell. In the
+Ebers papyrus _didi_ was mixed with incense in one of the
+prescriptions;[389] and in the Berlin medical papyrus it was one of the
+ingredients of a fumigation used for treating heart disease. If my
+contention is justified, it may provide the explanation of how the
+confusion arose by which the peony came to have attributed to it a
+"smell like myrrh".
+
+Pliny proceeds: "Both plants [_i.e._ male and female] grow in the woods,
+and they should always be taken up at night, it is said; as it would be
+dangerous to do so in the day-time, the woodpecker of Mars being sure to
+attack the person so engaged.[390] It is stated also that the person,
+while taking up the root, runs great risk of being attacked with
+[prolapsus ani].... Both plants are used[391] for various purposes: the
+red seed, taken in red wine, about fifteen in number, arrest
+menstruation; while the black seed, taken in the same proportion, in
+either raisin or other wine, are curative of diseases of the uterus." I
+refer to these red-coloured beverages and their therapeutic use in
+women's complaints to suggest the analogy with that other red drink
+administered to the Great Mother, Hathor.
+
+In his essay, "Jacob and the Mandrakes,"[392] Sir James Frazer has
+called attention to the homologies between the attributes of the peony
+and the mandrake and to the reasons for regarding the former as Aelian's
+_aglaophotis_.
+
+Pliny states ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXIV, Chap. CII) that the
+_aglaophotis_ "is found growing among the marble quarries of Arabia, on
+the side of Persia," just as the Egyptian _didi_ was obtained near the
+granite quarries at Aswan. "By means of this plant [aglaophotis],
+according to Democritus, the Magi can summon the deities into their
+presence when they please, "just as the users of the conch-shell trumpet
+believed they could do with this instrument. I have already (p. 196)
+emphasized the fact that all of these plants, mandrake, bryony, peony,
+and the rest, were really surrogates of the cowry, the pearl, and the
+conch-shell. The first is the ultimate source of their influence on
+womankind, the second the origin of their attribute of _aglaophotis_,
+and the third of their supposed power of summoning the deity. The
+attributes of some of the plants which Pliny discusses along with the
+peony are suggestive. Pieces of the root of the _achaemenis_ (? perhaps
+_Euphorbia antiquorum_ or else a night-shade) taken in wine, torment the
+guilty to such an extent in their dreams as to extort from them a
+confession of their crimes. He gives it the name also of "hippophobas,"
+it being an especial object of terror to mares. The complementary story
+is told of the mandrake in mediæval Europe. The decomposing tissues of
+the body of an innocent victim on the gallows when they fall upon the
+earth can become reincarnated in a mandrake--the _main de gloire_ of old
+French writers.
+
+Then there is the plant _adamantis_, grown in Armenia and
+Cappadocia, which when _presented to a lion makes the beast fall upon
+its back_, and drop its jaws. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the
+lion-manifestation of Hathor who was calmed by the substance _didi_? A
+more direct link with the story of the destruction of mankind is
+suggested by the account of the _ophiusa_, "which is found in
+Elephantine, an island of Ethiopia". This plant is of a livid colour,
+and hideous to the sight. Taken by a person in drink, it inspires such a
+horror of serpents, which his imagination continually represents as
+menacing him that he commits suicide at last: hence it is that persons
+guilty of sacrilege are compelled to drink an infusion of it (Pliny,
+"Nat. Hist.," XXIV, 102). I am inclined to regard this as a variant of
+the myth of the Destruction of Mankind in which the "snake-plant" from
+Elephantine takes the place of the uræi of the Winged Disk Saga, and
+punishes the act of sacrilege by driving the delinquent into a state of
+delirium tremens.
+
+The next problem to be considered is the derivation of the word
+_mandragora_. Dr. Mingana tells me it is a great puzzle to discover any
+adequate meaning. The attempt to explain it through the Sanskrit _mand_,
+"joy," "intoxication," or _mantasana_, "sleep," "life," or _mandra_,
+"pleasure," or _mantara_, "paradise tree," and _agru_, "unmarried,
+violently passionate," is hazardous and possibly far-fetched.
+
+The Persian is _mardumgiah_, "man-like plant".
+
+The Syro-Arabic word for it is _Yabrouh_, Aramaic _Yahb-kouh_, "giver of
+life". This is possibly the source of the Chinese _Yah-puh-lu_ (Syriac
+_ya-bru-ha_) and _Yah-puh-lu-Yak_. The termination _Yak_ is merely the
+Turanian termination meaning "diminutive".
+
+The interest of the Levantine terms for the mandrake lies in the fact
+that they have the same significance as the word for pearl, _i.e._
+"giver of life". This adds another argument (to those which I have
+already given) for regarding the mandrake as a surrogate of the pearl.
+But they also reveal the essential fact that led to the identification
+of the plant with the Mother-Goddess, which I have already discussed.
+
+In Arabic the mandrake is called _abou ruhr_, "father of life," _i.e._
+"giver of life".[393]
+
+In Arabic _margan_ means "coral" as well as "pearl". In the
+Mediterranean area coral is explained as a new and marvellous plant
+sprung from the petrified blood-stained branches on which Perseus hung
+the bleeding head of Medusa. Eustathius ("Comment. ad Dionys. Perieget."
+1097) derives [Greek: koralion] from [Greek: korê], personifying the
+monstrous virgin: but Chæroboscos claims that it comes from [Greek:
+korê] and [Greek: alion], because it is a maritime product used to make
+ornaments for maidens. In any case coral is a "giver of life" and as
+such identified with a maiden,[394] as the most potential embodiment of
+life-giving force. But this specific application of the word for "giver
+of life" was due to the fact that in all the Semitic languages, as well
+as in literary references in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, this phrase was
+understood as a reference to the female organs of reproduction. The
+same _double entendre_ is implied in the use of the Greek word for "pig"
+and "cowry," these two surrogates of the Great Mother, each of which can
+be taken to mean the "giver of life" or the "pudendum muliebre".
+
+Perhaps the most plausible suggestion that has been made as to the
+derivation of the word "mandragora" is Delâtre's claim[395] that it is
+compounded of the words _mandros_, "sleep," and _agora_, "object or
+substance," and that mandragora means "the sleep-producing substance".
+
+This derivation is in harmony with my suggestion as to the means by
+which the plant acquired its magical properties. The sedative substance
+that, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs (of the Story of the Destruction of
+Mankind), was represented by yellow spheres with a red covering was
+confused in Western Asia with the yellow-berried plant which was known
+to have sedative properties. Hence the plant was confused with the
+mineral and so acquired all the magical properties of the Great Mother's
+elixir. But the Indian name is descriptive of the actual properties of
+the plant and is possibly the origin of the Greek word.
+
+Another suggestion that has been made deserves some notice. It has been
+claimed that the first syllable of the name is derived from the Sanskrit
+_mandara_, one of the trees in the Indian paradise, and the instrument
+with which the churning of the ocean was accomplished.[396] The mandrake
+has been claimed to be the tree of the Hebrew paradise; and a connexion
+has thus been instituted between it and the _mandara_. This hypothesis,
+however, does not offer any explanation of how either the mandrake or
+the _mandara_ acquired its magical attributes. The Indian tree of life
+was supposed to "sweat" _amrita_ just as the incense trees of Arabia
+produce the divine life-giving incense.
+
+But there are reasons[397] for the belief that the Indian story of the
+churning of the sea of milk is a much modified version of the old
+Egyptian story of the pounding of the materials for the elixir of life.
+The _mandara_ churn-stick, which is often supposed to represent the
+phallus,[398] was originally the tree of life, the tree or pillar which
+was animated by the Great Mother herself.[399] So that the _mandara_ is
+homologous with the _mandragora_. But so far as I am aware, there is no
+adequate reason for deriving the latter word from the former.
+
+The derivation from the Sanskrit words _mandros_ and _agora_ seems to
+fit naturally into the scheme of explanation which I have been
+formulating.
+
+In the Egyptian story the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded the _didi_ in a
+mortar to make "the giver of life," which by a simple confusion might be
+identified with the goddess herself in her capacity as "the giver of
+life". This seems to have occurred in the Indian legend. Lakshmi, or
+Sri, was born at the churning of the ocean. Like Aphrodite, who was born
+from the sea-foam churned from the ocean, Lakshmi was the goddess of
+beauty, love, and prosperity.
+
+Before leaving the problems of mandrake and the homologous plants and
+substances, it is important that I should emphasize the rôle of blood
+and blood-substitutes, red-stained beer, red wine, red earth, and red
+berries in the various legends. These life-giving and death-dealing
+substances were all associated with the colour red, and the destructive
+demons Sekhet and Set were given red forms, which in turn were
+transmitted to the dragon, and to that specialized form of the dragon
+which has become the conventional way of representing Satan.
+
+[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became attached to
+the plants _ginseng_ and _shang-luh_--see de Groot, Vol. II, p. 316 _et
+seq._; also Kumagusu Minakata, _Nature_, Vol. LI, April 25, 1895, p.
+608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The fact that the Chinese
+make use of the Syriac word _yabruha_ (_vide supra_) suggests the source
+of these Chinese legends.]
+
+
+[365: As Maspero has specifically mentioned ("Dawn of Civilization," p.
+166).]
+
+[366: "Die Alraune als altägyptische Zauberpflanze," _Zeitsch. f. Ægypt.
+Sprache_, Bd. XXIX, 1891, pp. 31-3.]
+
+[367: "Le nom hiéroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Eléphantine," _Revue
+Égyptologique_, XI^e Vol., Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]
+
+[368: It is quite possible that the use of the name "hæmatite" for this
+ancient substitute for blood may itself be the result of the survival of
+the old tradition.]
+
+[369: It is very important to keep in mind the two distinct properties
+of _didi_: (a) its magical life-giving powers, and (b) its sedative
+influence.]
+
+[370: In Chapter II, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a
+psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical
+question.]
+
+[371: For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the _British Medical
+Journal_, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.]
+
+[372: Even in Egypt itself _didi_ may be replaced by fruit in the more
+specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in the Saga of
+the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: "Thou didst put
+grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu". Wiedemann ("Religion
+of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 70) interprets this as meaning: "thou
+didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it". But by analogy
+with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation of
+_didi_, it should read: "thou didst make the water blood-red with
+grape-juice"; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two
+meanings.]
+
+[373: In the Babylonian story of the Deluge "Ishtar cried aloud like a
+woman in travail, the Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice
+(saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I
+assented to an evil thing in the council of the gods, and agreed to a
+storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth" (King,
+"Babylonian Religion," p. 134).
+
+The Nile god, Knum, Lord of Elephantine, was reputed to have formed the
+world of alluvial soil. The coming of the waters from Elephantine
+brought life to the earth.]
+
+[374: In the Babylonian story, Bel "bade one of the gods cut off his
+head and mix the earth with the blood that flowed from him, and from the
+mixture he directed him to fashion men and animals" (King, "Babylonian
+Religion," p. 56). Bel (Marduk) represents the Egyptian Horus who
+assumes his mother's rôle as the Creator. The red earth as a surrogate
+of blood in the Egyptian story is here replaced by earth _and_ blood.
+
+But Marduk created not only men and animals but heaven and earth also.
+To do this he split asunder the carcase of the dragon which he had
+slain, the Great Mother Tiamat, the evil _avatar_ of the Mother-Goddess
+whose mantle had fallen upon his own shoulders. In other words, he
+created the world out of the substance of the "giver of life" who was
+identified with the red earth, which was the elixir of life in the
+Egyptian story. This is only one more instance of the way in which the
+same fundamental idea was twisted and distorted in every conceivable
+manner in the process of rationalization. In one version of the Osirian
+myth Horus cut off the head of his mother Isis and the moon-god Thoth
+replaced it with a cow's head, just as in the Indian myth Ganesa's head
+was replaced by an elephant's.]
+
+[375: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 9.]
+
+[376: Compare with this the story of Picus the giant who fled to Kirke's
+isle and there was slain by Helios, the plant [Greek: môly] springing
+from his blood (A. B. Cook, "Zeus," p. 241, footnote 15). For a
+discussion of _moly_ see Andrew Lang's "Custom and Myth".]
+
+[377: Frazer, p. 6.]
+
+[378: In Socotra a tree (dracæna) has been identified with the dragon,
+and its exudation, "dragon's blood," was called cinnabar, and confused
+with the mineral (red sulphide of mercury), or simply with red ochre. In
+the Socotran dragon-myth the elephant takes the hero's rôle, as in the
+American stories of Chac and Tlaloc (see Chapter II). The word
+_kinnabari_ was applied to the thick matter that issues from the dragon
+when crushed beneath the weight of the dying elephant during these
+combats (Pliny, XXXIII, 28 and VIII, 12). The dragon had a passion for
+elephant's blood. Any thick red earth attributed to such combats was
+called _kinnabari_ (Schoff, _op. cit._, p. 137). This is another
+illustration of the ancient belief in the identification of blood and
+red ochre.]
+
+[379: "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 101.]
+
+[380: In an interesting article on "The Water Lilies of Ancient Egypt"
+(_Ancient Egypt_, 1917, Part I, p. 1) Mr. W. D. Spanton has collected a
+series of illustrations of the symbolic use of these plants. In view of
+the fact that the papyrus- and lotus-sceptres and the lotus-designs
+played so prominent a part in the evolution of the Greek thunder-weapon,
+it is peculiarly interesting to find (in the remote times of the Pyramid
+Age) lotus designs built up into the form of the double-axe (Spanton's
+Figs. 28 and 29) and the classical _keraunos_ (his Fig. 19).]
+
+[381: The Babylonian magic plant to prolong life and renew youth, like
+the red mineral _didi_ of the Egyptian story. It was also "the plant of
+birth" and "the plant of life".]
+
+[382: Müller, Quibell, Maspero, and Sethe regard the "round cartouche,"
+which the divine falcon often carries in place of the _ankh_-symbol of
+life, as a representation of the royal name (R. Weill, "Les Origines de
+l'Egypte pharaonique," _Annales du Musée Guimet_, 1908, p. 111). The
+analogous Babylonian sign known as "the rod and ring" is described by
+Ward (_op. cit._, p. 413) as "the emblem of the sun-god's supremacy," a
+"symbol of majesty and power, like the tablets of destiny".
+
+As it was believed in Egypt and Babylonia that the possession of a name
+"was equivalent to being in existence," we can regard the object carried
+by the hawk or vulture as a token of the giving of life and the
+controlling of destiny. It can probably be equated with the "tablets of
+destiny" so often mentioned in the Babylonian stories, which the bird
+god _Zu_ stole from Bel and was compelled by the sun-god to restore
+again. Marduk was given the power to destroy or to create, _to speak the
+word of command_ and to control fate, to wield the invincible weapon and
+to be able to render objects invisible. This form of the weapon, "the
+word" or _logos_, like all the other varieties of the thunder-weapon,
+could "become flesh," in other words, be an animate form of the god.
+
+In Egyptian art it is usually the hawk of Horus (the homologue of
+Marduk) which carries the "round cartouche," which is the _logos_, the
+tablets of destiny.]
+
+[383: I quote Professor Canney's notes on the word _duda'im_
+(Genesis xxx. 14) verbatim: "The _Encyclopædia Biblica_ says (s.v.
+'Mandrakes'): 'The Hebrew name, _duda'im_, was no doubt popularly
+associated with _dodim_, [Hebrew: dodim], "love"; but its real
+etymology (like that of [Greek: mandragoras]) is obscure".
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The same word is translated 'mandrakes' in Song of Songs vii. 13.
+
+"_Duda'im_ occurs also in Jeremiah xxiv, 1, where it is usually
+translated 'baskets' ('baskets of figs'). Here it is the plural of a
+word _dud_, which means sometimes a 'pot' or 'kettle,' sometimes a
+'basket'. The etymology is again doubtful.
+
+"I should imagine that the words in Jeremiah and Genesis have somehow or
+other the same etymology, and that _duda-im_ in Genesis has no
+real connexion with _dodim_ 'love'.
+
+"The meaning 'pot' (_dud_, plur. _duda-im_) is probably more
+original than 'basket'. Does _duda-im_ in Genesis and Song of
+Songs denote some kind of pot or caldron-shaped flower or fruit?"]
+
+[384: The Mother Pot is really a fundamental conception of all religious
+beliefs and is almost world-wide in its distribution.]
+
+[385: The fruit of the lotus (which is a form of Hathor) assumes a form
+(Spanton, _op. cit._, Fig. 51) that is identical with a common
+Mediterranean symbol of the Great Mother, called "pomegranate" by Sir
+Arthur Evans (see my text-fig. 6, p. 179, _m_), which is a surrogate of
+the apple and mandrake. The likeness to the Egyptian hieroglyph for a
+jar of water (text-fig. 6, _l_) and the goddess _Nu_ of the fruit of the
+poppy (which was closely associated with the mandrake by reason of its
+soporific properties) may have assisted in the transference of their
+attributes. The design of the water-plant (text-fig. 7, _d_) associated
+with the Nile god may have helped such a confusion and exchange.]
+
+[386: "A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians," revised and
+abridged, 1890, Vol. I, p. 323.]
+
+[387: See, for example, Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar
+Worship," Fig. 27, p. 46.]
+
+[388: In a Japanese dragon-story the dragon drinks "sake" from pots set
+out on the shore (as Hathor drank the _didi_ mixture from pots
+associated with the river); and the intoxicated monster was then slain.
+From its tail the hero extracted a sword (as in the case of the Western
+dragons), which is now said to be the Mikado's state sword.]
+
+[389: See Gauthier, _op. cit._, pp. 2 and 3.]
+
+[390: Compare the dog-incident in the mandrake story.]
+
+[391: Bostock and Riley add the comment that "the peony has no medicinal
+virtues whatever".]
+
+[392: _Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol. VIII, 1917, p. 16 (in
+the reprint).]
+
+[393: I am indebted to Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this information. But
+the philological question is discussed in a learned memoir by the late
+Professor P. J. Veth, "De Leer der Signatuur," _Internationales Archiv
+für Ethnographie_, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75 and 105, and especially
+the appendix, p. 199 _et seq._, "De Mandragora, Naschrift op het tweede
+Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling over de Leer der Signatuur".]
+
+[394: Like the _Purpura_ and the _Pterocera_, the bryony and other
+shells and plants.]
+
+[395: Larousse, Article "Mandragore".]
+
+[396: I have already referred to another version of the churning of the
+ocean in which Mount Meru was used as a churn-stick and identified with
+the Great Mother, of whom the _mandara_ was also an avatar.]
+
+[397: Which I shall discuss in my forthcoming book on "The Story of the
+Flood".]
+
+[398: The phallic interpretation is certainly a secondary
+rationalization of an incident which had no such implication
+originally.]
+
+[399: The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis ii. 17)
+produced fruit the eating of which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, so
+that they realized their nakedness: they became conscious of sex and
+made girdles of fig-leaves (_vide supra_, p. 155). In other words, the
+tree of life had the power of love-provoking like the mandrake. In
+Henderson's "Celtic Dragon Myth" (p. xl) we read: "The berries for which
+she [Medb] craved were from the Tree of Life, the food of the gods, the
+eating of which by mortals brings death," and further: "The berries of
+the rowan tree are the berries of the gods" (p. xliii). I have already
+suggested the homology between these red berries, the mandrake, and the
+red ochre of Hathor's elixir. Thus we have another suggestion of the
+identity of the tree of paradise and the mandrake.]
+
+
+The Measurement of Time.
+
+It was the similarity of the periodic phases of the moon and of
+womankind that originally suggested the identification of the Great
+Mother with the moon, and originated the belief that the moon was the
+regulator of human beings.[400] This was the starting-point of the
+system of astrology and the belief in Fates. The goddess of birth and
+death controlled and measured the lives of mankind.
+
+But incidentally the moon determined the earliest subdivision of time
+into months; and the moon-goddess lent the sanctity of her divine
+attributes to the number twenty-eight.
+
+The sun was obviously the determiner of day and night, and its rising
+and setting directed men's attention to the east and the west as
+cardinal points intimately associated with the daily birth and death of
+the sun. We have no certain clue as to the factors which first brought
+the north and the south into prominence. But it seems probable that the
+direction of the river Nile,[401] which was the guide to the orientation
+of the corpse in its grave, may have been responsible for giving special
+sanctity to these other cardinal points. The association of the
+direction of the deceased's head with the position of the original
+homeland and the eventual home of the dead would have made the south a
+"divine" region in Predynastic times. For similar reasons the north may
+have acquired special significance in the Early Dynastic period.[402]
+
+When the north and the south were added to the other two cardinal points
+the intimate association of the east and the west with the measurement
+of time would be extended to include all the four cardinal points.[403]
+Four became a sacred number associated with time-measurement, and
+especially with the sun.[404]
+
+Many other factors played a part in the establishment of the sanctity
+of the number four. Professor Lethaby has suggested[405] that the
+four-sided building was determined by certain practical factors, such as
+the desirability of fashioning a room to accommodate a woven mat, which
+was necessarily of a square or oblong form. But the study of the
+evolution of the early Egyptian grave and tomb-superstructures suggests
+that the early use of slabs of stone, wooden boards, and mud-bricks
+helped in the process of determining the four-sided form of house and
+room.
+
+When, out of these rude beginnings, the vast four-sided pyramid was
+developed, the direction of its sides was brought into relationship with
+the four cardinal points; and there was a corresponding development and
+enrichment of the symbolism of the number four. The form of the divine
+house of the dead king, who was the god, was thus assimilated to the
+form of the universe, which was conceived as an oblong area at the four
+corners of which pillars supported the sky, as the four legs supported
+the Celestial Cow.
+
+Having invested the numbers four and twenty-eight with special sanctity
+and brought them into association with the measurement of time, it was a
+not unnatural proceeding to subdivide the month into four parts and so
+bring the number seven into the sacred scheme. Once this was done the
+moon's phases were used to justify and rationalize this procedure, and
+the length of the week was incidentally brought into association with
+the moon-goddess, who had seven _avatars_, perhaps originally one for
+each day of the week. At a later period the number seven was arbitrarily
+brought into relationship with the Pleiades.
+
+The seven Hathors were not only mothers but fates also. Aphrodite was
+chief of the fates.
+
+The number seven is associated with the pots used by Hathor's
+priestesses at the celebration inaugurating the new year; and it plays a
+prominent part in the Story of the Flood. In Babylonia the sanctity of
+the number received special recognition. When the goddess became the
+destroyer of mankind, the device seems to have been adopted of
+intensifying her powers of destruction by representing her at times as
+seven demons.[406]
+
+But the Great Mother was associated not only with the week and month but
+also with the year. The evidence at our disposal seems to suggest that
+the earliest year-count was determined by the annual inundation of the
+river. The annual recurrence of the alternation of winter and summer
+would naturally suggest in a vague way such a subdivision of time as the
+year; but the exact measurement of that period and the fixing of an
+arbitrary commencement, a New Year's day, were due to other reasons. In
+the Story of the Destruction of Mankind it is recorded that the incident
+of the soothing of Hathor by means of the blood-coloured beer (which, as
+I have explained elsewhere,[407] is a reference to the annual Nile
+flood) was celebrated annually on New Year's day.
+
+Hathor was regarded in tradition as the cause of the inundation. She
+slaughtered mankind and so caused the original "flood": in the next
+phase she was associated with the 7000 jars of red beer; and in the
+ultimate version with the red-coloured river flood, which in another
+story was reputed to be "the tears of Isis".
+
+Hathor's day was in fact the date of the commencement of the inundation
+and of the year; and the former event marked the beginning of the year
+and enabled men for the first time to measure its duration. Thus
+Hathor[408] was the measurer of the year, the month, and the week; while
+her son Horus (Chronus) was the day-measurer.
+
+In Tylor's "Early History of Mankind" (pp. 352 _et seq._) there is a
+concise summary of some of the widespread stories of the Fountain of
+Youth which restores youthfulness to the aged who drank of it or bathed
+in it. He cites instances from India, Ethiopia, Europe, Indonesia,
+Polynesia, and America. "The Moslem geographer, Ibn-el-Wardi, places the
+Fountain of Life in the dark south-western regions of the earth"
+(p. 353).
+
+The star Sothis rose heliacally on the first day of the Egyptian New
+Year.[409] Hence it became "the second sun in heaven," and was
+identified with the goddess of the New Year's Day. The identification of
+Hathor with this "second sun"[410] may explain why the goddess is said
+to have entered Re's boat. She took her place as a crown upon his
+forehead, which afterwards was assumed by her surrogate, the
+fire-spitting uræus-serpent. When Horus took his mother's place in the
+myth, he also entered the sun-god's boat, and became the prototype of
+Noah seeking refuge from the Flood in the ship the Almighty instructed
+him to make.
+
+In memory of the beer-drinking episode in the Destruction of Mankind,
+New Year's Day was celebrated by Hathor's priestesses in wild orgies of
+beer drinking.
+
+This event was necessarily the earliest celebration of an anniversary,
+and the prototype of all the incidents associated with some special day
+in the year which have been so many milestones in the historical
+progress of civilization.
+
+The first measurement of the year also naturally forms the
+starting-point in the framing of a calendar.
+
+Similar celebrations took place to inaugurate the commencement of the
+year in all countries which came, either directly or indirectly, under
+Egyptian influence.
+
+The month [Greek: Aphrodisia] (so-called from the festival of the
+goddess) began the calendar of Bithynia, Cyprus, and Iasos, just as
+Hathor's feast was a New Year's celebration in Egypt.
+
+In the celebration of these anniversaries the priestesses of Aphrodite
+worked themselves up in a wild state of frenzy; and the term [Greek:
+hystêria][411] became identified with the state of emotional derangement
+associated with such orgies. The common belief that the term "hysteria"
+is derived directly from the Greek word for uterus is certainly
+erroneous. The word [Greek: hystêria] was used in the same sense as
+[Greek: Aphrodisia], that is as a synonym for the festivals of the
+goddess. The "hysteria" was the name for the orgy in celebration of the
+goddess on New Year's day: then it was applied to the condition produced
+by these excesses; and ultimately it was adopted in medicine to apply to
+similar emotional disturbances. Thus both the terms "hysteria" and
+"lunacy"[412] are intimately associated with the earliest phases in the
+moon-goddess's history; and their survival in modern medicine is a
+striking tribute to the strong hold of effete superstition in this
+branch of the diagnosis and treatment of disease.[413]
+
+I have already referred to the association of Artemis with the portal of
+birth and rebirth. As the guardian of the door her Roman representative
+Diana and her masculine _avatar_ Dianus or Janus gave the name to the
+commencement of the year. The Great Mother not only initiated the
+measurement of the year, but she (or her representative) lent her name
+to the opening of the year in various countries.
+
+But the story of the Destruction of Mankind has preserved the record not
+only of the circumstances which were responsible for originating the
+measurement of the year and the making of a calendar, but also of the
+materials out of which were formed the mythical epochs preserved in the
+legends of Greece and India and many other countries further removed
+from the original centre of civilization. When the elaboration of the
+early story involved the destruction of mankind, it became necessary to
+provide some explanation of the continued existence of man upon the
+earth. This difficulty was got rid of by creating a new race of men from
+the fragments of the old or from the clay into which they had been
+transformed (_supra_, p. 196). In course of time this _secondary_
+creation became the basis of the familiar story of the _original_
+creation of mankind. But the story also became transformed in other
+ways. Different versions of the process of destruction were blended into
+one narrative, and made into a series of catastrophes and a succession
+of acts of creation. I shall quote (from Mr. T. A. Joyce's "Mexican
+Archæology," p. 50) one example of these series of mythical epochs or
+world ages to illustrate the method of synthesis:--
+
+When all was dark Tezcatlipoca transformed himself into the sun to give
+light to men.
+
+1. This sun terminated in the destruction of mankind, including a race
+of giants, by _jaguars_.
+
+2. The second sun was Quetzalcoatl, and his age terminated in a terrible
+_hurricane_, during which mankind was transformed into monkeys.
+
+3. The third sun was Tlaloc, and the destruction came by a _rain of
+fire_.
+
+4. The fourth was Chalchintlicue, and mankind was finally destroyed by a
+_deluge_, during which they became fishes.
+
+The first episode is clearly based upon the story of the lioness-form of
+Hathor destroying mankind: the second is the Babylonian story of Tiamat,
+modified by such Indian influences as are revealed in the _Ramayana_:
+the third is inspired by the Saga of the Winged Disk; and the fourth by
+the story of the Deluge.
+
+Similar stories of world ages have been preserved in the mythologies of
+Eastern Asia, India, Western Asia, and Greece, and no doubt were derived
+from the same original source.
+
+
+[400: The Greek Chronus was the son of Selene.]
+
+[401: Or possibly the situations of Upper and Lower Egypt.]
+
+[402: See G. Elliot Smith, "The Ancient Egyptians".]
+
+[403: The association of north and south with the primary subdivision of
+the state probably led to the inclusion of the other two cardinal points
+to make the subdivision four-fold.]
+
+[404: The number four was associated with the sun-god. There were four
+"children of Horus" and four spokes to the wheel of the sun.]
+
+[405: "Architecture," p. 24.]
+
+[406: See the chapter on "Magic" in Jevons, "Comparative Religion". In
+his article "Magic (Egyptian)," in Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion
+and Ethics_ (p. 266), Dr. Alan Gardiner makes the following statement:
+"The mystical potency attaching to certain _numbers_ doubtless
+originated in associations of thought that to us are obscure. The number
+seven, in Egyptian magic, was regarded as particularly efficacious. Thus
+we find references to the seven Hathors: _cf._ [Greek: ai hepta Tychai
+tou ouranou] (A. Dieterich, _Eine Mithrasliturgie_, Leipzig, 1910, p.
+71): 'the seven daughters of Re,' who 'stand and weep and make seven
+knots in their seven tunics'; and similarly 'the seven hawks who are in
+front of the barque of Re'."
+
+Are the seven daughters of Re the seven days of the week, or the
+representatives of Hathor corresponding to the seven days?]
+
+[407: Chapter II, p. 118.]
+
+[408: We have already seen that the primitive aspect of life-giving that
+played an essential part in the development of the story we are
+considering was the search for the means by which youth could be
+restored. It is significant that Hathor's reputed ability to restore
+youth is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts in association with her
+functions as the measurer of years: for she is said "to turn back the
+years from King Teti," so that they pass over him without increasing his
+age (Breasted, "Thought and Religion in Ancient Egypt," p. 124).]
+
+[409: Breasted ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 22) states
+that as the inundation began at the rising of Sothis, the star of Isis,
+sister of Osiris, they said to him [_i.e._ Osiris]: "The beloved
+daughter, Sothis, makes thy fruits (rnpwt) in her name of 'Year'
+(rnpt)".]
+
+[410: The Great Mother was identified with the moon, but when she became
+specialized, her representative adopted Sothis or Venus as her star.]
+
+[411: "At Argos the principal fête of Aphrodite was called [Greek:
+hystêria] because they offered sacrifices of pigs ("Athen." III, 49, 96;
+"Clem. Alex. Protr." 33)"--Article "Aphrodisia," _Dict. des Antiquités_,
+p. 308. The Greek word for pig had the double significance of "pig" and
+"female organs of reproduction".]
+
+[412: Aphrodite sends Aphrodisiac "mania" (see Tümpel, _op. cit._, pp.
+394 and 395).]
+
+[413: There is still widely prevalent the belief in the possibility of
+being "moonstruck," and many people, even medical men who ought to know
+better, solemnly expound to their students the influence of the moon in
+producing "lunacy". If it were not invidious one could cite instances of
+this from the writings of certain teachers of psychological medicine in
+this country within the last few months. The persistence of these kinds
+of traditions is one of the factors that make it so difficult to effect
+any real reform in the treatment of mental disease in this country.]
+
+
+The Seven-headed Dragon.
+
+I have already referred to the magical significance attached to the
+number seven and the widespread references to the seven Hathors, the
+seven winds to destroy Tiamat, the seven demons, and the seven fates.
+In the story of the Flood there is a similar insistence on the
+seven-fold nature of many incidents of good and ill meaning in the
+narrative. But the dragon with this seven-fold power of wreaking
+vengeance came to be symbolized by a creature with seven heads.
+
+A Japanese story told in Henderson's notes to Campbell's "Celtic Dragon
+Myth"[414] will serve as an introduction to the seven-headed monster:--
+
+"A man came to a house where all were weeping, and learned that the last
+daughter of the house was to be given to a dragon with _seven or
+eight_[415] heads who came to the sea-shore yearly to claim a victim. He
+went with her, enticed the dragon to drink _sake_ from pots set out on
+the shore, and then he slew the monster. From the end of his tail he
+took out a sword, which is supposed to be the Mikado's state sword. He
+married the maiden, and with her got a jewel or talisman which is
+preserved with the regalia. A third thing of price so preserved is a
+mirror."
+
+The seven-headed dragon is found also in the Scottish dragon-myth, and
+the legends of Cambodia, India, Persia, Western Asia, East Africa, and
+the Mediterranean area.
+
+The seven-headed dragon probably originated from the seven Hathors. In
+Southern India the Dravidian people seem to have borrowed the Egyptian
+idea of the seven Hathors. "There are seven Mari deities, all sisters,
+who are worshipped in Mysore. All the seven sisters are regarded vaguely
+as wives or sisters of Siva."[416] At one village in the Trichinopoly
+district Bishop Whitehead found that the goddess Kaliamma was
+represented by seven brass pots, and adds: "It is possible that the
+seven brass pots represent seven sisters or the seven virgins sometimes
+found in Tamil shrines" (p. 36). But the goddess who animates seven
+pots, who is also the seven Hathors, is probably well on the way to
+becoming a dragon with seven heads.
+
+There is a close analogy between the Swahili and the Gaelic stories that
+reveals their ultimate derivation from Babylonia. In the Scottish story
+the seven-headed dragon comes in a storm of wind and spray. The East
+African serpent comes in a storm of wind and dust.[417] In the
+Babylonian story seven winds destroy Tiamat.
+
+"The famous legend of the seven devils current in antiquity was of
+Babylonian origin, and belief in these evil spirits, who fought against
+the gods for the possession of the souls and bodies of men, was
+widespread throughout the lands of the Mediterranean basin. Here is one
+of the descriptions of the seven demons:--
+
+"Of the seven the first is the south wind....
+
+"The second is a dragon whose open mouth....
+
+"The third is a panther whose mouth spares not.
+
+"The fourth is a frightful python....
+
+"The fifth is a wrathful ... who knows no turning back.
+
+"The sixth is an on-rushing ... who against god and king [attacks].
+
+"The seventh is a hurricane, an evil wind which [has no mercy].
+
+"The Babylonians were inconsistent in their description of the seven
+devils, describing them in various passages in different ways. In fact
+they actually conceived of a very large number of these demons, and
+their visions of the other evil spirits are innumerable. According to
+the incantation of Shamash-shum-ukin fifteen evil spirits had come into
+his body and
+
+"'My God who walks at my side they drove away.'
+
+"The king calls himself 'the son of his God'. We have here the most
+fundamental doctrines of Babylonian theology, borrowed originally from
+the religious beliefs of the Sumerians. For them man in his natural
+condition, at peace with the gods and in a state of atonement, is
+protected by a divine spirit whom they conceived of as dwelling in their
+bodies along with their souls or 'the breath of life'. In many ways the
+Egyptians held the same doctrine, in their belief concerning the
+_ka_[418] or the soul's double. According to the beliefs of the
+Sumerians and Babylonians these devils, evil spirits, and all evil
+powers stand for ever waiting to attach (_sic_) (? attack) the divine
+genius with each man. By means of insinuating snares they entrap mankind
+in the meshes of their magic. They secure possession of his soul and
+body by leading him into sin, or bringing him into contact with tabooed
+things, or by overcoming his divine protector with sympathetic
+magic.... These adversaries of humanity thus expel a man's god, or
+genius, or occupy his body. These rituals of atonement have as their
+primary object the ejection of the demons and the restoration of the
+divine protector. Many of the prayers end with the petition, 'Into the
+kind hands of his god and goddess restore him'.
+
+"Representations of the seven devils are somewhat rare.... The Brit.
+Mus. figurine represents the demon of the winds with body of a dog,
+scorpion tail, bird legs and feet" (S. Langdon, "A Ritual of Atonement
+for a Babylonian King," _The Museum Journal_ [University of
+Pennsylvania], Vol. VIII, No. 1, March, 1917, pp. 39-44).
+
+But the Babylonians not only adopted the Egyptian conception of the
+power of evil as being seven demons, but they also seem to have fused
+these seven into one, or rather given the real dragon seven-fold
+attributes.[419]
+
+In "The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia"[420] (British Museum),
+Marduk's weapon is compared to "the fish with seven wings".
+
+The god himself is represented as addressing it in these words: "The
+tempest of battle, my weapon of fifty heads, which like the great
+serpent of seven heads is yoked with seven heads, which like the strong
+serpent of the sea (sweeps away) the foe".
+
+In the Japanese story which I have quoted, the number of the dragon's
+heads is given as _seven_ or _eight_; and de Visser is at a loss to know
+why "the number eight should be stereotyped in these stories of
+[Japanese] dragons".[421]
+
+I have already emphasized the world-wide association of the
+seven-headed dragon with storms. The Argonaut (usually called
+"Nautilus" by classical scholars) was the prophet of ill-luck and the
+storm-bringer: but, true to the paradox that runs through the whole
+tissue of mythology, this form of the Great Mother is also a benevolent
+warner against storms. This seems to be another link between the
+seven-headed dragon and these cephalopoda.
+
+I would suggest, merely as a tentative working hypothesis, that the
+process of blending the seven _avatars_ of the dragon into a
+seven-headed dragon may have been facilitated by its identification with
+the _Pterocera_ and the octopus. We know that the octopus and the
+shell-fish were forms assumed by the dragon (see p. 172): the confusion
+between the numbers seven and eight is such as might have been created
+during the transference of the _Pterocera's_ attributes to the octopus
+(_vide supra_, p. 170); and the Babylonian reference to "the fish with
+seven wings," which was afterwards rationalized into "a great serpent
+with seven heads," seems to provide the clue which explains the origin
+of the seven-headed dragon. If Hathor was a seven-fold goddess and at
+the same time was identified with the seven-spiked spider-shell
+(_Pterocera_), the process of converting the shell-fish's seven "wings"
+into seven heads would be a very simple one for an ancient story-teller.
+If this hypothesis has any basis in fact, the circumstance that the
+beliefs concerning the _Pterocera_ must (from the habitat of the
+shell-fish) have come into existence upon the shores of Southern Arabia
+would explain the appearance of the derived myth of the seven-headed
+dragon in Babylonia.
+
+My attention was first called to the possibility of the octopus being
+the parent of the seven-headed dragon, and one of the forms assumed by
+the thunderbolt, by the design upon a krater from Apulia.[422] The
+weapon seemed to be a conventionalization of the octopus. Though further
+research has led me to distrust this interpretation, it has convinced me
+of the intimate association of the octopus and the derived spiral
+ornament with thunder and the dragon, and has suggested that the process
+of blending the seven demons into a seven-headed demon has been assisted
+by the symbolism of the octopus and the _Pterocera_.
+
+
+[414: "The Celtic Dragon Myth," by J. F. Campbell, with the "Geste of
+Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with introduction by George
+Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 134.]
+
+[415: My italics.]
+
+[416: Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Gods of South
+India," Oxford, 1916, p. 24.]
+
+[417: "The Celtic Dragon Myth," p. 136.]
+
+[418: See Chapter I, p. 47.]
+
+[419: I do not propose to discuss here the interesting problems raised
+by this identification of the dragon with a man's good or evil spirit.
+But it is worthy of note that while the Babylonian might be possessed by
+seven evil spirits, the Egyptian could have as many as fourteen good
+spirits or _kas_. In a form somewhat modified by the Indian and
+Indonesian channels, through which they must have passed, these beliefs
+still persist in Melanesia; and the illuminating account of them given
+by C. E. Fox and F. W. Drew ("Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval,"
+_Journ. Roy. Anthropol. Inst._, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 161), makes it easier
+to us to form some conception of their original meaning in ancient
+Babylonia and Egypt. The _ataro_ which possesses a man (and there may be
+as many as a hundred of these "ghosts") leaves his body at death and
+usually enters a shark (or in other cases an octopus, skate, turtle,
+crocodile, hawk, kingfisher, tree, or stone).]
+
+[420: Vol. II, 19, 11-18, and 65, quoted by Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_,
+p. 282.]
+
+[421: _Op. cit._, p. 150.]
+
+[422: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 337, in which (Fig. 269) the rider
+in the car is _welcoming_ the thunderbolt as a divine gift from heaven,
+_i.e._ as a life-amulet, a giver of fertility and good luck. For a
+design representing the octopus as a weapon of the god Eros see the
+title-page of Usener's "Die Sintfluthsagen," 1899.]
+
+
+The Pig.
+
+I have already referred to the circumstances that were responsible for
+the identification of the cow with the Great Mother, the sky, and the
+moon. Once this had happened, the process seems to have been extended to
+include other animals which were used as food, such as the sheep, goat,
+pig, and antelope (or gazelle and deer). In Egypt the cow continued to
+occupy the pre-eminent place as a divine animal; and the cow-cult
+extended from the Mediterreanean to equatorial Africa, to Western
+Europe, and as far East as India. But in the Mediterranean area the pig
+played a more prominent part than it did in Egypt.[423] In the latter
+country Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with the pig;
+and in Syria the place of Set as the enemy of Osiris (Adonis) was taken
+by an actual pig. But throughout the Eastern Mediterranean the pig was
+also identified with the Great Mother and associated with lunar and sky
+phenomena. In fact at Troy the pig was represented[424] with the
+star-shaped decorations with which Hathor's divine cow (in her rôle as a
+sky-goddess) was embellished in Egypt. To complete the identification
+with the cow-mother Cretan fable represents a sow suckling the infant
+Minos or the youthful Zeus-Dionysus as his Egyptian prototype was
+suckled by the divine cow.
+
+Now the cowry-shell was called [Greek: choiros] by the Greeks. The pig,
+in fact, was identified both with the Great Mother and the shell; and it
+is clear from what has been said already in these pages that the reason
+for this strange homology was the fact that originally the Great Mother
+was nothing more than the cowry-shell.
+
+But it was not only with the shell itself that the pig was identified
+but also with what the shell symbolized. Thus the term [Greek: choiros]
+had an obscene significance in addition to its usual meaning "pig" and
+its acquired meaning "cowry". This fact seems to have played some part
+in fixing upon the pig the notoriety of being "an unclean animal".[425]
+But it was mainly for other reasons of a very different kind that the
+eating of swine-flesh was forbidden. The tabu seems to have arisen
+originally because the pig was a sacred animal identified with the Great
+Mother and the Water God, and especially associated with both these
+deities in their lunar aspects.
+
+According to a Cretan legend the youthful god Zeus-Dionysus was suckled
+by a sow. For this reason "the Cretans consider this animal sacred, and
+will not taste of its flesh; and the men of Præsos perform sacred rites
+with the sow, making her the first offering at the sacrifice".[426]
+
+But when the pig also assumed the rôle of Set, as the enemy of Osiris,
+and became the prototype of the devil, an active aversion took the place
+of the sacred tabu, and inspired the belief in the unwholesomeness of
+pig flesh. To this was added the unpleasant reputation as a dirty animal
+which the pig itself acquired, for the reasons which I have already
+stated.
+
+I have already referred to the irrelevance of Miss Jane Harrison's
+denial of the birth of Aphrodite from the sea (p. 141). Miss Harrison
+does not seem to have realized that in her book[427] she has collected
+evidence which is much more relevant to the point at issue. For, in the
+interesting account of the Eleusinian Mysteries (pp. 150 _et seq._), she
+has called attention to the important rite upon the day "called in
+popular parlance '[Greek: halade mystai],' 'to the sea ye mystics'" (p.
+152), which, I think, has a direct bearing upon the myth of Aphrodite's
+birth from the sea.
+
+The Mysteries were celebrated at full moon; and each of the candidates
+for admission "took with him his own pharmakos,[428] a young pig".
+
+"Arrived at the sea, each man bathed with his pig" (p. 152). On one
+occasion, so it is said, "when a mystic was bathing his pig, a
+sea-monster ate off the lower part of his body" (p. 153). So important
+was the pig in this ritual "that when Eleusis was permitted (B.C.
+350-327) to issue her autonomous coinage it is the pig she chooses as
+the sign and symbol of her mysteries" (p. 153).
+
+"On the final day of the Mysteries, according to Athenæus, two vessels
+called _plemochoæ_ are emptied, one towards the East and the other
+towards the West, and at the moment of outpouring a mystic formulary
+was pronounced.... What the mystic formulary was we cannot certainly
+say, but it is tempting to connect the libation of the _plemochoæ_ with
+a formulary recorded by Proclos. He says 'In the Eleusinian mysteries,
+looking up to the sky they cried aloud "Rain," and looking down to earth
+they cried "Be fruitful"'" (p. 161).
+
+In these latter incidents we see, perhaps, a distant echo of Hathor's
+pots of blood-coloured beer that were poured out upon the soil, which in
+a later version of the story became the symbol of the inundation of the
+river and the token of the earth's fruitfulness. The personification in
+the Great Mother of these life-giving powers of the river occurred at
+about the same time; and this was rationalized by the myth that she was
+born of the sea. She was also identified with the moon and a sow. Hence
+these Mysteries were celebrated, both in Egypt and in the Mediterranean,
+at full moon, and the pig played a prominent part in them. The
+candidates washed the sacrificial pig in the sea, not primarily as a
+rite of purification,[429] as is commonly claimed, but because the
+sacrificial animal was merely a surrogate of the cowry, which lived in
+the sea, and of the Great Mother,[430] who was sprung from the cowry and
+hence born of the sea. In the story of the man carrying the pig being
+attacked by a sea-monster, perhaps we have an incident of that
+widespread story of the shark guarding the pearls. We have already seen
+how it was distorted into the fantastic legend of the dog's rôle in the
+digging up of mandrakes. In the version we are now considering the
+pearl's place is taken by the pig, both of them surrogates of the cowry.
+
+The object of the ceremony of carrying the pig into the sea was not the
+cleansing of "the unclean animal," nor was it _primarily_ a rite of
+purification in any sense of the term: it was simply a ritual procedure
+for identifying the sacrifice with the goddess by putting it in her own
+medium, and so transforming the surrogate of the sea-shell, the
+prototype of the sea-born goddess, into the actual Great Mother.
+
+The question naturally arises: what was the real purpose of the
+sacrifice of the pig?
+
+In the story of the Destruction of Mankind we have seen that originally
+a human victim was slain for the purpose of obtaining the life-giving
+human blood to rejuvenate the ageing king. Two circumstances were
+responsible for the modification of this procedure. In the first place,
+there was the abandonment of human sacrifice and the substitution of
+either beer coloured red with ochre to resemble blood (or in other cases
+red wine) or the actual blood of an animal sacrifice in place of the
+human blood. Secondly, the blood of the Great Mother herself
+(personified in the special _avatar_ that was recognized in a particular
+locality, the cow in one place, the pig in another, and so on) was
+regarded as more potent as a life-giving force than that of a mere
+mortal human being. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that this was
+the real reason for the abandoning of human sacrifice and the
+substitution of an animal for a human being. For it is unlikely that, in
+the rude state of society which had become familiarized with and
+brutalized by the practice of these bloody rites of homicide, ethical
+motives alone would have prompted the abolition of the custom of human
+sacrifice, to which such deep significance was attached. The
+substitution of the animal was prompted rather by the idea of obtaining
+a more potent elixir from the life-blood of the Great Mother herself in
+her cow- or sow-forms.
+
+In the transitional stage of the process of substitution of an animal
+for a human being some confusion seems to have arisen as to the ritual
+meaning of the new procedure. If Moret's account of the Egyptian
+Mysteries[431] is correct--and without a knowledge of Egyptian philology
+I am not competent to express an opinion upon this matter--the attempt
+was made to identify the animal victim of sacrifice with the human being
+whose place it had taken. In the procession a human being wore the skin
+of an animal; and, according to Moret, there was a ceremony of passing a
+human being through the skin as a ritual procedure for transforming the
+mock victim into the animal which was to be sacrificed in his place. If
+there is any truth in this interpretation, such a ceremony must have
+been prompted by a misunderstanding of the meaning of the sacrifice,
+unless the identification of the sacrificial animal with the goddess was
+merely a secondary rationalization of the substitution which had been
+made for ethical or some other reasons.
+
+We know that the dead were often buried in the skins of sacrificial
+animals, and so identified with the life-giving deities and given
+rebirth. We know also that in certain ceremonies the appropriate skins
+were worn by those who were impersonating particular gods or goddesses.
+The wearing of these skins of divine animals seems to have been prompted
+not so much by the idea of a reincarnation in animal form as by the
+desire for identification and communion with the particular deity which
+the animal represented. The whole question, however, is one of great
+complexity, which can only be settled by a critical study of the texts
+by some scholar who keeps clearly before his mind the real issues, and
+refuses to take refuge in the stereotyped evasions of conventional
+methods of interpretation.
+
+The sacrifice of the sow to Demeter is merely a late variant of Hathor's
+sacrifice of a human being to rejuvenate the king Re. How the real
+meaning of the story became distorted I have already explained in
+Chapter II ("Dragons and Rain Gods"). The killing of the sow to obtain a
+good harvest is homologous with the sacrifice of a maiden to obtain a
+good inundation of the river. The sow is the surrogate of the beautiful
+princess of the fairy tale. Instead of the maiden being slain, in one
+case, as Andromeda, she is rescued by the hero, in the other her place
+is taken by a sow. These late rationalizations are merely glosses of the
+deep motives which more than fifty centuries ago seem to have prompted
+early pharmacologists to obtain a more potent elixir than human blood by
+stealing from the heights of Olympus the divine blood of the life-giving
+deities themselves.
+
+The pig was identified not only with the Great Mother, but with Osiris
+and Set also. With the pig's lunar and astral associations I do not
+propose to deal in these pages, as the astronomical aspects of the
+problems are so vast as to need much more space than the limits imposed
+in this statement. But it is important to note that the identification
+of Set with a pig was perhaps the main factor in riveting upon this
+creature the fetters of a reputation for evil. The evil dragon was the
+representative of both Set and the Great Mother (Sekhet or Tiamat); and
+both of them were identified with the pig. Just as Set killed Osiris, so
+the pig gave Adonis his mortal injury.[432] When these earthly incidents
+were embellished with a celestial significance, the conflict of Horus
+with Set was interpreted as the struggle between the forces of light and
+order and the powers of darkness and chaos. When worshipped as a
+tempest-god the Mesopotamian Rimmon was known as "the pig"[433] and, as
+"the wild boar of the desert," was a form of Set.
+
+I have discussed the pig at this length because the use of the words
+[Greek: choiros] by the Greeks, and _porcus_ and _porculus_ by the
+Romans, reveals the fact that the terms had the double significance of
+"pig" and "cowry-shell". As it is manifestly impossible to derive the
+word "cowry" from the Greek word for "pig," the only explanation that
+will stand examination is that the two meanings must have been acquired
+from the identification of both the cowry and the pig with the Great
+Mother and the female reproductive organs. In other words, the
+pig-associations of Aphrodite afford clear evidence that the goddess was
+originally a personification of the cowry.[434]
+
+The fundamental nature of the identification of the cowry, the pig, and
+the Great Mother, the one with the other, is revealed not merely in the
+archæology of the Ægean, but also in the modern customs and ancient
+pictures of the most distant peoples. For example, in New Guinea the
+place of the sacrificial pig may be taken by the cowry-shell;[435] and
+upon the chief façade of the east wing of the ancient American monument,
+known as the Casa de las Monjas at Chichen Itza, the hieroglyph of the
+planet Venus is placed in conjunction with a picture of a wild pig.[436]
+
+
+[423: And also, in a misunderstood form, even as far as America.]
+
+[424: Schliemann, "Ilios," Fig. 1450, p. 616.]
+
+[425: This is seen in the case of the Persian word _khor_, which means
+both "pig" and "harlot" or "filthy woman". The possibility of the
+derivation of the old English word "[w]hore" from the same source is
+worth considering.]
+
+[426: L. R. Farnell, "Cults of the Greek States," Vol. I, p. 37.]
+
+[427: "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion."]
+
+[428: Which, in fact, was intended as the equivalent of [Greek:
+pharmakon athanasias], "the redeeming blood".]
+
+[429: Blackman ("Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt,"
+_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, March, 1918, p. 57;
+and May, 1918, p. 85) has shown that the idea of purification was
+certainly entertained.]
+
+[430: In some places an image of the goddess was washed in the sea.]
+
+[431: "Mystères Égyptiens."]
+
+[432: Mr. Donald Mackenzie has collected a good deal of folk-lore
+concerning the pig ("Myths of Egypt," pp. 66 _et seq._; also his books
+on Babylonian, Indian, and Cretan myths, _op. cit. supra_).]
+
+[433: According to Sayce, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 153, note 6.]
+
+[434: In Egypt not only was the sow identified with Isis, but "lucky
+pigs" were worn on necklaces just like the earlier cowry-amulets (Budge,
+"Guide to the Egyptian Collections" (British Museum), p. 96).]
+
+[435: Malinowski, _Trans. and Proc. Royal Society, South Australia_,
+XXXIX, 1915, p. 587 _et. seq._]
+
+[436: Seler, "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der
+Maya-Handschriften," _Zeitsch. f. Ethnologie_, Bd. 41, 1909, p. 405, and
+Fig. 242 in Maudslay, "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Vol. III, Pl. 13.]
+
+
+Gold and the Golden Aphrodite.
+
+The evidence which has been collected by Mr. Wilfrid Jackson seems to
+suggest that the shell-cults originated in the neighbourhood of the
+Red Sea.
+
+With the introduction of the practice of wearing shells on girdles and
+necklaces and as hair ornaments the time arrived when people living some
+distance from the sea experienced difficulty in obtaining these amulets
+in quantities sufficient to meet their demands. Hence they resorted to
+the manufacture of imitations of these shells in clay and stone. But at
+an early period in their history the inhabitants of the deserts between
+the Nile and the Red Sea (Hathor's special province) discovered that
+they could make more durable and attractive models of cowries and other
+shells by using the plastic yellow metal which was lying about in these
+deserts unused and unappreciated. This practice first gave to the metal
+gold an arbitrary value which it did not possess before. For the
+peculiar life-giving attributes of the shells modelled in the yellow
+metal came to be transferred to the gold itself. No doubt the lightness
+and especially the beauty of such gold models appealed to the early
+Egyptians, and were in large measure responsible for the hold gold
+acquired over mankind. But this was an outcome of the empirical
+knowledge gained from a practice that originally was inspired purely by
+cultural and not æsthetic motives. The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic
+sign for gold was a picture of a necklace of such amulets; and this
+emblem became the determinative of the Great Mother Hathor, not only
+because she was originally the personification of the life-giving
+shells, but also because she was the guardian deity both of the Eastern
+wadys where the gold was found and of the Red Sea coasts where the
+cowries were obtained. Hence she became the "Golden Hathor," the
+prototype of the "Golden Aphrodite".
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9.--The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign _nub_. It
+represents a collar from which golden amulets, probably representing
+cowries, are suspended.]
+
+It is a significant token of the influence of these Egyptian incidents
+upon the history of the Ægean that among the earliest gold ornaments
+found by Schliemann at Troy were a series of crude representations of
+cowries worn as pendants to a hair ornament.[437]
+
+It is hardly necessary to insist upon the vast influence upon the
+history of civilization which this arbitrary value of gold has been
+responsible for exerting. For more than fifty centuries men have been
+searching for the precious metal, and have been spreading abroad
+throughout the world the elements of our civilization. It has been not
+only the chief factor in bringing about the contact of peoples[438] and
+incidentally in building up our culture, but it has been the cause,
+directly or indirectly, of most of the warfare which has afflicted
+mankind. Yet these mighty forces were let loose upon the world as the
+result of the circumstance that early searchers for an elixir of life
+used the valueless metal to make imitations of their shell amulets!
+
+The identification of gold with cowries may not have been the primary
+reason for the invention of gold currency. In fact, Professor Ridgeway
+has called attention to certain historical events which in his opinion
+forced men to convert their jewellery into coinage. But the fact that
+cowries were the earliest form of currency may have prepared the way for
+the recognition of the use of gold for a similar purpose. Moreover, we
+know that long before a real gold currency came into being rings of gold
+were in Egypt a form of tribute and a sign of wealth. Cowries acquired
+their significance as currency as the result of incidents in some
+respects analogous to those which impelled the early Egyptians to make
+gold models of the shells. In places in Africa far removed from the sea
+where the practice has grown up of offering vast numbers of cowries to
+brides on the occasion of their marriage (as fertility amulets) or of
+putting the shells in the grave (to secure for the dead fresh vital
+energy), the people offered their most treasured possessions, such as
+their cattle, in exchange for the amulets which were believed to confer
+such priceless social and religious boons. Cattle were therefore given
+in exchange for cowries, or the shells were used for the purchase of
+wives. When the new significance as currency developed a remarkable
+confusion occurred. In many places cowries were placed in the mouth of
+the dead to confer the breath of life: but when the cowries acquired the
+new meaning as currency, the people who had lost all knowledge of the
+original significance of this practice explained the cowries as money
+with which to pay Charon's fare to the other world. Then, in many
+places, the cowry was replaced by an actual metallic coin. Most scholars
+fall into the same error as these ancient rationalists, and accept
+their explanation of the _obolus_ as though it were the real meaning of
+the act.
+
+Another result of the use of gold models of shells as life-giving
+amulets was that the metal also acquired the reputation of being a giver
+of life,[439] which originally belonged merely to the shell or the
+imitation of its form, whatever the substance used for making the model.
+
+Thus gold came to share the same magical reputation as the cowry and the
+pearl. It was also put to the same use: it was buried with the dead to
+confer a continuation of existence.
+
+Not only was Hathor called _Nub_, _i.e._ "gold" or the golden Hathor:
+but the place where the funerary statue was made ("born") in Egypt was
+called the "House of Gold" and personified as a goddess who gave rebirth
+to the dead (Alan Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet," p. 95; and A. M.
+Blackman, _Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, Vol. IV, p. 127).
+
+When ancient prospectors from the South exploited the rivers of
+Turkestan for alluvial gold and fresh water pearls, incidentally they
+also collected pebbles of jade for the purpose of making seals. The
+local inhabitants confused the properties of the stone with the magical
+reputation of the gold and the pearls. One outcome of this jade-fishing
+in Turkestan was the transference of the credit of life-giving to jade.
+Prospectors searching for these precious materials gradually made their
+way east past Lob Nor, and eventually discovered the deposits of gold
+and jade in the Shensi province. Thus jade became the nucleus around
+which the distinctive civilization of China became crystallized. It
+played an obtrusive part not only in attracting men from the West and in
+determining the locality where the germs of Western civilization were
+planted in China, but also in giving Chinese culture its distinctive
+shape.
+
+"The ancient Chinese, wishing to facilitate the resurrection of the
+dead, surrounded them with jade, gold, pearls, timber, and other things
+imbued with influences emitted from the heavens, or, in other words,
+with such objects as are pervaded with vital energy derived from the
+_Yang_ matter of which the heavens are the principal depository." (De
+Groot, _op. cit._, p. 316).
+
+By a similar process diamonds acquired the same reputation in India when
+searchers after gold discovered the precious metal in Hyderabad, and
+the diamonds of Golconda came to be accredited with life-giving
+powers.[440]
+
+According to the beliefs of the Indians "the Nâga owns riches, the water
+of life, and a jewel that restores the dead to life".
+
+Thus gold, pearls, jade, and diamonds in course of time acquired the
+reputation of elixirs of life, but the hold they established upon
+mankind was due to the fact (a) that the amulets made of these materials
+made a strong appeal to the æsthetic sense, and (b) the arbitrary value
+assigned to them made them desirable objects to search for.
+
+In his "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult" (1901) Sir Arthur Evans gives
+cogent reasons for the view that at the time when Mycenæan influence was
+powerful in Cyprus "the 'golden Aphroditê' of the Egyptians seems to
+play a much more important part than any form of Astarte or Mylitta"
+(p. 52). "The Cypriote parallels will be found to have a fundamental
+importance as demonstrating in detail that these ['a simple form of the
+palmette pillar, approaching a fleur-de-lys in outline,' in association
+with its guardian monsters] are in fact taken over from the cult of
+Mentu-Ra, the Warrior Sun-god of Egypt, of Hathor, and of Horus"
+(p. 52).
+
+
+[437: So far as I am aware the fact that these objects were intended to
+represent cowries does not appear to have been recognized hitherto. I am
+indebted to Mr. Wilfrid Jackson for calling my attention to the figures
+685 and 832 in Schliemann's "Ilios" (1880), and for identifying the
+objects.]
+
+[438: See Perry, "Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," _Proceedings
+and Memorials of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society_,
+1916; also "War and Civilization," _Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library_, 1918.]
+
+[439: "Danæ pregnant with immortal gold."]
+
+[440: See Laufer, "The Diamond," also Munn, "The Ancient Gold Mines of
+Hyderabad," paper now being published in the _Proceedings of the
+Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society_.]
+
+
+Aphrodite as the Thunder-stone.
+
+As a surrogate of the Great Mother, the Eye of Re, the thunder-weapon
+was also identified with any of her varied manifestations.
+
+The thunderbolt is one of the manifestations of the life-giving and
+death-dealing Divine Cow, and therefore is able specially to protect
+mundane cows.[441]
+
+There are numerous hints in the ancient literature of other countries in
+confirmation of the association of the Great Mother with "falling
+stars". "In a fragment of Sanchoniathon, Astarte, travelling about the
+habitable world, is said to have found a star falling through the air,
+which she took up and consecrated."[442]
+
+Aphrodite also was looked upon as a meteoric stone that fell from the
+moon. In the "Iliad," Zeus is said to have sent Athena as a meteorite
+from heaven to earth.[443]
+
+The association of Aphrodite with meteoric stones and the ancient belief
+that they fell from the moon serve to confirm the identification of
+these life-giving and death-dealing objects with the pearl and the
+thunderbolt. In Southern India the goddesses may be represented either
+by small stones or by pots of water, usually seven in number. During the
+ceremony around the stone-form of the goddess the _kappukaran_ runs
+thrice around the stone, as the mandrake-digger does around the plant.
+The _pujari_ who represents the goddess is painted like a leopard
+(Hathor's lioness) and kills the sacrificial sheep. The goddess (like
+Hathor) is supposed to drink the blood of the sacrificial victims
+(Whitehead, _op. cit._, pp. 164-8).
+
+Many factors played a part in the development of the beliefs about the
+origin of mankind from stones, with which the identification of the
+thunderbolt with the winged disk plays a part.
+
+The idea that the cowry was the giver of life and the parent of men was
+also transferred to crude stone imitations of the shell. Perhaps the
+belief in such stones as creators of human beings may have been
+reinforced by finding actual fossilized shells within pebbles.[444]
+
+A further corroboration of this theory was provided when the pearl came
+to be regarded as the quintessence of the life-giving substance of
+shells and as a little particle of moon-substance which fell as a drop
+of dew into the gaping oyster. Perry (_op. cit._, p. 78) refers to an
+Indonesian belief among the Tsalisen that their ancestors came out of
+the moon; and the chief of this people has a spherical stone which is
+said to represent the moon.
+
+This association of the moon with round stones may be connected with the
+identification of the sun (as the winged disk) with a stone axe, when
+they came to be regarded as alternative weapons for the destruction or
+the creation of men. Perry records a story of a rock being lowered down
+from the sun, from which it was born, and out of a cleft in it man and
+woman emerged, as they were believed to have been born from the cleft in
+the cowry.
+
+Then there are the Egyptian beliefs concerning stone statues, obelisks,
+or even unshaped blocks of stone which could be animated by human beings
+or gods.[445]
+
+The cycle of these stories was completed when the "Eye of Re"
+slaughtered the enemies of the god and they became identified with the
+followers of Set, "creatures of stone". Thus the evil eye petrified
+rebellious men: and so was launched upon its course the peculiar group
+of legends which in time encircled the world.
+
+It is particularly significant that in Indonesia, in association with
+these ideas about stone-origins and petrifaction, Perry (p. 133) found
+also the clear-cut belief that the thunder-weapon was a stone, or the
+tooth of a cloud-dragon in the sky.
+
+In Indonesia also petrifaction, thunder-stones, rain, floods, lightning,
+and an arrow shot to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning were the
+punishments traditionally assigned for certain offences, such as incest
+and laughing at animals.
+
+The same people who introduced into the Malay Archipelago these
+characteristic fragments of the dragon-myth also believed that certain
+animals were impersonations of their gods: they also brought stories of
+incestuous unions on the part of their deities and rulers. To laugh at
+their sacred animals, or to imitate privileged customs permitted to
+their deities, but not to ordinary mortals, merited the same sort of
+punishments as were meted out to those other rebels against the ruling
+class and the gods in the home of these beliefs.[446]
+
+To laugh at the divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a divine
+prerogative, was analogous to "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,"
+which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable offence, and in
+pagan legend was punished by the divine wrath, thunder, lightning, rain,
+floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instruments. Oedipus put out
+his own eyes to forestall the traditional wrath of the gods.
+
+
+[441: Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, p. 70 _et seq._]
+
+[442: Quoted by Layard, "Nineveh and its Remains," Vol. II, p. 457.]
+
+[443: Cook, "Zeus," I, p. 760.]
+
+[444: Striking examples of these stories about birth from split stones
+have been given by Perry, "Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Chapter X,
+and de Groot's "Religious System of China". It is possible that the
+double meaning of the Egyptian word _set_, as "stone" and "mountain"
+played a part in originating these stories. I have already quoted from
+the Pyramid Texts the account of the daily birth of the sun-god by a
+splitting of the "mountain" of the dawn. By a pun on this word the god's
+origin might have been interpreted as having taken place from a split
+"stone". The fact that the Great Mother was identified with a "mountain"
+(_set_) may also have facilitated the homology with the other meaning of
+_set_, _i.e._ "a stone".]
+
+[445: "Incense and Libations".]
+
+[446: As the character and attributes of the early goddesses became more
+complex, and contradictory traits were more sharply contrasted, the
+inevitable tendency developed to differentiate the goddesses themselves,
+and provide distinctive names for the new personalities thus split off
+from the common parent. We see this in Egypt in the case of Hathor and
+Sekhet, and in Babylonia in Ishtar and Tiamat. But the process of
+specialization and differentiation might even involve a change of sex.
+There can be no doubt that the _god_ Horus was originally a
+differentiation of certain of the aspects of the sky-goddess Hathor, at
+first as a brother "Eye". But as the _king_ Horus was the son of Osiris
+(as the dead king), when the confusion of the attributes of Osiris and
+Hathor--the actual father and the divine mother of Horus--made their
+marriage inevitable, the maternal relationship of the goddess to her
+"brother" was emphasized. But as the Great Mother, Hathor was the parent
+of the universe, and the mother not only of Horus but also of his father
+Osiris. This complicated rationalization made Hathor the sister, mother,
+and grandmother of Horus, and was responsible for originating the belief
+in the incestuous practices of the divine family. When the royal family
+assumed the rôle of gods and goddesses they were bound by these
+traditions (which had their origin purely in theological sophistry) and
+were driven to indulge in actual incest, as we know from the records of
+the Egyptian royal family and their imitators in other countries. But
+incest became a royal and divine prerogative which was sternly forbidden
+to mere mortals and regarded as a peculiarly detestable sin.]
+
+
+The Serpent and the Lioness.
+
+When the development of the story of the Destruction of Mankind
+necessitated the finding of a human sacrifice and drove the Great Mother
+to homicide, this side of her character was symbolized by identifying
+her with a man-slaying lion and the venomous uræus-serpent.
+
+She had previously been represented by such beneficent food-providing
+and life-sustaining creatures as the cow, the sow, and the gazelle
+(antelope or deer): but when she developed into a malevolent creature
+and became the destroyer of mankind it was appropriate that she should
+assume the form of such man-destroyers as the lion and the cobra.
+
+Once the reason for such identifications grew dim, the uræus-form of the
+Great Mother became her symbol in either of her aspects, good or bad,
+although the legend of her poison-spitting, man-destroying powers
+persisted.[447] The identification of the destroying-goddess with the
+moon, "the Eye of the Sun-god," prepared the way for the rationalization
+of her character as a uræus-serpent spitting venom and the sun's Eye
+spitting fire at the Sun-god's enemies. Such was the goddess of Buto in
+Lower Egypt, whose uræus-symbol was worn on the king's forehead, and was
+misinterpreted by the Greeks as not merely a symbolic "eye," but an
+actual median eye upon the king's or the god's forehead.
+
+It is not without special significance that in the ancient legend (see
+Sethe, _op. cit._) the lioness-goddess Tefnut was reputed to have come
+from Elephantine (or at any rate the region of Sehêl and Biga, which has
+the same significance), which serves to demonstrate her connexion with
+the story of the Destruction of Mankind and to corroborate the inference
+as to its remote antiquity. She was identified with Hathor, Sekhet,
+Bast, and other goddesses.
+
+But the uræus was not merely the goddess who destroyed the king's
+enemies and the emblem of his kingship: in course of time the cobra
+became identified with the ruler himself and the dead king, who was the
+god Osiris. When this happened the snake acquired the god's reputation
+of being the controller of water.
+
+The fashionable speculation of modern scholars that the movements of the
+snake naturally suggest rippling water[448] and provide "the obvious
+reason" which led many people quite independently the one of the other
+to associate the snake with water, is thus shown to have no foundation
+in fact.
+
+One would have imagined that, if any natural association between snakes
+and water was the reason for this association, a water-snake would have
+been chosen to express the symbolism; or, if it was the mere rippling
+motion of the reptile, that all snakes or any snake would have been
+drawn into the analogy. But primarily only one kind of snake, a cobra,
+was selected[449]; and it is not a water snake, and cannot live in or
+under water. It was selected _because it was venomous_ and the
+appropriate symbol of man-slaying.
+
+The circumstances which led to the identification of this particular
+serpent with water were the result of a process of legend-making of so
+arbitrary and eccentric a nature as to make it impossible seriously to
+pretend that so tortuous a ratiocination should have been exactly
+followed to the same unexpected destination also in Crete and Western
+Europe, in Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia, and in America, without
+prompting the one of the other. No serious investigator who is capable
+of estimating the value of evidence can honestly deny that the belief in
+the serpent's control over water was diffused abroad from one centre
+where a concatenation of peculiar circumstances and beliefs led to the
+identification of the ruler with the cobra and the control of water.
+
+We are surely on safe ground in assuming the improbability of such a
+wholly fortuitous set of events happening a second time and producing
+the same result elsewhere. Thus when we find in India the Nâga rajas
+identified with the cobra, and credited with the ability to control the
+waters, we can confidently assume that in some way the influence of
+these early Egyptian events made itself felt in India. As we compare the
+details of the Nâga worship in India[450] with early Egyptian beliefs,
+all doubt as to their common origin disappears.
+
+The Nâga rulers were closely associated with springs, streams, and
+lakes. "To this day the rulers of the Hindu Kush states, Hunza and
+Nagar, though now Mohammedans, are believed, by their subjects, to be
+able to command the elements."
+
+Oldham adds: "This power is still ascribed to the serpent-gods of the
+sun-worshipping countries of China, Manchuria, and Korea, and was so,
+until the introduction of Christianity, in Mexico and Peru". This is put
+forward in support of his argument that the Nâga kings' "supposed
+ability to control the elements, and especially the waters," arose "from
+their connexion with the sun". But this is not so.[451] The belief in
+the Egyptian king's power over water was certainly older than
+sun-worship, which did not begin until Osirian beliefs and the
+personification of the moon as the Great Mother brought the sky-deities
+and the control of water into correlation the one with the other. The
+association of the sun and the serpent in the royal insignia was a later
+development.
+
+The early Egyptian goddess was identified with the uræus-serpent in that
+vitally important nodal point of primitive civilization, Buto, in Lower
+Egypt. The earliest deity in Crete and the Eastern Mediterranean seems
+to have been a goddess who was also closely associated with the serpent.
+According to Langdon "the ophidian nature of the earliest Sumerian
+mother-goddess _Innini_ is unmistakable.... She carries the caduceus in
+her hand, two serpents twining about a staff."[452]
+
+The earliest Indian deities also were goddesses, and the first rulers of
+whom any record has been preserved were regarded as divine cobras, to
+whom was attributed the power of controlling water. These Nâgas, whether
+kings or queens, gods or goddesses, were the prototypes of the Eastern
+Asiatic dragon, whose origin is discussed in Chapter II.
+
+In Japan the earliest sun-deity was a goddess who was identified with a
+snake. Elsewhere in this volume (Chapter II) I have referred to the
+completeness of the transference to America of these Old World ideas of
+the serpent. Right on the route taken by the main stream of cultural
+diffusion across the Pacific we still find in their fully-developed form
+the old beliefs concerning the good Mother Serpent of the ancient
+civilizations (C. E. Fox and F. H. Drew, _op. cit. supra_, p. 139). She
+could be re-incarnated as a coconut: she controlled crops; she was
+associated with the coming of death into the world, with the
+introduction of agriculture and the discovery of fire. Like her
+predecessors in the West she was also a Mother Pot or Basket that
+never emptied.
+
+All the _hiona_ or _figona_ (_i.e._ spirits) of San Cristoval have a
+serpent incarnation from Agunua the creator, worshipped by every one, to
+Oharimae and others, only known to particular persons. Other spirits,
+called _ataro_, might be incarnate in almost any animal. Agunua, who
+took the form of a serpent, was good, not evil (p. 134). Very many
+pools, rocks, water-falls, or large trees were thought to be the abode
+of _figona_. These serpent spirits could take the form of a stone, or
+retire within a stone, and sacred stones seem to be connected with
+_figona_ rather than with _ataro_ (p. 135). Almost all the local
+_figona_ are represented as female snakes, but Agunua is a male snake
+(p. 137).
+
+As the real significance of the snake's symbolism originated from its
+identification with the Great Mother in her destructive aspect, it is
+not surprising that the snake is the most primitive form of the evil
+dragon. The Babylonian Tiamat was originally represented as a huge
+serpent,[453] and throughout the world the serpent is pre-eminently a
+symbol of the evil dragon and the powers of evil.
+
+The serpent that tempted Eve was the homologue both of the mother of
+mankind herself and also of the tree of paradise. It was the
+representative of the dragon-protector of pearls and of other kinds of
+treasure: it was also the goddess who animated the sacred tree as well
+as the protector who attacked all who approached it. It was the evil
+dragon that tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit which brought
+her mortality.
+
+The identification of the Great Mother with the lioness (and the
+secondary association of her husband and son with the lion) was
+responsible for a widespread relationship of these creatures with the
+gods and goddesses in Egypt and the Mediterranean, in Western Asia, in
+Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia [tiger] and America [ocelot, and
+forms borrowed from the conventionalized lions and tigers of the Old
+World].
+
+The account of the Great Mother's attributes and associations throws
+into clear relief certain aspects of the evolution of the dragon which
+were left in a somewhat nebulous state in Chapter II. The earliest form
+assumed by the power of evil was the serpent or the lion, because these
+death-dealing creatures were adopted as symbols of the Great Mother in
+her rôle as the Destroyer of Mankind. When Horus was differentiated from
+the Great Mother and became her _locum tenens_, his falcon (or eagle)
+was blended with Hathor's lioness to make the composite monster which is
+represented on Elamite and Babylonian monuments (see p. 79). But when
+the rôle of water as the instrument of destruction became prominent,
+Ea's antelope and fish were blended to make a monster, usually known as
+the "goat-fish," which in India and elsewhere assumed a great variety of
+forms. Some of the varieties of _makara_ were sufficiently like a
+crocodile to be confused or identified with this representative of the
+followers of Set.
+
+The real dragon was created when all three larval types--serpent,
+eagle-lion, and antelope-fish--were blended to form a monster with
+bird's feet and wings, a lion's forelimbs and head, the fish's scales,
+the antelope's horns, and a more or less serpentine form of trunk and
+tail, and sometimes also of head. Repeated substitution of parts of
+other animals, such as the spiral horn of Amen's ram, a deer's antlers,
+and the elephant's head, led to endless variation in the dragon's
+traits.
+
+The essential unity of the motives and incidents of the myths of all
+peoples and of every age is a token, not of independent origin or the
+result of "the similarity of the working of the human mind," but of
+their derivation from the same ultimate source.
+
+The question naturally arises: what is a myth? The dragon-myth of the
+West is the religion of China. The literature of every religion is
+saturated with the influence of the myth. In what respect does religion
+differ from myth? In Chapter I, I attempted to explain how originally
+science and religion were not differentiated. Both were the outcome of
+man's attempt to peer into the meaning of natural phenomena, and to
+extract from such knowledge practical measures for circumventing fate.
+His ever-insistent aim was to combat danger to life.
+
+Religion was differentiated from science when the measures for
+controlling fate became invested with the assurance of supernatural
+help, for which the growth of a knowledge of natural phenomena made it
+impossible for the mere scientist to be the sponsor. It became a
+question of faith rather than knowledge; and man's instinctive struggle
+against the risk of extinction impelled him to cling to this larger hope
+of salvation, and to embellish it with an ethical and moral significance
+which at first was lacking in the eternal search for the elixir of life.
+
+If religion can be regarded as archaic science enriched with the belief
+in supernatural control, the myth can be regarded as effete religion
+which has been superseded by the growth of a loftier ethical purpose.
+The myth is to religion what alchemy is to chemistry or astrology is to
+astronomy. Like these sciences, religion retains much of the material of
+the cruder phase of thought that is displayed in myth, alchemy, and
+astrology, but it has been refined and elaborated. The dross has been to
+a large extent eliminated, and the pure metal has been moulded into a
+more beautiful and attractive form. In searching for the elixir of life,
+the makers of religion have discovered the philosopher's stone, and with
+its aid have transmuted the base materials of myth into the gold of
+religion.
+
+If we seek for the deep motives which have prompted men in all ages so
+persistently to search for the elixir of life, for some means of
+averting the dangers to which their existence is exposed, it will be
+found in the instinct of self-preservation, which is the fundamental
+factor in the behaviour of all living beings, the means of preservation
+of the life which is their distinctive attribute and the very essence of
+their being.
+
+The dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine powers of
+life-giving; but with the development of a higher conception of
+religious ideals it became relegated to a baser rôle, and eventually
+became the symbol of the powers of evil.
+
+
+[447: Sethe, "Zur altägyptische Sage von Sonnenaugen das im Fremde war,"
+_Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ægyptens_, V, p. 23.
+[Transcriber's note: the title of the paper has been misprinted. It
+should read "...vom Sonnenauge, das..."]]
+
+[448: See especially the claims put forward by Brinton, which have been
+accepted by Spinden, Joyce, and many other recent writers.]
+
+[449: Possibly also the Cerastes. At a relatively late period other
+snakes were adopted as surrogates of the cobra and Cerastes.]
+
+[450: See Oldham, "Sun and Serpent," p. 51 _inter alia_.]
+
+[451: Blackman, however, has recently advanced this claim in reference
+to Egypt (_op. cit._, _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archæology_, 1918, p. 57), as
+Breasted and others have done before.]
+
+[452: S. Langdon, "A Seal of Nidaba, the Goddess of Vegetation,"
+_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, Vol. XXXVI, 1914,
+p. 281.]
+
+[453: L. W. King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 58.]
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Numerous obvious printing errors have been corrected.
+However, inconsistent hyphenation in the original has been retained.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith
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+Title: The Evolution of the Dragon
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+Author: G. Elliot Smith
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+
+
+<div class="frontmatter">
+
+<h1>THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON</h1>
+
+<p class="break">BY <br /><big>G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.</big></p>
+
+<p><small>PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER</small></p>
+
+<p class="break"><i>ILLUSTRATED</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="break"><span class="smcap">Manchester</span>: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS<br /> LONGMANS, GREEN &amp; COMPANY <br />
+<span class="smcap">London, New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras</span><br /> 1919</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Some explanation is due to the reader of the form and scope of these
+elaborations of the lectures which I have given at the John Rylands
+Library during the last three winters.</p>
+
+<p>They deal with a wide range of topics, and the thread which binds them
+more or less intimately into one connected story is only imperfectly
+expressed in the title "The Evolution of the Dragon".</p>
+
+<p>The book has been written in rare moments of leisure snatched from a
+variety of arduous war-time occupations; and it reveals only too plainly
+the traces of this disjointed process of composition. On 23 February,
+1915, I presented to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society
+an essay on the spread of certain customs and beliefs in ancient times
+under the title "On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of
+the Practice of Mummification," and in my Rylands Lecture two weeks
+later I summed up the general conclusions.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> In view of the lively
+controversies that followed the publication of the former of these
+addresses, I devoted my next Rylands Lecture (9 February, 1916) to the
+discussion of "The Relationship of the Egyptian Practice of
+Mummification to the Development of Civilization". In preparing this
+address for publication in the <i>Bulletin</i> some months later so much
+stress was laid upon the problems of "Incense and Libations" that I
+adopted this more concise title for the elaboration of the lecture which
+forms the first chapter of this book. This will explain why so many
+matters are discussed in that chapter which have little or no connexion
+either with "Incense and Libations" or with "The Evolution of the
+Dragon".</p>
+
+<p>The study of the development of the belief in water's life-giving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>
+attributes, and their personification in the gods Osiris, Ea, Soma
+[Haoma] and Varuna, prepared the way for the elucidation of the history
+of "Dragons and Rain Gods" in my next lecture (Chapter II). What played
+a large part in directing my thoughts dragon-wards was the discussion of
+certain representations of the Indian Elephant upon Precolumbian
+monuments in, and manuscripts from, Central America (<i>Nature</i>, 25 Nov.,
+1915; 16 Dec., 1915; and 27 Jan., 1916). For in the course of
+investigating the meaning of these remarkable designs I discovered that
+the Elephant-headed rain-god of America had attributes identical with
+those of the Indian Indra (and of Varuna and Soma) and the Chinese
+dragon. The investigation of these identities established the fact that
+the American rain-god was transmitted across the Pacific from India via
+Cambodia.</p>
+
+<p>The intensive study of dragons impressed upon me the importance of the
+part played by the Great Mother, especially in her Babylonian <i>avatar</i>
+as Tiamat, in the evolution of the famous wonder-beast. Under the
+stimulus of Dr. Rendel Harris's Rylands Lecture on "The Cult of
+Aphrodite," I therefore devoted my next address (14 November, 1917) to
+the "Birth of Aphrodite" and a general discussion of the problems of
+Olympian obstetrics.</p>
+
+<p>Each of these addresses was delivered as an informal demonstration of
+large series of lantern projections; and, as Mr. Guppy insisted upon the
+publication of the lectures in the <i>Bulletin</i>, it became necessary, as a
+rule, many months after the delivery of each address, to rearrange my
+material and put into the form of a written narrative the story which
+had previously been told mainly by pictures and verbal comments upon
+them.</p>
+
+<p>In making these elaborations additional facts were added and new points
+of view emerged, so that the printed statements bear little resemblance
+to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such
+transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written
+report of what was essentially an ocular demonstration, unless every one
+of the numerous pictures is reproduced.</p>
+
+<p>Each of the first two lectures was printed before the succeeding lecture
+was set up in type. For these reasons there is a good deal of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>
+repetition, and in successive lectures a wider interpretation of
+evidence mentioned in the preceding addresses. Had it been possible to
+revise the whole book at one time, and if the pressure of other duties
+had permitted me to devote more time to the work, these blemishes might
+have been eliminated and a coherent story made out of what is little
+more than a collection of data and tags of comment. No one is more
+conscious than the writer of the inadequacy of this method of presenting
+an argument of such inherent complexity as the dragon story: but my
+obligation to the Rylands Library gave me no option in the matter: I had
+to attempt the difficult task in spite of all the unpropitious
+circumstances. This book must be regarded, then, not as a coherent
+argument, but merely as some of the raw material for the study of the
+dragon's history. In my lecture (13 November, 1918) on "The Meaning of
+Myths," which will be published in the <i>Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library</i>, I have expounded the general conclusions that emerge from the
+studies embodied in these three lectures; and in my forthcoming book,
+"The Story of the Flood," I have submitted the whole mass of evidence to
+examination in detail, and attempted to extract from it the real story
+of mankind's age-long search for the elixir of life.</p>
+
+<p>In the earliest records from Egypt and Babylonia it is customary to
+portray a king's beneficence by representing him initiating irrigation
+works. In course of time he came to be regarded, not merely as the giver
+of the water which made the desert fertile, but as himself the
+personification and the giver of the vital powers of water. The
+fertility of the land and the welfare of the people thus came to be
+regarded as dependent upon the king's vitality. Hence it was not
+illogical to kill him when his virility showed signs of failing and so
+imperilled the country's prosperity. But when the view developed that
+the dead king acquired a new grant of vitality in the other world he
+became the god Osiris, who was able to confer even greater boons of
+life-giving to the land and people than was the case before. He was the
+Nile, and he fertilized the land. The original dragon was a beneficent
+creature, the personification of water, and was identified with kings
+and gods.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the enemy of Osiris became an evil dragon, and was identified with
+Set.</p>
+
+<p>The dragon-myth, however, did not really begin to develop until an
+ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother, as
+the giver of life, to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood;
+and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her
+murderous act led to her being compared with and ultimately identified
+with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of the
+dragon is a much distorted rumour of this incident; and in the process
+of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of
+interpretation and also confusion with the legendary account of the
+conflict between Horus and Set.</p>
+
+<p>When a substitute was obtained to replace the blood the slaying of a
+human victim was no longer logically necessary: but an explanation had
+to be found for the persistence of this incident in the story. Mankind
+(no longer a mere individual human sacrifice) had become sinful and
+rebellious (the act of rebellion being complaints that the king or god
+was growing old) and had to be destroyed as a punishment for this
+treason. The Great Mother continued to act as the avenger of the king or
+god. But the enemies of the god were also punished by Horus in the
+legend of Horus and Set. The two stories hence became confused the one
+with the other. The king Horus took the place of the Great Mother as the
+avenger of the gods. As she was identified with the moon, he became the
+Sun-god, and assumed many of the Great Mother's attributes, and also
+became her son. In the further development of the myth, when the Sun-god
+had completely usurped his mother's place, the infamy of her deeds of
+destruction seems to have led to her being confused with the rebellious
+men who were now called the followers of Set, Horus's enemy. Thus an
+evil dragon emerged from this blend of the attributes of the Great
+Mother and Set. This is the Babylonian Tiamat. From the amazingly
+complex jumble of this tissue of confusion all the incidents of the
+dragon-myth were derived.</p>
+
+<p>When attributes of the Water-god or his enemy became assimilated with
+those of the Great Mother and the Warrior Sun-god, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> animals with
+which these deities were identified came to be regarded individually and
+collectively as concrete expressions of the Water-god's powers. Thus the
+cow and the gazelle, the falcon and the eagle, the lion and the serpent,
+the fish and the crocodile became symbols of the life-giving and the
+life-destroying powers of water, and composite monsters or dragons were
+invented by combining parts of these various creatures to express the
+different manifestations of the vital powers of water. The process of
+elaboration of the attributes of these monsters led to the development
+of an amazingly complex myth: but the story became still further
+involved when the dragon's life-controlling powers became confused with
+man's vital spirit and identified with the good or evil genius which was
+regarded as the guest, welcome or unwelcome, of every individual's body,
+and the arbiter of his destiny. In my remarks on the <i>ka</i> and the
+<i>fravashi</i> I have merely hinted at the vast complexity of these elements
+of confusion.</p>
+
+<p>Had I been familiar with [Archbishop] S&ouml;derblom's important
+monograph,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> when I was writing Chapters I and III, I might have
+attempted to indicate how vital a part the confusion of the individual
+<i>genius</i> with the mythical wonder-beast has played in the history of the
+myths relating to the latter. For the identification of the dragon with
+the vital spirit of the individual explains why the stories of the
+former appealed to the selfish interest of every human being. At the
+time the lecture on "Incense and Libations" was written, I had no idea
+that the problems of the <i>ka</i> and the <i>fravashi</i> had any connexion with
+those relating to the dragon. But in the third chapter a quotation from
+Professor Langdon's account of "A Ritual of Atonement for a Babylonian
+King" indicates that the Babylonian equivalent of the <i>ka</i> and the
+<i>fravashi</i>, "my god who walks at my side," presents many points of
+affinity to a dragon.</p>
+
+<p>When in the lecture on "Incense and Libations" I ventured to make the
+daring suggestion that the ideas underlying the Egyptian conception of
+the <i>ka</i> were substantially identical with those entertained by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> the
+Iranians in reference to the <i>fravashi</i>, I was not aware of the fact
+that such a comparison had already been made. In [Archbishop]
+S&ouml;derblom's monograph, which contains a wealth of information in
+corroboration of the views set forth in Chapter I, the following
+statement occurs: "L'analyse, faite par M. Brede-Kristensen (<i>&AElig;gypternes
+forestillinger om livet efter d&ouml;den</i>, 14 ss. Kristiania, 1896) du <i>ka</i>
+&eacute;gyptien, jette une vive lumi&egrave;re sur notre question, par la frappante
+analogie qui semble exister entre le sens originaire de ces deux termes
+<i>ka</i> et <i>fravashi</i>" (p. 58, note 4). "La similitude entre le <i>ka</i> et la
+<i>fravashi</i> a &eacute;t&eacute; signal&eacute;e dej&agrave; par Nestor Lhote, <i>Lettres &eacute;crites
+d'&Eacute;gypte</i>, note, selon Maspero, <i>&Eacute;tudes de mythologie et d'arch&eacute;ologie
+&eacute;gyptiennes</i>, I, 47, note 3."</p>
+
+<p>In support of the view, which I have submitted in Chapter I, that the
+original idea of the <i>fravashi</i>, like that of the <i>ka</i>, was suggested by
+the placenta and the f&#339;tal membranes, I might refer to the specific
+statement (Farvardin-Yasht, XXIII, 1) that "les fravashis tiennent en
+ordre l'enfant dans le sein de sa m&egrave;re et l'enveloppent de sorte qu'il
+ne meurt pas" (<i>op. cit.</i>, S&ouml;derblom, p. 41, note 1). The <i>fravashi</i>
+"nourishes and protects" (p. 57): it is "the nurse" (p. 58): it is
+always feminine (p. 58). It is in fact the placenta, and is also
+associated with the functions of the Great Mother. "Nous voyons dans
+fravashi une personification de la force vitale, conserv&eacute;e et exerc&eacute;e
+aussi apr&egrave;s la mort. La fravashi est le principe de vie, la facult&eacute; qu'a
+l'homme de se soutenir par la nourriture, de manger, d'absorber et ainsi
+d'exister et de se d&eacute;velopper. Cette &eacute;tymologie et le r&ocirc;le attribut&eacute; &agrave;
+la fravashi dans le d&eacute;veloppement de l'embryon, des animaux, des plantes
+rappellent en quelque sorte, comme le remarque M. Foucher, l'id&eacute;e
+directrice de Claude Bernard. Seulement la fravashi n'a jamais &eacute;t&eacute; une
+abstraction. La fravashi est une puissance vivante, un <i>homunculus in
+homine</i>, un &ecirc;tre personnifi&eacute; comme du reste toutes les sources de vie et
+de mouvement que l'homme non civilis&eacute; aper&ccedil;oit dans son organisme.</p>
+
+<p>"Il ne faut pas non plus consid&eacute;rer la fravashi comme un double de
+l'homme, elle en est plut&ocirc;t une partie, un h&ocirc;te intime qui continue son
+existence apr&egrave;s la mort aux m&ecirc;mes conditions qu'avant, et<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span> qui oblige
+les vivants &agrave; lui fournir les aliments n&eacute;cessaires" (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 59).</p>
+
+<p>Thus the <i>fravashi</i> has the same remarkable associations with
+nourishment and placental functions as the <i>ka</i>. As a further suggestion
+of its connexion with the Great Mother as the inaugurator of the year,
+and in virtue of her physiological (uterine) functions the
+moon-controlled measurer of the month, it is important to note that "Le
+19<sup>e</sup> jour de chaque mois est &eacute;galement consecr&eacute; aux fravashis en
+g&eacute;n&eacute;ral. Le premier mois porte aussi le nom de Farvard&icirc;n. Quant aux
+formes des f&ecirc;tes mensuelles, elles semblent conformes &agrave; celles que nous
+allons rappeler [les f&ecirc;tes c&eacute;l&eacute;br&eacute;es en l'honneur des mortes]" (<i>op.
+cit.</i>, p. 10).</p>
+
+<p>But the <i>fravashi</i> was not only associated with the Great Mother, but
+also with the Water-god or Good Dragon, for it controlled the waters of
+irrigation and gave fertility to the soil (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 36). The
+<i>fravashi</i> was also identified with the third member of the primitive
+Trinity, the Warrior Sun-god, not merely in the general sense as the
+adversary of the powers of evil, but also in the more definite form of
+the Winged Disk (<i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 67 and 68).</p>
+
+<p>In all these respects the <i>fravashi</i> is brought into close association
+with the dragon, so that in addition to being "the divine and immortal
+element" (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 51), it became the genius or spirit that
+possesses a man and shapes his conduct and regulates his behaviour. It
+was in fact the expression of a crude attempt on the part of the early
+psychologists of Iran to explain the working of the instinct of
+self-preservation.</p>
+
+<p>In the text of Chapters I and III I have referred to the Greek,
+Babylonian, Chinese, and Melanesian variants of essentially the same
+conception. S&ouml;derblom refers to an interesting parallel among the
+Karens, whose <i>kelah</i> corresponds to the Iranian <i>fravashi</i> (p. 54, Note
+2: compare also A.&nbsp;E. Crawley, "The Idea of the Soul," 1909).</p>
+
+<p>In the development of the dragon-myth astronomical factors played a very
+obtrusive part: but I have deliberately refrained from entering into a
+detailed discussion of them, because they were not primarily the real
+causal agents in the origin of the myth. When the conception of a
+sky-world or a heaven became drawn into the dragon story it came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span> to
+play so prominent a part as to convince most writers that the myth was
+primarily and essentially astronomical. But it is clear that originally
+the myth was concerned solely with the regulation of irrigation systems
+and the search upon earth for an elixir of life.</p>
+
+<p>When I put forward the suggestion that the annual inundation of the Nile
+provided the information for the first measurement of the year, I was
+not aware of the fact that Sir Norman Lockyer ("The Dawn of Astronomy,"
+1894, p. 209), had already made the same claim and substantiated it by
+much fuller evidence than I have brought together here.</p>
+
+<p>In preparing these lectures I have received help from so large a number
+of correspondents that it is difficult to enumerate all of them. But I
+am under a special debt of gratitude to Dr. Alan Gardiner for calling my
+attention to the fact that the common rendering of the Egyptian word
+<i>didi</i> as "mandrake" was unjustifiable, and to Mr. F.&nbsp;Ll. Griffith for
+explaining its true meaning and for lending me the literature relating
+to this matter. Miss Winifred M. Crompton, the Assistant Keeper of the
+Egyptian Department in the Manchester Museum, gave me very material
+assistance by bringing to my attention some very important literature
+which otherwise would have been overlooked; and both she and Miss
+Dorothy Davison helped me with the drawings that illustrate this volume.
+Mr. Wilfrid Jackson gave me much of the information concerning shells
+and cephalopods which forms such an essential part of the argument, and
+he also collected a good deal of the literature which I have made use
+of. Dr. A.&nbsp;C. Haddon, F.R.S., of Cambridge, lent me a number of books
+and journals which I was unable to obtain in Manchester; and Mr. Donald
+A. Mackenzie, of Edinburgh, has poured in upon me a stream of
+information, especially upon the folk-lore of Scotland and India. Nor
+must I forget to acknowledge the invaluable help and forbearance of Mr.
+Henry Guppy, of the John Rylands Library, and Mr. Charles W.&nbsp;E. Leigh,
+of the University Library. To all of these and to the still larger
+number of correspondents who have helped me I offer my most grateful
+thanks.</p>
+
+<p>During the three years in which these lectures were compiled I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span> have
+been associated with Dr. W.&nbsp;H.&nbsp;R. Rivers, F.R.S., and Mr. T.&nbsp;H. Pear in
+their psychological work in the military hospitals, and the influence of
+this interesting experience is manifest upon every page of this volume.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps the most potent factor of all in shaping my views and
+directing my train of thought has been the stimulating influence of Mr.
+W.&nbsp;J. Perry's researches, which are converting ethnology into a real
+science and shedding a brilliant light upon the early history of
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p>G. ELLIOT SMITH.</p>
+
+<p>9 <i>December</i>, 1918.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilisation in the East
+and in America," <i>Bulletin of the John Rylands Library</i>, January-March,
+1916.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Nathan S&ouml;derblom, "Les Fravashis &Eacute;tude sur les Traces dans
+le Mazd&eacute;isme d'une Ancienne Conception sur la Survivance des Morts,"
+Paris, 1899.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li>CHAPTER I.<span class="TOCchapterTitle">INCENSE AND LIBATIONS</span><span class="TOCralign"><a
+href="#Page_1">1</a></span></li>
+<li>CHAPTER II.<span class="TOCchapterTitle">DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS</span><span class="TOCralign"><a
+href="#Page_76">76</a></span></li>
+<li>CHAPTER III.<span class="TOCchapterTitle">THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE</span><span class="TOCralign"><a
+href="#Page_140">140</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<p class="LOIheader">FACING PAGE</p>
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 1.&mdash;The conventional Egyptian representation of the burning of incense and
+the pouring of libations
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_001">2</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 2.&mdash;Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth, representing a restoration of
+the early mummy found at Med&ucirc;m by Professor Flinders Petrie, now in
+the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_002">16</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 3.&mdash;A mould taken from a life-mask found in the Pyramid of Teta by Mr.
+Quibell
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_003">17</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 4.&mdash;Portrait statue of an Egyptian lady of the Pyramid Age
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_004">18</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 5.&mdash;Statue of an Egyptian noble of the Pyramid Age to show the technical
+skill in the representation of life-like eyes
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_005">52</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 6.&mdash;Representation of the ancient Mexican worship of the Sun
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_006">70</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 7.&mdash;A medi&aelig;val picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its cloud (after the late
+Professor W. Anderson)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_009">80</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 8.&mdash;A Chinese Dragon (after de Groot)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_010">80</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 9.&mdash;Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_011">81</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 10.&mdash;Babylonian Weather God
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_012">81</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 11.&mdash;Reproduction of a picture in the Maya Codex Troano representing the
+Rain-god <i>Chac</i> treading upon the Serpent's head, which is interposed
+between the earth and the rain the god is pouring out of a bowl. A
+Rain-goddess stands upon the Serpent's tail
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_013">84</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 12.&mdash;Another representation of the elephant-headed Rain-god. He is holding
+thunderbolts, conventionalized in a hund-like form. The serpent is
+converted into a sac, holding up the rain-waters.
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_014">84</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 13.&mdash;A page (the 36th) of the Dresden Maya Codex.
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_015">86</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 14.&mdash;A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature compounded of
+the antelope and fish of Ea.&mdash;B. The "sea-goat" as the vehicle of Ea or
+Marduk.&mdash;C to K&mdash;a series of varieties of the <i>makara</i> from the
+Buddhist Rails at Buddha Gaya and Mathura, circa 70 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>&mdash;70
+<span class="smcap">a.d.</span>, after Cunningham ("Arch&aelig;ological Survey of India," Vol.
+III, 1873, Plates IX and XXIX).&mdash;L. The <i>makara</i> as the vehicle of
+Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood. It is not difficult to understand
+how, in the course of the easterly diffusion of culture, such a picture
+should develop into the Chinese Dragon or the American elephant-headed
+god
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_016">88</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 15.&mdash;Photograph of a Chinese embroidery in the Manchester School of Art
+representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon Symbol
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_018">98</a></span></p></li>
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 16.&mdash;The God of Thunder (from a Chinese drawing (? 17th Century) in the
+John Rylands Library)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_019">136</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 17.&mdash;From Joannes de Turrecremata's "Meditationes seu Contemplationes".
+<i>Rome: Ulrich Han</i>, 1467
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_020">137</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 18.&mdash;(<i>a</i>) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer showing, perhaps, the
+earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners of the palette) as a woman
+with cow's horns and ears (compare Flinders Petrie "The Royal Tombs of
+the First Dynasty," Part I, 1900, Plate XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is
+wearing a belt from which are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in
+place of the cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This affords corroboration
+of the view that Hathor assumed the functions originally attributed to
+the cowry-shell. (<i>b</i>) The king's <i>sporran</i>, where Hathor-heads (<i>H</i>) take the
+place of the cowries of the primitive girdle
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_021">150</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 19.&mdash;The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic representations of the
+Indian elephant at its upper corners), one of the ancient Maya monuments at
+Copan, Central America (after Maudslay's photograph and diagram). The
+girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (<i>Oliva</i> or <i>Conus</i>) and
+amulets representing human faces corresponding to the Hathor-heads on the
+Narmer palette (Fig. 18)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_022">151</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 20.&mdash;Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts worn in (<i>a</i>) East Africa
+and (<i>b</i>) Oceania respectively. (<i>c</i>) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of
+Sirima Devata on the Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious
+stones, and what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of
+cowries. (<i>d</i>) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads
+of deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt between
+the heads recall Hathor's sistra
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_023">153</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 21.&mdash;(<i>a</i>) A slate triad found by Professor G. A. Reisner in the temple of the
+Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh Mycerinus supported on his
+right side by the goddess Hathor, represented as a woman with the moon and
+the cow's horns upon her head, and on the left side by a nome goddess, bearing
+upon her head the jackal-symbol of her nome. (<i>b</i>) The Ecuador Aphrodite.
+Bas-relief from Cerro-Jaboncillo (after Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi,
+Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907, Plate XXXVIII). A grotesque composite
+monster intended to represent a woman (compare Saville's Plates
+XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a conventionalized Octopus,
+whose body is a <i>Lol&iacute;go</i>, and whose limbs are human
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_025">164</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 22.&mdash;(<i>a</i>) <i>Sepia officinalis</i>, after Tryon, "Cephalopoda". (<i>b</i>) <i>Loligo vulgaris</i>,
+after Tryon. (<i>c</i>) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after
+Tryon
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_026">168</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 23.&mdash;A series of Mycen&aelig;an conventionalizations of the Argonaut and the
+Octopus (after T&uuml;mpel), which provided the basis for Houssay's theory of the
+origin of the triskele (<i>a</i>, <i>c</i>, and <i>d</i>) and swastika (<i>b</i> and <i>e</i>), and Siret's theory
+to explain the design of Bes's face (<i>f</i> and <i>g</i>)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_028">172</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 24.&mdash;(<i>a</i>) and (<i>b</i>) Two Mycen&aelig;an pots (after Schliemann). (<i>a</i>) The so-called
+"owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the Mother-Pot in the form
+of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay). (<i>b</i>) The other vase represents the
+Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon her head and another in her hands&mdash;a
+three-fold representation of the Great Mother as a pot. (<i>c</i>) A Cretan vase
+from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a decoration
+upon the pot instead of in its form, (<i>d</i>), (<i>e</i>), (<i>f</i>), (<i>g</i>), and (<i>h</i>) A series of coins
+from Central Greece (after Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of
+the Octopus, with its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (<i>f</i>). (<i>i</i>) <i>Sepia
+officinalis</i> (after Tryon). (<i>h</i>) and (<i>l</i>) The so-called "spouting vases" in the
+hands of the Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea,
+Patesi of Tello, after Ward ("Seal Cylinders, etc.," p. 215)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_031">180</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 25.&mdash;(<i>a</i>) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I. (<i>b</i>) Persian design
+of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal Cylinders of Western
+Asia," Fig. 1109). (<i>c</i>) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk
+and Tree of Life in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).
+(<i>d</i>) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the design
+upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670). (<i>e</i>) Part of the design from
+a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig. 663). (<i>f</i>) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus
+from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig. 9). (<i>g</i>) Double axe from a
+gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycen&aelig; (after Sir Arthur Evans,
+"Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10). (<i>h</i>) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward,
+Fig. 608). (<i>i</i>) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate" (Ward, Fig. 349). (<i>k</i>)
+Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144). (<i>l</i>) An Assyrian Tree of Life and
+Winged Disk crudely conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 691). (<i>m</i>) Assyrian Tree
+of Life and Winged Disk in which the god is riding in a crescent replacing
+the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_032">184</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 26.&mdash;(<i>a</i>) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains of the horizon
+(on which trees are growing) (after Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. II,
+p. 101). (<i>b</i>) The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a
+surrogate of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in
+the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 39). (<i>c</i>) The Mesopotamian
+sun-god Shamash rising between the Eastern Mountains, the Gates of Dawn
+(Ward, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 373). (<i>d</i>) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun
+rising between the Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving
+birth to "the ridiculous mouse"&mdash;Smintheus). (<i>e</i>) Part of the design from a
+Mycen&aelig;an vase from Old Salamis (after Evans, p. 9). (<i>f</i>) Part of the design
+from a lentoid gem from the Id&aelig;an Cave, now in the Candia Museum (after
+Evans, Fig. 25). (<i>g</i>) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of
+the goddess (after Evans, Fig. 66). (<i>h</i>) Another Mycen&aelig;an design comparable
+with (<i>e</i>). (<i>i</i>) Design from a signet-ring from Mycen&aelig;; (after Evans,
+Fig. 34). (<i>k</i>) The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycen&aelig;
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_033">188</a></span></p></li>
+</ul>
+
+<h3>ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.</h3>
+<p class="LOIheader">PAGE</p>
+
+<ul class="TOC">
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 1.&mdash;Early representation of a "Dragon" compounded of the forepart of an
+eagle and the hindpart of a lion (from an Archaic Cylinder-seal from Susa,
+after Jequier)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_007">79</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 2.&mdash;The earliest Babylonian conception of the Dragon Tiamat (from a
+Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after L. W. King)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_008">79</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 3.&mdash;Wm. Dennis's drawing of the "Flying Dragon" depicted on the rocks
+at Piasa, Illinois
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_017">94</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 4.&mdash;Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh)
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_024">155</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 5.&mdash;<i>Pterocera bryonia</i>, the Red Sea spider-shell
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_027">170</a></span></p></li>
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 6.&mdash;(<i>a</i>) Picture of a bowl of water&mdash;the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to <i>hm</i>
+(the word <i>hmt</i> means "woman"&mdash;Griffith, "Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate
+VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29). (<i>b</i>) "A basket of sycamore figs"&mdash;Wilkinson's
+"Ancient Egyptians," Vol. I, p. 323. (<i>c</i>) and (<i>d</i>) are said by Wilkinson to be
+hieroglyphic signs meaning "wife" and are apparently taken from (<i>b</i>). But
+(<i>c</i>) is identical with (<i>i</i>), which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve
+shell (<i>g</i>, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely (<i>h</i>). The varying
+conventionalizations of (<i>a</i>) or (<i>b</i>) are shown in (<i>d</i>), (<i>e</i>), and (<i>f</i>) (Griffith,
+"Hieroglyphics," p. 34). (<i>k</i>) The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic
+equivalent of the sign (<i>h</i>), and, according to Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 26),
+"is probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like outline".
+(<i>l</i>) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as <i>Nu</i> and <i>Nut</i>.
+(<i>m</i>) A "pomegranate" (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column at
+Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 46). (<i>n</i>)
+The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the coins of
+Central Greece (compare Fig. 24 (<i>d</i>))
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_029">179</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 7.&mdash;(<i>a</i>) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus emerging from a
+lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis). (<i>b</i>) Papyrus sceptre often
+carried by goddesses and animistically identified with them either as an instrument
+of life-giving or destruction. (<i>c</i>) Conventionalized lily&mdash;the prototype
+of the trident and the thunder-weapon. (<i>d</i>) A water-plant associated
+with the Nile-gods
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_030">180</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 8.&mdash;(<i>a</i>) "Ceremonial forked object," or "magic wand," used in the ceremony
+of "opening the mouth," possibly connected with (<i>b</i>) (a bicornuate uterus),
+according to Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 60). (<i>c</i>) The Egyptian sign for a
+key. (<i>d</i>) The double axe of Crete and Egypt
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_034">191</a></span></p></li>
+
+<li><p class="LOIhanging">
+Fig. 9.&mdash;The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign <i>nub</i>
+<span class="TOCralign"><a href="#Image_035">222</a></span></p></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_I" id="Chapter_I"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter I.</span></h2>
+
+<h3>INCENSE AND LIBATIONS.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>The dragon was primarily a personification of the life-giving and
+life-destroying powers of water. This chapter is concerned with the
+genesis of this biological theory of water and its relationship to
+the other germs of civilisation.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p>It is commonly assumed that many of the elementary practices of
+civilization, such as the erection of rough stone buildings, whether
+houses, tombs, or temples, the crafts of the carpenter and the
+stonemason, the carving of statues, the customs of pouring out libations
+or burning incense, are such simple and obvious procedures that any
+people might adopt them without prompting or contact of any kind with
+other populations who do the same sort of things. But if such apparently
+commonplace acts be investigated they will be found to have a long and
+complex history. None of these things that seem so obvious to us was
+attempted until a multitude of diverse circumstances became focussed in
+some particular community, and constrained some individual to make the
+discovery. Nor did the quality of obviousness become apparent even when
+the enlightened discoverer had gathered up the threads of his
+predecessor's ideas and woven them into the fabric of a new invention.
+For he had then to begin the strenuous fight against the opposition of
+his fellows before he could induce them to accept his discovery. He had,
+in fact, to contend against their preconceived ideas and their lack of
+appreciation of the significance of the progress he had made before he
+could persuade them of its "obviousness". That is the history of most
+inventions since the world began. But it is begging the question to
+pretend that because tradition has made such inventions seem simple and
+obvious to us it is unnecessary to inquire into their history or to
+assume that any people or any individual simply did these things without
+any instruction when the spirit moved it or him so to do.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The customs of burning incense and making libations in religious
+ceremonies are so widespread and capable of being explained in such
+plausible, though infinitely diverse, ways that it has seemed
+unnecessary to inquire more deeply into their real origin and
+significance. For example, Professor Toy<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> disposes of these questions
+in relation to incense in a summary fashion. He claims that "when burnt
+before the deity" it is "to be regarded as food, though in course of
+time, when the recollection of this primitive character was lost, a
+conventional significance was attached to the act of burning. A more
+refined period demanded more refined food for the gods, such as ambrosia
+and nectar, but these also were finally given up."</p>
+
+<p>This, of course, is a purely gratuitous assumption, or series of
+assumptions, for which there is no real evidence. Moreover, even if
+there were any really early literature to justify such statements, they
+explain nothing. Incense-burning is just as mysterious if Prof. Toy's
+claim be granted as it was before.</p>
+
+<p>But a bewildering variety of other explanations, for all of which the
+merit of being "simple and obvious" is claimed, have been suggested. The
+reader who is curious about these things will find a luxurious crop of
+speculations by consulting a series of encyclop&aelig;dias.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> I shall content
+myself by quoting only one more. "Frankincense and other spices were
+indispensable in temples where bloody sacrifices formed part of the
+religion. The atmosphere of Solomon's temple must have been that of a
+sickening slaughter-house, and the fumes of incense could alone enable
+the priests and worshippers to support it. This would apply to thousands
+of other temples through Asia, and doubtless the palaces of kings and
+nobles suffered from uncleanliness and insanitary arrangements and
+required an antidote to evil smells to make them endurable."<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is an altogether delightful anachronism to imagine that religious
+ritual in the ancient and aromatic East was inspired by such
+squeamishness as a British sanitary inspector of the twentieth century
+might experience!</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p><div class="center">
+<a name="Image_001" id="Image_001"></a>
+<img src="images/image001.png" width="321" height="400" alt="Fig. 1.&mdash;The conventional Egyptian representation of
+the Burning of Incense and the Pouring of Libations (Period of the
+New Empire)&mdash;after Lepsius" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 1.&mdash;The conventional Egyptian representation of
+the Burning of Incense and the Pouring of Libations (Period of the
+New Empire)&mdash;after Lepsius</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But if there are these many diverse and mutually destructive reasons in
+explanation of the origin of incense-burning, it follows that the
+meaning of the practice cannot be so "simple and obvious". For scholars
+in the past have been unable to agree as to the sense in which these
+adjectives should be applied.</p>
+
+<p>But no useful purpose would be served by enumerating a collection of
+learned fallacies and exposing their contradictions when the true
+explanation has been provided in the earliest body of literature that
+has come down from antiquity. I refer to the Egyptian "Pyramid Texts".</p>
+
+<p>Before this ancient testimony is examined certain general principles
+involved in the discussion of such problems should be considered. In
+this connexion it is appropriate to quote the apt remarks made, in
+reference to the practice of totemism, by Professor Sollas.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> "If it is
+difficult to conceive how such ideas ... originated at all, it is still
+more difficult to understand how they should have arisen repeatedly and
+have developed in much the same way among races evolving independently
+in different environments. It is at least simpler to suppose that all
+[of them] have a common source ... and may have been carried ... to
+remote parts of the world."</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that anyone who conscientiously and without bias examines
+the evidence relating to incense-burning, the arbitrary details of the
+ritual and the peculiar circumstances under which it is practised in
+different countries, can refuse to admit that so artificial a custom
+must have been dispersed throughout the world from some one centre where
+it was devised.</p>
+
+<p>The remarkable fact that emerges from an examination of these so-called
+"obvious explanations" of ethnological phenomena is the failure on the
+part of those who are responsible for them to show any adequate
+appreciation of the nature of the problems to be solved. They know that
+incense has been in use for a vast period of time, and that the practice
+of burning it is very widespread. They have been so familiarized with
+the custom and certain more or less vague excuses for its perpetuation
+that they show no realization of how strangely irrational and devoid of
+obvious meaning the procedure is. The reasons usually given in
+explanation of its use are for the most part merely paraphrases of the
+traditional meanings that in the course of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> history have come to be
+attached to the ritual act or the words used to designate it. Neither
+the ethnologist nor the priestly apologist will, as a rule, admit that
+he does not know why such ritual acts as pouring out water or burning
+incense are performed, and that they are wholly inexplicable and
+meaningless to him. Nor will they confess that the real inspiration to
+perform such rites is the fact of their predecessors having handed them
+down as sacred acts of devotion, the meaning of which has been entirely
+forgotten during the process of transmission from antiquity. Instead of
+this they simply pretend that the significance of such acts is obvious.
+Stripped of the glamour which religious emotion and sophistry have woven
+around them, such pretended explanations become transparent subterfuges,
+none the less real because the apologists are quite innocent of any
+conscious intention to deceive either themselves or their disciples. It
+should be sufficient for them that such ritual acts have been handed
+down by tradition as right and proper things to do. But in response to
+the instinctive impulse of all human beings, the mind seeks for reasons
+in justification of actions of which the real inspiration is unknown.</p>
+
+<p>It is a common fallacy to suppose that men's actions are inspired mainly
+by reason. The most elementary investigation of the psychology of
+everyday life is sufficient to reveal the truth that man is not, as a
+rule, the pre-eminently rational creature he is commonly supposed to
+be.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> He is impelled to most of his acts by his instincts, the
+circumstances of his personal experience, and the conventions of the
+society in which he has grown up. But once he has acted or decided upon
+a course of procedure he is ready with excuses in explanation and
+attempted justification of his motives. In most cases these are not the
+real reasons, for few human beings attempt to analyse their motives or
+in fact are competent without help to understand their own feelings and
+the real significance of their actions. There is implanted in man the
+instinct to interpret for his own satisfaction his feelings and
+sensations, i.e. the meaning of his experience. But of necessity this is
+mostly of the nature of rationalizing, i.e. providing satisfying
+interpretations of thoughts and decisions the real meaning of which is
+hidden.</p>
+
+<p>Now it must be patent that the nature of this process of rationalization
+will depend largely upon the mental make-up of the individual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>&mdash;of the
+body of knowledge and traditions with which his mind has become stored
+in the course of his personal experience. The influences to which he has
+been exposed, daily and hourly, from the time of his birth onward,
+provide the specific determinants of most of his beliefs and views.
+Consciously and unconsciously he imbibes certain definite ideas, not
+merely of religion, morals, and politics, but of what is the correct and
+what is the incorrect attitude to assume in most of the circumstances of
+his daily life. These form the staple currency of his beliefs and his
+conversation. Reason plays a surprisingly small part in this process,
+for most human beings acquire from their fellows the traditions of their
+society which relieves them of the necessity of undue thought. The very
+words in which the accumulated traditions of his community are conveyed
+to each individual are themselves charged with the complex symbolism
+that has slowly developed during the ages, and tinges the whole of his
+thoughts with their subtle and, to most men, vaguely appreciated shades
+of meaning.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> During this process of acquiring the fruits of his
+community's beliefs and experiences every individual accepts without
+question a vast number of apparently simple customs and ideas. He is apt
+to regard them as obvious, and to assume that reason led him to accept
+them or be guided by them, although when the specific question is put to
+him he is unable to give their real history.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving these general considerations<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> I want to emphasize
+certain elementary facts of psychology which are often ignored by those
+who investigate the early history of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>First, the multitude and the complexity of the circumstances that are
+necessary to lead men to make even the simplest invention render the
+concatenation of all of these conditions wholly independently on a
+second occasion in the highest degree improbable. Until very definite
+and conclusive evidence is forthcoming in any individual case it can
+safely be assumed that no ethnologically significant innovation in
+customs or beliefs has ever been made twice.</p>
+
+<p>Those critics who have recently attempted to dispose of this claim by
+referring to the work of the Patent Office thereby display a singular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+lack of appreciation of the real point at issue. For the ethnological
+problem is concerned with different populations who are assumed <i>not</i> to
+share any common heritage of acquired knowledge, nor to have had any
+contact, direct or indirect, the one with the other. But the inventors
+who resort to the Patent Office are all of them persons supplied with
+information from the storehouse of our common civilization; and the
+inventions which they seek to protect from imitation by others are
+merely developments of the heritage of all civilized peoples. Even when
+similar inventions are made apparently independently under such
+circumstances, in most cases they can be explained by the fact that two
+investigators have followed up a line of advance which has been
+determined by the development of the common body of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>This general discussion suggests another factor in the working of the
+human mind.</p>
+
+<p>When certain vital needs or the force of circumstances compel a man to
+embark upon a certain train of reasoning or invention the results to
+which his investigations lead depend upon a great many circumstances.
+Obviously the range of his knowledge and experience and the general
+ideas he has acquired from his fellows will play a large part in shaping
+his inferences. It is quite certain that even in the simplest problem of
+primitive physics or biology his attention will be directed only to some
+of, and not all, the factors involved, and that the limitations of his
+knowledge will permit him to form a wholly inadequate conception even of
+the few factors that have obtruded themselves upon his attention. But he
+may frame a working hypothesis in explanation of the factors he had
+appreciated, which may seem perfectly exhaustive and final, as well as
+logical and rational to him, but to those who come after him, with a
+wider knowledge of the properties of matter and the nature of living
+beings, and a wholly different attitude towards such problems, the
+primitive man's solution may seem merely a ludicrous travesty.</p>
+
+<p>But once a tentative explanation of one group of phenomena has been made
+it is the method of science no less than the common tendency of the
+human mind to buttress this theory with analogies and fancied
+homologies. In other words the isolated facts are built up into a
+generalisation. It is important to remember that in most cases this
+mental process begins very early; so that the analogies play a very
+obtrusive part in the building up of theories. As a rule a multitude<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> of
+such influences play a part consciously or unconsciously in shaping any
+belief. Hence the historian is faced with the difficulty, often quite
+insuperable, of ascertaining (among scores of factors that definitely
+played some part in the building up of a great generalization) the real
+foundation upon which the vast edifice has been erected. I refer to
+these elementary matters here for two reasons. First, because they are
+so often overlooked by ethnologists; and secondly, because in these
+pages I shall have to discuss a series of historical events in which a
+bewildering number of factors played their part. In sifting out a
+certain number of them, I want to make it clear that I do not pretend to
+have discovered more than a small minority of the most conspicuous
+threads in the complex texture of the fabric of early human thought.</p>
+
+<p>Another fact that emerges from these elementary psychological
+considerations is the vital necessity of guarding against the
+misunderstandings necessarily involved in the use of words. In the
+course of long ages the originally simple connotation of the words used
+to denote many of our ideas has become enormously enriched with a
+meaning which in some degree reflects the chequered history of the
+expression of human aspirations. Many writers who in discussing ancient
+peoples make use of such terms, for example, as "soul," "religion," and
+"gods," without stripping them of the accretions of complex symbolism
+that have collected around them within more recent times, become
+involved in difficulty and misunderstanding.</p>
+
+<p>For example, the use of the terms "soul" or "soul-substance" in much of
+the literature relating to early or relatively primitive people is
+fruitful of misunderstanding. For it is quite clear from the context
+that in many cases such people meant to imply nothing more than "life"
+or "vital principle," the absence of which from the body for any
+prolonged period means death. But to translate such a word simply as
+"life" is inadequate because all of these people had some theoretical
+views as to its identity with the "breath" or to its being in the nature
+of a material substance or essence. It is naturally impossible to find
+any one word or phrase in our own language to express the exact idea,
+for among every people there are varying shades of meaning which cannot
+adequately express the symbolism distinctive of each place and society.
+To meet this insuperable difficulty perhaps the term "vital essence" is
+open to least objection.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In my last Rylands lecture<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> I sketched in rough outline a tentative
+explanation of the world-wide dispersal of the elements of the
+civilization that is now the heritage of the world at large, and
+referred to the part played by Ancient Egypt in the development of
+certain arts, customs, and beliefs. On the present occasion I propose to
+examine certain aspects of this process of development in greater
+detail, and to study the far-reaching influence exerted by the Egyptian
+practice of mummification, and the ideas that were suggested by it, in
+starting new trains of thought, in stimulating the invention of arts and
+crafts that were unknown before then, and in shaping the complex body of
+customs and beliefs that were the outcome of these potent intellectual
+ferments.</p>
+
+<p>In speaking of the relationship of the practice of mummification to the
+development of civilization, however, I have in mind not merely the
+influence it exerted upon the moulding of culture, but also the part
+played by the trend of philosophy in the world at large in determining
+the Egyptian's conceptions of the wider significance of embalming, and
+the reaction of these effects upon the current doctrines of the meaning
+of natural phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt it will be asked at the outset, what possible connexion can
+there be between the practice of so fantastic and gruesome an art as the
+embalming of the dead and the building up of civilization? Is it
+conceivable that the course of the development of the arts and crafts,
+the customs and beliefs, and the social and political organizations&mdash;in
+fact any of the essential elements of civilization&mdash;has been deflected a
+hair's breadth to the right or left as the outcome, directly or
+indirectly, of such a practice?</p>
+
+<p>In previous essays and lectures<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> I have indicated how intimately this
+custom was related, not merely to the invention of the arts and crafts
+of the carpenter and stonemason and all that is implied in the building
+up of what Professor Lethaby has called the "matrix of civilization,"
+but also to the shaping of religious beliefs and ritual practices,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+which developed in association with the evolution of the temple and the
+conception of a material resurrection. I have also suggested the
+far-reaching significance of an indirect influence of the practice of
+mummification in the history of civilization. It was mainly responsible
+for prompting the earliest great maritime expeditions of which the
+history has been preserved.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> For many centuries the quest of resins
+and balsams for embalming and for use in temple ritual, and wood for
+coffin-making, continued to provide the chief motives which induced the
+Egyptians to undertake sea-trafficking in the Mediterranean and the Red
+Sea. The knowledge and experience thus acquired ultimately made it
+possible for the Egyptians and their pupils to push their adventures
+further afield. It is impossible adequately to estimate the vastness of
+the influence of such intercourse, not merely in spreading abroad
+throughout the world the germs of our common civilization, but also, by
+bringing into close contact peoples of varied histories and traditions,
+in stimulating progress. Even if the practice of mummification had
+exerted no other noteworthy effect in the history of the world, this
+fact alone would have given it a pre-eminent place.</p>
+
+<p>Another aspect of the influence of mummification I have already
+discussed, and do not intend to consider further in this lecture. I
+refer to the manifold ways in which it affected the history of medicine
+and pharmacy. By accustoming the Egyptians, through thirty centuries, to
+the idea of cutting the human corpse, it made it possible for Greek
+physicians of the Ptolemaic and later ages to initiate in Alexandria the
+systematic dissection of the human body which popular prejudice forbade
+elsewhere, and especially in Greece itself. Upon this foundation the
+knowledge of anatomy and the science of medicine has been built up.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>
+But in many other ways the practice of mummification exerted
+far-reaching effects, directly and indirectly, upon the development of
+medical and pharmaceutical knowledge and methods.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is then this <i>prima-facie</i> evidence that the Egyptian practice of
+mummification was closely related to the development of architecture,
+maritime trafficking, and medicine. But what I am chiefly concerned with
+in the present lecture is the discussion of the much vaster part it
+played in shaping the innermost beliefs of mankind and directing the
+course of the religious aspirations and the scientific opinions, not
+merely of the Egyptians themselves, but also of the world at large, for
+many centuries afterward.</p>
+
+<p>It had a profound influence upon the history of human thought. The vague
+and ill-defined ideas of physiology and psychology, which had probably
+been developing since Aurignacian times<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> in Europe, were suddenly
+crystallized into a coherent structure and definite form by the musings
+of the Egyptian embalmer. But at the same time, if the new philosophy
+did not find expression in the invention of the first deities, it gave
+them a much more concrete form than they had previously presented, and
+played a large part in the establishment of the foundations upon which
+all religious ritual was subsequently built up, and in the initiation of
+a priesthood to administer the rites which were suggested by the
+practice of mummification.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> An elaboration of a Lecture on the relationship of the
+Egyptian practice of mummification to the development of civilization
+delivered in the John Rylands Library, on 9 February, 1916.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> "Introduction to the History of Religions," p. 486.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> He might start upon this journey of adventure by reading
+the article on "Incense" in Hastings' <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia of Religion and
+Ethics</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Samuel Laing, "Human Origins," Revised by Edward Clodd,
+1903, p. 38.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, pp. 234 and 235.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> On this subject see Elliot Smith and Pear, "Shell Shock and
+its Lessons," Manchester University Press, 1917, p. 59.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> An interesting discussion of this matter by the late
+Professor William James will be found in his "Principles of Psychology,"
+Vol. I, pp. 261 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> For a fuller discussion of certain phases of this matter
+see my address on "Primitive Man," in the <i>Proceedings of the British
+Academy</i>, 1917, especially pp. 23-50.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the
+East and in America," <i>The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library</i>,
+Jan.-March, 1916.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> "The Migrations of Early Culture," 1915, Manchester
+University Press: "The Evolution of the Rock-cut Tomb and the Dolmen,"
+<i>Essays and Studies Presented to William Ridgeway</i>, Cambridge, 1913, p.
+493: "Oriental Tombs and Temples," <i>Journal of the Manchester Egyptian
+and Oriental Society</i>, 1914-1915, p. 55.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> "Ships as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture,"
+Manchester University Press, 1917, p. 37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> "Egyptian Mummies," <i>Journal of Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol.
+I, Part III, July, 1914, p. 189.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Such, for example, as its influence in the acquisition of
+the means of preserving the tissues of the body, which has played so
+large a part in the development of the sciences of anatomy, pathology,
+and in fact biology in general. The practice of mummification was
+largely responsible for the attainment of a knowledge of the properties
+of many drugs and especially of those which restrain putrefactive
+changes. But it was not merely in the acquisition of a knowledge of
+material facts that mummification exerted its influence. The humoral
+theory of pathology and medicine, which prevailed for so many centuries
+and the effects of which are embalmed for all time in our common speech,
+was closely related in its inception to the ideas which I shall discuss
+in these pages. The Egyptians themselves did not profit to any
+appreciable extent from the remarkable opportunities which their
+practice of embalming provided for studying human anatomy. The sanctity
+of these ritual acts was fatal to the employment of such opportunities
+to gain knowledge. Nor was the attitude of mind of the Egyptians such as
+to permit the acquisition of a real appreciation of the structure of the
+body.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> See my address, "Primitive Man," <i>Proc. Brit. Academy</i>,
+1917.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Beginning of Stone-Working.</h3>
+
+<p>During the last few years I have repeatedly had occasion to point out
+the fundamental fallacy underlying much of the modern speculation in
+ethnology, and I have no intention of repeating these strictures
+here.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> But it is a significant fact that, when one leaves the
+writings of professed ethnologists and turns to the histories of their
+special subjects written by scholars in kindred fields of investigation,
+views such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> as I have been setting forth will often be found to be
+accepted without question or comment as the obvious truth.</p>
+
+<p>There is an excellent little book entitled "Architecture," written by
+Professor W.&nbsp;R. Lethaby for the Home University Library, that affords an
+admirable illustration of this interesting fact. I refer to this
+particular work because it gives lucid expression to some of the ideas
+that I wish to submit for consideration. "Two arts have changed the
+surface of the world, Agriculture and Architecture" (p. 1). "To a large
+degree architecture" [which he defines as "the matrix of civilization"]
+"is an Egyptian art" (p. 66): for in Egypt "we shall best find the
+origins of architecture as a whole" (p. 21).</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless Professor Lethaby bows the knee to current tradition when
+he makes the wholly unwarranted assumption that Egypt probably learnt
+its art from Babylonia. He puts forward this remarkable claim in spite
+of his frank confession that "little or nothing is known of a primitive
+age in Mesopotamia. At a remote time the art of Babylonia was that of a
+civilized people. As has been said, there is a great similarity between
+this art and that of dynastic times in Egypt. Yet it appears that Egypt
+borrowed of Asia, rather than the reverse." [He gives no reasons for
+this opinion, for which there is no evidence, except possibly the
+invention of bricks for building.] "If the origins of art in Babylonia
+were as fully known as those in Egypt, the story of architecture might
+have to begin in Asia instead of Egypt" (p. 67).</p>
+
+<p>But later on he speaks in a more convincing manner of the known facts
+when he says (p. 82):&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>When Greece entered on her period of high-strung life the time of
+first invention in the arts was over&mdash;the heroes of Craft, like
+Tubal Cain and Daedalus, necessarily belong to the infancy of
+culture. The phenomenon of Egypt could not occur again; the mission
+of Greece was rather to settle down to a task of gathering,
+interpreting, and bringing to perfection Egypt's gifts. The arts of
+civilization were never developed in watertight compartments, as is
+shown by the uniformity of custom over the modern world. Further,
+if any new nation enters into the circle of culture it seems that,
+like Japan, it must 'borrow the capital'. The art of Greece could
+hardly have been more self-originated than is the science of Japan.
+Ideas of the temple and of the fortified town must have spread from
+the East, the square-roomed house, columnar orders, fine masonry,
+were all Egyptian.</p></div>
+
+<p>Elsewhere<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> I have pointed out that it was the importance which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> the
+Egyptian came to attach to the preservation of the dead and to the
+making of adequate provision for the deceased's welfare that gradually
+led to the aggrandisement of the tomb. In course of time this impelled
+him to cut into the rock,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> and, later still, suggested the
+substitution of stone for brick in erecting the chapel of offerings
+above ground. The Egyptian burial customs were thus intimately related
+to the conceptions that grew up with the invention of embalming. The
+evidence in confirmation of this is so precise that every one who
+conscientiously examines it must be forced to the conclusion that man
+did not instinctively select stone as a suitable material with which to
+erect temples and houses, and forthwith begin to quarry and shape it for
+such purposes.</p>
+
+<p>There was an intimate connexion between the first use of stone for
+building and the practice of mummification. It was probably for this
+reason, and not from any abstract sense of "wonder at the magic of art,"
+as Professor Lethaby claims, that "ideas of sacredness, of ritual
+rightness, of magic stability and correspondence with the universe, and
+of perfection of form and proportion" came to be associated with stone
+buildings.</p>
+
+<p>At first stone was used only for such sacred purposes, and the pharaoh
+alone was entitled to use it for his palaces, in virtue of the fact that
+he was divine, the son and incarnation on earth of the sun-god. It was
+only when these Egyptian practices were transplanted to other countries,
+where these restrictions did not obtain, that the rigid wall of
+convention was broken down.</p>
+
+<p>Even in Rome until well into the Christian era "the largest domestic and
+civil buildings were of plastered brick". "Wrought masonry seems to have
+been demanded only for the great monuments, triumphal arches, theatres,
+temples and above all for the Coliseum." (Lethaby, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 120).</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless Rome was mainly responsible for breaking down the hieratic
+tradition which forbade the use of stone for civil purposes. "In Roman
+architecture the engineering element became paramount. It was this which
+broke the moulds of tradition and recast construction into modern form,
+and made it free once more" (p. 130).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Egypt was not only responsible for inaugurating the use of stone for
+building. For another forty centuries she continued to be the inventor
+of new devices in architecture. From time to time methods of building
+which developed in Egypt were adopted by her neighbours and spread far
+and wide. The shaft-tombs and <i>mastabas</i> of the Egyptian Pyramid Age
+were adopted in various localities in the region of the Eastern
+Mediterranean,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> with certain modifications in each place, and in turn
+became the models which were roughly copied in later ages by the
+wandering dolmen-builders. The round tombs of Crete and Mycen&aelig; were
+clearly only local modifications of their square prototypes, the
+Egyptian Pyramids of the Middle Kingdom. "While this &AElig;gean art gathered
+from, and perhaps gave to, Egypt, it passed on its ideals to the north
+and west of Europe, where the productions of the Bronze Age clearly show
+its influence" (Lethaby, p. 78) in the chambered mounds of the Iberian
+peninsula and Brittany, of New Grange in Ireland and of Maes Howe in the
+Orkneys.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> In the East the influence of these &AElig;gean modifications may
+possibly be seen in the Indian <i>stupas</i> and the <i>dagabas</i> of Ceylon,
+just as the stone stepped pyramids there reveal the effects of contact
+with the civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Lethaby sees the influence of Egypt in the orientation of
+Christian churches (p. 133), as well as in many of their structural
+details (p. 142); in the domed roofs, the iconography, the symbolism,
+and the decoration of Byzantine architecture (p. 138); and in Mohammedan
+buildings wherever they are found.</p>
+
+<p>For it was not only the architecture of Greece, Rome, and Christendom
+that received its inspiration from Egypt, but that of Isl&acirc;m also. These
+buildings were not, like the religion itself, in the main Arabic in
+origin. "Primitive Arabian art itself is quite negligible. When the new
+strength of the followers of the Prophet was consoli<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>dated with great
+rapidity into a rich and powerful empire, it took over the arts and
+artists of the conquered lands, extending from North Africa to Persia"
+(p. 158); and it is known how this influence spread as far west as Spain
+and as far east as Indonesia. "The Pharos at Alexandria, the great
+lighthouse built about 280 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, almost appears to have been
+the parent of all high and isolated towers.... Even on the coast of
+Britain, at Dover, we had a Pharos which was in some degree an imitation
+of the Alexandrian one." The Pharos at Boulogne, the round towers of
+Ravenna, and the imitations of it elsewhere in Europe, even as far as
+Ireland, are other examples of its influence. But in addition the
+Alexandrian Pharos had "as great an effect as the prototype of Eastern
+minarets as it had for Western towers" (p. 115).</p>
+
+<p>I have quoted so extensively from Professor Lethaby's brilliant little
+book to give this independent testimony of the vastness of the influence
+exerted by Egypt during a span of nearly forty centuries in creating and
+developing the "matrix of civilization". Most of this wider dispersal
+abroad was effected by alien peoples, who transformed their gifts from
+Egypt before they handed on the composite product to some more distant
+peoples. But the fact remains that the great centre of original
+inspiration in architecture was Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>The original incentive to the invention of this essentially Egyptian art
+was the desire to protect and secure the welfare of the dead. The
+importance attached to this aim was intimately associated with the
+development of the practice of mummification.</p>
+
+<p>With this tangible and persistent evidence of the general scheme of
+spread of the arts of building I can now turn to the consideration of
+some of the other, more vital, manifestations of human thought and
+aspirations, which also, like the "matrix of civilization" itself, grew
+up in intimate association with the practice of embalming the dead.</p>
+
+<p>I have already mentioned Professor Lethaby's reference to architecture
+and agriculture as the two arts that have changed the surface of the
+world. It is interesting to note that the influence of these two
+ingredients of civilization was diffused abroad throughout the world in
+intimate association the one with the other. In most parts of the world
+the use of stone for building and Egyptian methods of architecture made
+their first appearance along with the peculiarly distinctive form<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> of
+agriculture and irrigation so intimately associated with early Babylonia
+and Egypt.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>But agriculture also exerted a most profound influence in shaping the
+early Egyptian body of beliefs.</p>
+
+<p>I shall now call attention to certain features of the earliest mummies,
+and then discuss how the ideas suggested by the practice of the art of
+embalming the dead were affected by the early theories of agriculture
+and the mutual influence they exerted one upon the other.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> See, however, <i>op. cit. supra</i>; also "The Origin of the
+Pre-Columbian Civilization of America," <i>Science</i>, N.S., Vol. XLV, No.
+1158, pp. 241-246, 9 March, 1917.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Op. cit. supra</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> For the earliest evidence of the cutting of stone for
+architectural purposes, see my statement in the <i>Report of the British
+Association for 1914</i>, p. 212.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Especially in Crete, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor,
+Southern Russia, and the North African Littoral.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> For an account of the evidence relating to these
+monuments, with full bibliographical references, see D&eacute;chelette, "Manuel
+d'Arch&eacute;ologie pr&eacute;historique Celtique et Gallo-Romaine," T. 1, 1912, pp.
+390 <i>et seq.</i>; also Sophus M&uuml;ller, "Urgeschichte Europas," 1905, pp. 74
+and 75; and Louis Siret, "Les Cassit&eacute;rides et l'Empire Colonial des
+Ph&eacute;niciens," <i>L'Anthropologie</i>, T. 20, 1909, p. 313.</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> W.&nbsp;J. Perry, "The Geographical Distribution of Terraced
+Cultivation and Irrigation," <i>Memoirs and Proc. Manch. Lit. and Phil.
+Soc.</i>, Vol. 60, 1916.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Origin of Embalming.</h3>
+
+<p>I have already explained<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> how the increased importance that came to
+be attached to the corpse as the means of securing a continuance of
+existence led to the aggrandizement of the tomb. Special care was taken
+to protect the dead and this led to the invention of coffins, and to the
+making of a definite tomb, the size of which rapidly increased as more
+and more ample supplies of food and other offerings were made. But the
+very measures thus taken the more efficiently to protect and tend the
+dead defeated the primary object of all this care. For, when buried in
+such an elaborate tomb, the body no longer became desiccated and
+preserved by the forces of nature, as so often happened when it was
+placed in a simple grave directly in the hot dry sand.</p>
+
+<p>It is of fundamental importance in the argument set forth here to
+remember that these factors came into operation before the time of the
+First Dynasty. They were responsible for impelling the Proto-Egyptians
+not only to invent the wooden coffin, the stone sarcophagus, the
+rock-cut tomb, and to begin building in stone, but also to devise
+measures for the artificial preservation of the body.</p>
+
+<p>But in addition to stimulating the development of the first real
+architecture and the art of mummification other equally far-reaching
+results in the region of ideas and beliefs grew out of these practices.</p>
+
+<p>From the outset the Egyptian embalmer was clearly inspired by two
+ideals: (<i>a</i>) to preserve the actual tissues of the body with a minimum
+disturbance of its superficial appearance; and (<i>b</i>) to preserve a
+likeness of the deceased as he was in life. At first it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> was naturally
+attempted to make this simulacrum of the body itself if it were
+possible, or alternatively, when this ideal was found to be
+unattainable, from its wrappings or by means of a portrait statue. It
+was soon recognized that it was beyond the powers of the early embalmer
+to succeed in mummifying the body itself so as to retain a recognizable
+likeness to the man when alive: although from time to time such attempts
+were repeatedly made,<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> until the period of the XXI Dynasty, when the
+operator clearly was convinced that he had at last achieved what his
+predecessors, for perhaps twenty-five centuries, had been trying in vain
+to do.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Op. cit. supra</i>.</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> See my volume on "The Royal Mummies," General Catalogue of
+the Cairo Museum.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Early Mummies.</h3>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_002" id="Image_002"></a>
+<img src="images/image002.png" width="400" height="243" alt="Fig. 2.&mdash;Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth,
+representing a restoration of the early mummy found at Med&ucirc;m by Prof.
+Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in
+London" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 2.&mdash;Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth,
+representing a restoration of the early mummy found at Med&ucirc;m by Prof.
+Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in
+London</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the earliest known (Second Dynasty) examples of Egyptian attempts at
+mummification<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> the corpse was swathed in a large series of bandages,
+which were moulded into shape to represent the form of the body. In a
+later (probably Fifth Dynasty) mummy, found in 1892 by Professor
+Flinders Petrie at Med&ucirc;m, the superficial bandages had been impregnated
+with a resinous paste, which while still plastic was moulded into the
+form of the body, special care being bestowed upon the modelling of the
+face<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> and the organs of reproduction, so as to leave no room for
+doubt as to the identity and the sex. Professor Junker has described<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>
+an interesting series of variations of these practices. In two graves
+the bodies were covered with a layer of stucco plaster. First the corpse
+was covered with a fine linen cloth: then the plaster was put on, and
+modelled into the form of the body (p. 252). But in two other cases it
+was not the whole body that was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> covered with this layer of stucco,
+but only the head. Professor Junker claims that this was done
+"apparently because the head was regarded as the most important part, as
+the organs of taste, sight, smell, and hearing were contained in it".
+But surely there was the additional and more obtrusive reason that the
+face affords the means of identifying the individual! For this modelling
+of the features was intended primarily as a restoration of the form of
+the body which had been altered, if not actually destroyed. In other
+cases, where no attempt was made to restore the features in such durable
+materials as resin or stucco, the linen-enveloped head was modelled, and
+a representation of the eyes painted upon it so as to enhance the
+life-like appearance of the face.</p>
+
+<p>These facts prove quite conclusively that the earliest attempts to
+reproduce the features of the deceased and so preserve his likeness,
+were made upon the wrapped mummy itself. Thus the mummy was intended to
+be the portrait as well as the actual bodily remains of the dead. In
+view of certain differences of opinion as to the original significance
+of the funerary ritual, which I shall have occasion to discuss later on
+(see p. 20), it is important to keep these facts clearly in mind.</p>
+
+<p>A discovery made by Mr. J.&nbsp;E. Quibell in the course of his excavations
+at Sakkara<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> suggests that, as an outcome of these practices a new
+procedure may have been devised in the Pyramid Age&mdash;the making of a
+death-mask. For he discovered what may be the mask taken directly from
+the face of the Pharaoh Teta (Fig. 3).</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_003" id="Image_003"></a>
+<img src="images/image003.png" width="300" height="467" alt="Fig. 3.&mdash;A mould taken from a life-mask found in the
+Pyramid of Teta by Mr. Quibell" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 3.&mdash;A mould taken from a life-mask found in the
+Pyramid of Teta by Mr. Quibell</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>About this time also the practice originated of making a life-size
+portrait statue of the dead man's head and placing it along with the
+actual body in the burial chamber. These "reserve heads," as they have
+been called, were usually made of fine limestone, but Junker found one
+made of Nile mud.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>Junker believes that there was an intimate relationship between the
+plaster-covered heads and the reserve-heads. They were both expressions
+of the same idea, to preserve a simulacrum of the deceased when his
+actual body had lost all recognizable likeness to him as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> was when
+alive. The one method aimed at combining in the same object the actual
+body and the likeness; the other at making a more life-like portrait
+apart from the corpse, which could take the place of the latter when it
+decayed.</p>
+
+<p>Junker states further that "it is no chance that the substitute-heads
+... entirely, or at any rate chiefly, are found in the tombs that have
+no statue-chamber and probably possessed no statues. The statues [of the
+whole body] certainly were made, at any rate partly, with the intention
+that they should take the place of the decaying body, although later the
+idea was modified. The placing of the substitute-head in [the burial
+chamber of] the mastaba therefore became unnecessary at the moment when
+the complete figure of the dead [placed in a special hidden chamber, now
+commonly called the <i>serdab</i>] was introduced." The ancient Egyptians
+themselves called the <i>serdab</i> the <i>pr-twt</i> or "statue-house," and the
+group of chambers, forming the tomb-chapel in the mastaba, was known to
+them as the "<i>ka</i>-house".<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is important to remember that, even when the custom of making a
+statue of the deceased became fully established, the original idea of
+restoring the form of the mummy itself or its wrappings was never
+abandoned. The attempts made in the XVIII, and XXI and XXII Dynasties to
+pack the body of the mummy itself and by artificial means give it a
+life-like appearance afford evidence of this. In the New Empire and in
+Roman times the wrapped mummy was sometimes modelled into the form of a
+statue. But throughout Egyptian history it was a not uncommon practice
+to provide a painted mask for the wrapped mummy, or in early Christian
+times simply a portrait of the deceased.</p>
+
+<p>With this custom there also persisted a remembrance of its original
+significance. Professor Garstang records the fact that in the XII
+Dynasty,<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> when a painted mask was placed upon the wrapped mummy, no
+statue or statuette was found in the tomb. The under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>takers apparently
+realized that the mummy<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> which was provided with a life-like mask was
+therefore fulfilling the purposes for which statues were devised. So
+also in the New Empire the packing and modelling of the actual mummy so
+as to restore its life-like appearance were regarded as obviating the
+need for a statue.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_004" id="Image_004"></a>
+<img src="images/image004.png" width="144" height="400" alt="Fig. 4.&mdash;Portrait Statue of an Egyptian Lady of the
+Pyramid Age" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 4.&mdash;Portrait Statue of an Egyptian Lady of the
+Pyramid Age</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I must now return to the further consideration of the Old Kingdom
+statues. All these varied experiments were inspired by the same desire,
+to preserve the likeness of the deceased. But when the sculptors
+attained their object, and created those marvellous life-like portraits,
+which must ever remain marvels of technical skill and artistic feeling
+(Fig. 4), the old ideas that surged through the minds of the Predynastic
+Egyptians, as they contemplated the desiccated remains of the dead, were
+strongly reinforced. The earlier people's thoughts were turned more
+specifically than heretofore to the contemplation of the nature of life
+and death by seeing the bodies of their dead preserved whole and
+incorruptible; and, if their actions can be regarded as an expression of
+their ideas, they began to wonder what was lacking in these physically
+complete bodies to prevent them from feeling and acting like living
+beings. Such must have been the results of their puzzled contemplation
+of the great problems of life and death. Otherwise the impulse to make
+more certain the preservation of the body by the invention of
+mummification and to retain a life-like representation of the deceased
+by means of a sculptured statue remains inexplicable. But when the
+corpse had been rendered incorruptible and the deceased's portrait had
+been fashioned with realistic perfection the old ideas would recur with
+renewed strength. The belief then took more definite shape that if the
+missing elements of vitality could be restored to the statue, it might
+become animated and the dead man would live again in his vitalized
+statue. This prompted a more intense and searching investigation of the
+problems concerning the nature of the elements of vitality of which the
+corpse was deprived at the time of death. Out of these inquiries in
+course of time a highly complex system of philosophy developed.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But in the earlier times with which I am now concerned it found
+practical expression in certain ritual procedures, invented to convey to
+the statue the breath of life, the vitalising fluids, and the odour and
+sweat of the living body. The seat of knowledge and of feeling was
+believed to be retained in the body when the heart was left <i>in situ</i>:
+so that the only thing needed to awaken consciousness, and make it
+possible for the dead man to take heed of his friends and to act
+voluntarily, was to present offerings of blood to stimulate the
+physiological functions of the heart. But the element of vitality which
+left the body at death had to be restored to the statue, which
+represented the deceased in the <i>ka</i>-house.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>In my earlier attempts<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> to interpret these problems, I adopted the
+view that the making of portrait statues was the direct outcome of the
+practice of mummification. But Dr. Alan Gardiner, whose intimate
+knowledge of the early literature enables him to look at such problems
+from the Egyptian's own point of view, has suggested a modification of
+this interpretation. Instead of regarding the custom of making statues
+as an outcome of the practice of mummification, he thinks that the two
+customs developed simultaneously, in response to the two-fold desire to
+preserve both the actual body and a representation of the features of
+the dead. But I think this suggestion does not give adequate recognition
+to the fact that the earliest attempts at funerary portraiture were made
+upon the wrappings of the actual mummies.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> This fact and the evidence
+which I have already<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> quoted from Junker make it quite clear that from
+the beginning the embalmer's aim was to preserve the body and to convert
+the mummy itself into a simulacrum of the deceased. When he realized
+that his technical skill was not adequate to enable him to accomplish
+this double aim, he fell back upon the device of making a more perfect
+and realistic portrait statue apart from the mummy. But, as I have
+already pointed out, he never completely renounced his ambition of
+transforming the mummy itself; and in the time of the New Empire he
+actually attained the result which he had kept in view for nearly twenty
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>In these remarks I have been referring only to funerary portrait
+statues. Centuries before the attempt was made to fashion them modellers
+had been making of clay and stone representations of cattle and human
+beings, which have been found not only in Predynastic graves in Egypt
+but also in so-called "Upper Pal&aelig;olithic" deposits in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>But the fashioning of realistic and life-size human portrait-statues for
+funerary purposes was a new art, which gradually developed in the way I
+have tried to depict. No doubt the modellers made use of the skill they
+had acquired in the practice of the older art of rough impressionism.</p>
+
+<p>Once the statue was made a stone-house (the <i>serdab</i>) was provided for
+it above ground<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>. As the dolmen is a crude copy of the <i>serdab</i><a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>
+it can be claimed as one of the ultimate results of the practice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> of
+mummification. It is clear that the conception of the possibility of a
+life beyond the grave assumed a more concrete form when it was realized
+that the body itself could be rendered incorruptible and its distinctive
+traits could be kept alive by means of a portrait statue. There are
+reasons for supposing that primitive man did not realize or contemplate
+the possibility of his own existence coming to an end.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> Even when he
+witnessed the death of his fellows he does not appear to have
+appreciated the fact that it was really the end of life and not merely a
+kind of sleep from which the dead might awake. But if the corpse were
+destroyed or underwent a process of natural disintegration the fact was
+brought home to him that death had occurred. If these considerations,
+which early Egyptian literature seems to suggest, be borne in mind, the
+view that the preservation of the body from corruption implied a
+continuation of existence becomes intelligible. At first the
+subterranean chambers in which the actual body was housed were developed
+into a many-roomed house for the deceased, complete in every detail.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a>
+But when the statue took over the function of representing the deceased,
+a dwelling was provided for it above ground. This developed into the
+temple where the relatives and friends of the dead came and made the
+offerings of food which were regarded as essential for the maintenance
+of existence.</p>
+
+<p>The evolution of the temple was thus the direct outcome of the ideas
+that grew up in connexion with the preservation of the dead. For at
+first it was nothing more than the dwelling place of the reanimated
+dead. But when, for reasons which I shall explain later (see p. 30), the
+dead king became deified, his temple of offerings became the building
+where food and drink were presented to the god, not merely to maintain
+his existence, but also to restore his consciousness, and so afford an
+opportunity for his successor, the actual king, to consult him and
+obtain his advice and help. The presentation of offerings and the ritual
+procedures for animating and restoring consciousness to the dead king
+were at first directed solely to these ends. But in course of time, as
+their original purpose became obscured, these services in the temple
+altered in character, and their meaning became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> rationalized into acts
+of homage and worship, and of prayer and supplication, and in much later
+times, acquired an ethical and moral significance that was wholly absent
+from the original conception of the temple services. The earliest idea
+of the temple as a place of offering has not been lost sight of. Even in
+our times the offertory still finds a place in temple services.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> G. Elliot Smith, "The Earliest Evidence of Attempts at
+Mummification in Egypt," <i>Report British Association</i>, 1912, p. 612:
+compare also J. Garstang, "Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt," London,
+1907, pp. 29 and 30. Professor Garstang did not recognize that
+mummification had been attempted.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> G. Elliot Smith, "The History of Mummification in Egypt,"
+<i>Proc. Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow</i>, 1910: also "Egyptian
+Mummies," <i>Journal of Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol. I, Part III, July,
+1914, Plate XXXI.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> "Excavations of the Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences at
+the Pyramids of Gizah, 1914," <i>Journal of Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol. I,
+Oct. 1914, p. 250.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> "Excavations at Saqqara," 1907-8, p. 113.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> The great variety of experiments that were being made at
+the beginning of the Pyramid Age bears ample testimony to the fact that
+the original inventors of these devices were actually at work in Lower
+Egypt at that time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Aylward M. Blackman, "The <i>Ka</i>-House and the Serdab,"
+<i>Journal of Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250.
+The word <i>serdab</i> is merely the Arabic word used by the native workmen,
+which has been adopted and converted into a technical term by European
+arch&aelig;ologists.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i> p. 171.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> It is a remarkable fact that Professor Garstang, who
+brought to light perhaps the best, and certainly the best-preserved,
+collection of Middle Kingdom mummies ever discovered, failed to
+recognize the fact that they had really been embalmed (<i>op. cit.</i> p.
+171).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> The reader who wishes for fuller information as to the
+reality of these beliefs and how seriously they were held will find them
+still in active operation in China. An admirable account of Chinese
+philosophy will be found in De Groot's "Religious System of China,"
+especially Vol. IV, Book II. It represents the fully developed (New
+Empire) system of Egyptian belief modified in various ways by
+Babylonian, Indian and Central Asiatic influences, as well as by
+accretions developed locally in China.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> A.&nbsp;M. Blackman, "The <i>Ka</i>-House and the Serdab," <i>The
+Journal of Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> "Migrations of Early Culture," p. 37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Dr. Alan Gardiner (Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of
+Amenemh&#275;t," 1915, p. 83, footnote) has, I think, overlooked certain
+statements in my writings and underestimated the antiquity of the
+embalmer's art; for he attributes to me the opinion that "mummification
+was a custom of relatively late growth".
+</p><p>
+The presence in China of the characteristically Egyptian beliefs
+concerning the animation of statues (de Groot, <i>op. cit.</i> pp. 339-356),
+whereas the practice of mummification, though not wholly absent, is not
+obtrusive, might perhaps be interpreted by some scholars as evidence in
+favour of the development of the custom of making statues independently
+of mummification. But such an inference is untenable. Not only is it the
+fact that in most parts of the world the practices of making statues and
+mummifying the dead are found in association the one with the other, but
+also in China the essential beliefs concerning the dead are based upon
+the supposition that the body is fully preserved (<i>see</i> de Groot, chap.
+XV.). It is quite evident that the Chinese customs have been derived
+directly or indirectly from some people who mummified their dead as a
+regular practice. There can be no doubt that the ultimate source of
+their inspiration to do these things was Egypt.
+</p><p>
+I need mention only one of many identical peculiarities that makes this
+quite certain. De Groot says it is "strange to see Chinese fancy depict
+the souls of the viscera as distinct individuals with animal forms" (p.
+71). The same custom prevailed in Egypt, where the "souls" or protective
+deities were first given animal forms in the Nineteenth Dynasty
+(Reisner).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> The Arabic word conveys the idea of being "hidden
+underground," because the house is exposed by excavation.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Op. cit. supra</i>, Ridgeway Essays; also <i>Man</i>, 1913, p.
+193.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> See Alan H. Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian),"
+Hastings' <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia of Religion and Ethics</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> See the quotation from Mr. Quibell's account in my
+statement in the <i>Report of the British Association for 1914</i>, p. 215.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Significance of Libations.</h3>
+
+<p>The central idea of this lecture was suggested by Mr. Aylward M.
+Blackman's important discovery of the actual meaning of incense and
+libations to the Egyptians themselves.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> The earliest body of
+literature preserved from any of the peoples of antiquity is comprised
+in the texts inscribed in the subterranean chambers of the Sakkara
+Pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. These documents, written
+forty-five centuries ago, were first brought to light in modern times in
+1880-81; and since the late Sir Gaston Maspero published the first
+translation of them, many scholars have helped in the task of
+elucidating their meaning. But it remained for Blackman to discover the
+explanation they give of the origin and significance of the act of
+pouring out libations. "The general meaning of these passages is quite
+clear. The corpse of the deceased is dry and shrivelled. To revivify it
+the vital fluids that have exuded from it [in the process of
+mummification] must be restored, for not till then will life return and
+the heart beat again. This, so the texts show us, was believed to be
+accomplished by offering libations to the accompaniment of incantations"
+(<i>op. cit.</i> p. 70).</p>
+
+<p>In the first three passages quoted by Blackman from the Pyramid Texts
+"the libations are said to be the actual fluids that have issued from
+the corpse". In the next four quotations "a different notion is
+introduced. It is not the deceased's own exudations that are to revive
+his shrunken frame but those of a divine body, the [god's fluid]<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> came from the corpse of Osiris himself, the juices that dissolved
+from his decaying flesh, which are communicated to the dead
+sacrament-wise under the form of these libations."</p>
+
+<p>This dragging-in of Osiris is especially significant. For the analogy of
+the life-giving power of water that is specially associated with Osiris
+played a dominant part in suggesting the ritual of libations. Just as
+water, when applied to the apparently dead seed, makes it germinate and
+come to life, so libations can reanimate the corpse. These general
+biological theories of the potency of water were current at the time,
+and, as I shall explain later (see p. 28), had possibly received
+specific application to man long before the idea of libations developed.
+For, in the development of the cult of Osiris<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> the general
+fertilizing power<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> of water when applied to the soil found specific
+exemplification in the potency of the seminal fluid to fertilize human
+beings. Malinowski has pointed out that certain Papuan people, who are
+ignorant of the fact that women are fertilized by sexual connexion,
+believe that they can be rendered pregnant by rain falling upon them
+(<i>op. cit. infra</i>). The study of folk-lore and early beliefs makes it
+abundantly clear that in the distant past which I am now discussing no
+clear distinction was made between fertilization and vitalization,
+between bringing new life into being and reanimating the body which had
+once been alive. The process of fertilization of the female and
+animating a corpse or a statue were regarded as belonging to the same
+category of biological processes. The sculptor who carved the
+portrait-statues for the Egyptian's tomb was called <i>sa'nkh</i>, "he who
+causes to live," and "the word 'to fashion' (<i>ms</i>) a statue is to all
+appearances identical with <i>ms</i>, 'to give birth'".<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thus the Egyptians themselves expressed in words the ideas which an
+independent study of the ethnological evidence showed many other peoples
+to entertain, both in ancient and modern times.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
+
+<p>The interpretation of ancient texts and the study of the beliefs of less
+cultured modern peoples indicate that our expressions: "to give birth,"
+"to give life," "to maintain life," "to ward off death," "to insure good
+luck," "to prolong life," "to give life to the dead," "to animate a
+corpse or a representation of the dead," "to give fertility," "to
+impregnate," "to create," represent a series of specializations of
+meaning which were not clearly differentiated the one from the other in
+early times or among relatively primitive modern people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The evidence brought together in Jackson's work clearly suggests that at
+a very early period in human history, long before the ideas that found
+expression in the Osiris story had materialized, men entertained in all
+its literal crudity the belief that the external organ of reproduction
+from which the child emerged at birth was the actual creator of the
+child, not merely the giver of birth but also the source of life.</p>
+
+<p>The widespread tendency of the human mind to identify similar objects
+and attribute to them the powers of the things they mimic led primitive
+men to assign to the cowry-shell all these life-giving and birth-giving
+virtues. It became an amulet to give fertility, to assist at birth, to
+maintain life, to ward off danger, to ensure the life hereafter, to
+bring luck of any sort. Now, as the giver of birth, the cowry-shell also
+came to be identified with, or regarded as, the mother and creator of
+the human family; and in course of time, as this belief became
+rationalized, the shell's maternity received visible expression and it
+became personified as an actual woman, the Great Mother, at first nameless
+and with ill-defined features. But at a later period, when the dead king
+Osiris gradually acquired his attributes of divinity, and a god emerged
+with the form of a man, the vagueness of the Great Mother who had been
+merely the personified cowry-shell soon disappeared and the amulet
+assumed, as Hathor, the form of a real woman, or, for reasons to be
+explained later, a cow.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of these developments reacted upon the nascent conception
+of the water-controlling god, Osiris; and his powers of fertility were
+enlarged to include many of the life-giving attributes of Hathor.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> "The Significance of Incense and Libations in Funerary and
+Temple Ritual," <i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r &Auml;gyptische Sprache und Alteriumskunde</i>,
+Bd. 50, 1912, p. 69.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Mr. Blackman here quotes the actual word in hieroglyphics
+and adds the translation "god's fluid" and the following explanation in
+a footnote: "The Nile was supposed to be the fluid which issued from
+Osiris. The expression in the Pyramid texts may refer to this
+belief&mdash;the dead" [in the Pyramid Age it would have been more accurate
+if he had said the dead king, in whose Pyramid the inscriptions were
+found] "being usually identified with Osiris&mdash;since the water used in
+the libations was Nile water."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> The voluminous literature relating to Osiris will be found
+summarized in the latest edition of "The Golden Bough" by Sir James
+Frazer. But in referring the reader to this remarkable compilation of
+evidence it is necessary to call particular attention to the fact that
+Sir James Frazer's interpretation is permeated with speculations based
+upon the modern ethnological dogma of independent evolution of similar
+customs and beliefs without cultural contact between the different
+localities where such similarities make their appearance.
+</p><p>
+The complexities of the motives that inspire and direct human activities
+are entirely fatal to such speculations, as I have attempted to indicate
+(see above, p. 195). But apart from this general warning, there are
+other objections to Sir James Frazer's theories. In his illuminating
+article upon Osiris and Horus, Dr. Alan Gardiner (in a criticism of Sir
+James Frazer's "The Golden Bough: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the
+History of Oriental Religion," <i>Journal of Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol.
+II, 1915, p. 122) insists upon the crucial fact that Osiris was
+primarily a king, and that "it is always as a <i>dead</i> king," "the r&ocirc;le of
+the living king being invariably played by Horus, his son and heir".
+</p><p>
+He states further: "What Egyptologists wish to know about Osiris beyond
+anything else is how and by what means he became associated with the
+processes of vegetable life". An examination of the literature relating
+to Osiris and the large series of homologous deities in other countries
+(which exhibit <i>prima facie</i> evidence of a common origin) suggests the
+idea that the king who first introduced the practice of systematic
+irrigation thereby laid the foundation of his reputation as a beneficent
+reformer. When, for reasons which I shall discuss later on (see p. 220),
+the dead king became deified, his fame as the controller of water and
+the fertilization of the earth became apotheosized also. I venture to
+put forward this suggestion only because none of the alternative
+hypotheses that have been propounded seem to be in accordance with, or
+to offer an adequate explanation of, the body of known facts concerning
+Osiris.
+</p><p>
+It is a remarkable fact that in his lectures on "The Development of
+Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," which are based upon his own
+studies of the Pyramid Texts, and are an invaluable storehouse of
+information, Professor J.&nbsp;H. Breasted should have accepted Sir James
+Frazer's views. These seem to me to be altogether at variance with the
+renderings of the actual Egyptian texts and to confuse the exposition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> Dr. Alan Gardiner, quoted in my "Migrations of Early
+Culture," p. 42: see also the same scholar's remarks in Davies and
+Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemh&#275;t," 1915, p. 57, and "A new
+Masterpiece of Egyptian Sculpture," <i>The Journal of Egyptian
+Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol. IV, Part I, Jan., 1917.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> See J. Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the
+Migrations of Early Culture," 1917, Manchester University Press.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Early Biological Theories.</h3>
+
+<p>Before the full significance of these procedures can be appreciated it
+is essential to try to get at the back of the Proto-Egyptian's mind and
+to understand his general trend of thought. I specially want to make it
+clear that the ritual use of water for animating the corpse or the
+statue was merely a specific application of the general principles of
+biology which were then current. It was no mere childish make-believe or
+priestly subterfuge to regard the pouring out of water as a means of
+animating a block of stone. It was a conviction for which the
+Proto-Egyptians considered there was a substantial scientific basis; and
+their faith in the efficacy of water to animate the dead is to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+regarded in the same light as any scientific inference which is made at
+the present time to give a specific application of some general theory
+considered to be well founded. The Proto-Egyptians clearly believed in
+the validity of the general biological theory of the life-giving
+properties of water. Many facts, no doubt quite convincing to them,
+testified to the soundness of their theory. They accepted the principle
+with the same confidence that modern people have adopted Newton's Law of
+Gravitation, and Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species, and applied
+it to explain many phenomena or to justify certain procedures, which in
+the light of fuller knowledge seem to modern people puerile and
+ludicrous. But the early people obviously took these procedures
+seriously and regarded their actions as rational. The fact that their
+early biological theory was inadequate ought not to mislead modern
+scholars and encourage them to fall into the error of supposing that the
+ritual of libations was not based upon a serious inference. Modern
+scientists do not accept the whole of Darwin's teaching, or possibly
+even Newton's "Law," but this does not mean that in the past innumerable
+inferences have been honestly and confidently made in specific
+application of these general principles.</p>
+
+<p>It is important, then, that I should examine more closely the
+Proto-Egyptian body of doctrine to elucidate the mutual influence of it
+and the ideas suggested by the practice of mummification. It is not
+known where agriculture was first practised or the circumstances which
+led men to appreciate the fact that plants could be cultivated. In many
+parts of the world agriculture can be carried on without artificial
+irrigation, and even without any adequate appreciation on the part of
+the farmer of the importance of water. But when it came to be practised
+under such conditions as prevail in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the
+cultivator would soon be forced to realize that water was essential for
+the growth of plants, and that it was imperative to devise artificial
+means by which the soil might be irrigated. It is not known where or by
+whom this cardinal fact first came to be appreciated, whether by the
+Sumerians or the Egyptians or by some other people. But it is known that
+in the earliest records both of Egypt and Sumer the most significant
+manifestations of a ruler's wisdom were the making of irrigation canals
+and the controlling of water. Important as these facts are from their
+bearing upon the material prospects of the people, they had an
+infinitely more profound and far-reaching effect upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> beliefs of
+mankind. Groping after some explanation of the natural phenomenon that
+the earth became fertile when water was applied to it, and that seed
+burst into life under the same influence, the early biologist formulated
+the natural and not wholly illogical idea that water was the repository
+of life-giving powers. Water was equally necessary for the production of
+life and for the maintenance of life.</p>
+
+<p>At an early stage in the development of this biological theory man and
+other animals were brought within the scope of the generalization. For
+the drinking of water was a condition of existence in animals. The idea
+that water played a part in reproduction was co-related with this fact.</p>
+
+<p>Even at the present time many aboriginal peoples in Australia, New
+Guinea, and elsewhere, are not aware of the fact that in the process of
+animal reproduction the male exercises the physiological r&ocirc;le of
+fertilization.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>There are widespread indications throughout the world that the
+appreciation of this elementary physiological knowledge was acquired at
+a relatively recent period in the history of mankind. It is difficult to
+believe that the fundamental facts of the physiology of fertilization in
+animals could long have remained unknown when men became breeders of
+cattle. The Egyptian hieroglyphs leave no doubt that the knowledge was
+fully appreciated at the period when the earliest picture-symbols were
+devised, for the verb "to beget" is represented by the male organs of
+generation. But, as the domestication of animals may have been earlier
+than the invention of agriculture, it is possible that the appreciation
+of the fertilizing powers of the male animal may have been definitely
+more ancient than the earliest biological theory of the fertilizing
+power of water.</p>
+
+<p>I have discussed this question to suggest that the knowledge that
+animals could be fertilized by the seminal fluid was certainly brought
+within the scope of the wider generalization that water itself was
+endowed with fertilizing properties. Just as water fertilized the earth,
+so the semen fertilized the female. Water was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> necessary for the
+maintenance of life in plants and was also essential in the form of
+drink for animals. As both the earth and women could be fertilized by
+water they were homologized one with the other. The earth came to be
+regarded as a woman, the Great Mother.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> When the fertilizing water
+came to be personified in the person of Osiris his consort Isis was
+identified with the earth which was fertilized by water.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
+
+<p>One of the earliest pictures of an Egyptian king represents him using
+the hoe to inaugurate the making of an irrigation-canal.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> This was
+the typical act of benevolence on the part of a wise ruler. It is not
+unlikely that the earliest organization of a community under a definite
+leader may have been due to the need for some systematized control of
+irrigation. In any case the earliest rulers of Egypt and Sumer were
+essentially the controllers and regulators of the water supply and as
+such the givers of fertility and prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>Once men first consciously formulated the belief that death was not the
+end of all things,<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> that the body could be re-animated and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+consciousness and the will restored, it was natural that a wise ruler
+who, when alive, had rendered conspicuous services should after death
+continue to be consulted. The fame of such a man would grow with age;
+his good deeds and his powers would become apotheosized; he would become
+an oracle whose advice might be sought and whose help be obtained in
+grave crises. In other words the dead king would be "deified," or at any
+rate credited with the ability to confer even greater boons than he was
+able to do when alive.</p>
+
+<p>It is no mere coincidence that the first "god" should have been a dead
+king, Osiris, nor that he controlled the waters of irrigation and was
+specially interested in agriculture. Nor, for the reasons that I have
+already suggested, is it surprising that he should have had phallic
+attributes, and in himself have personified the virile powers of
+fertilization.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>In attempting to explain the origin of the ritual procedures of burning
+incense and offering libations it is essential to realize that the
+creation of the first deities was not primarily an expression of
+religious belief, but rather an application of science to national
+affairs. It was the logical interpretation of the dominant scientific
+theory of the time for the practical benefit of the living; or in other
+words, the means devised for securing the advice and the active help of
+wise rulers after their death. It was essentially a matter of practical
+politics and applied science. It became "religion" only when the
+advancement of knowledge superseded these primitive scientific theories
+and left them as soothing traditions for the thoughts and aspirations of
+mankind to cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories of
+knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and
+had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's
+conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral
+precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that no
+force was able to strip away this body of consolatory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> beliefs; and they
+have persisted for all time, although the reasoning by which they were
+originally built up has been demolished and forgotten several millennia
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>It is not known where Osiris was born. In other countries there are
+homologous deities, such as Ea, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, which are
+certainly manifestations of the same idea and sprung from the same
+source. Certain recent writers assume that the germ of the
+Osiris-conception was introduced into Egypt from abroad. But if so,
+nothing is known for certain of its place of origin. In any case there
+can be no doubt that the distinctive features of Osiris, his real
+personality and character, were developed in Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>For reasons which I have suggested already it is probable that the
+significance of water in cultivation was not realized until cereals were
+cultivated in some such place as Babylonia or Egypt. But there are very
+definite legends of the Babylonian Ea coming from abroad by way of the
+Persian Gulf.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> The early history of Tammuz is veiled in obscurity.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in South Western Asia or North Eastern Africa, probably within
+a few years of the development of the art of agriculture, some
+scientific theorist, interpreting the body of empirical knowledge
+acquired by cultivating cereals, propounded the view that water was the
+great life-giving element. This view eventually found expression in the
+Osiris-group of legends.</p>
+
+<p>This theory found specific application in the invention of libations and
+incense. These practices in turn reacted upon the general body of
+doctrine and gave it a more sharply defined form. The dead king also
+became more real when he was represented by an actual embalmed body and
+a life-like statue, sitting in state upon his throne and holding in his
+hands the emblems of his high office.</p>
+
+<p>Thus while, in the present state of knowledge, it would be unjustifiable
+to claim that the Osiris-group of deities was invented in Egypt, and
+certainly erroneous to attribute the general theory of the fertilizing
+properties of water to the practice of embalming, it is true that the
+latter was responsible for giving Osiris a much more concrete<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> and
+clearly-defined shape, of "making a god in the image of man", and for
+giving to the water-theory a much richer and fuller significance than it
+had before.</p>
+
+<p>The symbolism so created has had a most profound influence upon the
+thoughts and aspirations of the human race. For Osiris was the prototype
+of all the gods; his ritual was the basis of all religious ceremonial;
+his priests who conducted the animating ceremonies were the pioneers of
+a long series of ministers who for more than fifty centuries, in spite
+of the endless variety of details of their ritual and the character of
+their temples, have continued to perform ceremonies that have undergone
+remarkably little essential change. Though the chief functions of the
+priest as the animator of the god and the restorer of his consciousness
+have now fallen into the background in most religions, the ritual acts
+(the incense and libations, the offerings of food and blood and the
+rest) still persist in many countries: the priest still appeals by
+prayer and supplication for those benefits, which the Proto-Egyptian
+aimed at securing when he created Osiris as a god to give advice and
+help. The prayer for rain is one of the earliest forms of religious
+appeal, but the request for a plentiful inundation was earlier still.</p>
+
+<p>I have already said that in using the terms "god" and "religion" with
+reference to the earliest form of Osiris and the beliefs that grew up
+with reference to him a potent element of confusion is introduced.</p>
+
+<p>During the last fifty centuries the meanings of those two words have
+become so complexly enriched with the glamour of a mystic symbolism that
+the Proto-Egyptian's conception of Osiris and the Osirian beliefs must
+have been vastly different from those implied in the words "god" and
+"religion" at the present time. Osiris was regarded as an actual king
+who had died and been reanimated. In other words he was a <i>man</i> who
+could bestow upon his former subjects the benefits of his advice and
+help, but could also display such human weaknesses as malice, envy, and
+all uncharitableness. Much modern discussion completely misses the mark
+by the failure to recognize that these so-called "gods" were really men,
+equally capable of acts of beneficence and of outbursts of hatred, and
+as one or the other aspect became accentuated the same deity could
+become a Vedic <i>deva</i> or an Avestan <i>d&aelig;va</i>, a <i>deus</i> or a devil, a god
+of kindness or a demon of wickedness.</p>
+
+<p>The acts which the earliest "gods" were supposed to perform<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> were not at
+first regarded as supernatural. They were merely the boons which the
+mortal ruler was supposed to be able to confer, by controlling the
+waters of irrigation and rendering the land fertile. It was only when
+his powers became apotheosized with a halo of accumulated glory (and the
+growth of knowledge revealed the insecurity of the scientific basis upon
+which his fame was built up) that a priesthood reluctant to abandon any
+of the attributes which had captured the popular imagination, made it an
+obligation of belief to accept these supernatural powers of the gods for
+which the student of natural phenomena refused any longer to be a
+sponsor. This was the parting of the ways between science and religion;
+and thenceforth the attributes of the "gods" became definitely and
+admittedly superhuman.</p>
+
+<p>As I have already stated (p. 23) the original object of the offering of
+libations was thus clearly for the purpose of animating the statue of
+the deceased and so enabling him to continue the existence which had
+merely been interrupted by the incident of death. In course of time,
+however, as definite gods gradually materialized and came to be
+represented by statues, they also had to be vitalized by offerings of
+water from time to time. Thus the pouring out of libations came to be an
+act of worship of the deity; and in this form it has persisted until our
+own times in many civilized countries.</p>
+
+<p>But not only was water regarded as a means of animating the dead, or
+statues representing the dead, and an appropriate act of worship, in
+that it vitalized an idol and the god dwelling in it was thus able to
+hear and answer supplications. Water also became an essential part of
+any act of ritual rebirth.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> As a baptism it also symbolized the
+giving of life. The initiate was re-born into a new communion of faith.
+In scores of other ways the same conception of the life-giving
+properties of water was responsible for as many applications of the use
+of libations in inaugurating new enterprises, such as "baptising" ships
+and blessing buildings. It is important to remember that, according to
+early Egyptian beliefs, the continued existence of the dead was wholly
+dependent upon the attentions of the living. Unless this animating
+ceremony was performed not merely at the time of the funeral, but also
+at stated periods afterwards, and unless the friends of the deceased<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+periodically supplied food and drink, such a continuation of existence
+was impossible.</p>
+
+<p>The development of these beliefs had far-reaching effects in other
+directions. The idea that a stone statue could be animated ultimately
+became extended to mean that the dead man could enter into and dwell in
+a block of stone, which he could leave or return to at will. From this
+arose the beliefs, which spread far and wide, that the dead ancestors,
+kings, or deified kings, dwelt in stones; and that they could be
+consulted as oracles, who gave advice and counsel. The acceptance of
+this idea that the dead could be reanimated in a stone statue no doubt
+prepared the minds of the people to credit the further belief, which
+other circumstances were responsible for creating, that men could be
+turned into stone. In the next chapter I shall explain how these
+petrifaction stories developed.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p>All the rich crop of myths concerning men and animals dwelling in stones
+which are to be found encircling the globe from Ireland to America, can
+be referred back to these early Egyptian attempts to solve the mysteries
+of death, and to acquire the means of circumventing fate.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+
+<p>These beliefs at first may have concerned human beings only. But in
+course of time, as the duty of revictualling an increasingly large
+number of tombs and temples tended to tax the resources of the people,
+the practice developed of substituting for the real things models, or
+even pictures, of food-animals, vegetables, and other requisites of the
+dead. And these objects and pictures were restored to life or reality by
+means of a ritual which was essentially identical with that used for
+animating the statue or the mummy of the deceased himself.</p>
+
+<p>It is well worth considering whether this may not be one of the basal
+factors in explanation of the phenomena which the late Sir Edward Tylor
+labelled "animism".</p>
+
+<p>So far from being a phase of culture through which many, if not all,
+peoples have passed in the course of their evolution, may it not have
+been merely an artificial conception of certain things, which was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> given
+so definite a form in Egypt, for the specific reasons at which I have
+just hinted, and from there spread far and wide?</p>
+
+<p>Against this view may be urged the fact that our own children talk in an
+animistic fashion. But is not this due in some measure to the
+unconscious influence of their elders? Or at most is it not a vague and
+ill-defined attitude of anthropomorphism necessarily involved in all
+spoken languages, which is vastly different from what the ethnologist
+understands by "animism"<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a>?</p>
+
+<p>But whether this be so or not, there can be no doubt that the "animism"
+of the early Egyptians assumed its precise and clear-cut distinctive
+features as the result of the growth of ideas suggested by the attempts
+to make mummies and statues of the dead and symbolic offerings of food
+and other funerary requisites.</p>
+
+<p>Thus incidentally there grew up the belief in a power of magic by means
+of which these make-believe offerings could be transformed into
+realities. But it is important to emphasize the fact that originally the
+conviction of the genuineness of this transubstantiation was a logical
+and not unnatural inference based upon the attempt to interpret natural
+phenomena, and then to influence them by imitating what were regarded as
+the determining factors.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+<p>In China these ideas still retain much of their primitive influence and
+directness of expression. Referring to the Chinese "belief in the
+identity of pictures or images with the beings they represent" de Groot
+states that the <i>kwan shuh</i> or "magic art" is a "main branch of Chinese
+witchcraft". It consists essentially of "the infusion of a soul, life,
+and activity into likenesses of beings, to thus render them fit to work
+in some direction desired ... this infusion is effected by blowing or
+breathing, or spurting water over the likeness: indeed breath or <i>khi</i>,
+or water from the mouth imbued with breath, is identical with <i>yang</i>
+substance or life."<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Baldwin Spencer and Gillen, "The Northern Tribes of
+Central Australia"; "Across Australia"; and Spencer's "Native Tribes of
+the Northern Territory of Australia". For a very important study of the
+whole problem with special reference to New Guinea, see B. Malinowski,
+"Baloma: the Spirits of the Dead," etc., <i>Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute</i>, 1916, p. 415.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> The idea of the earth's maternal function spread
+throughout the greater part of the world.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> With reference to the assimilation of the conceptions of
+human fertilization and watering the soil and the widespread idea among
+the ancients of regarding the male as "he who irrigates," Canon van
+Hoonacker gave M. Louis Siret the following note:&mdash;
+</p><p>
+"In Assyrian the cuneiform sign for water is also used, <i>inter alia</i>, to
+express the idea of begetting (<i>ban&uacute;</i>). Compare with this the references
+from Hebrew and Arabic writings. In Isaiah xlviii. 1, we read 'Hear ye
+this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are
+come forth out of the waters of Judah'; and in Numbers xxiv. 7, 'Water
+shall flow from his buckets and his seed shall be in many waters'.
+</p><p>
+"The Hebrew verb (<i>shangal</i>) which denotes sexual intercourse has, in
+Arabic (<i>sadjala</i>), the meaning 'to spill water'. In the Koran, Sur. 36,
+v. 6, the word <i>m&acirc;'un</i> (water) is used to designate semen" (L. Siret,
+"Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Ib&eacute;riques," Tome I, 1913, p.
+250).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Quibell, "Hieraconpolis", Vol. I, 260, 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> In using this phrase I want to make a clear distinction
+between the phase of culture in which it had never occurred to man that,
+in his individual case, life would come to an end, and the more
+enlightened stage, in which he fully realized that death would
+inevitably be his fate, but that in spite of it his real existence would
+continue.
+</p><p>
+It is clear that at quite an early stage in his history man appreciated
+the fact that he could kill an animal or his fellow-man. But for a long
+time he failed to realize that he himself, if he could avoid the process
+of mechanical destruction by which he could kill an animal or a
+fellow-man, would not continue to exist. The dead are supposed by many
+people to be still in existence so long as the body is preserved. Once
+the body begins to disintegrate even the most unimaginative of men can
+entirely repress the idea of death. But to primitive people the
+preservation of the body is equally a token that existence has not come
+to an end. The corpse is merely sleeping.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Breasted, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> The possibility, or even the probability, must be borne in
+mind that the legend of Ea arising from the waters may be merely another
+way of expressing his primary attribute as the personification of the
+fertilizing powers of water.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> This occurred at a later epoch when the attributes of the
+water-controlling deity of fertility became confused with those of the
+birth-giving mother goddess (<i>vide infra</i>, p. 40).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> For a large series of these stories see E. Sidney
+Hartland's "Legend of Perseus". But even more instructive, as revealing
+the intimate connexion of such ideas with the beliefs regarding the
+preservation of the body, see J.&nbsp;J.&nbsp;M. de Groot, "The Religious System
+of China," Vol. IV, Book II, 1901.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> In this connexion see de Groot, <i>op. cit.</i> pp. 356 and
+415. <span class="trnote">[Transcriber's Note: the original text contained no marker for this
+footnote, so a guess has been made as to what it referred]</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> The child certainly resembles primitive man in the
+readiness with which it attributes to even the crudest models of animals
+or human beings the feelings of living creatures.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> It became "magical" in our sense of the term only when the
+growth of knowledge revealed the fact that the measures taken were
+inadequate to attain the desired end; while the "magician" continued to
+make the pretence that he could attain that end by ultra-physical
+means.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> De Groot, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 356.</p></div></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+<h3>Incense.</h3>
+
+<p>So far I have referred in detail only to the offering of libations. But
+this was only one of several procedures for animating statues, mummies,
+and food-offerings. I have still to consider the ritual procedures of
+incense-burning and "opening the mouth".</p>
+
+<p>From Mr. Blackman's translations of the Egyptian texts it is clear that
+the burning of incense was intended to restore to the statue (or the
+mummy) the odour of the living body, and that this was part of the
+procedure considered necessary to animate the statue. He says "the
+belief about incense [which is explained by a later document, the
+<i>Ritual of Amon</i>] apparently does not occur in the Old Kingdom religious
+texts that are preserved to us, yet it may quite well be as ancient as
+that period. That is certainly Erman's view" (<i>op. cit.</i> p. 75).</p>
+
+<p>He gives the following translation of the relevant passage in the
+<i>Ritual of Amon</i> (XII, 11): "The god comes with body adorned which he
+has fumigated with the eye of his body, the incense of the god which has
+issued from his flesh, the sweat of the god which has fallen to the
+ground, which he has given to all the gods.... It is the Horus eye. If
+it lives, the people live, thy flesh lives, thy members are vigorous"
+(<i>op. cit.</i> p. 72). In his comments upon this passage Mr. Blackman
+states: "In the light of the Pyramid libation-formul&aelig; the expressions in
+this text are quite comprehensible. Like the libations the grains of
+incense are the exudations of a divinity,<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> the fluid which issued
+from his flesh, the god's sweat descending to the ground.... Here
+incense is not merely the 'odour of the god,' but the grains of resin
+are said to be the god's sweat" (<i>op. cit.</i> p. 72). "Both rites, the
+pouring of libations and the burning of incense, are performed for the
+same purpose&mdash;to revivify the body [or the statue] of god and man by
+restoring to it its lost moisture" (p. 75).</p>
+
+<p>In attempting to reconstitute the circumstances which led to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+invention of incense-burning as a ritual act, the nature of the problem
+to be solved must be recalled. Among the most obtrusive evidences of
+death were the coldness of the skin, the lack of perspiration and of the
+odour of the living. It is important to realize what the phrase "odour
+of the living" would convey to the Proto-Egyptian. From the earliest
+Predynastic times in Egypt it had been the custom to make extensive use
+of resinous material as an essential ingredient (what a pharmacist would
+call the adhesive "vehicle") of cosmetics. One of the results of this
+practice in a hot climate must have been the association of a strong
+aroma of resin or balsam with a living person.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> Whether or not it was
+the practice to burn incense to give pleasure to the living is not
+known. The fact that such a procedure was customary among their
+successors may mean that it was really archaic; or on the other hand the
+possibility must not be overlooked that it may be merely the later
+vulgarization of a practice which originally was devised for purely
+ritual purposes. The burning of incense before a corpse or statue was
+intended to convey to it the warmth, the sweat, and the odour of life.</p>
+
+<p>When the belief became well established that the burning of incense was
+potent as an animating force, and especially a giver of life to the
+dead, it naturally came to be regarded as a divine substance in the
+sense that it had the power of resurrection. As the grains of incense
+consisted of the exudation of trees, or, as the ancient texts express
+it, "their sweat," the divine power of animation in course of time
+became transferred to the trees. They were no longer merely the source
+of the life-giving incense, but were themselves animated by the deity
+whose drops of sweat were the means of conveying life to the mummy.</p>
+
+<p>The reason why the deity which dwelt in these trees was usually
+identified with the Mother-Goddess will become clear in the course of
+the subsequent discussion (p. 38). It is probable that this was due
+mainly to the geographical circumstance that the chief source of incense
+was Southern Arabia, which was also the home of the primitive goddesses
+of fertility. For they were originally nothing more than
+personifications of the life-giving cowry amulets from the Red Sea.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Robertson Smith's statement that "the value of the gum of the
+acacia as an amulet is connected with the idea that it is a clot of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+menstruous blood, i.e., that the tree is a woman"<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> is probably an
+inversion of cause and effect. It was the value attached to the gum that
+conferred animation upon the tree. The rest of the legend is merely a
+rationalization based upon the idea that the tree was identified with
+the mother-goddess. The same criticism applies to his further contention
+(p. 427) with reference to "the religious value of incense" which he
+claims to be due to the fact that "like the gum of the <i>samora</i> (acacia)
+tree, ... it was an animate or divine plant".</p>
+
+<p>Many factors played a part in the development of tree-worship but it is
+probable the origin of the sacredness of trees must be assigned to the
+fact that it was acquired from the incense and the aromatic woods which
+were credited with the power of animating the dead. But at a very early
+epoch many other considerations helped to confirm and extend the
+conception of deification. When Osiris was buried, a sacred sycamore
+grew up as "the visible symbol of the imperishable life of Osiris".<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a>
+But the sap of trees was brought into relationship with life-giving
+water and thus constituted another link with Osiris. The sap was also
+regarded as the blood of trees and the incense that exuded as the sweat.
+Just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid of the body of
+Osiris, so also, by this process of rationalization, the incense came to
+possess a similar significance.</p>
+
+<p>For reasons precisely analogous to those already explained in the case
+of libations, the custom of burning incense, from being originally a
+ritual act for animating the funerary statue, ultimately developed into
+an act of homage to the deity.</p>
+
+<p>But it also acquired a special significance when the cult of sky-gods
+developed,<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> for the smoke of the burning incense then came to be
+regarded as the vehicle which wafted the deceased's soul to the sky or
+conveyed there the requests of the dwellers upon earth.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The soul of a human being is generally conceived [by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> Chinese] as
+possessing the shape and characteristics of a human being, and
+occasionally those of an animal; ... the spirit of an animal is the shape
+of this animal or of some being with human attributes and speech. But
+plant spirits are never conceived as plant-shaped, nor to have
+plant-characters ... whenever forms are given them, they are mostly
+represented as a man, a woman, or a child, and often also as an animal,
+dwelling in or near the plant, and emerging from it at times to do harm,
+or to dispense blessings.... Whether conceptions on the animation of
+plants have never developed in Chinese thought and worship before ideas
+about human ghosts ... had become predominant in mind and custom, we
+cannot say: but the matter seems probable" (De Groot, <i>op. cit.</i> pp.
+272, 273). Tales of trees that shed blood and that cry out when hurt are
+common in Chinese literature (p. 274) [as also in Southern Arabia]; also
+of trees that lodge or can change into maidens of transcendent beauty
+(p. 276).</p>
+
+<p>It is further significant that amongst the stories of souls of men
+taking up their residence in and animating trees and plants, the human
+being is usually a woman, accompanied by "a fox, a dog, an old raven or
+the like" (p. 276).</p>
+
+<p>Thus in China are found all the elements out of which Dr. Rendel Harris
+believes the Aphrodite cult was compounded in Cyprus,<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> the animation
+of the anthropoid plant, its human cry, its association with a beautiful
+maiden and a dog.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>The immemorial custom of planting trees on graves in China is supposed
+by De Groot (p. 277) to be due to "the desire to strengthen the soul of
+the buried person, thus to save his body from corruption, for which
+reason trees such as pines and cypresses, deemed to be bearers of great
+vitality for being possessed of more <i>shen</i> than other trees, were used
+preferably for such purposes". But may not such beliefs also be an
+expression of the idea that a tree growing upon a grave is developed
+from and becomes the personification of the deceased? The significance
+of the selection of pines and cypresses may be compared to that
+associated with the so-called "cedars" in Babylonia, Egypt, and
+Ph&#339;nicia, and the myrrh- and frankincense-producing trees in Arabia
+and East Africa. They have come to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> accredited with "soul-substance,"
+since their use in mummification and as incense and for making coffins,
+has made them the means for attaining a future existence. Hence in
+course of time they came to be regarded as charged with the spirit of
+vitality, the <i>shen</i> or "soul-substance".</p>
+
+<p>In China also it was because the woods of the pine or fir and the cyprus
+were used for making coffins and grave-vaults and that pine-resin was
+regarded as a means of attaining immortality (De Groot, <i>op. cit.</i> pp.
+296 and 297) that such veneration was bestowed upon these trees. "At an
+early date, Taoist seekers after immortality transplanted that animation
+[of the hardy long-lived fir and cypress<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a>] into themselves by
+consuming the resin of those trees, which, apparently, they looked upon
+as coagulated soul-substance, the counterpart of the blood in men and
+animals" (p. 296).</p>
+
+<p>In India the <i>amrita</i>, the god's food of immortality, was sometimes
+regarded as the sap exuded from the sacred trees of paradise.</p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere in these pages it is explained how the vaguely defined Mother
+"Goddess" and the more distinctly anthropoid Water "God," which
+originally developed quite independently the one of the other,
+ultimately came to exert a profound and mutual influence, so that many
+of the attributes which originally belonged to one of them came to be
+shared with the other. Many factors played a part in this process of
+blending and confusion of sex. As I shall explain later, when the moon
+came to be regarded as the dwelling or the impersonation of Hathor, the
+supposed influence of the moon over water led to a further assimilation
+of her attributes with those of Osiris as the controller of water, which
+received definite expression in a lunar form of Osiris.</p>
+
+<p>But the link that is most intimately related to the subject of this
+address is provided by the personification of the Mother-Goddess in
+incense-trees. For incense thus became the sweat or the tears of the
+Great Mother just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid of
+Osiris.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> As I shall explain later (see page 38), the idea of the
+divinity of the incense-tree was a result of, and not the reason for,
+the practice of incense-burning. As one of the means by which the
+resurrection was attained incense became a giver of divinity; and by a
+simple process of rationalization the tree which produced this divine
+substance became a god.
+</p><p>
+The reference to the "eye of the body" (see p. 55) means the life-giving
+god or goddess who is the "eye" of the sky, <i>i.e.</i> the god with whom the
+dead king is identified.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> It would lead me too far afield to enter into a discussion
+of the use of scents and unguents, which is closely related to this
+question.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Breasted, p. 28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> For reasons explained on a subsequent page (56).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> It is also worth considering whether the extension of this
+idea may not have been responsible for originating the practice of
+cremation&mdash;as a device for transferring, not merely the animating
+incense and the supplications of the living, but also the body of the
+deceased to the sky-world. This, of course, did not happen in Egypt, but
+in some other country which adopted the Egyptian practice of
+incense-burning, but was not hampered by the religious conservatism that
+guarded the sacredness of the corpse.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> "The Ascent of Olympus," 1917.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> For a collection of stories relating to human beings,
+generally women, dwelling in trees, see Hartland's "Legend of Perseus".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> The fact that the fir and cypress are "hardy and
+long-lived" is not the reason for their being accredited with these
+life-prolonging qualities. But once the latter virtues had become
+attributed to them the fact that the trees were "hardy and long-lived"
+may have been used to bolster up the belief by a process of
+rationalization.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+<h3>The Breath of Life.</h3>
+
+<p>Although the pouring of libations and the burning of incense played so
+prominent a part in the ritual of animating the statue or the mummy, the
+most important incident in the ceremony was the "opening of the mouth,"
+which was regarded as giving it the breath of life.</p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> I have suggested that the conception of the heart and
+blood as the vehicles of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge may have
+been extremely ancient. It is not known when or under what circumstances
+the idea of the breath being the "life" was first entertained. The fact
+that in certain primitive systems of philosophy the breath was supposed
+to have something to do with the heart suggests that these beliefs may
+be a constituent element of the ancient heart-theory. In some of the
+rock-pictures in America, Australia, and elsewhere the air-passages are
+represented leading to the heart. But there can be little doubt that the
+practice of mummification gave greater definiteness to the ideas
+regarding the "heart" and "breath," which eventually led to a
+differentiation between their supposed functions.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> As the heart and
+the blood were obviously present in the dead body they could no longer
+be regarded as the "life". The breath was clearly the "element" the lack
+of which rendered the body inanimate. It was therefore regarded as
+necessary to set the heart working. The heart then came to be looked
+upon as the seat of knowledge, the organ that feels and wills during
+waking life. All the pulsating motions of the body seem to have been
+regarded, like the act of respiration, as expressions of the vital
+principle or "life," which Dutch ethnological writers refer to as "soul
+substance". The neighbourhood of certain joints where the pulse can be
+felt most readily, and the top of the head, where pulsation can be felt
+in the infant's fontanelle, were therefore regarded by some Asiatic
+peoples as the places where the substance of life could leave or enter
+the body.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that in ancient times this belief was more widespread<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+than it is now. It affords an explanation of the motive for trephining
+the skull among ancient peoples, to afford a more ready passage for the
+"vital essence" to and from the skull.</p>
+
+<p>In his lecture on "The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul,"<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> Professor
+John Burnet has expounded the meaning of early Greek conceptions of the
+soul with rare insight and lucidity. Originally, the word &#968;&#965;&#967;&#8053;
+meant "breath," but, by historical times, it had already been
+specialized in two distinct ways. It had come to mean <i>courage</i> in the
+first place, and secondly the <i>breath of life</i>, the presence or absence
+of which is the most obvious distinction between the animate and the
+inanimate, the "ghost" which a man "gives up" at death. But it may also
+quit the body temporarily, which explains the phenomenon of swooning
+(&#955;&#953;&#960;&#959;&#968;&#965;&#967;&#8055;&#945;). It seemed natural to suppose it was also the
+thing that can roam at large when the body is asleep, and even appear to
+another sleeping person in his dream. Moreover, since we can dream of
+the dead, what then appears to us must be just what leaves the body at
+the moment of death. These considerations explain the world-wide belief
+in the "soul" as a sort of double of the real bodily man, the Egyptian
+<i>ka</i>,<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> the Italian <i>genius</i>, and the Greek &#968;&#965;&#967;&#8053;.</p>
+
+<p>Now this double is not identical with whatever it is in us that feels
+and wills during our waking life. That is generally supposed to be blood
+and not breath.</p>
+
+<p>What we feel and perceive have their seat in the heart: they belong to
+the body and perish with it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>It is only when the shades have been allowed to drink blood that
+consciousness returns to them for a while.</p>
+
+<p>At one time the &#968;&#965;&#967;&#8053; was supposed to dwell with the body in
+the grave, where it had to be supported by the offerings of the
+survivors, especially by libations (&#967;&#959;&#945;&#8055;).</p>
+
+<p>An Egyptian psychologist has carried the story back long before the
+times of which Professor Burnet writes. He has explained "his conception
+of the functions of the 'heart (mind) and tongue'. 'When<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> the eyes see,
+the ears hear, and the nose breathes, they transmit to the heart. It is
+he (the heart) who brings forth every issue and it is the tongue which
+repeats the thought of the heart.'"<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a></p>
+
+<p>"There came the saying that Atum, who created the gods, stated
+concerning Ptah-Tatenen: 'He is the fashioner of the gods.... He made
+likenesses of their bodies to the satisfaction of their hearts. Then the
+gods entered into their bodies of every wood and every stone and every
+metal.'"<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p>
+
+<p>That these ideas are really ancient is shown by the fact that in the
+Pyramid Texts Isis is represented conveying the breath of life to Osiris
+by "causing a wind with her wings".<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> The ceremony of "opening the
+mouth" which aimed at achieving this restoration of the breath of life
+was the principal part of the ritual procedure before the statue or
+mummy. As I have already mentioned (p. 25), the sculptor who modelled
+the portrait statue was called "he who causes to live," and the word "to
+fashion" a statue is identical with that which means "to give birth".
+The god Ptah created man by modelling his form in clay. Similarly the
+life-giving sculptor made the portrait which was to be the means of
+securing a perpetuation of existence, when it was animated by the
+"opening of the mouth," by libations and incense.</p>
+
+<p>As the outcome of this process of rationalization in Egypt a vast crop
+of creation-legends came into existence, which have persisted with
+remarkable completeness until the present day in India, Indonesia,
+China, America, and elsewhere. A statue of stone, wood, or clay is
+fashioned, and the ceremony of animation is performed to convey to it
+the breath of life, which in many places is supposed to be brought down
+from the sky.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the Egyptian beliefs, as well as in most of the world-wide legends
+that were derived from them, the idea assumed a definite form that the
+vital principle (often referred to as the "soul," "soul-substance," or
+"double") could exist apart from the body. Whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> the explanation, it
+is clear that the possibility of the existence of the vital principle
+apart from the body was entertained. It was supposed that it could
+return to the body and temporarily reanimate it. It could enter into and
+dwell within the stone representation of the deceased. Sometimes this
+so-called "soul" was identified<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> with the breath of life, which could
+enter into the statue as the result of the ceremony of "opening the
+mouth".</p>
+
+<p>It has been commonly assumed by Sir Edward Tyler and those who accept
+his theory of animism that the idea of the "soul" was based upon the
+attempts to interpret the phenomena of dreams and shadows, to which
+Burnet has referred in the passage quoted above. The fact that when a
+person is sleeping he may dream of seeing absent people and of having a
+variety of adventures is explained by many peoples by the hypothesis
+that these are real experiences which befell the "soul" when it wandered
+abroad during its owner's sleep. A man's shadow or his reflection in
+water or a mirror has been interpreted as his double. But what these
+speculations leave out of account is the fact that these dream- and
+shadow-phenomena were probably merely the predisposing circumstances
+which helped in the development of (or the corroborative details which
+were added to and, by rationalization, incorporated in) the
+"soul-theory," which other circumstances were responsible for
+creating.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have already called attention (p. 5) to the fact that in many of the
+psychological speculations in ethnology too little account is taken of
+the enormous complexity of the factors which determine even the simplest
+and apparently most obvious and rational actions of men. I must again
+remind the reader that a vast multitude of influences, many of them of a
+subconscious and emotional nature, affect men's decisions and opinions.
+But once some definite state of feeling inclines a man to a certain
+conclusion, he will call up a host of other circumstances to buttress
+his decision, and weave them into a complex net of rationalization. Some
+such process undoubtedly took place in the development of "animism"; and
+though it is not possible yet to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> reconstruct the whole history of the
+growth of the idea, there can be no question that these early strivings
+after an understanding of the nature of life and death, and the attempts
+to put the theories into practice to reanimate the dead, provided the
+foundations upon which has been built up during the last fifty centuries
+a vast and complex theory of the soul. In the creation of this edifice
+the thoughts and the aspirations of countless millions of peoples have
+played a part: but the foundation was laid down when the Egyptian king
+or priest claimed that he could restore to the dead the "breath of life"
+and, by means of the wand which he called "the great magician,"<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a>
+could enable the dead to be born again. The wand is supposed by some
+scholars<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> to be a conventionalized representation of the uterus, so
+that its power of giving birth is expressed with literal directness.
+Such beliefs and stories of the "magic wand" are found to-day in
+scattered localities from the Scottish Highlands to Indonesia and
+America.</p>
+
+<p>In this sketch I have referred merely to one or two aspects of a
+conception of vast complexity. But it must be remembered that, once the
+mind of man began to play with the idea of a vital essence capable of
+existing apart from the body and to identify it with the breath of life,
+an illimitable field was opened up for speculation. The vital principle
+could manifest itself in all the varied expressions of human
+personality, as well as in all the physiological indications of life.
+Experience of dreams led men to believe that the "soul" could also leave
+the body temporarily and enjoy varied experiences. But the
+concrete-minded Egyptian demanded some physical evidence to buttress
+these intangible ideas of the wandering abroad of his vital essence. He
+made a statue for it to dwell in after his death, because he was not
+able to make an adequately life-like reproduction of the dead man's
+features upon the mummy itself or its wrappings. Then he gradually
+persuaded himself that the life-substance could exist apart from the
+body as a "double" or "twin" which animated the statue.</p>
+
+<p>Searching for material evidence to support his faith primitive man not
+unnaturally turned to the contemplation of the circumstances of his
+birth. All his beliefs concerning the nature of life can ultimately be
+referred back to the story of his own origin, his birth or creation.</p>
+
+<p>When an infant is born it is accompanied by the after-birth or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> placenta
+to which it is linked by the umbilical cord. The full comprehension of
+the significance of these structures is an achievement of modern
+science. To primitive man they were an incomprehensible marvel. But once
+he began to play with the idea that he had a double, a vital essence in
+his own shape which could leave the sleeping body and lead a separate
+existence, the placenta obviously provided tangible evidence of its
+reality. The considerations set forth by Blackman,<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> supplementing
+those of Moret, Murray and Seligman and others, have been claimed as
+linking the placenta with the <i>ka</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Much controversy has waged around the interpretation of the Egyptian
+word <i>ka</i>, especially during recent years. An excellent summary of the
+arguments brought forward by the various disputants up to 1912 will be
+found in Morel's "Myst&egrave;res &Eacute;gyptiens". Since then more or less
+contradictory views have been put forward by Alan Gardiner, Breasted,
+and Blackman. It is not my intention to intervene in a dispute as to the
+meaning of certain phrases in ancient literature; but there are certain
+aspects of the problems at issue which are so intimately related to my
+main theme as to make some reference to them unavoidable.</p>
+
+<p>The development of the custom of making statues of the dead necessarily
+raised for solution the problem of explaining the deceased's two bodies,
+his actual mummy and his portrait statue. During life on earth his vital
+principle dwelt in the former, except on those occasions when the man
+was asleep. His actual body also gave expression to all the varied
+attributes of his personality. But after death the statue became the
+dwelling place of these manifestations of the spirit of vitality.</p>
+
+<p>Whether or not the conception arose out of the necessities unavoidably
+created by the making of statues, it seems clear that this custom must
+have given more concrete shape to the belief that all of those elements
+of the dead man's individuality which left his body at the time of death
+could shift as a shadowy double into his statue.</p>
+
+<p>At the birth of a king he is accompanied by a comrade or twin exactly
+reproducing all his features. This double or <i>ka</i> is intimately
+associated throughout life and in the life to come with the king's
+wel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>fare. In fact Breasted claims that the <i>ka</i> "was a kind of superior
+genius intended to guide the fortunes of the individual <i>in the
+hereafter</i>" ... there "he had his abode and awaited the coming of his
+earthly companion".<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> At death the deceased "goes to his <i>ka</i>, to the
+sky". The <i>ka</i> controls and protects the deceased: he brings him food
+which they eat together.</p>
+
+<p>It is important clearly to keep in mind the different factors involved
+in the conception of the <i>ka</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) The statue of the deceased is animated by restoring to it the
+breath of life and all the other vital attributes of which the early
+Egyptian physiologist took cognisance.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) At the time of birth there came into being along with the child a
+"twin" whose destinies were closely linked with the child's.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) As the result of animating the statue the deceased also has
+restored to him his character, "the sum of his attributes," his
+individuality, later raised to the position of a protecting genius or
+god, a Providence who watches over his well-being.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p>
+
+<p>The <i>ka</i> is not simply identical with the breath of life or <i>animus</i>, as
+Burnet supposes (<i>op. cit. supra</i>), but has a wider significance. The
+adoption of the conception of the <i>ka</i> as a sort of guardian angel which
+finds its appropriate habitation in a statue that has been animated does
+not necessarily conflict with the view so concretely and unmistakably
+represented in the tomb-pictures that the <i>ka</i> is also a double who is
+born along with the individual.</p>
+
+<p>This material conception of the <i>ka</i> as a double who is born with and
+closely linked to the individual is, as Blackman has emphasized,<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a>
+very suggestive of Baganda beliefs and rites connected with the
+placenta. At death the circumstances of the act of birth are
+reconstituted, and for this rebirth the placenta which played an
+essential part in the original process is restored to the deceased. May
+not the original meaning of the expression "he goes to his <i>ka</i>" be a
+literal description of this reunion with his placenta? The
+identification of the <i>ka</i> with the moon, the guardian of the dead man's
+welfare, may have enriched the symbolism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Blackman makes the suggestion that "on the analogy of the beliefs
+entertained by the Hamitic ruling caste in Uganda," according to Roscoe,
+"the placenta,<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> or rather its ghost, would have been supposed by the
+Ancient Egyptians to be closely connected with the individual's
+personality, as" he maintains was also the case with the god or
+protecting genius of the Babylonians.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> "Unless united with his twin's
+[i.e. his placenta's] ghost the dead king was an imperfect deity, i.e.
+his directing intelligence was impaired or lacking," presumably because
+the placenta was composed of blood, which was regarded as the material
+of consciousness and intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>In China, as the quotations from de Groot (see footnote) show, the
+placenta when placed under felicitous circumstances is able to ensure
+the child a long life and to control his mental and physical welfare.</p>
+
+<p>In view of the claims put forward by Blackman to associate the placenta
+with the <i>ka</i>, it is of interest to note Moret's suggestion concerning
+the fourteen forms of the <i>ka</i>, to which von Bissing assigns<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> the
+general significance "nourishment or offerings". He puts the question
+whether they do not "personify the elements of material and intellectual
+prosperity, all that is necessary for the health of body and spirit"
+(<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 209).</p>
+
+<p>The placenta is credited with all the varieties of life-giving potency
+that are attributed to the Mother-Goddess. It therefore controls the
+welfare of the individual and, like all maternal amulets (<i>vide supra</i>),
+ensures his good fortune. But, probably by virtue of its supposed
+derivation from and intimate association with blood, it also ministered
+to his mental welfare.</p>
+
+<p>In my last Rylands Lecture I referred to the probability that the
+essential elements of Chinese civilization were derived from the West. I
+had hoped that, before the present statement went to the printer, I
+would have found time to set forth in detail the evidence in
+substantiation of the reality of that diffusion of culture.</p>
+
+<p>Briefly the chain of proof is composed of the following links: (<i>a</i>) the
+intimate cultural contact between Egypt, Southern Arabia, Sumer, and
+Elam from a period at least as early as the First Egyptian Dynasty;
+(<i>b</i>) the diffusion of Sumerian and Elamite culture in very early times
+at least as far north as Russian Turkestan and as far east as
+Baluchistan; (<i>c</i>) at some later period the quest of gold, copper,
+turquoise, and jade led the Babylonians (and their neighbours) as far
+north as the Altai and as far east as Khotan and the Tarim Valley, where
+their pathways were blazed with the distinctive methods of cultivation
+and irrigation; (<i>d</i>) at some subsequent period there was an easterly
+diffusion of culture from Turkestan into the Shensi Province of China
+proper; and (<i>e</i>) at least as early as the seventh century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>
+there was also a spread of Western culture to China by sea.<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have already referred to some of the distinctively Egyptian traits in
+Chinese beliefs concerning the dead. Mingled with them are other equally
+definitely Babylonian ideas concerning the liver.</p>
+
+<p>It must be apparent that in the course of the spread of a complex system
+of religious beliefs to so great a distance, only certain of their
+features would survive the journey. Handed on from people to people,
+each of whom would unavoidably transform them to some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> extent, the
+tenets of the Western beliefs would become shorn of many of their
+details and have many excrescences added to them before the Chinese
+received them. In the crucible of the local philosophy they would be
+assimilated with Chinese ideas until the resulting compound assumed a
+Chinese appearance. When these inevitable circumstances are recalled the
+value of any positive evidence of Western influence is of special
+significance.</p>
+
+<p>According to the ancient Chinese, man has two souls, the <i>kwei</i> and the
+<i>shen</i>. The former, which according to de Groot is definitely the more
+ancient of the two (p. 8), is the material, substantial soul, which
+emanates from the terrestrial part of the universe, and is formed of
+<i>yin</i> substance. In living man it operates under the name of <i>p'oh</i>, and
+on his death it returns to the earth and abides with the deceased in his
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>shen</i> or immaterial soul emanates from the ethereal celestial part
+of the cosmos and consists of <i>yang</i> substance. When operating actively
+in the living human body, it is called <i>khi</i> or "breath," and <i>hwun</i>;
+when separated from it after death it lives forth as a refulgent spirit,
+styled <i>ming</i>.<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the <i>shen</i> also, in spite of its sky-affinities, hovers about the
+grave and may dwell in the inscribed grave-stone (p. 6). There may be a
+multitude of <i>shen</i> in one body and many "soul-tablets" may be provided
+for them (p. 74).</p>
+
+<p>Just as in Egypt the <i>ka</i> is said to "symbolize the force of life which
+resides in nourishment" (Moret, p. 212), so the Chinese refer to the
+ethereal part of the food as its <i>khi</i>, i.e. the "breath" of its <i>shen</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The careful study of the mass of detailed evidence so lucidly set forth
+by de Groot in his great monograph reveals the fact that, in spite of
+many superficial differences and apparent contradictions, the early
+Chinese conceptions of the soul and its functions are essentially
+identical with the Egyptian, and must have been derived from the same
+source.</p>
+
+<p>From the quotations which I have already given in the foregoing pages,
+it appears that the Chinese entertain views regarding the functions of
+the placenta which are identical with those of the Baganda, and a
+conception of the souls of man which presents unmistakable analogies
+with Egyptian beliefs. Yet these Chinese references do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> not shed any
+clearer light than Egyptian literature does upon the problem of the
+possible relationship between the <i>ka</i> and the <i>placenta</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the Iranian domain, however, right on the overland route from the
+Persian Gulf to China, there seems to be a ray of light. According to
+the late Professor Moulton, "The later Parsi books tell us that the
+Fravashi is a part of a good man's identity, living in heaven and
+reuniting with the soul at death. It is not exactly a guardian angel,
+for it shares in the development or deterioration of the rest of the
+man."<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></p>
+
+<p>In fact the Fravashi is not unlike the Egyptian <i>ka</i> on the one side and
+the Chinese <i>shen</i> on the other. "They are the <i>Manes</i>, 'the good folk'"
+(p. 144): they are connected with the stars in their capacity as spirits
+of the dead (p. 143), and they "showed their paths to the sun, the moon,
+the sun, and the endless lights," just as the <i>kas</i> guide the dead in
+the hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>The Fravashis play a part in the annual All Soul's feast (p. 144), for
+which Breasted has provided an almost exact parallel in Egypt during the
+Middle Kingdom.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a> All the circumstances of the two ceremonies are
+essentially identical.</p>
+
+<p>Now Professor Moulton suggests that the word Fravashi may be derived
+from the Avestan root <i>var</i>, "to impregnate," and <i>frava&#353;i</i> mean
+"birth-promotion" (p. 142). As he associates this with childbirth the
+possibility suggests itself whether the "birth-promoter" may not be
+simply the placenta.</p>
+
+<p>Loret (quoted by Moret, p. 202), however, derives the word <i>ka</i> from a
+root signifying "to beget," so that the Fravashi may be nothing more
+than the Iranian homologue of the Egyptian <i>ka</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The connecting link between the Iranian and Egyptian conceptions may be
+the Sumerian instances given to Blackman<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> by Dr. Langdon.</p>
+
+<p>The whole idea seems to have originated out of the belief that the sum
+of the individual attributes or vital expressions of a man's personality
+could exist apart from the physical body. The contemplation of the
+phenomena of sleep and death provided the evidence in corroboration of
+this.</p>
+
+<p>At birth the newcomer came into the world physically connected with the
+placenta, which was accredited with the attributes of the life-giving
+and birth-promoting Great Mother and intimately related<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> to the moon and
+the earliest totem. It was obviously, also, closely concerned in the
+nutrition of the embryo, for was it not the stalk upon which the latter
+was growing like some fruit on its stem? It was a not unnatural
+inference to suppose that, as the elements of the personality were not
+indissolubly connected with the body, they were brought into existence
+at the time of birth and that the placenta was their vehicle.</p>
+
+<p>The Egyptians' own terms of reference to the sculptor of a statue show
+that the ideas of birth were uppermost in their minds when the custom of
+statue-making was first devised. Moret has brought together (<i>op. cit.
+supra</i>) a good deal of evidence to suggest the far-reaching significance
+of the conception of ritual rebirth in early Egyptian religious
+ceremonial. With these ideas in his mind the Egyptian would naturally
+attach great importance to the placenta in any attempt to reconstruct
+the act of rebirth, which would be regarded in a literal sense. The
+placenta which played an essential part in the original act would have
+an equally important r&ocirc;le in the ritual of rebirth. [For a further
+comment upon the problem discussed in the preceding ten pages, see
+Appendix A, p. 73.]</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> "Primitive Man," <i>Proceedings of the British Academy</i>,
+1917, p. 41.
+</p><p>
+It is important to remember that the real meaning of respiration was
+quite unknown until modern science revealed the part played by oxygen.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> The enormous complexity and intricacy of the interrelation
+between the functions of the "heart," and the "breath" is revealed in
+Chinese philosophy (see de Groot, <i>op. cit.</i> Chapter VII. <i>inter
+alia</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Second Annual Philosophical Lecture, Henriette Hertz
+Trust, <i>Proceedings of the British Academy</i>, Vol. VII, 26 Jan., 1916.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> The Egyptian <i>ka</i>, however, was a more complex entity than
+this comparison suggests.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> Breasted, <i>op. cit.</i> pp. 44 and 45.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i> pp. 45 and 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 28.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> W.&nbsp;J. Perry has collected the evidence preserved in a
+remarkable series of Indonesian legends in his recent book, "The
+Megalithic Culture of Indonesia". But the fullest exposition of the
+whole subject is provided in the Chinese literature summarized by de
+Groot (<i>op. cit.</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> See, however, the reservations in the subsequent pages.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> The thorough analysis of the beliefs of any people makes
+this abundantly clear. De Groot's monograph is an admirable illustration
+of this (<i>op. cit.</i> Chapter VII.). Both in Egypt and China the
+conceptions of the significance of the shadow are later and altogether
+subsidiary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Alan H. Gardiner, Davies and Gardiner, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 59.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> F.&nbsp;Ll. Griffith, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs," 1898, p.
+60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> Aylward M. Blackman, "Some Remarks on an Emblem upon the
+Head of an Ancient Egyptian Birth-Goddess," <i>Journal of Egyptian
+Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol. III, Part III, July, 1916, p. 199; and "The Pharaoh's
+Placenta and the Moon-God Khons," <i>ibid.</i> Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 235.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 52. Breasted
+denies that the <i>ka</i> was an element of the personality.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> For an abstruse discussion of this problem see Alan H.
+Gardiner, "Personification (Egyptian)," Hastings' <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia of
+Religion and Ethics</i>, pp. 790 and 792.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> <i>Op. cit. supra</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Mr. Blackman is puzzled to explain what "possible
+connexion there could be between the Pharaoh's placenta and the moon
+beyond the fact that it is the custom in Uganda to expose the king's
+placenta each new moon and anoint it with butter."
+</p><p>
+To those readers who follow my argument in the later pages of this
+discussion the reasoning at the back of this association should be plain
+enough. The moon was regarded as the controller of menstruation. The
+placenta (and also the child) was considered to be formed of menstrual
+blood. The welfare of the placenta was therefore considered to be under
+the control of the moon.
+</p><p>
+The anointing with butter is an interesting illustration of the close
+connexion of these lunar and maternal phenomena with the cow.
+</p><p>
+The placenta was associated with the moon also in China, as the
+following quotation shows.
+</p><p>
+According to de Groot (<i>op. cit.</i> p. 396), "in the <i>Siao 'rh fang</i> or
+Medicament for Babies, by the hand of Ts'ui Hing-kung [died 674
+<span class="smcap">a.d.</span>], it is said: 'The placenta should be stored away in a
+felicitous spot under the salutary influences of the sky or the moon ...
+in order that the child may be ensured a long life'". He then goes on to
+explain how any interference with the placenta will entail mental or
+physical trouble to the child.
+</p><p>
+The placenta also is used as the ingredient of pills to increase
+fertility, facilitate parturition, to bring back life to people on the
+brink of death and it is the main ingredient "in medicines for lunacy,
+convulsions, epilepsy, etc." (p. 397). "It gives rest to the heart,
+nourishes the blood, increases the breath, and strengthens the <i>tsing</i>"
+(p. 396).
+</p><p>
+These attributes of the placenta indicate that the beliefs of the
+Baganda are not merely local eccentricities, but widespread and sharply
+defined interpretations of the natural phenomena of birth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i> p. 241.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> See "The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization," now being
+published in the <i>Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and
+Philosophical Society</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> De Groot, p. 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> <i>Early Religious Poetry of Persia</i>, p. 145.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i> p. 264.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 240.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Power of the Eye.</h3>
+
+<p>In attempting to understand the peculiar functions attributed to the eye
+it is essential that the inquirer should endeavour to look at the
+problem from the early Egyptian's point of view. After moulding into
+shape the wrappings of the mummy so as to restore as far as possible the
+form of the deceased the embalmer then painted eyes upon the face. So
+also when the sculptor had learned to make finished models in stone or
+wood, and by the addition of paint had enhanced the life-like
+appearance, the statue was still merely a dead thing. What were needed
+above all to enliven it, literally and actually, in other words, to
+animate it, were the eyes; and the Egyptian artist set to work and with
+truly marvellous skill reproduced the appearance of living eyes (Fig.
+5). How ample was the justification for this belief will be appreciated
+by anyone who glances at the remarkable photographs recently published
+by Dr. Alan H. Gardiner.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> The wonderful eyes will be seen to make the
+statue sparkle and live. To the concrete mind of the Egyptian this
+triumph of art was regarded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> not as a mere technical success or
+&aelig;sthetic achievement. The artist was considered to have made the statue
+really live; in fact, literally and actually converted it into a "living
+image". The eyes themselves were regarded as one of the chief sources of
+the vitality which had been conferred upon the statue.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_005" id="Image_005"></a>
+<img src="images/image005.png" width="296" height="400" alt="Fig. 5&mdash;Statue of an Egyptian Noble of the Pyramid
+Age to show the technical skill in the representation of life-like
+eyes" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 5&mdash;Statue of an Egyptian Noble of the Pyramid
+Age to show the technical skill in the representation of life-like
+eyes</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is the explanation of all the elaborate care and skill bestowed
+upon the making of artificial eyes. No doubt also it was largely
+responsible for giving definition to the remarkable belief in the
+animating power of the eye. But so many other factors of most diverse
+kinds played a part in building up the complex theory of the eye's
+fertilizing potency that all the stages in the process of
+rationalization cannot yet be arranged in orderly sequence.</p>
+
+<p>I refer to the question here and suggest certain aspects of it that seem
+worthy of investigation merely for the purpose of stimulating some
+student of early Egyptian literature to look into the matter
+further.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a></p>
+
+<p>As death was regarded as a kind of sleep and the closing of the eyes was
+the distinctive sign of the latter condition the open eyes were not
+unnaturally regarded as clear evidence of wakefulness and life. In fact,
+to a matter-of-fact people the restoration of the eyes to the mummy or
+statue was equivalent to an awakening to life.</p>
+
+<p>At a time when a reflection in a mirror or in a sheet of water was
+supposed to afford quite positive evidence of the reality of each
+individual's "double," and when the "soul," or more concretely, "life,"
+was imagined to be a minute image or homunculus, it is quite likely that
+the reflection in the eye may have been interpreted as the "soul"
+dwelling within it. The eye was certainly regarded as peculiarly rich in
+"soul substance". It was not until Osiris received from Horus the eye
+which had been wrenched out in the latter's combat with Set that he
+"became a soul".<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is a remarkable fact that this belief in the animating power of the
+eye spread as far east as Polynesia and America, and as far west as the
+British Islands.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of course the obvious physiological functions of the eyes as means of
+communication between their possessor and the world around him; the
+powerful influence of the eyes for expressing feeling and emotion
+without speech; the analogy between the closing and opening of the eyes
+and the changes of day and night, are all hinted at in Egyptian
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>But there were certain specific factors that seem to have helped to give
+definiteness to these general ideas of the physiology of the eyes. The
+tears, like all the body moisture, came to share the life-giving
+attributes of water in general. And when it is recalled that at funeral
+ceremonies emotion found natural expression in the shedding of tears, it
+is not unlikely that this came to be assimilated with all the other
+water-symbolism of the funerary ritual. The early literature of Egypt,
+in fact, refers to the part played by Isis and Nephthys in the
+reanimation of Osiris, when the tears they shed as mourners brought life
+back to the god. But the fertilizing tears of Isis were life-giving in
+the wider sense. They were said to cause the inundation which fertilized
+the soil of Egypt, meaning presumably that the "Eye of Re" sent the
+rain.</p>
+
+<p>There is the further possibility that the beliefs associated with the
+cowry may have played some part, if not in originating, at any rate in
+emphasizing the conception of the fertilizing powers of the eye. I have
+already mentioned the outstanding features of the symbolism of the
+cowry. In many places in Africa and elsewhere the similarity of this
+shell to the half-closed eyelids led to its use as an artificial "eye"
+in mummies. The use of the same objects to symbolize the female
+reproductive organs and the eyes may have played some part in
+transferring to the latter the fertility of the former. The gods were
+born of the eyes of Ptah. Might not the confusion of the eye with the
+genitalia have given a meaning to this statement? There is evidence of
+this double symbolism of these shells. Cowry shells have also been
+employed, both in the Persian Gulf and the Pacific, to decorate the bows
+of boats, probably for the dual purpose of representing eyes and
+conferring vitality upon the vessel. These facts suggest that the belief
+in the fertilizing power of the eyes may to some extent be due to this
+cowry-association. Even if it be admitted that all the known cases of
+the use of cowries as eyes of mummies are relatively late, and that it
+is not known to have been employed for such a purpose in Egypt, the mere
+fact that the likeness to the eyelids<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> so readily suggests itself may
+have linked together the attributes of the cowry and the eye even in
+Predynastic times, when cowries were placed with the dead in the grave.</p>
+
+<p>Hathor's identification with the "Eye of Re" may possibly have been an
+expression of the same idea. But the r&ocirc;le of the "Eye of Re" was due
+primarily to her association with the moon (<i>vide infra</i>, p. 56).</p>
+
+<p>The apparently hopeless tangle of contradictions involved in these
+conceptions of Hathor will have to be unravelled. For "no eye is to be
+feared more than thine (Re's) when it attacketh in the form of Hathor"
+(Maspero, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 165). If it was the beneficent life-giving
+aspect of the eye which led to its identification with Hathor, in course
+of time, when the reason for this connexion was lost sight of, it became
+associated with the malevolent, death-dealing <i>avatar</i> of the goddess,
+and became the expression of the god's anger and hatred toward his
+enemies. It is not unlikely that such a confusion may have been
+responsible for giving concrete expression to the general psychological
+fact that the eyes are obviously among the chief means for expressing
+hatred for and intimidating and "brow-beating" one's fellows. [In my
+lecture on "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall explain the explicit
+circumstances that gave rise to these contradictions.]</p>
+
+<p>It is significant that, in addition to the widespread belief in the
+"evil eye"&mdash;which in itself embodies the same confusion, the expression
+of admiration that works evil&mdash;in a multitude of legends it is the eye
+that produces petrifaction. The "stony stare" causes death and the dead
+become transformed into statues, which, however, usually lack their
+original attribute of animation. These stories have been collected by
+Mr. E.&nbsp;S. Hartland in his "Legend of Perseus".</p>
+
+<p>There is another possible link in the chain of associations between the
+eye and the idea of fertility. I have already referred to the
+development of the belief that incense, which plays so prominent a part
+in the ritual for conferring vitality upon the dead, is itself replete
+with animating properties. "Glaser has already shown the <i>anti</i> incense
+of the Egyptian Punt Reliefs to be an Arabian word, <i>a-a-netc</i>,
+'tree-eyes' (<i>Punt und die S&uuml;darabischen Reiche</i>, p. 7), and to refer to
+the large lumps ... as distinguished from the small round drops, which
+are supposed to be tree-tears or the tree-blood."<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> "A New Masterpiece of Egyptian Sculpture," <i>The Journal of
+Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol. IV, Part I, Jan., 1917.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> In all probability the main factor that was responsible
+for conferring such definite life-giving powers upon the eye was the
+identification of the moon with the Great Mother. The moon was the Eye
+of Re, the sky-god.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> Breasted, "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 59.
+The meaning of the phrase rendered "a soul" here would be more
+accurately given by the word "reanimated".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Wilfred H. Schoff, "The Periplus of the Erythr&aelig;an Sea,"
+1912, p. 164.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+<h3>The Moon and the Sky-World.</h3>
+
+<p>There are reasons for believing that the chief episodes in Aphrodite's
+past point to the Red Sea for their inspiration, though many other
+factors, due partly to local circumstances and partly to contact with
+other civilizations, contributed to the determination of the traits of
+the Mediterranean goddess of love. In Babylonia and India there are very
+definite signs of borrowing from the same source. It is important,
+therefore, to look for further evidence to Arabia as the obvious bond of
+union both with Ph&#339;nicia and Babylonia.</p>
+
+<p>The claim made in Roscher's <i>Lexicon der Mythologie</i> that the Assyrian
+Ishtar, the Ph&#339;nician Ashtoreth (Astarte), the Syrian Atargatis
+(Derketo), the Babylonian Belit (Mylitta) and the Arabian Ilat (Al-ilat)
+were all moon-goddesses has given rise to much rather aimless
+discussion, for there can be no question of their essential homology
+with Hathor and Aphrodite. Moreover, from the beginning, all
+goddesses&mdash;and especially this most primitive stratum of fertility
+deities&mdash;were for obvious reasons intimately associated with the
+moon.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> But the cyclical periodicity of the moon which suggested the
+analogy with the similar physiological periodicity of women merely
+explains the association of the moon with women. The influence of the
+moon upon dew and the tides, perhaps, suggested its controlling power
+over water and emphasized the life-giving function which its association
+with women had already suggested. For reasons which have been explained
+already, water was associated more especially with fertilization by the
+male. Hence the symbolism of the moon came to include the control of
+both the male and the female processes of reproduction.<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p>
+
+<p>The literature relating to the development of these ideas with
+refer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>ence to the moon has been summarized by Professor Hutton
+Webster.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> He shows that "there is good reason for believing that
+among many primitive peoples the moon, rather than the sun, the planets
+or any of the constellations, first excited the imagination and aroused
+feelings of superstitious awe or of religious veneration".</p>
+
+<p>Special attention was first devoted to the moon when agricultural
+pursuits compelled men to measure time and determine the seasons. The
+influence of the moon on water, both the tides and dew, brought it
+within the scope of the then current biological theory of fertilization.
+This conception was powerfully corroborated by the parallelism of the
+moon's cycles and those of womankind, which was interpreted by regarding
+the moon as the controlling power of the female reproductive functions.
+Thus all of the earliest goddesses who were personifications of the
+powers of fertility came to be associated, and in some cases identified,
+with the moon.</p>
+
+<p>In this way the animation and deification of the moon was brought about:
+and the first sky deity assumed not only all the attributes of the
+cowry, i.e. the female reproductive functions, but also, as the
+controller of water, many of those which afterwards were associated with
+Osiris. The confusion of the male fertilizing powers of Osiris with the
+female reproductive functions of Hathor and Isis may explain how in some
+places the moon became a masculine deity, who, however, still retained
+his control over womankind, and caused the phenomena of menstruation by
+the exercise of his virile powers.<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> But the moon-god was also a
+measurer of time and in this aspect was specially personified in Thoth.</p>
+
+<p>The assimilation of the moon with these earth-deities was probably
+responsible for the creation of the first sky-deity. For once the
+conception developed of identifying a deity with the moon, and the
+Osirian beliefs associated with the deification of a dead king grew up,
+the moon became the impersonation of the spirit of womankind, some
+mortal woman who by death had acquired divinity.</p>
+
+<p>After the idea had developed of regarding the moon as the spirit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> of a
+dead person, it was only natural that, in course of time, the sun and
+stars should be brought within the scope of the same train of thought,
+and be regarded as the deified dead. When this happened the sun not
+unnaturally soon leapt into a position of pre-eminence. As the moon
+represented the deified female principle the sun became the dominant
+male deity Re. The stars also became the spirits of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Once this new conception of a sky-world was adumbrated a luxuriant crop
+of beliefs grew up to assimilate the new beliefs with the old, and to
+buttress the confused mixture of incompatible ideas with a complex
+scaffolding of rationalization.</p>
+
+<p>The sun-god Horus was already the son of Osiris. Osiris controlled not
+only the river and the irrigation canals, but also the rain-clouds. The
+fumes of incense conveyed to the sky-gods the supplications of the
+worshippers on earth. Incense was not only "the perfume that deities,"
+but also the means by which the deities and the dead could pass to their
+doubles in the newly invented sky-heaven. The sun-god Re was represented
+in his temple not by an anthropoid statue, but by an obelisk,<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> the
+gilded apex of which pointed to heaven and "drew down" the dazzling rays
+of the sun, reflected from its polished surface, so that all the
+worshippers could see the manifestations of the god in his temple.</p>
+
+<p>These events are important, not only for creating the sky-gods and the
+sky-heaven, but possibly also for suggesting the idea that even a mere
+pillar of stone, whether carved or uncarved, upon which no attempt had
+been made to model the human form, could represent the deity, or rather
+could become the "body" to be animated by the god.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> For once it was
+admitted, even in the home of these ancient ideas concerning the
+animation of statues, that it was not essential for the idol to be
+shaped into human form, the way was opened for less cultured peoples,
+who had not acquired the technical skill to carve statues, simply to
+erect stone pillars or unshaped masses of stone or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> wood for their gods
+to enter, when the appropriate ritual of animation was performed.<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a></p>
+
+<p>This conception of the possibility of gods, men, or animals dwelling in
+stones spread in course of time throughout the world, but in every place
+where it is found certain arbitrary details of the methods of animating
+the stone reveal the fact that all these legends must have been derived
+from the same source.</p>
+
+<p>The complementary belief in the possibility of the petrifaction of men
+and animals has a similarly extensive geographical distribution. The
+history of this remarkable incident I shall explain in the lecture on
+"Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II.).<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> I am not concerned here with the explanation of the means
+by which their home became transferred to the planet Venus.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> In his discussion of the functions of the Fravashis in the
+Iranian Yasht, the late Professor Moulton suggested the derivation of
+the word from the Avestan root <i>var</i>, "to impregnate," so that
+<i>frava&#353;i</i> might mean "birth-promotion". But he was puzzled by a
+reference to water. "Less easy to understand is their intimate connexion
+with the Waters" ("Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 142 and 143).
+But the Waters were regarded as fertilizing agents. This is seen in the
+Avestan Anahita, who was "the presiding genie of Fertility and more
+especially of the Waters" (W.&nbsp;J. Phythian-Adams, "Mithraism," 1915, p.
+13).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> "Rest Days," New York, 1916, pp. 124 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Wherever these deities of fertility are found, whether in
+Egypt, Babylonia, the Mediterranean Area, Eastern Asia, and America,
+illustrations of this confusion of sex are found. The explanation which
+Dr. Rendel Harris offers of this confusion in the case of Aphrodite
+seems to me not to give due recognition to its great antiquity and
+almost world-wide distribution.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> L. Borchardt, "Das Re-heiligtum des K&ouml;nigs Ne-woser-re".
+For a good exposition of this matter see A. Moret, "Sanctuaires de
+l'ancien Empire &Eacute;gyptien,"; <i>Annales du Mus&eacute;e Guimet</i>, 1912, p. 265.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> It is possible that the ceremony of erecting the <i>dad</i>
+columns may have played some part in the development of these beliefs.
+(On this see A. Moret, "Myst&egrave;res &Eacute;gyptiens," 1913, pp. 13-17.)</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Many other factors played a part in the development of
+the stories of the birth of ancestors from stones. I have already
+referred to the origin of the idea of the cowry (or some other shell) as
+the parent of mankind. The place of the shell was often taken by roughly
+carved stones, which of course were accredited with the same power of
+being able to produce men, or of being a sort of egg from which human
+beings could be hatched. It is unlikely that the finding of fossilized
+animals played any leading r&ocirc;le in the development of these beliefs,
+beyond affording corroborative evidence in support of them after other
+circumstances had been responsible for originating the stories. The more
+circumstantial Oriental stories of the splitting of stones giving birth
+to heroes and gods may have been suggested by the finding in pebbles of
+fossilized shells&mdash;themselves regarded already as the parents of
+mankind. But such interpretations were only possible because all the
+predisposing circumstances had already prepared the way for the
+acceptance of these specific illustrations of a general theory.
+</p><p>
+These beliefs may have developed before and quite independently of the
+ideas concerning the animation of statues; but if so the latter event
+would have strengthened and in some places become merged with the other
+story.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> For an extensive collection of these remarkable
+petrifaction legends in almost every part of the world, see E. Sidney
+Hartland's "The Legend of Perseus," especially Volumes I and III. These
+distinctive stories will be found to be complexly interwoven with all
+the matters discussed in this address.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Worship of the Cow.</h3>
+
+<p>Intimately linked with the subjects I have been discussing is the
+worship of the cow. It would lead me too far afield to enter into the
+details of the process by which the earliest Mother-Goddesses became so
+closely associated or even identified with the cow, and why the cow's
+horns became associated with the moon among the emblems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> of Hathor. But
+it is essential that reference should be made to certain aspects of the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think there is any evidence to justify the common theory that
+the likeness of the crescent moon to a cow's horns was the reason for
+the association. On the other hand, it is clear that both the moon and
+the cow became identified with the Mother-Goddess quite independently
+the one of the other, and at a very remote period.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that the fundamental factor in the development of this
+association of the cow and the Mother-Goddess was the fact of the use of
+milk as food for human beings. For if the cow could assume this maternal
+function she was in fact a sort of foster-mother of mankind; and in
+course of time she came to be regarded as the actual mother of the human
+race and to be identified with the Great Mother.</p>
+
+<p>Many other considerations helped in this process of assimilation. The
+use of cattle not merely as meat for the sustenance of the living but as
+the usual and most characteristic life-giving food for the dead
+naturally played a part in conferring divinity upon the cow, just as an
+analogous relationship made incense a holy substance and was responsible
+for the personification of the incense-tree as a goddess. This influence
+was still further emphasized in the case of cattle because they also
+supplied the blood which was used for the ritual purpose of bestowing
+consciousness upon the dead, and in course of time upon the gods also,
+so that they might hear and attend to the prayers of supplicants.</p>
+
+<p>Other circumstances emphasize the significance attached to the cow: but
+it is difficult to decide whether they contributed in any way to the
+development of these beliefs or were merely some of the practices which
+were the result of the divination of the cow. The custom of placing
+butter in the mouths of the dead, in Egypt, Uganda, and India, the
+various ritual uses of milk, the employment of a cow's hide as a
+wrapping for the dead in the grave, and also in certain mysterious
+ceremonies,<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> all indicate the intimate connexion between the cow and
+the means of attaining a rebirth in the life to come.</p>
+
+<p>I think there are definite reasons for believing that once the cow
+became identified with the Mother-Goddess as the parent of mankind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> the
+first step was taken in the development of the curious system of ideas
+now known as "totemism".</p>
+
+<p>This, however, is a complex problem which I cannot stay to discuss here.</p>
+
+<p>When the cow became identified with the Great Mother and the moon was
+regarded as the dwelling or the personification of the same goddess, the
+Divine Cow by a process of confused syncretism came to be regarded as
+the sky or the heavens, to which the dead were raised up on the cow's
+back. When Re became the dominant deity, he was identified with the sky,
+and the sun and moon were then regarded as his eyes. Thus the moon, as
+the Great Mother as well as the Eye of Re, was the bond of
+identification of the Great Mother with an eye. This was probably how
+the eye acquired the animating powers of the Giver of Life.</p>
+
+<p>A whole volume might be written upon the almost world-wide diffusion of
+these beliefs regarding the cow, as far as Scotland and Ireland in the
+west, and in their easterly migration probably as far as America, to the
+confusion alike of its ancient artists and its modern ethnologists.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p>
+
+<p>As an illustration of the identification of the cow's attributes with
+those of the life-giving Great Mother, I might refer to the late
+Professor Moulton's commentary<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> on the ancient Iranian G&acirc;th&acirc;s, where
+cow's flesh is given to mortals by Yima to make them immortal. "May we
+connect it with another legend whereby at the Regeneration Mithra is to
+make men immortal by giving them to eat the fat of the ... primeval Cow
+from whose slain body, according to the Aryan legends adopted by
+Mithraism, mankind was first created?"<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> See A. Moret, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 81, <i>inter alia</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> See the Copan sculptured monuments described by Maudslay
+in Godman and Salvin's "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Arch&aelig;ology, Plate
+46, representing "Stela D," with two serpents in the places occupied by
+the Indian elephants in Stela B&mdash;concerning which see <i>Nature</i>, November
+25, 1915. To one of these intertwined serpents is attached a cow-headed
+human d&aelig;mon. Compare also the Chiriqui figure depicted by MacCurdy,
+"A Study of Chiriquian Antiquities," Yale University Press, 1911, fig.
+361, p. 209.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> "Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 42 and 43.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i> p. 43. But I think these legends accredited to
+the Aryans owe their parentage to the same source as the Egyptian
+beliefs concerning the cow, and especially the remarkable mysteries upon
+which Moret has been endeavouring to throw some light&mdash;"Myst&egrave;res
+&Eacute;gyptiens," p. 43.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+<h3>The Diffusion of Culture.</h3>
+
+<p>In these pages I have made no attempt to deal with the far-reaching and
+intricate problems of the diffusion abroad of the practices and beliefs
+which I have been discussing. But the thoughts and the aspirations of
+every cultured people are permeated through and through with their
+influence.</p>
+
+<p>It is important to remember that in almost every stage of the
+development of these complex customs and ideas not merely the "finished
+product" but also the ingredients out of which it was built up were
+being scattered abroad.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p>I shall briefly refer to certain evidence from Asia and America in
+illustration of this fact and in substantiation of the reality of the
+diffusion to the East of some of the beliefs I have been discussing.</p>
+
+<p>The unity of Egyptian and Babylonian ideas is nowhere more strikingly
+demonstrated than in the essential identity of the attributes of Osiris
+and Ea. It affords the most positive proof of the derivation of the
+beliefs from some common source, and reveals the fact that Egyptian and
+Sumerian civilizations must have been in intimate cultural contact at
+the beginning of their developmental history. "In Babylonia, as in
+Egypt, there were differences of opinion regarding the origin of life
+and the particular natural element which represented the vital
+principle." "One section of the people, who were represented by the
+worshippers of Ea, appear to have believed that the essence of life was
+contained in water. The god of Eridu was the source of the 'water of
+life'."<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a></p>
+
+<p>"Offerings of water and food were made to the dead," not primarily so
+that they might be "prevented from troubling the living,"<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> but to
+supply them with the means of sustenance and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> reanimate them to help
+the suppliants. It is a common belief that these and other procedures
+were inspired by fear of the dead. But such a statement does not
+accurately represent the attitude of mind of the people who devised
+these funerary ceremonies. For it is not the enemies of the dead or
+those against whom he had a grudge that run a risk at funerals, but
+rather his friends; and the more deeply he was attached to a particular
+person the greater the danger for the latter. For among many people the
+belief obtains that when a man dies he will endeavour to steal the
+"soul-substance" of those who are dearest to him so that they may
+accompany him to the other world. But as stealing the
+"soul-substance"<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> means death, it is easy to misunderstand such a
+display of affection. Hence most people who long for life and hate death
+do their utmost to evade such embarrassing tokens of love; and most
+ethnologists, misjudging such actions, write about "appeasing the dead".
+It was those whom the gods <i>loved</i> who died young.</p>
+
+<p>Ea was not only the god of the deep, but also "lord of life," king of
+the river and god of creation. Like Osiris "he fertilized parched and
+sunburnt wastes through rivers and irrigating canals, and conferred upon
+man the sustaining 'food of life'.... The goddess of the dead commanded
+her servant to 'sprinkle the Lady Ishtar with the water of life'" (<i>op.
+cit.</i>, p. 44).</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter <span class="smcap">III</span>. of Mr. Mackenzie's book, from which I have
+just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> quoted, there is an interesting collection of quotations clearly
+showing that the conception of the vitalizing properties of the body
+moisture of gods is not restricted to Egypt, but is found also in
+Babylonia and India, in Western Asia and Greece, and also in Western
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>It has been suggested that the name Ishtar has been derived from Semitic
+roots implying "she who waters," "she who makes fruitful".<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a></p>
+
+<p>Barton claims that: "The beginnings of Semitic religion as they were
+conceived by the Semites themselves go back to sexual relations ... the
+Semitic conception of deity ... embodies the truth&mdash;grossly indeed, but
+nevertheless embodies it&mdash;that 'God is love'" (<i>op. cit.</i> p. 107). [This
+statement, however, is very misleading&mdash;see Appendix C, p. 75.]</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the countries where Semitic<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> influence spread the
+primitive Mother-Goddesses or some of their specialized variants are
+found. But in every case the goddess is associated with many distinctive
+traits which reveal her identity with her homologues in Cyprus,
+Babylonia, and Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>Among the Sumerians "life comes on earth through the introduction of
+water and irrigation".<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> "Man also results from a union between the
+water-gods."</p>
+
+<p>The Akkadians held views which were almost the direct antithesis of
+these. To them "the watery deep is disorder, and the cosmos, the order
+of the world, is due to the victory of a god of light and spring over
+the monster of winter and water; man is directly made by the gods".<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The Sumerian account of Beginnings centres around the production by the
+gods of water, Enki and his consort Nin-ella (or Dangal), of a great
+number of canals bringing rain to the desolate fields of a dry
+continent. Life both of vegetables and animals follows the profusion of
+the vivifying waters.... In the process of life's production besides
+Enki, the personality of his consort is very conspicuous. She is called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+<i>Nin-Ella</i>, 'the pure Lady,' <i>Damgal-Nunna</i>, the 'great Lady of the
+Waters,' <i>Nin-Tu</i>, 'the Lady of Birth'" (p. 301). The child of Enki and
+Nin-ella was the ancestor of mankind.<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a></p>
+
+<p>"In later traditions, the personality of that Great Lady seems to have
+been overshadowed by that of Ishtar, who absorbed several of her
+functions" (p. 301).</p>
+
+<p>Professor Carnoy fully demonstrates the derivation of certain early
+so-called "Aryan" beliefs from Chaldea. In the Iranian account of the
+creation "the great spring Ardv&#299; S&#363;ra An&#257;hita is the
+life-increasing, the herd-increasing, the fold-increasing who makes
+prosperity for all countries (Yt. 5, 1) ... that precious spring is
+worshipped as a goddess ... and is personified as a handsome and stately
+woman. She is a fair maid, most strong, tall of form, high-girded. Her
+arms are white and thick as a horse's shoulder or still thicker. She is
+full of gracefulness" (Yt. 5, 7, 64, 78). "Professor Cumont thinks that
+An&#257;hita is Ishtar ... she is a goddess of fecundation and birth.
+Moreover in Ach&aelig;menian inscriptions An&#257;hita is associated with Ahura
+Mazd&#257;h and Mithra, a triad corresponding to the Chaldean triad:
+Sin-Shamash-Ishtar. &#7944;&#957;&#8049;&#953;&#964;&#953;&#962; in Strabo and other Greek writers
+is treated as &#7944;&#966;&#961;&#959;&#948;&#8055;&#964;&#951;" (p. 302).</p>
+
+<p>But in Mesopotamia also the same views were entertained as in Egypt of
+the functions of statues.</p>
+
+<p>"The statues hidden in the recesses of the temples or erected on the
+summits of the 'Ziggurats' became imbued, by virtue of their
+consecration, with the actual body of the god whom they represented."
+Thus Marduk is said to "inhabit his image" (Maspero, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 64).</p>
+
+<p>This is precisely the idea which the Egyptians had. Even at the present
+day it survives among the Dravidian peoples of India.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> They make
+images of their village deities, which may be permanent or only
+temporary, but in any case they are regarded not as actual deities but
+as the "bodies" so to speak into which these deities can enter. They are
+sacred only when they are so animated by the goddess. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> ritual of
+animation is essentially identical with that found in Ancient Egypt.
+Libations are poured out; incense is burnt; the bleeding right fore-leg
+of a buffalo constitutes the blood-offering.<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> When the deity is
+reanimated by these procedures and its consciousness restored by the
+blood-offering it can hear appeals and speak.</p>
+
+<p>The same attitude towards their idols was adopted by the Polynesians.
+"The priest usually addressed the image, into which it was imagined the
+god entered when anyone came to inquire his will."<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a></p>
+
+<p>But there are certain other aspects of these Indian customs that are of
+peculiar interest. In my Ridgeway essay (<i>op. cit. supra</i>) I referred to
+the means by which in Nubia the degradation of the oblong Egyptian
+<i>mastaba</i> gave rise to the simple stone circle. This type spread to the
+west along the North African littoral, and also to the Eastern desert
+and Palestine. At some subsequent time mariners from the Red Sea
+introduced this practice into India.</p>
+
+<p>[It is important to bear in mind that two other classes of stone circles
+were invented. One of them was derived, not from the <i>mastaba</i> itself,
+but from the enclosing wall surrounding it (see my Ridgeway essay, Fig.
+13, p. 531, and compare with Figs. 3 and 4, p. 510, for illustrations of
+the transformed <i>mastaba</i>-type). This type of circle (enclosing a
+dolmen) is found both in the Caucasus-Caspian area as well as in India.
+A highly developed form of this encircling type of structure is seen in
+the famous rails surrounding the Buddhist <i>stupas</i> and <i>dagabas</i>. A
+third and later form of circle, of which Stonehenge is an example, was
+developed out of the much later New Empire Egyptian conception of a
+temple.]</p>
+
+<p>But at the same time, as in Nubia, and possibly in Libya, the <i>mastaba</i>
+was being degraded into the first of the three main varieties of stone
+circle, other, though less drastic, forms of simplification of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+<i>mastaba</i> were taking place, possibly in Egypt itself, but certainly
+upon the neighbouring Mediterranean coasts. In some respects the least
+altered copies of the <i>mastaba</i> are found in the so-called "giant's
+graves" of Sardinia and the "horned cairns" of the British Isles. But
+the real features of the Egyptian <i>serdab</i>, which was the essential
+part, the nucleus so to speak, of the <i>mastaba</i>, are best preserved in
+the so-called "holed dolmens" of the Levant, the Caucasus, and India.
+[They also occur sporadically in the West, as in France and Britain.]</p>
+
+<p>Such dolmens and more simplified forms are scattered in Palestine,<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a>
+but are seen to best advantage upon the Eastern Littoral of the Black
+Sea, the Caucasus, and the neighbourhood of the Caspian. They are found
+only in scattered localities between the Black and Caspian Seas. As de
+Morgan has pointed out,<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> their distribution is explained by their
+association with ancient gold and copper mines. They were the tombs of
+immigrant mining colonies who had settled in these definite localities
+to exploit these minerals.</p>
+
+<p>Now the same types of dolmens, also associated with ancient mines,<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a>
+are found in India. There is some evidence to suggest that these
+degraded types of Egyptian <i>mastabas</i> were introduced into India at some
+time after the adoption of the other, the Nubian modification of the
+<i>mastaba</i> which is represented by the first variety of stone
+circle.<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have referred to these Indian dolmens for the specific purpose of
+illustrating the complexities of the processes of diffusion of culture.
+For not only have several variously specialized degradation-products of
+the same original type of Egyptian <i>mastaba</i> reached India, possibly by
+different routes and at different times, but also many of the ideas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+that developed out of the funerary ritual in Egypt&mdash;of which the
+<i>mastaba</i> was merely one of the manifestations&mdash;made their way to India
+at various times and became secondarily blended with other expressions
+of the same or associated ideas there. I have already referred to the
+essential elements of the Egyptian funerary ritual&mdash;the statues,
+incense, libations, and the rest&mdash;as still persisting among the
+Dravidian peoples.</p>
+
+<p>But in the Madras Presidency dolmens are found converted into Siva
+temples.<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> Now in the inner chamber of the shrine&mdash;which represents
+the homologue of the <i>serdab</i>&mdash;in place of the statue or bas-relief of
+the deceased or of the deity, which is found in some of them (see Plate
+I), there is the stone <i>linga-yoni</i> emblem in the position corresponding
+to that in which, in the later temple in the same locality (Kambaduru),
+there is an image of Parvati, the consort of Siva.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest deities in Egypt, both Osiris and Hathor, were really
+expressions of the creative principle. In the case of Hathor, the
+goddess was, in fact, the personification of the female organs of
+reproduction.<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> In these early Siva temples in India these principles
+of creation were given their literal interpretation, and represented
+frankly as the organs of reproduction of the two sexes. The gods of
+creation were symbolized by models in stone of the creating organs.
+Further illustrations of the same principle are witnessed in the
+Indonesian megalithic monuments which Perry calls "dissoliths".<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a></p>
+
+<p>The later Indian temples, both Buddhist and Hindu, were developed from
+these early dolmens, as Mr. Longhurst's reports so clearly demonstrate.
+But from time to time there was an influx of new ideas from the West
+which found expression in a series of modifications of the architecture.
+Thus India provides an admirable illustration of this principle of
+culture contact. A series of waves of megalithic culture introduced
+purely Western ideas. These were developed by the local people in their
+own way, constantly intermingling a variety of cultural influences to
+weave them into a dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>tinctive fabric, which was compounded partly of
+imported, partly of local threads, woven locally into a truly Indian
+pattern. In this process of development one can detect the effects of
+Mycen&aelig;an accretions (see for example Longhurst's Plate XIII), probably
+modified during its indirect transmission by Ph&#339;nician and later
+influences; and also the more intimate part played by Babylonian,
+Egyptian, and, later, Greek and Persian art and architecture in
+directing the course of development of Indian culture.</p>
+
+<p>Incidentally, in the course of the discussions in the foregoing pages, I
+have referred to the profound influence of Egyptian, Babylonian and
+Indian ideas in Eastern Asia. Perry's important book (<i>op. cit. supra</i>)
+reveals their efforts in Indonesia. Thence they spread across the
+Pacific to America.</p>
+
+<p>In the "Migrations of Early Culture" (p. 114) I called attention to the
+fact that among the Aztecs water was poured upon the head of the mummy.
+This ritual procedure was inspired by the Egyptian idea of libations,
+for, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg, the pouring out of the water
+was accompanied by the remark "C'est cette eau que tu as re&ccedil;ue en venant
+an monde".</p>
+
+<p>But incense-burning and blood-offering were also practised in America.
+In an interesting memoir<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> on the practice of blood-letting by
+piercing the ears and tongue, Mrs. Zelia Nuttall reproduces a remarkable
+picture from a "partly unpublished MS. of Sahagun's work preserved in
+Florence". "The image of the sun is held up by a man whose body is
+partly hidden, and two men, seated opposite to each other in the
+foreground, are in the act of piercing the helices or external borders
+of their ears." But in addition to these blood-offerings to the sun, two
+priests are burning incense in remarkably Egyptian-like censers, and
+another pair are blowing conch-shell trumpets.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_006" id="Image_006"></a>
+<img src="images/image006.png" width="400" height="334" alt="Fig. 6.&mdash;Representation of the ancient Mexican
+Worship of the Sun. The image of the sun is held up by a man in front of his face; two men
+blow conch-shell trumpets; another pair burn incense; and a third pair
+make blood-offerings by piercing their ears&mdash;after Zelia Nuttall." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 6.&mdash;Representation of the ancient Mexican
+Worship of the Sun</p>
+
+<p>The image of the sun is held up by a man in front of his face; two men
+blow conch-shell trumpets; another pair burn incense; and a third pair
+make blood-offerings by piercing their ears&mdash;after Zelia Nuttall.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But it was not merely the use of incense and libations and the
+identities in the wholly arbitrary attributes of the American pantheon
+that reveal the sources of their derivation in the Old World. When the
+Spaniards first visited Yucatan they found traces of a Maya baptismal
+rite which the natives called <i>zihil</i>, signifying "to be born again". At
+the ceremony also incense was burnt.<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The forehead, the face, the fingers and toes were moistened. "After they
+had been thus sprinkled with water, the priest arose and removed the
+cloths from the heads of the children, and then cut off with a stone
+knife a certain bead that was attached to the head from childhood."<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a></p>
+
+<p>[The custom of wearing such a bead during childhood is found in Egypt at
+the present day.]</p>
+
+<p>In the case of the girls, their mothers "divested them of a cord which
+was worn during their childhood, fastened round the loins, having a
+small shell that hung in front ('una conchuela asida que les venia a dar
+encima de la parte honesta'&mdash;Landa). The removal of this signified that
+they could marry."<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a></p>
+
+<p>This use of shells is found in the Soudan and East Africa at the present
+day.<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> The girdle upon which the shells were hung is the prototype of
+the cestus of Hathor, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Kali and all the goddesses of
+fertility in the Old World. It is an admirable illustration of the fact
+that not only were the finished products, the goddesses and their
+fantastic repertory of attributes, transmitted to the New World, but
+also the earliest and most primitive ingredients out of which the
+complexities of their traits were compounded.</p>
+
+<p>In Chapter III ("The Birth of Aphrodite") I shall explain what an
+important part the invention of this girdle played in the development of
+the material side of civilization and the even vaster influence it
+exerted upon beliefs and ethics. It represents the first stage in the
+evolution of clothing; and it was responsible for originating the belief
+in love-philtres and in the possibility of foretelling the future.</p>
+
+<p>It would lead me too far from my main purpose in this book to discuss
+the widespread geographical distribution and historical associations of
+the customs of baptism and pouring libations among different peoples. I
+may, however, refer the reader to an article by Mr. Elsdon Best,
+entitled "Ceremonial Performances Pertaining to Birth, as Performed by
+the Maori of New Zealand in Past Times" (<i>Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute</i>, Vol. XLIV, 1914, p. 127), which sheds a
+clear light upon the general problem.</p>
+
+<p>The whole subject of baptismal ceremonies is well worth detailed study
+as a remarkable demonstration of the spread of culture in early times.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> Donald A. Mackenzie, "Myths of Babylonia and Assyria," p.
+44 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> Dr. Alan Gardiner has protested against the assertions of
+"some Egyptologists, influenced more by anthropological theorists than
+by the unambiguous evidence of the Egyptian texts," to the effect that
+"the funerary rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main
+precautionary measures serving to protect the living against the dead"
+(Article "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings' <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia of
+Religion and Ethics</i>). I should like to emphasize the fact that the
+"anthropological theorists," who so frequently put forward these claims
+have little more justification for them than "some Egyptologists".
+Careful study of the best evidence from Babylonia, India, Indonesia, and
+Japan, reveals the fact that anthropologists who make such claims have
+in many cases misinterpreted the facts. In an article on "Ancestor
+Worship" by Professor Nobushige Hozumi in A. Stead's "Japan by the
+Japanese" (1904) the true point of view is put very clearly: "The origin
+of ancestor-worship is ascribed by many eminent writers to the <i>dread of
+ghosts</i> and the sacrifices made to the souls of ancestors for the
+purpose of <i>propitiating</i> them. It appears to me more correct to
+attribute the origin of ancestor-worship to a contrary cause. It was the
+<i>love</i> of ancestors, not the <i>dread</i> of them" [Here he quotes the
+Chinese philosophers Shiu-ki and Confucius in corroboration] that
+impelled men to worship. "We celebrate the anniversary of our ancestors,
+pay visits to their graves, offer flowers, food and drink, burn incense
+and bow before their tombs, entirely from a feeling of love and respect
+for their memory, and no question of 'dread' enters our minds in doing
+so" (pp. 281 and 282). [See, however, Appendix B, p. 74.]</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> For, as I have already explained, the idea so commonly
+and mistakenly conveyed by the term "soul-substance" by writers on
+Indonesian and Chinese beliefs would be much more accurately rendered
+simply by the word "life," so that the stealing of it necessarily means
+death.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> Barton, <i>op. cit.</i> p. 105.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> The evidence set forth in these pages makes it clear that
+such ideas are not restricted to the Semites: nor is there any reason to
+suppose that they originated amongst them.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in Connexion
+with Similar Babylonian Beliefs," <i>Journal of the American Oriental
+Society</i>, Vol. XXXVI, 1916, pp. 300-20.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> This is Professor Carnoy's summary of Professor Jastrow's
+views as expressed in his article "Sumerian and Akkadian Views of
+Beginnings".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> Jastrow's interpretation of a recently-discovered tablet
+published by Langdon under the title <i>The Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the
+Flood and the Fall of Man</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> I have already (p. 43) mentioned the fact that it is
+still preserved in China also.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Deities
+of Southern India," Madras Government Museum, Bull., Vol. V, No. 3,
+1907; Wilber Theodore Elmore, "Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism: A
+Study of the Local and Village Deities of Southern India," University
+Studies: University of Nebraska, Vol. XV, No. 1, Jan., 1915. Compare the
+sacrifice of the fore-leg of a living calf in Egypt&mdash;A.&nbsp;E.&nbsp;P.&nbsp;B.
+Weigall, "An Ancient Egyptian Funeral Ceremony," <i>Journal of Egyptian
+Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol. II, 1915, p. 10. Early literary references from
+Babylonia suggest that a similar method of offering blood was practised
+there.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> William Ellis, "Polynesian Researches," 2nd edition,
+1832, Vol. I, p. 373.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> See H. Vincent, "Canaan d'apr&egrave;s l'exploration r&eacute;cente,"
+Paris, 1907, p. 395.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> "Les Premi&egrave;res Civilizations," Paris, 1909, p. 404:
+M&eacute;moires de la D&eacute;l&eacute;gation en Perse, Tome VIII, arch&eacute;ol.; and Mission
+Scientifique au Caucase, Tome I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> W.&nbsp;J. Perry, "The Relationship between the Geographical
+Distribution of Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," <i>Memoirs and
+Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society</i>, Vol.
+60, Part I, 24th Nov., 1915.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> The evidence for this is being prepared for publication
+by Captain Leonard Munn, R.E., who has personally collected the data in
+Hyderabad.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> Annual Report of the Arch&aelig;ological Department, Southern
+Circle, Madras, for the year 1915-1916. See for example Mr. A.&nbsp;H.
+Longhurst's photographs and plans (Plates I-IV) and especially that of
+the old Siva temple at Kambaduru, Plate IV (<i>b</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> As I shall show in "The Birth of Aphrodite" (Chapter
+III).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> W.&nbsp;J. Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> "A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans,"
+Arch&aelig;ological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard
+University, Vol. I, No. 7, 1904.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> Bancroft, <i>op. cit.</i> Vol. II, pp. 682 and 683.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i> p. 684.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> See J. Wilfrid Jackson, <i>op. cit. supra</i>.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+<h3>Summary.</h3>
+
+<p>In these pages I have ranged over a very wide field of speculation,
+groping in the dim shadows of the early history of civilization. I have
+been attempting to pick up a few of the threads which ultimately became
+woven into the texture of human beliefs and aspirations, and to suggest
+that the practice of mummification was the woof around which the web of
+civilization was intimately intertwined.</p>
+
+<p>I have already explained how closely that practice was related to the
+origin and development of architecture, which Professor Lethaby has
+called the "matrix of civilization," and how nearly the ideas that grew
+up in explanation and in justification of the ritual of embalming were
+affected by the practice of agriculture, the second great pillar of
+support for the edifice of civilization. It has also been shown how
+far-reaching was the influence exerted by the needs of the embalmer,
+which impelled men, probably for the first time in history, to plan and
+carry out great expeditions by sea and land to obtain the necessary
+resins and the balsams, the wood and the spices. Incidentally also in
+course of time the practice of mummification came to exert a profound
+effect upon the means for the acquisition of a knowledge of medicine and
+all the sciences ancillary to it.</p>
+
+<p>But I have devoted chief attention to the bearing of the ideas which
+developed out of the practice and ritual of embalming upon the spirit of
+man. It gave shape and substance to the belief in a future life; it was
+perhaps the most important factor in the development of a definite
+conception of the gods: it laid the foundation of the ideas which
+subsequently were built up into a theory of the soul: in fact, it was
+intimately connected with the birth of all those ideals and aspirations
+which are now included in the conception of religious belief and ritual.
+A multitude of other trains of thought were started amidst the
+intellectual ferment of the formulation of the earliest concrete system
+of biological theory. The idea of the properties and functions of water
+which had previously sprung up in connexion with the development of
+agriculture became crystallized into a more definite form as the result
+of the development of mummification, and this has played an obtrusive
+part in religion, in philosophy and in medicine ever since. Moreover its
+influence has become embalmed for all time in many languages and in the
+ritual of every religion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But it was a factor in the development not merely of religious beliefs,
+temples and ritual, but it was also very closely related to the origin
+of much of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular beliefs.
+The swastika and the thunderbolt, dragons and demons, totemism and the
+sky-world are all of them conceptions that were more or less closely
+connected with the matters I have been discussing.</p>
+
+<p>The ideas which grew up in association with the practice of
+mummification were responsible for the development of the temple and its
+ritual and for a definite formulation of the conception of deities. But
+they were also responsible for originating a priesthood. For the
+resuscitation of the dead king, Osiris, and for the maintenance of his
+existence it was necessary for his successor, the reigning king, to
+perform the ritual of animation and the provision of food and drink. The
+king, therefore, was the first priest, and his functions were not
+primarily acts of worship but merely the necessary preliminaries for
+restoring life and consciousness to the dead seer so that he could
+consult him and secure his advice and help.</p>
+
+<p>It was only when the number of temples became so great and their ritual
+so complex and elaborate as to make it a physical impossibility for the
+king to act in this capacity in all of them and on every occasion that
+he was compelled to delegate some of his priestly functions to others,
+either members of the royal family or high officials. In course of time
+certain individuals devoted themselves exclusively to these duties and
+became professional priests; but it is important to remember that at
+first it was the exclusive privilege of Horus, the reigning king, to
+intercede with Osiris, the dead king, on behalf of men, and that the
+earliest priesthood consisted of those individuals to whom he had
+delegated some of these duties.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion I should like to express in words what must be only too
+apparent to every reader of this statement. It claims to be nothing more
+than a contribution to the study of some of the most difficult problems
+in the history of human thought. For one so ill-equipped for a task of
+such a nature as I am to attempt it calls for a word of explanation. The
+clear light that recent research has shed upon the earliest literature
+in the world has done much to destroy the foundations upon which the
+theories propounded by scholars have been built up. It seemed to be
+worth while to attempt to read afresh the volu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>minous mass of old
+documents with the illumination of this new information.</p>
+
+<p>The other reason for making such an attempt is that almost every modern
+scholar who has discussed the matters at issue has assumed that the
+fashionable doctrine of the independent development of human beliefs and
+practices was a safe basis upon which to construct his theories. At best
+it is an unproven and reckless speculation. I am convinced it is utterly
+false. Holding such views I have attempted to read the evidence afresh.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>APPENDIX A.</h3>
+
+<p>On re-reading the discussion of the significance of the <i>ka</i> I realize
+that, in striving after brevity and conciseness&mdash;to keep the size of my
+statement within the limits of the <i>Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library</i>, generously elastic though it is&mdash;I have left the argument in a
+rather nebulous form.</p>
+
+<p>It must not be imagined that a concrete-minded people like the ancient
+Egyptians entertained highly abstract and ethereal ideas about "the
+soul". They recognized that all the expressions of consciousness and
+personality could cease during sleep; and at the same time the phenomena
+of dreams seemed to afford evidence that these absent elements of the
+individual's being were enjoying real experiences elsewhere. Thus there
+was an <i>alter ego</i>, identified by this matter-of-fact people with the
+twin (placenta) which was born with the child and was clearly concerned
+with its physical and intellectual nourishment&mdash;for it was obviously
+connected by its stalk to the embryo like a tree to its roots, and it
+seemed to be composed of blood, which was regarded as the vehicle of
+mind. But this intellectual "twin" kept pace in its growth with the
+physical body. When a statue was made to represent the latter the <i>ka</i>
+could dwell in the real body or the statue.</p>
+
+<p>The identification of the placenta with the moon helped the growth of
+the conception that this "birth-promoter" could not only bring about a
+re-birth in the life to come, but also facilitate a transference to the
+sky-world. The placenta had already been superintending the deceased's
+welfare upon earth and would continue to do so when he rejoined his <i>ka</i>
+in the sky world.</p>
+
+<p>The complexity of the conception is due to the fact that the simple
+early belief in "a double" was gradually elaborated, as one new idea
+after another became added to it, and rationalized to blend with the
+former complex in an increasingly involved synthesis. It was only when
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> elaborate scaffolding of material factors was cleared away that a
+more ethereal conception of "the soul" was sublimated.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>APPENDIX B.</h3>
+
+<p>I should like to emphasize the fact that my protest (on p. 63) was
+directed against the claim that the custom of offering food and drink to
+the dead was inspired <i>primarily</i> to prevent them from troubling the
+living. Its original purpose was to sustain and reanimate the dead; but,
+of course, when its real meaning was forgotten, it was explained in a
+great variety of ways by the people who made a practice of presenting
+offerings to the dead without really knowing why they did so.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Alan Gardiner himself has made a statement which casual readers
+(i.e., those who do not discriminate between the motive for the
+invention of a procedure and the reasons subsequently given for its
+continuance) might regard as a contradiction of my quotation from his
+writings on p. 62. Thus he says: "Any god could doubtless attack human
+beings, but savage and malicious deities, like Seth [Set], the murderer
+of Osiris, or Sakhmet, [Sekhet], the 'lady of pestilence' (<i>nb-t 'idw</i>),
+were doubtless most to be feared." [This attitude of the malignant
+goddesses is revealed in a most obtrusive form in the village deities of
+the Dravidians of Southern India.] "The dead were specially to be
+feared; nor was it only those dead who were unhappy or unburied that
+might torment the living, for the magician sometimes warns them that
+their tombs are endangered" (Article "Magic (Egyptian)," <i>Hastings'
+Encycl. Ethics and Religion</i>, p. 264).</p>
+
+<p>But it is important to bear in mind, as the same scholar has explained
+elsewhere ["Life and Death (Egyptian)," <i>Hastings' Encycl.</i>, p. 23]:
+"Nothing could be farther from the truth [than the statement that 'the
+funerary rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main
+precautionary measures serving to protect the living against the dead'];
+it is of fundamental importance to realize that the vast stores of
+wealth and thought expended by the Egyptians on their tombs&mdash;that wealth
+and that thought which created not only the pyramids, but also the
+practice of mummification and a very extensive funerary literature&mdash;were
+due to the anxiety of each member of the community with regard to his
+own individual future welfare, and not to feelings of respect, or fear,
+or duty felt towards the other dead."</p>
+
+<p>It was only in response to certain binding obligations that the living
+observed all those costly and troublesome rules which were believed to
+insure the welfare of the deceased. But this recognition of the primary
+and real purpose of the food offerings as sustenance for the dead or the
+gods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that there is
+widespread throughout the world a real fear of the dead and ghosts, and
+that in many places food-offerings are made for the specific purpose "of
+appeasing the fairies".</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me that offerings of milk and porridge are
+made at the stone monuments in Scotland, and children carry meal in
+their pockets to protect themselves from the fairies. For the dead went
+to Fairyland.</p>
+
+<p>Beliefs of a similar kind can be collected from most parts of the world:
+but the point I specially want to emphasize is that they are <i>secondary</i>
+rationalizations of a custom which originally had an utterly different
+significance.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>APPENDIX C.</h3>
+
+<p>Prof. Barton's statement (<i>supra</i>, p. 64) is typical of a widespread
+misapprehension, resulting from the confusion between sexual relations
+and the giving of life. At first primitive people did not realize that
+the manifestations of the sex instinct had anything whatever to do with
+reproduction. They were aware of the fact that women gave birth to
+children; and the organ concerned in this process was regarded as the
+giver of life, the creator. The apotheosis of these powers led to the
+conception of the first deity. But it was only secondarily that these
+life-giving attributes were brought into association with the sexual act
+and the masculine powers of fertilization. Much confusion has been
+created by those writers who see manifestations of the sexual factor and
+phallic ideas in every aspect of primitive religion, where in most cases
+only the power of life-giving plays a part.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Chapter_II" id="Chapter_II"></a><span class="smcap">Chapter II.</span></h2>
+
+<h3>DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS.<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a></h3>
+
+
+<p>An adequate account of the development of the dragon-legend would
+represent the history of the expression of mankind's aspirations and
+fears during the past fifty centuries and more. For the dragon was
+evolved along with civilization itself. The search for the elixir of
+life, to turn back the years from old age and confer the boon of
+immortality, has been the great driving force that compelled men to
+build up the material and the intellectual fabric of civilization. The
+dragon-legend is the history of that search which has been preserved by
+popular tradition: it has grown up and kept pace with the constant
+struggle to grasp the unattainable goal of men's desires; and the story
+has been constantly growing in complexity, as new incidents were drawn
+within its scope and confused with old incidents whose real meaning was
+forgotten or distorted. It has passed through all the phases with which
+the study of the spreading of rumours or the development of dreams has
+familiarized students of psychology. The simple original stories, which
+become blended and confused, their meaning distorted and reinterpreted
+by the rationalizing of incoherent incidents, are given the dramatic
+form with which the human mind invests all stories that make a strong
+appeal to its emotions, and then secondarily elaborated with a wealth of
+circumstantial detail. This is the history of popular legends and the
+development of rumours. But these phenomena are displayed in their most
+emphatic form in dreams.<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> In his waking state man restrains his
+roving fancies and exercises what Freud has called a "censorship" over
+the stream of his thoughts: but when he falls asleep, the "censor" dozes
+also; and free rein is given to his un<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>restrained fancies to make a
+hotch-potch of the most varied and unrelated incidents, and to create a
+fantastic mosaic built up from fragments of his actual experience, bound
+together by the cement of his aspirations and fears. The myth resembles
+the dream because it has developed without any consistent and effective
+censorship. The individual who tells one particular phase of the story
+may exert the controlling influence of his mind over the version he
+narrates: but as it is handed on from man to man and generation to
+generation the "censorship" also is constantly changing. This lack of
+unity of control implies that the development of the myth is not unlike
+the building-up of a dream-story. But the dragon-myth is vastly more
+complex than any dream, because mankind as a whole has taken a hand in
+the process of shaping it; and the number of centuries devoted to this
+work of elaboration has been far greater than the years spent by the
+average individual in accumulating the stuff of which most of his dreams
+have been made. But though the myth is enormously complex, so vast a
+mass of detailed evidence concerning every phase and every detail of its
+history has been preserved, both in the literature and the folk-lore of
+the world, that we are able to submit it to psychological analysis and
+determine the course of its development and the significance of every
+incident in its tortuous rambling.</p>
+
+<p>In instituting these comparisons between the development of myths and
+dreams, I should like to emphasize the fact that the interpretation of
+the <i>myth</i> proposed in these pages is almost diametrically opposed to
+that suggested by Freud, and pushed to a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> by his
+more reckless followers, and especially by Yung.</p>
+
+<p>The dragon has been described as "the most venerable symbol employed in
+ornamental art and the favourite and most highly decorative motif in
+artistic design". It has been the inspiration of much, if not most, of
+the world's great literature in every age and clime, and the nucleus
+around which a wealth of ethical symbolism has accumulated throughout
+the ages. The dragon-myth represents also the earliest doctrine or
+systematic theory of astronomy and meteorology.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of its romantic and chequered history the dragon has been
+identified with all of the gods and all of the demons of every religion.
+But it is most intimately associated with the earliest stratum of
+divinities, for it has been homologized with each of the members of the
+earliest Trinity, the Great Mother, the Water God, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> Warrior Sun
+God, both individually and collectively. To add to the complexities of
+the story, the dragon-slayer is also represented by the same deities,
+either individually or collectively; and the weapon with which the hero
+slays the dragon is also homologous both with him and his victim, for it
+is animated by him who wields it, and its powers of destruction make it
+a symbol of the same power of evil which it itself destroys.</p>
+
+<p>Such a fantastic paradox of contradictions has supplied the materials
+with which the fancies of men of every race and land, and every stage of
+knowledge and ignorance, have been playing for all these centuries. It
+is not surprising, therefore, that an endless series of variations of
+the story has been evolved, each decked out with topical allusions and
+distinctive embellishments. But throughout the complex tissue of this
+highly embroidered fabric the essential threads of the web and woof of
+its foundation can be detected with surprising constancy and regularity.</p>
+
+<p>Within the limits of such an account as this it is obvious that I can
+deal only with the main threads of the argument and leave the
+interesting details of the local embellishments until some other time.</p>
+
+<p>The fundamental element in the dragon's powers is the control of water.
+Both in its beneficent and destructive aspects water was regarded as
+animated by the dragon, who thus assumed the r&ocirc;le of Osiris or his enemy
+Set. But when the attributes of the Water God became confused with those
+of the Great Mother, and her evil avatar, the lioness (Sekhet) form of
+Hathor in Egypt, or in Babylonia the destructive Tiamat, became the
+symbol of disorder and chaos, the dragon became identified with her
+also.</p>
+
+<p>Similarly the third member of the Earliest Trinity also became the
+dragon. As the son and successor of the dead king Osiris the living king
+Horus became assimilated with him. When the belief became more and more
+insistent that the dead king had acquired the boon of immortality and
+was really alive, the distinction between him and the actually living
+king Horus became correspondingly minimized. This process of
+assimilation was advanced a further stage when the king became a god and
+was thus more closely identified with his father and predecessor. Hence
+Horus assumed many of the functions of Osiris; and amongst them those
+which in foreign lands contributed to making a dragon of the Water God.
+But if the distinction be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>tween Horus and Osiris became more and more
+attenuated with the lapse of time, the identification with his mother
+Hathor (Isis) was more complete still. For he took her place and assumed
+many of her attributes in the later versions of the great saga which is
+the nucleus of all the literature of mythology&mdash;I refer to the story of
+"The Destruction Of Mankind".</p>
+
+<p>The attributes of these three members of the Trinity, Hathor, Osiris,
+and Horus, thus became intimately linked the one with the other; and in
+Susa, where the earliest pictorial representation of a real dragon
+developed, it received concrete form (Fig. 1) as a monster compounded of
+the lioness of Hathor (Sekhet) with the falcon (or eagle) of Horus, but
+with the human attributes and water-controlling powers which originally
+belonged to Osiris. In some parts of Africa the earliest "dragon" was
+nothing more than Hathor's cow or the gazelle or antelope of Horus
+(Osiris) or of Set.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_007" id="Image_007"></a>
+<img src="images/image007.png" width="300" height="199" alt="Fig. 1.&mdash;Early Representation of a &quot;Dragon&quot;
+Compounded of the Forepart of an Eagle and the Hindpart of a
+Lion&mdash;(from an Archaic Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier)." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 1.&mdash;Early Representation of a &quot;Dragon&quot;
+Compounded of the Forepart of an Eagle and the Hindpart of a
+Lion&mdash;(from an Archaic Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier).</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_008" id="Image_008"></a>
+<img src="images/image008.png" width="300" height="179" alt="Fig. 2.&mdash;The Earliest Babylonian Conception of the
+Dragon Tiamat&mdash;(from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after
+L.&nbsp;W. King)." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 2.&mdash;The Earliest Babylonian Conception of the
+Dragon Tiamat&mdash;(from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after
+L.&nbsp;W. King).</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But if the dragon was compounded of all three deities, who was the
+slayer of the evil dragon?</p>
+
+<p>The story of the dragon-conflict is really a recital of Horus's vendetta
+against Set, intimately blended and confused with different versions of
+"The Destruction of Mankind".<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> The commonplace incidents of the
+originally prosaic stories were distorted into an almost unrecognizable
+form, then secondarily elaborated without any attention to their
+original meaning, but with a wealth of circumstantial embellishment, in
+accordance with the usual methods of the human mind that I have already
+mentioned. The history of the legend is in fact the most complete,
+because it is the oldest and the most widespread, illustration of those
+instinctive tendencies of the human spirit to bridge the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> gaps in its
+disjointed experience, and to link together in a kind of mental mosaic
+the otherwise isolated incidents in the facts of daily life and the
+rumours and traditions that have been handed down from the
+story-teller's predecessors.</p>
+
+<p>In the "Destruction of Mankind," which I shall discuss more fully in the
+following pages (p. 109 <i>et seq.</i>), Hathor does the slaying: in the
+later stories Horus takes his mother's place and earns his spurs as the
+Warrior Sun-god:<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> hence confusion was inevitably introduced between
+the enemies of Re, the original victims in the legend, and Horus's
+traditional enemies, the followers of Set. Against the latter it was
+Osiris himself who fought originally; and in many of the non-Egyptian
+variants of the legend it is the rain-god himself who is the warrior.</p>
+
+<p>Hence all three members of the Trinity were identified, not only with
+the dragon, but also with the hero who was the dragon-slayer.</p>
+
+<p>But the weapon used by the latter was also animated by the same Trinity,
+and in fact identified with them. In the Saga of the Winged Disk, Horus
+assumed the form of the sun equipped with the wings of his own falcon
+and the fire-spitting ur&aelig;us serpents. Flying down from heaven in this
+form he was at the same time the god and the god's weapon. As a fiery
+bolt from heaven he slew the enemies of Re, who were now identified with
+his own personal foes, the followers of Set. But in the earlier versions
+of the myth (i.e. the "Destruction of Mankind"), it was Hathor who was
+the "Eye of Re" and descended from heaven to destroy mankind with fire;
+she also was the vulture (Mut); and in the earliest version she did the
+slaughter with a knife or an axe with which she was animistically
+identified.</p>
+
+<p>But Osiris also was the weapon of destruction, both in the form of the
+flood (for he was the personification of the river) and the rain-storms
+from heaven. But he was also an instrument for vanquishing the demon,
+when the intoxicating beer or the sedative drink (the potency of which
+was due to the indwelling spirit of the god) was the chosen means of
+overcoming the dragon.</p>
+
+<p>This, in brief, is the framework of the dragon-story. The early Trinity
+as the hero, armed with the Trinity as weapon, slays the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> dragon,
+which again is the same Trinity. With its illimitable possibilities for
+dramatic development and fantastic embellishment with incident and
+ethical symbolism, this theme has provided countless thousands of
+story-tellers with the skeleton which they clothed with the living flesh
+of their stories, representing not merely the earliest theories of
+astronomy and meteorology, but all the emotional conflicts of daily
+life, the struggle between light and darkness, heat and cold, right and
+wrong, justice and injustice, prosperity and adversity, wealth and
+poverty. The whole gamut of human strivings and emotions was drawn into
+the legend until it became the great epic of the human spirit and the
+main theme that has appealed to the interest of all mankind in every
+age.</p>
+
+<p>An ancient Chinese philosopher, Wang Fu, writing in the time of the Han
+Dynasty, enumerates the "nine resemblances" of the dragon. "His horns
+resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes those of a
+demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam, his scales
+those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a
+tiger, his ears those of a cow."<a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> But this list includes only a
+small minority of the menagerie of diverse creatures which at one time
+or another have contributed their quota to this truly astounding
+hotchpotch.</p>
+
+<p>This composite wonder-beast ranges from Western Europe to the Far East
+of Asia, and as we shall see, also even across the Pacific to America.
+Although in the different localities a great number of most varied
+ingredients enter into its composition, in most places where the dragon
+occurs the substratum of its anatomy consists of a serpent or a
+crocodile, usually with the scales of a fish for covering, and the feet
+and wings, and sometimes also the head, of an eagle, falcon, or hawk,
+and the forelimbs and sometimes the head of a lion. An association of
+anatomical features of so unnatural and arbitrary a nature can only mean
+that all dragons are the progeny of the same ultimate ancestors.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_009" id="Image_009"></a>
+<img src="images/image009.png" width="399" height="267" alt="Fig. 7.&mdash;A Medi&aelig;val Picture of a Chinese Dragon upon
+its cloud (After the late Professor W. Anderson)" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 7.&mdash;A Medi&aelig;val Picture of a Chinese Dragon upon
+its cloud (After the late Professor W. Anderson)</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_010" id="Image_010"></a>
+<img src="images/image010.png" width="400" height="341" alt="Fig. 8.&mdash;A Chinese Dragon (After de Groot)" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 8.&mdash;A Chinese Dragon (After de Groot)</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_011" id="Image_011"></a>
+<img src="images/image011.png" width="401" height="292" alt="Fig. 9.&mdash;Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 9.&mdash;Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_012" id="Image_012"></a>
+<img src="images/image012.png" width="189" height="400" alt="Fig. 10.&mdash;Babylonian Weather God" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 10.&mdash;Babylonian Weather God</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>But it is not merely a case of structural or anatomical similarity, but
+also of physiological identity, that clinches the proof of the
+derivation of this fantastic brood from the same parents. Wherever the
+dragon is found, it displays a special partiality for water. It controls
+the rivers or seas, dwells in pools or wells, or in the clouds on the
+tops<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> of mountains, regulates the tides, the flow of streams, or the
+rainfall, and is associated with thunder and lightning. Its home is a
+mansion at the bottom of the sea, where it guards vast treasures,
+usually pearls, but also gold and precious stones. In other instances
+the dwelling is upon the top of a high mountain; and the dragon's breath
+forms the rain-clouds. It emits thunder and lightning. Eating the
+dragon's heart enables the diner to acquire the knowledge stored in this
+"organ of the mind" so that he can understand the language of birds, and
+in fact of all the creatures that have contributed to the making of a
+dragon.</p>
+
+<p>It should not be necessary to rebut the numerous attempts that have been
+made to explain the dragon-myth as a story relating to extinct monsters.
+Such fantastic claims can be made only by writers devoid of any
+knowledge of pal&aelig;ontology or of the distinctive features of the dragon
+and its history. But when the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian
+Antiquities in the British Museum, in a book that is not intended to be
+humorous,<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> seriously claims Dr. Andrews' discovery of a gigantic
+fossil snake as "proof" of the former existence of "the great
+serpent-devil &#256;pep," it is time to protest.</p>
+
+<p>Those who attempt to derive the dragon from such living creatures as
+lizards like <i>Draco volans</i> or <i>Moloch horridus</i><a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> ignore the
+evidence of the composite and unnatural features of the monsters.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever be the origin of the Northern dragon, the myths, when they
+first became articulate for us, show him to be in all essentials the
+same as that of the South and East. He is a power of evil, guardian of
+hoards, the greedy withholder of good things from men; and the slaying
+of a dragon is the crowning achievement of heroes&mdash;of Siegmund, of
+Beowulf, of Sigurd, of Arthur, of Tristam&mdash;even of Lancelot, the <i>beau
+ideal</i> of medi&aelig;val chivalry" (<i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica</i>, vol. viii., p.
+467). But if in the West the dragon is usually a "power of evil," in the
+far East he is equally emphatically a symbol of beneficence. He is
+identified with emperors and kings; he is the son of heaven the bestower
+of all bounties, not merely to mankind directly, but also to the earth
+as well.</p>
+
+<p>Even in our country his symbolism is not always wholly malevolent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+
+otherwise&mdash;if for the moment we shut our eyes to the history of the
+development of heraldic ornament&mdash;dragons would hardly figure as the
+supporters of the arms of the City of London, and as the symbol of many
+of our aristocratic families, among which the Royal House of Tudor is
+included. It is only a few years since the Red Dragon of Cadwallader was
+added as an additional badge to the achievement of the Prince of Wales.
+But, "though a common ensign in war, both in the East and the West, as
+an ecclesiastical emblem his opposite qualities have remained
+consistently until the present day. Whenever the dragon is represented,
+it symbolizes the power of evil, the devil and his works. Hell in
+medi&aelig;val art is a dragon with gaping jaws, belching fire."</p>
+
+<p>And in the East the dragon's reputation is not always blameless. For it
+figures in some disreputable incidents and does not escape the sort of
+punishment that tradition metes out to his European cousins.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> An elaboration of a Lecture delivered in the John Rylands
+Library on 8 November, 1916.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> In his lecture, "Dreams and Primitive Culture," delivered
+at the John Rylands Library on 10 April, 1918, Dr. Rivers has expounded
+the principles of dream-development.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> <i>Vide infra</i>, p. 109 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> Hence soldiers killed in battle and women dying in
+childbirth receive special consideration in the exclusive heaven of
+(Osiris's) Horus's Indian and American representatives, Indra and
+Tlaloc.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> M.&nbsp;W. de Visser, "The Dragon in China and Japan,"
+<i>Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te
+Amsterdam</i>, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Deel XIII, No. 2, 1913, p. 70.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> E.&nbsp;A. Wallis Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," 1904,
+vol. i, p. 11</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> Gould's "Mythical Monsters," 1886.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Dragon in America and Eastern Asia.</h3>
+
+<p>In the early centuries of the Christian era, and probably also even for
+two or three hundred years earlier still, the leaven of the ancient
+civilizations of the Old World was at work in Mexico, Central America
+and Peru. The most obtrusive influences that were brought to bear,
+especially in the area from Yucatan to Mexico, were inspired by the
+Cambodian and Indonesian modifications of Indian beliefs and practices.
+The god who was most often depicted upon the ancient Maya and Aztec
+codices was the Indian rain-god Indra, who in America was provided with
+the head of the Indian elephant<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> (i.e. seems to have been confused
+with the Indian Ganesa) and given other attributes more suggestive of
+the Dravidian N&acirc;ga than his enemy, the Aryan deity. In other words the
+character of the American god, known as <i>Chac</i> by the Maya people and as
+<i>Tlaloc</i> by the Aztecs, is an interesting illustration of the effects of
+such a mixture of cultures as Dr. Rivers has studied in Melanesia.<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a>
+Not only does the elephant-headed god in America represent a blend of
+the two great Indian rain-gods which in the Old World are mortal
+enemies, the one of the other (partly for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the political reason that the
+Dravidians and Aryans were rival and hostile peoples), but all the
+traits of each deity, even those depicting the old Aryan conception of
+their deadly combat, are reproduced in America under circumstances which
+reveal an ignorance on the part of the artists of the significance of
+the paradoxical contradictions they are representing. But even many
+incidents in the early history of the Vedic gods, which were due to
+arbitrary circumstances in the growth of the legends, reappear in
+America. To cite one instance (out of scores which might be quoted), in
+the Vedic story Indra assumed many of the attributes of the god Soma. In
+America the name of the god of rain and thunder, the Mexican Indra, is
+<i>Tlaloc</i>, which is generally translated "pulque of the earth," from
+<i>tlal[l]i</i>, "earth," and <i>oc[tli]</i>, "pulque, a fermented drink (like the
+Indian drink <i>soma</i>) made from the juice of the agave".<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a></p>
+
+<p>The so-called "long-nosed god" (the elephant-headed rain-god) has been
+given the non-committal designation "god B," by Schellhas.<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a></p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_013" id="Image_013"></a>
+<img src="images/image013.png" width="400" height="379" alt="Fig. 11.&mdash;Reproduction of a Picture in the Maya Codex
+Troano representing the Rain-god Chac treading upon the Serpent&#39;s
+head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the god is
+pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-goddess stands upon the Serpent&#39;s
+tail." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 11.&mdash;Reproduction of a Picture in the Maya Codex
+Troano representing the Rain-god Chac treading upon the Serpent&#39;s
+head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the god is
+pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-goddess stands upon the Serpent&#39;s
+tail.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I reproduce here a remarkable drawing (Fig. 11) from the Codex Troano,
+in which this god, whom the Maya people called <i>Chac</i>, is shown pouring
+the rain out of a water-jar (just as the deities of Babylonia and India
+are often represented), and putting his foot upon the head of a serpent,
+who is preventing the rain from reaching the earth. Here we find
+depicted with childlike simplicity and directness the Vedic conception
+of Indra overcoming the demon Vritra. Stempell describes this scene as
+"the elephant-headed god B standing upon the head of a serpent";<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a>
+while Seler, who claims that god B is a tortoise, explains it as the
+serpent forming a footstool for the rain-god.<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+Codex Cortes the same theme is depicted in another way, which is truer
+to the Indian conception of Vritra, as "the restrainer"<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> (Fig. 12).</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_014" id="Image_014"></a>
+<img src="images/image014.png" width="346" height="400" alt="Fig. 12.&mdash;Another representation of the
+Elephant-headed Rain god. He is holding thunderbolts, conventionalised
+in a hand-like form. The Serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the
+rain-waters." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 12.&mdash;Another representation of the
+Elephant-headed Rain god. He is holding thunderbolts, conventionalised
+in a hand-like form. The Serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the
+rain-waters.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The serpent (the American rattlesnake) restrains the water by coiling
+itself into a sac to hold up the rain and so prevent it from reaching
+the earth. In the various American codices this episode is depicted in
+as great a variety of forms as the Vedic poets of India described when
+they sang of the exploits of Indra. The Maya Chac is, in fact, Indra
+transferred to the other side of the Pacific and there only thinly
+disguised by a veneer of American stylistic design.</p>
+
+<p>But the Aztec god Tlaloc is merely the Chac of the Maya people
+transferred to Mexico. Schellhas declares that the "god B," the "most
+common figure in the codices," is a "universal deity to whom the most
+varied elements, natural phenomena, and activities are subject". "Many
+authorities consider God B to represent Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent,
+whose Aztec equivalent is Quetzalcoatl. Others identify him with
+Itzamna, the Serpent God of the East, or with Chac, the Rain God of the
+four quarters and the equivalent of Tlaloc of the Mexicans."<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a></p>
+
+<p>From the point of view of its Indian analogies these confusions are
+peculiarly significant, for the same phenomena are found in India. The
+snake and the dragon can be either the rain-god of the East or the enemy
+of the rain-god; either the dragon-slayer or the evil dragon who has to
+be slain. The Indian word <i>N&acirc;ga</i>, which is applied to the beneficent god
+or king identified with the cobra, can also mean "elephant," and this
+double significance probably played a part in the confusion of the
+deities in America.</p>
+
+<p>In the Dresden Codex the elephant-headed god is represented in one place
+grasping a serpent, in another issuing from a serpent's mouth, and again
+as an actual serpent (Fig. 13). Turning next to the attributes of these
+American gods we find that they reproduce with amazing precision those
+of Indra. Not only were they the divinities who controlled rain,
+thunder, lightning, and vegetation, but they also carried axes and
+thunderbolts (Fig. 13) like their homologues in the Old World. Like
+Indra, Tlaloc was intimately associated with the East and with the tops
+of mountains, where he had a special heaven, reserved for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> warriors who
+fell in battle and women who died in childbirth. As a water-god also he
+presided over the souls of the drowned and those who in life suffered
+from dropsical affections. Indra also specialized in the same branch of
+medicine.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, if one compares the account of Tlaloc's attributes and
+achievements, such as is given in Mr. Joyce's "Mexican Arch&aelig;ology" or
+Professor Seler's monograph on the "Codex Vaticanus," with Professor
+Hopkins's summary of Indra's character ("Religions of India") the
+identity is so exact, even in the most arbitrary traits and confusions
+with other deities' peculiarities, that it becomes impossible for any
+serious investigator to refuse to admit that Tlaloc and Chac are merely
+American forms of Indra. Even so fantastic a practice as the
+representation of the American rain-god's face as composed of contorted
+snakes<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> finds its analogy in Siam, where in relatively recent times
+this curious device was still being used by artists.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a></p>
+
+<p>"As the god of fertility maize belonged to him [Tlaloc], though not
+altogether by right, for according to one legend he stole it after it
+had been discovered by other gods concealed in the heart of a
+mountain."<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> Indra also obtained soma from the mountain by similar
+means.<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the ancient civilization of America one of the most prominent deities
+was called the "Feathered Serpent," in the Maya language, Kukulkan,
+Quich&eacute; Gukumatz, Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the Pueblo "Mother of Waters".
+Throughout a very extensive part of America the snake, like the Indian
+N&acirc;ga, is the emblem of rain, clouds, thunder and lightning. But it is
+essentially and pre-eminently the symbol of rain; and the god who
+controls the rain, Chac of the Mayas, Tlaloc of the Aztecs, carried the
+axe and the thunderbolt like his homologues and prototypes in the Old
+World. In America also we find reproduced in full, not only the legends
+of the antagonism between the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> thunder-bird and the serpent, but also
+the identification of these two rivals in one composite monster, which,
+as I have already mentioned, is seen in the winged disks, both in the
+Old World and the New.<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> Hardly any incident in the history of the
+Egyptian falcon or the thunder-birds of Babylonia, Greece or India,
+fails to reappear in America and find pictorial expression in the Maya
+and Aztec codices.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_015" id="Image_015"></a>
+<img src="images/image015.png" width="400" height="622" alt="Fig. 13.
+A photographic reproduction of the 36th page of the Dresden Maya Codex.
+Of the three pictures in the top row one represents the elephant-headed
+god Chac with a snake&#39;s body. He is pouring out rain. The central
+picture represents the lightning animal carrying fire down from heaven
+to earth. On the right Chac is shown in human guise carrying
+thunder-weapons in the form of burning torches.
+In the second row a goddess sits in the rain: her head is prolonged into
+that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows
+Chac in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The
+third illustration depicts the familiar conflict between the vulture and
+serpent. In the third row Chac is seen with his axe: in the central picture he
+is standing in the water looking up towards a rain-cloud; and on the
+right he is shown sitting in a hut resting from his labours." title="" />
+
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 13.</p>
+
+<p>A photographic reproduction of the 36th page of the Dresden Maya Codex.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three pictures in the top row one represents the elephant-headed
+god Chac with a snake&#39;s body. He is pouring out rain. The central
+picture represents the lightning animal carrying fire down from heaven
+to earth. On the right Chac is shown in human guise carrying
+thunder-weapons in the form of burning torches.</p>
+
+<p>In the second row a goddess sits in the rain: her head is prolonged into
+that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows
+Chac in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The
+third illustration depicts the familiar conflict between the vulture and
+serpent.</p>
+
+<p>In the third row Chac is seen with his axe: in the central picture he
+is standing in the water looking up towards a rain-cloud; and on the
+right he is shown sitting in a hut resting from his labours.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What makes America such a rich storehouse of historical data is the fact
+that it is stretched across the world almost from pole to pole; and for
+many centuries the jetsam and flotsam swept on to this vast strand has
+made it a museum of the cultural history of the Old World, much of which
+would have been lost for ever if America had not saved it. But a record
+preserved in this manner is necessarily in a highly confused state. For
+essentially the same materials reached America in manifold forms. The
+original immigrants into America brought from North-Eastern Asia such
+cultural equipment as had reached the area east of the Yenesei at the
+time when Europe was in the Neolithic phase of culture. Then when
+ancient mariners began to coast along the Eastern Asiatic littoral and
+make their way to America by the Aleutian route there was a further
+infiltration of new ideas. But when more venturesome sailors began to
+navigate the open seas and exploit Polynesia, for centuries<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a> there
+was a more or less constant influx of customs and beliefs, which were
+drawn from Egypt and Babylonia, from the Mediterranean and East Africa,
+from India and Indonesia, China and Japan, Cambodia and Oceania. One and
+the same fundamental idea, such as the attributes of the serpent as a
+water-god, reached America in an infinite variety of guises, Egyptian,
+Babylonian, Indian, Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese, and from this
+amazing jumble of confusion the local priesthood of Central America
+built up a system of beliefs which is distinctively American, though
+most of the ingredients and the principles of synthetic composition were
+borrowed from the Old World.</p>
+
+<p>Every possible phase of the early history of the dragon-story and all
+the ingredients which in the Old World went to the making<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> of it have
+been preserved in American pictures and legends in a bewildering variety
+of forms and with an amazing luxuriance of complicated symbolism and
+picturesque ingenuity. In America, as in India and Eastern Asia, the
+power controlling water was identified both with a serpent (which in the
+New World, as in the Old, was often equipped with such inappropriate and
+arbitrary appendages, as wings, horns and crests) and a god, who was
+either associated or confused with an elephant. Now many of the
+attributes of these gods, as personifications of the life-giving powers
+of water, are identical with those of the Babylonian god Ea and the
+Egyptian Osiris, and their reputations as warriors with the respective
+sons and representatives, Marduk and Horus. The composite animal of
+Ea-Marduk, the "sea-goat" (the Capricornus of the Zodiac), was also the
+vehicle of Varuna in India whose relationship to Indra was in some
+respects analogous to that of Ea to Marduk in Babylonia.<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> The Indian
+"sea-goat" or <i>Makara</i> was in fact intimately associated both with
+Varuna and with Indra. This monster assumed a great variety of forms,
+such as the crocodile, the dolphin, the sea-serpent or dragon, or
+combinations of the heads of different animals with a fish's body (Fig.
+14). Amongst these we find an elephant-headed form of the <i>makara</i>,
+which was adopted as far east as Indonesia and as far west as Scotland.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_016" id="Image_016"></a>
+<img src="images/image016.png" width="400" height="600" alt="Fig. 14. A. The so-called &quot;sea-goat&quot; of Babylonia, a creature compounded of the
+antelope and fish of Ea. B. The &quot;sea-goat&quot; as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk. C to K&mdash;a series of varieties of the makara from the Buddhist Rails at
+Buddha Gaya and Mathura, circa 70 b.c.-70 a.d., after
+Cunningham (&quot;Arch&aelig;ological Survey of India,&quot; Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX
+and XXIX). L. The makara as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood. It
+is not difficult to understand how, in the course of the easterly
+diffusion of culture, such a picture should develop into the Chinese
+Dragon or the American Elephant-headed God." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 14.</p>
+
+<p>A. The so-called &quot;sea-goat&quot; of Babylonia, a creature compounded of the
+antelope and fish of Ea.</p>
+
+<p>B. The &quot;sea-goat&quot; as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.</p>
+
+<p>C to K&mdash;a series of varieties of the makara from the Buddhist Rails at
+Buddha Gaya and Mathura, circa 70 b.c.-70 a.d., after
+Cunningham (&quot;Arch&aelig;ological Survey of India,&quot; Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX
+and XXIX).</p>
+
+<p>L. The makara as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood. It
+is not difficult to understand how, in the course of the easterly
+diffusion of culture, such a picture should develop into the Chinese
+Dragon or the American Elephant-headed God.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>I have already called attention<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> to the part played by the <i>makara</i>
+in determining the development of the form of the elephant-headed god in
+America. Another form of the <i>makara</i> is described in the following
+American legend, which is interesting also as a mutilated version of the
+original dragon-story of the Old World.</p>
+
+<p>In 1912 Hern&aacute;ndez translated and published a Maya manuscript<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> which
+had been written out in Spanish characters in the early days<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> of the
+conquest of the Americas, but had been overlooked until six years ago.
+It is an account of the creation, and includes the following passages:
+"All at once came the water [? rain] after the dragon was carried away.
+The heaven was broken up; it fell upon the earth; and they say that
+<i>Cantul-ti-ku</i> (four gods), the four Baccab, were those who destroyed
+it.... 'The whole world', said <i>Ah-uuc-chek-nale</i> (he who seven times
+makes fruitful), 'proceeded from the seven bosoms of the earth.' And he
+descended to make fruitful <i>Itzam-kab-uin</i> (the female whale with
+alligator-feet), when he came down from the central angle of the
+heavenly region" (p. 171).</p>
+
+<p>Hern&aacute;ndez adds that "the old fishermen of Yucatan still call the whale
+<i>Itzam</i>: this explains the name of <i>Itzaes</i>, by which the Mayas were
+known before the founding of Mayapan".</p>
+
+<p>The close analogy to the Indra-story is suggested by the phrase
+describing the coming of the water "after the dragon was carried away".
+Moreover, the Indian sea-elephant <i>makara</i>, which was confused in the
+Old World with the dolphin of Aphrodite, and was sometimes also regarded
+as a crocodile, naturally suggests that the "female whale with the
+alligator-feet" was only an American version of the old Indian legend.</p>
+
+<p>All this serves, not only to corroborate the inferences drawn from the
+other sources of information which I have already indicated, but also to
+suggest that, in addition to borrowing the chief divinities of their
+pantheon from India, the Maya people's original name was derived from
+the same mythology.<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is of considerable interest and importance to note that in the
+earliest dated example of Maya workmanship (from Tuxtla, in the Vera
+Cruz State of Mexico), for which Spinden assigns a tentative date of 235
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, an unmistakable elephant figures among the four
+hieroglyphs which Spinden reproduces (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 171). A similar
+hieroglyphic sign is found in the Chinese records of the Early Chow
+Dynasty (John Ross, "The Origin of the Chinese People," 1916, P. 152).</p>
+
+<p>The use of the numerals four and seven in the narrative translated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> by
+Hern&aacute;ndez, as in so many other American documents, is itself, as Mrs.
+Zelia Nuttall has so conclusively demonstrated,<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> a most striking and
+conclusive demonstration of the link with the Old World.</p>
+
+<p>Indra was not the only Indian god who was transferred to America, for
+all the associated deities, with the characteristic stories of their
+exploits,<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> are also found depicted with childlike directness of
+incident, but amazingly luxuriant artistic phantasy, in the Maya and
+Aztec codices.</p>
+
+<p>We find scattered throughout the islands of the Pacific the familiar
+stories of the dragon. One mentioned by the Bishop of Wellington refers
+to a New Zealand dragon with jaws like a crocodile's, which spouted
+water like a whale. It lived in a fresh-water lake.<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> In the same
+number of the same <i>Journal</i> Sir George Grey gives extracts from a Maori
+legend of the dragon, which he compares with corresponding passages from
+Spenser's "Faery Queen". "Their strict verbal and poetical conformity
+with the New Zealand legends are such as at first to lead to the
+impression either that Spenser must have stolen his images and language
+from the New Zealand poets, or that they must have acted unfairly by the
+English bard" (p. 362). The Maori legend describes the dragon as "in
+size large as a monstrous whale, in shape like a hideous lizard; for in
+its huge head, its limbs, its tail, its scales, its tough skin, its
+sharp spines, yes, in all these it resembled a lizard" (p. 364).</p>
+
+<p>Now the attributes of the Chinese and Japanese dragon as the controller
+of rain, thunder and lightning are identical with those of the American
+elephant-headed god. It also is associated with the East and with the
+tops of mountains. It is identified with the Indian N&acirc;ga, but the
+conflict involved in this identification is less obtrusive than it is
+either in America or in India. In Dravidian India the rulers and the
+gods are identified with the serpent: but among the Aryans, who were
+hostile to the Dravidians, the rain-god is the enemy of the N&acirc;ga. In
+America the confusion becomes more pronounced because Tlaloc (Chac)
+represents both Indra and his enemy the serpent. The representation in
+the codices of his conflict with the serpent is merely a tra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>dition
+which the Maya and Aztec scribes followed, apparently without
+understanding its meaning.</p>
+
+<p>In China and Japan the Indra-episode plays a much less prominent part,
+for the dragon is, like the Indian N&acirc;ga, a beneficent creature, which
+approximates more nearly to the Babylonian Ea or the Egyptian Osiris. It
+is not only the controller of water, but the impersonation of water and
+its life-giving powers: it is identified with the emperor, with his
+standard, with the sky, and with all the powers that give, maintain, and
+prolong life and guard against all kinds of danger to life. In other
+words, it is the bringer of good luck, the rejuvenator of mankind, the
+giver of immortality.</p>
+
+<p>But if the physiological functions of the dragon of the Far East can
+thus be assimilated to those of the Indian N&acirc;ga and the Babylonian and
+Egyptian Water God, who is also the king, anatomically he is usually
+represented in a form which can only be regarded as the Babylonian
+composite monster, as a rule stripped of his wings, though not of his
+avian feet.</p>
+
+<p>In America we find preserved in the legends of the Indians an accurate
+and unmistakable description of the Japanese dragon (which is mainly
+Chinese in origin). Even Spinden, who "does not care to dignify by
+refutation the numerous empty theories of ethnic connections between
+Central America" [and in fact America as a whole] "and the Old World,"
+makes the following statement (in the course of a discussion of the
+myths relating to horned snakes in California): "a similar monster,
+possessing antlers, and sometimes wings, is also very common in Algonkin
+and Iroquois legends, although rare in art. As a rule the horned serpent
+is a water spirit and an enemy of the thunder bird. Among the Pueblo
+Indians the horned snake seems to have considerable prestige in
+religious belief.... It lives in the water or in the sky and is
+connected with rain or lightning."<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thus we find stories of a dragon equipped with those distinctive tokens
+of Chinese origin, the deer's antlers; and along with it a snake with
+less specialized horns suggesting the Cerastes of Egypt and Babylonia. A
+horned viper distantly akin to the Cerastes of the Old World does occur
+in California; but its "horns" are so insignificant as to make it highly
+improbable that they could have been in any way responsible for the
+obtrusive r&ocirc;le played by horns in these widespread<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> American stories.
+But the proof of the foreign origin of these stories is established by
+the horned serpent's achievements.</p>
+
+<p>It "lives in the water or the sky" like its homologue in the Old World,
+and it is "a water spirit". Now neither the Cobra nor the Cerastes is
+actually a water serpent. Their achievements in the myths therefore have
+no possible relationship with the natural habits of the real snakes.
+They are purely arbitrary attributes which they have acquired as the
+result of a peculiar and fortuitous series of historical incidents.</p>
+
+<p>It is therefore utterly inconceivable and in the highest degree
+improbable that this long chain of chance circumstances should have
+happened a second time in America, and have been responsible for the
+creation of the same bizarre story in reference to one of the rarer
+American snakes of a localized distribution, whose horns are mere
+vestiges, which no one but a trained morphologist is likely to have
+noticed or recognized as such.</p>
+
+<p>But the American horned serpent, like its Babylonian and Indian
+homologues, is also the enemy of the thunder bird. Here is a further
+corroboration of the transmission to America of ideas which were the
+chance result of certain historical events in the Old World, which I
+have mentioned in this lecture.</p>
+
+<p>In the figure on page 94 I reproduce a remarkable drawing of an American
+dragon. If the Algonkin Indians had not preserved legends of a winged
+serpent equipped with deer's antlers, no value could be assigned to this
+sketch: but as we know that this particular tribe retains the legend of
+just such a wonder-beast, we are justified in treating this drawing as
+something more than a jest.</p>
+
+<p>"Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. John Criley as occurring near Ava,
+Jackson County, Illinois. The outlines of the characters observed by him
+were drawn from memory and submitted to Mr. Charles S. Mason, of Toledo,
+Ohio, through whom they were furnished to the Bureau of Ethnology.
+Little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of such drawing, but
+from the general appearance of the sketches the originals of which they
+are copies were probably made by one of the middle Algonquin tribes of
+Indians.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The 'Piasa' rock, as it is generally designated, was referred to by the
+missionary explorer Marquette in 1675. Its situation was immediately
+above the city of Alton, Illinois."</p>
+
+<p>Marquette's remarks are translated by Dr. Francis Parkman as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"On the flat face of a high rock were painted, in red, black, and green,
+a pair of monsters, each 'as large as a calf, with horns like a deer,
+red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression of
+countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body covered
+with scales; and the tail so long that it passes entirely round the
+body, over the head, and between the legs, ending like that of a fish.'"</p>
+
+<p>Another version, by Davidson and Struve, of the discovery of the
+petroglyph is as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Again they (Joliet and Marquette) were floating on the broad bosom of
+the unknown stream. Passing the mouth of the Illinois, they soon fell
+into the shadow of a tall promontory, and with great astonishment beheld
+the representation of two monsters painted on its lofty limestone front.
+According to Marquette, each of these frightful figures had the face of
+a man, the horns of a deer, the beard of a tiger, and the tail of a fish
+so long that it passed around the body, over the head, and between the
+legs. It was an object of Indian worship and greatly impressed the mind
+of the pious missionary with the necessity of substituting for this
+monstrous idolatry the worship of the true God."</p>
+
+<p>A footnote connected with the foregoing quotation gives the following
+description of the same rock:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Near the mouth of the Piasa creek, on the bluff, there is a smooth rock
+in a cavernous cleft, under an overhanging cliff, on whose face 50 feet
+from the base, are painted some ancient pictures or hieroglyphics, of
+great interest to the curious. They are placed in a horizontal line from
+east to west, representing men, plants and animals. The paintings,
+though protected from dampness and storms, are in great part destroyed,
+marred by portions of the rock becoming detached and falling down."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. McAdams, of Alton, Illinois, says, "The name Piasa is Indian and
+signifies, in the Illini, the bird which devours men". He furnishes a
+spirited pen-and-ink sketch, 12 by 15 inches in size and purporting to
+represent the ancient painting described by Marquette.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> On the picture
+is inscribed the following in ink: "Made by Wm. Dennis, April 3rd,
+1825". The date is in both letters and figures. On the top of the
+picture in large letters are the two words, "FLYING DRAGON". This
+picture, which has been kept in the old Gilham family of Madison county
+and bears the evidence of its age, is reproduced as Fig. 3.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_017" id="Image_017"></a>
+<img src="images/image017.png" width="401" height="238" alt="Fig. 3.&mdash;Wm. Dennis&#39;s Drawing of the &quot;Flying Dragon&quot;
+Depicted on the Rocks at Piasa, Illinois." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 3.&mdash;Wm. Dennis&#39;s Drawing of the &quot;Flying Dragon&quot;
+Depicted on the Rocks at Piasa, Illinois.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He also publishes another representation with the following remarks:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"One of the most satisfactory pictures of the Piasa we have ever seen is
+in an old German publication entitled 'The Valley of the Mississippi
+Illustrated. Eighty illustrations from Nature, by H. Lewis, from the
+Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico,' published about the year
+1839 by Arenz &amp; Co., Dusseldorf, Germany. One of the large full-page
+plates in this work gives a fine view of the bluff at Alton, with the
+figure of the Piasa on the face of the rock. It is represented to have
+been taken on the spot by artists from Germany.... In the German picture
+there is shown just behind the rather dim outlines of the second face a
+ragged crevice, as though of a fracture. Part of the bluff's face might
+have fallen and thus nearly destroyed one of the monsters, for in later
+years writers speak of but one figure. The whole face of the bluff was
+quarried away in 1846-47."</p>
+
+<p>The close agreement of this account with that of the Chinese and
+Japanese dragon at once arrests attention. The anatomical peculiarities
+are so extraordinary that if P&egrave;re Marquette's account is trustworthy
+there is no longer any room for doubt of the Chinese or Japanese
+derivation of this composite creature. If the account is not accepted we
+will be driven, not only to attribute to the pious seventeenth-century
+missionary serious dishonesty or culpable gullibility, but also to
+credit him with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> a remarkably precise knowledge of Mongolian arch&aelig;ology.
+When Algonkin legends are recalled, however, I think we are bound to
+accept the missionary's account as substantially accurate.</p>
+
+<p>Minns claims that representations of the dragon are unknown in China
+before the Han dynasty. But the legend of the dragon is much more
+ancient. The evidence has been given in full by de Visser.<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a></p>
+
+<p>He tells us that the earliest reference is found in the <i>Yih King</i>, and
+shows that the dragon was "a water animal akin to the snake, which
+[used] to sleep in pools during winter and arises in the spring." "It is
+the god of thunder, who brings good crops when he appears in the rice
+fields (as rain) or in the sky (as dark and yellow clouds), in other
+words when he makes the rain fertilize the ground" (p. 38).</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>Shu King</i> there is a reference to the dragon as one of the
+symbolic figures painted on the upper garment of the emperor Hwang Ti
+(who according to the Chinese legends, which of course are not above
+reproach, reigned in the twenty-seventh century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>). In this
+ancient literature there are numerous references to the dragon, and not
+merely to the legends, <i>but also to representations</i> of the benign
+monster on garments, banners and metal tablets.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> "The ancient texts
+... are short, but sufficient to give us the main conceptions of Old
+China with regard to the dragon. In those early days [just as at
+present] he was the god of water, thunder, clouds, and rain, the
+harbinger of blessings, and the symbol of holy men. As the emperors are
+the holy beings on earth, the idea of the dragon being the symbol of
+Imperial power is based upon this ancient conception" (<i>op. cit.</i>, p.
+42).</p>
+
+<p>In the fifth appendix to the <i>Yih King</i>, which has been ascribed to
+Confucius, (i.e. three centuries earlier than the Han dynasty mentioned
+by Mr. Minns), it is stated that "<i>K'ien</i> (Heaven) is a horse, <i>Kw'un</i>
+(Earth) is a cow, <i>Chen (Thunder) is a dragon</i>." (<i>op. cit.</i>, p.
+37).<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a></p>
+
+<p>The philosopher Hwai Nan Tsze (who died 122 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>) declared that
+the dragon is the origin of all creatures, winged, hairy, scaly, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+mailed; and he propounded a scheme of evolution (de Visser, p. 65). He
+seems to have tried to explain away the fact that he had never actually
+witnessed the dragon performing some of the remarkable feats attributed
+to it: "Mankind cannot see the dragons rise: wind and rain assist them
+to ascend to a great height" (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 65). Confucius also is
+credited with the frankness of a similar confession: "As to the dragon,
+we cannot understand his riding on the wind and clouds and his ascending
+to the sky. To-day I saw Lao Tsze; is he not like the dragon?" (p. 65).</p>
+
+<p>This does not necessarily mean that these learned men were sceptical of
+the beliefs which tradition had forged in their minds, but that the
+dragon had the power of hiding itself in a cloak of invisibility, just
+as clouds (in which the Chinese saw dragons) could be dissipated in the
+sky. The belief in these powers of the dragon was as sincere as that of
+learned men of other countries in the beneficent attributes which
+tradition had taught them to assign to their particular deities. In the
+passages I have quoted the Chinese scholars were presumably attempting
+to bridge the gap between the ideas inculcated by faith and the evidence
+of their senses, in much the same sort of spirit as, for instance,
+actuated Dean Buckland last century, when he claimed that the glacial
+deposits of this country afforded evidence in confirmation of the Deluge
+described in the Book of Genesis.</p>
+
+<p>The tiger and the dragon, the gods of wind and water, are the keystones
+of the doctrine called <i>fung shui</i>, which Professor de Groot has
+described in detail.<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a></p>
+
+<p>He describes it "as a quasi-scientific system, supposed to teach men
+where and how to build graves, temples, and dwellings, in order that the
+dead, the gods, and the living may be located therein exclusively, or as
+far as possible, under the auspicious influences of Nature". The dragon
+plays a most important part in this system, being "the chief spirit of
+water and rain, and at the same time representing one of the four
+quarters of heaven (i.e. the East, called the Azure Dragon, and the
+first of the seasons, spring)." The word Dragon comprises the high
+grounds in general, and the water streams which have their sources
+therein or wind their way through them.<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The attributes thus assigned to the Blue Dragon, his control of water
+and streams, his dwelling on high mountains whence they spring, and his
+association with the East, will be seen to reveal his identity with the
+so-called "god B" of American arch&aelig;ologists, the elephant-headed god
+<i>Tlaloc</i> of the Aztecs, <i>Chac</i> of the Mayas, whose more direct parent
+was Indra.</p>
+
+<p>It is of interest to note that, according to Gerini,<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> the word
+<i>N&acirc;ga</i> denotes not only a snake but also an elephant. Both the Chinese
+dragon and the Mexican elephant-god are thus linked with the N&acirc;ga, who
+is identified both with Indra himself and Indra's enemy Vritra. This is
+another instance of those remarkable contradictions that one meets at
+every step in pursuing the dragon. In the confusion resulting from the
+blending of hostile tribes and diverse cultures the Aryan deity who,
+both for religious and political reasons, is the enemy of the N&acirc;gas
+becomes himself identified with a N&acirc;ga!</p>
+
+<p>I have already called attention (<i>Nature</i>, Jan. 27, 1916) to the fact
+that the graphic form of representation of the American elephant-headed
+god was derived from Indonesian pictures of the <i>makara</i>. In India
+itself the <i>makara</i> (see Fig. 14) is represented in a great variety of
+forms, most of which are prototypes of different kinds of dragons. Hence
+the homology of the elephant-headed god with the other dragons is
+further established and shown to be genetically related to the evolution
+of the protean manifestations of the dragon's form.</p>
+
+<p>The dragon in China is "the heavenly giver of fertilizing rain" (<i>op.
+cit.</i>, p. 36). In the <i>Shu King</i> "the emblematic figures of the ancients
+are given as the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountain, the <i>dragon</i>,
+and the variegated animals (pheasants) which are depicted on the upper
+sacrificial garment of the Emperor" (p. 39). In the <i>Li Ki</i> the unicorn,
+the ph&#339;nix, the tortoise, and the dragon are called the four <i>ling</i>
+(p. 39), which de Visser translates "spiritual beings," creatures with
+enormously strong vital spirit. The dragon possesses the most <i>ling</i> of
+all creatures (p. 64). The tiger is the deadly enemy of the dragon (p.
+42).</p>
+
+<p>The dragon sheds a brilliant light at night (p. 44), usually from his
+glittering eyes. He is the giver of omens (p. 45), good and bad,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> rains
+and floods. The dragon-horse is a vital spirit of Heaven and Earth (p.
+58) and also of river water: it has the tail of a huge serpent.</p>
+
+<p>The ecclesiastical vestments of the Wu-ist priests are endowed with
+magical properties which are considered to enable the wearer to control
+the order of the world, to avert unseasonable and calamitous events,
+such as drought, untimely and superabundant rainfall, and eclipses.
+These powers are conferred by the decoration upon the dress. Upon the
+back of the chief vestment the representation of a range of mountains is
+embroidered as a symbol of the world: on each side (the right and left)
+of it a large dragon arises above the billows to represent the
+fertilizing rain. They are surrounded by gold-thread figures
+representing clouds and spirals typifying rolling thunder.<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a></p>
+
+<p>A ball, sometimes with a spiral decoration, is commonly represented in
+front of the Chinese dragon. The Chinese writer Koh Hung tells us that
+"a spiral denotes the rolling of thunder from which issues a flash of
+lightning".<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> De Visser discusses this question at some length and
+refers to Hirth's claim that the Chinese triquetrum, i.e., the
+well-known three-comma shaped figure, the Japanese <i>mitsu-tomoe</i>, the
+ancient spiral, represents thunder also.<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a> Before discussing this
+question, which involves the consideration of the almost world-wide
+belief in a thunder-weapon and its relationship to the spiral ornament,
+the octopus,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> the pearl, the swastika and triskele, let us examine
+further the problem of the dragon's ball (see Fig. 15).</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_018" id="Image_018"></a>
+<img src="images/image018.png" width="399" height="159" alt="Fig. 15.&mdash;Photograph of a Chinese Embroidery in the
+Manchester School of Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon
+Symbol." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 15.&mdash;Photograph of a Chinese Embroidery in the
+Manchester School of Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon
+Symbol.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>De Groot regards the dragon as a thunder-god and therefore, like Hirth,
+assumes that the supposed thunder-ball is being <i>belched forth</i> and not
+being <i>swallowed</i> by the dragon. But de Visser, as the result of a
+conversation with Mr. Kramp and the study of a Chinese picture in
+Blacker's "Chats on Oriental China" (1908, p. 54), puts forward the
+suggestion that the ball is the moon or the pearl-moon which the dragon
+is swallowing, thereby causing the fertilizing rain. The Chinese
+themselves refer to the ball as the "precious pearl," which, under the
+influence of Buddhism in China, was identified with "the pearl that
+grants all desires" and is under the special protection of the N&acirc;ga,
+i.e., the dragon. Arising out of this de Visser puts the conundrum: "Was
+the ball originally also a pearl, not of Buddhism but of Taoism?"</p>
+
+<p>In reply to this question I may call attention to the fact that the
+germs of civilization were first planted in China by people strongly
+imbued with the belief that the pearl was the quintessence of
+life-giving and prosperity-conferring powers:<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> it was not only
+identified with the moon, but also was itself a particle of
+moon-substance which fell as dew into the gaping oyster. It was the very
+people who held such views about pearls and gold who, when searching for
+alluvial gold and fresh-water pearls in Turkestan, were responsible for
+transferring these same life-giving properties to jade; and the magical
+value thus attached to jade was the nucleus, so to speak, around which
+the earliest civilization of China was crystallized.</p>
+
+<p>As we shall see, in the discussion of the thunder-weapon (p. 121), the
+luminous pearl, which was believed to have fallen from the sky, was
+homologized with the thunderbolt, with the functions of which its own
+magical properties were assimilated.</p>
+
+<p>Kramp called de Visser's attention to the fact that the Chinese
+hieroglyphic character for the dragon's ball is compounded of the signs
+for <i>jewel</i> and <i>moon</i>, which is also given in a Japanese lexicon as
+<i>divine pearl</i>, the pearl of the bright moon.</p>
+
+<p>"When the clouds approached and covered the moon, the ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> Chinese
+may have thought that the dragons had seized and swallowed this pearl,
+more brilliant than all the pearls of the sea" (de Visser, p. 108).</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty de Visser finds in regarding his own theory as wholly
+satisfactory is, first, the red colour of the ball, and secondly, the
+spiral pattern upon it. He explains the colour as possibly an attempt to
+represent the pearl's lustre. But de Visser seems to have overlooked the
+fact that red and rose-coloured pearls obtained from the conch-shell
+were used in China and Japan.<a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The spiral is much used in delineating the sacred pearls of Buddhism,
+so that it might have served also to design those of Taoism; although I
+must acknowledge that the spiral of the Buddhist pearl goes upward,
+while the spiral of the dragon is flat" (p. 103).</p>
+
+<p>De Visser sums up the whole argument in these words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"These are, however, all mere suppositions. The only facts we know are:
+the eager attitude of the dragons, ready to grasp and swallow the ball;
+the ideas of the Chinese themselves as to the ball being the moon or a
+pearl; the existence of a kind of sacred "moon-pearl"; the red colour of
+the ball, its emitting flames and its spiral-like form. As the three
+last facts are in favour of the thunder theory, I should be inclined to
+prefer the latter. Yet I am convinced that the dragons do not <i>belch
+out</i> the thunder. If their trying to <i>grasp</i> or <i>swallow</i> the thunder
+could be explained, I should immediately accept the theory concerning
+the thunder-spiral, especially on account of the flames it emits. But I
+do not see the reason why the god of thunder should persecute thunder
+itself. Therefore, after having given the above facts that the reader
+may take them into consideration, I feel obliged to say: 'non liquet'"
+(p. 108).</p>
+
+<p>It does not seem to have occurred to the distinguished Dutch scholar,
+who has so lucidly put the issue before us, that his demonstration of
+the fact of the ball being the pearl-moon about to be swallowed by the
+dragon does not preclude it being also confused with the thunder.
+Elsewhere in this volume I have referred to the origin of the spiral
+symbolism and have shown that it became associated with the pearl
+<i>before</i> it became the symbol of thunder. The pearl-association in fact
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> one of the links in the chain of events which made the pearl and
+the spirally-coiled arm of the octopus the sign of thunder.<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a></p>
+
+<p>It seems quite clear to me that de Visser's pearl-moon theory is the
+true interpretation. But when the pearl-ball was provided with the
+spiral, painted red, and given flames to represent its power of emitting
+light and shining by night, the fact of the spiral ornamentation and of
+the pearl being one of the surrogates of the thunder-weapon was
+rationalized into an identification of the ball with thunder and the
+light it was emitting as lightning. It is, of course, quite irrational
+for a thunder-god to swallow his own thunder: but popular
+interpretations of subtle symbolism, the true explanation of which is
+deeply buried in the history of the distant past, are rarely logical and
+almost invariably irrelevant.</p>
+
+<p>In his account of the state of Brahmanism in India after the times of
+the two earlier Vedas, Professor Hopkins<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a> throws light upon the real
+significance of the ball in the dragon-symbolism. "Old legends are
+varied. The victory over Vritra is now expounded thus: Indra, who slays
+Vritra, is the sun. Vritra is the moon, who swims into the sun's mouth
+on the night of the new moon. The sun rises after swallowing him, and
+the moon is invisible because he is swallowed. The sun vomits out the
+moon, and the latter is then seen in the west, and increases again, to
+serve the sun as food. In another passage it is said that when the moon
+is invisible he is hiding in plants and waters."</p>
+
+<p>This seems to clear away any doubt as to the significance of the ball.
+It is the pearl-moon, which is both swallowed and vomited by the dragon.</p>
+
+<p>The snake takes a more obtrusive part in the Japanese than in the
+Chinese dragon and it frequently manifests itself as a god of the sea.
+The old Japanese sea-gods were often female water-snakes. The cultural
+influences which reached Japan from the south by way of Indonesia&mdash;many
+centuries before the coming of Buddhism&mdash;naturally emphasized the
+serpent form of the dragon and its connexion with the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>But the river-gods, or "water-fathers," were real four-footed dragons
+identified with the dragon-kings of Chinese myth, but at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> same time
+were strictly homologous with the N&acirc;ga Rajas or cobra-kings of India.</p>
+
+<p>The Japanese "Sea Lord" or "Sea Snake" was also called
+"Abundant-Pearl-Prince," who had a magnificent palace at the bottom of
+the sea. His daughter ("Abundant-Pearl-Princess") married a youth whom
+she observed, reflected in the well, sitting on a cassia tree near the
+castle gate. Ashamed at his presence at her lying-in she was changed
+into a <i>wani</i> or crocodile (de Visser, p. 139), elsewhere described as a
+dragon (<i>makara</i>). De Visser gives it as his opinion that the <i>wani</i> is
+"an old Japanese dragon, or serpent-shaped sea-god, and the legend is an
+ancient Japanese tale, dressed in an Indian garb by later generations"
+(p. 140). He is arguing that the Japanese dragon existed long before
+Japan came under Indian influence. But he ignores the fact that at a
+very early date both India and China were diversely influenced by
+Babylonia, the great breeding place of dragons; and, secondly, that
+Japan was influenced by Indonesia, and through it by the West, for many
+centuries before the arrival of such later Indian legends as those
+relating to the palace under the sea, the castle gate and the cassia
+tree. As Aston (quoted by de Visser) remarks, all these incidents and
+also the well that serves as a mirror, "form a combination not unknown
+to European folk-lore".</p>
+
+<p>After de Visser had given his own views, he modified them (on p. 141)
+when he learned that essentially the same dragon-stories had been
+recorded in the Kei Islands and Minahassa (Celebes). In the light of
+this new information he frankly admits that "the resemblance of several
+features of this myth with the Japanese one is so striking, that we may
+be sure that the latter is of Indonesian origin." He goes further when
+he recognizes that "probably the foreign invaders, who in prehistoric
+times conquered Japan, came from Indonesia, and brought the myth with
+them" (p. 141). The evidence recently brought together by W.&nbsp;J. Perry in
+his book "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia" makes it certain that the
+people of Indonesia in turn got it from the West.</p>
+
+<p>An old painting reproduced by F.&nbsp;W.&nbsp;K. M&uuml;ller,<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> who called de
+Visser's attention to these interesting stories, shows Hohodemi (the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+youth on the cassia tree who married the princess) returning home
+mounted on the back of a crocodile, like the Indian Varuna upon the
+<i>makara</i> in a drawing reproduced by the late Sir George Birdwood.<a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a></p>
+
+<p>The <i>wani</i> or crocodile thus introduced from India, <i>via</i> Indonesia, is
+really the Chinese and Japanese dragon, as Aston has claimed. Aston
+refers to Japanese pictures in which the Abundant-Pearl-Prince and his
+daughter are represented with dragon's heads appearing over their human
+ones, but in the old Indonesian version they maintain their forms as
+<i>wani</i> or crocodiles.</p>
+
+<p>The dragon's head appearing over a human one is quite an Indian motive,
+transferred to China and from there to Korea and Japan (de Visser, p.
+142), and, I may add, also to America.</p>
+
+<p>[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been printed, the Curator of the
+Liverpool Museum has kindly called my attention to a remarkable series
+of Maya remains in the collection under his care, which were obtained in
+the course of excavations made by Mr. T.&nbsp;W.&nbsp;F. Gann, M.R.C.S., an
+officer in the Medical Service of British Honduras (see his account of
+the excavations in Part II. of the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of
+Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution of Washington). Among them is a
+pottery figure of a <i>wani</i> or <i>makara</i> in the form of an alligator,
+equipped with diminutive deer's horns (like the dragon of Eastern Asia);
+and its skin is studded with circular elevations, presumably meant to
+represent the spots upon the star-spangled "Celestial Stag" of the
+Aryans (p. 130). As in the Japanese pictures mentioned by Aston, a human
+head is seen emerging from the creature's throat. It affords a most
+definite and convincing demonstration of the sources of American
+culture.]</p>
+
+<p>The jewels of flood and ebb in the Japanese legends consist of the
+pearls of flood and ebb obtained from the dragon's palace at the bottom
+of the sea. By their aid storms and floods could be created to destroy
+enemies or calm to secure safety for friends. Such stories are the
+logical result of the identification of pearls with the moon, the
+influence of which upon the tides was probably one of the circumstances
+which was responsible for bringing the moon into the circle of the great
+scientific theory of the life-giving powers of water. This in turn
+played a great, if not decisive, part in originating the earliest belief
+in a sky world, or heaven.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> "Precolumbian Representations of the Elephant in
+America," <i>Nature</i>, Nov. 25, 1915, p. 340; Dec. 16, 1915, p. 425; and
+Jan. 27, 1916, p. 593.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> "History of Melanesian Society," Cambridge, 1914.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Arch&eacute;ologie Am&eacute;ricaine," 1912, p.
+319.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> "Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts,"
+<i>Papers of the Peabody Museum</i>, vol. iv., 1904.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> <i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Ethnologie</i>, Bd. 40, 1908, p. 716.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der
+Maya-Handschriften," <i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Ethnologie</i>, Bd. 42, 1910, pp. 75
+and 77. In the remarkable series of drawings from Maya and Aztec sources
+reproduced by Seler in his articles in the <i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Ethnologie</i>,
+the <i>Peabody Museum Papers</i>, and his monograph on the <i>Codex Vaticanus</i>,
+not only is practically every episode of the dragon-myth of the Old
+World graphically depicted, but also every phase and incident of the
+legends from India (and Babylonia, Egypt and the &AElig;gean) that contributed
+to the building-up of the myth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> Compare Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 94.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> Herbert J. Spinden, "Maya Art," p. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> Seler, "Codex Vaticanus," Figs. 299-304.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> See, for example, F.&nbsp;W.&nbsp;K. M&uuml;ller, "Nang," <i>Int. Arch. f.
+Ethnolog.</i>, 1894, Suppl. zu Bd. vii., Taf. vii., where the mask of
+<i>Ravana</i> (a late surrogate of Indra in the <i>Ramayana</i>) reveals a
+survival of the prototype of the Mexican designs.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> Joyce, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> For the incident of the stealing of the soma by Garuda,
+who in this legend is the representative of Indra, see Hopkins,
+"Religions of India," pp. 360-61.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the
+East and in America," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1916, Fig.
+4, "The Serpent-Bird".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> Probably from about 300 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> to 700
+<span class="smcap">a.d.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> For information concerning Ea's "Goat-Fish," which can
+truly be called the "Father of Dragons," as well as the prototype of the
+Indian <i>makara</i>, the mermaid, the "sea-serpent," the "dolphin of
+Aphrodite," and of most composite sea-monsters, see W.&nbsp;H. Ward's "Seal
+Cylinders of Western Asia," pp. 382 <i>et seq.</i> and 399 <i>et seq.</i>; and
+especially the detailed reports in de Morgan's <i>M&eacute;moires</i> (D&eacute;l&eacute;gation en
+Perse).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> <i>Nature, op. cit., supra</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> Juan Martinez Hern&aacute;ndez, "La Creaci&oacute;n del Mundo segun los
+Mayas," P&aacute;ginas In&eacute;ditas del MS. De Chumayel, <i>International Congress of
+Americanists, Proceedings of the XVIII. Session</i>, London, 1912, p. 164.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> From the folk-lore of America I have collected many
+interesting variants of the Indra story and other legends (and artistic
+designs) of the elephant. I hope to publish these in the near future.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> <i>Peabody Museum Papers</i>, 1901.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> See, for example, Wilfrid Jackson's "Shells as Evidence
+of the Migration of Early Culture," pp. 50-66.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> "Notes on the Maoris, etc.," <i>Journal of the Ethnological
+Society</i>, vol. i., 1869, p. 368.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 231.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> I quote this and the following paragraphs verbatim from
+Garrick Mallery, "Picture Writing of the American Indians," <i>10th Annual
+Report, 1888-89, Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institute)</i>. p. 78.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, pp. 35 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> See de Visser, p. 41.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> There can be no doubt that the Chinese dragon is the
+descendant of the early Babylonian monster, and that the inspiration to
+create it probably reached Shensi during the third millennium
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> by the route indicated in my "Incense and Libations"
+(<i>Bull. John Rylands Library</i>, vol. iv., No. 2, p. 239). Some centuries
+later the Indian dragon reached the Far East via Indonesia and mingled
+with his Babylonian cousin in Japan and China.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> "Religious System of China," vol. iii., chap, xii., pp.
+936-1056.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> This paragraph is taken almost verbatim from de Visser,
+<i>op. cit.</i> pp. 59 and 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> G.&nbsp;E. Gerini, "Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of
+Eastern Asia," <i>Asiatic Society's Monographs</i>, No. 1, 1909, p. 146.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> De Visser, p. 102, and de Groot, vi., p. 1265, Plate
+XVIII. The reference to "a range of mountains ... as a symbol of the
+world" recalls the Egyptian representation of the eastern horizon as two
+hills between which Hathor or her son arises (see Budge, "Gods of the
+Egyptians," vol. ii., p. 101; and compare Griffith's "Hieroglyphs," p.
+30): the same conception was adopted in Mesopotamia (see Ward, "Seal
+Cylinders of Western Asia," fig. 412, p. 156) and in the Mediterranean
+(see Evans, "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 37 <i>et seq.</i>). It is a
+remarkable fact that Sir Arthur Evans, who, upon p. 64 of his memoir,
+reproduces two drawings of the Egyptian "horizon" supporting the sun's
+disk, should have failed to recognize in it the prototype of what he
+calls "the horns of consecration". Even if the confusion of the
+"horizon" with a cow's horns was very ancient (for the horns of the
+Divine Cow supporting the moon made this inevitable), this
+rationalization should not blind us as to the real origin of the idea,
+which is preserved in the ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Cretan and
+Chinese pictures (see Fig. 26, facing p. 188).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> De Visser, p. 103.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> P. 104. The Chinese triquetrum has a circle in the centre
+and five or eight commas.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> See on this my paper "The Origin of Early Siberian
+Civilization," now being published in the <i>Memoirs and Proceedings of
+the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of
+Early Culture," p. 106.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> I shall discuss this more fully in "The Birth of
+Aphrodite".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> "Religions of India," p. 197.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> "Mythe der Kei-Insulaner und Verwandtes," <i>Zeitsch. f.
+Ethnologie</i>, vol. xxv., 1893, pp. 533 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> See Fig. 14.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p>
+<h3>The Evolution of the Dragon.</h3>
+
+<p>The American and Indonesian dragons can be referred back primarily to
+India, the Chinese and Japanese varieties to India and Babylonia. The
+dragons of Europe can be traced through Greek channels to the same
+ultimate source. But the cruder dragons of Africa are derived either
+from Egypt, from the &AElig;gean, or from India. All dragons that strictly
+conform to the conventional idea of what such a wonder-beast should be
+can be shown to be sprung from the fertile imagination of ancient Sumer,
+the "great breeding place of monsters" (Minns).</p>
+
+<p>But the history of the dragon's evolution and transmission to other
+countries is full of complexities; and the dragon-myth is made up of
+many episodes, some of which were not derived from Babylonia.</p>
+
+<p>In Egypt we do not find the characteristic dragon and dragon-story. Yet
+all of the ingredients out of which both the monster and the legends are
+compounded have been preserved in Egypt, and in perhaps a more primitive
+and less altered form than elsewhere. Hence, if Egypt does not provide
+dragons for us to dissect, it does supply us with the evidence without
+which the dragon's evolution would be quite unintelligible.</p>
+
+<p>Egyptian literature affords a clearer insight into the development of
+the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun God than we can
+obtain from any other writings of the origin of this fundamental stratum
+of deities. And in the three legends: The Destruction of Mankind, The
+Story of the Winged Disk, and The Conflict between Horus and Set, it has
+preserved the germs of the great Dragon Saga. Babylonian literature has
+shown us how this raw material was worked up into the definite and
+familiar story, as well as how the features of a variety of animals were
+blended to form the composite monster. India and Greece, as well as more
+distant parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia, and even America have
+preserved many details that have been lost in the real home of the
+monster.</p>
+
+<p>In the earliest literature that has come down to us from antiquity a
+clear account is given of the original attributes of Osiris. "Horus
+comes, he recognizes his father in thee [Osiris], youthful in thy name
+of 'Fresh Water'." "Thou art indeed the Nile, great on the fields at the
+beginning of the seasons; gods and men live by the moisture that is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> in
+thee." He is also identified with the inundation of the river. "It is
+Unis [the dead king identified with Osiris] who inundates the land." He
+also brings the wind and guides it. It is the breath of life which
+raises the king from the dead as an Osiris. The wine-press god comes to
+Osiris bearing wine-juice and the great god becomes "Lord of the
+overflowing wine": he is also identified with barley and with the beer
+made from it. Certain trees also are personifications of the god.</p>
+
+<p>But Osiris was regarded not only as the waters upon earth, the rivers
+and streams, the moisture in the soil and in the bodies of animals and
+plants, but also as "the waters of life that are in the sky".</p>
+
+<p>"As Osiris was identified with the waters of earth and sky, he may even
+become the sea and the ocean itself. We find him addressed thus: 'Thou
+art great, thou art green, in thy name of Great Green (Sea); lo, thou
+art round as the Great Circle (Okeanos); lo, thou art turned about, thou
+art round as the circle that encircles the Haunebu (&AElig;geans)."</p>
+
+<p>This series of interesting extracts from Professor Breasted's "Religion
+and Thought in Ancient Egypt" (pp. 18-26) gives the earliest Egyptians'
+own ideas of the attributes of Osiris. The Babylonians regarded Ea in
+almost precisely the same light and endowed him with identical powers.
+But there is an important and significant difference between Osiris and
+Ea. The former was usually represented as a man, that is, as a dead
+king, whereas Ea was represented as a man wearing a fish-skin, as a
+fish, or as the composite monster with a fish's body and tail, which was
+the prototype of the Indian <i>makara</i> and "the father of dragons".</p>
+
+<p>In attempting to understand the creation of the dragon it is important
+to remember that, although Osiris and Ea were regarded primarily as
+personifications of the beneficent life-giving powers of water, as the
+bringers of fertility to the soil and the givers of life and immortality
+to living creatures, they were also identified with the destructive
+forces of water, by which men were drowned or their welfare affected in
+various ways by storms of sea and wind.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Osiris or the fish-god Ea could destroy mankind. In other words the
+fish-dragon, or the composite monster formed of a fish and an antelope,
+could represent the destructive forces of wind and water. Thus even the
+malignant dragon can be the homologue of the usually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> beneficent gods
+Osiris and Ea, and their Aryan surrogates Mazdah and Varuna.</p>
+
+<p>By a somewhat analogous process of archaic rationalization the sons
+respectively of Osiris and Ea, the sun-gods Horus and Marduk, acquired a
+similarly confused reputation. Although their outstanding achievements
+were the overcoming of the powers of evil, and, as the givers of light,
+conquering darkness, their character as warriors made them also powers
+of destruction. The falcon of Horus thus became also a symbol of chaos,
+and as the thunder-bird became the most obtrusive feature in the weird
+anatomy of the composite Mesopotamian dragon and his more modern
+bird-footed brood, which ranges from Western Europe to the Far East of
+Asia and America.</p>
+
+<p>That the sun-god derived his functions directly or indirectly from
+Osiris and Hathor is shown by his most primitive attributes, for in "the
+earliest sun-temples at Abusir, he appears as the source of life and
+increase". "Men said of him: 'Thou hast driven away the storm, and hast
+expelled the rain, and hast broken up the clouds'." Horus was in fact
+the son of Osiris and Hathor, from whom he derived his attributes. The
+invention of the sun-god was not, as most scholars pretend, an attempt
+to give direct expression to the fact that the sun is the source of
+fertility. That is a discovery of modern science. The sun-god acquired
+his attributes secondarily (and for definite historical reasons) from
+his parents, who were responsible for his birth.</p>
+
+<p>The quotation from the Pyramid Texts is of special interest as an
+illustration of one of the results of the assimilation of the idea of
+Osiris as the controller of water with that of a sky-heaven and a
+sun-god. The sun-god's powers are rationalized so as to bring them into
+conformity with the earliest conception of a god as a power controlling
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Breasted attempts to interpret the statements concerning the storm and
+rain-clouds as references to the enemies of the sun, who steal the
+sky-god's eye, i.e., obscure the sun or moon.<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> The incident of
+Horus's loss of an eye, which looms so large in Egyptian legends, is
+possibly more closely related to the earliest attempts at explaining
+eclipses of the sun and moon, the "eyes" of the sky. The obscuring of
+the sun and moon by clouds is a matter of little significance to the
+Egyptian: but the modern Egyptian <i>fellah</i>, and no doubt his
+predecessors also,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> regard eclipses with much concern. Such events
+excite great alarm, for the peasants consider them as actual combats
+between the powers of good and evil.</p>
+
+<p>In other countries where rain is a blessing and not, as in Egypt, merely
+an unwelcome inconvenience, the clouds play a much more prominent part
+in the popular beliefs. In the Rig-Veda the power that holds up the
+clouds is evil: as an elaboration of the ancient Egyptian conception of
+the sky as a Divine Cow, the Great Mother, the Aryan Indians regarded
+the clouds as a herd of cattle which the Vedic warrior-god Indra (who in
+this respect is the homologue of the Egyptian warrior Horus) stole from
+the powers of evil and bestowed upon mankind. In other words, like
+Horus, he broke up the clouds and brought rain.</p>
+
+<p>The antithesis between the two aspects of the character of these ancient
+deities is most pronounced in the case of the other member of this most
+primitive Trinity, the Great Mother. She was the great beneficent giver
+of life, but also the controller of life, which implies that she was the
+death-dealer. But this evil aspect of her character developed only under
+the stress of a peculiar dilemma in which she was placed. On a famous
+occasion in the very remote past the great Giver of Life was summoned to
+rejuvenate the ageing king. The only elixir of life that was known to
+the pharmacop&#339;ia of the times was human blood: but to obtain this
+life-blood the Giver of Life was compelled to slaughter mankind. She
+thus became the destroyer of mankind in her lioness <i>avatar</i> as Sekhet.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest known pictorial representation of the dragon (Fig. 1)
+consists of the forepart of the sun-god's falcon or eagle united with
+the hindpart of the mother-goddess's lioness. The student of modern
+heraldry would not regard this as a dragon at all, but merely a gryphon
+or griffin. A recent writer on heraldry has complained that, "in spite
+of frequent corrections, this creature is persistently confused in the
+popular mind with the <i>dragon</i>, which is even more purely
+imaginary."<a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> But the investigator of the early history of these
+wonder-beasts is compelled, even at the risk of incurring the herald's
+censure, to regard the gryphon as one of the earliest known tentative
+efforts at dragon-making. But though the fish, the falcon or eagle, and
+the composite eagle-lion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> monster are early known pictorial
+representations of the dragon, good or bad, the serpent is probably more
+ancient still (Fig. 2).</p>
+
+<p>The earliest form assumed by the power of evil was the serpent: but it
+is important to remember that, as each of the primary deities can be a
+power of either good or evil, any of the animals representing them can
+symbolize either aspect. Though Hathor in her cow manifestation is
+usually benevolent and as a lioness a power of destruction, the cow may
+become a demon in certain cases and the lioness a kindly creature. The
+falcon of Horus (or its representatives, eagle, hawk, woodpecker, dove,
+redbreast, etc) may be either good or bad: so also the gazelle (antelope
+or deer), the crocodile, the fish, or any of the menagerie of creatures
+that enter into the composition of good or bad demons.</p>
+
+<p>"The N&acirc;gas are semi-divine serpents which very often assume human shapes
+and whose kings live with their retinues in the utmost luxury in their
+magnificent abodes at the bottom of the sea or in rivers or lakes. When
+leaving the N&acirc;ga world they are in constant danger of being grasped and
+killed by the gigantic semi-divine birds, the Garudas, which also change
+themselves into men" (de Visser, p. 7).</p>
+
+<p>"The N&acirc;gas are depicted in three forms: common snakes, guarding jewels;
+human beings with four snakes in their necks; and winged sea-dragons,
+the upper part of the body human, but with a horned, ox-like head, the
+lower part of the body that of a coiling-dragon. Here we find a link
+between the snake of ancient India and the four-legged Chinese dragon"
+(p. 6), hidden in the clouds, which the dragon himself emitted, like a
+modern battleship, for the purpose of rendering himself invisible. In
+other words, the rain clouds were the dragon's breath. The fertilizing
+rain was thus in fact the vital essence of the dragon, being both water
+and the breath of life.</p>
+
+<p>"We find the N&acirc;ga king not only in the possession of numberless jewels
+and beautiful girls, but also of mighty charms, bestowing supernatural
+vision and hearing. The palaces of the N&acirc;ga kings are always described
+as extremely splendid, abounding with gold and silver and precious
+stones, and the N&acirc;ga women, when appearing in human shape, were
+beautiful beyond description" (p. 9).</p>
+
+<p>De Visser records the story of an evil N&acirc;ga protecting a big tree that
+grew in a pond, who failed to emit clouds and thunder when the tree was
+cut down, because he was neither despised nor wounded: for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> his body
+became the support of the st&#363;pa and the tree became a beam of the
+st&#363;pa (p. 16). This aspect of the N&acirc;ga as a tree-demon is rare in
+India, but common in China and Japan. It seems to be identical with the
+Mediterranean conception of the pillar of wood or stone, which is both a
+representative of the Great Mother and the chief support of a
+temple.<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the magnificent city that king Ya&ccedil;a&#7717;ketu saw, when he dived into
+the sea, "wishing trees that granted every desire" were among the
+objects that met his vision. There were also palaces of precious stones
+and gardens and tanks, and, of course, beautiful maidens (de Visser, p.
+20).</p>
+
+<p>In the Far Eastern stories it is interesting to note the antagonism of
+the dragon to the tiger, when we recall that the lioness-form of Hathor
+was the prototype of the earliest malevolent dragon.</p>
+
+<p>There are five sorts of dragons: serpent-dragons; lizard-dragons;
+fish-dragons; elephant-dragons; and toad-dragons (de Visser, p. 23).</p>
+
+<p>"According to de Groot, the blue colour is chosen in China because this
+is the colour of the East, from where the rain must come; this quarter
+is represented by the Azure Dragon, the highest in rank among all the
+dragons. We have seen, however, that the original s&#363;tra already
+prescribed to use the blue colour and to face the East.... Indra, the
+rain-god, is the patron of the East, and Indra-colour is <i>nila</i>, dark
+blue or rather blue-black, the regular epithet of the rain clouds. If
+the priest had not to face the East but the West, this would agree with
+the fact that the N&acirc;gas were said to live in the western quarter and
+that in India the West corresponds with the blue colour. Facing the
+East, however, seems to point to an old rain ceremony in which Indra was
+invoked to raise the blue-black clouds" (de Visser, pp. 30 and 31).</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> Breasted, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> G.&nbsp;W. Eve, "Decorative Heraldry," 1897, p. 35.</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> Arthur J. Evans, "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 88
+<i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Dragon Myth.</h3>
+
+<p>The most important and fundamental legend in the whole history of
+mythology is the story of the "Destruction of Mankind". "It was
+discovered, translated, and commented upon by Naville ("La Destruction
+des hommes par les Dieux," in the <i>Transactions of the Society of
+Biblical Arch&aelig;ology</i>, vol. iv., pp. 1-19, reproducing Hay's copies made
+at the beginning of [the nineteenth] century; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> "L'Inscription de la
+Destruction des hommes dans le tombeau de Rams&eacute;s III," in the
+<i>Transactions</i>, vol. viii., pp. 412-20); afterwards published anew by
+Herr von Bergmann (<i>Hieroglyphische Inscriften</i>, pls. lxxv.-lxxxii., and
+pp. 55, 56); completely translated by Brugsch (<i>Die neue Weltordnung
+nach Vernichtung des s&uuml;ndigen Menschengeschlechts nach einer
+Alt&auml;gyptischen Ueberlieferung</i>, 1881); and partly translated by Lauth
+(<i>Aus &AElig;gyptens Vorzeit</i>, pp. 70-81) and by Lef&egrave;bure ("Une chapitre de la
+chronique solaire," in the <i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r &AElig;gyptische Sprache</i>, 1883,
+pp 32, 33)".<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a></p>
+
+<p>Important commentaries upon this story have been published also by
+Brugsch and Gauthier.<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a></p>
+
+<p>As the really important features of the story consist of the incoherent
+and contradictory details, and it would take up too much space to
+reproduce the whole legend here, I must refer the reader to Maspero's
+account of it (<i>op. cit.</i>), or to the versions given by Erman in his
+"Life in Ancient Egypt" (p. 267, from which I quote) or Budge in "The
+Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 388.</p>
+
+<p>Although the story as we know it was not written down until the time of
+Seti I (<i>circa</i> 1300 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>), it is very old and had been
+circulating as a popular legend for more than twenty centuries before
+that time. The narrative itself tells its own story because it is
+composed of many contradictory interpretations of the same incidents
+flung together in a highly confused and incoherent form.</p>
+
+<p>The other legends to which I shall have constantly to refer are "The
+Saga of the Winged Disk," "The Feud between Horus and Set," "The
+Stealing of Re's Name by Isis," and a series of later variants and
+confusions of these stories.<a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Egyptian legends cannot be fully appreciated unless they are in
+conjunction with those of Babylonia and Assyria,<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> the mythology of
+Greece,<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> Persia,<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> India,<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> China,<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> Indonesia,<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> and
+America.<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a></p>
+
+<p>For it will be found that essentially the same stream of legends was
+flowing in all these countries, and that the scribes and painters have
+caught and preserved certain definite phases of this verbal currency.
+The legends which have thus been preserved are not to be regarded as
+having been directly derived the one from the other but as collateral
+phases of a variety of waves of story spreading out from one centre.
+Thus the comparison of the whole range of homologous legends is
+peculiarly instructive and useful; because the gaps in the Egyptian
+series, for example, can be filled in by necessary phases which are
+missing in Egypt itself, but are preserved in Babylonia or Greece,
+Persia or India, China or Britain, or even Oceania and America.</p>
+
+<p>The incidents in the Destruction of Mankind may be briefly summarized:</p>
+
+<p>As Re grows old "the men who were begotten of his eye"<a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a> show signs
+of rebellion. Re calls a council of the gods and they advise him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> to
+"shoot forth his Eye<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> that it may slay the evil conspirators.... Let
+the goddess Hathor descend [from heaven] and slay the men on the
+mountains [to which they had fled in fear]." As the goddess complied she
+remarked: "it will be good for me when I subject mankind," and Re
+replied, "I shall subject them and slay them". Hence the goddess
+received the additional name of <i>Sekhmet</i> from the word "to subject".
+The destructive Sekhmet<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> <i>avatar</i> of Hathor is represented as a
+fierce lion-headed goddess of war wading in blood. For the goddess set
+to work slaughtering mankind and the land was flooded with blood<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a>.
+Re became alarmed and determined to save at least some remnant of
+mankind. For this purpose he sent messengers to Elephantine to obtain a
+substance called <i>d'd'</i> in the Egyptian text, which he gave to the god
+Sektet of Heliopolis to grind up in a mortar. When the slaves had
+crushed barley to make beer the powdered <i>d'd'</i> was mixed with it so as
+to make it red like human blood. Enough of this blood-coloured beer was
+made to fill 7000 jars. At nighttime this was poured out upon the
+fields, so that when the goddess came to resume her task of destruction
+in the morning she found the fields inundated and her face was mirrored
+in the fluid. She drank of the fluid and became intoxicated so that she
+no longer recognized mankind.<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a></p>
+
+<p>Thus Re saved a remnant of mankind from the bloodthirsty, terrible
+Hathor. But the god was weary of life on earth and withdrew to heaven
+upon the back of the Divine Cow.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt as to the meaning of this legend, highly confused
+as it is. The king who was responsible for introducing irriga<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>tion came
+to be himself identified with the life-giving power of water. He was the
+river: his own vitality was the source of all fertility and prosperity.
+Hence when he showed signs that his vital powers were failing it became
+a logical necessity that he should be killed to safeguard the welfare of
+his country and people.<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a></p>
+
+<p>The time came when a king, rich in power and the enjoyment of life,
+refused to comply with this custom. When he realized that his virility
+was failing he consulted the Great Mother, as the source and giver of
+life, to obtain an elixir which would rejuvenate him and obviate the
+necessity of being killed. The only medicine in the pharmacop&#339;ia of
+those times that was believed to be useful in minimizing danger to life
+was human blood. Wounds that gave rise to severe h&aelig;morrhage were known
+to produce unconsciousness and death. If the escape of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> the blood of
+life could produce these results it was not altogether illogical to
+assume that the exhibition of human blood could also add to the vitality
+of living men and so "turn back the years from their old age," as the
+Pyramid Texts express it.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Great Mother, the giver of life to all mankind, was faced with
+the dilemma that, to provide the king with the elixir to restore his
+youth, she had to slay mankind, to take the life she herself had given
+to her own children. Thus she acquired an evil reputation which was to
+stick to her throughout her career. She was not only the beneficent
+creator of all things and the bestower of all blessings: but she was
+also a demon of destruction who did not hesitate to slaughter even her
+own children.</p>
+
+<p>In course of time the practice of human sacrifice was abandoned and
+substitutes were adopted in place of the blood of mankind. Either the
+blood of cattle,<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> who by means of appropriate ceremonies could be
+transformed into human beings (for the Great Mother herself was the
+Divine Cow and her offspring cattle), was employed in its stead; or red
+ochre was used to colour a liquid which was used ritually to replace the
+blood of sacrifice. When this phase of culture was reached the goddess
+provided for the king an elixir of life consisting of beer stained red
+by means of red ochre, so as to simulate human blood.</p>
+
+<p>But such a mixture was doubly potent, for the barley from which the beer
+was made and the drink itself was supposed to be imbued with the
+life-giving powers of Osiris, and the blood-colour reinforced its
+therapeutic usefulness. The legend now begins to become involved and
+confused. For the goddess is making the rejuvenator for the king, who in
+the meantime has died and become deified as Osiris; and the beer, which
+is the vehicle of the life-giving powers of Osiris, is now being used to
+rejuvenate his son and successor, the living king Horus, who in the
+version that has come down to us is replaced by the sun-god Re.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is Re who is king and is growing old: he asks Hathor, the Great
+Mother, to provide him with the elixir of life. But comparison with some
+of the legends of other countries suggests that Re has usurped the place
+previously occupied by Horus and originally by Osiris, who as the real
+personification of the life-giving power of water is obviously the
+appropriate person to be slain when his virility begins to fail. Dr.
+C.&nbsp;G. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker Lerpiu, which I have
+already quoted (p. 113) from Sir James Frazer's "Dying God," suggests
+that the slain king or god was originally Osiris.</p>
+
+<p>The introduction of Re into the story marks the beginning of the belief
+in the sky-world or heaven. Hathor was originally nothing more than an
+amulet to enhance fertility and vitality. Then she was personified as a
+woman and identified with a cow. But when the view developed that the
+moon controlled the powers of life-giving in women and exercised a
+direct influence upon their life-blood, the Great Mother was identified
+with the moon. But how was such a conception to be brought into harmony
+with the view that she was also a cow? The human mind displays an
+irresistible tendency to unify its experience and to bridge the gaps
+that necessarily exist in its broken series of scraps of knowledge and
+ideas. No break is too great to be bridged by this instinctive impulse
+to rationalize the products of diverse experience. Hence, early man,
+having identified the Great Mother both with a cow and the moon, had no
+compunction in making "the cow jump over the moon" to become the sky.
+The moon then became the "Eye" of the sky and the sun necessarily became
+its other "Eye". But, as the sun was clearly the more important "Eye,"
+seeing that it determined the day and gave warmth and light for man's
+daily work, it was the more important deity. Therefore Re, at first the
+Brother-Eye of Hathor, and afterwards her husband, became the supreme
+sky-deity, and Hathor merely one of his Eyes.</p>
+
+<p>When this stage of theological evolution was reached, the story of the
+"Destruction of Mankind" was re-edited, and Hathor was called the "Eye
+of Re". In the earlier versions she was called into consultation solely
+as the giver of life and, to obtain the life-blood, she cut men's
+throats with a knife.</p>
+
+<p>But as the Eye of Re she was identified with the fire-spitting
+ur&aelig;us-serpent which the king or god wore on his forehead. She was both
+the moon and the fiery bolt which shot down from the sky to slay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> the
+enemies of Re. For the men who were originally slaughtered to provide
+the blood for an elixir now became the enemies of Re. The reason for
+this was that, human sacrifice having been abandoned and substitutes
+provided to replace the human blood, the story-teller was at a loss to
+know why the goddess killed mankind. A reason had to be found&mdash;and the
+rationalization adopted was that men had rebelled against the gods and
+had to be killed. This interpretation was probably the result of a
+confusion with the old legend of the fight between Horus and Set, the
+rulers of the two kingdoms of Egypt. The possibility also suggests
+itself that a pun made by some priestly jester may have been the real
+factor that led to this mingling of two originally separate stories. In
+the "Destruction of Mankind" the story runs, according to Budge,<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a>
+that Re, referring to his enemies, said: <i>m&#257;-ten set u&#257;r er set</i>,
+"Behold ye them (<i>set</i>) fleeing into the mountain (<i>set</i>)". The enemies
+were thus identified with the mountain or stone and with Set, the enemy
+of the gods.<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a></p>
+
+<p>In Egyptian hieroglyphics the symbol for stone is used as the
+determinative for Set. When the "Eye of Re" destroyed mankind and the
+rebels were thus identified with the followers of Set, they were
+regarded as creatures of "stone". In other words the Medusa-eye
+petrified the enemies. From this feeble pun on the part of some ancient
+Egyptian scribe has arisen the world-wide stories of the influence of
+the "Evil Eye" and the petrification of the enemies of the gods.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a> As
+the name for Isis in Egyptian is "<i>Set</i>" it is possible that the
+confusion of the Power of Evil with the Great Mother may also have been
+facilitated by an extension of the same pun.</p>
+
+<p>It is important to recognize that the legend of Hathor descending from
+the moon or the sky in the form of destroying fire had nothing whatever
+to do, in the first instance, with the phenomena of lightning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> and
+meteorites. It was the result of verbal quibbling after the destructive
+goddess came to be identified with the moon, the sky and the "Eye of
+Re". But once the evolution of the story on these lines prepared the
+way, it was inevitable that in later times the powers of destruction
+exerted by the fire from the sky should have been identified with the
+lightning and meteorites.</p>
+
+<p>When the destructive force of the heavens was attributed to the "Eye of
+Re" and the god's enemies were identified with the followers of Set, it
+was natural that the traditional enemy of Set who was also the more
+potent other "Eye of Re" should assume his mother's r&ocirc;le of punishing
+rebellious mankind. That Horus did in fact take the place at first
+occupied by Hathor in the story is revealed by the series of trivial
+episodes from the "Destruction of Mankind" that reappear in the "Saga of
+the Winged Disk". The king of Lower Egypt (Horus) was identified with a
+falcon, as Hathor was with the vulture (Mut): like her, he entered the
+sun-god's boat<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> and sailed up the river with him: he then mounted up
+to heaven as a winged disk, i.e. the sun of Re equipped with his own
+falcon's wings. The destructive force displayed by Hathor as the Eye of
+Re was symbolized by her identification with Tefnut, the fire-spitting
+ur&aelig;us-snake. When Horus assumed the form of the winged disk he added to
+his insignia two fire-spitting serpents to destroy Re's enemies. The
+winged disk was at once the instrument of destruction and the god
+himself. It swooped (or flew) down from heaven like a bolt of destroying
+fire and killed the enemies of Re. By a confusion with Horus's other
+fight against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> followers of Set, the enemies of Re become identified
+with Set's army and they are transformed into crocodiles, hippopotami
+and all the other kinds of creatures whose shapes the enemies of Osiris
+assume.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the development of these legends a multitude of other
+factors played a part and gave rise to transformations of the meaning of
+the incidents.</p>
+
+<p>The goddess originally slaughtered mankind, or perhaps it would be truer
+to say, made <i>a</i> human sacrifice, to obtain blood to rejuvenate the
+king. But, as we have seen already, when the sacrifice was no longer a
+necessary part of the programme, the incident of the slaughter was not
+dropped out of the story, but a new explanation of it was framed.
+Instead of simply making a human sacrifice, mankind as a whole was
+destroyed for rebelling against the gods, the act of rebellion being
+murmuring about the king's old age and loss of virility. The elixir soon
+became something more than a rejuvenator: it was transformed into the
+food of the gods, the ambrosia that gave them their immortality, and
+distinguished them from mere mortals. Now when the development of the
+story led to the replacement of the single victim by the whole of
+mankind, the blood produced by the wholesale slaughter was so abundant
+that the fields were flooded by the life-giving elixir. By the sacrifice
+of men the soil was renewed and refertilized. When the blood-coloured
+beer was substituted for the actual blood the conception was brought
+into still closer harmony with Egyptian ideas, because the beer was
+animated with the life-giving powers of Osiris. But Osiris was the Nile.
+The blood-coloured fertilizing fluid was then identified with the annual
+inundation of the red-coloured waters of the Nile. Now the Nile waters
+were supposed to come from the First Cataract at Elephantine. Hence by a
+familiar psychological process the previous phase of the legend was
+recast, and by confusion the red ochre (which was used to colour the
+beer red) was said to have come from Elephantine.
+<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thus we have arrived at the stage where, by a distortion of a series of
+phases, the new incident emerges that by means of a human sacrifice the
+Nile flood can be produced. By a further confusion the goddess, who
+originally did the slaughter, becomes the victim. Hence the story
+assumed the form that by means of the sacrifice of a beautiful and
+attractive maiden the annual inundation can be produced. As the most
+potent symbol of life-giving it is essential that the victim should be
+sexually attractive, i.e. that she should be a virgin and the most
+beautiful and desirable in the land. When the practice of human
+sacrifice was abandoned a figure or an animal was substituted for the
+maiden in ritual practice, and in legends the hero rescued the maiden,
+as Andromeda was saved from the dragon.<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a> The dragon is the
+personification of the monsters that dwell in the waters as well as the
+destructive forces of the flood itself. But the monsters were no other
+than the followers of Set; they were the victims of the slaughter who
+became identified with the god's other traditional enemies, the
+followers of Set. Thus the monster from whom Andromeda is rescued is
+merely another representative of herself!</p>
+
+<p>But the destructive forces of the flood now enter into the programme. In
+the phases we have so far discussed it was the slaughter of mankind
+which caused the inundation: but in the next phase it is the flood
+itself which causes the destruction, as in the later Egyptian and the
+borrowed Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew&mdash;and in fact the
+world-wide&mdash;versions. Re's boat becomes the ark; the winged disk which
+was despatched by Re from the boat becomes the dove and the other birds
+sent out to spy the land, as the winged Horus spied the enemies of Re.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the new weapon of the gods&mdash;we have already noted Hathor's knife
+and Horus's winged disk, which is the fire from heaven, the lightning
+and the thunderbolt&mdash;is the flood. Like the others it can be either a
+beneficent giver of life or a force of destruction.</p>
+
+<p>But the flood also becomes a weapon of another kind. One of the earlier
+incidents of the story represents Hathor in opposition to Re. The
+goddess becomes so maddened with the zest of killing that the god
+becomes alarmed and asks her to desist and spare some representatives of
+the race. But she is deaf to entreaties. Hence the god is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> said to have
+sent to Elephantine for the red ochre to make a sedative draught to
+overcome her destructive zeal. We have already seen that this incident
+had an entirely different meaning&mdash;it was merely intended to explain the
+obtaining of the colouring matter wherewith to redden the sacred beer so
+as to make it resemble blood as an elixir for the god. It was brought
+from Elephantine, because the red waters of inundation of the Nile were
+supposed by the Egyptians to come from Elephantine.</p>
+
+<p>But according to the story inscribed in Seti I<sup>st</sup>'s tomb, the red
+ochre was an essential ingredient of the sedative mixture (prepared
+under the direction of Re by the Sekti<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a> of Heliopolis) to calm
+Hathor's murderous spirit.</p>
+
+<p>It has been claimed that the story simply means that the goddess became
+intoxicated with beer and that she became genially inoffensive solely as
+the effect of such inebriation. But the incident in the Egyptian story
+closely resembles the legends of other countries in which some herb is
+used specifically as a sedative. In most books on Egyptian mythology the
+word (<i>d'd'</i>) for the substance put into the drink to colour it is
+translated "mandragora," from its resemblance to the Hebrew word
+<i>dudaim</i> in the Old Testament, which is often translated "mandrakes" or
+"love-apples". But Gauthier has clearly demonstrated that the Egyptian
+word does not refer to a vegetable but to a mineral substance, which he
+translates "red clay".<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a> Mr. F.&nbsp;Ll. Griffith tells me, however, that
+it is "red ochre". In any case, mandrake is not found at Elephantine
+(which, however, for the reasons I have already given, is a point of no
+importance so far as the identification of the substance is concerned),
+nor in fact anywhere in Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>But if some foreign story of the action of a sedative drug had become
+blended with and incorporated in the highly complex and composite
+Egyptian legend the narrative would be more intelligible. The mandrake
+is such a sedative as might have been employed to calm the murderous
+frenzy of a maniacal woman. In fact it is closely allied to hyoscyamus,
+whose active principle, hyoscin, is used in modern medicine precisely
+for such purposes. I venture to suggest that a folk-tale describing the
+effect of opium or some other "drowsy syrup" has been absorbed into the
+legend of the Destruction of Mankind, and has provided the starting
+point of all those incidents in the dragon-story in which poison or
+some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> sleep-producing drug plays a part. For when Hathor defies Re and
+continues the destruction, she is playing the part of her Babylonian
+representative Tiamat, and is a dragon who has to be vanquished by the
+drink which the god provides.</p>
+
+<p>The red earth which was pounded in the mortar to make the elixir of life
+and the fertilizer of the soil also came to be regarded as the material
+out of which the new race of men was made to replace those who were
+destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>The god fashioned mankind of this earth and, instead of the red ochre
+being merely the material to give the blood-colour to the draught of
+immortality, the story became confused: actual blood was presented to
+the clay images to give them life and consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>In a later elaboration the remains of the former race of mankind were
+ground up to provide the material out of which their successors were
+created. This version is a favourite story in Northern Europe, and has
+obviously been influenced by an intermediate variant which finds
+expression in the Indian legend of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.
+Instead of the material for the elixir of the gods being pounded by the
+Sekti of Heliopolis and incidentally becoming a sedative for Hathor, it
+is the milk of the Divine Cow herself which is churned to provide the
+<i>amrita</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> G. Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 164.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> H. Brugsch, "Die Alraune als alt&auml;gyptische
+Zauberpflanze," <i>Zeit. f. &AElig;gypt. Sprache</i>, Bd. 29, 1891, pp. 31-3; and
+Henri Gauthier, "Le nom hi&eacute;roglyphique de l'argile rouge d'&Eacute;l&eacute;phantine,"
+<i>Revue &Eacute;gyptologique</i>, t. xi<sup>e</sup>e, Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> These legends will be found in the works by Maspero,
+Erman and Budge, to which I have already referred. A very useful digest
+will be found in Donald A. Mackenzie's "Egyptian Myth and Legend". Mr.
+Mackenzie does not claim to have any first-hand knowledge of the
+subject, but his exceptionally wide and intimate knowledge of Scottish
+folk-lore, which has preserved a surprisingly large part of the same
+legends, has enabled him to present the Egyptian stories with
+exceptional clearness and sympathetic insight. But I refer to his book
+specially because he is one of the few modern writers who has made the
+attempt to compare the legends of Egypt, Babylonia, Crete, India and
+Western Europe. Hence the reader who is not familiar with the mythology
+of these countries will find his books particularly useful as works of
+reference in following the story I have to unfold: "Teutonic Myth and
+Legend," "Egyptian Myth and Legend," "Indian Myth and Legend," "Myths of
+Babylonia and Assyria" and "Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> See Leonard W. King, "Babylonian Religion," 1899.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> For a useful collection of data see A.&nbsp;B. Cook, "Zeus".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in connexion
+with Similar Babylonian Beliefs," <i>Journal of the American Oriental
+Society</i>, vol. xxxvi., 1916, pp. 300-20; and "The Moral Deities of Iran
+and India and their Origins," <i>The American Journal of Theology</i>, vol.
+xxi., No. i., January, 1917.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> Hopkins, "Religions of India".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> De Groot, "The Religious System of China".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Manchester,
+1918.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Arch&eacute;ologie Am&eacute;ricaine," Paris,
+1912; T.&nbsp;A. Joyce, "Mexican Arch&aelig;ology," and especially the memoir by
+Seler on the "Codex Vaticanus" and his articles in the <i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r
+Ethnologie</i> and elsewhere.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> I.e. the offspring of the Great Mother of gods and men,
+Hathor, the "Eye of Re".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> That is, Hathor, who as the moon is the "Eye of Re".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> Elsewhere in these pages I have used the more generally
+adopted spelling "<i>Sekhet</i>".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> Mr. F. &nbsp;Ll. Griffith tells me that the translation
+"flooding the land" is erroneous and misleading. Comparison of the whole
+series of stories, however, suggests that the amount of blood shed
+rapidly increased in the development of the narrative: at first the
+blood of a single victim; then the blood of mankind; then 7000 jars of a
+substitute for blood; then the red inundation of the Nile.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> This version I have quoted mainly from Erman, <i>op. cit.</i>,
+pp. 267-9, but with certain alterations which I shall mention later. In
+another version of the legend wine replaces the beer and is made out of
+"the blood of those who formerly fought against the gods," <i>cf.</i>
+Plutarch, De Iside (ed. Parthey) 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> It is still the custom in many places, and among them
+especially the regions near the headwaters of the Nile itself, to regard
+the king or rain-maker as the impersonation of the life-giving
+properties of water and the source of all fertility. When his own
+vitality shows signs of failing he is killed, so as not to endanger the
+fruitfulness of the community by allowing one who is weak in life-giving
+powers to control its destinies. Much of the evidence relating to these
+matters has been collected by Sir James Frazer in "The Dying God," 1911,
+who quotes from Dr. Seligman the following account of the Dinka
+"Osiris":
+</p><p>
+"While the mighty spirit Lerpiu is supposed to be embodied in the
+rain-maker, it is also thought to inhabit a certain hut which serves as
+a shrine. In front of the hut stands a post to which are fastened the
+horns of many bullocks that have been sacrificed to Lerpiu; and in the
+hut is kept a very sacred spear which bears the name of Lerpiu and is
+said to have fallen from heaven six generations ago. As fallen stars are
+also called Lerpiu, we may suspect that an intimate connexion is
+supposed to exist between meteorites and the spirit which animates the
+rain-maker" (Frazer, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 32). Here then we have a house of
+the dead inhabited by Lerpiu, who can also enter the body of the
+rain-maker and animate him, as well as the ancient spear and the falling
+stars, which are also animate forms of the same god, who obviously is
+the homologue of Osiris, and is identified with the spear and the
+falling stars.
+</p><p>
+In spring when the April moon is a few days old bullocks are sacrificed
+to Lerpiu. "Two bullocks are led twice round the shrine and afterwards
+tied by the rain-maker to the post in front of it. Then the drums beat
+and the people, old and young, men and women, dance round the shrine and
+sing, while the beasts are being sacrificed, 'Lerpiu, our ancestor, we
+have brought you a sacrifice. Be pleased to cause rain to fall.' The
+blood of the bullocks is collected in a gourd, boiled in a pot on the
+fire, and eaten by the old and important people of the clan. The horns
+of the animals are attached to the post in front of the shrine" (pp. 32
+and 33).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> In Northern Nigeria an official who bore the title of
+Killer of the Elephant throttled the king "as soon as he showed signs of
+failing health or growing infirmity". The king-elect was afterwards
+conducted to the centre of the town, called Head of the Elephant, where
+he was made to lie down on a bed. Then a black ox was slaughtered and
+its blood allowed to pour all over his body. Next the ox was flayed, and
+the remains of the dead king, which had been disembowelled and smoked
+for seven days over a slow fire, were wrapped up in the hide and dragged
+along to the place of burial, where they were interred in a circular
+pit. (Frazer, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 35).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 392.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> "The eye of the sun-god, which was subsequently called
+the eye of Horus and identified with the Ur&aelig;us-snake on the forehead of
+Re and of the Pharaohs, the earthly representatives of Re, finally
+becoming synonymous with the crown of Lower Egypt, was a mighty goddess,
+Uto or Buto by name" (Alan Gardiner, Article "Magic (Egyptian)" in
+Hastings' <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia of Religion and Ethics</i>, p. 268, quoting
+Sethe.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> For an account of the distribution of this story see E.
+Sidney Hartland, "The Legend of Perseus"; also W.&nbsp;J. Perry, "The
+Megalithic Culture of Indonesia".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> The original "boat of the sky" was the crescent moon,
+which, from its likeness to the earliest form of Nile boat, was regarded
+as the vessel in which the moon (seen as a faint object upon the
+crescent), or the goddess who was supposed to be personified in the
+moon, travelled across the waters of the heavens. But as this "boat" was
+obviously part of the moon itself, it also was regarded as an animate
+form of the goddess, the "Eye of Re". When the Sun, as the other "Eye,"
+assumed the chief r&ocirc;le, Re was supposed to traverse the heavens in his
+own "boat," which was also brought into relationship with the actual
+boat used in the Osirian burial ritual.
+</p><p>
+The custom of employing the name "dragon" in reference to a boat is
+found in places as far apart as Scandinavia and China. It is the direct
+outcome of these identifications of the sun and moon with a boat
+animated by the respective deities. In India the <i>Makara</i>, the prototype
+of the dragon, was sometimes represented as a boat which was looked upon
+as the fish-<i>avatar</i> of Vishnu, Buddha or some other deity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> This is an instance of the well-known tendency of the
+human mind to blend numbers of different incidents into one story. An
+episode of one experience, having been transferred to an earlier one,
+becomes rationalized in adaptation to its different environment. This
+process of psychological transference is the explanation of the
+reference to Elephantine as the source of the <i>d'd'</i>, and has no
+relation to actuality. The na&iuml;ve efforts of Brugsch and Gauthier to
+study the natural products of Elephantine for the purpose of identifying
+<i>d'd'</i> were therefore wholly misplaced.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> In Hartland's "Legend of Perseus" a collection of
+variants of this story will be found.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> In the version I have quoted from Erman he refers to "the
+god Sektet".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> <i>Op. cit. supra</i>.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Thunder-Weapon.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a></h3>
+
+<p>In the development of the dragon-story we have seen that the instruments
+of destruction were of a most varied kind. Each of the three primary
+deities, Hathor, Osiris and Horus can be a destructive power as well as
+a giver of life and of all kinds of boons. Every homologue or surrogate
+of these three deities can become a weapon for dragon-destroying, such
+as the moon or the lotus of Hathor, the water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> or the beer of Osiris,
+the sun or the falcon of Horus. Originally Hathor used a flint knife or
+axe: then she did the execution as "the Eye of Re," the moon, the fiery
+bolt from heaven: Osiris sent the destroying flood and the intoxicating
+beer, each of which, like the knife, axe and moon of Hathor, were
+animated by the deity. Then Horus came as the winged disk, the falcon,
+the sun, the lightning and the thunderbolt. As the dragon-story was
+spread abroad in the world any one of these "weapons" was confused with
+any of (or all) the rest. The Eye of Re was the fire-spitting
+ur&aelig;us-serpent; and foreign people, like the Greeks, Indians and others,
+gave the Egyptian verbal simile literal expression and converted it into
+an actual Cyclopean eye planted in the forehead, which shot out the
+destroying fire.</p>
+
+<p>The warrior god of Babylonia is called the bright one,<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> the sword or
+lightning of Ishtar, who was herself called both the sword or lightning
+of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>In the &AElig;gean area also the sons of Zeus and the progeny of heaven may be
+axes, stone implements, meteoric stones and thunderbolts. In a Swahili
+tale the hero's weapon is "a sword like a flash of lightning".</p>
+
+<p>According to Bergaigne,<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> the myth of the celestial drink <i>soma</i>,
+brought down from heaven by a bird ordinarily called <i>cyena</i>, "eagle,"
+is parallel to that of Agni, the celestial fire brought by M&acirc;tari&ccedil;van.
+This parallelism is even expressly stated in the Rig Veda, verse 6 of
+hymn 1 to Agni and Soma. M&acirc;tari&ccedil;van brought the one from heaven, the
+eagle brought the other from the celestial mountain.</p>
+
+<p>Kuhn admits that the eagle represents Indra; and Lehmann regards the
+eagle who takes the fire as Agni himself. It is patent that both Indra
+and Agni are in fact merely specialized forms of Horus of the Winged
+Disk Saga, in one of which the warrior sun-god is represented, in the
+other the living fire. The elixir of life of the Egyptian story is
+represented by the <i>soma</i>, which by confusion is associated with the
+eagle: in other words, the god Soma is the homologue not only of Osiris,
+but also of Horus.</p>
+
+<p>Other incidents in the same original version are confused in the Greek
+story of Prometheus. He stole the fire from heaven and brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> it to
+earth: but, in place of the episode of the elixir, which is adopted in
+the Indian story just mentioned, the creation of men from clay is
+accredited by the Greeks to the "flaming one," the "fire eagle"
+Prometheus.</p>
+
+<p>The double axe was the homologue of the winged disk which fell, or
+rather flew, from heaven as the tangible form of the god. This fire from
+heaven inevitably came to be identified with the lightning. According to
+Blinkenberg (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 19) "many points go to prove that the
+double-axe is a representation of the lightning (see Usener, p. 20)". He
+refers to the design on the famous gold ring from Mycen&aelig; where "the sun,
+the moon, a double curved line presumably representing the rainbow, and
+the double-axe, i.e. the lightning": but "the latter is placed lower
+than the others, probably because it descends from heaven to earth,"
+like Horus when he assumed the form of the winged disk and flew down to
+earth as a fiery bolt to destroy the enemies of Re.</p>
+
+<p>The recognition of the homology of the winged disk with the double axe
+solves a host of problems which have puzzled classical scholars within
+recent years. The form of the double axe on the Mycen&aelig;an ring<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a> and
+the painted sarcophagus from Hagia Triada in Crete (and especially the
+oblique markings upon the axe) is probably a suggestion of the double
+series of feathers and the outlines of the individual feathers
+respectively on the wings. The position of the axe upon a symbolic tree
+is not intended, as Blinkenberg claims (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 21), as "a ritual
+representation of the trees struck by lightning": but is the familiar
+scene of Mesopotamian culture-area, the tree of life surmounted by the
+winged disk.<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a></p>
+
+<p>The bird poised upon the axe in the Cretan picture is the homologue of
+the falcon of Horus: it is in fact a second representation of the winged
+disk itself. This interpretation is not affected by the consideration
+that the falcon may be replaced by the eagle, pigeon, woodpecker or
+raven, for these substitutions were repeatedly made by the ancient
+priesthoods in flagrant defiance of the properties of ornithological
+homologies. The same phenomenon is displayed even more obtrusively in
+Central America and Mexico, where the ancient sculptors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> and painters
+represented the bird perched upon the tree of life as a falcon, an
+eagle, a vulture, a macaw or even a turkey.<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a></p>
+
+<p>The incident of the winged disk descending to effect the sun-god's
+purposes upon earth probably represents the earliest record of the
+recognition of thunder and lightning and the phenomena of rain as
+manifestations of the god's powers. All gods of thunder, lightning, rain
+and clouds derive their attributes, and the arbitrary graphic
+representation of them, from the legend which the Egyptian scribe has
+preserved for us in the Saga of the Winged Disk.</p>
+
+<p>The sacred axe of Crete is represented elsewhere as a sword which became
+the visible impersonation of the deity.<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a> There is a Hittite story of
+a sword-handle coming to life. Hose and McDougall refer to the same
+incident in certain Sarawak legends; and the story is true to the
+original in the fact that the sword fell from the sun.<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sir Arthur Evans describes as "the aniconic image of the god" a stone
+pillar on which crude pictures of a double axe have been scratched.
+These representations of the axe in fact serve the same purpose as the
+winged disk in Egypt, and, as we shall see subsequently, there was an
+actual confusion between the Egyptian symbol and the Cretan axe.</p>
+
+<p>The obelisk at Abusir was the aniconic representative of the sun-god Re,
+or rather, the support of the pyramidal apex, the gilded surface of
+which reflected the sun's rays and so made manifest the god's presence
+in the stone.</p>
+
+<p>The Hittites seem to have substituted the winged disk as a
+representation of the sun: for in a design copied from a seal<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> we
+find the Egyptian symbol borne upon the apex of a cone.</p>
+
+<p>The transition from this to the great double axe from Hagia Triada in
+the Candia Museum<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> is a relatively easy one, which was materially
+helped, as we shall see, by the fact that the winged disk was actually
+homologized with an axe or knife as alternative weapons used by the
+sun-god for the destruction of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>In Dr. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker (<i>supra</i>, p. 113)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> we
+have already seen that the Soudanese Osiris was identified with a spear
+and falling stars.</p>
+
+<p>According to Dr. Budge<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> the Egyptian hieroglyph used as the
+determinative of the word <i>neter</i>, meaning god or spirit, is the axe
+with a handle. Mr. Griffith, however, interprets it as a roll of yellow
+cloth ("Hieroglyphics," p. 46). On Hittite seals the axe sometimes takes
+the place of the god Teshub.<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sir Arthur Evans endeavours to explain these conceptions by a vague
+appeal to certain natural phenomena (<i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 20 and 21); but the
+identical traditions of widespread peoples are much too arbitrary and
+specific to be interpreted by any such speculations.</p>
+
+<p>Sanchoniathon's story of Baetylos being the son of Ouranos is merely a
+poetical way of saying that the sun-god fell to earth in the form of a
+stone or a weapon, as a Zeus Kapp&ocirc;tas or a Horus in the form of a winged
+disk, flying down from heaven to destroy the enemies of Re.</p>
+
+<p>"The idea of their [the weapons] flying through the air or falling from
+heaven, and their supposed power of burning with inner fire or shining
+in the nighttime," was not primarily suggested, as Sir Arthur Evans
+claims (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 21), "by the phenomena associated with meteoric
+stones," but was a rationalization of the events described in the early
+Egyptian and Babylonian stories.</p>
+
+<p>They "shine at night" because the original weapon of destruction was the
+moon as the Eye of Re. They "burn with inward fire," like the Babylonian
+Marduk, when in the fight with the dragon Tiamat "he filled his body
+with burning flame" (King, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 71), because they <i>were</i> fire,
+the fire of the sun and of lightning, the fire spat out by the Eye of
+Re.</p>
+
+<p>Further evidence in corroboration of these views is provided by the fact
+that in the &AElig;gean area the double-axe replaces the moon between the
+cow's horns (Evans, <i>op. cit.</i>, Fig. 3, p. 9).</p>
+
+<p>In King's "Babylonian Religion" (pp. 70 and 71) we are told how the gods
+provided Marduk with an invincible weapon in preparation for the combat
+with the dragon: and the ancient scribe himself sets forth a series of
+its homologues:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">He made ready his bow ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He slung a spear ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bow and quiver ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He set the lightning in front of him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With burning flame he filled his body.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>An ancient Egyptian writer has put on record further identifications of
+weapons. In the 95th Chapter of the Book of the Dead, the deceased is
+reported to have said: "I am he who sendeth forth terror into the powers
+of rain and thunder.... I have made to flourish my knife which is in the
+hand of Thoth in the powers of rain and thunder" (Budge, "Gods of the
+Egyptians," vol. i., p. 414).</p>
+
+<p>The identification of the winged disk with the thunderbolt which emerges
+so definitely from these homologies is not altogether new, for it was
+suggested some years ago by Count d'Alviella<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> in these words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"On seeing some representations of the Thunderbolt which recall in a
+remarkable manner the outlines of the Winged Globe, it may be asked if
+it was not owing to this latter symbol that the Greeks transformed into
+a winged spindle the Double Trident derived from Assyria. At any rate
+the transition, or, if it be preferred, the combination of the two
+symbols is met with in those coins from Northern Africa where Greek art
+was most deeply impregnated with Ph&#339;nician types. Thus on coins of
+Bocchus II, King of Mauretania, figures are found which M. Lajard
+connected with the Winged Globe, and M.&nbsp;L. M&uuml;ller calls Thunderbolts,
+but which are really the result of crossing between these two emblems".</p>
+
+<p>The thunderbolt, however, is not always, or even commonly, the direct
+representative of the winged disk. It is more often derived from
+lightning or some floral design.<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a></p>
+
+<p>According to Count d'Alviella<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> "the Trident of Siva at times
+exhibits the form of a lotus calyx depicted in the Egyptian manner".</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps other transformations of the <i>trisula</i> might still be found at
+Boro-Budur [in Java].... The same Disk which, when transformed into a
+most complicated ornament, is sometimes crowned by a Trident, is also
+met with between two serpents&mdash;which brings us back to the origin of the
+Winged Circle&mdash;the Globe of Egypt with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> ur&aelig;i" (see d'Alviella's Fig.
+158). "Moreover this ornament, between which and certain forms of the
+<i>trisula</i> the transition is easily traced, commonly surmounts the
+entrance to the pagodas depicted in the bas-reliefs&mdash;in exactly the same
+manner as the Winged Globe adorns the lintel of the temples in Egypt and
+Ph&#339;nicia."</p>
+
+<p>Thus we find traces of a blending of the two homologous designs, derived
+independently from the lotus and the winged disk, which acquired the
+same symbolic significance.</p>
+
+<p>The weapon of Poseidon, the so-called "Trident of Neptune," is
+"sometimes crowned with a trilobate lotus flower, or with three lotus
+buds; in other cases it is depicted in a shape that may well represent a
+fishing spear" (Blinkenberg, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 53 and 54).</p>
+
+<p>"Even if Jacobsthal's interpretation of the flower as a common Greek
+symbol for fire be not accepted, the conventionalization of the trident
+as a lotus blossom is quite analogous to the change, on Greek soil, of
+the Assyrian thunderweapon to two flowers pointing in opposite
+directions" (p. 54).</p>
+
+<p>But the conception of a flower as a symbol of fire cannot thus summarily
+be dismissed. For Sir Arthur Evans has collected all the stages in the
+transformation of Egyptian palmette pillars into the rayed pillars of
+Cyprus, in which the leaflets of the palmette become converted (in the
+Cypro-Mycen&aelig;an derivatives) into the rays which he calls "the natural
+concomitant of divinities of light".<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a></p>
+
+<p>The underlying motive which makes such a transference easy is the
+Egyptian conception of Hathor as a sacred lotus from which the sun-god
+Horus is born. The god of light is identified with the water-plant,
+whether lotus, iris or lily; and the lotus form of Horus can be
+correlated with its Hellenic surrogate, Apollo Hyakinthos. "The
+fleur-de-lys type now takes its place beside the sacred lotus" (<i>op.
+cit.</i>, p. 50). The trident and the fleur-de-lys are thunderweapons
+because they represent forms of Horus or his mother.</p>
+
+<p>The classical keraunos is still preserved in Tibet as the <i>dorje</i>, which
+is identified with Indra's thunderbolt, the <i>vajra</i>.<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> This word is
+also applied to the diamond, the "king of stones," which in turn
+acquired many of the attributes of the pearl, another of the Great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+Mother's surrogates, which is reputed to have fallen from heaven like
+the thunderbolt.<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Tibetan <i>dorje</i>, like its Greek original, is obviously a
+conventionalized flower, the leaf-design about the base of the corona
+being quite clearly defined.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of the Winged-Disk Saga is clearly revealed in such Greek
+myths as that relating to Ixion. "Euripides is represented by
+Aristophanes as declaring that <i>Aith&eacute;r</i> the creation devised</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">The eye to mimic the wheel of the sun."<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When we read of Zeus in anger binding Ixion to a winged wheel made of
+fire, and sending him spinning through the air, we are merely dealing
+with a Greek variant of the Egyptian myth in which Re despatched Horus
+as a winged disk to slay his enemies. In the Hellenic version the
+sky-god is angry with the father of the centaurs for his ill-treatment
+of his father-in-law and his behaviour towards Hera and her
+cloud-manifestation: but though distorted all the incidents reveal their
+original inspiration in the Egyptian story and its early Aryan variants.</p>
+
+<p>It is remarkable that Mr. A.&nbsp;B. Cook, who compared the wheel of Ixion
+with the Egyptian winged disk (pp. 205-10), did not look deeper for a
+common origin of the two myths, especially when he got so far as to
+identify Ixion with the sun-god (p. 211).</p>
+
+<p>Blinkenberg sums up the development of the thunder-weapon thus: "From
+the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or three
+zigzag lines representing flames, a tripartite thunder-weapon was
+evolved and earned east and west from the ancient seat of civilization.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+Together with the axe (in Western Asia Minor the double-edged, and
+towards the centre of Asia the single-edged, axe) it became a regular
+attribute of the Asiatic thunder-gods.... The Indian trisula and the
+Greek triaina are both its descendants" (p. 57).</p>
+
+<p>Discussing the relationship of the sun-god to thunder, Dr. Rendel Harris
+refers to the fact that Apollo's "arrows are said to be lightnings," and
+he quotes Pausanias, Apollodorus and Mr. A.&nbsp;B. Cook in substantiation of
+his statements.<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> Both sons of Zeus, Dionysus and Apollo, are
+"concerned with the production of fire".</p>
+
+<p>According to Hyginus, Typhon was the son of Tartarus and the Earth: he
+made war against Jupiter for dominion, and, being struck by lightning,
+was thrown flaming to the earth, where Mount &AElig;tna was placed upon
+him.<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a></p>
+
+<p>In this curious variant of the story of the winged disk, the conflict of
+Horus with Set is merged with the Destruction, for the son of Tartarus
+[Osiris] and the Earth [Isis] here is not Horus but his hostile brother
+Set. Instead of fighting for Jupiter (Re) as Horus did, he is against
+him. The lightning (which is Horus in the form of the winged disk)
+strikes Typhon and throws him flaming to earth. The episode of Mount
+&AElig;tna is the antithesis of the incident in the Indian legend of the
+churning of the ocean: Mount Meru is placed in the sea upon the tortoise
+<i>avatar</i> of Vishnu and is used to churn the food of immortality for the
+gods. In the Egyptian story the red ochre brought from Elephantine is
+pounded with the barley.</p>
+
+<p>The story told by Hyginus leads up to the vision in Revelations (xii., 7
+<i>et seq.</i>): "There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought
+against the dragon; and the dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed
+not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great
+dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which
+deceiveth the whole world: he was cast into the earth, and his angels
+were cast out with him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the later variants the original significance of the Destruction of
+Mankind seems to have been lost sight of. The life-giving Great Mother
+tends to drop out of the story and her son Horus takes her place. He
+becomes the warrior-god, but he not only assumes his mother's r&ocirc;le but
+he also adopts her tactics. Just as she attacked Re's enemies in the
+capacity of the sky-god's "Eye," so Horus as the other "Eye," the sun,
+to which he gave his own falcon's wings, attacked in the form of the
+winged disk. The winged disk, like the other "Eye of Re," was not merely
+the sky weapon which shot down to destroy mankind, but also was the god
+Horus himself. This early conception involved the belief that the
+thunderbolt and lightning represented not merely the fiery weapon but
+the actual god.</p>
+
+<p>The winged disk thus exhibits the same confusion of attributes as we
+have already noticed in Osiris and Hathor. It is the commonest symbol of
+life-giving and beneficent protective power: yet it is the weapon used
+to slaughter mankind. It is in fact the healing caduceus as well as the
+baneful thunder-weapon.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> The history of the thunder-weapon cannot wholly be
+ignored in discussing the dragon-myth because it forms an integral part
+of the story. It was animated both by the dragon and the dragon-slayer.
+But an adequate account of the weapon would be so highly involved and
+complex as to be unintelligible without a very large series of
+illustrations. Hence I am referring here only to certain aspects of the
+subject. Pending the preparation of a monograph upon the thunder-weapon,
+I may refer the reader to the works of Blinkenberg, d'Alviella, Ward,
+Evans and A.&nbsp;B. Cook (to which frequent reference is made in these
+pages) for material, especially in the form of illustrations, to
+supplement my brief and unavoidably involved summary.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> As in Egypt Osiris is described as "a ray of light" which
+issued from the moon (Hathor), <i>i.e.</i> was born of the Great Mother.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> "Religion v&eacute;dique," i., p. 173, quoted by S. Reinach,
+"&AElig;tos Prometheus," <i>Revue arch&eacute;ologique</i>, 4<sup>ie</sup> s&eacute;rie, tome x., 1917, p.
+72.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> Evans, <i>op. cit.</i>, Fig. 4, p. 10.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> William Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia,"
+chapter xxxviii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> Seler, "Codex Vaticanus, No. 3773," vol. i., p. 77 <i>et
+seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> Evans, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> "The Pagan Tribes of Borneo," 1912, vol. ii., p. 137.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> Evans, <i>op. cit.</i>, Fig. 8, <i>c</i>, p. 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> There is an excellent photograph of this in Donald
+McKenzie's "Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe," facing p. 160.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> "The Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., pp. 63 <i>et seq</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> See, for example, Ward, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 411.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> "The Migration of Symbols," pp. 220 and 221.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> Blinkenberg, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 53.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 256.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 51 and 52.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> See Blinkenberg, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 45-8.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> I must defer consideration of the part played by certain
+of the Great Mother's surrogates in the development of the
+thunder-weapon's symbolism and the associated folk-lore. I have in mind
+especially the influence of the octopus and the cow. The former was
+responsible in part for the use of the spiral as a thunder-symbol; and
+the latter for the beliefs in the special protective power of
+thunder-stones over cows (see Blinkenberg, <i>op. cit.</i>). The
+thunder-stone was placed over the lintel of the cow-shed for the same
+purpose as the winged disk over the door of an Egyptian temple. Until
+the relations of the octopus to the dragon have been set forth it is
+impossible adequately to discuss the question of the seven-headed
+dragon, which ranges from Scotland to Japan and from Scandinavia to the
+Zambesi. In "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall call attention to the basal
+factors in its evolution.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> A.&nbsp;B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 198.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 32.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> "Tartarus ex Terra procreavit Typhonem, immani
+magnitudine, specieque portentosa, cui centum capita draconum ex humeris
+enata erant. Hic Jovem provocavit, si vellet secum de regno centare.
+Jovis fulmine ardenti pectus ejus percussit. Cui cum flagraret, montem
+&AElig;tnam, qui est in Sicili&acirc;, super eum imposuit; qui ex eo adhuc ardere
+dicitur" (Hyginus, fab. 152).</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Deer.</h3>
+
+<p>One of the most surprising features of the dragon in China, Japan and
+America, is the equipment of deer's horns.</p>
+
+<p>In Babylonia both Ea and Marduk are intimately associated with the
+antelope or gazelle, and the combination of the head of the antelope (or
+in other cases the goat) with the body of a fish is the most
+characteristic manifestation of either god. In Egypt both Osiris and
+Horus are at times brought into relationship with the gazelle or
+antelope, but more often it represents their enemy Set. Hence, in some
+parts of Africa, especially in the west, the antelope plays the part of
+the dragon in Asiatic stories.<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> The cow<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a> of Hathor (Tiamat) may
+represent the dragon also. In East Africa the antelope assumes the r&ocirc;le
+of the hero,<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a> and is the representative of Horus. In the &AElig;gean area,
+Asia Minor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> and Europe the antelope, gazelle or the deer, may be
+associated with the Great Mother.<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a></p>
+
+<p>In India the god Soma's chariot is drawn by an antelope. I have already
+suggested that Soma is only a specialized form of the Babylonian Ea,
+whose evil <i>avatar</i> is the dragon: there is thus suggested another link
+between the antelope and the latter. The Ea-element explains the
+fish-scales and the antelope provides the horns. I shall return to the
+discussion of this point later.</p>
+
+<p>Vayu or Pavana, the Indian god of the winds, who afterwards became
+merged with Indra, rides upon an antelope like the Egyptian Horus.
+Soma's attributes also were in large measure taken over by Indra. Hence
+in this complex tissue of contradictions we once more find the
+dragon-slayer acquiring the insignia, in this case the antelope, of his
+mortal enemy.</p>
+
+<p>I have already referred to the fact that the early Babylonian deities
+could also be demons. Tiamat, the dragon whom Marduk fought, was merely
+the malevolent <i>avatar</i> of the Great Mother. The dragon acquired his
+covering of fish-scales from an evil form of Ea.</p>
+
+<p>In his Hibbert Lectures Professor Sayce claimed that the name of Ea was
+expressed by an ideograph which signifies literally "the antelope" (p.
+280). "Ea was called 'the antelope of the deep,' 'the antelope the
+creator,' 'the lusty antelope'. We should have expected the animal of Ea
+to have been the fish: the fact that it is not so points to the
+conclusion that the culture-god of Southern Babylonia was an
+amalgamation of two earlier deities, one the divine antelope and the
+other the divine fish." Ea was "originally the god of the river and was
+also associated with the snake". Nina was also both the fish-goddess and
+the divinity whose name is interchanged with that of the deep. Professor
+Sayce then refers to "the curious process of development which
+transformed the old serpent-goddess, 'the lady Nina,' into the
+embodiment of all that was hostile to the powers of heaven; but after
+all, Nina had sprung from the fish-god of the deep [who also was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> both
+antelope and serpent as well, see p. 282], and Tiamat is herself 'the
+deep' in Semitic dress" (p. 283).</p>
+
+<p>"At times Ea was regarded as a gazelle rather than as an antelope." The
+position of the name in the list of animals shows what species of animal
+must be meant. <i>Lulim</i>, "a stag," seems to be a re-duplicated form of
+the same word. Both <i>lulim</i> and <i>elim</i> are said to be equivalent to
+<i>sarru</i>, king (p. 284).</p>
+
+<p>Certain Assyriologists, from whom I asked for enlightenment upon these
+philological matters, express some doubt as to the antiquity or to the
+reality of the association of the names of Ea and the word for an
+antelope, gazelle or stag. But whatever the value of the linguistic
+evidence, the arch&aelig;ological, at any rate as early as the time of
+Nebuchadnezzar I, brings both Ea and Marduk into close association with
+a strange creature equipped with the horns of an antelope or gazelle.
+The association with the antelope of the homologous deities in India and
+Egypt leaves the reality of the connexion in no doubt. I had hoped that
+Professor Sayce's evidence would have provided some explanation of the
+strange association of the antelope. But whether or not the philological
+data justify the inferences which Professor Sayce drew from them, there
+can be no doubt concerning the correctness of his statement that Ea was
+represented both by fish and antelope, for in the course of his
+excavations at Susa M.&nbsp;J. de Morgan brought to light representations of
+Ea's animal consisting of an antelope's head on the body of a fish.<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a>
+He also makes the statement that the ideogram of Ea, <i>turahu-apsu</i>,
+means "antelope of the sea". I have already (p. 88) referred to the fact
+that this "antelope of the sea," the so-called "goat-fish," is identical
+with the prototype of the dragon.</p>
+
+<p>If his claim that the names of Ea meant both a "fish" and an "antelope"
+were well founded, the pun would have solved this problem, as it has
+done in the case of many other puzzles in the history of early
+civilization. But if this is not the case, the question is still open
+for solution. As Set was held to be personified in all the desert
+animals, the gazelle was identified with the demon of evil for this
+reason. In her important treatise on "The Asiatic Dionysos" Miss Gladys
+Davis tells us that "in his aspect of Moon 'the lord of stars'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> Soma has
+in this character the antelope as his symbol. In fact, one of the names
+given to the moon by the early Indians was 'm&#7771;iga-piplu' or marked
+like an antelope" (p. 202). Further she adds: "The Sanskrit name for the
+lunar mansion over which Soma presides is 'm&#7771;iga-&#347;iras' or the
+deer-headed." If it be admitted that Soma is merely the Aryan
+specialization of Ea and Osiris, as I have claimed, Sayce's association
+of Ea with the antelope is corroborated, even if it is not explained.</p>
+
+<p>In China the dragon was sometimes called "the celestial stag" (de Groot,
+<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 1143). In Mexico the deer has the same intimate celestial
+relations as it has in the Old World (see Seler, <i>Zeit. f. Ethnologie</i>,
+Bd. 41, p. 414). I have already referred to the remarkable Maya
+deer-crocodile <i>makara</i> in the Liverpool Museum (p. 103).</p>
+
+<p>The systematic zoology of the ancients was lacking in the precision of
+modern times; and there are reasons for supposing that the antelope and
+gazelle could exchange places the one with the other in their divine
+r&ocirc;les; the deer and the rabbit were also their surrogates. In India a
+spotted rabbit can take the place of the antelope in playing the part of
+what we call "the man in the moon". This interpretation is common, not
+only in India, but also in China, and is repeatedly found in the ancient
+Mexican codices (Seler, <i>op. cit.</i>). In the spread of the ideas we have
+just been considering from Babylonia towards the north we find that the
+deer takes the place of the antelope.</p>
+
+<p>In view of the close resemblance between the Indian god Soma and the
+Phrygian Dionysus, which has been demonstrated by Miss Gladys Davis, it
+is of interest to note that in the service of the Greek god a man was
+disguised as a stag, slain and eaten.<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a></p>
+
+<p>Artemis also, one of the many <i>avatars</i> of the Great Mother, who was
+also related to the moon, was closely associated with the deer.</p>
+
+<p>I have already referred to the fact that in Africa the dragon r&ocirc;le of
+the female antelope may be assumed by the cow or buffalo. In the case of
+the gods Soma and Dionysus their association with the antelope or deer
+may be extended to the bull. Miss Davis (<i>op. cit.</i>) states that in the
+Homa Yasht the deer-headed lunar mansion over which the god presides is
+spoken of as "leading the Paurvas," i.e. Pleiades: "Mazda brought to
+thee (Homa) the star-studded spirit-fashioned girdle (the belt of Orion)
+leading the Paurvas. Now the Bull-Dionysus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> was especially associated
+with the Pleiades on ancient gems and in classical mythology&mdash;which form
+part of the sign Taurus." The bull is a sign of Haoma (Homa) or Soma.
+The belt of the thunder-god Thor corroborates the fact of the diffusion
+of these Babylonian ideas as far as Northern Europe.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> Frobenius, "The Voice of Africa," vol. ii., p. 467 <i>inter
+alia</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 468.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> J.&nbsp;F. Campbell, "The Celtic Dragon Myth," with the "Geste
+of Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with Introduction by George
+Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 136.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> For example the red deer occupies the place usually taken
+by the goddess's lions upon a Cretan gem (Evans, "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and
+Pillar Cult," Fig. 32, p. 56): on the bronze plate from Heddemheim
+(A.&nbsp;B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., pl. xxxiv., and p. 620) Isis is
+represented standing on a hind: Artemis, another <i>avatar</i> of the same
+Great Mother, was intimately associated with deer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> J. de Morgan, article on "Koudourrous," <i>Mem. Del. en
+Perse</i>, t. 7, 1905. Figures on p. 143 and p. 148: see also an earlier
+article on the same subject in tome i. of the same series.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> A.&nbsp;B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 674.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Ram.</h3>
+
+<p>The close association of the ram with the thunder-god is probably
+related with the fact that the sun-god Amon in Egypt was represented by
+the ram with a distinctive spiral horn. This spiral became a distinctive
+feature of the god of thunder throughout the Hellenic and Ph&#339;nician
+worlds and in those parts of Africa which were affected by their
+influence or directly by Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>An account of the widespread influence of the ram-headed god of thunder
+in the Soudan and West Africa has been given by Frobenius.<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the ram also became associated with Agni, the Indian fire-god, and
+the spiral as a head-appendage became the symbol of thunder throughout
+China and Japan, and from Asia spread to America where such deities as
+Tlaloc still retain this distinctive token of their origin from the Old
+World.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe this association of the ram and its spiral horn played an even
+more obtrusive part.</p>
+
+<p>The octopus as a surrogate of the Great Mother was primarily responsible
+for the development of the life-giving attributes of the spiral motif.
+But the close connexion of the Great Mother with the dragon and the
+thunder-weapon prepared the way for the special association of the
+spiral with thunder, which was confirmed when the ram with its spiral
+horn became the God of Thunder.</p>
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, vol. i., pp. 212-27.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<h3>The Pig.</h3>
+
+<p>The relationship of the pig to the dragon is on the whole analogous to
+that of the cow and the stag, for it can play either a beneficent or a
+malevolent part. But the nature of the special circumstances which gave
+the pig a peculiar notoriety as an unclean animal are so intimately
+associated with the "Birth of Aphrodite" that I shall defer the
+discussion of them for my lecture on the history of the goddess.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Certain Incidents in the Dragon Myth.</h3>
+
+<p>Throughout the greater part of the area which tradition has peopled with
+dragons, iron is regarded as peculiarly lethal to the monsters. This
+seems to be due to the part played by the "smiths" who forged iron
+weapons with which Horus overcame Set and his followers,<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a> or in the
+earlier versions of the legend the metal weapons by means of which the
+people of Upper Egypt secured their historic victory over the Lower
+Egyptians. But the association of meteoric iron with the thunderbolt,
+the traditional weapon for destroying dragons, gave added force to the
+ancient legend and made it peculiarly apt as an incident in the story.</p>
+
+<p>But though the dragon is afraid of iron, he likes precious gems and
+<i>k'ung-ts'ing</i> ("The Stone of Darkness") and is fond of roasted
+swallows.</p>
+
+<p>The partiality of dragons for swallows was due to the transmission of a
+very ancient story of the Great Mother, who in the form of Isis was
+identified with the swallow. In China, so ravenous is the monster for
+this delicacy, that anyone who has eaten of swallows should avoid
+crossing the water, lest the dragon whose home is in the deep should
+devour the traveller to secure the dainty morsel of swallow. But those
+who pray for rain use swallows to attract the beneficent deity. Even in
+England swallows flying low are believed to be omens of coming rain&mdash;a
+tale which is about as reliable as the Chinese variant of the same
+ancient legend.</p>
+
+<p>"The beautiful gems remind us of the Indian dragons; the pearls of the
+sea were, of course, in India as well as China and Japan, considered to
+be in the special possession of the dragon-shaped sea-gods" (de Visser,
+p. 69). The cultural drift from West to East along the southern coast of
+India was effected mainly by sailors who were searching for pearls.
+Sharks constituted the special dangers the divers had to incur in
+exploiting pearl-beds to obtain the precious "giver of life". But at the
+time these great enterprises were first undertaken in the Indian Ocean
+the people dwelling in the neighbourhood of the chief pearl-beds
+regarded the sea as the great source of all life-giving virtues and the
+god who exercised these powers was incarnated in a fish. The sharks
+therefore had to be brought into harmony with this scheme, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> they
+were rationalized as the guardians of the storehouse of life-giving
+pearls at the bottom of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>I do not propose to discuss at present the diffusion to the East of the
+beliefs concerning the shark and the modifications which they underwent
+in the course of these migrations in Melanesia and elsewhere; but in my
+lecture upon "the Birth of Aphrodite" I shall have occasion to refer to
+its spread to the West and explain how the shark's r&ocirc;le was transferred
+to the dog-fish in the Mediterranean. The dog-fish then assumed a
+terrestrial form and became simply the dog who plays such a strange part
+in the magical ceremony of digging up the mandrake.</p>
+
+<p>At present we are concerned merely with the shark as the guardian of the
+stores of pearls at the bottom of the sea. He became identified with the
+N&acirc;ga and the dragon, and the store of pearls became a vast
+treasure-house which it became one of the chief functions of the dragon
+to guard. This episode in the wonder-beast's varied career has a place
+in most of the legends ranging from Western Europe to Farthest Asia.
+Sometimes the dragon carries a pearl under his tongue or in his chin as
+a reserve of life-giving substance.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Donald Mackenzie has called attention<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a> to the remarkable
+influence upon the development of the Dragon Myth of the familiar
+Egyptian representation of the child Horus with a finger touching his
+lips. On some pretence or other, many of the European dragon-slaying
+heroes, such as Sigurd and the Highland Finn, place their fingers in
+their mouths. This action is usually rationalized by the statement that
+the hero burnt his fingers while cooking the slain monster.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 476.</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> "Egyptian Myth and Legend," pp. 340 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Ethical Aspect.</h3>
+
+<p>So far in this discussion I have been dealing mainly with the problems
+of the dragon's evolution, the attainment of his or her distinctive
+anatomical features and physiological attributes. But during this
+process of development a moral and ethical aspect of the dragon's
+character was also emerging.</p>
+
+<p>Now that we have realized the fact of the dragon's homology with the
+moon-god it is important to remember that one of the primary functions
+of this deity, which later became specialized in the Egyptian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> god
+Thoth, was the measuring of time and the keeping of records. The moon,
+in fact, was the controller of accuracy, of truth, and order, and
+therefore the enemy of falsehood and chaos. The identification of the
+moon with Osiris, who from a dead king eventually developed into a king
+of the dead, conferred upon the great Father of Waters the power to
+exact from men respect for truth and order. For even if at first these
+ideas were only vaguely adumbrated and not expressed in set phrases, it
+must have been an incentive to good discipline when men remembered that
+the record-keeper and the guardian of law and order was also the deity
+upon whose tender mercies they would have to rely in the life after
+death. Set, the enemy of Osiris, who is the real prototype of the evil
+dragon, was the antithesis of the god of justice: he was the father of
+falsehood and the symbol of chaos. He was the prototype of Satan, as
+Osiris was the first definite representative of the Deity of which any
+record has been preserved.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the evil dragon is not merely the evolution of the devil,
+but it also affords the explanation of his traditional peculiarities,
+his bird-like features, his horns, his red colour, his wings and cloven
+hoofs, and his tail. They are all of them the dragon's distinctive
+features; and from time to time in the history of past ages we catch
+glimpses of the reality of these identifications. In one of the earliest
+woodcuts (Fig. 17) found in a printed book Satan is depicted as a monk
+with the bird's feet of the dragon. A most interesting intermediate
+phase is seen in a Chinese water-colour in the John Rylands Library, in
+which the thunder-dragon is represented in a form almost exactly
+reproducing that of the devil of European tradition (Fig. 16).</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_019" id="Image_019"></a>
+<img src="images/image019.png" width="291" height="400" alt="Fig. 16.&mdash;The God Of Thunder (From a Chinese drawing (? 17th Century) in the John Rylands Library)" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 16.&mdash;The God Of Thunder</p>
+
+<p>(From a Chinese drawing (? 17th Century) in the John Rylands Library)</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_020" id="Image_020"></a>
+<img src="images/image020.png" width="400" height="295" alt="Fig. 17.&mdash;From Joannes de Turrecremata&#39;s
+&quot;Meditationes seu Contemplationes&quot;. Rom&aelig;: Ulrich Hau. 1467" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 17.&mdash;From Joannes de Turrecremata&#39;s
+&quot;Meditationes seu Contemplationes&quot;. Rom&aelig;: Ulrich Hau. 1467</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Early in the Christian era, when ancient beliefs in Egypt became
+disguised under a thin veneer of Christianity, the story of the conflict
+between Horus and Set was converted into a conflict between Christ and
+Satan. M. Clermont-Ganneau has described an interesting bas-relief in
+the Louvre in which a hawk-headed St. George, clad in Roman military
+uniform and mounted on a horse, is slaying a dragon which is represented
+by Set's crocodile.<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> But the Biblical references to Satan leave no
+doubt as to his identity with the dragon, who is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> specifically mentioned
+in the Book of Revelations as "the old serpent which is the Devil and
+Satan" (xx. 2).</p>
+
+<p>The devil Set was symbolic of disorder and darkness, while the god
+Osiris was the maintainer of order and the giver of light. Although the
+moon-god, in the form of Osiris, Thoth and other deities, thus came to
+acquire the moral attributes of a just judge, who regulated the
+movements of the celestial bodies, controlled the waters upon the earth,
+and was responsible for the maintenance of order in the Universe, the
+ethical aspect of his functions was in large measure disguised by the
+material importance of his duties. In Babylonia similar views were held
+with respect to the beneficent water-god Ea, who was the giver of
+civilization, order and justice, and Sin, the moon-god, who "had
+attained a high position in the Babylonian pantheon," as "the guide of
+the stars and the planets, the overseer of the world at night". "From
+that conception a god of high moral character soon developed." "He is an
+extremely beneficent deity, he is a king, he is the ruler of men, he
+produces order and stability, like Shamash and like the Indian Varu&#7751;a
+and Mitra, but besides that, he is also a judge, he loosens the bonds of
+the imprisoned, like Varu&#7751;a. His light, like that of Varu&#7751;a, is
+the symbol of righteousness.... Like the Indian Varu&#7751;a and the
+Iranian Mazd&acirc;h, he is a god of wisdom."</p>
+
+<p>When these Egyptian and Babylonian ideas were borrowed by the Aryans,
+and the Iranian Mazd&acirc;h and the Indian Varu&#7751;a assumed the r&ocirc;le of the
+beneficent deity of the former more ancient civilizations, the material
+aspect of the functions of the moon-god became less obtrusive; and there
+gradually emerged the conception, to which Zarathushtra first gave
+concrete expression, of the beneficent god Ahura Mazd&acirc;h as "an
+omniscient protector of morality and creator of marvellous power and
+knowledge". "He is the most-knowing one, and the most-seeing one. No one
+can deceive him. He watches with radiant eyes everything that is done in
+open or in secret." "Although he has a strong personality he has no
+anthropomorphic features." He has shed the material aspects which loomed
+so large in his Egyptian, Babylonian and earlier Aryan prototypes, and a
+more ethereal conception of a God of the highest ethical qualities has
+emerged.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of this process of transformation has been described with deep
+insight and lucid exposition by Professor Cumont, from whose im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>portant
+and convincing memoir I have quoted so freely in the foregoing
+paragraphs.<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a></p>
+
+<p>The creation of a beneficent Deity of such moral grandeur inevitably
+emphasized the baseness and the malevolence of the "Power of Evil". No
+longer are the gods merely glorified human beings who can work good or
+evil as they will; but there is now an all-powerful God controlling the
+morals of the universe, and in opposition to Him "the dragon, the old
+serpent, which is the Devil and Satan".</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> "Horus et St. George d'apr&egrave;s un bas-relief inedit du
+Louvre," <i>Revue Arch&eacute;ologique</i>, Nouvelle S&eacute;rie, t. xxxii., 1876, p. 196,
+pl. xviii. It is right to explain that M. Clermont-Ganneau's
+interpretation of this relief has not been accepted by all scholars.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> Albert J. Carnoy, "The Moral Deities of Iran and India
+and their Origins," <i>The American Journal of Theology</i>, vol. xxi., No.
+1, Jan. 1917, p. 58.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Chapter_III" id="Chapter_III"></a>Chapter III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE.<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a></h3>
+
+
+<p>It may seem ungallant to discuss the birth of Aphrodite as part of the
+story of the evolution of the dragon. But the other chapters of this
+book, in which frequent references have been made to the early history
+of the Great Mother, have revealed how vital a part she played in the
+development of the dragon. The earliest real dragon was Tiamat, one of
+the forms assumed by the Great Mother; and an even earlier prototype was
+the lioness (Sekhet) manifestation of Hathor.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it becomes necessary to enquire more fully (than has been done in
+the other chapters) into the circumstances of the Great Mother's birth
+and development, and to investigate certain aspects of her ontogeny to
+which only scant attention has been paid in the preceding pages.</p>
+
+<p>Several reasons have led me to select Aphrodite from the vast legion of
+Great Mothers for special consideration. In spite of her high
+specialization in certain directions the Greek goddess of love retains
+in greater measure than any of her sisters some of the most primitive
+associations of her original parent. Like vestigial structures in
+biology, these traits afford invaluable evidence, not only of
+Aphrodite's own ancestry and early history, but also of that of the
+whole family of goddesses of which she is only a specialized type. For
+Aphrodite's connexion with shells is a survival of the circumstances
+which called into existence the first Great Mother and made her not only
+the Creator of mankind and the universe, but also the parent of all
+deities, as she was historically the first to be created by human
+inventiveness. In this lecture I propose to deal with the more general
+aspects of the evolution of all these daughters of the Great Mother:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+but I have used Aphrodite's name in the title because her
+shell-associations can be demonstrated more clearly and definitely than
+those of any of her sisters.</p>
+
+<p>In the past a vast array of learning has been brought to bear upon the
+problems of Aphrodite's origin; but this effort has, for the most part,
+been characterized by a narrowness of vision and a lack of adequate
+appreciation of the more vital factors in her embryological history. In
+the search for the deep human motives that found specific expression in
+the great goddess of love, too little attention has been paid to
+primitive man's psychology, and his persistent striving for an elixir of
+life to avert the risk of death, to renew youth and secure a continuance
+of existence after death. On the other hand, the possibility of
+obtaining any real explanation has been dashed aside by most scholars,
+who have been content simply to juggle with certain stereotyped
+catchphrases and baseless assumptions, simply because the traditions of
+classical scholarship have made these devices the pawns in a rather
+aimless game.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to cite specific illustrations in support of this
+statement. Reference to any of the standard works on classical
+arch&aelig;ology, such as Roscher's "Lexikon," will testify to the truth of my
+accusation. In her "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion" Miss
+Jane Harrison devotes a chapter (VI) to "The Making of a Goddess," and
+discusses "The Birth of Aphrodite". But she strictly observes the
+traditions of the classical method; and assumes that the meaning of the
+myth of Aphrodite's birth from the sea&mdash;the germs of which are at least
+fifty centuries old&mdash;can be decided by the omission of any
+representation of the sea in the decoration of a pot made in the fifth
+century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>!</p>
+
+<p>But apart from this general criticism, the lack of resourcefulness and
+open mindedness, certain more specific factors have deflected classical
+scholars from the true path. In the search for the ancestry of
+Aphrodite, they have concentrated their attention too exclusively upon
+the Mediterranean area and Western Asia, and so ignored the most ancient
+of the historic Great Mothers, the African Hathor, with whom (as Sir
+Arthur Evans<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a> clearly demonstrated more than fifteen years ago) the
+Cypriote goddess has much closer affinities than with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> any of her
+Asiatic sisters. Yet no scholar, either on the Greek or Egyptian side,
+has seriously attempted to follow up this clue and really investigate
+the nature of the connexions between Aphrodite and Hathor, and the
+history of the development of their respective specializations of
+functions.<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a></p>
+
+<p>But some explanation must be given for my temerity in venturing to
+invade the intensively cultivated domains of Aphrodite "with a mind
+undebauched by classical learning". I have already explained how the
+study of Libations and Dragons brought me face to face with the problems
+of the Great Mother's attributes. At that stage of the enquiry two
+circumstances directed my attention specifically to Aphrodite. Mr.
+Wilfrid Jackson was collecting the data relating to the cultural uses of
+shells, which he has since incorporated in a book.<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a> As the results
+of his search accumulated, the fact soon emerged that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> the original
+Great Mother was nothing more than a cowry-shell used as a life-giving
+amulet; and that Aphrodite's shell-associations were a survival of the
+earliest phase in the Great Mother's history. At this psychological
+moment Dr. Rendel Harris<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a> claimed that Aphrodite was a
+personification of the mandrake. But the magical attributes of the
+mandrake, which he claimed to have been responsible for converting the
+amulet into a goddess, were identical with those which Jackson's
+investigations had previously led me to regard as the reasons for
+deriving Aphrodite from the cowry. The mandrake was clearly a surrogate
+of the shell or vice versa.<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a> The problem to be solved was to decide
+which amulet was responsible for suggesting the process of life-giving.
+The goddess Aphrodite was closely related to Cyprus; the mandrake was a
+magical plant there; and the cowry is so intimately associated with the
+island as to be called <i>Cypr&aelig;a</i>. So far as is known, however, the
+shell-amulet is vastly more ancient than the magical reputation of the
+plant. Moreover, we know why the cowry was regarded as feminine and
+accredited with life-giving attributes. There are no such reasons for
+assigning life-giving powers or the female sex to the mandrake. The
+claim that its magical properties are due to the fancied resemblance of
+its root to a human being is wholly untenable.<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a> The roots of many
+plants are at least as manlike; and, even if this character was the
+exclusive property of the mandrake, how does it help to explain the
+remarkable repetory of quite arbitrary and fantastic properties and the
+female sex assigned to the plant? Sir James Frazer's claim<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a> that
+"such beliefs and practices illustrate the primitive tendency to
+personify nature" is a gratuitous and quite irrelevant assumption, which
+offers no explanation whatsoever of the specific and arbitrary nature of
+the form assumed by the personification. But when we investigate the
+historical development of the peculiar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> attributes of the cowry-shell,
+and appreciate why and how they were acquired, any doubt as to the
+source from which the mandrake obtained its "magic" is removed; and with
+it the fallacy of Sir James Frazer's wholly unwarranted claims is also
+exposed.</p>
+
+<p>If we ignore Sir James Frazer's na&iuml;ve speculations we can make use of
+the compilations of evidence which he makes with such remarkable
+assiduity. But it is more profitable to turn to the study of the
+remarkable lectures which Dr. Rendel Harris has been delivering in this
+room<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> during the last few years. Our genial friend has been
+cultivating his garden on the slopes of Olympus,<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> and has been
+plucking the rich fruits of his ripe scholarship and nimble wit. At the
+same time, with rougher implements and cruder methods, I have been
+burrowing in the depths of the earth, trying to recover information
+concerning the habits and thoughts of mankind many centuries before
+Dionysus and Apollo, and Artemis and Aphrodite, were dreamt of.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of these subterranean gropings no one was more surprised
+than I was to discover that I was getting entangled in the roots of the
+same plants whose golden fruit Dr. Rendel Harris was gathering from his
+Olympian heights. But the contrast in our respective points of view was
+perhaps responsible for the different appearance the growths assumed.</p>
+
+<p>To drop the metaphor, while he was searching for the origins of the
+deities a few centuries before the Christian era began, I was finding
+their more or less larval forms flourishing more than twenty centuries
+before the commencement of his story. For the gods and goddesses of his
+narrative were only the thinly disguised representatives of much more
+ancient deities decked out in the sumptuous habiliments of Greek
+culture.</p>
+
+<p>In his lecture on Aphrodite, Dr. Rendel Harris claimed that the goddess
+was a personification of the mandrake; and I think he made out a good
+prima facie case in support of his thesis. But other scholars have set
+forth equally valid reasons for associating Aphrodite with the argonaut,
+the octopus, the purpura, and a variety of other shells, both univalves
+and bivalves.<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a></p>
+
+<p>The goddess has also been regarded as a personification of water,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> the
+ocean, or its foam.<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a> Then again she is closely linked with pigs,
+cows, lions, deer, goats, rams, dolphins, and a host of other creatures,
+not forgetting the dove, the swallow, the partridge, the sparling, the
+goose, and the swan.<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a></p>
+
+<p>The mandrake theory does not explain, or give adequate recognition to,
+any of these facts. Nor does Dr. Rendel Harris suggest why it is so
+dangerous an operation to dig up the mandrake which he identifies with
+the goddess, or why it is essential to secure the assistance of a
+dog<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a> in the process. The explanation of this fantastic fable gives
+an important clue to Aphrodite's antecedents.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> An elaboration of a lecture delivered at the John Rylands
+Library, on 14 November, 1917.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 52. Compare also
+A.&nbsp;E.&nbsp;W. Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, p. 435.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> With a strange disregard of Sir Arthur Evans's "Mycen&aelig;an
+Tree and Pillar Cult," Mr. H.&nbsp;R. Hall makes the following remarks in his
+"&AElig;gean Arch&aelig;ology" (p. 150): "The origin of the goddess Aphrodite has
+long been taken for granted. It has been regarded as a settled fact that
+she was Semitic, and came to Greece from Ph&#339;nicia or Cyprus. But the
+new discoveries have thrown this, like other received ideas, into the
+melting-pot, for the Minoans undoubtedly worshipped an Aphrodite. We see
+her, naked and with her doves, on gold plaques from one of the Mycen&aelig;an
+shaft-graves (Schuchhardt, <i>Schliemann</i>, Figs. 180, 181), which must be
+as old as the First Late Minoan period (<i>c.</i> 1600-1500 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>),
+and&mdash;not rising from the foam, but sailing over it&mdash;in a boat, naked, on
+the lost gold ring from Mochlos. It is evident now that she was not only
+a Canaanitish-Syrian goddess, but was common to all the people of the
+Levant. She is Aphrodite-Paphia in Cyprus, Ashtaroth-Astarte in Canaan,
+Atargatis in Syria, Derketo in Philistria, Hathor in Egypt; what the
+Minoans called her we do not know, unless she was Britomartis. She must
+take her place by the side of Rhea-Diktynna in the Minoan pantheon."
+</p><p>
+It is not without interest to note that on the Mochlos ring the goddess
+is sailing in a papyrus float of Egyptian type, like the moon-goddess in
+her crescent moon.
+</p><p>
+The association of this early representative of Aphrodite with doves is
+of special interest in view of Highnard's attempt ("Le Mythe de Venus,"
+<i>Annales du Mus&eacute;e Guimet</i>, T. 1, 1880, p. 23) to derive the name of "la
+d&eacute;esse &agrave; la colombe" from the Chaldean and Ph&#339;nician <i>phrit</i> or
+<i>phrut</i> meaning "a dove".
+</p><p>
+Mr. Hall might have extended his list of homologues to Mesopotamia,
+Iran, and India, to Europe and Further Asia, to America, and, in fact,
+every part of the world that harbours goddesses.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> "Shells as Evidence of the Migration of Early Culture."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> "The Ascent of Olympus."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> A striking confirmation of the fact that the mandrake is
+really a surrogate of the cowry is afforded by the practice in modern
+Greece of using the mandrake carried in a leather bag in the same way
+(and for the same magical purpose as a love philtre) as the Baganda of
+East Africa use the cowry (in a leather bag) at the present time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> Old Gerade was frank enough to admit that he "never could
+perceive shape of man or woman" (quoted by Rendel Harris, <i>op. cit.</i>, p.
+110).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> "Jacob and the Mandrakes," <i>Proceedings of the British
+Academy</i>, Vol. VIII, p. 22.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> The John Rylands Library.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> "The Ascent of Olympus."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a> See the memoirs by T&uuml;mpel, Jahn, Houssay, and Jackson, to
+which reference is made elsewhere in these pages.</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> The well-known circumstantial story told in Hesiod's
+theogony.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> See the article "Aphrodite" in Roscher's "Lexikon".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> Sir James Frazer's claim that the incident of the ass in
+a late Jewish story of Jacob and the mandrakes (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 20)
+"helps us to understand the function of the dog," is quite unsupported.
+The learned guardian of the Golden Bough does not explain <i>how</i> it helps
+us to understand.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Search for the Elixir of Life. Blood as Life.</h3>
+
+<p>In delving into the remotely distant history of our species we cannot
+fail to be impressed with the persistence with which, throughout the
+whole of his career, man (of the species <i>sapiens</i>) has been
+seeking<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a> for an elixir of life, to give added "vitality" to the dead
+(whose existence was not consciously regarded as ended), to prolong the
+days of active life to the living, to restore youth, and to protect his
+own life from all assaults, not merely of time, but also of
+circumstance. In other words, the elixir he sought was something that
+would bring "good luck" in all the events of his life and its
+continuation. Most of the amulets, even of modern times, the lucky
+trinkets, the averters of the "Evil Eye," the practices and devices for
+securing good luck in love and sport, in curing bodily ills or mental
+distress, in attaining material prosperity, or a continuation of
+existence after death, are survivals of this ancient and persistent
+striving after those objects which our earliest forefathers called
+collectively the "givers of life".</p>
+
+<p>From statements in the earliest literature<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a> that has come down to us
+from antiquity, no less than from the views that still prevail among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+the relatively more primitive peoples of the present day, it is clear
+that originally man did not consciously formulate a belief in
+immortality.</p>
+
+<p>It was rather the result of a defect of thinking, or as the modern
+psychologist would express it, an instinctive repression of the
+unpleasant idea that death would come to him personally, that primitive
+man refused to contemplate or to entertain the possibility of life
+coming to an end. So intense was his instinctive love of life and dread
+of such physical damage as would destroy his body that man unconsciously
+avoided thinking of the chance of his own death: hence his belief in the
+continuance of life cannot be regarded as the outcome of an active
+process of constructive thought.</p>
+
+<p>This may seem altogether paradoxical and incredible.</p>
+
+<p>How, it may be asked, can man be said to repress the idea of death, if
+he instinctively refused to admit its possibility? How did he escape the
+inevitable process of applying to himself the analogy he might have been
+supposed to make from other men's experience and recognize that he must
+die?</p>
+
+<p>Man appreciated the fact that he could kill an animal or another man by
+inflicting certain physical injuries on him. But at first he seems to
+have believed that if he could avoid such direct assaults upon himself,
+his life would flow on unchecked. When death does occur and the
+onlookers recognize the reality, it is still the practice among certain
+relatively primitive people to search for the man who has inflicted
+death on his fellow.</p>
+
+<p>It would, of course, be absurd to pretend that any people could fail to
+recognize the reality of death in the great majority of cases. The mere
+fact of burial is an indication of this. But the point of difference
+between the views of these early men and ourselves, was the tacit
+assumption on the part of the former, that in spite of the obvious
+changes in his body (which made inhumation or some other procedure
+necessary) the deceased was still continuing an existence not unlike
+that which he enjoyed previously, only somewhat duller, less eventful
+and more precarious. He still needed food and drink, as he did before,
+and all the paraphernalia of his mortal life, but he was dependent upon
+his relatives for the maintenance of his existence.</p>
+
+<p>Such views were difficult of acceptance by a thoughtful people, once
+they appreciated the fact of the disintegration of the corpse in the
+grave; and in course of time it was regarded as essential for continued<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+existence that the body should be preserved. The idea developed, that so
+long as the body of the deceased was preserved and there were restored
+to it all the elements of vitality which it had lost at death, the
+continuance of existence was theoretically possible and worthy of
+acceptance as an article of faith.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider for a moment what were considered to be elements of
+vitality by the earliest members of our species.<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a></p>
+
+<p>From the remotest times man seems to have been aware of the fact that he
+could kill animals or his fellow men by means of certain physical
+injuries. He associated these results with the effusion of blood. The
+loss of blood could cause unconsciousness and death. Blood, therefore,
+must be the vehicle of consciousness and life, the material whose escape
+from the body could bring life to an end.<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a></p>
+
+<p>The first pictures painted by man, with which we are at present
+acquainted, are found upon the walls and roofs of certain caves in
+Southern France and Spain. They were the work of the earliest known
+representatives of our own species, <i>Homo sapiens</i>, in the phase of
+culture now distinguished by the name "Aurignacian".</p>
+
+<p>The animals man was in the habit of hunting for food are depicted.<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a>
+In some of them arrows are shown implanted in the animal's flank near
+the region of the heart; and in others the heart itself is represented.</p>
+
+<p>This implies that at this distant time in the history of our species, it
+was already realized how vital a spot in the animal's anatomy the heart
+was. But even long before man began to speculate about the functions of
+the heart, he must have learned to associate the loss of blood on the
+part of man or animals with death, and to regard the pouring out of
+blood as the escape of its vitality. Many factors must have contributed
+to the new advance in physiology which made the heart the centre or the
+chief habitation of vitality, volition, feeling, and knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Not merely the empirical fact, acquired by experience in hunting, of the
+peculiarly vulnerable nature of the heart, but perhaps also the
+knowledge that the heart contained life-giving blood, helped in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+developing the ideas about its functions as the bestower of life and
+consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The palpitation of the heart after severe exertion or under the
+influence of intense emotion would impress the early physiologist with
+the relationship of the heart to the feelings, and afford confirmation
+of his earlier ideas of its functions.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever the explanation, it is known from the folk-lore of even the
+most unsophisticated peoples that the heart was originally regarded as
+the seat of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge, and that the blood
+was the life-stream. The Aurignacian pictures in the caves of Western
+Europe suggest that these beliefs were extremely ancient.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence at our disposal seems to indicate that not only were such
+ideas of physiology current in Aurignacian times, but also certain
+cultural applications of them had been inaugurated even then. The
+remarkable method of blood-letting by chopping off part of a finger
+seems to have been practised even in Aurignacian times.<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a></p>
+
+<p>If it is legitimate to attempt to guess at the meaning these early
+people attached to so singular a procedure, we may be guided by the
+ideas associated with this act in outlying corners of the world at the
+present time. On these grounds we may surmise that the motive underlying
+this, and other later methods of blood-letting, such as circumcision,
+piercing the ears, lips, and tongue, gashing the limbs and body, et
+cetera, was the offering of the life-giving fluid.</p>
+
+<p>Once it was recognized that the state of unconsciousness or death was
+due to the loss of blood it was a not illogical or irrational procedure
+to imagine that offerings of blood might restore consciousness and life
+to the dead.<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a> If the blood was seriously believed to be the vehicle
+of feeling and knowledge, the exchange of blood or the offering of blood
+to the community was a reasonable method for initiating anyone into the
+wider knowledge of and sympathy with his fellow-men.</p>
+
+<p>Blood-letting, therefore, played a part in a great variety of
+ceremonies, of burial and of initiation, and also those of a
+therapeutic<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a> and, later, of a religious significance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But from Aurignacian times onwards, it seems to have been admitted that
+substitutes for blood might be endowed with a similar potency.</p>
+
+<p>The extensive use of red ochre or other red materials for packing around
+the bodies of the dead was presumably inspired by the idea that
+materials simulating blood-stained earth, were endowed with the same
+life-giving properties as actual blood poured out upon the ground in
+similar vitalizing ceremonies.</p>
+
+<p>As the shedding of blood produced unconsciousness, the offering of blood
+or red ochre was, therefore, a logical and practical means of restoring
+consciousness and reinforcing the element of vitality which was
+diminished or lost in the corpse.</p>
+
+<p>The common statement that primitive man was a fantastically irrational
+child is based upon a fallacy. He was probably as well endowed mentally
+as his modern successors; and was as logical and rational as they are;
+but many of his premises were wrong, and he hadn't the necessary body of
+accumulated wisdom to help him to correct his false assumptions.</p>
+
+<p>If primitive man regarded the dead as still existing, but with a reduced
+vitality, it was a not irrational procedure on the part of the people of
+the Reindeer Epoch in Europe to pack the dead in red ochre (which they
+regarded as a surrogate of the life-giving fluid) to make good the lack
+of vitality in the corpse.</p>
+
+<p>If blood was the vehicle of consciousness and knowledge, the exchange of
+blood was clearly a logical procedure for establishing communion of
+thought and feeling and so enabling an initiate to assimilate the
+traditions of his people.</p>
+
+<p>If red carnelian was a surrogate of blood the wearing of bracelets or
+necklaces of this life-giving material was a proper means of warding off
+danger to life and of securing good luck.</p>
+
+<p>If red paint or the colour red brought these magical results, it was
+clearly justifiable to resort to its use.</p>
+
+<p>All these procedures are logical. It is only the premises that were
+erroneous.</p>
+
+<p>The persistence of such customs in Ancient Egypt makes it possible for
+us to obtain literary evidence to support the inferences drawn from
+arch&aelig;ological data of a more remote age. For instance, the red jasper
+amulet sometimes called the "girdle-tie of Isis," was supposed to
+re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>present the blood of the goddess and was applied to the mummy "to
+stimulate the functions of his blood";<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a> or perhaps it would be more
+accurate to say that it was intended to add to the vital substance which
+was so obviously lacking in the corpse.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> In response to the prompting of the most fundamental of
+all instincts, that of the preservation of life.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> See Alan Gardiner, <i>Journal of Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol.
+IV, Parts II-III, April-July, 1917, p. 205. Compare also the Babylonian
+story of Gilgamesh.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> Some of these have been discussed in Chapter 1 ("Incense
+and Libations") and will not be further considered here.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> "The life which is the blood thereof" (Gen. ix. 4).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> See, for example, Sollas, "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition,
+1915, pp. 326 (fig. 163), 333 (fig. 171), and 36 (fig. 189).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> Sollas, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 347 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> The "redeeming blood," &#934;&#8049;&#961;&#956;&#945;&#954;&#959;&#957; &#7936;&#952;&#945;&#957;&#945;&#963;&#8055;&#945;&#962;.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> The practice of blood-letting for therapeutic purposes
+was probably first suggested by a confused rationalization. The act of
+blood-letting was a means of healing; and the victim himself supplied
+the vitalizing fluid!</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet," p. 112.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Cowry as a Giver of Life.</h3>
+
+<p>Blood and its substitutes, however, were not the only materials that had
+acquired a reputation for vitalizing qualities in the Reindeer Epoch.
+For there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that shells also were
+regarded, even in that remote time, as life-giving amulets.</p>
+
+<p>If the loss of blood was at first the only recognized cause of death,
+the act of birth was clearly the only process of life-giving. The portal
+by which a child entered the world was regarded, therefore, not only as
+the channel of birth, but also as the actual giver of life.<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> The
+large Red Sea cowry-shell, which closely simulates this "giver of life,"
+then came to be endowed by popular imagination with the same powers.
+Hence the shell was used in the same way as red ochre or carnelian: it
+was placed in the grave to confer vitality on the dead, and worn on
+bracelets and necklaces to secure good luck by using the "giver of life"
+to avert the risk of danger to life. Thus the general life-giving
+properties of blood, blood substitutes, and shells, came to be
+assimilated the one with the other.<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a></p>
+
+<p>At first it was probably its more general power of averting death or
+giving vitality to the dead that played the more obtrusive part in the
+magical use of the shell. But the circumstances which led to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+development of the shell's symbolism naturally and inevitably conferred
+upon the cowry special power over women. It was the surrogate of the
+life-giving organ. It became an amulet to increase the fertility of
+women and to help them in childbirth. It was, therefore, worn by girls
+suspended from a girdle, so as to be as near as possible to the organ it
+was supposed to simulate and whose potency it was believed to be able to
+reinforce and intensify. Just as bracelets and necklaces of carnelian
+were used to confer on either sex the vitalizing virtues of blood, which
+it was supposed to simulate, so also cowries, or imitations of them made
+of metal or stone, were worn as bracelets, necklaces, or hair-ornaments,
+to confer health and good luck in both sexes. But these ideas received a
+much further extension.</p>
+
+<p>As the giver of life, the cowry came to have attributed to it by some
+people definite powers of creation. It was not merely an amulet to
+increase fertility: it was itself the actual parent of mankind, the
+creator of all living things; and the next step was to give these
+maternal functions material expression, and personify the cowry as an
+actual woman in the form of a statuette with the distinctly feminine
+characters grossly exaggerated;<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> and in the domain of belief to
+create the image of a Great Mother, who was the parent of the universe.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_021" id="Image_021"></a>
+<img src="images/image021.png" width="287" height="600" alt="Fig. 18 (a) The Archaic Egyptian slate
+palette of Narmer showing, perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at
+the upper corners of the palette) as a woman with cow&#39;s horns and ears
+(compare Flinders Petrie, &quot;The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty,&quot; Part
+I, 1900, Plate XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt from which
+are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in place of the
+cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This affords corroboration of
+the view that Hathor assumed the functions originally attributed to the
+cowry-shell. (b) The king&#39;s sporran, where Hathor-heads (h) take the place
+of the cowries of the primitive girdle." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 18 (<i>a</i>) The Archaic Egyptian slate
+palette of Narmer showing, perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at
+the upper corners of the palette) as a woman with cow&#39;s horns and ears
+(compare Flinders Petrie, &quot;The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty,&quot; Part
+I, 1900, Plate XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt from which
+are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in place of the
+cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This affords corroboration of
+the view that Hathor assumed the functions originally attributed to the
+cowry-shell.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) The king&#39;s sporran, where Hathor-heads (<i>h</i>) take the place
+of the cowries of the primitive girdle.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_022" id="Image_022"></a>
+<img src="images/image022.png" width="400" height="558" alt="Fig. 19.&mdash;The front of Stela B (famous for the
+realistic representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners),
+one of the ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America (after
+Maudslay&#39;s photograph and diagram).
+The girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (Oliva or
+Conus) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to the
+Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18)." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 19.&mdash;The front of Stela B (famous for the
+realistic representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners),
+one of the ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America (after
+Maudslay&#39;s photograph and diagram).</p>
+
+<p>The girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (Oliva or
+Conus) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to the
+Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18).</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thus gradually there developed out of the cowry-amulet the conception of
+a creator, the giver of life, health, and good luck. This Great Mother,
+at first with only vaguely defined traits, was probably the first deity
+that the wit of man devised to console him with her watchful care over
+his welfare in this life and to give him assurance as to his fate in the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>At this stage I should like to emphasize the fact that these beliefs had
+taken shape long before any definite ideas had been formulated as to the
+physiology of animal reproduction and before agriculture was practised.</p>
+
+<p>Man had not yet come to appreciate the importance of vegetable
+fertility, nor had he yet begun to frame theories of the fertilizing
+powers of water, or give specific expression to them by creating the god
+Osiris in his own image.</p>
+
+<p>Nor had he begun to take anything more than the most casual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> interest in
+the sun, the moon, and the stars. He had not yet devised a sky-world nor
+created a heaven. When, for reasons that I have already discussed,<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a>
+the theory of the fertilizing and the animating power of water was
+formulated, the beliefs concerning this element were assimilated with
+those which many ages previously had grown up in explanation of the
+potency of blood and shells. In addition to fertilizing the earth, water
+could also animate the dead. The rivers and the seas were in fact a vast
+reservoir of this animating substance. The powers of the cowry, as a
+product of the sea, were rationalized into an expression of the great
+creative force of the water.</p>
+
+<p>A bowl of water became the symbol of the fruitfulness of woman. Such
+symbolism implied that woman, or her uterus, was a receptacle into which
+the seminal fluid was poured and from which a new being emerged in a
+flood of amniotic fluid.</p>
+
+<p>The burial of shells with the dead is an extremely ancient practice, for
+cowries have been found upon human skeletons of the so-called "Upper
+Pal&aelig;olithic Age" of Southern Europe.</p>
+
+<p>At Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne) Mediterranean cowries were found arranged
+in pairs upon the body; two pairs on the forehead, one near each arm,
+four in the region of the thighs and knees, and two upon each foot.
+Others were found in the Mentone caves, and are peculiarly important,
+because, upon the same stratum as the skeleton with which they were
+associated, was found part of a <i>Cassis rufa</i>, a shell whose habitat
+does not extend any nearer than the Indian Ocean.<a name="FNanchor_262_262" id="FNanchor_262_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a></p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_023" id="Image_023"></a>
+<img src="images/image023.png" width="285" height="600" alt="Fig. 20.&mdash;Diagrams illustrating the form of
+cowry-belts worn in (a) East Africa and (b)
+Oceania respectively.
+(c) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the
+Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones, and
+what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of cowries.
+(d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads
+of deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt
+between the heads recall Hathor&#39;s sistra." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 20.&mdash;Diagrams illustrating the form of
+cowry-belts worn in (<i>a</i>) East Africa and (<i>b</i>)
+Oceania respectively.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the
+Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones, and
+what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of cowries.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>d</i>) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads
+of deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt
+between the heads recall Hathor&#39;s sistra.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>These facts are very important. In the first place they reveal the great
+antiquity of the practice of burying shells with the dead, presumably
+for the purpose of "life-giving". Secondly, they suggest the possibility
+that their magical value as givers of life may be more ancient than
+their specific use as intensifiers of the fertility of women. Thirdly,
+the association of these practices with the use of the shell <i>Cassis
+rufa</i> indicates a very early cultural contact between the people living
+upon the North-Western shores of the Mediterranean in the Reindeer Age
+and the dwellers on the coasts of the Indian Ocean; and the
+proba<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>bility that these special uses of shells by the former were
+inspired by the latter.</p>
+
+<p>This hint assumes a special significance when we first get a clear view
+of the more fully-developed shell-cults of the Eastern Mediterranean
+many centuries later.<a name="FNanchor_263_263" id="FNanchor_263_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a> For then we find definite indications that
+the cultural uses of shells were obviously borrowed from the Erythr&aelig;an
+area.</p>
+
+<p>Long before the shell-amulet became personified as a woman the
+Mediterranean people had definitely adopted the belief in the cowry's
+ability to give life and birth.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> As it is still called in the Semitic languages. In the
+Egyptian Pyramid Texts there is a reference to a new being formed "by
+the vulva of Tefnut" (Breasted).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> Many customs and beliefs of primitive peoples suggest
+that this correlation of the attributes of blood and shells went much
+deeper than the similarity of their use in burial ceremonies and for
+making necklaces and bracelets. The fact that the monthly effusion of
+blood in women ceased during pregnancy seems to have given rise to the
+theory, that the new life of the child was actually formed from the
+blood thus retained. The beliefs that grew up in explanation of the
+placenta form part of the system of interpretation of these phenomena:
+for the placenta was regarded as a mass of clotted blood (intimately
+related to the child which was supposed to be derived from part of the
+same material) which harboured certain elements of the child's mentality
+(because blood was the substance of consciousness).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> See S. Reinach, "Les D&eacute;esses Nues dans l'Art Oriental et
+dans l'Art Grec," <i>Revue Arch&eacute;ol.</i>, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 367. Compare also
+the figurines of the so-called Upper Pal&aelig;olithic Period in Europe.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a> Chapter I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262_262" id="Footnote_262_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a> The literature relating to these important discoveries
+has been summarized by Wilfrid Jackson in his "Shells as Evidence of the
+Migrations of Early Culture," pp. 135-7.</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263_263" id="Footnote_263_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a> Cowries were obtained in Neolithic sites at Hissarlik and
+Spain (Siret, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 18).</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Origin of Clothing.</h3>
+
+<p>The cowry and its surrogates were supposed to be potent to confer
+fertility on maidens; and it became the practice for growing girls to
+wear a girdle on which to suspend the shells as near as possible to the
+organ their magic was supposed to stimulate. Among many peoples<a name="FNanchor_264_264" id="FNanchor_264_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a>
+this girdle was discarded as soon as the girls reached maturity.</p>
+
+<p>This practice probably represents the beginning of the history of
+clothing; but it had other far-reaching effects in the domain of belief.</p>
+
+<p>It has often been claimed that the feeling of modesty was not the reason
+for the invention of clothing, but that the clothes begat modesty.<a name="FNanchor_265_265" id="FNanchor_265_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a>
+This doctrine contains a certain element of truth, but is by no means
+the whole explanation. For true modesty is displayed by people who have
+never worn clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Before mankind could appreciate the psychological fact that the wearing
+of clothing might add to an individual's allurement and enhance her
+sexual attractiveness, some other circumstances must have been
+responsible for suggesting the experiments out of which this empirical
+knowledge emerged. The use of a girdle (<i>a</i>) as a protection against
+danger to life, and (<i>b</i>) as a means of conferring fecundity on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+girls<a name="FNanchor_266_266" id="FNanchor_266_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a> provided the circumstances which enabled men to discover that
+the sexual attractiveness of maidens, which in a state of nature was
+originally associated with modesty and coyness, was profoundly
+intensified by the artifices of clothing and adornment.</p>
+
+<p>Among people (such as those of East Africa and Southern Arabia) in which
+it was customary for unmarried girls to adorn themselves with a girdle,
+it is easy to understand how the meaning of the practice underwent a
+change, and developed into a device for enhancing their charms and
+stimulating the imaginations of their suitors.</p>
+
+<p>Out of such experience developed the idea of the magical girdle as an
+allurement and a love-provoking charm or philtre. Thus Aphrodite's
+girdle acquired the reputation of being able to <i>compel</i> love. When
+Ishtar removed her girdle in the under-world reproduction ceased in the
+world. The Teutonic Brunhild's great strength lay in her girdle. In fact
+magic virtues were conferred upon most goddesses in every part of the
+world by means of a cestus of some sort.<a name="FNanchor_267_267" id="FNanchor_267_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a> But the outstanding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+feature of Aphrodite's character as a goddess of love is intimately
+bound up with these conceptions which developed from the wearing of a
+girdle of cowries.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_024" id="Image_024"></a>
+<img src="images/image024.png" width="400" height="294" alt="Fig. 4.&mdash;Two representations of Astarte
+(Qetesh).
+(a) The mother-goddess standing upon a lioness (which is her Sekhet
+form): she is wearing her girdle, and upon her head is the moon and the
+cow&#39;s horns, conventionalized so as to simulate the crescent moon. Her
+hair is represented in the conventional form which is sometimes used as
+Hathor&#39;s symbol. In her hands are the serpent and the lotus, which again
+are merely forms of the goddess herself.
+(b) Another picture of Astarte (from Roscher&#39;s &quot;Lexikon&quot;) holding the
+papyrus sceptre which at times is regarded as an animate form of the
+mother-goddess herself and as such a thunder weapon." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 4.&mdash;Two representations of Astarte
+(Qetesh).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) The mother-goddess standing upon a lioness (which is her Sekhet
+form): she is wearing her girdle, and upon her head is the moon and the
+cow&#39;s horns, conventionalized so as to simulate the crescent moon. Her
+hair is represented in the conventional form which is sometimes used as
+Hathor&#39;s symbol. In her hands are the serpent and the lotus, which again
+are merely forms of the goddess herself.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) Another picture of Astarte (from Roscher&#39;s &quot;Lexikon&quot;) holding the
+papyrus sceptre which at times is regarded as an animate form of the
+mother-goddess herself and as such a thunder weapon.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the Biblical narrative, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden
+fruit, "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
+naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons,"
+or, as the Revised Version expresses it, "girdles". The girdle of
+fig-leaves, however, was originally a surrogate of the girdle of
+cowries: it was an amulet to give fertility. The consciousness of
+nakedness was part of the knowledge acquired as <i>the result</i> of the
+wearing of such girdles (and the clothing into which they developed),
+and was not originally the motive that impelled our remote ancestors to
+clothe themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The use of fig-leaves for the girdle in Palestine is an interesting
+connecting link between the employment of the cowry and the mandrake for
+similar purposes in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and in Cyprus and
+Syria respectively (<i>vide infra</i>).</p>
+
+<p>In Greece and Italy, the sweet basil has a reputation for magical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+properties analogous to those of the cowry. Maidens collect the plant
+and wear bunches of it upon their body or upon their girdles; while
+married women fix basil upon their heads.<a name="FNanchor_268_268" id="FNanchor_268_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> It is believed that the
+odour of the plant will attract admirers: hence in Italy it is called
+<i>Bacia-nicola</i>. "Kiss me, Nicholas".<a name="FNanchor_269_269" id="FNanchor_269_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a></p>
+
+<p>In Crete it is a sign of mourning presumably because its life-prolonging
+attributes, as a means of conferring continued existence to the dead,
+have been so rationalized in explanation of its use at funerals.</p>
+
+<p>On New Year's day in Athens boys carry a boat and people remark, "St.
+Basil is come from C&aelig;sarea".</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264_264" id="Footnote_264_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a> See Jackson, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 139 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265_265" id="Footnote_265_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a> For a discussion of this subject see the chapter on "The
+Psychology of Modesty and Clothing," in William I. Thomas's "Sex and
+Society," Chicago, 1907; also S. Reinach, "Cults, Myths, and Religions,"
+p. 177; and Paton, "The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall," <i>Revue
+Arch&eacute;ol.</i>, Serie IV. T. IX, 1907, p. 51.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266_266" id="Footnote_266_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a> It is important to remember that shell-girdles were used
+by both sexes for general life-giving and luck-bringing purposes, in the
+funerary ritual of both sexes, in animating the dead or statues of the
+dead, to attain success in hunting, fishing, and head-hunting, as well
+as in games. Thus men also at times wore shells upon their belts or
+aprons, and upon their implements and fishing nets, and adorned their
+trophies of war and the chase with them. Such customs are found in all
+the continents of the Old World and also in America, as, for example, in
+the girdles of <i>Conus</i>- and <i>Oliva</i>-shells worn by the figures
+sculptured upon the Copan stel&aelig;. See, for example, Maudslay's pictures
+of stele N, Plate 82 (Biologia Centrali-Americana; Arch&aelig;ology) <i>inter
+alia</i>. But they were much more widely used by women, not merely by
+maidens, but also by brides and married women, to heighten their
+fertility and cure sterility, and by pregnant women to ensure safe
+delivery in childbirth. It was their wider employment by women that
+gives these shells their peculiar cultural significance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267_267" id="Footnote_267_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a> Witness the importance of the girdle in early Indian and
+American sculptures: in the literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Western
+Europe, and the Mediterranean area. For important Indian analogies and
+Egyptian parallels see Moret, "Myst&egrave;res &Eacute;gyptiens," p. 91, especially
+note 3. The magic girdle assumed a great variety of forms as the number
+of surrogates of the cowry increased. The mugwort (Artemisia) of Artemis
+was worn in the girdle on St. John's Eve (Rendel Harris, <i>op. cit.</i>, p.
+91): the people of Zante use vervain in the same way; the people of
+France (Creuse et Corr&egrave;res) rye-stalks; Eve's fig-leaves; in Vedic India
+the initiate wore the "cincture of Munga's herbs"; and Kali had her
+girdle of hands. Breasted, ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p.
+29) says: "In the oldest fragments we hear of Isis the great, who
+<i>fastened on the girdle</i> in Khemmis, when she brought her [censer] and
+burned incense before her son Horus."</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268_268" id="Footnote_268_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a> This distinction between the significance of the amulet
+when worn on the girdle and on the head (in the hair), or as a necklace
+or bracelet, is very widespread. On the girdle it <i>usually</i> has the
+significance of stimulating the individual's fertility: worn elsewhere
+it was intended to ward off danger to life, <i>i.e.</i> to give good luck. An
+interesting surrogate of Hathor's distinctive emblem is the necklace of
+golden apples worn by a priestess of Apollo (Rendel Harris, <i>op. cit.</i>,
+p. 42).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269_269" id="Footnote_269_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a> De Gubernatis, "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 35.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Pearls.</h3>
+
+<p>During the chequered history of the Great Mother the attributes of the
+original shell-amulet from which the goddess was sprung were also
+changing and being elaborated to fit into a more complex scheme. The
+magical properties of the cowry came to be acquired by other Red Sea
+shells, such as <i>Pterocera</i>, the pearl oyster, conch shells, and others.
+Each of these became intimately associated with the moon.<a name="FNanchor_270_270" id="FNanchor_270_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a> The
+pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little moons, drops of
+the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky into the gaping
+oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of "shining by night," like
+the moon from which they were believed to have come: and every surrogate
+of the Great Mother, whether plant, animal, mineral or mythical
+instrument, came to be endowed with the power of "shining by night". But
+pearls were also regarded as the quintessence of the shell's life-giving
+properties, which were considered to be all the more potent because they
+were sky-given emanations of the moon-goddess herself. Hence pearls
+acquired the reputation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> being the "givers of life" <i>par excellence</i>,
+an idea which found literal expression in the ancient Persian word
+<i>margan</i> (from <i>mar</i>, "giver" and <i>gan</i>, "life"). This word has been
+borrowed in all the Turanian languages (ranging from Hungary to
+Kamskatckha), but also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia,
+thence through Greek and Latin (<i>margarita</i>) to European languages.<a name="FNanchor_271_271" id="FNanchor_271_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a>
+The same life-giving attributes were also acquired by the other
+pearl-bearing shells; and at some subsequent period, when it was
+discovered that some of these shells could be used as trumpets, the
+sound produced was also believed to be life-giving or the voice of the
+great Giver of Life. The blast of the trumpet was also supposed to be
+able to animate the deity and restore his consciousness, so that he
+could attend to the appeals of supplicants. In other words the noise
+woke up the god from his sleep. Hence the shell-trumpet attained an
+important significance in early religious ceremonials for the ritual
+purpose of summoning the deity, especially in Crete and India, and
+ultimately in widely distant parts of the world.<a name="FNanchor_272_272" id="FNanchor_272_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a> Long before these
+shells are known to have been used as trumpets, they were employed like
+the other Red Sea shells as "givers of life" to the dead in Egypt. Their
+use as trumpets was secondary.</p>
+
+<p>And when it was discovered that purple dye could be obtained from
+certain of the trumpet-shells, the colouring-matter acquired the same
+life-giving powers as had already been conferred upon the trumpet and
+the pearls: thus it became regarded as a divine substance and as the
+exclusive property of gods and kings.</p>
+
+<p>Long before, the colour red had acquired magic potency as a surrogate of
+life-giving blood; and this colour-symbolism undoubtedly helped in the
+development of the similar beliefs concerning purple.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270_270" id="Footnote_270_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a> For the details see Jackson, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 57-69. Both
+the shells and the moon were identified with the Great Mother. Hence
+they were homologized the one with the other.</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271_271" id="Footnote_271_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a> Dr. Mingana has given me the following note: "It is very
+probable that the Gr&aelig;co-Latin <i>margarita</i>, the Aram&aelig;o-Syriac
+<i>margarita</i>, the Arabic <i>margan</i>, and the Turanian <i>margan</i> are derived
+from the Persian <i>mar-g&acirc;n</i>, meaning both 'pearl' and 'life,' or
+etymologically 'giver, owner, or possessor, of life'. The word <i>g&#257;n</i>,
+in Zend <i>y&#257;n</i>, is thoroughly Persian and is undoubtedly the original
+form of this expression."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272_272" id="Footnote_272_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a> See Chapter II of Jackson's book, <i>op. cit.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Sharks and Dragons.</h3>
+
+<p>When the life-giving attributes of water were confused with the same
+properties with which shells had independently been credited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> long
+before, the shell's reputation was rationalized as an expression of the
+vital powers of the ocean in which the mollusc was born. But the same
+explanation was also extended to include fishes, and other denizens of
+the water, as manifestations of similar divine powers. In the lecture on
+"Dragons and Rain Gods" I referred to the identification of Ea, the
+Babylonian Osiris, with a fish (p. 105). When the value of the pearl as
+the giver of life impelled men to incur any risks to obtain so precious
+an amulet, the chief dangers that threatened pearl-fishers were due to
+sharks. These came to be regarded as demons guarding the treasure-houses
+at the bottom of the sea. Out of these crude materials the imaginations
+of the early pearl-fishers created the picture of wonderful submarine
+palaces of N&acirc;ga kings in which vast wealth, not merely of pearls, but
+also of gold, precious stones, and beautiful maidens (all of them
+"givers of life," <i>vide infra</i>, p. 224), were placed under the
+protection of shark-dragons.<a name="FNanchor_273_273" id="FNanchor_273_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a> The conception of the pearl (which is
+a surrogate of the life-giving Great Mother) guarded by dragons is
+linked by many bonds of affinity with early Erythr&aelig;an and Mediterranean
+beliefs. The more usual form of the story, both in Southern Arabian
+legend and in Minoan and Mycen&aelig;an art, represents the Mother Goddess
+incarnate in a sacred tree or pillar with its protecting dragons in the
+form of serpents or lions, or a variety of dragon-surrogates, either
+real animals, such as deer or cattle, or composite monsters (Fig.
+26).<a name="FNanchor_274_274" id="FNanchor_274_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There are reasons for believing that these stories were first invented
+somewhere on the shores of the Erythr&aelig;an Sea, probably in Southern
+Arabia. The animation of the incense-tree by the Great Mother, for the
+reasons which I have already expounded,<a name="FNanchor_275_275" id="FNanchor_275_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a> formed the link of her
+identification with the pearl, which probably acquired its magical
+reputation in the same region.</p>
+
+<p>"In the Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing in the
+lake Vourukasha: the fish Khar-m&acirc;hi circles protectingly around it and
+defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life, children to
+women, husbands to girls, and horses to men. In the Min&ocirc;khired the tree
+is called 'the preparer of the corpse'" (Spiegel, "Eran. Altertumskunde,"
+II, 115&mdash;quoted by Jung, "Psychology of the Unconscious," p. 532). The
+idea of guarding the divine tree<a name="FNanchor_276_276" id="FNanchor_276_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a> by dragons was probably the result
+of the transference to that particular surrogate of the Great Mother of
+the shark-stories which originated from the experiences of the seekers
+after pearls, her other representatives.</p>
+
+<p>There are many other bits of corroborative evidence to suggest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> that
+these shell-cults and the legends derived from them were actually
+transmitted from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. Nor is it
+surprising that this should have happened, when it is recalled that
+Egyptian sailors were trafficking in both seas long before the Pyramid
+Age, and no doubt carried the beliefs and the legends of one region to
+the other. I have already referred to the adoption in the Mediterranean
+area of the idea of the dragon-protectors of the tree- and pillar-forms
+of the Great Mother, and suggested that this was merely a garbled
+version of the pearl-fisher's experience of the dangers of attacks by
+sharks. But the same legends also reached the Levant in a less modified
+form, and then underwent another kind of transformation (and confusion
+with the tree-version) in Cyprus or Syria.</p>
+
+<p>As the shark would be a not wholly appropriate actor in the
+Mediterranean, its r&ocirc;le is taken by its smaller Selachian relative, the
+dog-fish. In the notes on Pliny's Natural History, Dr. Bostock and Mr.
+H.&nbsp;T. Riley<a name="FNanchor_277_277" id="FNanchor_277_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a> refer to the habits of dog-fishes ("Canes marini"), and
+quote from Procopius ("De Bell. Pers." B. I, c. 4) the following
+"wonderful story in relation to this subject": "Sea-dogs are wonderful
+admirers of the pearl-fish, and follow them out to sea.... A certain
+fisherman, having watched for the moment when the shell-fish was
+deprived of the attention of its attendant sea-dog, ... seized the
+shell-fish and made for the shore. The sea-dog, however, was soon aware
+of the theft, and making straight for the fisherman, seized him. Finding
+himself thus caught, he made a last effort, and threw the pearl-fish on
+shore, immediately on which he was torn to pieces by its
+protector."<a name="FNanchor_278_278" id="FNanchor_278_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a></p>
+
+<p>Though the written record of this story is relatively modern the
+incident thus described probably goes back to much more ancient times.
+It is only a very slightly modified version of an ancient narrative of a
+shark's attack upon a pearl-diver.</p>
+
+<p>For reasons which I shall discuss in the following pages, the r&ocirc;le of
+the cowry and pearl as representatives of the Great Mother was in the
+Levant assumed by the mandrake, just as we have already seen the
+Southern Arabian conception of her as a tree adopted in Mycen&aelig;an lands.
+Having replaced the sea-shell by a land plant it became neces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>sary, in
+adapting the legend, to substitute for the "sea-dog" some land animal.
+Not unnaturally it became a dog. Thus the story of the dangers incurred
+in the process of digging up a mandrake assumed the well-known
+form.<a name="FNanchor_279_279" id="FNanchor_279_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a> The attempt to dig up the mandrake was said to be fraught
+with great danger. The traditional means of circumventing these risks
+has been described by many writers, ancient and modern, and preserved in
+the folk-lore of most European and western Asiatic countries. The story
+as told by Josephus is as follows: "They dig a trench round it till the
+hidden part of the root is very small, then they tie a dog to it, and
+when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily
+plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man
+that would take the plant away."<a name="FNanchor_280_280" id="FNanchor_280_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a> Thus the dog takes the place of
+the dog-fish when the mandrake becomes the pearl's surrogate. The only
+discrepancy between the two stories is the point to which Josephus calls
+specific attention. For instead of the dog killing the thief, as the
+shark (dog-fish) kills the stealer of pearls, the dog becomes the victim
+as a substitute for the man. As Josephus remarks, "the dog dies
+immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant
+away". This distortion of the story is true to the traditions of
+legend-making. The dog-incident is so twisted as to be transformed into
+a device for plucking the dangerous plant without risk.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite possible that earlier associations of the dog with the Great
+Mother may have played some part in this transference of meaning, if
+only by creating confusion which made such rationalization necessary. I
+refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the
+fragments of Osiris; and the r&ocirc;le played by Anubis, and his Greek
+<i>avatar</i> Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the association of
+the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with the confusion is
+uncertain.<a name="FNanchor_281_281" id="FNanchor_281_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a></p>
+
+<p>There was an intimate association of the dog with the goddess of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the
+under-world (Hecate) and the ritual of rebirth of the dead.<a name="FNanchor_282_282" id="FNanchor_282_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a> Perhaps
+the development of the story of the underworld-goddess Aphrodite's dog
+and the mandrake may have been helped by this survival of the
+association of Isis with Anubis, even if there is not a more definite
+causal relationship between the dog-incidents in the various legends.</p>
+
+<p>The divine dog Anubis is frequently represented in connexion with the
+ritual of rebirth,<a name="FNanchor_283_283" id="FNanchor_283_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a> where it is shown upon a standard in association
+with the placenta. The hieroglyphic sign for the Egyptian word <i>mes</i>,
+"to give birth," consists of the skins of three dogs (or jackals, or
+foxes). The three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded the portal of Hades
+may possibly be a distorted survival of this ancient symbolism of the
+three-fold dog-skin as the graphic sign for the act of emergence from
+the portal of birth. Elsewhere (p. 223) in this lecture I have referred
+to Charon's <i>obolus</i> as a surrogate of the life-giving pearl or cowry
+placed in the mouth of the dead to provide "vital substance". Rohde<a name="FNanchor_284_284" id="FNanchor_284_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a>
+regards Charon as the second Cerberus, corresponding to the Egyptian
+dog-faced god Anubis: just as Charon received his <i>obolus</i>, so in Attic
+custom the dead were provided with &#956;&#949;&#955;&#953;&#964;&#959;&#8166;&#964;&#953;&#945; the object of
+which is usually said to be to pacify the dog of hell.</p>
+
+<p>What seems to link all these fantastic beliefs and customs with the
+story of the dog and the mandrake is the fact that they are closely
+bound up with the conception of the dog as the guardian of hidden
+treasure.</p>
+
+<p>The mandrake story may have arisen out of a mingling of these two
+streams of legend&mdash;the shark (dog-fish) protecting the treasures at the
+bottom of the sea, and the ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning the
+dog-headed god who presides at the embalmer's operations and
+superintends the process of rebirth.</p>
+
+<p>The dog of the story is a representative of the dragon guarding the
+goddess in the form of the mandrake, just as the lions over the gate at
+Mycen&aelig; heraldically support her pillar-form, or the serpents in Southern
+Arabia protect her as an incense tree. Dog, Lion, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> Serpent in these
+legends are all representatives of the goddess herself, i.e. merely her
+own <i>avatars</i> (Fig. 26).</p>
+
+<p>At one time I imagined that the r&ocirc;le of Anubis as a god of embalming and
+the restorer of the dead was merely an ingenuous device on the part of
+the early Egyptians to console themselves for the depredations of
+jackals in their cemeteries. For if the jackal were converted into a
+life-giving god it would be a comforting thought to believe that the
+dead man, even though devoured, was "in the bosom of his god" and
+thereby had attained a rebirth in the hereafter. In ancient Persia
+corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour. There was also the
+custom of leading a dog to the bed of a dying man who presented him with
+food, just as Cerberus was given honey-cakes by Hercules in his journey
+to hell. But I have not been able to obtain any corroboration of this
+supposition. It is a remarkable coincidence that the Great Mother has
+been identified with the necrophilic vulture as Mut; and it has been
+claimed by some writers<a name="FNanchor_285_285" id="FNanchor_285_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a> that, just as the jackal was regarded as a
+symbol of rebirth in Egypt and the dead were exposed for dogs to devour
+in Persia, so the vulture's corpse-devouring habits may have been
+primarily responsible for suggesting its identification with the Great
+Mother and for the motive behind the Indian practice of leaving the
+corpses of the dead for the vultures to dispose of.<a name="FNanchor_286_286" id="FNanchor_286_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a> It is not
+uncommon to find, even in English cathedrals, recumbent statues of
+bishops with dogs as footstools. Petronius ("Sat.," c. 71) makes the
+following statement: "valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae
+catellam pingas&mdash;ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem
+vivere".<a name="FNanchor_287_287" id="FNanchor_287_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a> The belief in the dog's service as a guide to the dead
+ranges from Western Europe to Peru.</p>
+
+<p>To return to the story of the dog and the mandrake: no doubt the demand
+will be made for further evidence that the mandrake actually assumed the
+r&ocirc;le of the pearl in these stories. If the remark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>able repertory of
+magical properties assigned to the mandrake<a name="FNanchor_288_288" id="FNanchor_288_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a> be compared with those
+which developed in connexion with the cowry and the pearl,<a name="FNanchor_289_289" id="FNanchor_289_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a> it will
+be found that the two series are identical. The mandrake also is the
+giver of life, of fertility to women, of safety in childbirth; and like
+the cowry and the pearl it exerts these magical influences only if it be
+worn in contact with the wearer's skin.<a name="FNanchor_290_290" id="FNanchor_290_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a> But the most definite
+indication of the mandrake's homology with the pearl is provided by the
+legend that "it shines by night". Some scholars,<a name="FNanchor_291_291" id="FNanchor_291_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a> both ancient and
+modern, have attempted to rationalize this tradition by interpreting it
+as a reference to the glow-worms that settle on the plant! But it is
+only one of many attributes borrowed by the mandrake from the pearl,
+which was credited with this remarkable reputation only when early
+scientists conceived the hypothesis that the gem was a bit of moon
+substance.</p>
+
+<p>As the memory of the real history of these beliefs grew dim, confusion
+was rapidly introduced into the stories. I have already explained how
+the diving for pearls started the story of the great palace of treasures
+under the waters which was guarded by dragons. As the pearl had the
+reputation of shining by night, it is not surprising that it or some of
+its surrogates should in course of time come to be credited with the
+power of "revealing hidden treasures," the treasures which in the
+original story were the pearls themselves. Thus the magic fern-seed and
+other treasure-disclosing vegetables<a name="FNanchor_292_292" id="FNanchor_292_292"></a><a href="#Footnote_292_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a> are surrogates of the
+mandrake, and like it derive their magical properties directly or
+indirectly from the pearl.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The fantastic story of the dog and the mandrake provides the most
+definite evidence of the derivation of the mandrake-beliefs from the
+shell-cults of the Erythr&aelig;an Sea. There are many other scraps of
+evidence to corroborate this. I shall refer here only to one of these.
+"The discovery of the art of purple-dyeing has been attributed to the
+Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many
+writers. According to Julius Pollux ('Onomasticon,' I, iv.) and Nonnus
+('Dionys.,' XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on the seashore
+accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom he was enamoured. The
+dog having found a <i>Murex</i> with its head protruding from its shell,
+devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained with purple. The nymph,
+on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained with Hercules to provide her
+with a robe of like splendour."<a name="FNanchor_293_293" id="FNanchor_293_293"></a><a href="#Footnote_293_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a> This seems to be another variant of
+the same story.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273_273" id="Footnote_273_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a> In Eastern Asia (see, for example, Shinji Nishimura, "The
+Hisago-Bune," Tokio, 1918, published by the Tokio Society of Naval
+Architects, p. 18, where the dragon is identified with the <i>wani</i>, which
+can be either a crocodile or a shark); in Oceania (L. Frobenius, "Das
+Zeitalter des Sonnengottes," Bd. I., 1904, and C.&nbsp;E. Fox and F.&nbsp;H. Drew,
+"Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval," <i>Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute</i>, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 140); and in America (see
+Thomas Gann, "Mounds in Northern Honduras," <i>Nineteenth Annual Report of
+the Bureau of American Ethnology</i>, 1897-8, Part II, p. 661) the dragon
+assumes the form of a shark, a crocodile, or a variety of other
+animals.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274_274" id="Footnote_274_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a> Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult," <i>op.
+cit. supra</i>: W. Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," <i>op.
+cit.</i>: and Robertson Smith, "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133: "In
+Hadramant it is still dangerous to touch the sensitive mimosa, because
+the spirit that resides in the plant will avenge the injury". When men
+interfere with the incense trees it is reported: "the demons of the
+place flew away with doleful cries in the shape of white serpents, and
+the intruders died soon afterwards".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275_275" id="Footnote_275_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a> <i>Vide supra</i>, p. 38.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276_276" id="Footnote_276_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a> In Western mythology the dragon guarding the
+fruit-bearing tree of life is also identified with the Mother of Mankind
+(Campbell, "Celtic Dragon Myth," pp. xli and 18). Thus the tree and its
+defender are both surrogates of the Great Mother. When Eve ate the apple
+from the tree of Paradise she was committing an act of cannibalism, for
+the plant was only another form of herself. Her "sin" consisted in
+aspiring to attain the immortality which was the exclusive privilege of
+the gods. This incident is analogous to that found in the Indian tales
+where mortals steal the <i>amrita</i>. By Eve's sin "death came into the
+world" for the paradoxical reason that she had eaten the food of the
+gods which gives immortality. The punishment meted out to her by the
+Almighty seems to have been to inhibit the life-giving and
+birth-facilitating action of the fruit of immortality, so that she and
+all her progeny were doomed to be mortal and to suffer the pangs of
+child-bearing.
+</p><p>
+There was a widespread belief among the ancients that ceremonies in
+connexion with the gods must (to be efficacious) be done in the reverse
+of the usual human way (Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 201). So also
+an act which gives immortality to the gods, brings death to man.
+</p><p>
+The full realization of the fact that man was mortal imposed upon the
+early theologians the necessity of explaining the immortality of the
+gods. The elixir of life was the food of the gods that conferred eternal
+life upon them. By one of those paradoxes so dear to the maker of myths
+this same elixir brought death to man.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277_277" id="Footnote_277_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a> Bohn's Edition, 1855, Vol. II, p. 433.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278_278" id="Footnote_278_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a> A Cretan scene depicts a man attacking a dog-headed
+sea-monster (Mackenzie, <i>op. cit.</i>, "Myths of Crete," p. 139).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279_279" id="Footnote_279_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a> A number of versions of this widespread fable have been
+collected by Dr. Rendel Harris (<i>op. cit.</i>) and Sir James Frazer (<i>op.
+cit.</i>). I quote here from the former (p. 118).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280_280" id="Footnote_280_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a> Josephus, "Bell. Jud.," VII, 6, 3, quoted by Rendel
+Harris, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 118.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281_281" id="Footnote_281_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a> The dog-star became associated with Hathor for reasons
+which are explained on p. 209. It was "the opener of the Way" for the
+birth of the sun and the New Year.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282_282" id="Footnote_282_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a> When Artemis acquired the reputation as a huntress and
+her deer became her quarry the dog was rationalized into the new
+scheme.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283_283" id="Footnote_283_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a> See, for example, Moret's "Myst&egrave;res &Eacute;gyptiens," pp.
+77-80.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284_284" id="Footnote_284_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a> "Psyche," p. 244.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285_285" id="Footnote_285_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a> See, for example, Jung, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 268.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286_286" id="Footnote_286_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a> Nekhebit, the Egyptian Vulture goddess, was identified by
+the Greeks with Eileithyia, the goddess of birth (Wiedemann, "Religion
+of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 141). She was usually represented as a
+vulture hovering over the king. Her place can be taken by the falcon of
+Horus or in the Babylonian story of Etana by the eagle. In the Indian
+Mah&aacute;bh&aacute;rata the Garuda is described as "the bird of life ... destroyer
+of all, creator of all".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287_287" id="Footnote_287_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a> Quoted by Jung, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 530.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288_288" id="Footnote_288_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a> See Rendel Harris (<i>op. cit.</i>) and Sir James Frazer (<i>op.
+cit.</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289_289" id="Footnote_289_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a> Jackson, <i>op. cit.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290_290" id="Footnote_290_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a> An interesting rationalization (of which Mr. T.&nbsp;H. Pear
+has kindly reminded me) of this ancient Oriental belief is still alive
+amongst British women. It is maintained that pearls "lose their lustre"
+unless they are worn in contact with the skin. This of course is a pure
+myth, but also an illuminating survival.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291_291" id="Footnote_291_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a> See Frazer, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 16, especially the references
+to the "devil's candle" and "the lamp of the elves".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_292_292" id="Footnote_292_292"></a><a href="#FNanchor_292_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a> Rendel Harris, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 113: Other factors played a
+part in the development of this legend of opening up treasure-houses.
+Both Artemis and Hecate are associated with a magical plant capable of
+opening locks and helping the process of birth. Artemis is a goddess of
+the portal and her life-giving symbol in a multitude of varied forms is
+found appropriately placed above the lintel of doors.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_293_293" id="Footnote_293_293"></a><a href="#FNanchor_293_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a> Jackson, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 195.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Octopus.</h3>
+
+<p>Aphrodite was associated not only with the cowry, the pearl, and the
+mandrake, but also with the octopus, the argonaut, and other
+cephalopods. T&uuml;mpel seems to imagine that the identification of the
+goddess with the argonaut and the octopus necessarily excludes her
+association with molluscs; and Dr. Rendel Harris attributes an equally
+exclusive importance to the mandrake. But in such methods of argument
+due recognition is not given to the outstanding fact in the history of
+primitive beliefs. The early philosophers built up their great
+generalizations in the same way as their modern successors. They were
+searching for some explanation of, or a working hypothesis to include,
+most diverse natural phenomena within a concise scheme. The very essence
+of such attempts was the institution of a series of homologies and
+fancied analogies between dissimilar objects. Aphrodite was at one and
+the same time the personification of the cowry, the conch shell, the
+purple shell, the pearl, the lotus, and the lily, the mandrake and the
+bryony, the incense tree and the cedar, the octopus and the argonaut,
+the pig, and the cow.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_025" id="Image_025"></a>
+<img src="images/image025.png" width="338" height="600" alt="Fig. 21.&mdash;(a) A slate triad found by
+Professor G.&nbsp;A. Reisner in the temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It
+shows the Pharaoh Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess
+Hathor, represented as a woman with the moon and the cow&#39;s horns upon
+her head, and on the left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon her head
+the jackal-symbol of her nome.
+(b) The Ecuador Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro Jaboncillo (after
+Saville, &quot;Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador,&quot; Preliminary Report, 1907,
+Plate XXXVIII).
+A grotesque composite monster intended to represent a woman (compare
+Saville&#39;s Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a
+conventionalized Octopus, whose body is a Loligo, and whose limbs are
+human." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 21.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) A slate triad found by
+Professor G.&nbsp;A. Reisner in the temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It
+shows the Pharaoh Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess
+Hathor, represented as a woman with the moon and the cow&#39;s horns upon
+her head, and on the left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon her head
+the jackal-symbol of her nome.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) The Ecuador Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro Jaboncillo (after
+Saville, &quot;Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador,&quot; Preliminary Report, 1907,
+Plate XXXVIII).</p>
+
+<p>A grotesque composite monster intended to represent a woman (compare
+Saville&#39;s Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a
+conventionalized Octopus, whose body is a Loligo, and whose limbs are
+human.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Every one of these identifications is the result of a long and chequered
+history, in which fancied resemblances and confusion of meaning play a
+very large part. But I cannot too strongly repudiate the claim made by
+Sir James Frazer that such events are merely so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> many evidences of the
+innate human tendency to personify nature. The history of the arbitrary
+circumstances that were responsible for the development of each one of
+these homologies is entirely fatal to this wholly unwarranted
+speculation.<a name="FNanchor_294_294" id="FNanchor_294_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a> T&uuml;mpel claims<a name="FNanchor_295_295" id="FNanchor_295_295"></a><a href="#Footnote_295_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a> the Aphrodite was associated more
+especially with "a species of <i>Sepia</i>". He refers to the attempts to
+associate the goddess of love with amulets of univalvular shells "in
+virtue of a certain peculiar and obscene symbolism".<a name="FNanchor_296_296" id="FNanchor_296_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a> Naturalists,
+however, designate with the term <i>Venus Cytherea</i> certain gaping bivalve
+molluscs.</p>
+
+<p>But, according to T&uuml;mpel (p. 386), neither univalvular nor bivalve
+shells can be regarded as a real part of the goddess's cultural
+equipment. There is no representation of Aphrodite coming in a shell
+from across the sea.<a name="FNanchor_297_297" id="FNanchor_297_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a> The truly sacred Aphrodite-shell was entirely
+different, so T&uuml;mpel believes: it was obviously difficult to preserve,
+but for that reason more worthy of notice, for the small &#967;&#959;&#8055;&#961;&#953;&#957;&#945;&#953;
+(pectines), virginalia marina (Apuleius de mag. 34, 35, and
+in reference thereto, Isidor. origg. 9, 5, 24) or spuria (&#963;&#960;&#8057;&#961;&#953;&#945;)
+were only the commoner and more readily obtained surrogates:
+the univalvular shells.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> (&#956;&#959;&#957;&#8057;&#952;&#965;&#961;&#945; of Aristotle), such as those just mentioned, and the
+other &#8004;&#963;&#964;&#961;&#949;&#945; of Aphrodite, the Nerites (periwinkles, etc.), the
+purple shell and the Echine&iuml;s were also real Veneriae conchae. Among the
+Nerites Aelian enumerates (N.A. 14, 28): &#7944;&#966;&#961;&#959;&#948;&#8055;&#964;&#951;&#957; &#948;&#8050; &#963;&#965;&#957;&#948;&#953;&#945;&#953;&#964;&#969;&#956;&#8051;&#957;&#951;&#957; &#8051;&#957; &#964;&#8130; &#952;&#8049;&#955;&#945;&#964;&#964;&#951; &#7969;&#963;&#952;&#8052;&#957;&#945;&#953; &#964;&#949; &#964;&#8183; &#925;&#951;&#961;&#8055;&#964;&#951; &#964;&#8183;&#948;&#949; &#954;&#945;&#8054; &#7956;&#967;&#949;&#953;&#957; &#7936;&#965;&#964;&#959;&#957; &#966;&#8055;&#955;&#959;&#957;.
+On account of their supposed medicinal value in cases of
+abortion and especially as a prophylactic for pregnant women the &#7960;&#967;&#949;&#957;&#951;&#8147;&#962;
+(pure Latin re[mi]mora) was called &#8032;&#948;&#953;&#957;&#959;&#955;&#8059;&#964;&#951;<a name="FNanchor_298_298" id="FNanchor_298_298"></a><a href="#Footnote_298_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a>
+(Pliny, 32, 1, 5: pisciculus!). According to Mutianus (Pliny, 9, 25
+(41), 79 f.), it was a species of purple shell, but larger than the true
+<i>Murex purpura</i>. From this the sanctity of the Echine&iuml;s to the Cnidian
+Aphrodite is demonstrated: "quibus (conchis) inhaerentibus plenam ventis
+stetisse navem portantem Periandro, ut castrarentur nobilis pueros,
+conchasque, quae id praestiterint, apud Cnidiorum Venerem coli" (Pliny).</p>
+
+<p>T&uuml;mpel then (p. 387) accuses Stephani of being mistaken in his
+interpretation of Martial's Cytheriacae (Epign. II, 47, 1 = purple
+shells) as the amulets of Aphrodite, and claims that Jahn has given the
+correct solution of the following passages from Pliny (N.H., 9, 33 [52],
+103, compare 32, 11 [53]): "navigant ex his (conchis) veneriae,
+praebentesque concavam sui partem et aurae opponentes per summa aequorum
+velificant"; and further (9, 30[49], 94): "in Propontide concham esse
+acatii modo carinatam inflexa puppe, prora rostrata, in hac condi
+nauplium animal saepiae simile ludendi societate sola, duobus hoc fieri
+generibus: tranquillum enim vectorem demissis palmulis ferire ut remis;
+si vero flatus invitet, easdem in usu gubernaculi porrigi pandique
+buccarum sinus aurae".</p>
+
+<p>T&uuml;mpel claims (pp. 387 and 388) that this quotation settles the
+question. Aphrodite's "shell," according to him, is the <i>Nauplius</i>
+(depicted as a shell-fish, with its sail-like palmul&aelig; spread out to the
+wind, but with the same sails flattened into plate-like arms for
+steering), clearly "a species of <i>Sepia</i>," wholly like Aphrodite
+herself, a ship-like shell-fish sailing over the surface of the water,
+the concha veneria. [The analogy to a ship bearing the Great Mother is
+extremely ancient and originally referred to the crescent moon carrying
+the moon-goddess across the heavenly ocean.]<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Elsewhere (p. 399) he discusses the reasons for the connexion of
+Aphrodite with the "nautilus," by which is meant the argonaut of
+zoologists.</p>
+
+<p>But if Jahn and T&uuml;mpel have thus clearly established the proof of the
+intimate association of Aphrodite with certain cephalopods, they are
+wholly unjustified in the assumption that their quotations from
+relatively modern authors disprove the reality of the equally close
+(though more ancient) relationship of the goddess to the cowry, the
+pearl-shell, the trumpet-shell, and the purple-shell.</p>
+
+<p>It must not be forgotten that, as we have already seen, the primitive
+shell-cults of the Erythr&aelig;an Sea had been diffused throughout the
+Mediterranean area long before Aphrodite was born upon the shores of the
+Levant, and possibly before Hathor came into existence in the south. The
+use of the cowry and gold models of the cowry goes back to an early time
+in &AElig;gean history.<a name="FNanchor_299_299" id="FNanchor_299_299"></a><a href="#Footnote_299_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a> And the influence of Aphrodite's early
+associations had become blurred and confused by the development of new
+links with other shells and their surrogates.</p>
+
+<p>But the connexion of Aphrodite with the octopus and its kindred played a
+very obtrusive part in Minoan and Mycen&aelig;an art; and its influence was
+spread abroad as far as Western Europe<a name="FNanchor_300_300" id="FNanchor_300_300"></a><a href="#Footnote_300_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a> and towards the East as far
+as America. In many ways it was a factor in the development of such
+artistic designs as the spiral and the volute, and not improbably also
+of the swastika.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_026" id="Image_026"></a>
+<img src="images/image026.png" width="388" height="600" alt="Fig. 22.&mdash;(a) Sepia officinalis, after
+Tryon, &quot;Cephalopoda&quot;.
+(b) Loligo vulgaris, after Tryon.
+(c) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after
+Tryon." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 22.</p>
+<p>(<i>a</i>) Sepia officinalis, after
+Tryon, &quot;Cephalopoda&quot;.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) Loligo vulgaris, after Tryon.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after
+Tryon.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Starting from the researches of T&uuml;mpel, a distinguished French
+zoologist, Dr. Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Houssay,<a name="FNanchor_301_301" id="FNanchor_301_301"></a><a href="#Footnote_301_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a> sought to demonstrate that the
+cult of Aphrodite was "based upon a pre-existing zoological philosophy".
+The argument in support of his claim that Aphrodite was a
+personification of the octopus must be sharply differentiated into two
+parts: first, the reality of the association of the octopus with the
+goddess, of which there can be no doubt; and secondly, his explanation
+of it, which (however popular it may be with classical writers and
+modern scholars)<a name="FNanchor_302_302" id="FNanchor_302_302"></a><a href="#Footnote_302_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a> is not only a gratuitous assumption, but also,
+even if it were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> based upon more valid evidence than the speculations
+of such recent writers as Pliny, would not really carry the explanation
+very far.</p>
+
+<p>I refer to his claim that "les premiers conqu&eacute;rants de la mer furent
+induits en v&eacute;n&eacute;ration du poulpe nageur (octopus) parce qu'ils crurent
+que quelque-uns de ces c&eacute;phalopodes, les poulpes sacr&eacute;s (argonauta)
+avaient, comme eux et avant eux, invent&eacute; la navigation" (<i>op. cit.</i>, p.
+15). Idle fancies of this sort do not help us to understand the
+arbitrary beliefs concerning the magical powers of the octopus.</p>
+
+<p>The real problem we have to solve is to discover why, among all the
+multitude of bizarre creatures to be found in the Mediterranean Sea, the
+octopus and its allies should thus have been singled out for distinctive
+appreciation, and also acquired the same remarkable attributes as the
+cowry.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that the Red Sea "Spider shell," <i>Pterocera</i>,<a name="FNanchor_303_303" id="FNanchor_303_303"></a><a href="#Footnote_303_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a> was the
+link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like the
+cowry, for funerary purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India.<a name="FNanchor_304_304" id="FNanchor_304_304"></a><a href="#Footnote_304_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a>
+But it was also depicted upon a series of remarkable primitive statues
+of the god Min, which were found at Coptos during the winter 1893-4 by
+Professor Flinders Petrie.<a name="FNanchor_305_305" id="FNanchor_305_305"></a><a href="#Footnote_305_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a> Some of these objects are now in the
+Cairo Museum and the others in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. They are
+supposed to be late predynastic representations of the god Min. If this
+supposition is correct they are the earliest idols (apart from mere
+amulets) that have been preserved from antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>Upon these statues, representations of the Red Sea shell <i>Pterocera
+bryonia</i> are sculptured in low relief. Mr. F.&nbsp;Ll. Griffith is
+disinclined to accept my suggestion that the object of these pictures of
+the shell was to animate the statues. But whether this was their purpose
+or not, it is probably not without some significance that these
+life-giving shells were associated with so obtrusively phallic a deity
+as Min. In any case they afford concrete evidence of cultural contact
+between Coptos and the Red Sea, and indicate that these particular
+shells were chosen as symbols of that sea or its coast.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_027" id="Image_027"></a>
+<img src="images/image027.png" width="267" height="400" alt="Fig. 5&mdash;Pterocera Bryonia. the Red Sea
+Spider-shell. Col.&mdash;the columella 1-7&mdash;the &quot;claws&quot;." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 5&mdash;Pterocera Bryonia. the Red Sea
+Spider-shell. Col.&mdash;the columella 1-7&mdash;the &quot;claws&quot;.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The distinctive feature of the <i>Pterocera</i> is that the mantle in the
+adult expands into a series of long finger-like processes each of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+secretes a calcareous process or "claw". There are seven<a name="FNanchor_306_306" id="FNanchor_306_306"></a><a href="#Footnote_306_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a> of these
+claws as well as the long columella (Fig. 5). Hence, when the
+shell-cults were diffused from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean (where
+the <i>Pterocera</i> is not found), it is quite likely that the people of the
+Levant may have confused with the octopus some sailor's account of the
+eight-rayed shell (or perhaps representations of it on some amulet or
+statue). Whether this is the explanation of the confusion or not, it is
+certain that the beliefs associated with the cowry and the octopus in
+the &AElig;gean area are identical with those linked up with the cowry and the
+<i>Pterocera</i> in the Red Sea.</p>
+
+<p>I have already mentioned that the mandrake is believed to possess the
+same magical powers. Sir James Frazer has called attention to the fact
+that in Armenia the bryony (<i>Bryonia alba</i>) is a surrogate of the
+mandrake and is credited with the same attributes.<a name="FNanchor_307_307" id="FNanchor_307_307"></a><a href="#Footnote_307_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a> Lovell Reeve
+("Conchologia Iconica," VI, 1851) refers to the Red Sea <i>Pterocera</i> as
+the "Wild Vine Root" species, previously known as <i>Strombus radix
+bryoniae</i>; and Chemnitz ("Conch. Cab.," 1788, Vol. X, p. 227) says the
+French call it "Racine de brione femelle imparfaite," and refer to it as
+"the maiden". Here then is further evidence that this shell (<i>a</i>) was
+associated in some way with a surrogate of the mandrake (Aphrodite), and
+(<i>b</i>) was regarded as a maiden. Thus clearly it has a place in the
+chequered history of Aphrodite. I have suggested the possibility of its
+confusion with the octopus, which may have led to the inclusion of the
+latter within the scope of the marine creatures in Aphrodite's cultural
+equipment. According to Matthioli (Lib. 2, p. 135),<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> another of
+Aphrodite's creatures, the purple shell-fish, was also known as "the
+maiden". By Pliny it is called Pelogia, in Greek &#960;&#959;&#961;&#966;&#8059;&#961;&#945;; and
+&#960;&#959;&#961;&#966;&#965;&#961;&#8061;&#956;&#945;&#964;&#945; was the term applied to the flesh of swine that
+had been sacrificed to Ceres and Proserpine (Hesych.). In fact, the
+purple-shell was "the maiden" and also "the sow": in other words it was
+Aphrodite. The use of the term "maiden" for the <i>Pterocera</i> suggests a
+similar identification. To complete this web of proof it may be noted
+that an old writer has called the mandrake the plant of Circe, the
+sorceress who turned men into swine by a magic draught.<a name="FNanchor_308_308" id="FNanchor_308_308"></a><a href="#Footnote_308_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a> Thus we
+have a series of shells, plants, and marine creatures accredited with
+identical magical properties, and each of them known in popular
+tradition as "the maiden". They are all culturally associated with
+Aphrodite.</p>
+
+<p>I shall have occasion (<i>infra</i>, p. 177) to refer to M. Siret's account
+of the discovery of the &AElig;gean octopus-motif upon &AElig;neolithic objects in
+Spain, and of the widespread use in Western Europe of certain
+conventional designs derived from the octopus. M. Siret also (see the
+table, Fig. 6, on p. 34 of his book) makes the remarkable claim that the
+conventional form of the Egyptian Bes, which, according to Quibell,<a name="FNanchor_309_309" id="FNanchor_309_309"></a><a href="#Footnote_309_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a>
+is the god whose function it is to preside over sexual intercourse in
+its purely physical aspect, is derived from the octopus. If this is
+true&mdash;and I am bound to admit that it is far from being proved&mdash;it
+suggests that the Red Sea littoral may have been the place of origin of
+the cultural use of the octopus and an association with Hathor, for Bes
+and Hathor are said to have been introduced into Egypt from there.<a name="FNanchor_310_310" id="FNanchor_310_310"></a><a href="#Footnote_310_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a></p>
+
+<p>That the octopus was actually identified with the Great Mother and also
+with the dragon is revealed by the fact of the latter assuming an
+octopus-form in Eastern Asia and Oceania, and by the occurrence of
+octopus-motifs in the representation of the goddess in America. One of
+the most remarkable series of pictures depicting the Great Mother is
+found sculptured in low relief upon a number of stone slabs from Manabi
+in Central America,<a name="FNanchor_311_311" id="FNanchor_311_311"></a><a href="#Footnote_311_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a> one of which I reproduce here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> (Fig. 21<i>b</i>).
+The head of the goddess is a conventionalized octopus; to that was added
+a body consisting of a <i>Loligo</i>; and, to give greater definiteness to
+this remarkable process of building up the form of the goddess,
+conventional representations of her arms and legs (and in some of the
+sculptures also the <i>pudendum muliebre</i>) were added. Thus there can be
+no doubt of the identification of this American Aphrodite and the
+octopus.</p>
+
+<p>In the Polynesian Rata-myth there is a very instructive series of
+manifestations of the dragon.<a name="FNanchor_312_312" id="FNanchor_312_312"></a><a href="#Footnote_312_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a> The first form assumed by the monster
+in this story was a gaping shell-fish of enormous size; then it appeared
+as a mighty octopus; and lastly, as a whale, into whose jaws the hero
+Nganaoa sprang, as his representatives are said to have done elsewhere
+throughout the world (Frobenius, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 59-219).</p>
+
+<p>Houssay (<i>op. cit. infra</i>) calls attention to the fact that at times
+Astarte was shown carrying an octopus as her emblem,<a name="FNanchor_313_313" id="FNanchor_313_313"></a><a href="#Footnote_313_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a> and has
+suggested that it was mistaken for a hand, just as in America the
+thunderbolt of Chac was given a hand-like form in the Dresden Codex
+(<i>vide supra</i>. Fig. 13), and elsewhere (<i>e.g.</i> Fig. 12).</p>
+
+<p>If this suggestion should prove to be well founded it would provide a
+more convincing explanation of the girdle of hands worn by the Indian
+goddess Kali<a name="FNanchor_314_314" id="FNanchor_314_314"></a><a href="#Footnote_314_314" class="fnanchor">[314]</a> than that usually given. If the "hands" really
+represent surrogates of the cowry, the wearing of such a girdle brings
+the Indian goddess into line, not only with Astarte and Aphrodite, but
+also with the East African maidens who still wear the girdle of cowries.
+Kali's exploits were in many respects identical with those of the
+bloodthirsty Sekhet-manifestation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Just
+as Sekhet had to be restrained by Re for her excess of zeal in murdering
+his foes, so Siva had to intervene with Kali upon the battle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>field
+flooded with gore (as also in the Egyptian story) to spare the remnant
+of his enemies.<a name="FNanchor_315_315" id="FNanchor_315_315"></a><a href="#Footnote_315_315" class="fnanchor">[315]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_294_294" id="Footnote_294_294"></a><a href="#FNanchor_294_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a> Sir James Frazer, "Jacob and the Mandrakes," <i>Proc. Brit.
+Academy</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_295_295" id="Footnote_295_295"></a><a href="#FNanchor_295_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a> K. T&uuml;mpel, "Die 'Muschel der Aphrodite,'" <i>Philologus,
+Zeitschrift f&uuml;r das Classische Alterthum</i>, Bd. 51, 1892, p. 385: compare
+also, with reference to the "Muschel der Aphrodite," O. Jahn, <i>SB. d. k.
+S&auml;chs. G. d. W.</i>, VII, 1853, p. 16 ff.; also IX, 1855, p. 80; and
+Stephani, <i>Compte rendu pour l'an 1870-71</i>, p. 17 ff.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296_296" id="Footnote_296_296"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a> See Jahn, <i>op. cit.</i>, 1855, T. V, 6, and T. IV, 8:
+figures of the so-called &#935;&#959;&#953;&#961;&#8055;&#957;&#945;&#953; (from &#935;&#959;&#8150;&#961;&#959;&#962; in
+the double sense as "pig" and "the female pudendum"): Aristophanes, Eq.
+1147; Vesp. 332; Pollux, 8, 16; Hesch. s.v.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297_297" id="Footnote_297_297"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a> The fact that no graphic representation of this event has
+been found is surely a wholly inadequate reason for refusing to credit
+the story. Very few episodes in the sacred history of the gods received
+concrete expression in pictures or sculptures until relatively late. A
+Hellenistic representation of the goddess emerging from a bivalve was
+found in Southern Russia (Minns, "Scythians and Greeks," p. 345).
+</p><p>
+T&uuml;mpel cites the following statements: "te (Venus) ex concha natam esse
+autumant: cave tu harum conchas spernas!" Tibull. 3, 3, 24: "et faveas
+concha, Cypria, vecta tua"; Statius Silv. 1, 2, 117: Venus to
+Violentilla, "haec et caerule&iuml;s mecum consurgere digna fluctibus et
+nostra potuit considere concha"; Fulgent. myth. 2, 4 "concha etiam
+marina pingitur (Venus) portari (I. HS:&mdash;am portare)"; Paulus Diacon. p.
+52, "M. Cytherea Venus ab urbe Cythera, in quam primum devecta esse
+dicitur concha, cum in mari esset concepta cet".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_298_298" id="Footnote_298_298"></a><a href="#FNanchor_298_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a> From &#8032;&#948;&#8055;&#957;&#959;&mdash;"to have the pains of childbirth".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_299_299" id="Footnote_299_299"></a><a href="#FNanchor_299_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a> See Schliemann, "Ilios," p. 455; and Siret, <i>op. cit</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_300_300" id="Footnote_300_300"></a><a href="#FNanchor_300_300"><span class="label">[300]</span></a> Siret, <i>op. cit. supra</i>, p. 59.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301_301" id="Footnote_301_301"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301_301"><span class="label">[301]</span></a> "Les Th&eacute;ories de la Gen&egrave;se &agrave; Myc&egrave;nes et le sens
+zoologique de certains symboles du culte d'Aphrodite," <i>Revue
+Arch&eacute;ologique</i>, 3<sup>ie</sup> s&eacute;rie, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 13.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_302_302" id="Footnote_302_302"></a><a href="#FNanchor_302_302"><span class="label">[302]</span></a> It was adduced also by T&uuml;mpel and others before him.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_303_303" id="Footnote_303_303"></a><a href="#FNanchor_303_303"><span class="label">[303]</span></a> or <i>Pteroceras</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304_304" id="Footnote_304_304"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304_304"><span class="label">[304]</span></a> Jackson, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 38.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305_305" id="Footnote_305_305"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305_305"><span class="label">[305]</span></a> "Koptos," pp. 7-9, Pls. III. and IV.: for a discussion of
+the significance of these statues see Jean Capart, "Les D&eacute;buts de l'Art
+en &Eacute;gypte," Brussels, 1904, p. 216 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306_306" id="Footnote_306_306"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306_306"><span class="label">[306]</span></a> This may help to explain the peculiar sanctity of the
+shell.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_307_307" id="Footnote_307_307"></a><a href="#FNanchor_307_307"><span class="label">[307]</span></a> Frazer, <i>op. cit.</i>, 4.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308_308" id="Footnote_308_308"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308_308"><span class="label">[308]</span></a> Just as Hathor (or her surrogate Horus) turned men into
+the creatures of Set, <i>i.e.</i> pigs, crocodiles, <i>et cetera</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_309_309" id="Footnote_309_309"></a><a href="#FNanchor_309_309"><span class="label">[309]</span></a> "Excavations at Saqqara," 1905-1906, p. 14.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_310_310" id="Footnote_310_310"></a><a href="#FNanchor_310_310"><span class="label">[310]</span></a> Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 34.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_311_311" id="Footnote_311_311"></a><a href="#FNanchor_311_311"><span class="label">[311]</span></a> Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," 1907.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312_312" id="Footnote_312_312"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312_312"><span class="label">[312]</span></a> A detailed summary of the literature relating to the
+world-wide distribution of certain phases of the dragon-myth is given by
+Frobenius, "Das Zeitalter des Sonnesgottes," Berlin, 1904: on pp. 63-5
+he gives the Rata-myth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313_313" id="Footnote_313_313"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313_313"><span class="label">[313]</span></a> Which can also be compared with the conventional form of
+the thunderbolt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314_314" id="Footnote_314_314"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314_314"><span class="label">[314]</span></a> Of course the hands had the additional significance as
+trophies of her murderous zeal. But I think this is a secondary
+rationalization of their meaning. An excellent photograph of a bronze
+statue (in the Calcutta Art Gallery), representing Kali with her girdle
+of hands, is given by Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie, "Indian Myth and Legend,"
+p. xl.</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_315_315" id="Footnote_315_315"></a><a href="#FNanchor_315_315"><span class="label">[315]</span></a> F.&nbsp;T. Elworthy has summarized the extensive literature
+relating to hand-amulets ("The Evil Eye," 1895; and "Horns of Honour,"
+1900). Many of these hands have the definite reputation as fertility
+charms which one would expect if Houssay's hypothesis of their
+derivation from the octopus is well founded.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Swastika.</h3>
+
+<p>Houssay (<i>op. cit. supra</i>) has made the interesting suggestion that the
+swastika may have been derived from such conventionalized
+representations of the octopus as are shown in Fig. 23. This series of
+sketches is taken from T&uuml;mpel's memoir, which provided the foundation
+for Houssay's hypothesis.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_028" id="Image_028"></a>
+<img src="images/image028.png" width="319" height="600" alt="Fig. 23.&mdash;A series of Mycen&aelig;an conventionalizations
+of the Argonaut and the Octopus (after T&uuml;mpel), which provided the basis
+for Houssay&#39;s theory of the origin of the triskele (a, c,
+and d) and swastika (b and e), and
+Siret&#39;s theory to explain the design of Bes&#39;s face (f
+and g)" title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 23.&mdash;A series of Mycen&aelig;an conventionalizations
+of the Argonaut and the Octopus (after T&uuml;mpel), which provided the basis
+for Houssay&#39;s theory of the origin of the triskele (a, c,
+and d) and swastika (b and e), and
+Siret&#39;s theory to explain the design of Bes&#39;s face (f
+and g)</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A vast amount of attention has been devoted to this lucky symbol,<a name="FNanchor_316_316" id="FNanchor_316_316"></a><a href="#Footnote_316_316" class="fnanchor">[316]</a>
+which still enjoys a widespread vogue at the present day, after a
+history of several thousand years. Although so much has been written in
+attempted explanation of the swastika since Houssay made his suggestion,
+so far as I am aware no one has paid the slightest attention to his
+hypothesis or made even a passing reference to his memoir.<a name="FNanchor_317_317" id="FNanchor_317_317"></a><a href="#Footnote_317_317" class="fnanchor">[317]</a>
+Fantastic and far-fetched though it may seem at first sight (though
+surely not more so than the strictly orthodox solar theory advocated by
+Mr. Cook or Mrs. Nuttall's astral speculations) Houssay's suggestion
+offers an explanation of some of the salient attributes of the swastika
+on which the alternative hypotheses shed little or no light.</p>
+
+<p>Among the earliest known examples of the symbol are those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> engraved upon
+the so-called "owl-shaped" (but, as Houssay has conclusively
+demonstrated, really octopus-shaped) vases and a metal figurine found by
+Schliemann in his excavations of the hill at Hissarlik.<a name="FNanchor_318_318" id="FNanchor_318_318"></a><a href="#Footnote_318_318" class="fnanchor">[318]</a> The
+swastika is represented upon the <i>mons Veneris</i> of these figures, which
+represent the Great Mother in her form as a woman or as a pot, which is
+an anthropomorphized octopus, one of the avatars of the Great Mother.
+The symbol seems to have been intended as a fertility amulet like the
+cowry, either suspended from a girdle or depicted upon a pubic shield or
+conventionalized fig-leaf.</p>
+
+<p>Wherever it is found the swastika is supposed to be an amulet to confer
+"good luck" and long life. Both this reputation and the association with
+the female organs of reproduction link up the symbol with the cowry, the
+<i>Pterocera</i>, and the octopus. It is clear then that the swastika has the
+same reputation for magic and the same attributes and associations as
+the octopus; and it may be a conventionalized representation of it, as
+Houssay has suggested.</p>
+
+<p>It must not be assumed that the identification of the swastika with the
+Great Mother and her powers of giving life and resurrection
+<i>necessarily</i> invalidates the solar and astral theories recently
+championed by Mr. Cook and Mrs. Nuttall respectively. I have already
+called attention to the fact that the Sun-god derived his existence and
+all his attributes from his mother. The whole symbolism of the Winged
+Disk and the Wheel of the Sun and their reputation for life-giving and
+destruction were adopted from the Great Mother. These well-established
+facts should prepare us to recognize that the admission of the truth of
+Houssay's suggestion would not necessarily invalidate the more widely
+accepted solar significance of the swastika.</p>
+
+<p>T&uuml;mpel called attention to the fact that, when they set about
+conventionalizing the octopus, the Mycen&aelig;an artists often resorted to
+the practice of representing pairs of "arms" as units and so making
+four-limbed and three-limbed forms (Fig. 23), which Houssay regards as
+the prototypes of the swastika and the triskele respectively. That such
+a process may have played a part in the development of the symbol is
+further suggested by the form of a Transcaucasian swastika found by
+R&ouml;ssler,<a name="FNanchor_319_319" id="FNanchor_319_319"></a><a href="#Footnote_319_319" class="fnanchor">[319]</a> who assigns it to the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age. Each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+of the four limbs is bifurcated at its extremity. Moreover they exhibit
+the series of spots, so often found upon or alongside the limbs of the
+symbol, which suggest the conventional way of representing the suckers
+of the octopus in the Mycen&aelig;an designs (Fig. 23).</p>
+
+<p>Another remarkable picture of a swastika-like emblem has been found in
+America.<a name="FNanchor_320_320" id="FNanchor_320_320"></a><a href="#Footnote_320_320" class="fnanchor">[320]</a> The elephant-headed god sits in the centre and four pairs
+of arms radiate from him, each of them equipped with definite suckers.</p>
+
+<p>Another possible way in which the design of a four-limbed swastika may
+have been derived from an octopus is suggested by the gypsum weight
+found in 1901 by Sir Arthur Evans<a name="FNanchor_321_321" id="FNanchor_321_321"></a><a href="#Footnote_321_321" class="fnanchor">[321]</a> in the West Magazine of the
+palace at Knossos (<i>circa</i> 1500 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>). Upon the surface of this
+weight the form of an octopus has been depicted, four of the arms of
+which stand out in much stronger relief than the others.</p>
+
+<p>The number four has a peculiar mystical significance (<i>vide infra</i>, p.
+206) and is especially associated with the Sun-god Horus. This fact may
+have played some part in the process of reduction of the number of limbs
+of the octopus to four; or alternatively it may have helped to emphasize
+the solar associations of the symbol, which other considerations were
+responsible for suggesting. The designs upon the pots from Hissarlik
+show that at a relatively early epoch the swastika was confused with the
+sun's disc represented as a wheel with four spokes.<a name="FNanchor_322_322" id="FNanchor_322_322"></a><a href="#Footnote_322_322" class="fnanchor">[322]</a> But the solar
+attributes of the swastika are secondary to those of life-giving and
+luck-bringing, with which it was originally endowed as a form of the
+Great Mother.</p>
+
+<p>The only serious fact which arouses some doubt as to the validity of
+Houssay's theory is the discovery of an early painted vase at Susa
+decorated with an unmistakable swastika. Edmond Pottier, who has
+described the ceramic ware from Susa,<a name="FNanchor_323_323" id="FNanchor_323_323"></a><a href="#Footnote_323_323" class="fnanchor">[323]</a> regards this pot as
+Proto-Elamite of the earliest period. If Pottier's claim is justified we
+have in this isolated specimen from Susa the earliest example of the
+swastika. Moreover, it comes from a region in which the symbol was
+supposed to be wholly absent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This raises a difficult problem for solution. Is the Proto-Elamite
+swastika the prototype of the symbol whose world-wide migrations have
+been studied by Wilson (<i>op. cit. supra</i>)? Or is it an instance of
+independent evolution? If it falls within the first category and is
+really the parent of the early Anatolian swastikas, how is it to be
+explained? Was the conventionalization of the octopus design much more
+ancient than the earliest Trojan examples of the symbol? Or was the
+Susian design adopted in the West and given a symbolic meaning which it
+did not have before then?</p>
+
+<p>These are questions which we are unable to answer at present because the
+necessary information is lacking. I have enumerated them merely to
+suggest that any hasty inferences regarding the bearing of the Susian
+design upon the general problem are apt to be misleading. Vincent<a name="FNanchor_324_324" id="FNanchor_324_324"></a><a href="#Footnote_324_324" class="fnanchor">[324]</a>
+claims that the fact of the swastika having been in use by ceramic
+artists in Crete and Susiana many centuries before the appearance of
+Mycen&aelig;an art is fatal to Houssay's hypothesis. But I think it is too
+soon to make such an assumption. The swastika was already a rigidly
+conventionalized symbol when we first know it both in the Mediterranean
+and in Susiana. It may therefore have a long history behind it. The
+octopus may possibly have begun to play a part in the development of
+this symbolism before the Egyptian Bes (<i>vide supra</i>, p. 171) was
+evolved, perhaps even before the time of the Coptos statues of Min
+(<i>supra</i>, p. 169), or in the early days of Sumerian history when the
+conventional form of the water-pot was being determined (<i>infra</i>, p.
+179). These are mere conjectures, which I mention merely for the purpose
+of suggesting that the time is not yet ripe for using such arguments as
+Vincent's finally to dispose of Houssay's octopus-theory.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that the symbolism of the Mycen&aelig;an spiral and the
+volute is closely related to the octopus. In fact, the evidence provided
+by Minoan paintings and Mycen&aelig;an decorative art demonstrates that the
+spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the
+octopus. The use of the volute on Egyptian scarabs<a name="FNanchor_325_325" id="FNanchor_325_325"></a><a href="#Footnote_325_325" class="fnanchor">[325]</a> and also in the
+decoration of an early Thracian statuette of a nude god<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>dess<a name="FNanchor_326_326" id="FNanchor_326_326"></a><a href="#Footnote_326_326" class="fnanchor">[326]</a>
+indicate that it was employed like the spiral and octopus as a
+life-symbol.</p>
+
+<p>In Spanish graves of the Early and Middle Neolithic types M. Siret found
+cowry-shells in association with a series of flint implements, crude
+idols, and pottery almost precisely reproducing the forms of similar
+objects found with cowries and pecten shells at Hissarlik.<a name="FNanchor_327_327" id="FNanchor_327_327"></a><a href="#Footnote_327_327" class="fnanchor">[327]</a> But when
+the &AElig;neolithic phase of culture dawned in Spain, and the &AElig;gean
+octopus-motif made its appearance there, the culture as a whole reveals
+unmistakable evidence of a predominantly Egyptian inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>M. Siret claims, however, that, even in the Neolithic phase in Spain,
+the crude idols represent forms derived from the octopus in the Eastern
+Mediterranean (p. 59 <i>et seq.</i>). He regards the octopus as "a
+conventional symbol of the ocean, or, more precisely, of the fertilizing
+watery principle" (p. 19). He elucidates a very interesting feature of
+the &AElig;neolithic representation of the octopus in Spain. The spiral-motif
+of the &AElig;gean gives place to an angular design, which he claims to be due
+to the influence of the conventional Egyptian way of representing water
+(p. 40). If this interpretation is correct&mdash;and, in spite of the
+slenderness of the evidence, I am inclined to accept it&mdash;it affords a
+remarkable illustration of the effects of culture-contact in the
+conventionalization of designs, to which Dr. Rivers has called
+attention.<a name="FNanchor_328_328" id="FNanchor_328_328"></a><a href="#Footnote_328_328" class="fnanchor">[328]</a> Whatever explanation may be provided of this method of
+representing the arms of the octopus with its angularly bent
+extremities, it seems to have an important bearing on Houssay's
+hypothesis of the swastika's origin. For it would reveal the means by
+which the spiral or volute shape of the limbs of the swastika became
+transformed into the angular form, which is so characteristic of the
+conventional symbol.<a name="FNanchor_329_329" id="FNanchor_329_329"></a><a href="#Footnote_329_329" class="fnanchor">[329]</a></p>
+
+<p>The significance of the spiral as a form of the Great Mother inevitably
+led to its identification with the thunder weapon, like all her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> other
+surrogates. I have already referred (Chapter II, p. 98) to the
+association of the spiral with thunder and lightning in Eastern Asia.
+But other factors played a significant part in determining this
+specialization. In Egypt the god Amen was identified with the ram; and
+this creature's spirally curved horn became the symbol of the
+thunder-god throughout the Mediterranean area,<a name="FNanchor_330_330" id="FNanchor_330_330"></a><a href="#Footnote_330_330" class="fnanchor">[330]</a> and then further
+afield in Europe, Africa, and Asia, where, for instance, we see Agni's
+ram with the characteristic horn. This blending of the influence of the
+octopus- and the ram's-horn-motifs made the spiral a conventional
+representation of thunder. This is displayed in its most definite form
+in China, Japan, Indonesia, and America, where we find the separate
+spiral used as a thunder-symbol, and the spiral appendage on the side of
+the head as a token of the god of thunder.<a name="FNanchor_331_331" id="FNanchor_331_331"></a><a href="#Footnote_331_331" class="fnanchor">[331]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_316_316" id="Footnote_316_316"></a><a href="#FNanchor_316_316"><span class="label">[316]</span></a> Thomas Wilson ("The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol,
+and its Migrations; with Observations on the Migration of Certain
+Industries in Prehistoric Times," <i>Report of the U.&nbsp;S. National Museum
+for 1894</i>, Washington, 1896) has given a full and well-illustrated
+summary of most of the literature: further information is provided by
+Count d'Alviella (<i>op. cit. supra</i>), "The Migration of Symbols"; by
+Zelia Nuttall ("The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World
+Civilizations," <i>Arch&aelig;ological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody
+Museum</i>, Cambridge, Mass., 1901); and Arthur Bernard Cook ("Zeus, A
+Study in Ancient Religion," Vol. I, Cambridge, 1914, pp. 472 <i>et
+seq.</i>).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_317_317" id="Footnote_317_317"></a><a href="#FNanchor_317_317"><span class="label">[317]</span></a> Since this has been printed Mr. W.&nbsp;J. Perry has called my
+attention to a short article by Ren&eacute; Croste ("Le Svastika," <i>Bull.
+Trimestriel de la Soci&eacute;t&eacute; Bayonnaise d'&Eacute;tudes Regionales</i>, 1918), in
+which Houssay's hypothesis is mentioned as having been adopted by
+Guilleminot ("Les Nouveaux Horizons de la Science").</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_318_318" id="Footnote_318_318"></a><a href="#FNanchor_318_318"><span class="label">[318]</span></a> Wilson (<i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 829-33 and Figs. 125, 128, and
+129) has collected the relevant passages and illustrations from
+Schliemann's writings.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_319_319" id="Footnote_319_319"></a><a href="#FNanchor_319_319"><span class="label">[319]</span></a> <i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Ethnologie</i>, Bd. 37, p. 148.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_320_320" id="Footnote_320_320"></a><a href="#FNanchor_320_320"><span class="label">[320]</span></a> Seler, <i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Ethnologie</i>, Bd., 41, p. 409.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_321_321" id="Footnote_321_321"></a><a href="#FNanchor_321_321"><span class="label">[321]</span></a> <i>Corolla Numismatica</i>, 1906, p. 342.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_322_322" id="Footnote_322_322"></a><a href="#FNanchor_322_322"><span class="label">[322]</span></a> A.&nbsp;B. Cook, "Zeus," pp. 198 <i>et seq</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_323_323" id="Footnote_323_323"></a><a href="#FNanchor_323_323"><span class="label">[323]</span></a> "Etude Historique et Chronologique sur les Vases Peints
+de l'Acropole de Suse," <i>M&eacute;moires de la D&eacute;l&eacute;gation en Perse</i>, T. XIII,
+<i>Rech. Arch&eacute;ol.</i>, 5<sup>e</sup> s&eacute;rie, 1912, Plate XLI, Fig. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_324_324" id="Footnote_324_324"></a><a href="#FNanchor_324_324"><span class="label">[324]</span></a> "Canaan," p. 340, footnote.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_325_325" id="Footnote_325_325"></a><a href="#FNanchor_325_325"><span class="label">[325]</span></a> Alice Grenfell, <i>Journal of Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol.
+II, 1915, p. 217: and <i>Ancient Egypt</i>, 1916, Part I, p. 23.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_326_326" id="Footnote_326_326"></a><a href="#FNanchor_326_326"><span class="label">[326]</span></a> S. Reinach, <i>Revue Arch&eacute;ol.</i>, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 369.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_327_327" id="Footnote_327_327"></a><a href="#FNanchor_327_327"><span class="label">[327]</span></a> L. Siret, "Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie
+Ib&eacute;riques," 1913, p. 18, Fig. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_328_328" id="Footnote_328_328"></a><a href="#FNanchor_328_328"><span class="label">[328]</span></a> Rivers, "History of Melanesian Society," Vol. II, p. 374;
+also <i>Report Brit. Association</i>, 1912, p. 599.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_329_329" id="Footnote_329_329"></a><a href="#FNanchor_329_329"><span class="label">[329]</span></a> M. Siret assigns the date of the appearance in Spain of
+the highly conventionalized angular form of octopus to the time between
+the fifteenth and the twelfth centuries <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>; and he attributes
+it to Ph&#339;nician influence (p. 63).</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_330_330" id="Footnote_330_330"></a><a href="#FNanchor_330_330"><span class="label">[330]</span></a> Cook, "Zeus," p. 346 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_331_331" id="Footnote_331_331"></a><a href="#FNanchor_331_331"><span class="label">[331]</span></a> This is well shown upon the Copan representations (Fig.
+19) of the elephant-headed god&mdash;see <i>Nature</i>, November, 25, 1915, p.
+340.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Mother Pot</h3>
+
+<p>In the lecture on "Incense and Libations" (Chapter I) I referred to the
+enrichment of the conception of water's life-giving properties which the
+inclusion of the idea of human fertilization by water involved. When
+this event happened a new view developed in explanation of the part
+played by woman in reproduction. She was no longer regarded as the real
+parent of mankind, but as the matrix in which the seed was planted and
+nurtured during the course of its growth and development. Hence in the
+earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic writing the picture of a pot of water was
+taken as the symbol of womanhood, the "vessel" which received the seed.
+A globular water-pot, the common phonetic value of which is <i>Nw</i> or
+<i>Nu</i>, was the symbol of the cosmic waters, the god <i>Nw (Nu)</i>, whose
+female counterpart was the goddess <i>Nut</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In his report, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs,"<a name="FNanchor_332_332" id="FNanchor_332_332"></a><a href="#Footnote_332_332" class="fnanchor">[332]</a> Mr. F.L&nbsp;Ll.Griffith
+discusses the bowl of water (<i>a</i>) and says that it stands for the female
+principle in the words for <i>vulva</i> and woman. When it is recalled that
+the cowry (and other shells) had the same double significance, the
+possibility suggests itself whether at times confusion may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> not have
+arisen between the not very dissimilar hieroglyphic signs for "a shell"
+(<i>h</i>) and "the bowl of water" (woman) (<i>f</i>).<a name="FNanchor_333_333" id="FNanchor_333_333"></a><a href="#Footnote_333_333" class="fnanchor">[333]</a></p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_029" id="Image_029"></a>
+<img src="images/image029.png" width="400" height="371" alt="Fig. 6.
+(a) Picture of a bowl of water&mdash;the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to
+hm (the word hmt means &quot;woman&quot;)&mdash;Griffith, &quot;Beni Hasan,&quot; Part III,
+Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29.
+(b) &quot;A basket of sycamore figs&quot;&mdash;Wilkinson&#39;s &quot;Ancient Egyptians,&quot; Vol.
+I, p. 323.
+(c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning
+&quot;wife&quot; and are apparently taken from (b). But (c) is identical with
+(i), which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve shell
+(g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely (h). The
+varying conventionalizations of (a) or (b) are shown in (d),
+(e), and (f) (Griffith, &quot;Hieroglyphics,&quot; p. 34).
+(k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic equivalent of the
+sign (h), and, according to Griffith (&quot;Hieroglyphics,&quot; p. 26), &quot;is
+probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like
+outline&quot;.
+(l) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as Nu and
+Nut.
+(m) A &quot;pomegranate&quot; (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column
+at Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, &quot;Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult,&quot; p. 46).
+(n) The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the
+coins of Central Greece (compare Fig. 24 (d)). Its similarity to the
+Egyptian pot-sign (l) (which also has the significance of
+mother-goddess) is worthy of note." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 6.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) Picture of a bowl of water&mdash;the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to
+hm (the word hmt means &quot;woman&quot;)&mdash;Griffith, &quot;Beni Hasan,&quot; Part III,
+Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) &quot;A basket of sycamore figs&quot;&mdash;Wilkinson&#39;s &quot;Ancient Egyptians,&quot; Vol.
+I, p. 323.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) and (<i>d</i>) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning
+&quot;wife&quot; and are apparently taken from (<i>b</i>). But (<i>c</i>) is identical with
+(<i>i</i>), which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve shell
+(g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely (<i>h</i>). The
+varying conventionalizations of (<i>a</i>) or (<i>b</i>) are shown in (<i>d</i>),
+(<i>e</i>), and (<i>f</i>) (Griffith, &quot;Hieroglyphics,&quot; p. 34).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>k</i>) The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic equivalent of the
+sign (<i>h</i>), and, according to Griffith (&quot;Hieroglyphics,&quot; p. 26), &quot;is
+probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like
+outline&quot;.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>l</i>) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as Nu and
+Nut.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>m</i>) A &quot;pomegranate&quot; (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column
+at Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, &quot;Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult,&quot; p. 46).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>n</i>) The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the
+coins of Central Greece (compare Fig. 24 (<i>d</i>)). Its similarity to the
+Egyptian pot-sign (<i>l</i>) (which also has the significance of
+mother-goddess) is worthy of note.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Referring to the sign (<i>g</i> and <i>h</i>) for "a shell," Mr. Griffith says (p.
+25): "It is regularly found at all periods in the word
+<i>&#7723;aw&middot;t</i>=altar,<a name="FNanchor_334_334" id="FNanchor_334_334"></a><a href="#Footnote_334_334" class="fnanchor">[334]</a> and perhaps only in this word: but it is a
+peculiarity of the Pyramid Texts that the sign shown in the text-figures
+<i>c</i>, <i>h</i>, and <i>i</i> is in them used very commonly, not as a word-sign, but
+also as a phonetic equivalent to the sign labelled <i>k</i> (in the
+text-figure) for <i>&#7723;'</i> (<i>kha</i>), or apparently for <i>&#7723;</i> alone in many
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"The name of the lotus leaf is probably derived from the same root, on
+account of its shell-like outline or <i>vice versa</i>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_030" id="Image_030"></a>
+<img src="images/image030.png" width="294" height="400" alt="Fig. 7.
+(a) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus emerging from a
+lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis).
+(b) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and animistically
+identified with them either as an instrument of life-giving or
+destruction.
+(c) Conventionalized lily&mdash;the prototype of the trident and the
+thunder-weapon.
+(d) A water-plant associated with the Nile-gods." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 7.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus emerging from a
+lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and animistically
+identified with them either as an instrument of life-giving or
+destruction.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) Conventionalized lily&mdash;the prototype of the trident and the
+thunder-weapon.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>d</i>) A water-plant associated with the Nile-gods.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The familiar representation of Horus (and his homologues in India and
+elsewhere) being born from the lotus suggests that the flower represents
+his mother Hathor. But as the argument in these pages has led us towards
+the inference that the original form of Hathor was a shell-amulet,<a name="FNanchor_335_335" id="FNanchor_335_335"></a><a href="#Footnote_335_335" class="fnanchor">[335]</a>
+it seems not unlikely that her identification with the lotus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> may have
+arisen from the confusion between the latter and the cowry, which no
+doubt was also in part due to the belief that both the shell and the
+plant were expressions of the vital powers of the water in which they
+developed.</p>
+
+<p>The identification of the Great Mother with a pot was one of the factors
+that played a part in the assimilation of her attributes with those of
+the Water God, who in early Sumerian pictures was usually represented
+pouring the life-giving waters from his pot (Fig. 24, <i>h</i> and <i>l</i>).</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_031" id="Image_031"></a>
+<img src="images/image031.png" width="400" height="571" alt="Fig. 24.
+(a) and (b) Two Mycen&aelig;an pots (after Schliemann).
+(a) The so-called &quot;owl-shaped&quot; vase is really a representation of the
+Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
+(b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon
+her head and another in her hands&mdash;a three-fold representation of the
+Great Mother as a pot.
+(c) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is
+represented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form.
+(d), (e), (f), (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central
+Greece (after Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the
+Octopus, with its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f).
+(i) Sepia officinalis (after Tryon).
+(k) and (l) The so-called &quot;spouting vases&quot; in the hands of the
+Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of
+Tello, after Ward (&quot;Seal Cylinders, etc.,&quot; p. 215).
+The &quot;spouting vases&quot; have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia to
+suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of
+the latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and
+cephalopods in Western Asia and the Mediterranean." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 24.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) and (<i>b</i>) Two Mycen&aelig;an pots (after Schliemann).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) The so-called &quot;owl-shaped&quot; vase is really a representation of the
+Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon
+her head and another in her hands&mdash;a three-fold representation of the
+Great Mother as a pot.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is
+represented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>d</i>), (<i>e</i>), (<i>f</i>), (<i>g</i>), and (<i>h</i>) A series of coins from Central
+Greece (after Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the
+Octopus, with its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (<i>f</i>).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>i</i>) Sepia officinalis (after Tryon).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>k</i>) and (<i>l</i>) The so-called &quot;spouting vases&quot; in the hands of the
+Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of
+Tello, after Ward (&quot;Seal Cylinders, etc.,&quot; p. 215).</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;spouting vases&quot; have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia to
+suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of
+the latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and
+cephalopods in Western Asia and the Mediterranean.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This idea of the Mother Pot is found not only in Babylonia, Egypt,
+India,<a name="FNanchor_336_336" id="FNanchor_336_336"></a><a href="#Footnote_336_336" class="fnanchor">[336]</a> and the Eastern Mediterranean, but wherever the influence of
+these ancient civilizations made itself felt. It is widespread among the
+Celtic-speaking peoples. In Wales the pot's life-giving powers are
+enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea spread, its
+meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a
+basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's cauldron, the
+magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the
+faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense
+as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so Mr. Donald
+Mackenzie tells me, is closely associated with cows, serpents, frogs,
+dragons, birds, pearls, and "nine maidens that blow the fire under the
+cauldron"; and, if the nature of these relationships be examined, each
+of them will be found to be a link between the pot and the Great Mother.</p>
+
+<p>The witch's cauldron and the maidens who assist in the preparation of
+the witch's medicine seem to be the descendants respectively of Hathor's
+pots (in the story of the Destruction of Mankind) and the Sekti who
+churn up the <i>didi</i> and the barley with which to make the elixir of
+immortality and the sedative draught for the destructive goddess
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Donald Mackenzie has given me a number of additional references from
+Celtic and Indian literature in corroboration of these widespread
+associations of the pot with the Great Mother; and he reminds me that in
+Oceania the coco-nut has the same reputation as the pot in the Indian
+<i>Mah&#257;bh&#257;rata</i>. It is the source of food and anything else that is
+wanted, and its supply can never be exhausted. [On some future occasion
+I hope to make use of the wonderful legends of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> pot's life-giving
+powers, to which Mr. Mackenzie has directed my attention. At present,
+however, I must content myself with the statement that the pot's
+identity with the Great Mother is deeply rooted in ancient belief
+throughout the greater part of the world.<a name="FNanchor_337_337" id="FNanchor_337_337"></a><a href="#Footnote_337_337" class="fnanchor">[337]</a>]</p>
+
+<p>The diverse conceptions of the Great Mother as a pot and as an octopus
+seem to have been blended in Mycen&aelig;an lands, where the so-called
+"owl-shaped" pots were clearly intended to represent the goddess in both
+these aspects united in one symbol. When the diffusion of these ideas
+into more remote parts of the world took place syntheses with other
+motives produced a great variety of most complex forms. In Honduras
+pottery vessels have been found<a name="FNanchor_338_338" id="FNanchor_338_338"></a><a href="#Footnote_338_338" class="fnanchor">[338]</a> which give tangible expression to
+the blending of the ideas of the Mother Pot, the crocodile-like
+<i>Makara</i>, star-spangled like Hathor's cow, Aphrodite's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> pig, and Soma's
+deer, and provided with the deer's antlers of the Eastern Asiatic dragon
+(see Chapter II, p. 103).</p>
+
+<p>The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and
+rebirth. When Nicodemus asks: "How can a man be born again when he is
+old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" he
+is told: "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot
+enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh:
+and that which is born of the spirit is spirit" (John iii. 4, 5, and 6).</p>
+
+<p>The phrase "born of water" refers to the birth "of the flesh"; and the
+mother's womb is the vessel containing "the water" from which the new
+life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of Isis:
+"&#964;&#949;&#964;&#8049;&#961;&#964;&#951; &#948;&#949; &#964;&#951;&#957; &#7996;&#963;&#953;&#957; &#7952;&#957; &#960;&#945;&#957;&#965;&#947;&#961;&#959;&#953;&#962; &#947;&#949;&#957;&#8051;&#963;&#952;&#945;&#953;". The great waters
+which produced all living things, the Egyptian god Nun and the goddess
+Nut, were expressed in hieroglyphic as pots of water. The goddess was
+identified with Hathor's celestial star-spangled cow, the original
+mother of the sun-god; and the word "Nun" was a symbol of all that was
+new, young, and fresh, and the fertilizing and life-giving waters of the
+annual inundation of the Nile. Hathor was the daughter of these waters,
+as Aphrodite was sprung from the sea-foam.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_332_332" id="Footnote_332_332"></a><a href="#FNanchor_332_332"><span class="label">[332]</span></a> <i>Arch&aelig;ol. Survey of Egypt</i>, 1898, p. 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_333_333" id="Footnote_333_333"></a><a href="#FNanchor_333_333"><span class="label">[333]</span></a> Compare the two-fold meaning of the Latin <i>testa</i> as
+"shell" and "bowl".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_334_334" id="Footnote_334_334"></a><a href="#FNanchor_334_334"><span class="label">[334]</span></a> Compare the association of shells with altars in Minoan
+Crete and the widespread use of large shells as bowls for "holy water"
+in Christian churches.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_335_335" id="Footnote_335_335"></a><a href="#FNanchor_335_335"><span class="label">[335]</span></a> Miss Winifred M. Crompton, Assistant Keeper of the
+Egyptian Department of the Manchester Museum, has called my attention to
+a remarkable piece of evidence which affords additional corroboration of
+the view that Hathor was a development of the cowry-amulet. Upon the
+famous archaic palette of Narmer (Fig. 18), a sporran, composed of four
+representations of Hathor's head, takes the place of the original
+cowries that were suspended from more primitive girdles.
+</p><p>
+The cowries of the head ornament of primitive peoples of Africa and Asia
+(and of the Mediterranean area in early times&mdash;Schliemann's "Ilios,"
+Fig. 685) are often replaced in Egypt by lotus flowers (W.&nbsp;D. Spanton,
+"Water Lilies of Egypt," <i>Ancient Egypt</i>, 1917, Part I, Figs. 19, 20,
+and 21). Upon the head-band of the statue of Nefert, which I have
+reproduced in Chapter I (Fig. 4), a conventional lotus design is found
+(see Spanton's Fig. 19), which is almost identical with the classical
+thunder-weapon.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_336_336" id="Footnote_336_336"></a><a href="#FNanchor_336_336"><span class="label">[336]</span></a> Among the Dravidian people at the present day the seven
+goddesses (corresponding to the seven Hathors) are often represented by
+seven pots.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_337_337" id="Footnote_337_337"></a><a href="#FNanchor_337_337"><span class="label">[337]</span></a> The luxuriant crop of stories of the Holy Grail was not
+inspired originally by mere literary invention. A tradition sprung from
+the fountain-head of all mythology, the parent-story of the Destruction
+of Mankind, provided the materials which a series of writers elaborated
+into the varied assortment of legends of the Mother Pot. The true
+meaning of the Quest of the Holy Grail can be understood only by reading
+the fabled accounts of it in the light of the ancient search for the
+elixir of life and the historical development of the narrative
+describing that search.
+</p><p>
+A concise summary of the Grail literature will be found in Jessie L.
+Weston's "The Quest of the Holy Grail" (1913). Her theory will be found,
+after some slight modifications, to fall into line with the general
+argument of this book.
+</p><p>
+Mr. F.L&nbsp;Ll.Griffith tells me that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the verb
+"coire cum" gives frank expression to the real meaning of the symbolism
+of the pot as the matrix which receives the seed. The same idea provides
+the material for the incident of the birth of Drona (the pot-born) in
+the Adi Parva (Sections CXXXI, CXXXIX, and CLXVIII, in Roy's
+translation) of the Mahabharata, to which Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie has
+kindly called my attention. Drona was conceived in a pot from the seed
+of a Rishi. A widespread variant of the same story is the conception of
+a child from a drop of blood in a pot (see, for example, Hartland,
+"Legend of Perseus," Vol. I, pp. 98 and 144). If the pot can thus create
+a human being, it is easy to understand how it acquired its reputation
+of being also able to multiply food and provide an inexhaustible supply.
+Similarly, all substances, such as barley, rice, gold, pearls, and jade,
+to which the possession of a special vital essence or "soul substance"
+was attributed, were believed to be able to reproduce themselves and so
+increase in quantity of their own activities. As "givers of life" they
+were also able to add to their own life-substance, in other words to
+grow like any other living being.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_338_338" id="Footnote_338_338"></a><a href="#FNanchor_338_338"><span class="label">[338]</span></a> "An American Dragon," <i>Man</i>, November, 1918.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Artemis and the Guardian of the Portal.</h3>
+
+<p>Sir Gardner Wilkinson states (see text-figure, p. 179, <i>b</i>) that "a
+basket of sycamore figs" was originally the hieroglyphic sign for a
+woman, a goddess, or a mother. Later on (p. 199) I shall refer to the
+possible bearing of this Egyptian idea upon the origin of the Hebrew
+word for mandrakes and the allusion to "a basket of figs" in the Book of
+Jeremiah.</p>
+
+<p>The life-giving powers attributed to "love-apples" and the association
+of these ideas with the fig-tree may have facilitated the transference
+of these attributes of "apples" to those actually growing upon a tree.</p>
+
+<p>We know that Aphrodite was intimately associated, not only with
+"love-apples," but also with real apples. The sun-god Apollo's connexion
+with the apple-tree, which Dr. Rendel Harris, with great daring, wants
+to convert into an identity of name, was probably only one of the
+results of that long series of confusions between the Great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> Mother
+(Hathor) and the Sun-god (Horus), to which I have referred in my
+discussion of the dragon-story.</p>
+
+<p>But when Apollo's form emerges more clearly he is associated not with
+Aphrodite but with Artemis, whom Dr. Rendel Harris has shown to be
+identified with the mugwort, <i>Artemisia</i>. The association of the goddess
+with this plant is probably related to the identification of Sekhet with
+the marsh-plants of the Egyptian Delta and of Hathor and Isis with the
+lotus and other water plants. Any doubt as to the reality of these
+associations and Egyptian connexions is banished by the evidence of
+Artemis's male counterpart Apollo Hyakinthos and his relations to the
+sacred lily and other water plants.<a name="FNanchor_339_339" id="FNanchor_339_339"></a><a href="#Footnote_339_339" class="fnanchor">[339]</a> Artemis was a gyn&aelig;cological
+specialist: for she assisted women not only in childbirth and the
+expulsion of the placenta, but also in cases of amenorrh&#339;a and
+affections of the uterus. She was regarded as the goddess of the portal,
+not merely of birth,<a name="FNanchor_340_340" id="FNanchor_340_340"></a><a href="#Footnote_340_340" class="fnanchor">[340]</a> but also of gold and treasure, of which she
+possessed the key, and of the year (January).</p>
+
+<p>This brings us back to the guardianship of gold and treasures which
+plays so vital a part in the evolution of the Mediterranean goddesses.
+For, like the story of the dog and the mandrake, it emphasizes the
+conchological ancestry of these deities and their connexion with the
+guardians of the subterranean palaces where pearls are found. But
+Artemis was not only the opener of the treasure-houses, but she also
+possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone: she could transmute
+base substances into gold,<a name="FNanchor_341_341" id="FNanchor_341_341"></a><a href="#Footnote_341_341" class="fnanchor">[341]</a> for was she not the offspring of the
+Golden Hathor? To open the portal either of birth or wealth she used her
+magic wand or key. As <i>N&#363;b</i>, the lady of gold, the Great Mother could
+not only change other substances into gold, but she was also the
+guardian of the treasure house of gold, pearls, and precious stones.
+Hence she could grant riches. Elsewhere in this chapter (p. 221) I shall
+explain how the goddess came to be identified with gold.</p>
+
+<p>Just as Hathor, the Eye of Re, descended to provide the elixir of youth
+for the king who was the sun-god, so Artemis is described as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+travelling through the air in a car drawn by two serpents<a name="FNanchor_342_342" id="FNanchor_342_342"></a><a href="#Footnote_342_342" class="fnanchor">[342]</a> seeking
+the most pious of kings in order that she might establish her cult with
+him and bless him with renewed youth.<a name="FNanchor_343_343" id="FNanchor_343_343"></a><a href="#Footnote_343_343" class="fnanchor">[343]</a></p>
+
+<p>Artemis was a moon-goddess closely related to Britomartis and Diktynna,
+the Cretan prototype of Aphrodite. These goddesses afforded help to
+women in childbirth and were regarded as guardians of the portal. The
+goddess of streams and marshes was identified with the mugwort
+(<i>Artemisia</i>), which was hung above the door in the place occupied at
+other times by the winged disk, the thunder-stone, or a crocodile
+(dragon). As the guardian of portals Artemis's magic plant could open
+locks and doors. As the giver of life she could also withhold the vital
+essence and so cause disease or death; but she possessed the means of
+curing the ills she inflicted. Artemis, in fact, like all the other
+goddesses, was a witch.</p>
+
+<p>In former lectures<a name="FNanchor_344_344" id="FNanchor_344_344"></a><a href="#Footnote_344_344" class="fnanchor">[344]</a> I have often discussed the remarkable feature of
+Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate
+the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples
+become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways
+or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by
+this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the
+symbolic gateways of China and Japan.</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_032" id="Image_032"></a>
+<img src="images/image032.png" width="400" height="596" alt="Fig. 25.
+(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I.
+(b) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, &quot;Seal
+Cylinders of Western Asia,&quot; Fig. 1109).
+(c) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of
+Life in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).
+(d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the
+design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670).
+(e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig.
+663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains:
+alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle.
+(f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg,
+Fig. 9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe,
+into which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was
+the prototype of the Winged Disk has been added.
+(g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycen&aelig;
+(after Sir Arthur Evans, &quot;Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult,&quot; p. 10).
+(h) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the
+wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in g.
+(i) &quot;Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate&quot; (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the
+Goddess of the Portal.
+(k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the
+form suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, c).
+(l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized
+(Ward, Fig. 695).
+(m) Assyrian Tree of Life and &quot;Winged Disk&quot; in which the god is riding
+in a crescent replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695)." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 25.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, &quot;Seal
+Cylinders of Western Asia,&quot; Fig. 1109).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of
+Life in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>d</i>) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the
+design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>e</i>) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig.
+663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains:
+alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>f</i>) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg,
+Fig. 9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe,
+into which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was
+the prototype of the Winged Disk has been added.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>g</i>) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycen&aelig;
+(after Sir Arthur Evans, &quot;Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult,&quot; p. 10).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>h</i>) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the
+wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in g.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>i</i>) &quot;Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate&quot; (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the
+Goddess of the Portal.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>k</i>) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the
+form suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, c).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>l</i>) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized
+(Ward, Fig. 695).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>m</i>) Assyrian Tree of Life and &quot;Winged Disk&quot; in which the god is riding
+in a crescent replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695).</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This significance of gates was no doubt suggested by the idea that they
+represented the means of communication between the living and the dead,
+and, symbolically, the portal by which the dead acquired a rebirth into
+a new form of existence. It was presumably for this reason that the
+winged disk as a symbol of life-giving, was placed above the lintels of
+these doors, not merely in Egypt, Ph&#339;nicia, the Mediterranean Area,
+and Western Asia, but also in America,<a name="FNanchor_345_345" id="FNanchor_345_345"></a><a href="#Footnote_345_345" class="fnanchor">[345]</a> and in modified forms in
+India, Indonesia, Melanesia, Cambodia, China, and Japan.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion (Chapter II) of the means by which the winged disk came
+to acquire the power of life-giving, "the healing in its wings," will
+have made it clear that the sun became accredited with these virtues
+only when it assumed the place of the other "Eye of Re," the Great
+Mother. In fact, it was a not uncommon practice in Egypt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> to represent
+the eyes of Re or of Horus himself in place of the more usual winged
+disk. In the &AElig;gean area the original practice of representing the Great
+Mother was retained long after it was superseded in Egypt by the use of
+the winged disk (the sun-god).</p>
+
+<p>Over the lintel of the famous "Lion Gate" at Mycen&aelig;, instead of the
+winged disk, we find a vertical pillar to represent the Mother Goddess,
+flanked by two lions which are nothing more than other representatives
+of herself (Fig. 26). </p>
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_033" id="Image_033"></a>
+<img src="images/image033.png" width="400" height="564" alt="Fig. 26.
+(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains of the horizon
+(on which trees are growing) (after Budge, &quot;Gods of the Egyptians,&quot; Vol.
+II, p. 101). [This is a part only of a scene in which the goddess Nut is
+giving birth to the sun, whose rays illuminate Hathor on the horizon, as
+Sothis, the &quot;Opener of the Way&quot; for the sun.
+(b) The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a
+surrogate of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now
+in the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, op. cit., p. 39). This
+indicates the identity of what Evans calls &quot;the horns of consecration&quot;
+and the &quot;mountains of the horizon,&quot; and also suggests how confusion may
+have arisen between the mountains and the cow's horns.
+(c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the Eastern
+Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, op. cit., p. 373).
+(d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the
+Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to &quot;the
+ridiculous mouse&quot;&mdash;Smintheus). The ankh (life-sign) below the sun is
+the determinative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is
+heraldically supported by the Great Mother's lionesses.
+(e) Part of the design from a Mycen&aelig;an vase from Old Salamis (after
+Evans, p. 9). The cow's head and the Eastern Mountains are shown
+alongside one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe
+representing the god.
+(f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Id&aelig;an Cave, now in
+the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). If this design be compared
+with the Egyptian picture (a), it will be seen that Hathor's place is
+taken by the tree-form of the Great Mother, and the trees which in the
+former (a) are growing upon the Eastern Mountains are now placed
+alongside the &quot;horns&quot;. In the complete design (vide Evans, op. cit.,
+p. 44) a votary is represented blowing a conch-shell trumpet to animate
+the deity in the sacred tree.
+(g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of the goddess
+(after Evans, Fig. 66).
+(h) Another Mycen&aelig;an design comparable with (e).
+(i) Design from a signet-ring from Mycen&aelig; (after Evans, Fig. 34). If
+this be compared with the Egyptian picture (a) it will be noted that
+the Great Mother is now replaced by a tree: the Eastern Mountains by
+bulls, from whose backs the trees of the Eastern Mountains are
+sprouting. This design affords interesting corroboration of the
+suggestion that the Eastern Mountains may be confused with the cow's
+head (see b and c) or with the cow itself. Newberry (Annals of
+Arch&aelig;ology and Anthropology, Liverpool, Vol. I, p. 28) has called
+attention to the intimate association (in Protodynastic Egypt) of the
+Eastern Mountains, the Bull and the Double Axe&mdash;a certain token of
+cultural contact with Crete.
+(k) The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycen&aelig;. The pillar
+form of the Great Mother heraldically supported by her lioness-avatars,
+which correspond to the cattle of the design (i) and the Eastern
+Mountains of (a). The use of this design above the lintel of the gate
+brings it into homology with the Winged Disk. The Pillar represents the
+Goddess, as the Disk represents her Egyptian locum tenens, Horus; her
+destructive representatives (the lionesses) correspond to the two ur&aelig;i
+of the Winged Disk design." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 26.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains of the horizon
+(on which trees are growing) (after Budge, &quot;Gods of the Egyptians,&quot; Vol.
+II, p. 101). [This is a part only of a scene in which the goddess Nut is
+giving birth to the sun, whose rays illuminate Hathor on the horizon, as
+Sothis, the &quot;Opener of the Way&quot; for the sun.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>b</i>) The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a
+surrogate of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now
+in the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 39). This
+indicates the identity of what Evans calls "the horns of consecration"
+and the "mountains of the horizon," and also suggests how confusion may
+have arisen between the mountains and the cow's horns.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the Eastern
+Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 373).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>d</i>) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the
+Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to "the
+ridiculous mouse"&mdash;Smintheus). The <i>ankh</i> (life-sign) below the sun is
+the determinative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is
+heraldically supported by the Great Mother's lionesses.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>e</i>) Part of the design from a Mycen&aelig;an vase from Old Salamis (after
+Evans, p. 9). The cow's head and the Eastern Mountains are shown
+alongside one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe
+representing the god.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>f</i>) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Id&aelig;an Cave, now in
+the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). If this design be compared
+with the Egyptian picture (<i>a</i>), it will be seen that Hathor's place is
+taken by the tree-form of the Great Mother, and the trees which in the
+former (<i>a</i>) are growing upon the Eastern Mountains are now placed
+alongside the "horns". In the complete design (<i>vide</i> Evans, <i>op. cit.</i>,
+p. 44) a votary is represented blowing a conch-shell trumpet to animate
+the deity in the sacred tree.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>g</i>) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of the goddess
+(after Evans, Fig. 66).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>h</i>) Another Mycen&aelig;an design comparable with (<i>e</i>).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>i</i>) Design from a signet-ring from Mycen&aelig; (after Evans, Fig. 34). If
+this be compared with the Egyptian picture (<i>a</i>) it will be noted that
+the Great Mother is now replaced by a tree: the Eastern Mountains by
+bulls, from whose backs the trees of the Eastern Mountains are
+sprouting. This design affords interesting corroboration of the
+suggestion that the Eastern Mountains may be confused with the cow's
+head (see <i>b</i> and <i>c</i>) or with the cow itself. Newberry (<i>Annals of
+Arch&aelig;ology and Anthropology</i>, Liverpool, Vol. I, p. 28) has called
+attention to the intimate association (in Protodynastic Egypt) of the
+Eastern Mountains, the Bull and the Double Axe&mdash;a certain token of
+cultural contact with Crete.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>k</i>) The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycen&aelig;. The pillar
+form of the Great Mother heraldically supported by her lioness-avatars,
+which correspond to the cattle of the design (<i>i</i>) and the Eastern
+Mountains of (<i>a</i>). The use of this design above the lintel of the gate
+brings it into homology with the Winged Disk. The Pillar represents the
+Goddess, as the Disk represents her Egyptian <i>locum tenens</i>, Horus; her
+destructive representatives (the lionesses) correspond to the two ur&aelig;i
+of the Winged Disk design.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In his "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult," Sir Arthur Evans has shown that
+all possible transitional forms can be found (in Crete and the &AElig;gean
+area) between the representation of the actual goddess and her pillar-
+and tree-manifestations, until the stage is reached where the sun itself
+appears above the pillar between the lions.<a name="FNanchor_346_346" id="FNanchor_346_346"></a><a href="#Footnote_346_346" class="fnanchor">[346]</a> In the large series of
+seals from Mesopotamia and Western Asia which have been described in Mr.
+William Hayes Ward's monograph,<a name="FNanchor_347_347" id="FNanchor_347_347"></a><a href="#Footnote_347_347" class="fnanchor">[347]</a> we find manifold links between both
+the Egyptian and the Minoan cults.</p>
+
+<p>The tree-form of the Great Mother there becomes transformed into the
+"tree of life" and the winged disk is perched upon its summit. Thus we
+have a duplication of the life-giving deities. The "tree of life" of the
+Great Mother surmounted by the winged disk which is really her surrogate
+or that of the sun-god, who took over from her the power of life-giving
+(Figs. 25 and 26).</p>
+
+<p>In an interesting Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada<a name="FNanchor_348_348" id="FNanchor_348_348"></a><a href="#Footnote_348_348" class="fnanchor">[348]</a> the
+life-giving power is <i>tripled</i>. There is not only the tree representing
+the Great Mother herself; but also the double axe (the winged-disk
+homologue of the sun-god); and the more direct representation of him as
+a bird perched upon the axe (Fig. 25, <i>f</i>).</p>
+
+<p>The identification of the Great Mother with the tree or pillar seems
+also to have led to her confusion with the pestle with which the
+materials for her draught of immortality was pounded. She was also the
+bowl or mortar in which the pestle worked.<a name="FNanchor_349_349" id="FNanchor_349_349"></a><a href="#Footnote_349_349" class="fnanchor">[349]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As the Great Mother became confused with the pestle, so, "the
+Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the
+Soma-libation, becomes in the <i>Vedas</i> itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a
+very characteristic and frequent Oriental conceit in accordance with
+which the agent and the person or thing acted on are identified".<a name="FNanchor_350_350" id="FNanchor_350_350"></a><a href="#Footnote_350_350" class="fnanchor">[350]</a></p>
+
+<p>"The pressing-stones by means of which Soma is crushed typify
+thunderbolts." "In the <i>Rig-Veda</i>, we read of him [Soma] as
+<i>jyotihrathah</i>, <i>i.e.</i> 'mounted on a car of light' (IX, 5, 86, verse
+43); or again: 'Like a hero he holds weapons in his hand ... mounted on
+a chariot' (IX, 4, 76, verse 2)"&mdash;(p. 171).</p>
+
+<p>"Soma was the giver of power, of riches and treasures, flocks and herds,
+but above all, the giver of immortality" (p. 140).</p>
+
+<p>Sir Arthur Evans is of opinion "that in the case of the Cypriote
+cylinders the attendant monsters and, to a certain extent, the symbolic
+column itself, are taken from an Egyptian solar cycle, and the inference
+has been drawn that the aniconic pillars among the Mycen&aelig;ans of Cyprus
+were identified with divinities having some points in common with the
+sun-gods Ra, or Horus, and Hathor, the Great Mother" (<i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 63
+and 64).</p>
+
+<p>In attempting to find some explanation of how the tree or pillar of the
+goddess came to be replaced in the Indian legend by Mount Meru, the
+possibility suggests itself whether the aniconic form of the Great
+Mother placed between two relatively diminutive hills may not have
+helped, by confusion, to convert the cone itself into a yet bigger hill,
+which was identified with Mount Meru, the summit of which in other
+legends produced the <i>amrita</i> of the gods, either in the form of the
+soma plant that grew upon its heights, or the rain clouds which
+collected there. But, as the subsequent argument will make clear, the
+real reason for the identification of the Great Mother with a mountain
+was the belief that the sun was born from the splitting of the eastern
+mountain, which thus assumed the function of the sun-god's mother.
+Possibly the association of the tops of mountains with cloud- and
+rain-phenomena and the gods that controlled them played some part in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> development of the symbolism of mountains. [When I referred (in
+Chapter II, p. 98) to the fact that what Sir Arthur Evans calls "the
+horns of consecration" was primarily the split mountain of the dawn, I
+was not aware that Professor Newberry ("Two Cults of the Old Kingdom,"
+<i>Annals of Arch&aelig;ology and Anthropology</i>, Liverpool, Vol. I, 1908, p. 28)
+had already suggested this identification.]</p>
+
+<p>In the Egyptian story the god Re instructed the Sekti of Heliopolis to
+pound the materials for the food of immortality. In the Indian version,
+the gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover some elixir
+which would make them immortal. To this end, Mount Meru [the Great
+Mother] was cast into the sea [of milk]. Vishnu, in his second avatar as
+a tortoise<a name="FNanchor_351_351" id="FNanchor_351_351"></a><a href="#Footnote_351_351" class="fnanchor">[351]</a> supported the mountain on his back; and the N&acirc;ga serpent
+Vasuki was then twisted around the mountain, the gods seizing its head
+and the demons his tail twirled the mountain until they had churned the
+amrita or water of life. Wilfrid Jackson has called attention to the
+fact that this scene has been depicted, not only in India and Japan, but
+also in the Precolumbian <i>Codex Cortes</i> drawn by some Maya artist in
+Central America.<a name="FNanchor_352_352" id="FNanchor_352_352"></a><a href="#Footnote_352_352" class="fnanchor">[352]</a></p>
+
+<p>The horizon is the birthplace of the gods; and the birth of the deity is
+depicted with literal crudity as an emergence from the portal between
+its two mountains. The mountain splits to give birth to the sun-god,
+just as in the later fable the parturient mountain produced the
+"ridiculous mouse" (Apollo Smintheus). The Great Mother is described as
+giving birth&mdash;"the gates of the firmament are undone for Teti himself at
+break of day" [that is when the sun-god is born on the horizon]. "He
+comes forth from the Field of Earu" (Egyptian Pyramid Texts&mdash;Breasted's
+translation).</p>
+
+<p>In the domain of Olympian obstetrics the analogy between birth and the
+emergence from the door of a house or the gateway of a temple is a
+common theme of veiled reference. Artemis, for instance, is a goddess of
+the portal, and is not only a helper in childbirth, but also grows in
+her garden a magical herb which is capable of opening locks. This
+reputation, however, was acquired not merely by reason of her skill in
+midwifery, but also as an outcome of the legend<a name="FNanchor_353_353" id="FNanchor_353_353"></a><a href="#Footnote_353_353" class="fnanchor">[353]</a> of the
+treasure-house of pearls which was under the guardianship of the great
+"giver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> of life" and of which she kept the magic key. She was in fact
+the feminine form of Janus, the doorkeeper who presided over all
+beginnings, whether of birth, or of any kind of enterprise or new
+venture, or the commencement of the year (like Hathor). Janus was the
+guardian of the door of Olympus itself, the gate of rebirth into the
+immortality of the gods.</p>
+
+<p>The ideas underlying these conceptions found expression in an endless
+variety of forms, material, intellectual, and moral, wherever the
+influence of civilization made itself felt. I shall refer only to one
+group of these expressions that is directly relevant to the
+subject-matter of this book. I mean the custom of suspending or
+representing the life-giving symbol above the portal of temples and
+houses. Thus the plant peculiar to Artemis herself, the mugwort or
+Artemisia, was hung above the door,<a name="FNanchor_354_354" id="FNanchor_354_354"></a><a href="#Footnote_354_354" class="fnanchor">[354]</a> just as the winged disk was
+sculptured upon the lintel, or the thunder-stone was placed above the
+door of the cowhouse<a name="FNanchor_355_355" id="FNanchor_355_355"></a><a href="#Footnote_355_355" class="fnanchor">[355]</a> to afford the protection of the Great Mother's
+powers of life-giving to her own cattle.</p>
+
+<p>In the Pyramid Texts the rebirth of a dead pharaoh is described with
+vivid realism and directness. "The waters of life which are in the sky
+come. The waters of life which are in the earth come. The sky burns for
+thee, the earth trembles for thee, before the birth of the god. The two
+hills are divided, the god comes into being, the god takes possession of
+his body. The two hills are divided, this Neferkere comes into being,
+this Neferkere takes possession of his body. Behold this Neferkere&mdash;his
+feet are kissed by the pure waters which are from Atum, which the
+phallus of Shu made, which the vulva of Tefnut brought into being. They
+have come, they have brought for thee the pure waters from their
+father."<a name="FNanchor_356_356" id="FNanchor_356_356"></a><a href="#Footnote_356_356" class="fnanchor">[356]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Egyptians entertained the belief<a name="FNanchor_357_357" id="FNanchor_357_357"></a><a href="#Footnote_357_357" class="fnanchor">[357]</a> that the sun-god was born of
+the celestial cow Mehetw&#275;ret, a name which means "Great Flood," and
+is the equivalent of the primeval ocean Nun. In other words the
+celestial cow Hathor, the embodiment of the life-giving waters of heaven
+and earth, is the mother of Horus. So also Aphrodite was born of the
+"Great Flood" which is the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>In his report upon the hieroglyphs of Beni Hasan,<a name="FNanchor_358_358" id="FNanchor_358_358"></a><a href="#Footnote_358_358" class="fnanchor">[358]</a> Mr. Griffith
+refers to the picture of "a woman of the marshes," which is read
+<i>sekht</i>, and is "used to denote the goddess Sekhet, the goddess of the
+marshes, who presided over the occupations of the dwellers there. Chief
+among these occupations must have been the capture of fish and fowl and
+the culture and gathering of water-plants, especially the papyrus and
+the lotus". Sekhet was in fact a rude prototype of Artemis in the
+character depicted by Dr. Rendel Harris.<a name="FNanchor_359_359" id="FNanchor_359_359"></a><a href="#Footnote_359_359" class="fnanchor">[359]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps not without significance that the root of a marsh plant,
+the <i>Iris pseudacorus</i><a name="FNanchor_360_360" id="FNanchor_360_360"></a><a href="#Footnote_360_360" class="fnanchor">[360]</a> is regarded in Germany as a luck-bringer
+which can take the place of the mandrake.<a name="FNanchor_361_361" id="FNanchor_361_361"></a><a href="#Footnote_361_361" class="fnanchor">[361]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Great Mother wields a magic wand which the ancient Egyptian scribes
+called the "Great Magician". It was endowed with the two-fold powers of
+life-giving and opening, which from the beginning were intimately
+associated the one with the other from the analogy of the act of birth,
+which was both an opening and a giving of life. Hence the "magic wand"
+was a key or "opener of the ways," wherewith, at the ceremonies of
+resurrection, the mouth was opened for speech and the taking of food, as
+well as for the passage of the breath of life, the eyes were opened for
+sight, and the ears for hearing. Both the physical act of opening (the
+"key" aspect) as well as the vital aspect of life-giving (which we may
+call the "uterine" aspect) were implied in this symbolism. Mr. Griffith
+suggests that the form of the magic wand may have been derived from that
+of a con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>ventionalized picture of the uterus,<a name="FNanchor_362_362" id="FNanchor_362_362"></a><a href="#Footnote_362_362" class="fnanchor">[362]</a> in its aspect as a
+giver of life. But it is possible also that its other significance as an
+"opener of the ways" may have helped in the confusion of the
+hieroglyphic uterus-symbol with the key-symbol, and possibly also with
+double-axe symbol which the vaguely defined early Cretan Mother-Goddess
+wielded. For, as we have already seen (<i>supra</i>, p. 122), the axe also
+was a life-giving divinity and a magic wand (Fig. 8).</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_034" id="Image_034"></a>
+<img src="images/image034.png" width="401" height="101" alt="Fig. 8.
+(a) &quot;Ceremonial forked object,&quot; or &quot;magic wand,&quot; used in the ceremony
+of &quot;opening the mouth,&quot; possibly connected with (b) (a bicornuate
+uterus), according to Griffith (&quot;Hieroglyphics,&quot; p. 60).
+(c) The Egyptian sign for a key.
+(d) The double axe of Crete and Egypt." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 8.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>a</i>) &quot;Ceremonial forked object,&quot; or &quot;magic wand,&quot; used in the ceremony
+of &quot;opening the mouth,&quot; possibly connected with (<i>b</i>) (a bicornuate
+uterus), according to Griffith (&quot;Hieroglyphics,&quot; p. 60).</p>
+
+<p>(<i>c</i>) The Egyptian sign for a key.</p>
+
+<p>(<i>d</i>) The double axe of Crete and Egypt.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p>In his chapter on "the Origin of the Cult of Artemis," Dr. Rendel Harris
+refers to the reputation of Artemis as the patron of travellers, and to
+Parkinson's statement: "It is said of Pliny that if a traveller binde
+some of the hearbe [Artemisia] with him, he shall feele no weariness at
+all in his journey" (p. 72). Hence the high Dutch name <i>Beifuss</i> is
+applied to it.</p>
+
+<p>The left foot of the dead was called "the staff of Hathor" by the
+Egyptians; and the goddess was said "to make the deceased's legs to
+walk".<a name="FNanchor_363_363" id="FNanchor_363_363"></a><a href="#Footnote_363_363" class="fnanchor">[363]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was a common practice to tie flowers to a mummy's feet, as I
+discovered in unwrapping the royal mummies. According to Moret (<i>op.
+cit.</i>) the flowers of Upper and Lower Egypt were tied under the king's
+feet at the celebration of the Sed festival.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Battiscombe Gunn (quoted by Dr. Alan Gardiner) states that the
+familiar symbol of life known as the <i>ankh</i> represents the string of a
+sandal.<a name="FNanchor_364_364" id="FNanchor_364_364"></a><a href="#Footnote_364_364" class="fnanchor">[364]</a></p>
+
+<p>It seems to be worth considering whether the symbolism of the
+sandal-string may not have been derived from the life-girdle, which in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+ancient Indian medical treatises was linked in name with the female
+organs of reproduction and the pubic bones. According to Moret (<i>op.
+cit.</i>, p. 91) a girdle furnished with a tail was used as a sign of
+consecration or attainment of the divine life after death. Jung (<i>op.
+cit.</i>, p. 270), who, however, tries to find a phallic meaning in all
+symbolism, claims that reference to the foot has such a significance.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_339_339" id="Footnote_339_339"></a><a href="#FNanchor_339_339"><span class="label">[339]</span></a> Evans, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 50.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_340_340" id="Footnote_340_340"></a><a href="#FNanchor_340_340"><span class="label">[340]</span></a> Her Latin representative, Diana, had a male counterpart
+and conjugate, Dianus, <i>i.e.</i> Janus, of whom it was said: "Ipse primum
+Janus cum puerperium concipitur ... aditum aperit recipiendo semini".
+For other quotations see Rendel Harris, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 88 and the
+article "Janus" in Roscher's "Lexikon".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_341_341" id="Footnote_341_341"></a><a href="#FNanchor_341_341"><span class="label">[341]</span></a> Rendel Harris, p. 73.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_342_342" id="Footnote_342_342"></a><a href="#FNanchor_342_342"><span class="label">[342]</span></a> No doubt the two ur&aelig;i of the Saga of the Winged Disk.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_343_343" id="Footnote_343_343"></a><a href="#FNanchor_343_343"><span class="label">[343]</span></a> A.&nbsp;B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 244.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_344_344" id="Footnote_344_344"></a><a href="#FNanchor_344_344"><span class="label">[344]</span></a><i>Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental
+Society</i>, 1916.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_345_345" id="Footnote_345_345"></a><a href="#FNanchor_345_345"><span class="label">[345]</span></a> "The Influence of Egyptian Civilization in the East and
+in America," <i>Bulletin of the John Rylands Library</i>, 1916.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_346_346" id="Footnote_346_346"></a><a href="#FNanchor_346_346"><span class="label">[346]</span></a> Evans's, Fig. 41, p. 63.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_347_347" id="Footnote_347_347"></a><a href="#FNanchor_347_347"><span class="label">[347]</span></a> "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," 1910.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_348_348" id="Footnote_348_348"></a><a href="#FNanchor_348_348"><span class="label">[348]</span></a> Paribeni, "Monumenti antichi dell'accademia dei Lincei,"
+XIX, punt. 1, pll. 1-3; and V. Duhn, "Arch. f. Religionswissensch.,"
+XII, p. 161, pll. 2-4; quoted by Blinkenberg, "The Thunder Weapon," pp.
+20 and 21, Fig. 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_349_349" id="Footnote_349_349"></a><a href="#FNanchor_349_349"><span class="label">[349]</span></a> Without just reason, many writers have assumed that the
+pestle, which was identified with the handle used in the churning of the
+ocean (see de Gubernatis, "Zoological Mythology," Vol II, p. 361), was a
+phallic emblem. This meaning may have been given to the handle of the
+churn at a later period, when the churn itself was regarded as the
+Mother Pot or uterus; but we are not justified in assuming that this was
+its primary significance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_350_350" id="Footnote_350_350"></a><a href="#FNanchor_350_350"><span class="label">[350]</span></a> Gladys M.&nbsp;N. Davis, "The Asiatic Dionysos," p. 172.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_351_351" id="Footnote_351_351"></a><a href="#FNanchor_351_351"><span class="label">[351]</span></a> The tortoise was the vehicle of Aphrodite also and her
+representatives in Central America.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_352_352" id="Footnote_352_352"></a><a href="#FNanchor_352_352"><span class="label">[352]</span></a> Jackson, "Shells, etc.," pp. 57 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_353_353" id="Footnote_353_353"></a><a href="#FNanchor_353_353"><span class="label">[353]</span></a> <i>Vide supra</i>, p. 158.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_354_354" id="Footnote_354_354"></a><a href="#FNanchor_354_354"><span class="label">[354]</span></a> Rendel Harris, "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 80. In the
+building up of the idea of rebirth the ancients kept constantly before
+their minds a very concrete picture of the actual process of parturition
+and of the anatomy of the organs concerned in this physiological
+process. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of the
+anatomical facts represented in the symbolism of the "giver of life"
+presiding over the portal and the "two hills" which are divided at the
+birth of the deity: but the real significance of the primitive imagery
+cannot be wholly ignored if we want to understand the meaning of the
+phraseology used by the ancient writers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_355_355" id="Footnote_355_355"></a><a href="#FNanchor_355_355"><span class="label">[355]</span></a> Blinkenberg, "The Thunder-weapon," p. 72.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_356_356" id="Footnote_356_356"></a><a href="#FNanchor_356_356"><span class="label">[356]</span></a> Aylward M. Blackman, "Sacramental Ideas and Usages in
+Ancient Egypt," <i>Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Arch&aelig;ology</i>,
+March, 1918, p. 64.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_357_357" id="Footnote_357_357"></a><a href="#FNanchor_357_357"><span class="label">[357]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_358_358" id="Footnote_358_358"></a><a href="#FNanchor_358_358"><span class="label">[358]</span></a> "Arch&aelig;ol. Survey of Egypt," 5th Memoir, 1896, p. 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_359_359" id="Footnote_359_359"></a><a href="#FNanchor_359_359"><span class="label">[359]</span></a> See especially <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 35, the goddess of streams
+and marshes, who was also herself "the mother plant," like the mother of
+Horus.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_360_360" id="Footnote_360_360"></a><a href="#FNanchor_360_360"><span class="label">[360]</span></a> Whose cultural associations with the Great Mother in the
+Eastern Mediterranean littoral has been discussed by Sir Arthur Evans,
+"Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 49 <i>et seq.</i> Compare also <i>Apollo
+hyakinthos</i> as further evidence of the link with Artemis.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_361_361" id="Footnote_361_361"></a><a href="#FNanchor_361_361"><span class="label">[361]</span></a> P.&nbsp;J. Veth, "Internat. Arch. f. Ethnol.," Bd. 7, pp. 203
+and 204.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_362_362" id="Footnote_362_362"></a><a href="#FNanchor_362_362"><span class="label">[362]</span></a> "Hieroglyphics," p. 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_363_363" id="Footnote_363_363"></a><a href="#FNanchor_363_363"><span class="label">[363]</span></a> Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, pp. 436 and
+437.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_364_364" id="Footnote_364_364"></a><a href="#FNanchor_364_364"><span class="label">[364]</span></a> Alan Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings'
+<i>Encyclop&aelig;dia of Religion and Ethics</i>.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Mandrake.</h3>
+
+<p>We have now given reasons for believing that the personification of the
+mandrake was in some way brought about by the transference to the plant
+of the magical virtues that originally belonged to the cowry shell.</p>
+
+<p>The problem that still awaits solution is the nature of the process by
+which the transference was effected.</p>
+
+<p>When I began this investigation the story of the Destruction of Mankind
+(see Chapter II) seemed to offer an explanation of the confusion.
+Brugsch, Naville, Maspero, Erman, and in fact most Egyptologists, seemed
+to be agreed that the magical substance from which the Egyptian elixir
+of life was made was the mandrake. As there was no hint<a name="FNanchor_365_365" id="FNanchor_365_365"></a><a href="#Footnote_365_365" class="fnanchor">[365]</a> in the
+Egyptian story of the derivation of its reputation from the fancied
+likeness to the human form, its identification with Hathor seemed to be
+merely another instance of those confusions with which the pathway of
+mythology is so thickly strewn. In other words, the plant seemed to have
+been used merely to soothe the excited goddess: then the other
+properties of "the food of the gods," of which it was an ingredient,
+became transferred to the mandrake, so that it acquired the reputation
+of being a "giver of life" as well as a sedative. If this had been true
+it would have been a simple process to identify this "giver of life"
+with the goddess herself in her r&ocirc;le as the "giver of life," and her
+cowry-ancestor which was credited with the same reputation.</p>
+
+<p>But this hypothesis is no longer tenable, because the word <i>d'd'</i>
+(variously transliterated <i>doudou</i> or <i>didi</i>), which Brugsch<a name="FNanchor_366_366" id="FNanchor_366_366"></a><a href="#Footnote_366_366" class="fnanchor">[366]</a> and
+his followers interpreted as "mandragora," is now believed to have
+another meaning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In a closely reasoned memoir, Henri Gauthier<a name="FNanchor_367_367" id="FNanchor_367_367"></a><a href="#Footnote_367_367" class="fnanchor">[367]</a> has completely
+demolished Brugsch's interpretation of this word. He says there are
+numerous instances of the use of <i>d'd'</i> (which he transliterates
+<i>doudouiou</i>) in the medical papyri. In the Ebers papyrus "<i>doudou</i>
+d'El&eacute;phantine broy&eacute;" is prescribed as a remedy for external application
+in diseases of the heart, and as an astringent and emollient dressing
+for ulcers. He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the
+interior of Africa and the coasts of Arabia.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. F. Ll. Griffith informs me that Gauthier's criticism of the
+translation "mandrakes" is undoubtedly just: but that the substance
+referred to was most probably "red ochre" or "h&aelig;matite".<a name="FNanchor_368_368" id="FNanchor_368_368"></a><a href="#Footnote_368_368" class="fnanchor">[368]</a></p>
+
+<p>The relevant passage in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind (in Seti
+I's tomb) will then read as follows: "When they had brought the red
+ochre, the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded it, and the priestesses mixed the
+pulverized substance with the beer, so that the mixture resembled human
+blood".</p>
+
+<p>I would call special attention to Gauthier's comment that the
+blood-coloured beer "had <i>some magical and marvellous property which is
+unknown to us</i>".<a name="FNanchor_369_369" id="FNanchor_369_369"></a><a href="#Footnote_369_369" class="fnanchor">[369]</a></p>
+
+<p>In his dictionary Brugsch considered the determinative <img
+style="vertical-align: middle;"
+src="images/imagesymbol.png" alt="Circle with three vertical lines underneath"></img> to
+refer to the fruits of a tree which he called "apple tree," on the
+supposed analogy with the Coptic &#1003;&#953;&#1003;&#953;, <i>fructus autumnalis</i>,
+<i>pomus</i>, the Greek &#8000;&#960;&#8061;&#961;&#945;; and he proposed to identify the
+supposed fruit, then transliterated <i>doudou</i>, with the Hebrew <i>douda&iuml;m</i>,
+and translate it <i>poma amatoria</i>, mandragora, or in German, <i>Alraune</i>.
+This interpretation was adopted by most scholars until Gauthier raised
+objections to it.</p>
+
+<p>As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in
+Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley.<a name="FNanchor_370_370" id="FNanchor_370_370"></a><a href="#Footnote_370_370" class="fnanchor">[370]</a></p>
+
+<p>But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+<i>d&#363;d&#257;'im</i> by &#956;&#945;&#957;&#948;&#961;&#8049;&#947;&#959;&#961;&#945;&#962; and the Copts did not use the
+word &#1003;&#953;&#1003;&#953; in their translations, but either the Greek word or a
+term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff has
+shown (<i>Zeitsch. f. &AElig;gypt. Sprache</i>, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that the
+word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated "<i>didi</i>" instead
+of "<i>doudou</i>".</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in a letter Mr. Griffith tells me the identification of <i>didi</i>
+with the Coptic &#1003;&#953;&#1003;&#953;, "apple (?)" is philologically impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Although this red colouring matter is thus definitely proved not to be
+the fruit of a plant, there are reasons to suggest that when the story
+of the Destruction of Mankind spread abroad&mdash;and the whole argument of
+this book establishes the fact that it did spread abroad&mdash;the substance
+<i>didi</i> was actually confused in the Levant with the mandrake. We have
+already seen that in the Delta a prototype of Artemis was already
+identified with certain plants.</p>
+
+<p>In all probability <i>didi</i> was originally brought into the Egyptian
+legend merely as a surrogate of the life-blood, and the mixture of which
+it was an ingredient was simply a restorer of youth to the king. But the
+determinative (in the tomb of Seti I)&mdash;a little yellow disc with a red
+border, which misled Naville into believing the substance to be yellow
+berries&mdash;may also have created confusion in the minds of ancient
+Levantine visitors to Egypt, and led them to believe that reference was
+being made to their own yellow-berried drug, the mandrake. Such an
+incident might have had a two-fold effect. It would explain the
+introduction into the Egyptian story of the sedative effects of <i>didi</i>,
+which would easily be rationalized as a means of soothing the maniacal
+goddess; and in the Levant it would have added to the real properties of
+mandrake<a name="FNanchor_371_371" id="FNanchor_371_371"></a><a href="#Footnote_371_371" class="fnanchor">[371]</a> the magical virtues which originally belonged to <i>didi</i>
+(and blood, the cowry, and water).</p>
+
+<p>In my lecture on "Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II) I explained that
+the Egyptian story of the Destruction of Mankind is merely one version
+of a saga of almost world-wide currency. In many of the non-Egyptian
+versions<a name="FNanchor_372_372" id="FNanchor_372_372"></a><a href="#Footnote_372_372" class="fnanchor">[372]</a> the r&ocirc;le of <i>didi</i> in the Egyptian story is taken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> by some
+<i>vegetable</i> product of a <i>red</i> colour; and many of these versions reveal
+a definite confusion between the red fruit and the red clay, thus
+proving that the confusion of <i>didi</i> with the mandrake is no mere
+hypothetical device to evade a difficulty on my part, but did actually
+occur.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the development of the Egyptian story the red clay from
+Elephantine became the colouring matter of the Nile flood, and this in
+turn was rationalized as the blood or red clay into which the bodies of
+the slaughtered enemies of Re were transformed,<a name="FNanchor_373_373" id="FNanchor_373_373"></a><a href="#Footnote_373_373" class="fnanchor">[373]</a> and the material
+out of which the new race of mankind was created.<a name="FNanchor_374_374" id="FNanchor_374_374"></a><a href="#Footnote_374_374" class="fnanchor">[374]</a> In other words,
+the new race was formed of <i>didi</i>. There is a widespread legend that the
+mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies<a name="FNanchor_375_375" id="FNanchor_375_375"></a><a href="#Footnote_375_375" class="fnanchor">[375]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> often
+represented as innocent or chaste men wrongly killed, just as the red
+clay was the substance of mankind killed to appease Re's wrath, "the
+blood of the slaughtered saints".<a name="FNanchor_376_376" id="FNanchor_376_376"></a><a href="#Footnote_376_376" class="fnanchor">[376]</a></p>
+
+<p>But the original belief is found in a more definite form in the ancient
+story that "the mandrake was fashioned out of the same earth whereof God
+formed Adam".<a name="FNanchor_377_377" id="FNanchor_377_377"></a><a href="#Footnote_377_377" class="fnanchor">[377]</a> In other words the mandrake was part of the same
+substance as the earth <i>didi</i>.<a name="FNanchor_378_378" id="FNanchor_378_378"></a><a href="#Footnote_378_378" class="fnanchor">[378]</a></p>
+
+<p>Further corroboration of this confusion is afforded by a story from
+Little Russia, quoted by de Gubernatis.<a name="FNanchor_379_379" id="FNanchor_379_379"></a><a href="#Footnote_379_379" class="fnanchor">[379]</a> If bryony (a widely
+recognized surrogate of mandrake) be suspended from the girdle all the
+dead Cossacks (who, like the enemies of Re in the Egyptian story, had
+been killed and broken to pieces in the earth) will come to life again.
+<i>Thus we have positive evidence of the homology of the mandrake with red
+clay or h&aelig;matite.</i></p>
+
+<p>The transference to the mandrake of the properties of the cowry (and the
+goddesses who were personifications of the shell) and blood (and its
+surrogates) was facilitated by the manifold homologies of the Great
+Mother with plants. We have already seen that the goddess was identified
+with: (<i>a</i>) incense-trees and other trees, such as the sycamore, which
+played some definite part in the burial ceremonies, either by providing
+the divine incense, the materials for preserving the body, or for making
+coffins to ensure the protection of the dead, and so make it possible
+for them to continue their existence; and (<i>b</i>) the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> lotus, the lily,
+the iris, and other marsh plants,<a name="FNanchor_380_380" id="FNanchor_380_380"></a><a href="#Footnote_380_380" class="fnanchor">[380]</a> for reasons that I have already
+mentioned (p. 184).</p>
+
+<p>The Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh represents one of the innumerable
+versions of the great theme which has engaged the attention of writers
+in every age and country attempting to express the deepest longings of
+the human spirit. It is the search for the elixir of life. The object of
+Gilgamesh's search is a magic <i>plant</i> to prolong life and restore youth.
+The hero of the story went on a voyage by water in order to obtain what
+appears to have been a marsh plant called <i>dittu</i>.<a name="FNanchor_381_381" id="FNanchor_381_381"></a><a href="#Footnote_381_381" class="fnanchor">[381]</a> The question
+naturally arises whether this Babylonian story and the name of the plant
+played any part in Palestine in blending the Egyptian and Babylonian
+stories and confusing the Egyptian elixir of life, the red earth <i>didi</i>,
+with the Babylonian elixir, the plant <i>dittu</i>?</p>
+
+<p>In the Babylonian story a serpent-demon steals the magic plant, just as
+in India <i>soma</i>, the food of immortality, is stolen. In Egypt Isis
+steals Re's name,<a name="FNanchor_382_382" id="FNanchor_382_382"></a><a href="#Footnote_382_382" class="fnanchor">[382]</a> and in Babylonia the Zu bird steals the tablets
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> destiny, the <i>logos</i>. In Greek legend apples are stolen from the
+garden of Hesperides. Apples are surrogates of the mandrake and <i>didi</i>.</p>
+
+<p>We have now seen that the mandrake is definitely a surrogate (<i>a</i>) of
+the cowry and a series of its shell-homologues, and (<i>b</i>) of the red
+substance in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind.</p>
+
+<p>There still remain to be determined (<i>i</i>) the means by which the mandrake
+became identified with the goddess, (ii) the significance of the Hebrew
+word <i>d&#363;d&#257;-&#299;m</i>, and (iii) the origin of the Greek word
+<i>mandragora</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The answer to the first of these three queries should now be obvious
+enough. As the result of the confusion of the life-giving magical
+substance <i>didi</i> with the sedative drug, mandrake, the latter acquired
+the reputation of being a "giver of life" and became identified with
+<i>the</i> "giver of life," the Great Mother, the story of whose exploits was
+responsible for the confusion.</p>
+
+<p>The erroneous identification of <i>didi</i> with the mandrake was originally
+suggested by Brugsch from the likeness of the word (then transliterated
+<i>doudou</i>) with the Hebrew word <i>d&#363;d&#257;-&#299;m</i> in Genesis, usually
+translated "mandrakes". I have already quoted the opinion of Gauthier
+and Griffith as to the error of such identification. But the evidence
+now at our disposal seems to me to leave no doubt as to the reality of
+the confusion of the Egyptian red substance with the mandrake. This
+naturally suggests the possibility that the similarity of the sounds of
+the words <i>may</i> have played some part in creating the confusion: but it
+is impossible to admit this as a factor in the development of the story,
+because the Hebrew word probably arose out of the identification of the
+mandrake with the Great Mother and not by any confusion of names. In
+other words the similarity of the names of these homologous substances
+is a mere coincidence.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Rendel Harris claims (and Sir James Frazer seems to approve of the
+suggestion) that the Hebrew word <i>d&#363;d&#257;-&#299;m</i> was derived from
+<i>d&#333;d&#299;m</i>, "love"; and, on the strength of this derivation, he soars
+into a lofty flight of philological conjecture to transmute
+<i>d&#333;d&#299;m</i>, into <i>Aphro</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span><i>dite</i>, "love" into the "goddess of love". It
+would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to follow these
+excursions into unknown heights of cloudland.</p>
+
+<p>But my colleagues Professor Canney and Principal Bennett tell me that
+the derivation of <i>d&#363;d&#257;-&#299;m</i> from <i>d&#333;d&#299;m</i> is improbable;
+and the former authority suggests that <i>d&#363;d&#257;-&#299;m</i> may be merely
+the plural of <i>d&#363;d</i>, a "pot".<a name="FNanchor_383_383" id="FNanchor_383_383"></a><a href="#Footnote_383_383" class="fnanchor">[383]</a> Now I have already explained how a
+pot came to symbolize a woman or a goddess, not merely in Egypt, but
+also in Southern India, and in Mycen&aelig;an Greece, and, in fact, the
+Mediterranean generally.<a name="FNanchor_384_384" id="FNanchor_384_384"></a><a href="#Footnote_384_384" class="fnanchor">[384]</a> Hence the use of the term <i>d&#363;d</i> for the
+mandrake implies either (<i>a</i>) an identification of the plant with the
+goddess who is the giver of life, or (<i>b</i>) an analogy between the form
+of the mandrake-fruit and a pot, which in turn led to it being called a
+pot, and from that being identified with the goddess.<a name="FNanchor_385_385" id="FNanchor_385_385"></a><a href="#Footnote_385_385" class="fnanchor">[385]</a></p>
+
+<p>I should explain that when Professor Canney gave me this state<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>ment he
+was not aware of the fact that I had already arrived at the conclusion
+that the Great Mother was identified with a pot and also with the
+mandrake; but in ignorance of the meaning of the Hebrew words I had
+hesitated to equate the pot with the mandrake. As soon as I received his
+note, and especially when I read his reference to the second meaning,
+"basket of figs," in Jeremiah, I recalled Mr. Griffith's discussion of
+the Egyptian hieroglyphic ("a pot of water") for woman, wife, or
+goddess, and the claim made by Sir Gardner Wilkinson that this manner of
+representing the word for "wife" was apparently taken from a
+conventionalized picture of "a basket of sycamore figs".<a name="FNanchor_386_386" id="FNanchor_386_386"></a><a href="#Footnote_386_386" class="fnanchor">[386]</a> The
+interpretation has now clearly emerged that the mandrake was called
+<i>d&#363;d&#257;'&#299;m</i> by the Hebrews because it was identified with the
+Mother Pot. The symbolism involved in the use of the Hebrew word also
+suggests that the inspiration may have come from Egypt, where a woman
+was called "a pot of water" or "a basket of figs".</p>
+
+<p>When the mandrake acquired the definite significance as a symbol of the
+Great Mother and the power of life-giving, its fruit, "the love apple,"
+became the quintessence of vitality and fertility. The apple and the
+pomegranate became surrogates of the "love apple," and were graphically
+represented in forms hardly distinguishable from pots, occupying places
+which mark them out clearly as homologues of the Great Mother
+herself.<a name="FNanchor_387_387" id="FNanchor_387_387"></a><a href="#Footnote_387_387" class="fnanchor">[387]</a></p>
+
+<p>But once the mandrake was identified with the Great Mother in the Levant
+the attributes of the plant were naturally acquired from her local
+reputation there. This explains the pre-eminently conchological aspect
+of the magical properties of the mandrake and the bryony.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not attempt to refer in detail to the innumerable stories of red
+and brown apples, of rowan berries, and a variety of other red fruits
+that play a part in the folk-lore of so many peoples, such as <i>didi</i>
+played in the Egyptian myth. These fruits can be either elixirs of life
+and food of the gods, or weapons for overcoming the dragon as Hathor
+(Sekhet) was conquered by her sedative draught.<a name="FNanchor_388_388" id="FNanchor_388_388"></a><a href="#Footnote_388_388" class="fnanchor">[388]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In his account of the peony, Pliny ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXVIII, Chap. LX)
+says it has "a stem two cubits in length, accompanied by two or three
+others, and of a reddish colour, with a bark like that of the laurel ...
+the seed is enclosed in capsules, <i>some being red</i> and some black ... it
+has an <i>astringent taste</i>. The leaves of the female plant <i>smell like
+myrrh</i>". Bostock and Riley, from whose translation I have made this
+quotation, add that in reality the plant is destitute of smell. In the
+Ebers papyrus <i>didi</i> was mixed with incense in one of the
+prescriptions;<a name="FNanchor_389_389" id="FNanchor_389_389"></a><a href="#Footnote_389_389" class="fnanchor">[389]</a> and in the Berlin medical papyrus it was one of the
+ingredients of a fumigation used for treating heart disease. If my
+contention is justified, it may provide the explanation of how the
+confusion arose by which the peony came to have attributed to it a
+"smell like myrrh".</p>
+
+<p>Pliny proceeds: "Both plants [<i>i.e.</i> male and female] grow in the woods,
+and they should always be taken up at night, it is said; as it would be
+dangerous to do so in the day-time, the woodpecker of Mars being sure to
+attack the person so engaged.<a name="FNanchor_390_390" id="FNanchor_390_390"></a><a href="#Footnote_390_390" class="fnanchor">[390]</a> It is stated also that the person,
+while taking up the root, runs great risk of being attacked with
+[prolapsus ani].... Both plants are used<a name="FNanchor_391_391" id="FNanchor_391_391"></a><a href="#Footnote_391_391" class="fnanchor">[391]</a> for various purposes: the
+red seed, taken in red wine, about fifteen in number, arrest
+menstruation; while the black seed, taken in the same proportion, in
+either raisin or other wine, are curative of diseases of the uterus." I
+refer to these red-coloured beverages and their therapeutic use in
+women's complaints to suggest the analogy with that other red drink
+administered to the Great Mother, Hathor.</p>
+
+<p>In his essay, "Jacob and the Mandrakes,"<a name="FNanchor_392_392" id="FNanchor_392_392"></a><a href="#Footnote_392_392" class="fnanchor">[392]</a> Sir James Frazer has
+called attention to the homologies between the attributes of the peony
+and the mandrake and to the reasons for regarding the former as Aelian's
+<i>aglaophotis</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Pliny states ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXIV, Chap. CII) that the
+<i>aglao</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span><i>photis</i> "is found growing among the marble quarries of Arabia, on
+the side of Persia," just as the Egyptian <i>didi</i> was obtained near the
+granite quarries at Aswan. "By means of this plant [aglaophotis],
+according to Democritus, the Magi can summon the deities into their
+presence when they please, "just as the users of the conch-shell trumpet
+believed they could do with this instrument. I have already (p. 196)
+emphasized the fact that all of these plants, mandrake, bryony, peony,
+and the rest, were really surrogates of the cowry, the pearl, and the
+conch-shell. The first is the ultimate source of their influence on
+womankind, the second the origin of their attribute of <i>aglaophotis</i>,
+and the third of their supposed power of summoning the deity. The
+attributes of some of the plants which Pliny discusses along with the
+peony are suggestive. Pieces of the root of the <i>achaemenis</i> (? perhaps
+<i>Euphorbia antiquorum</i> or else a night-shade) taken in wine, torment the
+guilty to such an extent in their dreams as to extort from them a
+confession of their crimes. He gives it the name also of "hippophobas,"
+it being an especial object of terror to mares. The complementary story
+is told of the mandrake in medi&aelig;val Europe. The decomposing tissues of
+the body of an innocent victim on the gallows when they fall upon the
+earth can become reincarnated in a mandrake&mdash;the <i>main de gloire</i> of old
+French writers.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is the plant <i>adamantis</i>, grown in Armenia and Cappadocia,
+which when <i>presented to a lion makes the beast fall upon its back</i>, and
+drop its jaws. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the
+lion-manifestation of Hathor who was calmed by the substance <i>didi</i>? A
+more direct link with the story of the destruction of mankind is
+suggested by the account of the <i>ophiusa</i>, "which is found in
+Elephantine, an island of Ethiopia". This plant is of a livid colour,
+and hideous to the sight. Taken by a person in drink, it inspires such a
+horror of serpents, which his imagination continually represents as
+menacing him that he commits suicide at last: hence it is that persons
+guilty of sacrilege are compelled to drink an infusion of it (Pliny,
+"Nat. Hist.," XXIV, 102). I am inclined to regard this as a variant of
+the myth of the Destruction of Mankind in which the "snake-plant" from
+Elephantine takes the place of the ur&aelig;i of the Winged Disk Saga, and
+punishes the act of sacrilege by driving the delinquent into a state of
+delirium tremens.</p>
+
+<p>The next problem to be considered is the derivation of the word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+<i>mandragora</i>. Dr. Mingana tells me it is a great puzzle to discover any
+adequate meaning. The attempt to explain it through the Sanskrit <i>mand</i>,
+"joy," "intoxication," or <i>mantasana</i>, "sleep," "life," or <i>mandra</i>,
+"pleasure," or <i>mantara</i>, "paradise tree," and <i>agru</i>, "unmarried,
+violently passionate," is hazardous and possibly far-fetched.</p>
+
+<p>The Persian is <i>mardumgiah</i>, "man-like plant".</p>
+
+<p>The Syro-Arabic word for it is <i>Yabrouh</i>, Aramaic <i>Yahb-kouh</i>, "giver of
+life". This is possibly the source of the Chinese <i>Yah-puh-lu</i> (Syriac
+<i>ya-bru-ha</i>) and <i>Yah-puh-lu-Yak</i>. The termination <i>Yak</i> is merely the
+Turanian termination meaning "diminutive".</p>
+
+<p>The interest of the Levantine terms for the mandrake lies in the fact
+that they have the same significance as the word for pearl, <i>i.e.</i>
+"giver of life". This adds another argument (to those which I have
+already given) for regarding the mandrake as a surrogate of the pearl.
+But they also reveal the essential fact that led to the identification
+of the plant with the Mother-Goddess, which I have already discussed.</p>
+
+<p>In Arabic the mandrake is called <i>abou ruhr</i>, "father of life," <i>i.e.</i>
+"giver of life".<a name="FNanchor_393_393" id="FNanchor_393_393"></a><a href="#Footnote_393_393" class="fnanchor">[393]</a></p>
+
+<p>In Arabic <i>margan</i> means "coral" as well as "pearl". In the
+Mediterranean area coral is explained as a new and marvellous plant
+sprung from the petrified blood-stained branches on which Perseus hung
+the bleeding head of Medusa. Eustathius ("Comment. ad Dionys. Perieget."
+1097) derives &#954;&#959;&#961;&#8049;&#955;&#953;&#959;&#957; from &#954;&#8057;&#961;&#951;, personifying the
+monstrous virgin: but Ch&aelig;roboscos claims that it comes from &#954;&#8057;&#961;&#951;
+and &#7940;&#955;&#953;&#959;&#957;, because it is a maritime product used to make
+ornaments for maidens. In any case coral is a "giver of life" and as
+such identified with a maiden,<a name="FNanchor_394_394" id="FNanchor_394_394"></a><a href="#Footnote_394_394" class="fnanchor">[394]</a> as the most potential embodiment of
+life-giving force. But this specific application of the word for "giver
+of life" was due to the fact that in all the Semitic languages, as well
+as in literary references in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, this phrase was
+understood as a reference to the female organs of reproduction. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+same <i>double entendre</i> is implied in the use of the Greek word for "pig"
+and "cowry," these two surrogates of the Great Mother, each of which can
+be taken to mean the "giver of life" or the "pudendum muliebre".</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most plausible suggestion that has been made as to the
+derivation of the word "mandragora" is Del&acirc;tre's claim<a name="FNanchor_395_395" id="FNanchor_395_395"></a><a href="#Footnote_395_395" class="fnanchor">[395]</a> that it is
+compounded of the words <i>mandros</i>, "sleep," and <i>agora</i>, "object or
+substance," and that mandragora means "the sleep-producing substance".</p>
+
+<p>This derivation is in harmony with my suggestion as to the means by
+which the plant acquired its magical properties. The sedative substance
+that, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs (of the Story of the Destruction of
+Mankind), was represented by yellow spheres with a red covering was
+confused in Western Asia with the yellow-berried plant which was known
+to have sedative properties. Hence the plant was confused with the
+mineral and so acquired all the magical properties of the Great Mother's
+elixir. But the Indian name is descriptive of the actual properties of
+the plant and is possibly the origin of the Greek word.</p>
+
+<p>Another suggestion that has been made deserves some notice. It has been
+claimed that the first syllable of the name is derived from the Sanskrit
+<i>mandara</i>, one of the trees in the Indian paradise, and the instrument
+with which the churning of the ocean was accomplished.<a name="FNanchor_396_396" id="FNanchor_396_396"></a><a href="#Footnote_396_396" class="fnanchor">[396]</a> The mandrake
+has been claimed to be the tree of the Hebrew paradise; and a connexion
+has thus been instituted between it and the <i>mandara</i>. This hypothesis,
+however, does not offer any explanation of how either the mandrake or
+the <i>mandara</i> acquired its magical attributes. The Indian tree of life
+was supposed to "sweat" <i>amrita</i> just as the incense trees of Arabia
+produce the divine life-giving incense.</p>
+
+<p>But there are reasons<a name="FNanchor_397_397" id="FNanchor_397_397"></a><a href="#Footnote_397_397" class="fnanchor">[397]</a> for the belief that the Indian story of the
+churning of the sea of milk is a much modified version of the old
+Egyptian story of the pounding of the materials for the elixir of life.
+The <i>mandara</i> churn-stick, which is often supposed to represent the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+phallus,<a name="FNanchor_398_398" id="FNanchor_398_398"></a><a href="#Footnote_398_398" class="fnanchor">[398]</a> was originally the tree of life, the tree or pillar which
+was animated by the Great Mother herself.<a name="FNanchor_399_399" id="FNanchor_399_399"></a><a href="#Footnote_399_399" class="fnanchor">[399]</a> So that the <i>mandara</i> is
+homologous with the <i>mandragora</i>. But so far as I am aware, there is no
+adequate reason for deriving the latter word from the former.</p>
+
+<p>The derivation from the Sanskrit words <i>mandros</i> and <i>agora</i> seems to
+fit naturally into the scheme of explanation which I have been
+formulating.</p>
+
+<p>In the Egyptian story the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded the <i>didi</i> in a
+mortar to make "the giver of life," which by a simple confusion might be
+identified with the goddess herself in her capacity as "the giver of
+life". This seems to have occurred in the Indian legend. Lakshmi, or
+Sri, was born at the churning of the ocean. Like Aphrodite, who was born
+from the sea-foam churned from the ocean, Lakshmi was the goddess of
+beauty, love, and prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving the problems of mandrake and the homologous plants and
+substances, it is important that I should emphasize the r&ocirc;le of blood
+and blood-substitutes, red-stained beer, red wine, red earth, and red
+berries in the various legends. These life-giving and death-dealing
+substances were all associated with the colour red, and the destructive
+demons Sekhet and Set were given red forms, which in turn were
+transmitted to the dragon, and to that specialized form of the dragon
+which has become the conventional way of representing Satan.</p>
+
+<p>[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became attached to
+the plants <i>ginseng</i> and <i>shang-luh</i>&mdash;see de Groot, Vol. II, p. 316 <i>et
+seq.</i>; also Kumagusu Minakata, <i>Nature</i>, Vol. LI, April 25, 1895, p.
+608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> fact that the Chinese
+make use of the Syriac word <i>yabruha</i> (<i>vide supra</i>) suggests the source
+of these Chinese legends.]</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_365_365" id="Footnote_365_365"></a><a href="#FNanchor_365_365"><span class="label">[365]</span></a> As Maspero has specifically mentioned ("Dawn of
+Civilization," p. 166).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_366_366" id="Footnote_366_366"></a><a href="#FNanchor_366_366"><span class="label">[366]</span></a> "Die Alraune als alt&auml;gyptische Zauberpflanze," <i>Zeitsch.
+f. &AElig;gypt. Sprache</i>, Bd. XXIX, 1891, pp. 31-3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_367_367" id="Footnote_367_367"></a><a href="#FNanchor_367_367"><span class="label">[367]</span></a> "Le nom hi&eacute;roglyphique de l'argile rouge d'El&eacute;phantine,"
+<i>Revue &Eacute;gyptologique</i>, XI<sup>e</sup> Vol., Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_368_368" id="Footnote_368_368"></a><a href="#FNanchor_368_368"><span class="label">[368]</span></a> It is quite possible that the use of the name "h&aelig;matite"
+for this ancient substitute for blood may itself be the result of the
+survival of the old tradition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_369_369" id="Footnote_369_369"></a><a href="#FNanchor_369_369"><span class="label">[369]</span></a> It is very important to keep in mind the two distinct
+properties of <i>didi</i>: (<i>a</i>) its magical life-giving powers, and (<i>b</i>)
+its sedative influence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_370_370" id="Footnote_370_370"></a><a href="#FNanchor_370_370"><span class="label">[370]</span></a> In Chapter II, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a
+psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical
+question.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_371_371" id="Footnote_371_371"></a><a href="#FNanchor_371_371"><span class="label">[371]</span></a> For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the <i>British
+Medical Journal</i>, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_372_372" id="Footnote_372_372"></a><a href="#FNanchor_372_372"><span class="label">[372]</span></a> Even in Egypt itself <i>didi</i> may be replaced by fruit in
+the more specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in
+the Saga of the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: "Thou
+didst put grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu". Wiedemann
+("Religion of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 70) interprets this as meaning:
+"thou didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it". But by
+analogy with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation
+of <i>didi</i>, it should read: "thou didst make the water blood-red with
+grape-juice"; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two
+meanings.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_373_373" id="Footnote_373_373"></a><a href="#FNanchor_373_373"><span class="label">[373]</span></a> In the Babylonian story of the Deluge "Ishtar cried aloud
+like a woman in travail, the Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice
+(saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I
+assented to an evil thing in the council of the gods, and agreed to a
+storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth" (King,
+"Babylonian Religion," p. 134).
+</p><p>
+The Nile god, Knum, Lord of Elephantine, was reputed to have formed the
+world of alluvial soil. The coming of the waters from Elephantine
+brought life to the earth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_374_374" id="Footnote_374_374"></a><a href="#FNanchor_374_374"><span class="label">[374]</span></a> In the Babylonian story, B&#275;l "bade one of the gods cut
+off his head and mix the earth with the blood that flowed from him, and
+from the mixture he directed him to fashion men and animals" (King,
+"Babylonian Religion," p. 56). B&#275;l (Marduk) represents the Egyptian
+Horus who assumes his mother's r&ocirc;le as the Creator. The red earth as a
+surrogate of blood in the Egyptian story is here replaced by earth <i>and</i>
+blood.
+</p><p>
+But Marduk created not only men and animals but heaven and earth also.
+To do this he split asunder the carcase of the dragon which he had
+slain, the Great Mother Tiamat, the evil <i>avatar</i> of the Mother-Goddess
+whose mantle had fallen upon his own shoulders. In other words, he
+created the world out of the substance of the "giver of life" who was
+identified with the red earth, which was the elixir of life in the
+Egyptian story. This is only one more instance of the way in which the
+same fundamental idea was twisted and distorted in every conceivable
+manner in the process of rationalization. In one version of the Osirian
+myth Horus cut off the head of his mother Isis and the moon-god Thoth
+replaced it with a cow's head, just as in the Indian myth Ganesa's head
+was replaced by an elephant's.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_375_375" id="Footnote_375_375"></a><a href="#FNanchor_375_375"><span class="label">[375]</span></a> See Frazer, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 9.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_376_376" id="Footnote_376_376"></a><a href="#FNanchor_376_376"><span class="label">[376]</span></a> Compare with this the story of Picus the giant who fled
+to Kirke's isle and there was slain by Helios, the plant &#956;&#8182;&#955;&#965;
+springing from his blood (A.&nbsp;B. Cook, "Zeus," p. 241, footnote 15). For
+a discussion of <i>moly</i> see Andrew Lang's "Custom and Myth".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_377_377" id="Footnote_377_377"></a><a href="#FNanchor_377_377"><span class="label">[377]</span></a> Frazer, p. 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_378_378" id="Footnote_378_378"></a><a href="#FNanchor_378_378"><span class="label">[378]</span></a> In Socotra a tree (drac&aelig;na) has been identified with the
+dragon, and its exudation, "dragon's blood," was called cinnabar, and
+confused with the mineral (red sulphide of mercury), or simply with red
+ochre. In the Socotran dragon-myth the elephant takes the hero's r&ocirc;le,
+as in the American stories of Chac and Tlaloc (see Chapter II). The word
+<i>kinnabari</i> was applied to the thick matter that issues from the dragon
+when crushed beneath the weight of the dying elephant during these
+combats (Pliny, XXXIII, 28 and VIII, 12). The dragon had a passion for
+elephant's blood. Any thick red earth attributed to such combats was
+called <i>kinnabari</i> (Schoff, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 137). This is another
+illustration of the ancient belief in the identification of blood and
+red ochre.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_379_379" id="Footnote_379_379"></a><a href="#FNanchor_379_379"><span class="label">[379]</span></a> "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 101.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_380_380" id="Footnote_380_380"></a><a href="#FNanchor_380_380"><span class="label">[380]</span></a> In an interesting article on "The Water Lilies of Ancient
+Egypt" (<i>Ancient Egypt</i>, 1917, Part I, p. 1) Mr. W.&nbsp;D. Spanton has
+collected a series of illustrations of the symbolic use of these plants.
+In view of the fact that the papyrus- and lotus-sceptres and the
+lotus-designs played so prominent a part in the evolution of the Greek
+thunder-weapon, it is peculiarly interesting to find (in the remote
+times of the Pyramid Age) lotus designs built up into the form of the
+double-axe (Spanton's Figs. 28 and 29) and the classical <i>keraunos</i> (his
+Fig. 19).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_381_381" id="Footnote_381_381"></a><a href="#FNanchor_381_381"><span class="label">[381]</span></a> The Babylonian magic plant to prolong life and renew
+youth, like the red mineral <i>didi</i> of the Egyptian story. It was also
+"the plant of birth" and "the plant of life".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_382_382" id="Footnote_382_382"></a><a href="#FNanchor_382_382"><span class="label">[382]</span></a> M&uuml;ller, Quibell, Maspero, and Sethe regard the "round
+cartouche," which the divine falcon often carries in place of the
+<i>ankh</i>-symbol of life, as a representation of the royal name (R. Weill,
+"Les Origines de l'Egypte pharaonique," <i>Annales du Mus&eacute;e Guimet</i>, 1908,
+p. 111). The analogous Babylonian sign known as "the rod and ring" is
+described by Ward (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 413) as "the emblem of the sun-god's
+supremacy," a "symbol of majesty and power, like the tablets of
+destiny".
+</p><p>
+As it was believed in Egypt and Babylonia that the possession of a name
+"was equivalent to being in existence," we can regard the object carried
+by the hawk or vulture as a token of the giving of life and the
+controlling of destiny. It can probably be equated with the "tablets of
+destiny" so often mentioned in the Babylonian stories, which the bird
+god <i>Zu</i> stole from B&#275;l and was compelled by the sun-god to restore
+again. Marduk was given the power to destroy or to create, <i>to speak the
+word of command</i> and to control fate, to wield the invincible weapon and
+to be able to render objects invisible. This form of the weapon, "the
+word" or <i>logos</i>, like all the other varieties of the thunder-weapon,
+could "become flesh," in other words, be an animate form of the god.
+</p><p>
+In Egyptian art it is usually the hawk of Horus (the homologue of
+Marduk) which carries the "round cartouche," which is the <i>logos</i>, the
+tablets of destiny.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_383_383" id="Footnote_383_383"></a><a href="#FNanchor_383_383"><span class="label">[383]</span></a> I quote Professor Canney's notes on the word
+<i>d&#363;d&#257;'im</i> (Genesis xxx. 14) verbatim: "The <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia Biblica</i>
+says (s.v. 'Mandrakes'): 'The Hebrew name, <i>d&#363;d&#257;'im</i>, was no doubt
+popularly associated with <i>d&#333;d&#299;m</i>, &#1491;&#1493;&#1465;&#1491;&#1460;&#1497;&#1501; , "love"; but
+its real etymology (like that of &#956;&#945;&#957;&#948;&#961;&#8049;&#947;&#959;&#961;&#945;&#962;) is obscure".
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+"The same word is translated 'mandrakes' in Song of Songs vii. 13.
+</p><p>
+"<i>D&#363;d&#257;'&#299;m</i> occurs also in Jeremiah xxiv, 1, where it is usually
+translated 'baskets' ('baskets of figs'). Here it is the plural of a
+word <i>d&#363;d</i>, which means sometimes a 'pot' or 'kettle,' sometimes a
+'basket'. The etymology is again doubtful.
+</p><p>
+"I should imagine that the words in Jeremiah and Genesis have somehow or
+other the same etymology, and that <i>d&#363;d&#257;-&#299;m</i> in Genesis has no
+real connexion with <i>d&#333;d&#299;m</i> 'love'.
+</p><p>
+"The meaning 'pot' (<i>d&#363;d</i>, plur. <i>d&#363;d&#257;-&#299;m</i>) is probably more
+original than 'basket'. Does <i>d&#363;d&#257;-&#299;m</i> in Genesis and Song of
+Songs denote some kind of pot or caldron-shaped flower or fruit?"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_384_384" id="Footnote_384_384"></a><a href="#FNanchor_384_384"><span class="label">[384]</span></a> The Mother Pot is really a fundamental conception of all
+religious beliefs and is almost world-wide in its distribution.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_385_385" id="Footnote_385_385"></a><a href="#FNanchor_385_385"><span class="label">[385]</span></a> The fruit of the lotus (which is a form of Hathor)
+assumes a form (Spanton, <i>op. cit.</i>, Fig. 51) that is identical with a
+common Mediterranean symbol of the Great Mother, called "pomegranate" by
+Sir Arthur Evans (see my text-fig. 6, p. 179, <i>m</i>), which is a surrogate
+of the apple and mandrake. The likeness to the Egyptian hieroglyph for a
+jar of water (text-fig. 6, <i>l</i>) and the goddess <i>Nu</i> of the fruit of the
+poppy (which was closely associated with the mandrake by reason of its
+soporific properties) may have assisted in the transference of their
+attributes. The design of the water-plant (text-fig. 7, <i>d</i>) associated
+with the Nile god may have helped such a confusion and exchange.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_386_386" id="Footnote_386_386"></a><a href="#FNanchor_386_386"><span class="label">[386]</span></a> "A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians," revised and
+abridged, 1890, Vol. I, p. 323.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_387_387" id="Footnote_387_387"></a><a href="#FNanchor_387_387"><span class="label">[387]</span></a> See, for example, Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and
+Pillar Worship," Fig. 27, p. 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_388_388" id="Footnote_388_388"></a><a href="#FNanchor_388_388"><span class="label">[388]</span></a> In a Japanese dragon-story the dragon drinks "sake" from
+pots set out on the shore (as Hathor drank the <i>didi</i> mixture from pots
+associated with the river); and the intoxicated monster was then slain.
+From its tail the hero extracted a sword (as in the case of the Western
+dragons), which is now said to be the Mikado's state sword.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_389_389" id="Footnote_389_389"></a><a href="#FNanchor_389_389"><span class="label">[389]</span></a> See Gauthier, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 2 and 3.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_390_390" id="Footnote_390_390"></a><a href="#FNanchor_390_390"><span class="label">[390]</span></a> Compare the dog-incident in the mandrake story.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_391_391" id="Footnote_391_391"></a><a href="#FNanchor_391_391"><span class="label">[391]</span></a> Bostock and Riley add the comment that "the peony has no
+medicinal virtues whatever".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_392_392" id="Footnote_392_392"></a><a href="#FNanchor_392_392"><span class="label">[392]</span></a> <i>Proceedings of the British Academy</i>, Vol. VIII, 1917, p.
+16 (in the reprint).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_393_393" id="Footnote_393_393"></a><a href="#FNanchor_393_393"><span class="label">[393]</span></a> I am indebted to Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this
+information. But the philological question is discussed in a learned
+memoir by the late Professor P.&nbsp;J. Veth, "De Leer der Signatuur,"
+<i>Internationales Archiv f&uuml;r Ethnographie</i>, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75
+and 105, and especially the appendix, p. 199 <i>et seq.</i>, "De Mandragora,
+Naschrift op het tweede Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling over de Leer der
+Signatur".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_394_394" id="Footnote_394_394"></a><a href="#FNanchor_394_394"><span class="label">[394]</span></a> Like the <i>Purpura</i> and the <i>Pterocera</i>, the bryony and
+other shells and plants.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_395_395" id="Footnote_395_395"></a><a href="#FNanchor_395_395"><span class="label">[395]</span></a> Larousse, Article "Mandragore".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_396_396" id="Footnote_396_396"></a><a href="#FNanchor_396_396"><span class="label">[396]</span></a> I have already referred to another version of the
+churning of the ocean in which Mount Meru was used as a churn-stick and
+identified with the Great Mother, of whom the <i>mandara</i> was also an
+avatar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_397_397" id="Footnote_397_397"></a><a href="#FNanchor_397_397"><span class="label">[397]</span></a> Which I shall discuss in my forthcoming book on "The
+Story of the Flood".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_398_398" id="Footnote_398_398"></a><a href="#FNanchor_398_398"><span class="label">[398]</span></a> The phallic interpretation is certainly a secondary
+rationalization of an incident which had no such implication
+originally.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_399_399" id="Footnote_399_399"></a><a href="#FNanchor_399_399"><span class="label">[399]</span></a> The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis ii.
+17) produced fruit the eating of which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve,
+so that they realized their nakedness: they became conscious of sex and
+made girdles of fig-leaves (<i>vide supra</i>, p. 155). In other words, the
+tree of life had the power of love-provoking like the mandrake. In
+Henderson's "Celtic Dragon Myth" (p. xl) we read: "The berries for which
+she [Medb] craved were from the Tree of Life, the food of the gods, the
+eating of which by mortals brings death," and further: "The berries of
+the rowan tree are the berries of the gods" (p. xliii). I have already
+suggested the homology between these red berries, the mandrake, and the
+red ochre of Hathor's elixir. Thus we have another suggestion of the
+identity of the tree of paradise and the mandrake.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Measurement of Time.</h3>
+
+<p>It was the similarity of the periodic phases of the moon and of
+womankind that originally suggested the identification of the Great
+Mother with the moon, and originated the belief that the moon was the
+regulator of human beings.<a name="FNanchor_400_400" id="FNanchor_400_400"></a><a href="#Footnote_400_400" class="fnanchor">[400]</a> This was the starting-point of the
+system of astrology and the belief in Fates. The goddess of birth and
+death controlled and measured the lives of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>But incidentally the moon determined the earliest subdivision of time
+into months; and the moon-goddess lent the sanctity of her divine
+attributes to the number twenty-eight.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was obviously the determiner of day and night, and its rising
+and setting directed men's attention to the east and the west as
+cardinal points intimately associated with the daily birth and death of
+the sun. We have no certain clue as to the factors which first brought
+the north and the south into prominence. But it seems probable that the
+direction of the river Nile,<a name="FNanchor_401_401" id="FNanchor_401_401"></a><a href="#Footnote_401_401" class="fnanchor">[401]</a> which was the guide to the orientation
+of the corpse in its grave, may have been responsible for giving special
+sanctity to these other cardinal points. The association of the
+direction of the deceased's head with the position of the original
+homeland and the eventual home of the dead would have made the south a
+"divine" region in Predynastic times. For similar reasons the north may
+have acquired special significance in the Early Dynastic period.<a name="FNanchor_402_402" id="FNanchor_402_402"></a><a href="#Footnote_402_402" class="fnanchor">[402]</a></p>
+
+<p>When the north and the south were added to the other two cardinal points
+the intimate association of the east and the west with the measurement
+of time would be extended to include all the four cardinal points.<a name="FNanchor_403_403" id="FNanchor_403_403"></a><a href="#Footnote_403_403" class="fnanchor">[403]</a>
+Four became a sacred number associated with time-measurement, and
+especially with the sun.<a name="FNanchor_404_404" id="FNanchor_404_404"></a><a href="#Footnote_404_404" class="fnanchor">[404]</a></p>
+
+<p>Many other factors played a part in the establishment of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> sanctity
+of the number four. Professor Lethaby has suggested<a name="FNanchor_405_405" id="FNanchor_405_405"></a><a href="#Footnote_405_405" class="fnanchor">[405]</a> that the
+four-sided building was determined by certain practical factors, such as
+the desirability of fashioning a room to accommodate a woven mat, which
+was necessarily of a square or oblong form. But the study of the
+evolution of the early Egyptian grave and tomb-superstructures suggests
+that the early use of slabs of stone, wooden boards, and mud-bricks
+helped in the process of determining the four-sided form of house and
+room.</p>
+
+<p>When, out of these rude beginnings, the vast four-sided pyramid was
+developed, the direction of its sides was brought into relationship with
+the four cardinal points; and there was a corresponding development and
+enrichment of the symbolism of the number four. The form of the divine
+house of the dead king, who was the god, was thus assimilated to the
+form of the universe, which was conceived as an oblong area at the four
+corners of which pillars supported the sky, as the four legs supported
+the Celestial Cow.</p>
+
+<p>Having invested the numbers four and twenty-eight with special sanctity
+and brought them into association with the measurement of time, it was a
+not unnatural proceeding to subdivide the month into four parts and so
+bring the number seven into the sacred scheme. Once this was done the
+moon's phases were used to justify and rationalize this procedure, and
+the length of the week was incidentally brought into association with
+the moon-goddess, who had seven <i>avatars</i>, perhaps originally one for
+each day of the week. At a later period the number seven was arbitrarily
+brought into relationship with the Pleiades.</p>
+
+<p>The seven Hathors were not only mothers but fates also. Aphrodite was
+chief of the fates.</p>
+
+<p>The number seven is associated with the pots used by Hathor's
+priestesses at the celebration inaugurating the new year; and it plays a
+prominent part in the Story of the Flood. In Babylonia the sanctity of
+the number received special recognition. When the goddess became the
+destroyer of mankind, the device seems to have been adopted of
+intensifying her powers of destruction by representing her at times as
+seven demons.<a name="FNanchor_406_406" id="FNanchor_406_406"></a><a href="#Footnote_406_406" class="fnanchor">[406]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the Great Mother was associated not only with the week and month but
+also with the year. The evidence at our disposal seems to suggest that
+the earliest year-count was determined by the annual inundation of the
+river. The annual recurrence of the alternation of winter and summer
+would naturally suggest in a vague way such a subdivision of time as the
+year; but the exact measurement of that period and the fixing of an
+arbitrary commencement, a New Year's day, were due to other reasons. In
+the Story of the Destruction of Mankind it is recorded that the incident
+of the soothing of Hathor by means of the blood-coloured beer (which, as
+I have explained elsewhere,<a name="FNanchor_407_407" id="FNanchor_407_407"></a><a href="#Footnote_407_407" class="fnanchor">[407]</a> is a reference to the annual Nile
+flood) was celebrated annually on New Year's day.</p>
+
+<p>Hathor was regarded in tradition as the cause of the inundation. She
+slaughtered mankind and so caused the original "flood": in the next
+phase she was associated with the 7000 jars of red beer; and in the
+ultimate version with the red-coloured river flood, which in another
+story was reputed to be "the tears of Isis".</p>
+
+<p>Hathor's day was in fact the date of the commencement of the inundation
+and of the year; and the former event marked the beginning of the year
+and enabled men for the first time to measure its duration. Thus
+Hathor<a name="FNanchor_408_408" id="FNanchor_408_408"></a><a href="#Footnote_408_408" class="fnanchor">[408]</a> was the measurer of the year, the month, and the week; while
+her son Horus (Chronus) was the day-measurer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In Tylor's "Early History of Mankind" (pp. 352 <i>et seq.</i>) there is a
+concise summary of some of the widespread stories of the Fountain of
+Youth which restores youthfulness to the aged who drank of it or bathed
+in it. He cites instances from India, Ethiopia, Europe, Indonesia,
+Polynesia, and America. "The Moslem geographer, Ibn-el-Wardi, places the
+Fountain of Life in the dark south-western regions of the earth" (p.
+353).</p>
+
+<p>The star Sothis rose heliacally on the first day of the Egyptian New
+Year.<a name="FNanchor_409_409" id="FNanchor_409_409"></a><a href="#Footnote_409_409" class="fnanchor">[409]</a> Hence it became "the second sun in heaven," and was
+identified with the goddess of the New Year's Day. The identification of
+Hathor with this "second sun"<a name="FNanchor_410_410" id="FNanchor_410_410"></a><a href="#Footnote_410_410" class="fnanchor">[410]</a> may explain why the goddess is said
+to have entered Re's boat. She took her place as a crown upon his
+forehead, which afterwards was assumed by her surrogate, the
+fire-spitting ur&aelig;us-serpent. When Horus took his mother's place in the
+myth, he also entered the sun-god's boat, and became the prototype of
+Noah seeking refuge from the Flood in the ship the Almighty instructed
+him to make.</p>
+
+<p>In memory of the beer-drinking episode in the Destruction of Mankind,
+New Year's Day was celebrated by Hathor's priestesses in wild orgies of
+beer drinking.</p>
+
+<p>This event was necessarily the earliest celebration of an anniversary,
+and the prototype of all the incidents associated with some special day
+in the year which have been so many milestones in the historical
+progress of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>The first measurement of the year also naturally forms the
+starting-point in the framing of a calendar.</p>
+
+<p>Similar celebrations took place to inaugurate the commencement of the
+year in all countries which came, either directly or indirectly, under
+Egyptian influence.</p>
+
+<p>The month &#7944;&#966;&#961;&#959;&#948;&#8055;&#963;&#953;&#945; (so-called from the festival of the
+goddess) began the calendar of Bithynia, Cyprus, and Iasos, just as
+Hathor's feast was a New Year's celebration in Egypt.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the celebration of these anniversaries the priestesses of Aphrodite
+worked themselves up in a wild state of frenzy; and the term &#8017;&#963;&#964;&#8053;&#961;&#953;&#945;<a name="FNanchor_411_411" id="FNanchor_411_411"></a><a href="#Footnote_411_411" class="fnanchor">[411]</a>
+became identified with the state of emotional derangement
+associated with such orgies. The common belief that the term "hysteria"
+is derived directly from the Greek word for uterus is certainly
+erroneous. The word &#8017;&#963;&#964;&#8053;&#961;&#953;&#945; was used in the same sense as
+&#7944;&#966;&#961;&#959;&#948;&#8055;&#963;&#953;&#945;, that is as a synonym for the festivals of the
+goddess. The "hysteria" was the name for the orgy in celebration of the
+goddess on New Year's day: then it was applied to the condition produced
+by these excesses; and ultimately it was adopted in medicine to apply to
+similar emotional disturbances. Thus both the terms "hysteria" and
+"lunacy"<a name="FNanchor_412_412" id="FNanchor_412_412"></a><a href="#Footnote_412_412" class="fnanchor">[412]</a> are intimately associated with the earliest phases in the
+moon-goddess's history; and their survival in modern medicine is a
+striking tribute to the strong hold of effete superstition in this
+branch of the diagnosis and treatment of disease.<a name="FNanchor_413_413" id="FNanchor_413_413"></a><a href="#Footnote_413_413" class="fnanchor">[413]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have already referred to the association of Artemis with the portal of
+birth and rebirth. As the guardian of the door her Roman representative
+Diana and her masculine <i>avatar</i> Dianus or Janus gave the name to the
+commencement of the year. The Great Mother not only initiated the
+measurement of the year, but she (or her representative) lent her name
+to the opening of the year in various countries.</p>
+
+<p>But the story of the Destruction of Mankind has preserved the record not
+only of the circumstances which were responsible for originating the
+measurement of the year and the making of a calendar, but also of the
+materials out of which were formed the mythical epochs pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>served in the
+legends of Greece and India and many other countries further removed
+from the original centre of civilization. When the elaboration of the
+early story involved the destruction of mankind, it became necessary to
+provide some explanation of the continued existence of man upon the
+earth. This difficulty was got rid of by creating a new race of men from
+the fragments of the old or from the clay into which they had been
+transformed (<i>supra</i>, p. 196). In course of time this <i>secondary</i>
+creation became the basis of the familiar story of the <i>original</i>
+creation of mankind. But the story also became transformed in other
+ways. Different versions of the process of destruction were blended into
+one narrative, and made into a series of catastrophes and a succession
+of acts of creation. I shall quote (from Mr. T.&nbsp;A. Joyce's "Mexican
+Arch&aelig;ology," p. 50) one example of these series of mythical epochs or
+world ages to illustrate the method of synthesis:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>When all was dark Tezcatlipoca transformed himself into the sun to give
+light to men.</p>
+
+<p>1. This sun terminated in the destruction of mankind, including a race
+of giants, by <i>jaguars</i>.</p>
+
+<p>2. The second sun was Quetzalcoatl, and his age terminated in a terrible
+<i>hurricane</i>, during which mankind was transformed into monkeys.</p>
+
+<p>3. The third sun was Tlaloc, and the destruction came by a <i>rain of
+fire</i>.</p>
+
+<p>4. The fourth was Chalchintlicue, and mankind was finally destroyed by a
+<i>deluge</i>, during which they became fishes.</p>
+
+<p>The first episode is clearly based upon the story of the lioness-form of
+Hathor destroying mankind: the second is the Babylonian story of Tiamat,
+modified by such Indian influences as are revealed in the <i>Ramayana</i>:
+the third is inspired by the Saga of the Winged Disk; and the fourth by
+the story of the Deluge.</p>
+
+<p>Similar stories of world ages have been preserved in the mythologies of
+Eastern Asia, India, Western Asia, and Greece, and no doubt were derived
+from the same original source.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_400_400" id="Footnote_400_400"></a><a href="#FNanchor_400_400"><span class="label">[400]</span></a> The Greek Chronus was the son of Selene.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_401_401" id="Footnote_401_401"></a><a href="#FNanchor_401_401"><span class="label">[401]</span></a> Or possibly the situations of Upper and Lower Egypt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_402_402" id="Footnote_402_402"></a><a href="#FNanchor_402_402"><span class="label">[402]</span></a> See G. Elliot Smith, "The Ancient Egyptians".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_403_403" id="Footnote_403_403"></a><a href="#FNanchor_403_403"><span class="label">[403]</span></a> The association of north and south with the primary
+subdivision of the state probably led to the inclusion of the other two
+cardinal points to make the subdivision four-fold.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_404_404" id="Footnote_404_404"></a><a href="#FNanchor_404_404"><span class="label">[404]</span></a> The number four was associated with the sun-god. There
+were four "children of Horus" and four spokes to the wheel of the sun.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_405_405" id="Footnote_405_405"></a><a href="#FNanchor_405_405"><span class="label">[405]</span></a> "Architecture," p. 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_406_406" id="Footnote_406_406"></a><a href="#FNanchor_406_406"><span class="label">[406]</span></a> See the chapter on "Magic" in Jevons, "Comparative
+Religion". In his article "Magic (Egyptian)," in Hastings' <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia
+of Religion and Ethics</i> (p. 266), Dr. Alan Gardiner makes the following
+statement: "The mystical potency attaching to certain <i>numbers</i>
+doubtless originated in associations of thought that to us are obscure.
+The number seven, in Egyptian magic, was regarded as particularly
+efficacious. Thus we find references to the seven Hathors: <i>cf.</i>
+&#945;&#7984; &#7953;&#960;&#964;&#8048; &#932;&#8059;&#967;&#945;&#953; &#964;&#959;&#8166; &#959;&#8016;&#961;&#945;&#957;&#959;&#8166; (A. Dieterich, <i>Eine Mithrasliturgie</i>,
+Leipzig, 1910, p. 71): 'the seven daughters of Re,' who 'stand and weep
+and make seven knots in their seven tunics'; and similarly 'the seven
+hawks who are in front of the barque of Re'."
+</p><p>
+Are the seven daughters of Re the seven days of the week, or the
+representatives of Hathor corresponding to the seven days?</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_407_407" id="Footnote_407_407"></a><a href="#FNanchor_407_407"><span class="label">[407]</span></a> Chapter II, p. 118.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_408_408" id="Footnote_408_408"></a><a href="#FNanchor_408_408"><span class="label">[408]</span></a> We have already seen that the primitive aspect of
+life-giving that played an essential part in the development of the
+story we are considering was the search for the means by which youth
+could be restored. It is significant that Hathor's reputed ability to
+restore youth is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts in association with her
+functions as the measurer of years: for she is said "to turn back the
+years from King Teti," so that they pass over him without increasing his
+age (Breasted, "Thought and Religion in Ancient Egypt," p. 124).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_409_409" id="Footnote_409_409"></a><a href="#FNanchor_409_409"><span class="label">[409]</span></a> Breasted ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 22)
+states that as the inundation began at the rising of Sothis, the star of
+Isis, sister of Osiris, they said to him [<i>i.e.</i> Osiris]: "The beloved
+daughter, Sothis, makes thy fruits (rnpwt) in her name of 'Year'
+(rnpt)".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_410_410" id="Footnote_410_410"></a><a href="#FNanchor_410_410"><span class="label">[410]</span></a> The Great Mother was identified with the moon, but when
+she became specialized, her representative adopted Sothis or Venus as
+her star.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_411_411" id="Footnote_411_411"></a><a href="#FNanchor_411_411"><span class="label">[411]</span></a> "At Argos the principal f&ecirc;te of Aphrodite was called
+&#8017;&#963;&#964;&#8053;&#961;&#953;&#945; because they offered sacrifices of pigs ("Athen." III,
+49, 96; "Clem. Alex. Protr." 33)"&mdash;Article "Aphrodisia," <i>Dict. des
+Antiquit&eacute;s</i>, p. 308. The Greek word for pig had the double significance
+of "pig" and "female organs of reproduction".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_412_412" id="Footnote_412_412"></a><a href="#FNanchor_412_412"><span class="label">[412]</span></a> Aphrodite sends Aphrodisiac "mania" (see T&uuml;mpel, <i>op.
+cit.</i>, pp. 394 and 395).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_413_413" id="Footnote_413_413"></a><a href="#FNanchor_413_413"><span class="label">[413]</span></a> There is still widely prevalent the belief in the
+possibility of being "moonstruck," and many people, even medical men who
+ought to know better, solemnly expound to their students the influence
+of the moon in producing "lunacy". If it were not invidious one could
+cite instances of this from the writings of certain teachers of
+psychological medicine in this country within the last few months. The
+persistence of these kinds of traditions is one of the factors that make
+it so difficult to effect any real reform in the treatment of mental
+disease in this country.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Seven-headed Dragon.</h3>
+
+<p>I have already referred to the magical significance attached to the
+number seven and the widespread references to the seven Hathors, the
+seven winds to destroy Tiamat, the seven demons, and the seven fates.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+In the story of the Flood there is a similar insistence on the
+seven-fold nature of many incidents of good and ill meaning in the
+narrative. But the dragon with this seven-fold power of wreaking
+vengeance came to be symbolized by a creature with seven heads.</p>
+
+<p>A Japanese story told in Henderson's notes to Campbell's "Celtic Dragon
+Myth"<a name="FNanchor_414_414" id="FNanchor_414_414"></a><a href="#Footnote_414_414" class="fnanchor">[414]</a> will serve as an introduction to the seven-headed monster:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"A man came to a house where all were weeping, and learned that the last
+daughter of the house was to be given to a dragon with <i>seven or
+eight</i><a name="FNanchor_415_415" id="FNanchor_415_415"></a><a href="#Footnote_415_415" class="fnanchor">[415]</a> heads who came to the sea-shore yearly to claim a victim. He
+went with her, enticed the dragon to drink <i>sake</i> from pots set out on
+the shore, and then he slew the monster. From the end of his tail he
+took out a sword, which is supposed to be the Mikado's state sword. He
+married the maiden, and with her got a jewel or talisman which is
+preserved with the regalia. A third thing of price so preserved is a
+mirror."</p>
+
+<p>The seven-headed dragon is found also in the Scottish dragon-myth, and
+the legends of Cambodia, India, Persia, Western Asia, East Africa, and
+the Mediterranean area.</p>
+
+<p>The seven-headed dragon probably originated from the seven Hathors. In
+Southern India the Dravidian people seem to have borrowed the Egyptian
+idea of the seven Hathors. "There are seven Mari deities, all sisters,
+who are worshipped in Mysore. All the seven sisters are regarded vaguely
+as wives or sisters of Siva."<a name="FNanchor_416_416" id="FNanchor_416_416"></a><a href="#Footnote_416_416" class="fnanchor">[416]</a> At one village in the Trichinopoly
+district Bishop Whitehead found that the goddess K&#257;l&#299;amma was
+represented by seven brass pots, and adds: "It is possible that the
+seven brass pots represent seven sisters or the seven virgins sometimes
+found in Tamil shrines" (p. 36). But the goddess who animates seven
+pots, who is also the seven Hathors, is probably well on the way to
+becoming a dragon with seven heads.</p>
+
+<p>There is a close analogy between the Swahili and the Gaelic stories that
+reveals their ultimate derivation from Babylonia. In the Scottish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> story
+the seven-headed dragon comes in a storm of wind and spray. The East
+African serpent comes in a storm of wind and dust.<a name="FNanchor_417_417" id="FNanchor_417_417"></a><a href="#Footnote_417_417" class="fnanchor">[417]</a> In the
+Babylonian story seven winds destroy Tiamat.</p>
+
+<p>"The famous legend of the seven devils current in antiquity was of
+Babylonian origin, and belief in these evil spirits, who fought against
+the gods for the possession of the souls and bodies of men, was
+widespread throughout the lands of the Mediterranean basin. Here is one
+of the descriptions of the seven demons:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Of the seven the first is the south wind....</p>
+
+<p>"The second is a dragon whose open mouth....</p>
+
+<p>"The third is a panther whose mouth spares not.</p>
+
+<p>"The fourth is a frightful python....</p>
+
+<p>"The fifth is a wrathful ... who knows no turning back.</p>
+
+<p>"The sixth is an on-rushing ... who against god and king [attacks].</p>
+
+<p>"The seventh is a hurricane, an evil wind which [has no mercy].</p>
+
+<p>"The Babylonians were inconsistent in their description of the seven
+devils, describing them in various passages in different ways. In fact
+they actually conceived of a very large number of these demons, and
+their visions of the other evil spirits are innumerable. According to
+the incantation of Shamash-shum-ukin fifteen evil spirits had come into
+his body and</p>
+
+<p>"'My God who walks at my side they drove away.'</p>
+
+<p>"The king calls himself 'the son of his God'. We have here the most
+fundamental doctrines of Babylonian theology, borrowed originally from
+the religious beliefs of the Sumerians. For them man in his natural
+condition, at peace with the gods and in a state of atonement, is
+protected by a divine spirit whom they conceived of as dwelling in their
+bodies along with their souls or 'the breath of life'. In many ways the
+Egyptians held the same doctrine, in their belief concerning the
+<i>ka</i><a name="FNanchor_418_418" id="FNanchor_418_418"></a><a href="#Footnote_418_418" class="fnanchor">[418]</a> or the soul's double. According to the beliefs of the
+Sumerians and Babylonians these devils, evil spirits, and all evil
+powers stand for ever waiting to attach (<i>sic</i>) (? attack) the divine
+genius with each man. By means of insinuating snares they entrap mankind
+in the meshes of their magic. They secure possession of his soul and
+body by leading him into sin, or bringing him into contact with tabooed
+things, or by overcoming his divine protector with sympathetic
+magic....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> These adversaries of humanity thus expel a man's god, or
+genius, or occupy his body. These rituals of atonement have as their
+primary object the ejection of the demons and the restoration of the
+divine protector. Many of the prayers end with the petition, 'Into the
+kind hands of his god and goddess restore him'.</p>
+
+<p>"Representations of the seven devils are somewhat rare.... The Brit.
+Mus. figurine represents the demon of the winds with body of a dog,
+scorpion tail, bird legs and feet" (S. Langdon, "A Ritual of Atonement
+for a Babylonian King," <i>The Museum Journal</i> [University of
+Pennsylvania], Vol. VIII, No. 1, March, 1917, pp. 39-44).</p>
+
+<p>But the Babylonians not only adopted the Egyptian conception of the
+power of evil as being seven demons, but they also seem to have fused
+these seven into one, or rather given the real dragon seven-fold
+attributes.<a name="FNanchor_419_419" id="FNanchor_419_419"></a><a href="#Footnote_419_419" class="fnanchor">[419]</a></p>
+
+<p>In "The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia"<a name="FNanchor_420_420" id="FNanchor_420_420"></a><a href="#Footnote_420_420" class="fnanchor">[420]</a> (British Museum),
+Marduk's weapon is compared to "the fish with seven wings".</p>
+
+<p>The god himself is represented as addressing it in these words: "The
+tempest of battle, my weapon of fifty heads, which like the great
+serpent of seven heads is yoked with seven heads, which like the strong
+serpent of the sea (sweeps away) the foe".</p>
+
+<p>In the Japanese story which I have quoted, the number of the dragon's
+heads is given as <i>seven</i> or <i>eight</i>; and de Visser is at a loss to know
+why "the number eight should be stereotyped in these stories of
+[Japanese] dragons".<a name="FNanchor_421_421" id="FNanchor_421_421"></a><a href="#Footnote_421_421" class="fnanchor">[421]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have already emphasized the world-wide association of the
+seven-headed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> dragon with storms. The Argonaut (usually called
+"Nautilus" by classical scholars) was the prophet of ill-luck and the
+storm-bringer: but, true to the paradox that runs through the whole
+tissue of mythology, this form of the Great Mother is also a benevolent
+warner against storms. This seems to be another link between the
+seven-headed dragon and these cephalopoda.</p>
+
+<p>I would suggest, merely as a tentative working hypothesis, that the
+process of blending the seven <i>avatars</i> of the dragon into a
+seven-headed dragon may have been facilitated by its identification with
+the <i>Pterocera</i> and the octopus. We know that the octopus and the
+shell-fish were forms assumed by the dragon (see p. 172): the confusion
+between the numbers seven and eight is such as might have been created
+during the transference of the <i>Pterocera's</i> attributes to the octopus
+(<i>vide supra</i>, p. 170); and the Babylonian reference to "the fish with
+seven wings," which was afterwards rationalized into "a great serpent
+with seven heads," seems to provide the clue which explains the origin
+of the seven-headed dragon. If Hathor was a seven-fold goddess and at
+the same time was identified with the seven-spiked spider-shell
+(<i>Pterocera</i>), the process of converting the shell-fish's seven "wings"
+into seven heads would be a very simple one for an ancient story-teller.
+If this hypothesis has any basis in fact, the circumstance that the
+beliefs concerning the <i>Pterocera</i> must (from the habitat of the
+shell-fish) have come into existence upon the shores of Southern Arabia
+would explain the appearance of the derived myth of the seven-headed
+dragon in Babylonia.</p>
+
+<p>My attention was first called to the possibility of the octopus being
+the parent of the seven-headed dragon, and one of the forms assumed by
+the thunderbolt, by the design upon a krater from Apulia.<a name="FNanchor_422_422" id="FNanchor_422_422"></a><a href="#Footnote_422_422" class="fnanchor">[422]</a> The
+weapon seemed to be a conventionalization of the octopus. Though further
+research has led me to distrust this interpretation, it has convinced me
+of the intimate association of the octopus and the derived spiral
+ornament with thunder and the dragon, and has suggested that the process
+of blending the seven demons into a seven-headed demon has been assisted
+by the symbolism of the octopus and the <i>Pterocera</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_414_414" id="Footnote_414_414"></a><a href="#FNanchor_414_414"><span class="label">[414]</span></a> "The Celtic Dragon Myth," by J.&nbsp;F. Campbell, with the
+"Geste of Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with introduction by George
+Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 134.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_415_415" id="Footnote_415_415"></a><a href="#FNanchor_415_415"><span class="label">[415]</span></a> My italics.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_416_416" id="Footnote_416_416"></a><a href="#FNanchor_416_416"><span class="label">[416]</span></a> Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Gods of
+South India," Oxford, 1916, p. 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_417_417" id="Footnote_417_417"></a><a href="#FNanchor_417_417"><span class="label">[417]</span></a> "The Celtic Dragon Myth," p. 136.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_418_418" id="Footnote_418_418"></a><a href="#FNanchor_418_418"><span class="label">[418]</span></a> See Chapter I, p. 47.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_419_419" id="Footnote_419_419"></a><a href="#FNanchor_419_419"><span class="label">[419]</span></a> I do not propose to discuss here the interesting problems
+raised by this identification of the dragon with a man's good or evil
+spirit. But it is worthy of note that while the Babylonian might be
+possessed by seven evil spirits, the Egyptian could have as many as
+fourteen good spirits or <i>kas</i>. In a form somewhat modified by the
+Indian and Indonesian channels, through which they must have passed,
+these beliefs still persist in Melanesia; and the illuminating account
+of them given by C.&nbsp;E. Fox and F.&nbsp;W. Drew ("Beliefs and Tales of San
+Cristoval," <i>Journ. Roy. Anthropol. Inst.</i>, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 161),
+makes it easier to us to form some conception of their original meaning
+in ancient Babylonia and Egypt. The <i>ataro</i> which possesses a man (and
+there may be as many as a hundred of these "ghosts") leaves his body at
+death and usually enters a shark (or in other cases an octopus, skate,
+turtle, crocodile, hawk, kingfisher, tree, or stone).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_420_420" id="Footnote_420_420"></a><a href="#FNanchor_420_420"><span class="label">[420]</span></a> Vol. II, 19, 11-18, and 65, quoted by Sayce, <i>Hibbert
+Lectures</i>, p. 282.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_421_421" id="Footnote_421_421"></a><a href="#FNanchor_421_421"><span class="label">[421]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 150.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_422_422" id="Footnote_422_422"></a><a href="#FNanchor_422_422"><span class="label">[422]</span></a> A.&nbsp;B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 337, in which (Fig. 269)
+the rider in the car is <i>welcoming</i> the thunderbolt as a divine gift
+from heaven, <i>i.e.</i> as a life-amulet, a giver of fertility and good
+luck. For a design representing the octopus as a weapon of the god Eros
+see the title-page of Usener's "Die Sintfluthsagen," 1899.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+<h3>The Pig.</h3>
+
+<p>I have already referred to the circumstances that were responsible for
+the identification of the cow with the Great Mother, the sky, and the
+moon. Once this had happened, the process seems to have been extended to
+include other animals which were used as food, such as the sheep, goat,
+pig, and antelope (or gazelle and deer). In Egypt the cow continued to
+occupy the pre-eminent place as a divine animal; and the cow-cult
+extended from the Mediterreanean to equatorial Africa, to Western
+Europe, and as far East as India. But in the Mediterranean area the pig
+played a more prominent part than it did in Egypt.<a name="FNanchor_423_423" id="FNanchor_423_423"></a><a href="#Footnote_423_423" class="fnanchor">[423]</a> In the latter
+country Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with the pig;
+and in Syria the place of Set as the enemy of Osiris (Adonis) was taken
+by an actual pig. But throughout the Eastern Mediterranean the pig was
+also identified with the Great Mother and associated with lunar and sky
+phenomena. In fact at Troy the pig was represented<a name="FNanchor_424_424" id="FNanchor_424_424"></a><a href="#Footnote_424_424" class="fnanchor">[424]</a> with the
+star-shaped decorations with which Hathor's divine cow (in her r&ocirc;le as a
+sky-goddess) was embellished in Egypt. To complete the identification
+with the cow-mother Cretan fable represents a sow suckling the infant
+Minos or the youthful Zeus-Dionysus as his Egyptian prototype was
+suckled by the divine cow.</p>
+
+<p>Now the cowry-shell was called &#967;&#959;&#8150;&#961;&#959;&#962; by the Greeks. The pig,
+in fact, was identified both with the Great Mother and the shell; and it
+is clear from what has been said already in these pages that the reason
+for this strange homology was the fact that originally the Great Mother
+was nothing more than the cowry-shell.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not only with the shell itself that the pig was identified
+but also with what the shell symbolized. Thus the term &#967;&#959;&#8150;&#961;&#959;&#962;
+had an obscene significance in addition to its usual meaning "pig" and
+its acquired meaning "cowry". This fact seems to have played some part
+in fixing upon the pig the notoriety of being "an unclean animal".<a name="FNanchor_425_425" id="FNanchor_425_425"></a><a href="#Footnote_425_425" class="fnanchor">[425]</a>
+But it was mainly for other reasons of a very different kind that the
+eating of swine-flesh was forbidden. The tabu seems to have arisen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+originally because the pig was a sacred animal identified with the Great
+Mother and the Water God, and especially associated with both these
+deities in their lunar aspects.</p>
+
+<p>According to a Cretan legend the youthful god Zeus-Dionysus was suckled
+by a sow. For this reason "the Cretans consider this animal sacred, and
+will not taste of its flesh; and the men of Pr&aelig;sos perform sacred rites
+with the sow, making her the first offering at the sacrifice".<a name="FNanchor_426_426" id="FNanchor_426_426"></a><a href="#Footnote_426_426" class="fnanchor">[426]</a></p>
+
+<p>But when the pig also assumed the r&ocirc;le of Set, as the enemy of Osiris,
+and became the prototype of the devil, an active aversion took the place
+of the sacred tabu, and inspired the belief in the unwholesomeness of
+pig flesh. To this was added the unpleasant reputation as a dirty animal
+which the pig itself acquired, for the reasons which I have already
+stated.</p>
+
+<p>I have already referred to the irrelevance of Miss Jane Harrison's
+denial of the birth of Aphrodite from the sea (p. 141). Miss Harrison
+does not seem to have realized that in her book<a name="FNanchor_427_427" id="FNanchor_427_427"></a><a href="#Footnote_427_427" class="fnanchor">[427]</a> she has collected
+evidence which is much more relevant to the point at issue. For, in the
+interesting account of the Eleusinian Mysteries (pp. 150 <i>et seq.</i>), she
+has called attention to the important rite upon the day "called in
+popular parlance '&#7940;&#955;&#945;&#948;&#949; &#956;&#8059;&#963;&#964;&#945;&#953;,' 'to the sea ye mystics'" (p.
+152), which, I think, has a direct bearing upon the myth of Aphrodite's
+birth from the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The Mysteries were celebrated at full moon; and each of the candidates
+for admission "took with him his own pharmakos,<a name="FNanchor_428_428" id="FNanchor_428_428"></a><a href="#Footnote_428_428" class="fnanchor">[428]</a> a young pig".</p>
+
+<p>"Arrived at the sea, each man bathed with his pig" (p. 152). On one
+occasion, so it is said, "when a mystic was bathing his pig, a
+sea-monster ate off the lower part of his body" (p. 153). So important
+was the pig in this ritual "that when Eleusis was permitted
+(<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> 350-327) to issue her autonomous coinage it is the pig
+she chooses as the sign and symbol of her mysteries" (p. 153).</p>
+
+<p>"On the final day of the Mysteries, according to Athen&aelig;us, two vessels
+called <i>plemocho&aelig;</i> are emptied, one towards the East and the other
+towards the West, and at the moment of outpouring a mystic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> formulary
+was pronounced.... What the mystic formulary was we cannot certainly
+say, but it is tempting to connect the libation of the <i>plemocho&aelig;</i> with
+a formulary recorded by Proclos. He says 'In the Eleusinian mysteries,
+looking up to the sky they cried aloud "Rain," and looking down to earth
+they cried "Be fruitful"'" (p. 161).</p>
+
+<p>In these latter incidents we see, perhaps, a distant echo of Hathor's
+pots of blood-coloured beer that were poured out upon the soil, which in
+a later version of the story became the symbol of the inundation of the
+river and the token of the earth's fruitfulness. The personification in
+the Great Mother of these life-giving powers of the river occurred at
+about the same time; and this was rationalized by the myth that she was
+born of the sea. She was also identified with the moon and a sow. Hence
+these Mysteries were celebrated, both in Egypt and in the Mediterranean,
+at full moon, and the pig played a prominent part in them. The
+candidates washed the sacrificial pig in the sea, not primarily as a
+rite of purification,<a name="FNanchor_429_429" id="FNanchor_429_429"></a><a href="#Footnote_429_429" class="fnanchor">[429]</a> as is commonly claimed, but because the
+sacrificial animal was merely a surrogate of the cowry, which lived in
+the sea, and of the Great Mother,<a name="FNanchor_430_430" id="FNanchor_430_430"></a><a href="#Footnote_430_430" class="fnanchor">[430]</a> who was sprung from the cowry and
+hence born of the sea. In the story of the man carrying the pig being
+attacked by a sea-monster, perhaps we have an incident of that
+widespread story of the shark guarding the pearls. We have already seen
+how it was distorted into the fantastic legend of the dog's r&ocirc;le in the
+digging up of mandrakes. In the version we are now considering the
+pearl's place is taken by the pig, both of them surrogates of the cowry.</p>
+
+<p>The object of the ceremony of carrying the pig into the sea was not the
+cleansing of "the unclean animal," nor was it <i>primarily</i> a rite of
+purification in any sense of the term: it was simply a ritual procedure
+for identifying the sacrifice with the goddess by putting it in her own
+medium, and so transforming the surrogate of the sea-shell, the
+prototype of the sea-born goddess, into the actual Great Mother.</p>
+
+<p>The question naturally arises: what was the real purpose of the
+sacrifice of the pig?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the story of the Destruction of Mankind we have seen that originally
+a human victim was slain for the purpose of obtaining the life-giving
+human blood to rejuvenate the ageing king. Two circumstances were
+responsible for the modification of this procedure. In the first place,
+there was the abandonment of human sacrifice and the substitution of
+either beer coloured red with ochre to resemble blood (or in other cases
+red wine) or the actual blood of an animal sacrifice in place of the
+human blood. Secondly, the blood of the Great Mother herself
+(personified in the special <i>avatar</i> that was recognized in a particular
+locality, the cow in one place, the pig in another, and so on) was
+regarded as more potent as a life-giving force than that of a mere
+mortal human being. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that this was
+the real reason for the abandoning of human sacrifice and the
+substitution of an animal for a human being. For it is unlikely that, in
+the rude state of society which had become familiarized with and
+brutalized by the practice of these bloody rites of homicide, ethical
+motives alone would have prompted the abolition of the custom of human
+sacrifice, to which such deep significance was attached. The
+substitution of the animal was prompted rather by the idea of obtaining
+a more potent elixir from the life-blood of the Great Mother herself in
+her cow- or sow-forms.</p>
+
+<p>In the transitional stage of the process of substitution of an animal
+for a human being some confusion seems to have arisen as to the ritual
+meaning of the new procedure. If Moret's account of the Egyptian
+Mysteries<a name="FNanchor_431_431" id="FNanchor_431_431"></a><a href="#Footnote_431_431" class="fnanchor">[431]</a> is correct&mdash;and without a knowledge of Egyptian philology
+I am not competent to express an opinion upon this matter&mdash;the attempt
+was made to identify the animal victim of sacrifice with the human being
+whose place it had taken. In the procession a human being wore the skin
+of an animal; and, according to Moret, there was a ceremony of passing a
+human being through the skin as a ritual procedure for transforming the
+mock victim into the animal which was to be sacrificed in his place. If
+there is any truth in this interpretation, such a ceremony must have
+been prompted by a misunderstanding of the meaning of the sacrifice,
+unless the identification of the sacrificial animal with the goddess was
+merely a secondary rationalization of the substitution which had been
+made for ethical or some other reasons.</p>
+
+<p>We know that the dead were often buried in the skins of sacrificial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+animals, and so identified with the life-giving deities and given
+rebirth. We know also that in certain ceremonies the appropriate skins
+were worn by those who were impersonating particular gods or goddesses.
+The wearing of these skins of divine animals seems to have been prompted
+not so much by the idea of a reincarnation in animal form as by the
+desire for identification and communion with the particular deity which
+the animal represented. The whole question, however, is one of great
+complexity, which can only be settled by a critical study of the texts
+by some scholar who keeps clearly before his mind the real issues, and
+refuses to take refuge in the stereotyped evasions of conventional
+methods of interpretation.</p>
+
+<p>The sacrifice of the sow to Demeter is merely a late variant of Hathor's
+sacrifice of a human being to rejuvenate the king Re. How the real
+meaning of the story became distorted I have already explained in
+Chapter II ("Dragons and Rain Gods"). The killing of the sow to obtain a
+good harvest is homologous with the sacrifice of a maiden to obtain a
+good inundation of the river. The sow is the surrogate of the beautiful
+princess of the fairy tale. Instead of the maiden being slain, in one
+case, as Andromeda, she is rescued by the hero, in the other her place
+is taken by a sow. These late rationalizations are merely glosses of the
+deep motives which more than fifty centuries ago seem to have prompted
+early pharmacologists to obtain a more potent elixir than human blood by
+stealing from the heights of Olympus the divine blood of the life-giving
+deities themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The pig was identified not only with the Great Mother, but with Osiris
+and Set also. With the pig's lunar and astral associations I do not
+propose to deal in these pages, as the astronomical aspects of the
+problems are so vast as to need much more space than the limits imposed
+in this statement. But it is important to note that the identification
+of Set with a pig was perhaps the main factor in riveting upon this
+creature the fetters of a reputation for evil. The evil dragon was the
+representative of both Set and the Great Mother (Sekhet or Tiamat); and
+both of them were identified with the pig. Just as Set killed Osiris, so
+the pig gave Adonis his mortal injury.<a name="FNanchor_432_432" id="FNanchor_432_432"></a><a href="#Footnote_432_432" class="fnanchor">[432]</a> When these earthly incidents
+were embellished with a celestial significance, the con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>flict of Horus
+with Set was interpreted as the struggle between the forces of light and
+order and the powers of darkness and chaos. When worshipped as a
+tempest-god the Mesopotamian Rimmon was known as "the pig"<a name="FNanchor_433_433" id="FNanchor_433_433"></a><a href="#Footnote_433_433" class="fnanchor">[433]</a> and, as
+"the wild boar of the desert," was a form of Set.</p>
+
+<p>I have discussed the pig at this length because the use of the words
+&#967;&#959;&#8150;&#961;&#959;&#962; by the Greeks, and <i>porcus</i> and <i>porculus</i> by the
+Romans, reveals the fact that the terms had the double significance of
+"pig" and "cowry-shell". As it is manifestly impossible to derive the
+word "cowry" from the Greek word for "pig," the only explanation that
+will stand examination is that the two meanings must have been acquired
+from the identification of both the cowry and the pig with the Great
+Mother and the female reproductive organs. In other words, the
+pig-associations of Aphrodite afford clear evidence that the goddess was
+originally a personification of the cowry.<a name="FNanchor_434_434" id="FNanchor_434_434"></a><a href="#Footnote_434_434" class="fnanchor">[434]</a></p>
+
+<p>The fundamental nature of the identification of the cowry, the pig, and
+the Great Mother, the one with the other, is revealed not merely in the
+arch&aelig;ology of the &AElig;gean, but also in the modern customs and ancient
+pictures of the most distant peoples. For example, in New Guinea the
+place of the sacrificial pig may be taken by the cowry-shell;<a name="FNanchor_435_435" id="FNanchor_435_435"></a><a href="#Footnote_435_435" class="fnanchor">[435]</a> and
+upon the chief fa&ccedil;ade of the east wing of the ancient American monument,
+known as the Casa de las Monjas at Chichen Itza, the hieroglyph of the
+planet Venus is placed in conjunction with a picture of a wild pig.<a name="FNanchor_436_436" id="FNanchor_436_436"></a><a href="#Footnote_436_436" class="fnanchor">[436]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_423_423" id="Footnote_423_423"></a><a href="#FNanchor_423_423"><span class="label">[423]</span></a> And also, in a misunderstood form, even as far as
+America.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_424_424" id="Footnote_424_424"></a><a href="#FNanchor_424_424"><span class="label">[424]</span></a> Schliemann, "Ilios," Fig. 1450, p. 616.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_425_425" id="Footnote_425_425"></a><a href="#FNanchor_425_425"><span class="label">[425]</span></a> This is seen in the case of the Persian word <i>khor</i>,
+which means both "pig" and "harlot" or "filthy woman". The possibility
+of the derivation of the old English word "[w]hore" from the same source
+is worth considering.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_426_426" id="Footnote_426_426"></a><a href="#FNanchor_426_426"><span class="label">[426]</span></a> L.&nbsp;R. Farnell, "Cults of the Greek States," Vol. I, p.
+37.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_427_427" id="Footnote_427_427"></a><a href="#FNanchor_427_427"><span class="label">[427]</span></a> "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_428_428" id="Footnote_428_428"></a><a href="#FNanchor_428_428"><span class="label">[428]</span></a> Which, in fact, was intended as the equivalent of &#966;&#8049;&#961;&#956;&#945;&#954;&#959;&#957; &#7936;&#952;&#945;&#957;&#945;&#963;&#8055;&#945;&#962;, "the redeeming blood".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_429_429" id="Footnote_429_429"></a><a href="#FNanchor_429_429"><span class="label">[429]</span></a> Blackman ("Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient
+Egypt," <i>Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Arch&aelig;ology</i>, March,
+1918, p. 57; and May, 1918, p. 85) has shown that the idea of
+purification was certainly entertained.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_430_430" id="Footnote_430_430"></a><a href="#FNanchor_430_430"><span class="label">[430]</span></a> In some places an image of the goddess was washed in the
+sea.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_431_431" id="Footnote_431_431"></a><a href="#FNanchor_431_431"><span class="label">[431]</span></a> "Myst&egrave;res &Eacute;gyptiens."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_432_432" id="Footnote_432_432"></a><a href="#FNanchor_432_432"><span class="label">[432]</span></a> Mr. Donald Mackenzie has collected a good deal of
+folk-lore concerning the pig ("Myths of Egypt," pp. 66 <i>et seq.</i>; also
+his books on Babylonian, Indian, and Cretan myths, <i>op. cit. supra</i>).</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_433_433" id="Footnote_433_433"></a><a href="#FNanchor_433_433"><span class="label">[433]</span></a> According to Sayce, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 153, note 6.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_434_434" id="Footnote_434_434"></a><a href="#FNanchor_434_434"><span class="label">[434]</span></a> In Egypt not only was the sow identified with Isis, but
+"lucky pigs" were worn on necklaces just like the earlier cowry-amulets
+(Budge, "Guide to the Egyptian Collections" (British Museum), p. 96).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_435_435" id="Footnote_435_435"></a><a href="#FNanchor_435_435"><span class="label">[435]</span></a> Malinowski, <i>Trans. and Proc. Royal Society, South
+Australia</i>, XXXIX, 1915, p. 587 <i>et. seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_436_436" id="Footnote_436_436"></a><a href="#FNanchor_436_436"><span class="label">[436]</span></a> Seler, "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der
+Maya-Handschriften," <i>Zeitsch. f. Ethnologie</i>, Bd. 41, 1909, p. 405, and
+Fig. 242 in Maudslay, "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Vol. III, Pl. 13.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Gold and the Golden Aphrodite.</h3>
+
+<p>The evidence which has been collected by Mr. Wilfrid Jackson seems to
+suggest that the shell-cults originated in the neighbourhood of the Red
+Sea.</p>
+
+<p>With the introduction of the practice of wearing shells on girdles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> and
+necklaces and as hair ornaments the time arrived when people living some
+distance from the sea experienced difficulty in obtaining these amulets
+in quantities sufficient to meet their demands. Hence they resorted to
+the manufacture of imitations of these shells in clay and stone. But at
+an early period in their history the inhabitants of the deserts between
+the Nile and the Red Sea (Hathor's special province) discovered that
+they could make more durable and attractive models of cowries and other
+shells by using the plastic yellow metal which was lying about in these
+deserts unused and unappreciated. This practice first gave to the metal
+gold an arbitrary value which it did not possess before. For the
+peculiar life-giving attributes of the shells modelled in the yellow
+metal came to be transferred to the gold itself. No doubt the lightness
+and especially the beauty of such gold models appealed to the early
+Egyptians, and were in large measure responsible for the hold gold
+acquired over mankind. But this was an outcome of the empirical
+knowledge gained from a practice that originally was inspired purely by
+cultural and not &aelig;sthetic motives. The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic
+sign for gold was a picture of a necklace of such amulets; and this
+emblem became the determinative of the Great Mother Hathor, not only
+because she was originally the personification of the life-giving
+shells, but also because she was the guardian deity both of the Eastern
+wadys where the gold was found and of the Red Sea coasts where the
+cowries were obtained. Hence she became the "Golden Hathor," the
+prototype of the "Golden Aphrodite".</p>
+
+<div class="center">
+<a name="Image_035" id="Image_035"></a>
+<img src="images/image035.png" width="336" height="196" alt="Fig. 9.&mdash;The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign
+nub. It represents a collar from which golden amulets, probably
+representing cowries, are suspended." title="" />
+<div class="caption"><p>Fig. 9.&mdash;The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign
+nub. It represents a collar from which golden amulets, probably
+representing cowries, are suspended.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is a significant token of the influence of these Egyptian incidents
+upon the history of the &AElig;gean that among the earliest gold ornaments
+found by Schliemann at Troy were a series of crude representations of
+cowries worn as pendants to a hair ornament.<a name="FNanchor_437_437" id="FNanchor_437_437"></a><a href="#Footnote_437_437" class="fnanchor">[437]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is hardly necessary to insist upon the vast influence upon the
+history of civilization which this arbitrary value of gold has been
+responsible for exerting. For more than fifty centuries men have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+searching for the precious metal, and have been spreading abroad
+throughout the world the elements of our civilization. It has been not
+only the chief factor in bringing about the contact of peoples<a name="FNanchor_438_438" id="FNanchor_438_438"></a><a href="#Footnote_438_438" class="fnanchor">[438]</a> and
+incidentally in building up our culture, but it has been the cause,
+directly or indirectly, of most of the warfare which has afflicted
+mankind. Yet these mighty forces were let loose upon the world as the
+result of the circumstance that early searchers for an elixir of life
+used the valueless metal to make imitations of their shell amulets!</p>
+
+<p>The identification of gold with cowries may not have been the primary
+reason for the invention of gold currency. In fact, Professor Ridgeway
+has called attention to certain historical events which in his opinion
+forced men to convert their jewellery into coinage. But the fact that
+cowries were the earliest form of currency may have prepared the way for
+the recognition of the use of gold for a similar purpose. Moreover, we
+know that long before a real gold currency came into being rings of gold
+were in Egypt a form of tribute and a sign of wealth. Cowries acquired
+their significance as currency as the result of incidents in some
+respects analogous to those which impelled the early Egyptians to make
+gold models of the shells. In places in Africa far removed from the sea
+where the practice has grown up of offering vast numbers of cowries to
+brides on the occasion of their marriage (as fertility amulets) or of
+putting the shells in the grave (to secure for the dead fresh vital
+energy), the people offered their most treasured possessions, such as
+their cattle, in exchange for the amulets which were believed to confer
+such priceless social and religious boons. Cattle were therefore given
+in exchange for cowries, or the shells were used for the purchase of
+wives. When the new significance as currency developed a remarkable
+confusion occurred. In many places cowries were placed in the mouth of
+the dead to confer the breath of life: but when the cowries acquired the
+new meaning as currency, the people who had lost all knowledge of the
+original significance of this practice explained the cowries as money
+with which to pay Charon's fare to the other world. Then, in many
+places, the cowry was replaced by an actual metallic coin. Most scholars
+fall into the same error as these ancient rationalists,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> and accept
+their explanation of the <i>obolus</i> as though it were the real meaning of
+the act.</p>
+
+<p>Another result of the use of gold models of shells as life-giving
+amulets was that the metal also acquired the reputation of being a giver
+of life,<a name="FNanchor_439_439" id="FNanchor_439_439"></a><a href="#Footnote_439_439" class="fnanchor">[439]</a> which originally belonged merely to the shell or the
+imitation of its form, whatever the substance used for making the model.</p>
+
+<p>Thus gold came to share the same magical reputation as the cowry and the
+pearl. It was also put to the same use: it was buried with the dead to
+confer a continuation of existence.</p>
+
+<p>Not only was Hathor called <i>N&#363;b</i>, <i>i.e.</i> "gold" or the golden Hathor:
+but the place where the funerary statue was made ("born") in Egypt was
+called the "House of Gold" and personified as a goddess who gave rebirth
+to the dead (Alan Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemh&#275;t," p. 95; and A.&nbsp;M.
+Blackman, <i>Journal of Egyptian Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol. IV, p. 127).</p>
+
+<p>When ancient prospectors from the South exploited the rivers of
+Turkestan for alluvial gold and fresh water pearls, incidentally they
+also collected pebbles of jade for the purpose of making seals. The
+local inhabitants confused the properties of the stone with the magical
+reputation of the gold and the pearls. One outcome of this jade-fishing
+in Turkestan was the transference of the credit of life-giving to jade.
+Prospectors searching for these precious materials gradually made their
+way east past Lob Nor, and eventually discovered the deposits of gold
+and jade in the Shensi province. Thus jade became the nucleus around
+which the distinctive civilization of China became crystallized. It
+played an obtrusive part not only in attracting men from the West and in
+determining the locality where the germs of Western civilization were
+planted in China, but also in giving Chinese culture its distinctive
+shape.</p>
+
+<p>"The ancient Chinese, wishing to facilitate the resurrection of the
+dead, surrounded them with jade, gold, pearls, timber, and other things
+imbued with influences emitted from the heavens, or, in other words,
+with such objects as are pervaded with vital energy derived from the
+<i>Yang</i> matter of which the heavens are the principal depository." (De
+Groot, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 316).</p>
+
+<p>By a similar process diamonds acquired the same reputation in India when
+searchers after gold discovered the precious metal in Hyderabad,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> and
+the diamonds of Golconda came to be accredited with life-giving
+powers.<a name="FNanchor_440_440" id="FNanchor_440_440"></a><a href="#Footnote_440_440" class="fnanchor">[440]</a></p>
+
+<p>According to the beliefs of the Indians "the N&acirc;ga owns riches, the water
+of life, and a jewel that restores the dead to life".</p>
+
+<p>Thus gold, pearls, jade, and diamonds in course of time acquired the
+reputation of elixirs of life, but the hold they established upon
+mankind was due to the fact (<i>a</i>) that the amulets made of these
+materials made a strong appeal to the &aelig;sthetic sense, and (<i>b</i>) the
+arbitrary value assigned to them made them desirable objects to search
+for.</p>
+
+<p>In his "Mycen&aelig;an Tree and Pillar Cult" (1901) Sir Arthur Evans gives
+cogent reasons for the view that at the time when Mycen&aelig;an influence was
+powerful in Cyprus "the 'golden Aphrodit&ecirc;' of the Egyptians seems to
+play a much more important part than any form of Astarte or Mylitta" (p.
+52). "The Cypriote parallels will be found to have a fundamental
+importance as demonstrating in detail that these ['a simple form of the
+palmette pillar, approaching a fleur-de-lys in outline,' in association
+with its guardian monsters] are in fact taken over from the cult of
+Mentu-Ra, the Warrior Sun-god of Egypt, of Hathor, and of Horus" (p.
+52).</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_437_437" id="Footnote_437_437"></a><a href="#FNanchor_437_437"><span class="label">[437]</span></a> So far as I am aware the fact that these objects were
+intended to represent cowries does not appear to have been recognized
+hitherto. I am indebted to Mr. Wilfrid Jackson for calling my attention
+to the figures 685 and 832 in Schliemann's "Ilios" (1880), and for
+identifying the objects.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_438_438" id="Footnote_438_438"></a><a href="#FNanchor_438_438"><span class="label">[438]</span></a> See Perry, "Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines,"
+<i>Proceedings and Memorials of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical
+Society</i>, 1916; also "War and Civilization," <i>Bulletin of the John
+Rylands Library</i>, 1918.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_439_439" id="Footnote_439_439"></a><a href="#FNanchor_439_439"><span class="label">[439]</span></a> "Dan&aelig; pregnant with immortal gold."</p></div>
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_440_440" id="Footnote_440_440"></a><a href="#FNanchor_440_440"><span class="label">[440]</span></a> See Laufer, "The Diamond," also Munn, "The Ancient Gold
+Mines of Hyderabad," paper now being published in the <i>Proceedings of
+the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>Aphrodite as the Thunder-stone.</h3>
+
+<p>As a surrogate of the Great Mother, the Eye of Re, the thunder-weapon
+was also identified with any of her varied manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>The thunderbolt is one of the manifestations of the life-giving and
+death-dealing Divine Cow, and therefore is able specially to protect
+mundane cows.<a name="FNanchor_441_441" id="FNanchor_441_441"></a><a href="#Footnote_441_441" class="fnanchor">[441]</a></p>
+
+<p>There are numerous hints in the ancient literature of other countries in
+confirmation of the association of the Great Mother with "falling
+stars". "In a fragment of Sanchoniathon, Astarte, travelling about the
+habitable world, is said to have found a star falling through the air,
+which she took up and consecrated."<a name="FNanchor_442_442" id="FNanchor_442_442"></a><a href="#Footnote_442_442" class="fnanchor">[442]</a></p>
+
+<p>Aphrodite also was looked upon as a meteoric stone that fell from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> the
+moon. In the "Iliad," Zeus is said to have sent Athena as a meteorite
+from heaven to earth.<a name="FNanchor_443_443" id="FNanchor_443_443"></a><a href="#Footnote_443_443" class="fnanchor">[443]</a></p>
+
+<p>The association of Aphrodite with meteoric stones and the ancient belief
+that they fell from the moon serve to confirm the identification of
+these life-giving and death-dealing objects with the pearl and the
+thunderbolt. In Southern India the goddesses may be represented either
+by small stones or by pots of water, usually seven in number. During the
+ceremony around the stone-form of the goddess the <i>kappukaran</i> runs
+thrice around the stone, as the mandrake-digger does around the plant.
+The <i>pujari</i> who represents the goddess is painted like a leopard
+(Hathor's lioness) and kills the sacrificial sheep. The goddess (like
+Hathor) is supposed to drink the blood of the sacrificial victims
+(Whitehead, <i>op. cit.</i>, pp. 164-8).</p>
+
+<p>Many factors played a part in the development of the beliefs about the
+origin of mankind from stones, with which the identification of the
+thunderbolt with the winged disk plays a part.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that the cowry was the giver of life and the parent of men was
+also transferred to crude stone imitations of the shell. Perhaps the
+belief in such stones as creators of human beings may have been
+reinforced by finding actual fossilized shells within pebbles.<a name="FNanchor_444_444" id="FNanchor_444_444"></a><a href="#Footnote_444_444" class="fnanchor">[444]</a></p>
+
+<p>A further corroboration of this theory was provided when the pearl came
+to be regarded as the quintessence of the life-giving substance of
+shells and as a little particle of moon-substance which fell as a drop
+of dew into the gaping oyster. Perry (<i>op. cit.</i>, p. 78) refers to an
+Indonesian belief among the Tsalisen that their ancestors came out of
+the moon; and the chief of this people has a spherical stone which is
+said to represent the moon.</p>
+
+<p>This association of the moon with round stones may be connected with the
+identification of the sun (as the winged disk) with a stone axe,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> when
+they came to be regarded as alternative weapons for the destruction or
+the creation of men. Perry records a story of a rock being lowered down
+from the sun, from which it was born, and out of a cleft in it man and
+woman emerged, as they were believed to have been born from the cleft in
+the cowry.</p>
+
+<p>Then there are the Egyptian beliefs concerning stone statues, obelisks,
+or even unshaped blocks of stone which could be animated by human beings
+or gods.<a name="FNanchor_445_445" id="FNanchor_445_445"></a><a href="#Footnote_445_445" class="fnanchor">[445]</a></p>
+
+<p>The cycle of these stories was completed when the "Eye of Re"
+slaughtered the enemies of the god and they became identified with the
+followers of Set, "creatures of stone". Thus the evil eye petrified
+rebellious men: and so was launched upon its course the peculiar group
+of legends which in time encircled the world.</p>
+
+<p>It is particularly significant that in Indonesia, in association with
+these ideas about stone-origins and petrifaction, Perry (p. 133) found
+also the clear-cut belief that the thunder-weapon was a stone, or the
+tooth of a cloud-dragon in the sky.</p>
+
+<p>In Indonesia also petrifaction, thunder-stones, rain, floods, lightning,
+and an arrow shot to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning were the
+punishments traditionally assigned for certain offences, such as incest
+and laughing at animals.</p>
+
+<p>The same people who introduced into the Malay Archipelago these
+characteristic fragments of the dragon-myth also believed that certain
+animals were impersonations of their gods: they also brought stories of
+incestuous unions on the part of their deities and rulers. To laugh at
+their sacred animals, or to imitate privileged customs permitted to
+their deities, but not to ordinary mortals, merited the same sort of
+punishments as were meted out to those other rebels against the ruling
+class and the gods in the home of these beliefs.<a name="FNanchor_446_446" id="FNanchor_446_446"></a><a href="#Footnote_446_446" class="fnanchor">[446]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To laugh at the divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a divine
+prerogative, was analogous to "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,"
+which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable offence, and in
+pagan legend was punished by the divine wrath, thunder, lightning, rain,
+floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instruments. &#338;dipus put
+out his own eyes to forestall the traditional wrath of the gods.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_441_441" id="Footnote_441_441"></a><a href="#FNanchor_441_441"><span class="label">[441]</span></a> Blinkenberg, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 70 <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_442_442" id="Footnote_442_442"></a><a href="#FNanchor_442_442"><span class="label">[442]</span></a> Quoted by Layard, "Nineveh and its Remains," Vol. II, p.
+457.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_443_443" id="Footnote_443_443"></a><a href="#FNanchor_443_443"><span class="label">[443]</span></a> Cook, "Zeus," I, p. 760.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_444_444" id="Footnote_444_444"></a><a href="#FNanchor_444_444"><span class="label">[444]</span></a> Striking examples of these stories about birth from split
+stones have been given by Perry, "Megalithic Culture of Indonesia,"
+Chapter X, and de Groot's "Religious System of China". It is possible
+that the double meaning of the Egyptian word <i>set</i>, as "stone" and
+"mountain" played a part in originating these stories. I have already
+quoted from the Pyramid Texts the account of the daily birth of the
+sun-god by a splitting of the "mountain" of the dawn. By a pun on this
+word the god's origin might have been interpreted as having taken place
+from a split "stone". The fact that the Great Mother was identified with
+a "mountain" (<i>set</i>) may also have facilitated the homology with the
+other meaning of <i>set</i>, <i>i.e.</i> "a stone".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_445_445" id="Footnote_445_445"></a><a href="#FNanchor_445_445"><span class="label">[445]</span></a> "Incense and Libations".</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_446_446" id="Footnote_446_446"></a><a href="#FNanchor_446_446"><span class="label">[446]</span></a> As the character and attributes of the early goddesses
+became more complex, and contradictory traits were more sharply
+contrasted, the inevitable tendency developed to differentiate the
+goddesses themselves, and provide distinctive names for the new
+personalities thus split off from the common parent. We see this in
+Egypt in the case of Hathor and Sekhet, and in Babylonia in Ishtar and
+Tiamat. But the process of specialization and differentiation might even
+involve a change of sex. There can be no doubt that the <i>god</i> Horus was
+originally a differentiation of certain of the aspects of the
+sky-goddess Hathor, at first as a brother "Eye". But as the <i>king</i> Horus
+was the son of Osiris (as the dead king), when the confusion of the
+attributes of Osiris and Hathor&mdash;the actual father and the divine mother
+of Horus&mdash;made their marriage inevitable, the maternal relationship of
+the goddess to her "brother" was emphasized. But as the Great Mother,
+Hathor was the parent of the universe, and the mother not only of Horus
+but also of his father Osiris. This complicated rationalization made
+Hathor the sister, mother, and grandmother of Horus, and was responsible
+for originating the belief in the incestuous practices of the divine
+family. When the royal family assumed the r&ocirc;le of gods and goddesses
+they were bound by these traditions (which had their origin purely in
+theological sophistry) and were driven to indulge in actual incest, as
+we know from the records of the Egyptian royal family and their
+imitators in other countries. But incest became a royal and divine
+prerogative which was sternly forbidden to mere mortals and regarded as
+a peculiarly detestable sin.</p></div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>The Serpent and the Lioness.</h3>
+
+<p>When the development of the story of the Destruction of Mankind
+necessitated the finding of a human sacrifice and drove the Great Mother
+to homicide, this side of her character was symbolized by identifying
+her with a man-slaying lion and the venomous ur&aelig;us-serpent.</p>
+
+<p>She had previously been represented by such beneficent food-providing
+and life-sustaining creatures as the cow, the sow, and the gazelle
+(antelope or deer): but when she developed into a malevolent creature
+and became the destroyer of mankind it was appropriate that she should
+assume the form of such man-destroyers as the lion and the cobra.</p>
+
+<p>Once the reason for such identifications grew dim, the ur&aelig;us-form of the
+Great Mother became her symbol in either of her aspects, good or bad,
+although the legend of her poison-spitting, man-destroying powers
+persisted.<a name="FNanchor_447_447" id="FNanchor_447_447"></a><a href="#Footnote_447_447" class="fnanchor">[447]</a> The identification of the destroying-goddess with the
+moon, "the Eye of the Sun-god," prepared the way for the rationalization
+of her character as a ur&aelig;us-serpent spitting venom and the sun's Eye
+spitting fire at the Sun-god's enemies. Such was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> goddess of Buto in
+Lower Egypt, whose ur&aelig;us-symbol was worn on the king's forehead, and was
+misinterpreted by the Greeks as not merely a symbolic "eye," but an
+actual median eye upon the king's or the god's forehead.</p>
+
+<p>It is not without special significance that in the ancient legend (see
+Sethe, <i>op. cit.</i>) the lioness-goddess Tefnut was reputed to have come
+from Elephantine (or at any rate the region of Seh&ecirc;l and Biga, which has
+the same significance), which serves to demonstrate her connexion with
+the story of the Destruction of Mankind and to corroborate the inference
+as to its remote antiquity. She was identified with Hathor, Sekhet,
+Bast, and other goddesses.</p>
+
+<p>But the ur&aelig;us was not merely the goddess who destroyed the king's
+enemies and the emblem of his kingship: in course of time the cobra
+became identified with the ruler himself and the dead king, who was the
+god Osiris. When this happened the snake acquired the god's reputation
+of being the controller of water.</p>
+
+<p>The fashionable speculation of modern scholars that the movements of the
+snake naturally suggest rippling water<a name="FNanchor_448_448" id="FNanchor_448_448"></a><a href="#Footnote_448_448" class="fnanchor">[448]</a> and provide "the obvious
+reason" which led many people quite independently the one of the other
+to associate the snake with water, is thus shown to have no foundation
+in fact.</p>
+
+<p>One would have imagined that, if any natural association between snakes
+and water was the reason for this association, a water-snake would have
+been chosen to express the symbolism; or, if it was the mere rippling
+motion of the reptile, that all snakes or any snake would have been
+drawn into the analogy. But primarily only one kind of snake, a cobra,
+was selected<a name="FNanchor_449_449" id="FNanchor_449_449"></a><a href="#Footnote_449_449" class="fnanchor">[449]</a>; and it is not a water snake, and cannot live in or
+under water. It was selected <i>because it was venomous</i> and the
+appropriate symbol of man-slaying.</p>
+
+<p>The circumstances which led to the identification of this particular
+serpent with water were the result of a process of legend-making of so
+arbitrary and eccentric a nature as to make it impossible seriously to
+pretend that so tortuous a ratiocination should have been exactly
+followed to the same unexpected destination also in Crete and Western<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>Europe, in Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia, and in America, without
+prompting the one of the other. No serious investigator who is capable
+of estimating the value of evidence can honestly deny that the belief in
+the serpent's control over water was diffused abroad from one centre
+where a concatenation of peculiar circumstances and beliefs led to the
+identification of the ruler with the cobra and the control of water.</p>
+
+<p>We are surely on safe ground in assuming the improbability of such a
+wholly fortuitous set of events happening a second time and producing
+the same result elsewhere. Thus when we find in India the N&acirc;ga rajas
+identified with the cobra, and credited with the ability to control the
+waters, we can confidently assume that in some way the influence of
+these early Egyptian events made itself felt in India. As we compare the
+details of the N&acirc;ga worship in India<a name="FNanchor_450_450" id="FNanchor_450_450"></a><a href="#Footnote_450_450" class="fnanchor">[450]</a> with early Egyptian beliefs,
+all doubt as to their common origin disappears.</p>
+
+<p>The N&acirc;ga rulers were closely associated with springs, streams, and
+lakes. "To this day the rulers of the Hindu Kush states, Hunza and
+Nagar, though now Mohammedans, are believed, by their subjects, to be
+able to command the elements."</p>
+
+<p>Oldham adds: "This power is still ascribed to the serpent-gods of the
+sun-worshipping countries of China, Manchuria, and Korea, and was so,
+until the introduction of Christianity, in Mexico and Peru". This is put
+forward in support of his argument that the N&acirc;ga kings' "supposed
+ability to control the elements, and especially the waters," arose "from
+their connexion with the sun". But this is not so.<a name="FNanchor_451_451" id="FNanchor_451_451"></a><a href="#Footnote_451_451" class="fnanchor">[451]</a> The belief in
+the Egyptian king's power over water was certainly older than
+sun-worship, which did not begin until Osirian beliefs and the
+personification of the moon as the Great Mother brought the sky-deities
+and the control of water into correlation the one with the other. The
+association of the sun and the serpent in the royal insignia was a later
+development.</p>
+
+<p>The early Egyptian goddess was identified with the ur&aelig;us-serpent in that
+vitally important nodal point of primitive civilization, Buto, in Lower
+Egypt. The earliest deity in Crete and the Eastern Mediter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>ranean seems
+to have been a goddess who was also closely associated with the serpent.
+According to Langdon "the ophidian nature of the earliest Sumerian
+mother-goddess <i>Innini</i> is unmistakable.... She carries the caduceus in
+her hand, two serpents twining about a staff."<a name="FNanchor_452_452" id="FNanchor_452_452"></a><a href="#Footnote_452_452" class="fnanchor">[452]</a></p>
+
+<p>The earliest Indian deities also were goddesses, and the first rulers of
+whom any record has been preserved were regarded as divine cobras, to
+whom was attributed the power of controlling water. These N&acirc;gas, whether
+kings or queens, gods or goddesses, were the prototypes of the Eastern
+Asiatic dragon, whose origin is discussed in Chapter II.</p>
+
+<p>In Japan the earliest sun-deity was a goddess who was identified with a
+snake. Elsewhere in this volume (Chapter II) I have referred to the
+completeness of the transference to America of these Old World ideas of
+the serpent. Right on the route taken by the main stream of cultural
+diffusion across the Pacific we still find in their fully-developed form
+the old beliefs concerning the good Mother Serpent of the ancient
+civilizations (C.&nbsp;E. Fox and F.&nbsp;H. Drew, <i>op. cit. supra</i>, p. 139). She
+could be re-incarnated as a coconut: she controlled crops; she was
+associated with the coming of death into the world, with the
+introduction of agriculture and the discovery of fire. Like her
+predecessors in the West she was also a Mother Pot or Basket that never
+emptied.</p>
+
+<p>All the <i>hiona</i> or <i>figona</i> (<i>i.e.</i> spirits) of San Cristoval have a
+serpent incarnation from Agunua the creator, worshipped by every one, to
+Oharimae and others, only known to particular persons. Other spirits,
+called <i>ataro</i>, might be incarnate in almost any animal. Agunua, who
+took the form of a serpent, was good, not evil (p. 134). Very many
+pools, rocks, water-falls, or large trees were thought to be the abode
+of <i>figona</i>. These serpent spirits could take the form of a stone, or
+retire within a stone, and sacred stones seem to be connected with
+<i>figona</i> rather than with <i>ataro</i> (p. 135). Almost all the local
+<i>figona</i> are represented as female snakes, but Agunua is a male snake
+(p. 137).</p>
+
+<p>As the real significance of the snake's symbolism originated from its
+identification with the Great Mother in her destructive aspect, it is
+not surprising that the snake is the most primitive form of the evil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+dragon. The Babylonian Tiamat was originally represented as a huge
+serpent,<a name="FNanchor_453_453" id="FNanchor_453_453"></a><a href="#Footnote_453_453" class="fnanchor">[453]</a> and throughout the world the serpent is pre-eminently a
+symbol of the evil dragon and the powers of evil.</p>
+
+<p>The serpent that tempted Eve was the homologue both of the mother of
+mankind herself and also of the tree of paradise. It was the
+representative of the dragon-protector of pearls and of other kinds of
+treasure: it was also the goddess who animated the sacred tree as well
+as the protector who attacked all who approached it. It was the evil
+dragon that tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit which brought her
+mortality.</p>
+
+<p>The identification of the Great Mother with the lioness (and the
+secondary association of her husband and son with the lion) was
+responsible for a widespread relationship of these creatures with the
+gods and goddesses in Egypt and the Mediterranean, in Western Asia, in
+Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia [tiger] and America [ocelot, and
+forms borrowed from the conventionalized lions and tigers of the Old
+World].</p>
+
+<p>The account of the Great Mother's attributes and associations throws
+into clear relief certain aspects of the evolution of the dragon which
+were left in a somewhat nebulous state in Chapter II. The earliest form
+assumed by the power of evil was the serpent or the lion, because these
+death-dealing creatures were adopted as symbols of the Great Mother in
+her r&ocirc;le as the Destroyer of Mankind. When Horus was differentiated from
+the Great Mother and became her <i>locum tenens</i>, his falcon (or eagle)
+was blended with Hathor's lioness to make the composite monster which is
+represented on Elamite and Babylonian monuments (see p. 79). But when
+the r&ocirc;le of water as the instrument of destruction became prominent,
+Ea's antelope and fish were blended to make a monster, usually known as
+the "goat-fish," which in India and elsewhere assumed a great variety of
+forms. Some of the varieties of <i>makara</i> were sufficiently like a
+crocodile to be confused or identified with this representative of the
+followers of Set.</p>
+
+<p>The real dragon was created when all three larval types&mdash;serpent,
+eagle-lion, and antelope-fish&mdash;were blended to form a monster with
+bird's feet and wings, a lion's forelimbs and head, the fish's scales,
+the antelope's horns, and a more or less serpentine form of trunk and
+tail,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> and sometimes also of head. Repeated substitution of parts of
+other animals, such as the spiral horn of Amen's ram, a deer's antlers,
+and the elephant's head, led to endless variation in the dragon's
+traits.</p>
+
+<p>The essential unity of the motives and incidents of the myths of all
+peoples and of every age is a token, not of independent origin or the
+result of "the similarity of the working of the human mind," but of
+their derivation from the same ultimate source.</p>
+
+<p>The question naturally arises: what is a myth? The dragon-myth of the
+West is the religion of China. The literature of every religion is
+saturated with the influence of the myth. In what respect does religion
+differ from myth? In Chapter I, I attempted to explain how originally
+science and religion were not differentiated. Both were the outcome of
+man's attempt to peer into the meaning of natural phenomena, and to
+extract from such knowledge practical measures for circumventing fate.
+His ever-insistent aim was to combat danger to life.</p>
+
+<p>Religion was differentiated from science when the measures for
+controlling fate became invested with the assurance of supernatural
+help, for which the growth of a knowledge of natural phenomena made it
+impossible for the mere scientist to be the sponsor. It became a
+question of faith rather than knowledge; and man's instinctive struggle
+against the risk of extinction impelled him to cling to this larger hope
+of salvation, and to embellish it with an ethical and moral significance
+which at first was lacking in the eternal search for the elixir of life.</p>
+
+<p>If religion can be regarded as archaic science enriched with the belief
+in supernatural control, the myth can be regarded as effete religion
+which has been superseded by the growth of a loftier ethical purpose.
+The myth is to religion what alchemy is to chemistry or astrology is to
+astronomy. Like these sciences, religion retains much of the material of
+the cruder phase of thought that is displayed in myth, alchemy, and
+astrology, but it has been refined and elaborated. The dross has been to
+a large extent eliminated, and the pure metal has been moulded into a
+more beautiful and attractive form. In searching for the elixir of life,
+the makers of religion have discovered the philosopher's stone, and with
+its aid have transmuted the base materials of myth into the gold of
+religion.</p>
+
+<p>If we seek for the deep motives which have prompted men in all ages so
+persistently to search for the elixir of life, for some means of
+averting the dangers to which their existence is exposed, it will be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+found in the instinct of self-preservation, which is the fundamental
+factor in the behaviour of all living beings, the means of preservation
+of the life which is their distinctive attribute and the very essence of
+their being.</p>
+
+<p>The dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine powers of
+life-giving; but with the development of a higher conception of
+religious ideals it became relegated to a baser r&ocirc;le, and eventually
+became the symbol of the powers of evil.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_447_447" id="Footnote_447_447"></a><a href="#FNanchor_447_447"><span class="label">[447]</span></a> Sethe, "Zur alt&auml;gyptische Sage von Sonnenaugen das im
+Fremde war," <i>Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde
+&AElig;gyptens</i>, V, p. 23. <span class="trnote">[Transcriber's note: the title of the paper has
+been misprinted. It should read "...vom Sonnenauge, das..."]</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_448_448" id="Footnote_448_448"></a><a href="#FNanchor_448_448"><span class="label">[448]</span></a> See especially the claims put forward by Brinton, which
+have been accepted by Spinden, Joyce, and many other recent writers.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_449_449" id="Footnote_449_449"></a><a href="#FNanchor_449_449"><span class="label">[449]</span></a> Possibly also the Cerastes. At a relatively late period
+other snakes were adopted as surrogates of the cobra and Cerastes.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_450_450" id="Footnote_450_450"></a><a href="#FNanchor_450_450"><span class="label">[450]</span></a> See Oldham, "Sun and Serpent," p. 51 <i>inter alia</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_451_451" id="Footnote_451_451"></a><a href="#FNanchor_451_451"><span class="label">[451]</span></a> Blackman, however, has recently advanced this claim in
+reference to Egypt (<i>op. cit.</i>, <i>Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch&aelig;ology</i>, 1918, p.
+57), as Breasted and others have done before.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_452_452" id="Footnote_452_452"></a><a href="#FNanchor_452_452"><span class="label">[452]</span></a> S. Langdon, "A Seal of Nidaba, the Goddess of
+Vegetation," <i>Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Arch&aelig;ology</i>, Vol.
+XXXVI, 1914, p. 281.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_453_453" id="Footnote_453_453"></a><a href="#FNanchor_453_453"><span class="label">[453]</span></a> L.&nbsp;W. King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 58.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="trnote">Transcriber's Note: Numerous obvious printing errors have been corrected.
+However, inconsistent hyphenation in the original has been retained.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith
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@@ -0,0 +1,11624 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Evolution of the Dragon
+
+Author: G. Elliot Smith
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2007 [EBook #22038]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Colin Bell, Dave Maddock and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file made using scans of public domain works at the
+University of Georgia.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF THE DRAGON
+
+BY G. ELLIOT SMITH, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
+
+PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
+
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+
+Manchester: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
+
+LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY
+
+London, New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Some explanation is due to the reader of the form and scope of these
+elaborations of the lectures which I have given at the John Rylands
+Library during the last three winters.
+
+They deal with a wide range of topics, and the thread which binds them
+more or less intimately into one connected story is only imperfectly
+expressed in the title "The Evolution of the Dragon".
+
+The book has been written in rare moments of leisure snatched from a
+variety of arduous war-time occupations; and it reveals only too plainly
+the traces of this disjointed process of composition. On 23 February,
+1915, I presented to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society
+an essay on the spread of certain customs and beliefs in ancient times
+under the title "On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of
+the Practice of Mummification," and in my Rylands Lecture two weeks
+later I summed up the general conclusions.[1] In view of the lively
+controversies that followed the publication of the former of these
+addresses, I devoted my next Rylands Lecture (9 February, 1916) to the
+discussion of "The Relationship of the Egyptian Practice of
+Mummification to the Development of Civilization". In preparing this
+address for publication in the _Bulletin_ some months later so much
+stress was laid upon the problems of "Incense and Libations" that I
+adopted this more concise title for the elaboration of the lecture which
+forms the first chapter of this book. This will explain why so many
+matters are discussed in that chapter which have little or no
+connexion either with "Incense and Libations" or with "The Evolution
+of the Dragon".
+
+The study of the development of the belief in water's life-giving
+attributes, and their personification in the gods Osiris, Ea, Soma
+[Haoma] and Varuna, prepared the way for the elucidation of the history
+of "Dragons and Rain Gods" in my next lecture (Chapter II). What played
+a large part in directing my thoughts dragon-wards was the discussion of
+certain representations of the Indian Elephant upon Precolumbian
+monuments in, and manuscripts from, Central America (_Nature_, 25 Nov.,
+1915; 16 Dec., 1915; and 27 Jan., 1916). For in the course of
+investigating the meaning of these remarkable designs I discovered that
+the Elephant-headed rain-god of America had attributes identical with
+those of the Indian Indra (and of Varuna and Soma) and the Chinese
+dragon. The investigation of these identities established the fact
+that the American rain-god was transmitted across the Pacific from India
+via Cambodia.
+
+The intensive study of dragons impressed upon me the importance of the
+part played by the Great Mother, especially in her Babylonian _avatar_
+as Tiamat, in the evolution of the famous wonder-beast. Under the
+stimulus of Dr. Rendel Harris's Rylands Lecture on "The Cult of
+Aphrodite," I therefore devoted my next address (14 November, 1917) to
+the "Birth of Aphrodite" and a general discussion of the problems of
+Olympian obstetrics.
+
+Each of these addresses was delivered as an informal demonstration of
+large series of lantern projections; and, as Mr. Guppy insisted upon the
+publication of the lectures in the _Bulletin_, it became necessary,
+as a rule, many months after the delivery of each address, to rearrange
+my material and put into the form of a written narrative the story
+which had previously been told mainly by pictures and verbal comments
+upon them.
+
+In making these elaborations additional facts were added and new points
+of view emerged, so that the printed statements bear little resemblance
+to the lectures of which they pretend to be reports. Such
+transformations are inevitable when one attempts to make a written
+report of what was essentially an ocular demonstration, unless every one
+of the numerous pictures is reproduced.
+
+Each of the first two lectures was printed before the succeeding lecture
+was set up in type. For these reasons there is a good deal of
+repetition, and in successive lectures a wider interpretation of
+evidence mentioned in the preceding addresses. Had it been possible to
+revise the whole book at one time, and if the pressure of other duties
+had permitted me to devote more time to the work, these blemishes might
+have been eliminated and a coherent story made out of what is little
+more than a collection of data and tags of comment. No one is more
+conscious than the writer of the inadequacy of this method of presenting
+an argument of such inherent complexity as the dragon story: but my
+obligation to the Rylands Library gave me no option in the matter: I had
+to attempt the difficult task in spite of all the unpropitious
+circumstances. This book must be regarded, then, not as a coherent
+argument, but merely as some of the raw material for the study of the
+dragon's history. In my lecture (13 November, 1918) on "The Meaning of
+Myths," which will be published in the _Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library_, I have expounded the general conclusions that emerge from the
+studies embodied in these three lectures; and in my forthcoming book,
+"The Story of the Flood," I have submitted the whole mass of evidence to
+examination in detail, and attempted to extract from it the real story
+of mankind's age-long search for the elixir of life.
+
+In the earliest records from Egypt and Babylonia it is customary to
+portray a king's beneficence by representing him initiating irrigation
+works. In course of time he came to be regarded, not merely as the giver
+of the water which made the desert fertile, but as himself the
+personification and the giver of the vital powers of water. The
+fertility of the land and the welfare of the people thus came to be
+regarded as dependent upon the king's vitality. Hence it was not
+illogical to kill him when his virility showed signs of failing and so
+imperilled the country's prosperity. But when the view developed that
+the dead king acquired a new grant of vitality in the other world he
+became the god Osiris, who was able to confer even greater boons of
+life-giving to the land and people than was the case before. He was the
+Nile, and he fertilized the land. The original dragon was a beneficent
+creature, the personification of water, and was identified with kings
+and gods.
+
+But the enemy of Osiris became an evil dragon, and was identified with
+Set.
+
+The dragon-myth, however, did not really begin to develop until an
+ageing king refused to be slain, and called upon the Great Mother, as
+the giver of life, to rejuvenate him. Her only elixir was human blood;
+and to obtain it she was compelled to make a human sacrifice. Her
+murderous act led to her being compared with and ultimately identified
+with a man-slaying lioness or a cobra. The story of the slaying of the
+dragon is a much distorted rumour of this incident; and in the process
+of elaboration the incidents were subjected to every kind of
+interpretation and also confusion with the legendary account of the
+conflict between Horus and Set.
+
+When a substitute was obtained to replace the blood the slaying of a
+human victim was no longer logically necessary: but an explanation had
+to be found for the persistence of this incident in the story. Mankind
+(no longer a mere individual human sacrifice) had become sinful and
+rebellious (the act of rebellion being complaints that the king or god
+was growing old) and had to be destroyed as a punishment for this
+treason. The Great Mother continued to act as the avenger of the king or
+god. But the enemies of the god were also punished by Horus in the
+legend of Horus and Set. The two stories hence became confused the one
+with the other. The king Horus took the place of the Great Mother as the
+avenger of the gods. As she was identified with the moon, he became the
+Sun-god, and assumed many of the Great Mother's attributes, and also
+became her son. In the further development of the myth, when the Sun-god
+had completely usurped his mother's place, the infamy of her deeds of
+destruction seems to have led to her being confused with the rebellious
+men who were now called the followers of Set, Horus's enemy. Thus an
+evil dragon emerged from this blend of the attributes of the Great
+Mother and Set. This is the Babylonian Tiamat. From the amazingly
+complex jumble of this tissue of confusion all the incidents of the
+dragon-myth were derived.
+
+When attributes of the Water-god or his enemy became assimilated with
+those of the Great Mother and the Warrior Sun-god, the animals with
+which these deities were identified came to be regarded individually and
+collectively as concrete expressions of the Water-god's powers. Thus the
+cow and the gazelle, the falcon and the eagle, the lion and the serpent,
+the fish and the crocodile became symbols of the life-giving and the
+life-destroying powers of water, and composite monsters or dragons were
+invented by combining parts of these various creatures to express the
+different manifestations of the vital powers of water. The process of
+elaboration of the attributes of these monsters led to the development
+of an amazingly complex myth: but the story became still further
+involved when the dragon's life-controlling powers became confused with
+man's vital spirit and identified with the good or evil genius which was
+regarded as the guest, welcome or unwelcome, of every individual's body,
+and the arbiter of his destiny. In my remarks on the _ka_ and the
+_fravashi_ I have merely hinted at the vast complexity of these elements
+of confusion.
+
+Had I been familiar with [Archbishop] Soederblom's important
+monograph,[2] when I was writing Chapters I and III, I might have
+attempted to indicate how vital a part the confusion of the individual
+_genius_ with the mythical wonder-beast has played in the history of the
+myths relating to the latter. For the identification of the dragon with
+the vital spirit of the individual explains why the stories of the
+former appealed to the selfish interest of every human being. At the
+time the lecture on "Incense and Libations" was written, I had no idea
+that the problems of the _ka_ and the _fravashi_ had any connexion with
+those relating to the dragon. But in the third chapter a quotation from
+Professor Langdon's account of "A Ritual of Atonement for a Babylonian
+King" indicates that the Babylonian equivalent of the _ka_ and the
+_fravashi_, "my god who walks at my side," presents many points of
+affinity to a dragon.
+
+When in the lecture on "Incense and Libations" I ventured to make the
+daring suggestion that the ideas underlying the Egyptian conception of
+the _ka_ were substantially identical with those entertained by the
+Iranians in reference to the _fravashi_, I was not aware of the fact
+that such a comparison had already been made. In [Archbishop]
+Soederblom's monograph, which contains a wealth of information in
+corroboration of the views set forth in Chapter I, the following
+statement occurs: "L'analyse, faite par M. Brede-Kristensen (_AEgypternes
+forestillinger om livet efter doeden_, 14 ss. Kristiania, 1896) du _ka_
+egyptien, jette une vive lumiere sur notre question, par la frappante
+analogie qui semble exister entre le sens originaire de ces deux termes
+_ka_ et _fravashi_" (p. 58, note 4). "La similitude entre le _ka_ et la
+_fravashi_ a ete signalee deja par Nestor Lhote, _Lettres ecrites
+d'Egypte_, note, selon Maspero, _Etudes de mythologie et d'archeologie
+egyptiennes_, I, 47, note 3."
+
+In support of the view, which I have submitted in Chapter I, that the
+original idea of the _fravashi_, like that of the _ka_, was suggested by
+the placenta and the foetal membranes, I might refer to the specific
+statement (Farvardin-Yasht, XXIII, 1) that "les fravashis tiennent en
+ordre l'enfant dans le sein de sa mere et l'enveloppent de sorte qu'il
+ne meurt pas" (_op. cit._, Soederblom, p. 41, note 1). The _fravashi_
+"nourishes and protects" (p. 57): it is "the nurse" (p. 58): it is
+always feminine (p. 58). It is in fact the placenta, and is also
+associated with the functions of the Great Mother. "Nous voyons dans
+fravashi une personification de la force vitale, conservee et exercee
+aussi apres la mort. La fravashi est le principe de vie, la faculte qu'a
+l'homme de se soutenir par la nourriture, de manger, d'absorber et ainsi
+d'exister et de se developper. Cette etymologie et le role attribute a
+la fravashi dans le developpement de l'embryon, des animaux, des plantes
+rappellent en quelque sorte, comme le remarque M. Foucher, l'idee
+directrice de Claude Bernard. Seulement la fravashi n'a jamais ete une
+abstraction. La fravashi est une puissance vivante, un _homunculus in
+homine_, un etre personnifie comme du reste toutes les sources de vie et
+de mouvement que l'homme non civilise apercoit dans son organisme.
+
+"Il ne faut pas non plus considerer la fravashi comme un double de
+l'homme, elle en est plutot une partie, un hote intime qui continue son
+existence apres la mort aux memes conditions qu'avant, et qui oblige
+les vivants a lui fournir les aliments necessaires" (_op. cit._, p. 59).
+
+Thus the _fravashi_ has the same remarkable associations with
+nourishment and placental functions as the _ka_. As a further suggestion
+of its connexion with the Great Mother as the inaugurator of the year,
+and in virtue of her physiological (uterine) functions the
+moon-controlled measurer of the month, it is important to note that "Le
+19^e jour de chaque mois est egalement consecre aux fravashis en
+general. Le premier mois porte aussi le nom de Farvardin. Quant aux
+formes des fetes mensuelles, elles semblent conformes a celles que nous
+allons rappeler [les fetes celebrees en l'honneur des mortes]" (_op.
+cit._, p. 10).
+
+But the _fravashi_ was not only associated with the Great Mother, but
+also with the Water-god or Good Dragon, for it controlled the waters of
+irrigation and gave fertility to the soil (_op. cit._, p. 36). The
+_fravashi_ was also identified with the third member of the primitive
+Trinity, the Warrior Sun-god, not merely in the general sense as the
+adversary of the powers of evil, but also in the more definite form of
+the Winged Disk (_op. cit._, pp. 67 and 68).
+
+In all these respects the _fravashi_ is brought into close association
+with the dragon, so that in addition to being "the divine and immortal
+element" (_op. cit._, p. 51), it became the genius or spirit that
+possesses a man and shapes his conduct and regulates his behaviour. It
+was in fact the expression of a crude attempt on the part of the early
+psychologists of Iran to explain the working of the instinct of
+self-preservation.
+
+In the text of Chapters I and III I have referred to the Greek,
+Babylonian, Chinese, and Melanesian variants of essentially the same
+conception. Soederblom refers to an interesting parallel among the
+Karens, whose _kelah_ corresponds to the Iranian _fravashi_ (p. 54, Note
+2: compare also A. E. Crawley, "The Idea of the Soul," 1909).
+
+In the development of the dragon-myth astronomical factors played a very
+obtrusive part: but I have deliberately refrained from entering into a
+detailed discussion of them, because they were not primarily the real
+causal agents in the origin of the myth. When the conception of a
+sky-world or a heaven became drawn into the dragon story it came to
+play so prominent a part as to convince most writers that the myth was
+primarily and essentially astronomical. But it is clear that originally
+the myth was concerned solely with the regulation of irrigation systems
+and the search upon earth for an elixir of life.
+
+When I put forward the suggestion that the annual inundation of the Nile
+provided the information for the first measurement of the year, I was
+not aware of the fact that Sir Norman Lockyer ("The Dawn of Astronomy,"
+1894, p. 209), had already made the same claim and substantiated it by
+much fuller evidence than I have brought together here.
+
+In preparing these lectures I have received help from so large a number
+of correspondents that it is difficult to enumerate all of them. But I
+am under a special debt of gratitude to Dr. Alan Gardiner for calling my
+attention to the fact that the common rendering of the Egyptian word
+_didi_ as "mandrake" was unjustifiable, and to Mr. F. Ll. Griffith for
+explaining its true meaning and for lending me the literature relating
+to this matter. Miss Winifred M. Crompton, the Assistant Keeper of the
+Egyptian Department in the Manchester Museum, gave me very material
+assistance by bringing to my attention some very important literature
+which otherwise would have been overlooked; and both she and Miss
+Dorothy Davison helped me with the drawings that illustrate this volume.
+Mr. Wilfrid Jackson gave me much of the information concerning shells
+and cephalopods which forms such an essential part of the argument, and
+he also collected a good deal of the literature which I have made use
+of. Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., of Cambridge, lent me a number of books
+and journals which I was unable to obtain in Manchester; and Mr. Donald
+A. Mackenzie, of Edinburgh, has poured in upon me a stream of
+information, especially upon the folk-lore of Scotland and India. Nor
+must I forget to acknowledge the invaluable help and forbearance of
+Mr. Henry Guppy, of the John Rylands Library, and Mr. Charles W. E.
+Leigh, of the University Library. To all of these and to the still
+larger number of correspondents who have helped me I offer my most
+grateful thanks.
+
+During the three years in which these lectures were compiled I have
+been associated with Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, F.R.S., and Mr. T. H. Pear in
+their psychological work in the military hospitals, and the influence of
+this interesting experience is manifest upon every page of this volume.
+
+But perhaps the most potent factor of all in shaping my views and
+directing my train of thought has been the stimulating influence of Mr.
+W. J. Perry's researches, which are converting ethnology into a real
+science and shedding a brilliant light upon the early history of
+civilization.
+
+G. ELLIOT SMITH.
+
+9 December, 1918.
+
+
+[1: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilisation in the East and in
+America," _Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, January-March, 1916.]
+
+[2: Nathan Soederblom, "Les Fravashis Etude sur les Traces dans le
+Mazdeisme d'une Ancienne Conception sur la Survivance des Morts," Paris,
+1899.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.   INCENSE AND LIBATIONS                                    1
+
+ CHAPTER II.  DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS                                   76
+
+ CHAPTER III. THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE                                 140
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                             FACING PAGE
+ Fig. 1.--The conventional Egyptian representation of the burning
+     of incense and the pouring of libations                           2
+
+ Fig. 2.--Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth, representing a
+     restoration of the early mummy found at Medum by Professor
+     Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of
+     Surgeons in London                                               16
+
+ Fig. 3.--A mould taken from a life-mask found in the Pyramid of Teta
+     by Mr. Quibell                                                   17
+
+ Fig. 4.--Portrait statue of an Egyptian lady of the Pyramid Age      18
+
+ Fig. 5.--Statue of an Egyptian noble of the Pyramid Age to show the
+     technical skill in the representation of life-like eyes          52
+
+ Fig. 6.--Representation of the ancient Mexican worship of the Sun    70
+
+ Fig. 7.--A mediaeval picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its cloud
+     (after the late Professor W. Anderson)                           80
+
+ Fig. 8.--A Chinese Dragon (after de Groot)                           80
+
+ Fig. 9.--Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon                      81
+
+ Fig. 10.--Babylonian Weather God                                     81
+
+ Fig. 11.--Reproduction of a picture in the Maya Codex Troano
+     representing the Rain-god _Chac_ treading upon the Serpent's
+     head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the
+     god is pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-goddess stands upon the
+     Serpent's tail                                                   84
+
+ Fig. 12.--Another representation of the elephant-headed Rain-god. He
+     is holding thunderbolts, conventionalized in a hund-like form.
+     The serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the
+     rain-waters.                                                     84
+
+ Fig. 13.--A page (the 36th) of the Dresden Maya Codex.               86
+
+ Fig. 14.--A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature
+     compounded of the antelope and fish of Ea.--B. The "sea-goat"
+     as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.--C to K--a series of varieties
+     of the _makara_ from the Buddhist Rails at Buddha Gaya and
+     Mathura, circa 70 B.C.--70 A.D., after Cunningham
+     ("Archaeological Survey of India," Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX and
+     XXIX).--L. The _makara_ as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir
+     George Birdwood. It is not difficult to understand how, in the
+     course of the easterly diffusion of culture, such a picture
+     should develop into the Chinese Dragon or the American
+     elephant-headed god                                              88
+
+ Fig. 15.--Photograph of a Chinese embroidery in the Manchester
+     School of Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon
+     Symbol                                                           98
+
+ Fig. 16.--The God of Thunder (from a Chinese drawing (? 17th
+     Century) in the John Rylands Library)                           136
+
+ Fig. 17.--From Joannes de Turrecremata's "Meditationes seu
+     Contemplationes". _Rome: Ulrich Han_, 1467                      137
+
+ Fig. 18.--(a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer showing,
+     perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners
+     of the palette) as a woman with cow's horns and ears (compare
+     Flinders Petrie "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part
+     I, 1900, Plate XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt
+     from which are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in
+     place of the cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This
+     affords corroboration of the view that Hathor assumed the
+     functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell. (b) The
+     king's _sporran_, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the
+     cowries of the primitive girdle                                 150
+
+ Fig. 19.--The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic
+     representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners),
+     one of the ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America
+     (after Maudslay's photograph and diagram). The girdle of the
+     chief figure is decorated both with shells (_Oliva_ or
+     _Conus_) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to
+     the Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18)                151
+
+ Fig. 20.--Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts worn in
+     (a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively. (c) Ancient
+     Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the Bharat
+     Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones,
+     and what  seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of
+     cowries. (d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both
+     shells and heads of deities are represented. The two objects
+     suspended from the belt between the heads recall Hathor's
+     sistra                                                          153
+
+ Fig. 21.--(a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A. Reisner in the
+     temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh
+     Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess Hathor,
+     represented as a woman with the moon and the cow's horns upon
+     her head, and on the left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon
+     her head the jackal-symbol of her nome. (b) The Ecuador
+     Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro-Jaboncillo (after Saville,
+     "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907,
+     Plate XXXVIII). A grotesque composite monster intended to
+     represent a woman (compare Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and
+     XXXIX), whose head is a conventionalized Octopus, whose body
+     is a _Loligo_, and whose limbs are human                        164
+
+ Fig. 22.--(a) _Sepia officinalis_, after Tryon, "Cephalopoda".
+     (b) _Loligo vulgaris_, after Tryon. (c) The position usually
+     adopted by the resting Octopus, after Tryon                     168
+
+ Fig. 23.--A series of Mycenaean conventionalizations of the Argonaut
+     and the Octopus (after Tuempel), which provided the basis for
+     Houssay's theory of the origin of the triskele (a, c, and d)
+     and swastika (b and e), and Siret's theory to explain the
+     design of Bes's face (f and g)                                  172
+
+ Fig. 24.--(a) and (b) Two Mycenaean pots (after Schliemann). (a) The
+     so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the
+     Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
+     (b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a
+     jar upon her head and another in her hands--a three-fold
+     representation of the Great Mother as a pot. (c) A Cretan vase
+     from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a
+     decoration upon the pot instead of in its form, (d), (e), (f),
+     (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after Head)
+     showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with
+     its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f). (i) _Sepia
+     officinalis_ (after Tryon). (h) and (l) The so-called "spouting
+     vases" in the hands of the Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder
+     seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of Tello, after Ward ("Seal
+     Cylinders, etc.," p. 215)                                       180
+
+ Fig 25.--(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I. (b) Persian
+     design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal
+     Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109). (c) Assyrian or
+     Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life in an
+     extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).
+     (d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life,
+     from the design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig.
+     670). (e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of
+     Dungi (Ward, Fig. 663). (f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from
+     Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig. 9). (g) Double axe from a gold
+     signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenae (after Sir Arthur Evans,
+     "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10). (h) Assyrian Winged
+     Disk (Ward, Fig. 608). (i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate"
+     (Ward, Fig. 349). (k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144).
+     (l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely
+     conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 691). (m) Assyrian Tree of Life
+     and Winged Disk in which the god is riding in a crescent
+     replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695)                             184
+
+ Fig. 26.--(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains
+     of the horizon (on which trees are growing) (after Budge,
+     "Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. II, p. 101). (b) The mountains
+     of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a surrogate of
+     Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in
+     the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, _op. cit._, p. 39).
+     (c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the
+     Eastern Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, _op. cit._, p.
+     373). (d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun
+     rising between the Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the
+     mountain giving birth to "the ridiculous mouse"--Smintheus).
+     (e) Part of the design from a Mycenaean vase from Old Salamis
+     (after Evans, p. 9). (f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem
+     from the Idaean Cave, now in the Candia Museum (after Evans,
+     Fig. 25). (g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form
+     of the goddess (after Evans, Fig. 66). (h) Another Mycenaean
+     design comparable with (e). (i) Design from a signet-ring from
+     Mycenae; (after Evans, Fig. 34). (k) The famous sculpture above
+     the Lion Gate at Mycenae                                         188
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+ Fig 1.--Early representation of a "Dragon" compounded of the
+    forepart of an eagle and the hindpart of a lion (from an
+    Archaic Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier)                   79
+
+ Fig. 2.--The earliest Babylonian conception of the Dragon Tiamat
+    (from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after L. W. King)    79
+
+ Fig. 3.--Wm. Dennis's drawing of the "Flying Dragon" depicted on the
+    rocks at Piasa, Illinois                                          94
+
+ Fig. 4.--Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh)                    155
+
+ Fig. 5.--_Pterocera bryonia_, the Red Sea spider-shell              170
+
+ Fig. 6.--(a) Picture of a bowl of water--the hieroglyphic sign
+     equivalent to _hm_ (the word _hmt_ means "woman"--Griffith,
+     "Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29). (b) "A
+     basket of sycamore figs"--Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Vol.
+     I, p. 323. (c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic
+     signs meaning "wife" and are apparently taken from (b). But (c)
+     is identical with (i), which, according to Griffith (p. 14),
+     represents a bivalve shell (g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more
+     usually placed obliquely (h). The varying conventionalizations
+     of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f) (Griffith,
+     "Hieroglyphics," p. 34). (k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which
+     is a phonetic equivalent of the sign (h), and, according to
+     Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 26), "is probably derived from
+     the same root, on account of its shell-like outline". (l) The
+     hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as _Nu_ and
+     _Nut_. (m) A "pomegranate" (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a
+     sacred column at Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and
+     Pillar Cult," p. 46). (n) The form of the body of an octopus as
+     conventionalized on the coins of Central Greece (compare Fig.
+     24 (d))                                                         179
+
+ Fig. 7.--(a) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus
+     emerging from a lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis).
+     (b) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and
+     animistically identified with them either as an instrument of
+     life-giving or destruction. (c) Conventionalized lily--the
+     prototype of the trident and the thunder-weapon. (d) A
+     water-plant associated with the Nile-gods                       180
+
+ Fig. 8.--(a) "Ceremonial forked object," or "magic wand," used in
+     the ceremony of "opening the mouth," possibly connected with
+     (b) (a bicornuate uterus), according to Griffith
+     ("Hieroglyphics," p. 60). (c) The Egyptian sign for a key.
+     (d) The double axe of Crete and Egypt                           191
+
+ Fig. 9.--The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign _nub_               222
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+INCENSE AND LIBATIONS.[3]
+
+
+The dragon was primarily a personification of the life-giving and
+life-destroying powers of water. This chapter is concerned with the
+genesis of this biological theory of water and its relationship to the
+other germs of civilisation.
+
+It is commonly assumed that many of the elementary practices of
+civilization, such as the erection of rough stone buildings, whether
+houses, tombs, or temples, the crafts of the carpenter and the
+stonemason, the carving of statues, the customs of pouring out libations
+or burning incense, are such simple and obvious procedures that any
+people might adopt them without prompting or contact of any kind with
+other populations who do the same sort of things. But if such apparently
+commonplace acts be investigated they will be found to have a long and
+complex history. None of these things that seem so obvious to us was
+attempted until a multitude of diverse circumstances became focussed in
+some particular community, and constrained some individual to make the
+discovery. Nor did the quality of obviousness become apparent even when
+the enlightened discoverer had gathered up the threads of his
+predecessor's ideas and woven them into the fabric of a new invention.
+For he had then to begin the strenuous fight against the opposition of
+his fellows before he could induce them to accept his discovery. He had,
+in fact, to contend against their preconceived ideas and their lack of
+appreciation of the significance of the progress he had made before he
+could persuade them of its "obviousness". That is the history of most
+inventions since the world began. But it is begging the question to
+pretend that because tradition has made such inventions seem simple and
+obvious to us it is unnecessary to inquire into their history or to
+assume that any people or any individual simply did these things without
+any instruction when the spirit moved it or him so to do.
+
+The customs of burning incense and making libations in religious
+ceremonies are so widespread and capable of being explained in such
+plausible, though infinitely diverse, ways that it has seemed
+unnecessary to inquire more deeply into their real origin and
+significance. For example, Professor Toy[4] disposes of these questions
+in relation to incense in a summary fashion. He claims that "when burnt
+before the deity" it is "to be regarded as food, though in course of
+time, when the recollection of this primitive character was lost, a
+conventional significance was attached to the act of burning. A more
+refined period demanded more refined food for the gods, such as ambrosia
+and nectar, but these also were finally given up."
+
+This, of course, is a purely gratuitous assumption, or series of
+assumptions, for which there is no real evidence. Moreover, even if
+there were any really early literature to justify such statements, they
+explain nothing. Incense-burning is just as mysterious if Prof. Toy's
+claim be granted as it was before.
+
+But a bewildering variety of other explanations, for all of which the
+merit of being "simple and obvious" is claimed, have been suggested. The
+reader who is curious about these things will find a luxurious crop of
+speculations by consulting a series of encyclopaedias.[5] I shall content
+myself by quoting only one more. "Frankincense and other spices were
+indispensable in temples where bloody sacrifices formed part of the
+religion. The atmosphere of Solomon's temple must have been that of a
+sickening slaughter-house, and the fumes of incense could alone enable
+the priests and worshippers to support it. This would apply to thousands
+of other temples through Asia, and doubtless the palaces of kings and
+nobles suffered from uncleanliness and insanitary arrangements and
+required an antidote to evil smells to make them endurable."[6]
+
+It is an altogether delightful anachronism to imagine that religious
+ritual in the ancient and aromatic East was inspired by such
+squeamishness as a British sanitary inspector of the twentieth century
+might experience!
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.--The conventional Egyptian representation of the
+Burning of Incense and the Pouring of Libations (Period of the New
+Empire)--after Lepsius]
+
+But if there are these many diverse and mutually destructive reasons in
+explanation of the origin of incense-burning, it follows that the
+meaning of the practice cannot be so "simple and obvious". For scholars
+in the past have been unable to agree as to the sense in which these
+adjectives should be applied.
+
+But no useful purpose would be served by enumerating a collection of
+learned fallacies and exposing their contradictions when the true
+explanation has been provided in the earliest body of literature that
+has come down from antiquity. I refer to the Egyptian "Pyramid Texts".
+
+Before this ancient testimony is examined certain general principles
+involved in the discussion of such problems should be considered. In
+this connexion it is appropriate to quote the apt remarks made, in
+reference to the practice of totemism, by Professor Sollas.[7] "If it is
+difficult to conceive how such ideas ... originated at all, it is still
+more difficult to understand how they should have arisen repeatedly and
+have developed in much the same way among races evolving independently
+in different environments. It is at least simpler to suppose that all
+[of them] have a common source ... and may have been carried ... to
+remote parts of the world."
+
+I do not think that anyone who conscientiously and without bias examines
+the evidence relating to incense-burning, the arbitrary details of the
+ritual and the peculiar circumstances under which it is practised in
+different countries, can refuse to admit that so artificial a custom
+must have been dispersed throughout the world from some one centre where
+it was devised.
+
+The remarkable fact that emerges from an examination of these so-called
+"obvious explanations" of ethnological phenomena is the failure on the
+part of those who are responsible for them to show any adequate
+appreciation of the nature of the problems to be solved. They know that
+incense has been in use for a vast period of time, and that the practice
+of burning it is very widespread. They have been so familiarized with
+the custom and certain more or less vague excuses for its perpetuation
+that they show no realization of how strangely irrational and devoid of
+obvious meaning the procedure is. The reasons usually given in
+explanation of its use are for the most part merely paraphrases of the
+traditional meanings that in the course of history have come to be
+attached to the ritual act or the words used to designate it. Neither
+the ethnologist nor the priestly apologist will, as a rule, admit that
+he does not know why such ritual acts as pouring out water or burning
+incense are performed, and that they are wholly inexplicable and
+meaningless to him. Nor will they confess that the real inspiration to
+perform such rites is the fact of their predecessors having handed them
+down as sacred acts of devotion, the meaning of which has been entirely
+forgotten during the process of transmission from antiquity. Instead of
+this they simply pretend that the significance of such acts is obvious.
+Stripped of the glamour which religious emotion and sophistry have woven
+around them, such pretended explanations become transparent subterfuges,
+none the less real because the apologists are quite innocent of any
+conscious intention to deceive either themselves or their disciples. It
+should be sufficient for them that such ritual acts have been handed
+down by tradition as right and proper things to do. But in response to
+the instinctive impulse of all human beings, the mind seeks for reasons
+in justification of actions of which the real inspiration is unknown.
+
+It is a common fallacy to suppose that men's actions are inspired mainly
+by reason. The most elementary investigation of the psychology of
+everyday life is sufficient to reveal the truth that man is not, as a
+rule, the pre-eminently rational creature he is commonly supposed to
+be.[8] He is impelled to most of his acts by his instincts, the
+circumstances of his personal experience, and the conventions of the
+society in which he has grown up. But once he has acted or decided upon
+a course of procedure he is ready with excuses in explanation and
+attempted justification of his motives. In most cases these are not the
+real reasons, for few human beings attempt to analyse their motives or
+in fact are competent without help to understand their own feelings and
+the real significance of their actions. There is implanted in man the
+instinct to interpret for his own satisfaction his feelings and
+sensations, i.e. the meaning of his experience. But of necessity this is
+mostly of the nature of rationalizing, i.e. providing satisfying
+interpretations of thoughts and decisions the real meaning of which
+is hidden.
+
+Now it must be patent that the nature of this process of rationalization
+will depend largely upon the mental make-up of the individual--of the
+body of knowledge and traditions with which his mind has become stored
+in the course of his personal experience. The influences to which he has
+been exposed, daily and hourly, from the time of his birth onward,
+provide the specific determinants of most of his beliefs and views.
+Consciously and unconsciously he imbibes certain definite ideas, not
+merely of religion, morals, and politics, but of what is the correct and
+what is the incorrect attitude to assume in most of the circumstances of
+his daily life. These form the staple currency of his beliefs and his
+conversation. Reason plays a surprisingly small part in this process,
+for most human beings acquire from their fellows the traditions of their
+society which relieves them of the necessity of undue thought. The very
+words in which the accumulated traditions of his community are conveyed
+to each individual are themselves charged with the complex symbolism
+that has slowly developed during the ages, and tinges the whole of his
+thoughts with their subtle and, to most men, vaguely appreciated shades
+of meaning.[9] During this process of acquiring the fruits of his
+community's beliefs and experiences every individual accepts without
+question a vast number of apparently simple customs and ideas. He is apt
+to regard them as obvious, and to assume that reason led him to accept
+them or be guided by them, although when the specific question is put to
+him he is unable to give their real history.
+
+Before leaving these general considerations[10] I want to emphasize
+certain elementary facts of psychology which are often ignored by those
+who investigate the early history of civilization.
+
+First, the multitude and the complexity of the circumstances that are
+necessary to lead men to make even the simplest invention render the
+concatenation of all of these conditions wholly independently on a
+second occasion in the highest degree improbable. Until very definite
+and conclusive evidence is forthcoming in any individual case it can
+safely be assumed that no ethnologically significant innovation in
+customs or beliefs has ever been made twice.
+
+Those critics who have recently attempted to dispose of this claim by
+referring to the work of the Patent Office thereby display a singular
+lack of appreciation of the real point at issue. For the ethnological
+problem is concerned with different populations who are assumed _not_ to
+share any common heritage of acquired knowledge, nor to have had any
+contact, direct or indirect, the one with the other. But the inventors
+who resort to the Patent Office are all of them persons supplied with
+information from the storehouse of our common civilization; and the
+inventions which they seek to protect from imitation by others are
+merely developments of the heritage of all civilized peoples. Even when
+similar inventions are made apparently independently under such
+circumstances, in most cases they can be explained by the fact that two
+investigators have followed up a line of advance which has been
+determined by the development of the common body of knowledge.
+
+This general discussion suggests another factor in the working of the
+human mind.
+
+When certain vital needs or the force of circumstances compel a man to
+embark upon a certain train of reasoning or invention the results to
+which his investigations lead depend upon a great many circumstances.
+Obviously the range of his knowledge and experience and the general
+ideas he has acquired from his fellows will play a large part in shaping
+his inferences. It is quite certain that even in the simplest problem of
+primitive physics or biology his attention will be directed only to some
+of, and not all, the factors involved, and that the limitations of his
+knowledge will permit him to form a wholly inadequate conception even of
+the few factors that have obtruded themselves upon his attention. But he
+may frame a working hypothesis in explanation of the factors he had
+appreciated, which may seem perfectly exhaustive and final, as well as
+logical and rational to him, but to those who come after him, with a
+wider knowledge of the properties of matter and the nature of living
+beings, and a wholly different attitude towards such problems, the
+primitive man's solution may seem merely a ludicrous travesty.
+
+But once a tentative explanation of one group of phenomena has been made
+it is the method of science no less than the common tendency of the
+human mind to buttress this theory with analogies and fancied
+homologies. In other words the isolated facts are built up into a
+generalisation. It is important to remember that in most cases this
+mental process begins very early; so that the analogies play a very
+obtrusive part in the building up of theories. As a rule a multitude of
+such influences play a part consciously or unconsciously in shaping any
+belief. Hence the historian is faced with the difficulty, often quite
+insuperable, of ascertaining (among scores of factors that definitely
+played some part in the building up of a great generalization) the real
+foundation upon which the vast edifice has been erected. I refer to
+these elementary matters here for two reasons. First, because they are
+so often overlooked by ethnologists; and secondly, because in these
+pages I shall have to discuss a series of historical events in which a
+bewildering number of factors played their part. In sifting out a
+certain number of them, I want to make it clear that I do not pretend to
+have discovered more than a small minority of the most conspicuous
+threads in the complex texture of the fabric of early human thought.
+
+Another fact that emerges from these elementary psychological
+considerations is the vital necessity of guarding against the
+misunderstandings necessarily involved in the use of words. In the
+course of long ages the originally simple connotation of the words used
+to denote many of our ideas has become enormously enriched with a
+meaning which in some degree reflects the chequered history of the
+expression of human aspirations. Many writers who in discussing ancient
+peoples make use of such terms, for example, as "soul," "religion," and
+"gods," without stripping them of the accretions of complex symbolism
+that have collected around them within more recent times, become
+involved in difficulty and misunderstanding.
+
+For example, the use of the terms "soul" or "soul-substance" in much of
+the literature relating to early or relatively primitive people is
+fruitful of misunderstanding. For it is quite clear from the context
+that in many cases such people meant to imply nothing more than "life"
+or "vital principle," the absence of which from the body for any
+prolonged period means death. But to translate such a word simply as
+"life" is inadequate because all of these people had some theoretical
+views as to its identity with the "breath" or to its being in the nature
+of a material substance or essence. It is naturally impossible to find
+any one word or phrase in our own language to express the exact idea,
+for among every people there are varying shades of meaning which cannot
+adequately express the symbolism distinctive of each place and society.
+To meet this insuperable difficulty perhaps the term "vital essence" is
+open to least objection.
+
+In my last Rylands lecture[11] I sketched in rough outline a tentative
+explanation of the world-wide dispersal of the elements of the
+civilization that is now the heritage of the world at large, and
+referred to the part played by Ancient Egypt in the development of
+certain arts, customs, and beliefs. On the present occasion I propose to
+examine certain aspects of this process of development in greater
+detail, and to study the far-reaching influence exerted by the Egyptian
+practice of mummification, and the ideas that were suggested by it, in
+starting new trains of thought, in stimulating the invention of arts
+and crafts that were unknown before then, and in shaping the complex
+body of customs and beliefs that were the outcome of these potent
+intellectual ferments.
+
+In speaking of the relationship of the practice of mummification to the
+development of civilization, however, I have in mind not merely the
+influence it exerted upon the moulding of culture, but also the part
+played by the trend of philosophy in the world at large in determining
+the Egyptian's conceptions of the wider significance of embalming, and
+the reaction of these effects upon the current doctrines of the meaning
+of natural phenomena.
+
+No doubt it will be asked at the outset, what possible connexion can
+there be between the practice of so fantastic and gruesome an art as the
+embalming of the dead and the building up of civilization? Is it
+conceivable that the course of the development of the arts and crafts,
+the customs and beliefs, and the social and political organizations--in
+fact any of the essential elements of civilization--has been deflected a
+hair's breadth to the right or left as the outcome, directly or
+indirectly, of such a practice?
+
+In previous essays and lectures[12] I have indicated how intimately this
+custom was related, not merely to the invention of the arts and crafts
+of the carpenter and stonemason and all that is implied in the building
+up of what Professor Lethaby has called the "matrix of civilization,"
+but also to the shaping of religious beliefs and ritual practices,
+which developed in association with the evolution of the temple and the
+conception of a material resurrection. I have also suggested the
+far-reaching significance of an indirect influence of the practice of
+mummification in the history of civilization. It was mainly responsible
+for prompting the earliest great maritime expeditions of which the
+history has been preserved.[13] For many centuries the quest of resins
+and balsams for embalming and for use in temple ritual, and wood for
+coffin-making, continued to provide the chief motives which induced the
+Egyptians to undertake sea-trafficking in the Mediterranean and the Red
+Sea. The knowledge and experience thus acquired ultimately made it
+possible for the Egyptians and their pupils to push their adventures
+further afield. It is impossible adequately to estimate the vastness of
+the influence of such intercourse, not merely in spreading abroad
+throughout the world the germs of our common civilization, but also, by
+bringing into close contact peoples of varied histories and traditions,
+in stimulating progress. Even if the practice of mummification had
+exerted no other noteworthy effect in the history of the world, this
+fact alone would have given it a pre-eminent place.
+
+Another aspect of the influence of mummification I have already
+discussed, and do not intend to consider further in this lecture. I
+refer to the manifold ways in which it affected the history of medicine
+and pharmacy. By accustoming the Egyptians, through thirty centuries, to
+the idea of cutting the human corpse, it made it possible for Greek
+physicians of the Ptolemaic and later ages to initiate in Alexandria the
+systematic dissection of the human body which popular prejudice forbade
+elsewhere, and especially in Greece itself. Upon this foundation the
+knowledge of anatomy and the science of medicine has been built up.[14]
+But in many other ways the practice of mummification exerted
+far-reaching effects, directly and indirectly, upon the development of
+medical and pharmaceutical knowledge and methods.[15]
+
+There is then this _prima-facie_ evidence that the Egyptian practice of
+mummification was closely related to the development of architecture,
+maritime trafficking, and medicine. But what I am chiefly concerned with
+in the present lecture is the discussion of the much vaster part it
+played in shaping the innermost beliefs of mankind and directing the
+course of the religious aspirations and the scientific opinions, not
+merely of the Egyptians themselves, but also of the world at large, for
+many centuries afterward.
+
+It had a profound influence upon the history of human thought. The vague
+and ill-defined ideas of physiology and psychology, which had probably
+been developing since Aurignacian times[16] in Europe, were suddenly
+crystallized into a coherent structure and definite form by the musings
+of the Egyptian embalmer. But at the same time, if the new philosophy
+did not find expression in the invention of the first deities, it gave
+them a much more concrete form than they had previously presented, and
+played a large part in the establishment of the foundations upon which
+all religious ritual was subsequently built up, and in the initiation of
+a priesthood to administer the rites which were suggested by the
+practice of mummification.
+
+
+[3: An elaboration of a Lecture on the relationship of the Egyptian
+practice of mummification to the development of civilization delivered
+in the John Rylands Library, on 9 February, 1916.]
+
+[4: "Introduction to the History of Religions," p. 486.]
+
+[5: He might start upon this journey of adventure by reading the article
+on "Incense" in Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_.]
+
+[6: Samuel Laing, "Human Origins," Revised by Edward Clodd, 1903, p.
+38.]
+
+[7: "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, pp. 234 and 235.]
+
+[8: On this subject see Elliot Smith and Pear, "Shell Shock and its
+Lessons," Manchester University Press, 1917, p. 59.]
+
+[9: An interesting discussion of this matter by the late Professor
+William James will be found in his "Principles of Psychology," Vol. I,
+pp. 261 _et seq._]
+
+[10: For a fuller discussion of certain phases of this matter see my
+address on "Primitive Man," in the _Proceedings of the British Academy_,
+1917, especially pp. 23-50.]
+
+[11: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
+America," _The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, Jan.-March, 1916.]
+
+[12: "The Migrations of Early Culture," 1915, Manchester University
+Press: "The Evolution of the Rock-cut Tomb and the Dolmen," _Essays and
+Studies Presented to William Ridgeway_, Cambridge, 1913, p. 493:
+"Oriental Tombs and Temples," _Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and
+Oriental Society_, 1914-1915, p. 55.]
+
+[13: "Ships as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture," Manchester
+University Press, 1917, p. 37.]
+
+[14: "Egyptian Mummies," _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol. I, Part
+III, July, 1914, p. 189.]
+
+[15: Such, for example, as its influence in the acquisition of the means
+of preserving the tissues of the body, which has played so large a part
+in the development of the sciences of anatomy, pathology, and in fact
+biology in general. The practice of mummification was largely
+responsible for the attainment of a knowledge of the properties of many
+drugs and especially of those which restrain putrefactive changes. But
+it was not merely in the acquisition of a knowledge of material facts
+that mummification exerted its influence. The humoral theory of
+pathology and medicine, which prevailed for so many centuries and the
+effects of which are embalmed for all time in our common speech, was
+closely related in its inception to the ideas which I shall discuss in
+these pages. The Egyptians themselves did not profit to any appreciable
+extent from the remarkable opportunities which their practice of
+embalming provided for studying human anatomy. The sanctity of these
+ritual acts was fatal to the employment of such opportunities to gain
+knowledge. Nor was the attitude of mind of the Egyptians such as to
+permit the acquisition of a real appreciation of the structure of the
+body.]
+
+[16: See my address, "Primitive Man," _Proc. Brit. Academy_, 1917.]
+
+
+Beginning of Stone-Working.
+
+During the last few years I have repeatedly had occasion to point out
+the fundamental fallacy underlying much of the modern speculation in
+ethnology, and I have no intention of repeating these strictures
+here.[17] But it is a significant fact that, when one leaves the
+writings of professed ethnologists and turns to the histories of their
+special subjects written by scholars in kindred fields of investigation,
+views such as I have been setting forth will often be found to be
+accepted without question or comment as the obvious truth.
+
+There is an excellent little book entitled "Architecture," written by
+Professor W. R. Lethaby for the Home University Library, that affords an
+admirable illustration of this interesting fact. I refer to this
+particular work because it gives lucid expression to some of the ideas
+that I wish to submit for consideration. "Two arts have changed the
+surface of the world, Agriculture and Architecture" (p. 1). "To a large
+degree architecture" [which he defines as "the matrix of civilization"]
+"is an Egyptian art" (p. 66): for in Egypt "we shall best find the
+origins of architecture as a whole" (p. 21).
+
+Nevertheless Professor Lethaby bows the knee to current tradition when
+he makes the wholly unwarranted assumption that Egypt probably learnt
+its art from Babylonia. He puts forward this remarkable claim in spite
+of his frank confession that "little or nothing is known of a primitive
+age in Mesopotamia. At a remote time the art of Babylonia was that of a
+civilized people. As has been said, there is a great similarity between
+this art and that of dynastic times in Egypt. Yet it appears that Egypt
+borrowed of Asia, rather than the reverse." [He gives no reasons for
+this opinion, for which there is no evidence, except possibly the
+invention of bricks for building.] "If the origins of art in Babylonia
+were as fully known as those in Egypt, the story of architecture might
+have to begin in Asia instead of Egypt" (p. 67).
+
+But later on he speaks in a more convincing manner of the known facts
+when he says (p. 82):--
+
+When Greece entered on her period of high-strung life the time of first
+invention in the arts was over--the heroes of Craft, like Tubal Cain and
+Daedalus, necessarily belong to the infancy of culture. The phenomenon
+of Egypt could not occur again; the mission of Greece was rather to
+settle down to a task of gathering, interpreting, and bringing to
+perfection Egypt's gifts. The arts of civilization were never developed
+in watertight compartments, as is shown by the uniformity of custom over
+the modern world. Further, if any new nation enters into the circle of
+culture it seems that, like Japan, it must 'borrow the capital'. The art
+of Greece could hardly have been more self-originated than is the
+science of Japan. Ideas of the temple and of the fortified town must
+have spread from the East, the square-roomed house, columnar orders,
+fine masonry, were all Egyptian.
+
+Elsewhere[18] I have pointed out that it was the importance which the
+Egyptian came to attach to the preservation of the dead and to the
+making of adequate provision for the deceased's welfare that gradually
+led to the aggrandisement of the tomb. In course of time this impelled
+him to cut into the rock,[19] and, later still, suggested the
+substitution of stone for brick in erecting the chapel of offerings
+above ground. The Egyptian burial customs were thus intimately related
+to the conceptions that grew up with the invention of embalming. The
+evidence in confirmation of this is so precise that every one who
+conscientiously examines it must be forced to the conclusion that man
+did not instinctively select stone as a suitable material with which to
+erect temples and houses, and forthwith begin to quarry and shape it for
+such purposes.
+
+There was an intimate connexion between the first use of stone for
+building and the practice of mummification. It was probably for this
+reason, and not from any abstract sense of "wonder at the magic of art,"
+as Professor Lethaby claims, that "ideas of sacredness, of ritual
+rightness, of magic stability and correspondence with the universe,
+and of perfection of form and proportion" came to be associated with
+stone buildings.
+
+At first stone was used only for such sacred purposes, and the pharaoh
+alone was entitled to use it for his palaces, in virtue of the fact that
+he was divine, the son and incarnation on earth of the sun-god. It was
+only when these Egyptian practices were transplanted to other countries,
+where these restrictions did not obtain, that the rigid wall of
+convention was broken down.
+
+Even in Rome until well into the Christian era "the largest domestic and
+civil buildings were of plastered brick". "Wrought masonry seems to have
+been demanded only for the great monuments, triumphal arches, theatres,
+temples and above all for the Coliseum." (Lethaby, _op. cit._ p. 120).
+
+Nevertheless Rome was mainly responsible for breaking down the hieratic
+tradition which forbade the use of stone for civil purposes. "In Roman
+architecture the engineering element became paramount. It was this which
+broke the moulds of tradition and recast construction into modern form,
+and made it free once more" (p. 130).
+
+But Egypt was not only responsible for inaugurating the use of stone for
+building. For another forty centuries she continued to be the inventor
+of new devices in architecture. From time to time methods of building
+which developed in Egypt were adopted by her neighbours and spread far
+and wide. The shaft-tombs and _mastabas_ of the Egyptian Pyramid Age
+were adopted in various localities in the region of the Eastern
+Mediterranean,[20] with certain modifications in each place, and in turn
+became the models which were roughly copied in later ages by the
+wandering dolmen-builders. The round tombs of Crete and Mycenae were
+clearly only local modifications of their square prototypes, the
+Egyptian Pyramids of the Middle Kingdom. "While this AEgean art gathered
+from, and perhaps gave to, Egypt, it passed on its ideals to the north
+and west of Europe, where the productions of the Bronze Age clearly show
+its influence" (Lethaby, p. 78) in the chambered mounds of the Iberian
+peninsula and Brittany, of New Grange in Ireland and of Maes Howe in the
+Orkneys.[21] In the East the influence of these AEgean modifications may
+possibly be seen in the Indian _stupas_ and the _dagabas_ of Ceylon,
+just as the stone stepped pyramids there reveal the effects of contact
+with the civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt.
+
+Professor Lethaby sees the influence of Egypt in the orientation of
+Christian churches (p. 133), as well as in many of their structural
+details (p. 142); in the domed roofs, the iconography, the symbolism,
+and the decoration of Byzantine architecture (p. 138); and in Mohammedan
+buildings wherever they are found.
+
+For it was not only the architecture of Greece, Rome, and Christendom
+that received its inspiration from Egypt, but that of Islam also. These
+buildings were not, like the religion itself, in the main Arabic in
+origin. "Primitive Arabian art itself is quite negligible. When the new
+strength of the followers of the Prophet was consolidated with great
+rapidity into a rich and powerful empire, it took over the arts and
+artists of the conquered lands, extending from North Africa to Persia"
+(p. 158); and it is known how this influence spread as far west as Spain
+and as far east as Indonesia. "The Pharos at Alexandria, the great
+lighthouse built about 280 B.C., almost appears to have been the parent
+of all high and isolated towers.... Even on the coast of Britain, at
+Dover, we had a Pharos which was in some degree an imitation of the
+Alexandrian one." The Pharos at Boulogne, the round towers of Ravenna,
+and the imitations of it elsewhere in Europe, even as far as Ireland,
+are other examples of its influence. But in addition the Alexandrian
+Pharos had "as great an effect as the prototype of Eastern minarets as
+it had for Western towers" (p. 115).
+
+I have quoted so extensively from Professor Lethaby's brilliant little
+book to give this independent testimony of the vastness of the influence
+exerted by Egypt during a span of nearly forty centuries in creating and
+developing the "matrix of civilization". Most of this wider dispersal
+abroad was effected by alien peoples, who transformed their gifts from
+Egypt before they handed on the composite product to some more distant
+peoples. But the fact remains that the great centre of original
+inspiration in architecture was Egypt.
+
+The original incentive to the invention of this essentially Egyptian art
+was the desire to protect and secure the welfare of the dead. The
+importance attached to this aim was intimately associated with the
+development of the practice of mummification.
+
+With this tangible and persistent evidence of the general scheme of
+spread of the arts of building I can now turn to the consideration of
+some of the other, more vital, manifestations of human thought and
+aspirations, which also, like the "matrix of civilization" itself, grew
+up in intimate association with the practice of embalming the dead.
+
+I have already mentioned Professor Lethaby's reference to architecture
+and agriculture as the two arts that have changed the surface of the
+world. It is interesting to note that the influence of these two
+ingredients of civilization was diffused abroad throughout the world in
+intimate association the one with the other. In most parts of the world
+the use of stone for building and Egyptian methods of architecture made
+their first appearance along with the peculiarly distinctive form of
+agriculture and irrigation so intimately associated with early Babylonia
+and Egypt.[22]
+
+But agriculture also exerted a most profound influence in shaping the
+early Egyptian body of beliefs.
+
+I shall now call attention to certain features of the earliest mummies,
+and then discuss how the ideas suggested by the practice of the art of
+embalming the dead were affected by the early theories of agriculture
+and the mutual influence they exerted one upon the other.
+
+
+[17: See, however, _op. cit. supra_; also "The Origin of the
+Pre-Columbian Civilization of America," _Science_, N.S., Vol. XLV, No.
+1158, pp. 241-246, 9 March, 1917.]
+
+[18: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+[19: For the earliest evidence of the cutting of stone for architectural
+purposes, see my statement in the _Report of the British Association for
+1914_, p. 212.]
+
+[20: Especially in Crete, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Southern Russia,
+and the North African Littoral.]
+
+[21: For an account of the evidence relating to these monuments, with
+full bibliographical references, see Dechelette, "Manuel d'Archeologie
+prehistorique Celtique et Gallo-Romaine," T. 1, 1912, pp. 390 _et seq._;
+also Sophus Mueller, "Urgeschichte Europas," 1905, pp. 74 and 75; and
+Louis Siret, "Les Cassiterides et l'Empire Colonial des Pheniciens,"
+_L'Anthropologie_, T. 20, 1909, p. 313.]
+
+[22: W. J. Perry, "The Geographical Distribution of Terraced Cultivation
+and Irrigation," _Memoirs and Proc. Manch. Lit. and Phil. Soc._, Vol.
+60, 1916.]
+
+
+The Origin of Embalming.
+
+I have already explained[23] how the increased importance that came to
+be attached to the corpse as the means of securing a continuance of
+existence led to the aggrandizement of the tomb. Special care was taken
+to protect the dead and this led to the invention of coffins, and to the
+making of a definite tomb, the size of which rapidly increased as more
+and more ample supplies of food and other offerings were made. But the
+very measures thus taken the more efficiently to protect and tend the
+dead defeated the primary object of all this care. For, when buried in
+such an elaborate tomb, the body no longer became desiccated and
+preserved by the forces of nature, as so often happened when it was
+placed in a simple grave directly in the hot dry sand.
+
+It is of fundamental importance in the argument set forth here to
+remember that these factors came into operation before the time of the
+First Dynasty. They were responsible for impelling the Proto-Egyptians
+not only to invent the wooden coffin, the stone sarcophagus, the
+rock-cut tomb, and to begin building in stone, but also to devise
+measures for the artificial preservation of the body.
+
+But in addition to stimulating the development of the first real
+architecture and the art of mummification other equally far-reaching
+results in the region of ideas and beliefs grew out of these practices.
+
+From the outset the Egyptian embalmer was clearly inspired by two
+ideals: (a) to preserve the actual tissues of the body with a minimum
+disturbance of its superficial appearance; and (b) to preserve a
+likeness of the deceased as he was in life. At first it was naturally
+attempted to make this simulacrum of the body itself if it were
+possible, or alternatively, when this ideal was found to be
+unattainable, from its wrappings or by means of a portrait statue. It
+was soon recognized that it was beyond the powers of the early embalmer
+to succeed in mummifying the body itself so as to retain a recognizable
+likeness to the man when alive: although from time to time such attempts
+were repeatedly made,[24] until the period of the XXI Dynasty, when the
+operator clearly was convinced that he had at last achieved what his
+predecessors, for perhaps twenty-five centuries, had been trying in vain
+to do.
+
+
+[23: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+[24: See my volume on "The Royal Mummies," General Catalogue of the
+Cairo Museum.]
+
+
+Early Mummies.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Water-colour sketch by Mrs. Cecil Firth,
+representing a restoration of the early mummy found at Medum by Prof.
+Flinders Petrie, now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in
+London]
+
+In the earliest known (Second Dynasty) examples of Egyptian attempts at
+mummification[25] the corpse was swathed in a large series of bandages,
+which were moulded into shape to represent the form of the body. In a
+later (probably Fifth Dynasty) mummy, found in 1892 by Professor
+Flinders Petrie at Medum, the superficial bandages had been impregnated
+with a resinous paste, which while still plastic was moulded into the
+form of the body, special care being bestowed upon the modelling of the
+face[26] and the organs of reproduction, so as to leave no room for
+doubt as to the identity and the sex. Professor Junker has described[27]
+an interesting series of variations of these practices. In two graves
+the bodies were covered with a layer of stucco plaster. First the corpse
+was covered with a fine linen cloth: then the plaster was put on, and
+modelled into the form of the body (p. 252). But in two other cases it
+was not the whole body that was covered with this layer of stucco,
+but only the head. Professor Junker claims that this was done
+"apparently because the head was regarded as the most important part, as
+the organs of taste, sight, smell, and hearing were contained in it".
+But surely there was the additional and more obtrusive reason that the
+face affords the means of identifying the individual! For this modelling
+of the features was intended primarily as a restoration of the form of
+the body which had been altered, if not actually destroyed. In other
+cases, where no attempt was made to restore the features in such durable
+materials as resin or stucco, the linen-enveloped head was modelled, and
+a representation of the eyes painted upon it so as to enhance the
+life-like appearance of the face.
+
+These facts prove quite conclusively that the earliest attempts to
+reproduce the features of the deceased and so preserve his likeness,
+were made upon the wrapped mummy itself. Thus the mummy was intended to
+be the portrait as well as the actual bodily remains of the dead. In
+view of certain differences of opinion as to the original significance
+of the funerary ritual, which I shall have occasion to discuss later on
+(see p. 20), it is important to keep these facts clearly in mind.
+
+A discovery made by Mr. J. E. Quibell in the course of his excavations
+at Sakkara[28] suggests that, as an outcome of these practices a new
+procedure may have been devised in the Pyramid Age--the making of a
+death-mask. For he discovered what may be the mask taken directly from
+the face of the Pharaoh Teta (Fig. 3).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.--A mould taken from a life-mask found in the
+Pyramid of Teta by Mr. Quibell]
+
+About this time also the practice originated of making a life-size
+portrait statue of the dead man's head and placing it along with the
+actual body in the burial chamber. These "reserve heads," as they have
+been called, were usually made of fine limestone, but Junker found one
+made of Nile mud.[29]
+
+Junker believes that there was an intimate relationship between the
+plaster-covered heads and the reserve-heads. They were both expressions
+of the same idea, to preserve a simulacrum of the deceased when his
+actual body had lost all recognizable likeness to him as he was when
+alive. The one method aimed at combining in the same object the actual
+body and the likeness; the other at making a more life-like portrait
+apart from the corpse, which could take the place of the latter when
+it decayed.
+
+Junker states further that "it is no chance that the substitute-heads
+... entirely, or at any rate chiefly, are found in the tombs that have
+no statue-chamber and probably possessed no statues. The statues [of the
+whole body] certainly were made, at any rate partly, with the intention
+that they should take the place of the decaying body, although later the
+idea was modified. The placing of the substitute-head in [the burial
+chamber of] the mastaba therefore became unnecessary at the moment when
+the complete figure of the dead [placed in a special hidden chamber, now
+commonly called the _serdab_] was introduced." The ancient Egyptians
+themselves called the _serdab_ the _pr-twt_ or "statue-house," and the
+group of chambers, forming the tomb-chapel in the mastaba, was known to
+them as the "_ka_-house".[30]
+
+It is important to remember that, even when the custom of making a
+statue of the deceased became fully established, the original idea of
+restoring the form of the mummy itself or its wrappings was never
+abandoned. The attempts made in the XVIII, and XXI and XXII Dynasties to
+pack the body of the mummy itself and by artificial means give it a
+life-like appearance afford evidence of this. In the New Empire and in
+Roman times the wrapped mummy was sometimes modelled into the form of a
+statue. But throughout Egyptian history it was a not uncommon practice
+to provide a painted mask for the wrapped mummy, or in early Christian
+times simply a portrait of the deceased.
+
+With this custom there also persisted a remembrance of its original
+significance. Professor Garstang records the fact that in the XII
+Dynasty,[31] when a painted mask was placed upon the wrapped mummy, no
+statue or statuette was found in the tomb. The undertakers apparently
+realized that the mummy[32] which was provided with a life-like mask was
+therefore fulfilling the purposes for which statues were devised. So
+also in the New Empire the packing and modelling of the actual mummy so
+as to restore its life-like appearance were regarded as obviating the
+need for a statue.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Portrait Statue of an Egyptian Lady of the
+Pyramid Age]
+
+I must now return to the further consideration of the Old Kingdom
+statues. All these varied experiments were inspired by the same desire,
+to preserve the likeness of the deceased. But when the sculptors
+attained their object, and created those marvellous life-like portraits,
+which must ever remain marvels of technical skill and artistic feeling
+(Fig. 4), the old ideas that surged through the minds of the Predynastic
+Egyptians, as they contemplated the desiccated remains of the dead, were
+strongly reinforced. The earlier people's thoughts were turned more
+specifically than heretofore to the contemplation of the nature of life
+and death by seeing the bodies of their dead preserved whole and
+incorruptible; and, if their actions can be regarded as an expression of
+their ideas, they began to wonder what was lacking in these physically
+complete bodies to prevent them from feeling and acting like living
+beings. Such must have been the results of their puzzled contemplation
+of the great problems of life and death. Otherwise the impulse to make
+more certain the preservation of the body by the invention of
+mummification and to retain a life-like representation of the deceased
+by means of a sculptured statue remains inexplicable. But when the
+corpse had been rendered incorruptible and the deceased's portrait had
+been fashioned with realistic perfection the old ideas would recur with
+renewed strength. The belief then took more definite shape that if the
+missing elements of vitality could be restored to the statue, it might
+become animated and the dead man would live again in his vitalized
+statue. This prompted a more intense and searching investigation of the
+problems concerning the nature of the elements of vitality of which the
+corpse was deprived at the time of death. Out of these inquiries in
+course of time a highly complex system of philosophy developed.[33]
+
+But in the earlier times with which I am now concerned it found
+practical expression in certain ritual procedures, invented to convey to
+the statue the breath of life, the vitalising fluids, and the odour and
+sweat of the living body. The seat of knowledge and of feeling was
+believed to be retained in the body when the heart was left _in situ_:
+so that the only thing needed to awaken consciousness, and make it
+possible for the dead man to take heed of his friends and to act
+voluntarily, was to present offerings of blood to stimulate the
+physiological functions of the heart. But the element of vitality which
+left the body at death had to be restored to the statue, which
+represented the deceased in the _ka_-house.[34]
+
+In my earlier attempts[35] to interpret these problems, I adopted the
+view that the making of portrait statues was the direct outcome of the
+practice of mummification. But Dr. Alan Gardiner, whose intimate
+knowledge of the early literature enables him to look at such problems
+from the Egyptian's own point of view, has suggested a modification of
+this interpretation. Instead of regarding the custom of making statues
+as an outcome of the practice of mummification, he thinks that the two
+customs developed simultaneously, in response to the two-fold desire to
+preserve both the actual body and a representation of the features of
+the dead. But I think this suggestion does not give adequate recognition
+to the fact that the earliest attempts at funerary portraiture were made
+upon the wrappings of the actual mummies.[36] This fact and the evidence
+which I have already quoted from Junker make it quite clear that from
+the beginning the embalmer's aim was to preserve the body and to convert
+the mummy itself into a simulacrum of the deceased. When he realized
+that his technical skill was not adequate to enable him to accomplish
+this double aim, he fell back upon the device of making a more perfect
+and realistic portrait statue apart from the mummy. But, as I have
+already pointed out, he never completely renounced his ambition of
+transforming the mummy itself; and in the time of the New Empire he
+actually attained the result which he had kept in view for nearly twenty
+centuries.
+
+In these remarks I have been referring only to funerary portrait
+statues. Centuries before the attempt was made to fashion them modellers
+had been making of clay and stone representations of cattle and human
+beings, which have been found not only in Predynastic graves in Egypt
+but also in so-called "Upper Palaeolithic" deposits in Europe.
+
+But the fashioning of realistic and life-size human portrait-statues for
+funerary purposes was a new art, which gradually developed in the way I
+have tried to depict. No doubt the modellers made use of the skill they
+had acquired in the practice of the older art of rough impressionism.
+
+Once the statue was made a stone-house (the _serdab_) was provided for
+it above ground[37]. As the dolmen is a crude copy of the _serdab_[38]
+it can be claimed as one of the ultimate results of the practice of
+mummification. It is clear that the conception of the possibility of a
+life beyond the grave assumed a more concrete form when it was realized
+that the body itself could be rendered incorruptible and its distinctive
+traits could be kept alive by means of a portrait statue. There are
+reasons for supposing that primitive man did not realize or contemplate
+the possibility of his own existence coming to an end.[39] Even when he
+witnessed the death of his fellows he does not appear to have
+appreciated the fact that it was really the end of life and not merely a
+kind of sleep from which the dead might awake. But if the corpse were
+destroyed or underwent a process of natural disintegration the fact was
+brought home to him that death had occurred. If these considerations,
+which early Egyptian literature seems to suggest, be borne in mind, the
+view that the preservation of the body from corruption implied a
+continuation of existence becomes intelligible. At first the
+subterranean chambers in which the actual body was housed were developed
+into a many-roomed house for the deceased, complete in every detail.[40]
+But when the statue took over the function of representing the deceased,
+a dwelling was provided for it above ground. This developed into the
+temple where the relatives and friends of the dead came and made the
+offerings of food which were regarded as essential for the maintenance
+of existence.
+
+The evolution of the temple was thus the direct outcome of the ideas
+that grew up in connexion with the preservation of the dead. For at
+first it was nothing more than the dwelling place of the reanimated
+dead. But when, for reasons which I shall explain later (see p. 30), the
+dead king became deified, his temple of offerings became the building
+where food and drink were presented to the god, not merely to maintain
+his existence, but also to restore his consciousness, and so afford an
+opportunity for his successor, the actual king, to consult him and
+obtain his advice and help. The presentation of offerings and the ritual
+procedures for animating and restoring consciousness to the dead king
+were at first directed solely to these ends. But in course of time, as
+their original purpose became obscured, these services in the temple
+altered in character, and their meaning became rationalized into acts
+of homage and worship, and of prayer and supplication, and in much later
+times, acquired an ethical and moral significance that was wholly absent
+from the original conception of the temple services. The earliest idea
+of the temple as a place of offering has not been lost sight of. Even in
+our times the offertory still finds a place in temple services.
+
+
+[25: G. Elliot Smith, "The Earliest Evidence of Attempts at
+Mummification in Egypt," _Report British Association_, 1912, p. 612:
+compare also J. Garstang, "Burial Customs of Ancient Egypt," London,
+1907, pp. 29 and 30. Professor Garstang did not recognize that
+mummification had been attempted.]
+
+[26: G. Elliot Smith, "The History of Mummification in Egypt," _Proc.
+Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow_, 1910: also "Egyptian Mummies,"
+_Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol. I, Part III, July, 1914, Plate
+XXXI.]
+
+[27: "Excavations of the Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences at the
+Pyramids of Gizah, 1914," _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol. I, Oct.
+1914, p. 250.]
+
+[28: "Excavations at Saqqara," 1907-8, p. 113.]
+
+[29: The great variety of experiments that were being made at the
+beginning of the Pyramid Age bears ample testimony to the fact that the
+original inventors of these devices were actually at work in Lower Egypt
+at that time.]
+
+[30: Aylward M. Blackman, "The _Ka_-House and the Serdab," _Journal of
+Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250. The word
+_serdab_ is merely the Arabic word used by the native workmen, which has
+been adopted and converted into a technical term by European
+archaeologists.]
+
+[31: _Op. cit._ p. 171.]
+
+[32: It is a remarkable fact that Professor Garstang, who brought to
+light perhaps the best, and certainly the best-preserved, collection of
+Middle Kingdom mummies ever discovered, failed to recognize the fact
+that they had really been embalmed (_op. cit._ p. 171).]
+
+[33: The reader who wishes for fuller information as to the reality of
+these beliefs and how seriously they were held will find them still in
+active operation in China. An admirable account of Chinese philosophy
+will be found in De Groot's "Religious System of China," especially Vol.
+IV, Book II. It represents the fully developed (New Empire) system of
+Egyptian belief modified in various ways by Babylonian, Indian and
+Central Asiatic influences, as well as by accretions developed locally
+in China.]
+
+[34: A. M. Blackman, "The _Ka_-House and the Serdab," _The Journal of
+Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol. III, Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 250.]
+
+[35: "Migrations of Early Culture," p. 37.]
+
+[36: Dr. Alan Gardiner (Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet,"
+1915, p. 83, footnote) has, I think, overlooked certain statements in my
+writings and underestimated the antiquity of the embalmer's art; for he
+attributes to me the opinion that "mummification was a custom of
+relatively late growth".
+
+The presence in China of the characteristically Egyptian beliefs
+concerning the animation of statues (de Groot, _op. cit._ pp. 339-356),
+whereas the practice of mummification, though not wholly absent, is not
+obtrusive, might perhaps be interpreted by some scholars as evidence in
+favour of the development of the custom of making statues independently
+of mummification. But such an inference is untenable. Not only is it the
+fact that in most parts of the world the practices of making statues and
+mummifying the dead are found in association the one with the other, but
+also in China the essential beliefs concerning the dead are based upon
+the supposition that the body is fully preserved (_see_ de Groot, chap.
+XV.). It is quite evident that the Chinese customs have been derived
+directly or indirectly from some people who mummified their dead as a
+regular practice. There can be no doubt that the ultimate source of
+their inspiration to do these things was Egypt.
+
+I need mention only one of many identical peculiarities that makes this
+quite certain. De Groot says it is "strange to see Chinese fancy depict
+the souls of the viscera as distinct individuals with animal forms" (p.
+71). The same custom prevailed in Egypt, where the "souls" or protective
+deities were first given animal forms in the Nineteenth Dynasty
+(Reisner).]
+
+[37: The Arabic word conveys the idea of being "hidden underground,"
+because the house is exposed by excavation.]
+
+[38: _Op. cit. supra_, Ridgeway Essays; also _Man_, 1913, p. 193.]
+
+[39: See Alan H. Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings'
+_Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_.]
+
+[40: See the quotation from Mr. Quibell's account in my statement in the
+_Report of the British Association for 1914_, p. 215.]
+
+
+The Significance of Libations.
+
+The central idea of this lecture was suggested by Mr. Aylward M.
+Blackman's important discovery of the actual meaning of incense and
+libations to the Egyptians themselves.[41] The earliest body of
+literature preserved from any of the peoples of antiquity is comprised
+in the texts inscribed in the subterranean chambers of the Sakkara
+Pyramids of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. These documents, written
+forty-five centuries ago, were first brought to light in modern times in
+1880-81; and since the late Sir Gaston Maspero published the first
+translation of them, many scholars have helped in the task of
+elucidating their meaning. But it remained for Blackman to discover the
+explanation they give of the origin and significance of the act of
+pouring out libations. "The general meaning of these passages is quite
+clear. The corpse of the deceased is dry and shrivelled. To revivify it
+the vital fluids that have exuded from it [in the process of
+mummification] must be restored, for not till then will life return and
+the heart beat again. This, so the texts show us, was believed to be
+accomplished by offering libations to the accompaniment of incantations"
+(_op. cit._ p. 70).
+
+In the first three passages quoted by Blackman from the Pyramid Texts
+"the libations are said to be the actual fluids that have issued from
+the corpse". In the next four quotations "a different notion is
+introduced. It is not the deceased's own exudations that are to revive
+his shrunken frame but those of a divine body, the [god's fluid][42]
+that came from the corpse of Osiris himself, the juices that dissolved
+from his decaying flesh, which are communicated to the dead
+sacrament-wise under the form of these libations."
+
+This dragging-in of Osiris is especially significant. For the analogy of
+the life-giving power of water that is specially associated with Osiris
+played a dominant part in suggesting the ritual of libations. Just as
+water, when applied to the apparently dead seed, makes it germinate and
+come to life, so libations can reanimate the corpse. These general
+biological theories of the potency of water were current at the time,
+and, as I shall explain later (see p. 28), had possibly received
+specific application to man long before the idea of libations developed.
+For, in the development of the cult of Osiris[43] the general
+fertilizing power of water when applied to the soil found specific
+exemplification in the potency of the seminal fluid to fertilize human
+beings. Malinowski has pointed out that certain Papuan people, who are
+ignorant of the fact that women are fertilized by sexual connexion,
+believe that they can be rendered pregnant by rain falling upon them
+(_op. cit. infra_). The study of folk-lore and early beliefs makes it
+abundantly clear that in the distant past which I am now discussing no
+clear distinction was made between fertilization and vitalization,
+between bringing new life into being and reanimating the body which had
+once been alive. The process of fertilization of the female and
+animating a corpse or a statue were regarded as belonging to the same
+category of biological processes. The sculptor who carved the
+portrait-statues for the Egyptian's tomb was called _sa'nkh_, "he who
+causes to live," and "the word 'to fashion' (_ms_) a statue is to all
+appearances identical with _ms_, 'to give birth'".[44]
+
+Thus the Egyptians themselves expressed in words the ideas which an
+independent study of the ethnological evidence showed many other peoples
+to entertain, both in ancient and modern times.[45]
+
+The interpretation of ancient texts and the study of the beliefs of less
+cultured modern peoples indicate that our expressions: "to give birth,"
+"to give life," "to maintain life," "to ward off death," "to insure good
+luck," "to prolong life," "to give life to the dead," "to animate a
+corpse or a representation of the dead," "to give fertility," "to
+impregnate," "to create," represent a series of specializations of
+meaning which were not clearly differentiated the one from the other in
+early times or among relatively primitive modern people.
+
+The evidence brought together in Jackson's work clearly suggests that at
+a very early period in human history, long before the ideas that found
+expression in the Osiris story had materialized, men entertained in all
+its literal crudity the belief that the external organ of reproduction
+from which the child emerged at birth was the actual creator of the
+child, not merely the giver of birth but also the source of life.
+
+The widespread tendency of the human mind to identify similar objects
+and attribute to them the powers of the things they mimic led primitive
+men to assign to the cowry-shell all these life-giving and birth-giving
+virtues. It became an amulet to give fertility, to assist at birth, to
+maintain life, to ward off danger, to ensure the life hereafter, to
+bring luck of any sort. Now, as the giver of birth, the cowry-shell also
+came to be identified with, or regarded as, the mother and creator of
+the human family; and in course of time, as this belief became
+rationalized, the shell's maternity received visible expression and it
+became personified as an actual woman, the Great Mother, at first nameless
+and with ill-defined features. But at a later period, when the dead king
+Osiris gradually acquired his attributes of divinity, and a god emerged
+with the form of a man, the vagueness of the Great Mother who had been
+merely the personified cowry-shell soon disappeared and the amulet assumed,
+as Hathor, the form of a real woman, or, for reasons to be explained
+later, a cow.
+
+The influence of these developments reacted upon the nascent conception
+of the water-controlling god, Osiris; and his powers of fertility were
+enlarged to include many of the life-giving attributes of Hathor.
+
+
+[41: "The Significance of Incense and Libations in Funerary and Temple
+Ritual," _Zeitschrift fuer Aegyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde_, Bd.
+50, 1912, p. 69.]
+
+[42: Mr. Blackman here quotes the actual word in hieroglyphics and adds
+the translation "god's fluid" and the following explanation in a
+footnote: "The Nile was supposed to be the fluid which issued from
+Osiris. The expression in the Pyramid texts may refer to this
+belief--the dead" [in the Pyramid Age it would have been more accurate
+if he had said the dead king, in whose Pyramid the inscriptions were
+found] "being usually identified with Osiris--since the water used in
+the libations was Nile water."]
+
+[43: The voluminous literature relating to Osiris will be found
+summarized in the latest edition of "The Golden Bough" by Sir James
+Frazer. But in referring the reader to this remarkable compilation of
+evidence it is necessary to call particular attention to the fact that
+Sir James Frazer's interpretation is permeated with speculations based
+upon the modern ethnological dogma of independent evolution of similar
+customs and beliefs without cultural contact between the different
+localities where such similarities make their appearance.
+
+The complexities of the motives that inspire and direct human activities
+are entirely fatal to such speculations, as I have attempted to indicate
+(see above, p. 195). But apart from this general warning, there are
+other objections to Sir James Frazer's theories. In his illuminating
+article upon Osiris and Horus, Dr. Alan Gardiner (in a criticism of Sir
+James Frazer's "The Golden Bough: Adonis, Attis, Osiris; Studies in the
+History of Oriental Religion," _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol.
+II, 1915, p. 122) insists upon the crucial fact that Osiris was
+primarily a king, and that "it is always as a _dead_ king," "the role of
+the living king being invariably played by Horus, his son and heir".
+
+He states further: "What Egyptologists wish to know about Osiris beyond
+anything else is how and by what means he became associated with the
+processes of vegetable life". An examination of the literature relating
+to Osiris and the large series of homologous deities in other countries
+(which exhibit _prima facie_ evidence of a common origin) suggests the
+idea that the king who first introduced the practice of systematic
+irrigation thereby laid the foundation of his reputation as a beneficent
+reformer. When, for reasons which I shall discuss later on (see p. 220),
+the dead king became deified, his fame as the controller of water and
+the fertilization of the earth became apotheosized also. I venture to
+put forward this suggestion only because none of the alternative
+hypotheses that have been propounded seem to be in accordance with,
+or to offer an adequate explanation of, the body of known facts
+concerning Osiris.
+
+It is a remarkable fact that in his lectures on "The Development of
+Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," which are based upon his own
+studies of the Pyramid Texts, and are an invaluable storehouse of
+information, Professor J. H. Breasted should have accepted Sir James
+Frazer's views. These seem to me to be altogether at variance with the
+renderings of the actual Egyptian texts and to confuse the exposition.]
+
+[44: Dr. Alan Gardiner, quoted in my "Migrations of Early Culture," p.
+42: see also the same scholar's remarks in Davies and Gardiner, "The
+Tomb of Amenemhet," 1915, p. 57, and "A new Masterpiece of Egyptian
+Sculpture," _The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol. IV, Part I,
+Jan., 1917.]
+
+[45: See J. Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of
+Early Culture," 1917, Manchester University Press.]
+
+
+Early Biological Theories.
+
+Before the full significance of these procedures can be appreciated it
+is essential to try to get at the back of the Proto-Egyptian's mind and
+to understand his general trend of thought. I specially want to make it
+clear that the ritual use of water for animating the corpse or the
+statue was merely a specific application of the general principles of
+biology which were then current. It was no mere childish make-believe or
+priestly subterfuge to regard the pouring out of water as a means of
+animating a block of stone. It was a conviction for which the
+Proto-Egyptians considered there was a substantial scientific basis; and
+their faith in the efficacy of water to animate the dead is to be
+regarded in the same light as any scientific inference which is made at
+the present time to give a specific application of some general theory
+considered to be well founded. The Proto-Egyptians clearly believed in
+the validity of the general biological theory of the life-giving
+properties of water. Many facts, no doubt quite convincing to them,
+testified to the soundness of their theory. They accepted the principle
+with the same confidence that modern people have adopted Newton's Law of
+Gravitation, and Darwin's theory of the Origin of Species, and applied
+it to explain many phenomena or to justify certain procedures, which in
+the light of fuller knowledge seem to modern people puerile and
+ludicrous. But the early people obviously took these procedures
+seriously and regarded their actions as rational. The fact that their
+early biological theory was inadequate ought not to mislead modern
+scholars and encourage them to fall into the error of supposing that the
+ritual of libations was not based upon a serious inference. Modern
+scientists do not accept the whole of Darwin's teaching, or possibly
+even Newton's "Law," but this does not mean that in the past innumerable
+inferences have been honestly and confidently made in specific
+application of these general principles.
+
+It is important, then, that I should examine more closely the
+Proto-Egyptian body of doctrine to elucidate the mutual influence of it
+and the ideas suggested by the practice of mummification. It is not
+known where agriculture was first practised or the circumstances which
+led men to appreciate the fact that plants could be cultivated. In many
+parts of the world agriculture can be carried on without artificial
+irrigation, and even without any adequate appreciation on the part of
+the farmer of the importance of water. But when it came to be practised
+under such conditions as prevail in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the
+cultivator would soon be forced to realize that water was essential for
+the growth of plants, and that it was imperative to devise artificial
+means by which the soil might be irrigated. It is not known where or by
+whom this cardinal fact first came to be appreciated, whether by the
+Sumerians or the Egyptians or by some other people. But it is known that
+in the earliest records both of Egypt and Sumer the most significant
+manifestations of a ruler's wisdom were the making of irrigation canals
+and the controlling of water. Important as these facts are from their
+bearing upon the material prospects of the people, they had an
+infinitely more profound and far-reaching effect upon the beliefs of
+mankind. Groping after some explanation of the natural phenomenon that
+the earth became fertile when water was applied to it, and that seed
+burst into life under the same influence, the early biologist formulated
+the natural and not wholly illogical idea that water was the repository
+of life-giving powers. Water was equally necessary for the production of
+life and for the maintenance of life.
+
+At an early stage in the development of this biological theory man and
+other animals were brought within the scope of the generalization. For
+the drinking of water was a condition of existence in animals. The idea
+that water played a part in reproduction was co-related with this fact.
+
+Even at the present time many aboriginal peoples in Australia, New
+Guinea, and elsewhere, are not aware of the fact that in the process of
+animal reproduction the male exercises the physiological role of
+fertilization.[46]
+
+There are widespread indications throughout the world that the
+appreciation of this elementary physiological knowledge was acquired at
+a relatively recent period in the history of mankind. It is difficult to
+believe that the fundamental facts of the physiology of fertilization in
+animals could long have remained unknown when men became breeders of
+cattle. The Egyptian hieroglyphs leave no doubt that the knowledge was
+fully appreciated at the period when the earliest picture-symbols were
+devised, for the verb "to beget" is represented by the male organs of
+generation. But, as the domestication of animals may have been earlier
+than the invention of agriculture, it is possible that the appreciation
+of the fertilizing powers of the male animal may have been definitely
+more ancient than the earliest biological theory of the fertilizing
+power of water.
+
+I have discussed this question to suggest that the knowledge that
+animals could be fertilized by the seminal fluid was certainly brought
+within the scope of the wider generalization that water itself was
+endowed with fertilizing properties. Just as water fertilized the earth,
+so the semen fertilized the female. Water was necessary for the
+maintenance of life in plants and was also essential in the form of
+drink for animals. As both the earth and women could be fertilized by
+water they were homologized one with the other. The earth came to be
+regarded as a woman, the Great Mother.[47] When the fertilizing water
+came to be personified in the person of Osiris his consort Isis was
+identified with the earth which was fertilized by water.[48]
+
+One of the earliest pictures of an Egyptian king represents him using
+the hoe to inaugurate the making of an irrigation-canal.[49] This was
+the typical act of benevolence on the part of a wise ruler. It is not
+unlikely that the earliest organization of a community under a definite
+leader may have been due to the need for some systematized control of
+irrigation. In any case the earliest rulers of Egypt and Sumer were
+essentially the controllers and regulators of the water supply and as
+such the givers of fertility and prosperity.
+
+Once men first consciously formulated the belief that death was not the
+end of all things,[50] that the body could be re-animated and
+consciousness and the will restored, it was natural that a wise ruler
+who, when alive, had rendered conspicuous services should after death
+continue to be consulted. The fame of such a man would grow with age;
+his good deeds and his powers would become apotheosized; he would become
+an oracle whose advice might be sought and whose help be obtained in
+grave crises. In other words the dead king would be "deified," or at any
+rate credited with the ability to confer even greater boons than he was
+able to do when alive.
+
+It is no mere coincidence that the first "god" should have been a dead
+king, Osiris, nor that he controlled the waters of irrigation and was
+specially interested in agriculture. Nor, for the reasons that I have
+already suggested, is it surprising that he should have had phallic
+attributes, and in himself have personified the virile powers of
+fertilization.[51]
+
+In attempting to explain the origin of the ritual procedures of burning
+incense and offering libations it is essential to realize that the
+creation of the first deities was not primarily an expression of
+religious belief, but rather an application of science to national
+affairs. It was the logical interpretation of the dominant scientific
+theory of the time for the practical benefit of the living; or in other
+words, the means devised for securing the advice and the active help of
+wise rulers after their death. It was essentially a matter of practical
+politics and applied science. It became "religion" only when the
+advancement of knowledge superseded these primitive scientific theories
+and left them as soothing traditions for the thoughts and aspirations of
+mankind to cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories of
+knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and
+had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's
+conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral
+precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that
+no force was able to strip away this body of consolatory beliefs; and
+they have persisted for all time, although the reasoning by which they
+were originally built up has been demolished and forgotten several
+millennia ago.
+
+It is not known where Osiris was born. In other countries there are
+homologous deities, such as Ea, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, which are
+certainly manifestations of the same idea and sprung from the same
+source. Certain recent writers assume that the germ of the
+Osiris-conception was introduced into Egypt from abroad. But if so,
+nothing is known for certain of its place of origin. In any case there
+can be no doubt that the distinctive features of Osiris, his real
+personality and character, were developed in Egypt.
+
+For reasons which I have suggested already it is probable that the
+significance of water in cultivation was not realized until cereals were
+cultivated in some such place as Babylonia or Egypt. But there are very
+definite legends of the Babylonian Ea coming from abroad by way of the
+Persian Gulf.[52] The early history of Tammuz is veiled in obscurity.
+
+Somewhere in South Western Asia or North Eastern Africa, probably within
+a few years of the development of the art of agriculture, some
+scientific theorist, interpreting the body of empirical knowledge
+acquired by cultivating cereals, propounded the view that water was the
+great life-giving element. This view eventually found expression in the
+Osiris-group of legends.
+
+This theory found specific application in the invention of libations and
+incense. These practices in turn reacted upon the general body of
+doctrine and gave it a more sharply defined form. The dead king also
+became more real when he was represented by an actual embalmed body and
+a life-like statue, sitting in state upon his throne and holding in his
+hands the emblems of his high office.
+
+Thus while, in the present state of knowledge, it would be unjustifiable
+to claim that the Osiris-group of deities was invented in Egypt, and
+certainly erroneous to attribute the general theory of the fertilizing
+properties of water to the practice of embalming, it is true that the
+latter was responsible for giving Osiris a much more concrete and
+clearly-defined shape, of "making a god in the image of man", and for
+giving to the water-theory a much richer and fuller significance than it
+had before.
+
+The symbolism so created has had a most profound influence upon the
+thoughts and aspirations of the human race. For Osiris was the prototype
+of all the gods; his ritual was the basis of all religious ceremonial;
+his priests who conducted the animating ceremonies were the pioneers of
+a long series of ministers who for more than fifty centuries, in spite
+of the endless variety of details of their ritual and the character of
+their temples, have continued to perform ceremonies that have undergone
+remarkably little essential change. Though the chief functions of the
+priest as the animator of the god and the restorer of his consciousness
+have now fallen into the background in most religions, the ritual acts
+(the incense and libations, the offerings of food and blood and the
+rest) still persist in many countries: the priest still appeals by
+prayer and supplication for those benefits, which the Proto-Egyptian
+aimed at securing when he created Osiris as a god to give advice and
+help. The prayer for rain is one of the earliest forms of religious
+appeal, but the request for a plentiful inundation was earlier still.
+
+I have already said that in using the terms "god" and "religion" with
+reference to the earliest form of Osiris and the beliefs that grew up
+with reference to him a potent element of confusion is introduced.
+
+During the last fifty centuries the meanings of those two words have
+become so complexly enriched with the glamour of a mystic symbolism that
+the Proto-Egyptian's conception of Osiris and the Osirian beliefs must
+have been vastly different from those implied in the words "god" and
+"religion" at the present time. Osiris was regarded as an actual king
+who had died and been reanimated. In other words he was a _man_ who
+could bestow upon his former subjects the benefits of his advice and
+help, but could also display such human weaknesses as malice, envy, and
+all uncharitableness. Much modern discussion completely misses the mark
+by the failure to recognize that these so-called "gods" were really men,
+equally capable of acts of beneficence and of outbursts of hatred, and
+as one or the other aspect became accentuated the same deity could
+become a Vedic _deva_ or an Avestan _daeva_, a _deus_ or a devil, a god
+of kindness or a demon of wickedness.
+
+The acts which the earliest "gods" were supposed to perform were not at
+first regarded as supernatural. They were merely the boons which the
+mortal ruler was supposed to be able to confer, by controlling the
+waters of irrigation and rendering the land fertile. It was only when
+his powers became apotheosized with a halo of accumulated glory (and the
+growth of knowledge revealed the insecurity of the scientific basis upon
+which his fame was built up) that a priesthood reluctant to abandon any
+of the attributes which had captured the popular imagination, made it an
+obligation of belief to accept these supernatural powers of the gods for
+which the student of natural phenomena refused any longer to be a
+sponsor. This was the parting of the ways between science and religion;
+and thenceforth the attributes of the "gods" became definitely and
+admittedly superhuman.
+
+As I have already stated (p. 23) the original object of the offering of
+libations was thus clearly for the purpose of animating the statue of
+the deceased and so enabling him to continue the existence which had
+merely been interrupted by the incident of death. In course of time,
+however, as definite gods gradually materialized and came to be
+represented by statues, they also had to be vitalized by offerings of
+water from time to time. Thus the pouring out of libations came to be an
+act of worship of the deity; and in this form it has persisted until our
+own times in many civilized countries.
+
+But not only was water regarded as a means of animating the dead, or
+statues representing the dead, and an appropriate act of worship, in
+that it vitalized an idol and the god dwelling in it was thus able to
+hear and answer supplications. Water also became an essential part of
+any act of ritual rebirth.[53] As a baptism it also symbolized the
+giving of life. The initiate was re-born into a new communion of faith.
+In scores of other ways the same conception of the life-giving
+properties of water was responsible for as many applications of the use
+of libations in inaugurating new enterprises, such as "baptising" ships
+and blessing buildings. It is important to remember that, according to
+early Egyptian beliefs, the continued existence of the dead was wholly
+dependent upon the attentions of the living. Unless this animating
+ceremony was performed not merely at the time of the funeral, but also
+at stated periods afterwards, and unless the friends of the deceased
+periodically supplied food and drink, such a continuation of existence
+was impossible.
+
+The development of these beliefs had far-reaching effects in other
+directions. The idea that a stone statue could be animated ultimately
+became extended to mean that the dead man could enter into and dwell in
+a block of stone, which he could leave or return to at will. From this
+arose the beliefs, which spread far and wide, that the dead ancestors,
+kings, or deified kings, dwelt in stones; and that they could be
+consulted as oracles, who gave advice and counsel. The acceptance of
+this idea that the dead could be reanimated in a stone statue no doubt
+prepared the minds of the people to credit the further belief, which
+other circumstances were responsible for creating, that men could be
+turned into stone. In the next chapter I shall explain how these
+petrifaction stories developed.[54]
+
+All the rich crop of myths concerning men and animals dwelling in stones
+which are to be found encircling the globe from Ireland to America, can
+be referred back to these early Egyptian attempts to solve the mysteries
+of death, and to acquire the means of circumventing fate.[55]
+
+These beliefs at first may have concerned human beings only. But in
+course of time, as the duty of revictualling an increasingly large
+number of tombs and temples tended to tax the resources of the people,
+the practice developed of substituting for the real things models, or
+even pictures, of food-animals, vegetables, and other requisites of the
+dead. And these objects and pictures were restored to life or reality by
+means of a ritual which was essentially identical with that used for
+animating the statue or the mummy of the deceased himself.
+
+It is well worth considering whether this may not be one of the basal
+factors in explanation of the phenomena which the late Sir Edward Tylor
+labelled "animism".
+
+So far from being a phase of culture through which many, if not all,
+peoples have passed in the course of their evolution, may it not have
+been merely an artificial conception of certain things, which was given
+so definite a form in Egypt, for the specific reasons at which I have
+just hinted, and from there spread far and wide?
+
+Against this view may be urged the fact that our own children talk in an
+animistic fashion. But is not this due in some measure to the
+unconscious influence of their elders? Or at most is it not a vague and
+ill-defined attitude of anthropomorphism necessarily involved in all
+spoken languages, which is vastly different from what the ethnologist
+understands by "animism"[56]?
+
+But whether this be so or not, there can be no doubt that the "animism"
+of the early Egyptians assumed its precise and clear-cut distinctive
+features as the result of the growth of ideas suggested by the attempts
+to make mummies and statues of the dead and symbolic offerings of food
+and other funerary requisites.
+
+Thus incidentally there grew up the belief in a power of magic by means
+of which these make-believe offerings could be transformed into
+realities. But it is important to emphasize the fact that originally the
+conviction of the genuineness of this transubstantiation was a logical
+and not unnatural inference based upon the attempt to interpret natural
+phenomena, and then to influence them by imitating what were regarded as
+the determining factors.[57]
+
+In China these ideas still retain much of their primitive influence and
+directness of expression. Referring to the Chinese "belief in the
+identity of pictures or images with the beings they represent" de Groot
+states that the _kwan shuh_ or "magic art" is a "main branch of Chinese
+witchcraft". It consists essentially of "the infusion of a soul, life,
+and activity into likenesses of beings, to thus render them fit to work
+in some direction desired ... this infusion is effected by blowing or
+breathing, or spurting water over the likeness: indeed breath or _khi_,
+or water from the mouth imbued with breath, is identical with _yang_
+substance or life."[58]
+
+
+[46: Baldwin Spencer and Gillen, "The Northern Tribes of Central
+Australia"; "Across Australia"; and Spencer's "Native Tribes of the
+Northern Territory of Australia". For a very important study of the
+whole problem with special reference to New Guinea, see B. Malinowski,
+"Baloma: the Spirits of the Dead," etc., _Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute_, 1916, p. 415.]
+
+[47: The idea of the earth's maternal function spread throughout the
+greater part of the world.]
+
+[48: With reference to the assimilation of the conceptions of human
+fertilization and watering the soil and the widespread idea among the
+ancients of regarding the male as "he who irrigates," Canon van
+Hoonacker gave M. Louis Siret the following note:--
+
+"In Assyrian the cuneiform sign for water is also used, _inter alia_, to
+express the idea of begetting (_banu_). Compare with this the references
+from Hebrew and Arabic writings. In Isaiah xlviii. 1, we read 'Hear ye
+this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel, and are
+come forth out of the waters of Judah'; and in Numbers xxiv. 7, 'Water
+shall flow from his buckets and his seed shall be in many waters'.
+
+"The Hebrew verb (_shangal_) which denotes sexual intercourse has, in
+Arabic (_sadjala_), the meaning 'to spill water'. In the Koran, Sur. 36,
+v. 6, the word _ma'un_ (water) is used to designate semen" (L. Siret,
+"Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Iberiques," Tome I, 1913, p.
+250).]
+
+[49: Quibell, "Hieraconpolis", Vol. I, 260, 4.]
+
+[50: In using this phrase I want to make a clear distinction between the
+phase of culture in which it had never occurred to man that, in his
+individual case, life would come to an end, and the more enlightened
+stage, in which he fully realized that death would inevitably be his
+fate, but that in spite of it his real existence would continue.
+
+It is clear that at quite an early stage in his history man appreciated
+the fact that he could kill an animal or his fellow-man. But for a long
+time he failed to realize that he himself, if he could avoid the process
+of mechanical destruction by which he could kill an animal or a
+fellow-man, would not continue to exist. The dead are supposed by many
+people to be still in existence so long as the body is preserved. Once
+the body begins to disintegrate even the most unimaginative of men can
+entirely repress the idea of death. But to primitive people the
+preservation of the body is equally a token that existence has not come
+to an end. The corpse is merely sleeping.]
+
+[51: Breasted, _op. cit._, p. 28.]
+
+[52: The possibility, or even the probability, must be borne in mind
+that the legend of Ea arising from the waters may be merely another way
+of expressing his primary attribute as the personification of the
+fertilizing powers of water.]
+
+[53: This occurred at a later epoch when the attributes of the
+water-controlling deity of fertility became confused with those of the
+birth-giving mother goddess (_vide infra_, p. 40).]
+
+[54: For a large series of these stories see E. Sidney Hartland's
+"Legend of Perseus". But even more instructive, as revealing the
+intimate connexion of such ideas with the beliefs regarding the
+preservation of the body, see J. J. M. de Groot, "The Religious System
+of China," Vol. IV, Book II, 1901.]
+
+[55: In this connexion see de Groot, _op. cit._ pp. 356 and 415.
+[Transcriber's Note: the original text contained no marker for this
+footnote, so a guess has been made as to what it referred]]
+
+[56: The child certainly resembles primitive man in the readiness with
+which it attributes to even the crudest models of animals or human
+beings the feelings of living creatures.]
+
+[57: It became "magical" in our sense of the term only when the growth
+of knowledge revealed the fact that the measures taken were inadequate
+to attain the desired end; while the "magician" continued to make the
+pretence that he could attain that end by ultra-physical means.]
+
+[58: De Groot, _op. cit._ p. 356.]
+
+
+Incense.
+
+So far I have referred in detail only to the offering of libations. But
+this was only one of several procedures for animating statues, mummies,
+and food-offerings. I have still to consider the ritual procedures of
+incense-burning and "opening the mouth".
+
+From Mr. Blackman's translations of the Egyptian texts it is clear that
+the burning of incense was intended to restore to the statue (or the
+mummy) the odour of the living body, and that this was part of the
+procedure considered necessary to animate the statue. He says "the
+belief about incense [which is explained by a later document, the
+_Ritual of Amon_] apparently does not occur in the Old Kingdom religious
+texts that are preserved to us, yet it may quite well be as ancient as
+that period. That is certainly Erman's view" (_op. cit._ p. 75).
+
+He gives the following translation of the relevant passage in the
+_Ritual of Amon_ (XII, 11): "The god comes with body adorned which he
+has fumigated with the eye of his body, the incense of the god which has
+issued from his flesh, the sweat of the god which has fallen to the
+ground, which he has given to all the gods.... It is the Horus eye. If
+it lives, the people live, thy flesh lives, thy members are vigorous"
+(_op. cit._ p. 72). In his comments upon this passage Mr. Blackman
+states: "In the light of the Pyramid libation-formulae the expressions in
+this text are quite comprehensible. Like the libations the grains of
+incense are the exudations of a divinity,[59] the fluid which issued
+from his flesh, the god's sweat descending to the ground.... Here
+incense is not merely the 'odour of the god,' but the grains of resin
+are said to be the god's sweat" (_op. cit._ p. 72). "Both rites, the
+pouring of libations and the burning of incense, are performed for the
+same purpose--to revivify the body [or the statue] of god and man by
+restoring to it its lost moisture" (p. 75).
+
+In attempting to reconstitute the circumstances which led to the
+invention of incense-burning as a ritual act, the nature of the problem
+to be solved must be recalled. Among the most obtrusive evidences of
+death were the coldness of the skin, the lack of perspiration and of the
+odour of the living. It is important to realize what the phrase "odour
+of the living" would convey to the Proto-Egyptian. From the earliest
+Predynastic times in Egypt it had been the custom to make extensive use
+of resinous material as an essential ingredient (what a pharmacist would
+call the adhesive "vehicle") of cosmetics. One of the results of this
+practice in a hot climate must have been the association of a strong
+aroma of resin or balsam with a living person.[60] Whether or not it was
+the practice to burn incense to give pleasure to the living is not
+known. The fact that such a procedure was customary among their
+successors may mean that it was really archaic; or on the other hand the
+possibility must not be overlooked that it may be merely the later
+vulgarization of a practice which originally was devised for purely
+ritual purposes. The burning of incense before a corpse or statue was
+intended to convey to it the warmth, the sweat, and the odour of life.
+
+When the belief became well established that the burning of incense was
+potent as an animating force, and especially a giver of life to the
+dead, it naturally came to be regarded as a divine substance in the
+sense that it had the power of resurrection. As the grains of incense
+consisted of the exudation of trees, or, as the ancient texts express
+it, "their sweat," the divine power of animation in course of time
+became transferred to the trees. They were no longer merely the source
+of the life-giving incense, but were themselves animated by the deity
+whose drops of sweat were the means of conveying life to the mummy.
+
+The reason why the deity which dwelt in these trees was usually
+identified with the Mother-Goddess will become clear in the course of
+the subsequent discussion (p. 38). It is probable that this was due
+mainly to the geographical circumstance that the chief source of incense
+was Southern Arabia, which was also the home of the primitive goddesses
+of fertility. For they were originally nothing more than
+personifications of the life-giving cowry amulets from the Red Sea.
+
+Thus Robertson Smith's statement that "the value of the gum of the
+acacia as an amulet is connected with the idea that it is a clot of
+menstruous blood, i.e., that the tree is a woman"[61] is probably an
+inversion of cause and effect. It was the value attached to the gum that
+conferred animation upon the tree. The rest of the legend is merely a
+rationalization based upon the idea that the tree was identified with
+the mother-goddess. The same criticism applies to his further contention
+(p. 427) with reference to "the religious value of incense" which he
+claims to be due to the fact that "like the gum of the _samora_ (acacia)
+tree, ... it was an animate or divine plant".
+
+Many factors played a part in the development of tree-worship but it is
+probable the origin of the sacredness of trees must be assigned to the
+fact that it was acquired from the incense and the aromatic woods which
+were credited with the power of animating the dead. But at a very early
+epoch many other considerations helped to confirm and extend the
+conception of deification. When Osiris was buried, a sacred sycamore
+grew up as "the visible symbol of the imperishable life of Osiris".[62]
+But the sap of trees was brought into relationship with life-giving
+water and thus constituted another link with Osiris. The sap was also
+regarded as the blood of trees and the incense that exuded as the sweat.
+Just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid of the body of
+Osiris, so also, by this process of rationalization, the incense came to
+possess a similar significance.
+
+For reasons precisely analogous to those already explained in the case
+of libations, the custom of burning incense, from being originally a
+ritual act for animating the funerary statue, ultimately developed into
+an act of homage to the deity.
+
+But it also acquired a special significance when the cult of sky-gods
+developed,[63] for the smoke of the burning incense then came to be
+regarded as the vehicle which wafted the deceased's soul to the sky or
+conveyed there the requests of the dwellers upon earth.[64]
+
+"The soul of a human being is generally conceived [by the Chinese] as
+possessing the shape and characteristics of a human being, and
+occasionally those of an animal; ... the spirit of an animal is the shape
+of this animal or of some being with human attributes and speech. But
+plant spirits are never conceived as plant-shaped, nor to have
+plant-characters ... whenever forms are given them, they are mostly
+represented as a man, a woman, or a child, and often also as an animal,
+dwelling in or near the plant, and emerging from it at times to do harm,
+or to dispense blessings.... Whether conceptions on the animation of
+plants have never developed in Chinese thought and worship before ideas
+about human ghosts ... had become predominant in mind and custom, we
+cannot say: but the matter seems probable" (De Groot, _op. cit._ pp.
+272, 273). Tales of trees that shed blood and that cry out when hurt are
+common in Chinese literature (p. 274) [as also in Southern Arabia]; also
+of trees that lodge or can change into maidens of transcendent beauty
+(p. 276).
+
+It is further significant that amongst the stories of souls of men
+taking up their residence in and animating trees and plants, the human
+being is usually a woman, accompanied by "a fox, a dog, an old raven or
+the like" (p. 276).
+
+Thus in China are found all the elements out of which Dr. Rendel Harris
+believes the Aphrodite cult was compounded in Cyprus,[65] the animation
+of the anthropoid plant, its human cry, its association with a beautiful
+maiden and a dog.[66]
+
+The immemorial custom of planting trees on graves in China is supposed
+by De Groot (p. 277) to be due to "the desire to strengthen the soul of
+the buried person, thus to save his body from corruption, for which
+reason trees such as pines and cypresses, deemed to be bearers of great
+vitality for being possessed of more _shen_ than other trees, were used
+preferably for such purposes". But may not such beliefs also be an
+expression of the idea that a tree growing upon a grave is developed
+from and becomes the personification of the deceased? The significance
+of the selection of pines and cypresses may be compared to that
+associated with the so-called "cedars" in Babylonia, Egypt, and
+Phoenicia, and the myrrh- and frankincense-producing trees in Arabia and
+East Africa. They have come to be accredited with "soul-substance,"
+since their use in mummification and as incense and for making coffins,
+has made them the means for attaining a future existence. Hence in
+course of time they came to be regarded as charged with the spirit of
+vitality, the _shen_ or "soul-substance".
+
+In China also it was because the woods of the pine or fir and the cyprus
+were used for making coffins and grave-vaults and that pine-resin was
+regarded as a means of attaining immortality (De Groot, _op. cit._ pp.
+296 and 297) that such veneration was bestowed upon these trees. "At an
+early date, Taoist seekers after immortality transplanted that animation
+[of the hardy long-lived fir and cypress[67]] into themselves by
+consuming the resin of those trees, which, apparently, they looked upon
+as coagulated soul-substance, the counterpart of the blood in men and
+animals" (p. 296).
+
+In India the _amrita_, the god's food of immortality, was sometimes
+regarded as the sap exuded from the sacred trees of paradise.
+
+Elsewhere in these pages it is explained how the vaguely defined Mother
+"Goddess" and the more distinctly anthropoid Water "God," which
+originally developed quite independently the one of the other,
+ultimately came to exert a profound and mutual influence, so that many
+of the attributes which originally belonged to one of them came to be
+shared with the other. Many factors played a part in this process of
+blending and confusion of sex. As I shall explain later, when the moon
+came to be regarded as the dwelling or the impersonation of Hathor, the
+supposed influence of the moon over water led to a further assimilation
+of her attributes with those of Osiris as the controller of water, which
+received definite expression in a lunar form of Osiris.
+
+But the link that is most intimately related to the subject of this
+address is provided by the personification of the Mother-Goddess in
+incense-trees. For incense thus became the sweat or the tears of the
+Great Mother just as the water of libation was regarded as the fluid
+of Osiris.
+
+
+[59: As I shall explain later (see page 38), the idea of the divinity of
+the incense-tree was a result of, and not the reason for, the practice
+of incense-burning. As one of the means by which the resurrection was
+attained incense became a giver of divinity; and by a simple process
+of rationalization the tree which produced this divine substance became
+a god.
+
+The reference to the "eye of the body" (see p. 55) means the life-giving
+god or goddess who is the "eye" of the sky, _i.e._ the god with whom the
+dead king is identified.]
+
+[60: It would lead me too far afield to enter into a discussion of the
+use of scents and unguents, which is closely related to this question.]
+
+[61: "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133.]
+
+[62: Breasted, p. 28.]
+
+[63: For reasons explained on a subsequent page (56).]
+
+[64: It is also worth considering whether the extension of this idea may
+not have been responsible for originating the practice of cremation--as
+a device for transferring, not merely the animating incense and the
+supplications of the living, but also the body of the deceased to the
+sky-world. This, of course, did not happen in Egypt, but in some other
+country which adopted the Egyptian practice of incense-burning, but was
+not hampered by the religious conservatism that guarded the sacredness
+of the corpse.]
+
+[65: "The Ascent of Olympus," 1917.]
+
+[66: For a collection of stories relating to human beings, generally
+women, dwelling in trees, see Hartland's "Legend of Perseus".]
+
+[67: The fact that the fir and cypress are "hardy and long-lived" is not
+the reason for their being accredited with these life-prolonging
+qualities. But once the latter virtues had become attributed to them the
+fact that the trees were "hardy and long-lived" may have been used to
+bolster up the belief by a process of rationalization.]
+
+
+The Breath of Life.
+
+Although the pouring of libations and the burning of incense played so
+prominent a part in the ritual of animating the statue or the mummy, the
+most important incident in the ceremony was the "opening of the mouth,"
+which was regarded as giving it the breath of life.
+
+Elsewhere[68] I have suggested that the conception of the heart and
+blood as the vehicles of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge may have
+been extremely ancient. It is not known when or under what circumstances
+the idea of the breath being the "life" was first entertained. The fact
+that in certain primitive systems of philosophy the breath was supposed
+to have something to do with the heart suggests that these beliefs may
+be a constituent element of the ancient heart-theory. In some of the
+rock-pictures in America, Australia, and elsewhere the air-passages are
+represented leading to the heart. But there can be little doubt that the
+practice of mummification gave greater definiteness to the ideas
+regarding the "heart" and "breath," which eventually led to a
+differentiation between their supposed functions.[69] As the heart and
+the blood were obviously present in the dead body they could no longer
+be regarded as the "life". The breath was clearly the "element" the lack
+of which rendered the body inanimate. It was therefore regarded as
+necessary to set the heart working. The heart then came to be looked
+upon as the seat of knowledge, the organ that feels and wills during
+waking life. All the pulsating motions of the body seem to have been
+regarded, like the act of respiration, as expressions of the vital
+principle or "life," which Dutch ethnological writers refer to as "soul
+substance". The neighbourhood of certain joints where the pulse can be
+felt most readily, and the top of the head, where pulsation can be felt
+in the infant's fontanelle, were therefore regarded by some Asiatic
+peoples as the places where the substance of life could leave or enter
+the body.
+
+It is possible that in ancient times this belief was more widespread
+than it is now. It affords an explanation of the motive for trephining
+the skull among ancient peoples, to afford a more ready passage for the
+"vital essence" to and from the skull.
+
+In his lecture on "The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul,"[70] Professor
+John Burnet has expounded the meaning of early Greek conceptions of the
+soul with rare insight and lucidity. Originally, the word [Greek:
+psyche] meant "breath," but, by historical times, it had already been
+specialized in two distinct ways. It had come to mean _courage_ in the
+first place, and secondly the _breath of life_, the presence or absence
+of which is the most obvious distinction between the animate and the
+inanimate, the "ghost" which a man "gives up" at death. But it may also
+quit the body temporarily, which explains the phenomenon of swooning
+([Greek: lipopsychia]). It seemed natural to suppose it was also the
+thing that can roam at large when the body is asleep, and even appear to
+another sleeping person in his dream. Moreover, since we can dream of
+the dead, what then appears to us must be just what leaves the body at
+the moment of death. These considerations explain the world-wide belief
+in the "soul" as a sort of double of the real bodily man, the Egyptian
+_ka_,[71] the Italian _genius_, and the Greek [Greek: psyche].
+
+Now this double is not identical with whatever it is in us that feels
+and wills during our waking life. That is generally supposed to be blood
+and not breath.
+
+What we feel and perceive have their seat in the heart: they belong to
+the body and perish with it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is only when the shades have been allowed to drink blood that
+consciousness returns to them for a while.
+
+At one time the [Greek: psyche] was supposed to dwell with the body in
+the grave, where it had to be supported by the offerings of the
+survivors, especially by libations ([Greek: choai]).
+
+An Egyptian psychologist has carried the story back long before the
+times of which Professor Burnet writes. He has explained "his conception
+of the functions of the 'heart (mind) and tongue'. 'When the eyes see,
+the ears hear, and the nose breathes, they transmit to the heart. It is
+he (the heart) who brings forth every issue and it is the tongue which
+repeats the thought of the heart.'"[72]
+
+"There came the saying that Atum, who created the gods, stated
+concerning Ptah-Tatenen: 'He is the fashioner of the gods.... He made
+likenesses of their bodies to the satisfaction of their hearts. Then the
+gods entered into their bodies of every wood and every stone and every
+metal.'"[73]
+
+That these ideas are really ancient is shown by the fact that in the
+Pyramid Texts Isis is represented conveying the breath of life to Osiris
+by "causing a wind with her wings".[74] The ceremony of "opening the
+mouth" which aimed at achieving this restoration of the breath of life
+was the principal part of the ritual procedure before the statue or
+mummy. As I have already mentioned (p. 25), the sculptor who modelled
+the portrait statue was called "he who causes to live," and the word "to
+fashion" a statue is identical with that which means "to give birth".
+The god Ptah created man by modelling his form in clay. Similarly the
+life-giving sculptor made the portrait which was to be the means of
+securing a perpetuation of existence, when it was animated by the
+"opening of the mouth," by libations and incense.
+
+As the outcome of this process of rationalization in Egypt a vast crop
+of creation-legends came into existence, which have persisted with
+remarkable completeness until the present day in India, Indonesia,
+China, America, and elsewhere. A statue of stone, wood, or clay is
+fashioned, and the ceremony of animation is performed to convey to it
+the breath of life, which in many places is supposed to be brought down
+from the sky.[75]
+
+In the Egyptian beliefs, as well as in most of the world-wide legends
+that were derived from them, the idea assumed a definite form that the
+vital principle (often referred to as the "soul," "soul-substance," or
+"double") could exist apart from the body. Whatever the explanation, it
+is clear that the possibility of the existence of the vital principle
+apart from the body was entertained. It was supposed that it could
+return to the body and temporarily reanimate it. It could enter into and
+dwell within the stone representation of the deceased. Sometimes this
+so-called "soul" was identified[76] with the breath of life, which
+could enter into the statue as the result of the ceremony of "opening
+the mouth".
+
+It has been commonly assumed by Sir Edward Tyler and those who accept
+his theory of animism that the idea of the "soul" was based upon the
+attempts to interpret the phenomena of dreams and shadows, to which
+Burnet has referred in the passage quoted above. The fact that when a
+person is sleeping he may dream of seeing absent people and of having a
+variety of adventures is explained by many peoples by the hypothesis
+that these are real experiences which befell the "soul" when it wandered
+abroad during its owner's sleep. A man's shadow or his reflection in
+water or a mirror has been interpreted as his double. But what these
+speculations leave out of account is the fact that these dream- and
+shadow-phenomena were probably merely the predisposing circumstances
+which helped in the development of (or the corroborative details which
+were added to and, by rationalization, incorporated in) the
+"soul-theory," which other circumstances were responsible for
+creating.[77]
+
+I have already called attention (p. 5) to the fact that in many of the
+psychological speculations in ethnology too little account is taken of
+the enormous complexity of the factors which determine even the simplest
+and apparently most obvious and rational actions of men. I must again
+remind the reader that a vast multitude of influences, many of them of a
+subconscious and emotional nature, affect men's decisions and opinions.
+But once some definite state of feeling inclines a man to a certain
+conclusion, he will call up a host of other circumstances to buttress
+his decision, and weave them into a complex net of rationalization. Some
+such process undoubtedly took place in the development of "animism"; and
+though it is not possible yet to reconstruct the whole history of the
+growth of the idea, there can be no question that these early strivings
+after an understanding of the nature of life and death, and the attempts
+to put the theories into practice to reanimate the dead, provided the
+foundations upon which has been built up during the last fifty centuries
+a vast and complex theory of the soul. In the creation of this edifice
+the thoughts and the aspirations of countless millions of peoples have
+played a part: but the foundation was laid down when the Egyptian king
+or priest claimed that he could restore to the dead the "breath of life"
+and, by means of the wand which he called "the great magician,"[78]
+could enable the dead to be born again. The wand is supposed by some
+scholars[79] to be a conventionalized representation of the uterus, so
+that its power of giving birth is expressed with literal directness.
+Such beliefs and stories of the "magic wand" are found to-day in
+scattered localities from the Scottish Highlands to Indonesia and
+America.
+
+In this sketch I have referred merely to one or two aspects of a
+conception of vast complexity. But it must be remembered that, once the
+mind of man began to play with the idea of a vital essence capable of
+existing apart from the body and to identify it with the breath of life,
+an illimitable field was opened up for speculation. The vital principle
+could manifest itself in all the varied expressions of human
+personality, as well as in all the physiological indications of life.
+Experience of dreams led men to believe that the "soul" could also leave
+the body temporarily and enjoy varied experiences. But the
+concrete-minded Egyptian demanded some physical evidence to buttress
+these intangible ideas of the wandering abroad of his vital essence. He
+made a statue for it to dwell in after his death, because he was not
+able to make an adequately life-like reproduction of the dead man's
+features upon the mummy itself or its wrappings. Then he gradually
+persuaded himself that the life-substance could exist apart from the
+body as a "double" or "twin" which animated the statue.
+
+Searching for material evidence to support his faith primitive man not
+unnaturally turned to the contemplation of the circumstances of his
+birth. All his beliefs concerning the nature of life can ultimately be
+referred back to the story of his own origin, his birth or creation.
+
+When an infant is born it is accompanied by the after-birth or placenta
+to which it is linked by the umbilical cord. The full comprehension of
+the significance of these structures is an achievement of modern
+science. To primitive man they were an incomprehensible marvel. But once
+he began to play with the idea that he had a double, a vital essence in
+his own shape which could leave the sleeping body and lead a separate
+existence, the placenta obviously provided tangible evidence of its
+reality. The considerations set forth by Blackman,[80] supplementing
+those of Moret, Murray and Seligman and others, have been claimed as
+linking the placenta with the _ka_.
+
+Much controversy has waged around the interpretation of the Egyptian
+word _ka_, especially during recent years. An excellent summary of the
+arguments brought forward by the various disputants up to 1912 will be
+found in Morel's "Mysteres Egyptiens". Since then more or less
+contradictory views have been put forward by Alan Gardiner, Breasted,
+and Blackman. It is not my intention to intervene in a dispute as to the
+meaning of certain phrases in ancient literature; but there are certain
+aspects of the problems at issue which are so intimately related to my
+main theme as to make some reference to them unavoidable.
+
+The development of the custom of making statues of the dead necessarily
+raised for solution the problem of explaining the deceased's two bodies,
+his actual mummy and his portrait statue. During life on earth his vital
+principle dwelt in the former, except on those occasions when the man
+was asleep. His actual body also gave expression to all the varied
+attributes of his personality. But after death the statue became the
+dwelling place of these manifestations of the spirit of vitality.
+
+Whether or not the conception arose out of the necessities unavoidably
+created by the making of statues, it seems clear that this custom must
+have given more concrete shape to the belief that all of those elements
+of the dead man's individuality which left his body at the time of death
+could shift as a shadowy double into his statue.
+
+At the birth of a king he is accompanied by a comrade or twin exactly
+reproducing all his features. This double or _ka_ is intimately
+associated throughout life and in the life to come with the king's
+welfare. In fact Breasted claims that the _ka_ "was a kind of superior
+genius intended to guide the fortunes of the individual _in the
+hereafter_" ... there "he had his abode and awaited the coming of his
+earthly companion".[81] At death the deceased "goes to his _ka_, to the
+sky". The _ka_ controls and protects the deceased: he brings him food
+which they eat together.
+
+It is important clearly to keep in mind the different factors involved
+in the conception of the _ka_:--
+
+(a) The statue of the deceased is animated by restoring to it the breath
+of life and all the other vital attributes of which the early Egyptian
+physiologist took cognisance.
+
+(b) At the time of birth there came into being along with the child a
+"twin" whose destinies were closely linked with the child's.
+
+(c) As the result of animating the statue the deceased also has restored
+to him his character, "the sum of his attributes," his individuality,
+later raised to the position of a protecting genius or god, a Providence
+who watches over his well-being.[82]
+
+The _ka_ is not simply identical with the breath of life or _animus_, as
+Burnet supposes (_op. cit. supra_), but has a wider significance. The
+adoption of the conception of the _ka_ as a sort of guardian angel which
+finds its appropriate habitation in a statue that has been animated does
+not necessarily conflict with the view so concretely and unmistakably
+represented in the tomb-pictures that the _ka_ is also a double who is
+born along with the individual.
+
+This material conception of the _ka_ as a double who is born with and
+closely linked to the individual is, as Blackman has emphasized,[83]
+very suggestive of Baganda beliefs and rites connected with the
+placenta. At death the circumstances of the act of birth are
+reconstituted, and for this rebirth the placenta which played an
+essential part in the original process is restored to the deceased. May
+not the original meaning of the expression "he goes to his _ka_" be a
+literal description of this reunion with his placenta? The
+identification of the _ka_ with the moon, the guardian of the dead man's
+welfare, may have enriched the symbolism.
+
+Blackman makes the suggestion that "on the analogy of the beliefs
+entertained by the Hamitic ruling caste in Uganda," according to Roscoe,
+"the placenta,[84] or rather its ghost, would have been supposed by the
+Ancient Egyptians to be closely connected with the individual's
+personality, as" he maintains was also the case with the god or
+protecting genius of the Babylonians.[85] "Unless united with his twin's
+[i.e. his placenta's] ghost the dead king was an imperfect deity, i.e.
+his directing intelligence was impaired or lacking," presumably because
+the placenta was composed of blood, which was regarded as the material
+of consciousness and intelligence.
+
+In China, as the quotations from de Groot (see footnote) show, the
+placenta when placed under felicitous circumstances is able to ensure
+the child a long life and to control his mental and physical welfare.
+
+In view of the claims put forward by Blackman to associate the placenta
+with the _ka_, it is of interest to note Moret's suggestion concerning
+the fourteen forms of the _ka_, to which von Bissing assigns the
+general significance "nourishment or offerings". He puts the question
+whether they do not "personify the elements of material and intellectual
+prosperity, all that is necessary for the health of body and spirit"
+(_op. cit._, p. 209).
+
+The placenta is credited with all the varieties of life-giving potency
+that are attributed to the Mother-Goddess. It therefore controls the
+welfare of the individual and, like all maternal amulets (_vide supra_),
+ensures his good fortune. But, probably by virtue of its supposed
+derivation from and intimate association with blood, it also ministered
+to his mental welfare.
+
+In my last Rylands Lecture I referred to the probability that the
+essential elements of Chinese civilization were derived from the West. I
+had hoped that, before the present statement went to the printer, I
+would have found time to set forth in detail the evidence in
+substantiation of the reality of that diffusion of culture.
+
+Briefly the chain of proof is composed of the following links: (a) the
+intimate cultural contact between Egypt, Southern Arabia, Sumer, and
+Elam from a period at least as early as the First Egyptian Dynasty; (b)
+the diffusion of Sumerian and Elamite culture in very early times at
+least as far north as Russian Turkestan and as far east as Baluchistan;
+(c) at some later period the quest of gold, copper, turquoise, and jade
+led the Babylonians (and their neighbours) as far north as the Altai and
+as far east as Khotan and the Tarim Valley, where their pathways were
+blazed with the distinctive methods of cultivation and irrigation; (d)
+at some subsequent period there was an easterly diffusion of culture
+from Turkestan into the Shensi Province of China proper; and (e) at
+least as early as the seventh century B.C. there was also a spread of
+Western culture to China by sea.[86]
+
+I have already referred to some of the distinctively Egyptian traits in
+Chinese beliefs concerning the dead. Mingled with them are other equally
+definitely Babylonian ideas concerning the liver.
+
+It must be apparent that in the course of the spread of a complex system
+of religious beliefs to so great a distance, only certain of their
+features would survive the journey. Handed on from people to people,
+each of whom would unavoidably transform them to some extent, the
+tenets of the Western beliefs would become shorn of many of their
+details and have many excrescences added to them before the Chinese
+received them. In the crucible of the local philosophy they would be
+assimilated with Chinese ideas until the resulting compound assumed a
+Chinese appearance. When these inevitable circumstances are recalled the
+value of any positive evidence of Western influence is of special
+significance.
+
+According to the ancient Chinese, man has two souls, the _kwei_ and the
+_shen_. The former, which according to de Groot is definitely the more
+ancient of the two (p. 8), is the material, substantial soul, which
+emanates from the terrestrial part of the universe, and is formed of
+_yin_ substance. In living man it operates under the name of _p'oh_,
+and on his death it returns to the earth and abides with the deceased
+in his grave.
+
+The _shen_ or immaterial soul emanates from the ethereal celestial part
+of the cosmos and consists of _yang_ substance. When operating actively
+in the living human body, it is called _khi_ or "breath," and _hwun_;
+when separated from it after death it lives forth as a refulgent spirit,
+styled _ming_.[87]
+
+But the _shen_ also, in spite of its sky-affinities, hovers about the
+grave and may dwell in the inscribed grave-stone (p. 6). There may be a
+multitude of _shen_ in one body and many "soul-tablets" may be provided
+for them (p. 74).
+
+Just as in Egypt the _ka_ is said to "symbolize the force of life which
+resides in nourishment" (Moret, p. 212), so the Chinese refer to the
+ethereal part of the food as its _khi_, i.e. the "breath" of its _shen_.
+
+The careful study of the mass of detailed evidence so lucidly set forth
+by de Groot in his great monograph reveals the fact that, in spite of
+many superficial differences and apparent contradictions, the early
+Chinese conceptions of the soul and its functions are essentially
+identical with the Egyptian, and must have been derived from the
+same source.
+
+From the quotations which I have already given in the foregoing pages,
+it appears that the Chinese entertain views regarding the functions of
+the placenta which are identical with those of the Baganda, and a
+conception of the souls of man which presents unmistakable analogies
+with Egyptian beliefs. Yet these Chinese references do not shed any
+clearer light than Egyptian literature does upon the problem of the
+possible relationship between the _ka_ and the _placenta_.
+
+In the Iranian domain, however, right on the overland route from the
+Persian Gulf to China, there seems to be a ray of light. According to
+the late Professor Moulton, "The later Parsi books tell us that the
+Fravashi is a part of a good man's identity, living in heaven and
+reuniting with the soul at death. It is not exactly a guardian angel,
+for it shares in the development or deterioration of the rest of the
+man."[88]
+
+In fact the Fravashi is not unlike the Egyptian _ka_ on the one side and
+the Chinese _shen_ on the other. "They are the _Manes_, 'the good folk'"
+(p. 144): they are connected with the stars in their capacity as spirits
+of the dead (p. 143), and they "showed their paths to the sun, the moon,
+the sun, and the endless lights," just as the _kas_ guide the dead in
+the hereafter.
+
+The Fravashis play a part in the annual All Soul's feast (p. 144), for
+which Breasted has provided an almost exact parallel in Egypt during the
+Middle Kingdom.[89] All the circumstances of the two ceremonies are
+essentially identical.
+
+Now Professor Moulton suggests that the word Fravashi may be derived
+from the Avestan root _var_, "to impregnate," and _fravasi_ mean
+"birth-promotion" (p. 142). As he associates this with childbirth the
+possibility suggests itself whether the "birth-promoter" may not be
+simply the placenta.
+
+Loret (quoted by Moret, p. 202), however, derives the word _ka_ from a
+root signifying "to beget," so that the Fravashi may be nothing more
+than the Iranian homologue of the Egyptian _ka_.
+
+The connecting link between the Iranian and Egyptian conceptions may be
+the Sumerian instances given to Blackman[90] by Dr. Langdon.
+
+The whole idea seems to have originated out of the belief that the sum
+of the individual attributes or vital expressions of a man's personality
+could exist apart from the physical body. The contemplation of the
+phenomena of sleep and death provided the evidence in corroboration
+of this.
+
+At birth the newcomer came into the world physically connected with the
+placenta, which was accredited with the attributes of the life-giving
+and birth-promoting Great Mother and intimately related to the moon and
+the earliest totem. It was obviously, also, closely concerned in the
+nutrition of the embryo, for was it not the stalk upon which the latter
+was growing like some fruit on its stem? It was a not unnatural
+inference to suppose that, as the elements of the personality were not
+indissolubly connected with the body, they were brought into existence
+at the time of birth and that the placenta was their vehicle.
+
+The Egyptians' own terms of reference to the sculptor of a statue show
+that the ideas of birth were uppermost in their minds when the custom of
+statue-making was first devised. Moret has brought together (_op. cit.
+supra_) a good deal of evidence to suggest the far-reaching significance
+of the conception of ritual rebirth in early Egyptian religious
+ceremonial. With these ideas in his mind the Egyptian would naturally
+attach great importance to the placenta in any attempt to reconstruct
+the act of rebirth, which would be regarded in a literal sense. The
+placenta which played an essential part in the original act would have
+an equally important role in the ritual of rebirth. [For a further
+comment upon the problem discussed in the preceding ten pages, see
+Appendix A, p. 73.]
+
+
+[68: "Primitive Man," _Proceedings of the British Academy_, 1917, p. 41.
+
+It is important to remember that the real meaning of respiration was
+quite unknown until modern science revealed the part played by oxygen.]
+
+[69: The enormous complexity and intricacy of the interrelation between
+the functions of the "heart," and the "breath" is revealed in Chinese
+philosophy (see de Groot, _op. cit._ Chapter VII. _inter alia_).]
+
+[70: Second Annual Philosophical Lecture, Henriette Hertz Trust,
+_Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol. VII, 26 Jan., 1916.]
+
+[71: The Egyptian _ka_, however, was a more complex entity than this
+comparison suggests.]
+
+[72: Breasted, _op. cit._ pp. 44 and 45.]
+
+[73: _Op. cit._ pp. 45 and 46.]
+
+[74: _Ibid._ p. 28.]
+
+[75: W. J. Perry has collected the evidence preserved in a remarkable
+series of Indonesian legends in his recent book, "The Megalithic Culture
+of Indonesia". But the fullest exposition of the whole subject is
+provided in the Chinese literature summarized by de Groot (_op. cit._).]
+
+[76: See, however, the reservations in the subsequent pages.]
+
+[77: The thorough analysis of the beliefs of any people makes this
+abundantly clear. De Groot's monograph is an admirable illustration of
+this (_op. cit._ Chapter VII.). Both in Egypt and China the conceptions
+of the significance of the shadow are later and altogether subsidiary.]
+
+[78: Alan H. Gardiner, Davies and Gardiner, _op. cit._ p. 59.]
+
+[79: F. Ll. Griffith, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs," 1898, p. 60.]
+
+[80: Aylward M. Blackman, "Some Remarks on an Emblem upon the Head of an
+Ancient Egyptian Birth-Goddess," _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol.
+III, Part III, July, 1916, p. 199; and "The Pharaoh's Placenta and the
+Moon-God Khons," _ibid._ Part IV, Oct., 1916, p. 235.]
+
+[81: "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 52. Breasted denies
+that the _ka_ was an element of the personality.]
+
+[82: For an abstruse discussion of this problem see Alan H. Gardiner,
+"Personification (Egyptian)," Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of Religion and
+Ethics_, pp. 790 and 792.]
+
+[83: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+[84: Mr. Blackman is puzzled to explain what "possible connexion there
+could be between the Pharaoh's placenta and the moon beyond the fact
+that it is the custom in Uganda to expose the king's placenta each new
+moon and anoint it with butter."
+
+To those readers who follow my argument in the later pages of this
+discussion the reasoning at the back of this association should be plain
+enough. The moon was regarded as the controller of menstruation. The
+placenta (and also the child) was considered to be formed of menstrual
+blood. The welfare of the placenta was therefore considered to be under
+the control of the moon.
+
+The anointing with butter is an interesting illustration of the close
+connexion of these lunar and maternal phenomena with the cow.
+
+The placenta was associated with the moon also in China, as the
+following quotation shows.
+
+According to de Groot (_op. cit._ p. 396), "in the _Siao 'rh fang_ or
+Medicament for Babies, by the hand of Ts'ui Hing-kung [died 674 A.D.],
+it is said: 'The placenta should be stored away in a felicitous spot
+under the salutary influences of the sky or the moon ... in order that
+the child may be ensured a long life'". He then goes on to explain how
+any interference with the placenta will entail mental or physical
+trouble to the child.
+
+The placenta also is used as the ingredient of pills to increase
+fertility, facilitate parturition, to bring back life to people on the
+brink of death and it is the main ingredient "in medicines for lunacy,
+convulsions, epilepsy, etc." (p. 397). "It gives rest to the heart,
+nourishes the blood, increases the breath, and strengthens the _tsing_"
+(p. 396).
+
+These attributes of the placenta indicate that the beliefs of the
+Baganda are not merely local eccentricities, but widespread and sharply
+defined interpretations of the natural phenomena of birth.]
+
+[85: _Op. cit._ p. 241.]
+
+[86: See "The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization," now being
+published in the _Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and
+Philosophical Society_.]
+
+[87: De Groot, p. 5.]
+
+[88: _Early Religious Poetry of Persia_, p. 145.]
+
+[89: _Op. cit._ p. 264.]
+
+[90: _Ibid._ p. 240.]
+
+
+The Power of the Eye.
+
+In attempting to understand the peculiar functions attributed to the eye
+it is essential that the inquirer should endeavour to look at the
+problem from the early Egyptian's point of view. After moulding into
+shape the wrappings of the mummy so as to restore as far as possible the
+form of the deceased the embalmer then painted eyes upon the face. So
+also when the sculptor had learned to make finished models in stone or
+wood, and by the addition of paint had enhanced the life-like
+appearance, the statue was still merely a dead thing. What were needed
+above all to enliven it, literally and actually, in other words, to
+animate it, were the eyes; and the Egyptian artist set to work and with
+truly marvellous skill reproduced the appearance of living eyes (Fig.
+5). How ample was the justification for this belief will be appreciated
+by anyone who glances at the remarkable photographs recently published
+by Dr. Alan H. Gardiner.[91] The wonderful eyes will be seen to make the
+statue sparkle and live. To the concrete mind of the Egyptian this
+triumph of art was regarded not as a mere technical success or
+aesthetic achievement. The artist was considered to have made the statue
+really live; in fact, literally and actually converted it into a "living
+image". The eyes themselves were regarded as one of the chief sources of
+the vitality which had been conferred upon the statue.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5--Statue of an Egyptian Noble of the Pyramid Age to
+show the technical skill in the representation of life-like eyes]
+
+This is the explanation of all the elaborate care and skill bestowed
+upon the making of artificial eyes. No doubt also it was largely
+responsible for giving definition to the remarkable belief in the
+animating power of the eye. But so many other factors of most diverse
+kinds played a part in building up the complex theory of the eye's
+fertilizing potency that all the stages in the process of
+rationalization cannot yet be arranged in orderly sequence.
+
+I refer to the question here and suggest certain aspects of it that seem
+worthy of investigation merely for the purpose of stimulating some
+student of early Egyptian literature to look into the matter
+further.[92]
+
+As death was regarded as a kind of sleep and the closing of the eyes was
+the distinctive sign of the latter condition the open eyes were not
+unnaturally regarded as clear evidence of wakefulness and life. In fact,
+to a matter-of-fact people the restoration of the eyes to the mummy or
+statue was equivalent to an awakening to life.
+
+At a time when a reflection in a mirror or in a sheet of water was
+supposed to afford quite positive evidence of the reality of each
+individual's "double," and when the "soul," or more concretely, "life,"
+was imagined to be a minute image or homunculus, it is quite likely that
+the reflection in the eye may have been interpreted as the "soul"
+dwelling within it. The eye was certainly regarded as peculiarly rich in
+"soul substance". It was not until Osiris received from Horus the eye
+which had been wrenched out in the latter's combat with Set that he
+"became a soul".[93]
+
+It is a remarkable fact that this belief in the animating power of the
+eye spread as far east as Polynesia and America, and as far west as the
+British Islands.
+
+Of course the obvious physiological functions of the eyes as means of
+communication between their possessor and the world around him; the
+powerful influence of the eyes for expressing feeling and emotion
+without speech; the analogy between the closing and opening of the eyes
+and the changes of day and night, are all hinted at in Egyptian
+literature.
+
+But there were certain specific factors that seem to have helped to give
+definiteness to these general ideas of the physiology of the eyes. The
+tears, like all the body moisture, came to share the life-giving
+attributes of water in general. And when it is recalled that at funeral
+ceremonies emotion found natural expression in the shedding of tears, it
+is not unlikely that this came to be assimilated with all the other
+water-symbolism of the funerary ritual. The early literature of Egypt,
+in fact, refers to the part played by Isis and Nephthys in the
+reanimation of Osiris, when the tears they shed as mourners brought
+life back to the god. But the fertilizing tears of Isis were life-giving
+in the wider sense. They were said to cause the inundation which
+fertilized the soil of Egypt, meaning presumably that the "Eye of Re"
+sent the rain.
+
+There is the further possibility that the beliefs associated with the
+cowry may have played some part, if not in originating, at any rate in
+emphasizing the conception of the fertilizing powers of the eye. I have
+already mentioned the outstanding features of the symbolism of the
+cowry. In many places in Africa and elsewhere the similarity of this
+shell to the half-closed eyelids led to its use as an artificial "eye"
+in mummies. The use of the same objects to symbolize the female
+reproductive organs and the eyes may have played some part in
+transferring to the latter the fertility of the former. The gods were
+born of the eyes of Ptah. Might not the confusion of the eye with the
+genitalia have given a meaning to this statement? There is evidence of
+this double symbolism of these shells. Cowry shells have also been
+employed, both in the Persian Gulf and the Pacific, to decorate the bows
+of boats, probably for the dual purpose of representing eyes and
+conferring vitality upon the vessel. These facts suggest that the belief
+in the fertilizing power of the eyes may to some extent be due to this
+cowry-association. Even if it be admitted that all the known cases of
+the use of cowries as eyes of mummies are relatively late, and that it
+is not known to have been employed for such a purpose in Egypt, the mere
+fact that the likeness to the eyelids so readily suggests itself may
+have linked together the attributes of the cowry and the eye even in
+Predynastic times, when cowries were placed with the dead in the grave.
+
+Hathor's identification with the "Eye of Re" may possibly have been an
+expression of the same idea. But the role of the "Eye of Re" was due
+primarily to her association with the moon (_vide infra_, p. 56).
+
+The apparently hopeless tangle of contradictions involved in these
+conceptions of Hathor will have to be unravelled. For "no eye is to be
+feared more than thine (Re's) when it attacketh in the form of Hathor"
+(Maspero, _op. cit._ p. 165). If it was the beneficent life-giving
+aspect of the eye which led to its identification with Hathor, in course
+of time, when the reason for this connexion was lost sight of, it became
+associated with the malevolent, death-dealing _avatar_ of the goddess,
+and became the expression of the god's anger and hatred toward his
+enemies. It is not unlikely that such a confusion may have been
+responsible for giving concrete expression to the general psychological
+fact that the eyes are obviously among the chief means for expressing
+hatred for and intimidating and "brow-beating" one's fellows. [In my
+lecture on "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall explain the explicit
+circumstances that gave rise to these contradictions.]
+
+It is significant that, in addition to the widespread belief in the
+"evil eye"--which in itself embodies the same confusion, the expression
+of admiration that works evil--in a multitude of legends it is the eye
+that produces petrifaction. The "stony stare" causes death and the dead
+become transformed into statues, which, however, usually lack their
+original attribute of animation. These stories have been collected by
+Mr. E. S. Hartland in his "Legend of Perseus".
+
+There is another possible link in the chain of associations between the
+eye and the idea of fertility. I have already referred to the
+development of the belief that incense, which plays so prominent a part
+in the ritual for conferring vitality upon the dead, is itself replete
+with animating properties. "Glaser has already shown the _anti_ incense
+of the Egyptian Punt Reliefs to be an Arabian word, _a-a-netc_,
+'tree-eyes' (_Punt und die Suedarabischen Reiche_, p. 7), and to refer to
+the large lumps ... as distinguished from the small round drops, which
+are supposed to be tree-tears or the tree-blood."[94]
+
+
+[91: "A New Masterpiece of Egyptian Sculpture," _The Journal of Egyptian
+Archaeology_, Vol. IV, Part I, Jan., 1917.]
+
+[92: In all probability the main factor that was responsible for
+conferring such definite life-giving powers upon the eye was the
+identification of the moon with the Great Mother. The moon was the Eye
+of Re, the sky-god.]
+
+[93: Breasted, "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 59. The
+meaning of the phrase rendered "a soul" here would be more accurately
+given by the word "reanimated".]
+
+[94: Wilfred H. Schoff, "The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea," 1912, p.
+164.]
+
+
+The Moon and the Sky-World.
+
+There are reasons for believing that the chief episodes in Aphrodite's
+past point to the Red Sea for their inspiration, though many other
+factors, due partly to local circumstances and partly to contact with
+other civilizations, contributed to the determination of the traits of
+the Mediterranean goddess of love. In Babylonia and India there are very
+definite signs of borrowing from the same source. It is important,
+therefore, to look for further evidence to Arabia as the obvious bond of
+union both with Phoenicia and Babylonia.
+
+The claim made in Roscher's _Lexicon der Mythologie_ that the Assyrian
+Ishtar, the Phoenician Ashtoreth (Astarte), the Syrian Atargatis
+(Derketo), the Babylonian Belit (Mylitta) and the Arabian Ilat (Al-ilat)
+were all moon-goddesses has given rise to much rather aimless
+discussion, for there can be no question of their essential homology
+with Hathor and Aphrodite. Moreover, from the beginning, all
+goddesses--and especially this most primitive stratum of fertility
+deities--were for obvious reasons intimately associated with the
+moon.[95] But the cyclical periodicity of the moon which suggested the
+analogy with the similar physiological periodicity of women merely
+explains the association of the moon with women. The influence of the
+moon upon dew and the tides, perhaps, suggested its controlling power
+over water and emphasized the life-giving function which its association
+with women had already suggested. For reasons which have been explained
+already, water was associated more especially with fertilization by the
+male. Hence the symbolism of the moon came to include the control of
+both the male and the female processes of reproduction.[96]
+
+The literature relating to the development of these ideas with
+reference to the moon has been summarized by Professor Hutton
+Webster.[97] He shows that "there is good reason for believing that
+among many primitive peoples the moon, rather than the sun, the planets
+or any of the constellations, first excited the imagination and aroused
+feelings of superstitious awe or of religious veneration".
+
+Special attention was first devoted to the moon when agricultural
+pursuits compelled men to measure time and determine the seasons. The
+influence of the moon on water, both the tides and dew, brought it
+within the scope of the then current biological theory of fertilization.
+This conception was powerfully corroborated by the parallelism of the
+moon's cycles and those of womankind, which was interpreted by regarding
+the moon as the controlling power of the female reproductive functions.
+Thus all of the earliest goddesses who were personifications of the
+powers of fertility came to be associated, and in some cases identified,
+with the moon.
+
+In this way the animation and deification of the moon was brought about:
+and the first sky deity assumed not only all the attributes of the
+cowry, i.e. the female reproductive functions, but also, as the
+controller of water, many of those which afterwards were associated with
+Osiris. The confusion of the male fertilizing powers of Osiris with the
+female reproductive functions of Hathor and Isis may explain how in some
+places the moon became a masculine deity, who, however, still retained
+his control over womankind, and caused the phenomena of menstruation by
+the exercise of his virile powers.[98] But the moon-god was also a
+measurer of time and in this aspect was specially personified in Thoth.
+
+The assimilation of the moon with these earth-deities was probably
+responsible for the creation of the first sky-deity. For once the
+conception developed of identifying a deity with the moon, and the
+Osirian beliefs associated with the deification of a dead king grew up,
+the moon became the impersonation of the spirit of womankind, some
+mortal woman who by death had acquired divinity.
+
+After the idea had developed of regarding the moon as the spirit of a
+dead person, it was only natural that, in course of time, the sun and
+stars should be brought within the scope of the same train of thought,
+and be regarded as the deified dead. When this happened the sun not
+unnaturally soon leapt into a position of pre-eminence. As the moon
+represented the deified female principle the sun became the dominant
+male deity Re. The stars also became the spirits of the dead.
+
+Once this new conception of a sky-world was adumbrated a luxuriant crop
+of beliefs grew up to assimilate the new beliefs with the old, and to
+buttress the confused mixture of incompatible ideas with a complex
+scaffolding of rationalization.
+
+The sun-god Horus was already the son of Osiris. Osiris controlled not
+only the river and the irrigation canals, but also the rain-clouds. The
+fumes of incense conveyed to the sky-gods the supplications of the
+worshippers on earth. Incense was not only "the perfume that deities,"
+but also the means by which the deities and the dead could pass to their
+doubles in the newly invented sky-heaven. The sun-god Re was represented
+in his temple not by an anthropoid statue, but by an obelisk,[99] the
+gilded apex of which pointed to heaven and "drew down" the dazzling rays
+of the sun, reflected from its polished surface, so that all the
+worshippers could see the manifestations of the god in his temple.
+
+These events are important, not only for creating the sky-gods and the
+sky-heaven, but possibly also for suggesting the idea that even a mere
+pillar of stone, whether carved or uncarved, upon which no attempt had
+been made to model the human form, could represent the deity, or rather
+could become the "body" to be animated by the god.[100] For once it was
+admitted, even in the home of these ancient ideas concerning the
+animation of statues, that it was not essential for the idol to be
+shaped into human form, the way was opened for less cultured peoples,
+who had not acquired the technical skill to carve statues, simply to
+erect stone pillars or unshaped masses of stone or wood for their gods
+to enter, when the appropriate ritual of animation was performed.[101]
+
+This conception of the possibility of gods, men, or animals dwelling in
+stones spread in course of time throughout the world, but in every place
+where it is found certain arbitrary details of the methods of animating
+the stone reveal the fact that all these legends must have been derived
+from the same source.
+
+The complementary belief in the possibility of the petrifaction of men
+and animals has a similarly extensive geographical distribution. The
+history of this remarkable incident I shall explain in the lecture on
+"Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II.).[102]
+
+
+[95: I am not concerned here with the explanation of the means by which
+their home became transferred to the planet Venus.]
+
+[96: In his discussion of the functions of the Fravashis in the Iranian
+Yasht, the late Professor Moulton suggested the derivation of the word
+from the Avestan root _var_, "to impregnate," so that _fravasi_ might
+mean "birth-promotion". But he was puzzled by a reference to water.
+"Less easy to understand is their intimate connexion with the Waters"
+("Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 142 and 143). But the Waters
+were regarded as fertilizing agents. This is seen in the Avestan
+Anahita, who was "the presiding genie of Fertility and more especially
+of the Waters" (W. J. Phythian-Adams, "Mithraism," 1915, p. 13).]
+
+[97: "Rest Days," New York, 1916, pp. 124 _et seq._]
+
+[98: Wherever these deities of fertility are found, whether in Egypt,
+Babylonia, the Mediterranean Area, Eastern Asia, and America,
+illustrations of this confusion of sex are found. The explanation which
+Dr. Rendel Harris offers of this confusion in the case of Aphrodite
+seems to me not to give due recognition to its great antiquity and
+almost world-wide distribution.]
+
+[99: L. Borchardt, "Das Re-heiligtum des Koenigs Ne-woser-re". For a good
+exposition of this matter see A. Moret, "Sanctuaires de l'ancien Empire
+Egyptien,"; _Annales du Musee Guimet_, 1912, p. 265.]
+
+[100: It is possible that the ceremony of erecting the _dad_ columns may
+have played some part in the development of these beliefs. (On this see
+A. Moret, "Mysteres Egyptiens," 1913, pp. 13-17.)]
+
+[101: Many other factors played a part in the development of the stories
+of the birth of ancestors from stones. I have already referred to the
+origin of the idea of the cowry (or some other shell) as the parent of
+mankind. The place of the shell was often taken by roughly carved
+stones, which of course were accredited with the same power of being
+able to produce men, or of being a sort of egg from which human beings
+could be hatched. It is unlikely that the finding of fossilized animals
+played any leading role in the development of these beliefs, beyond
+affording corroborative evidence in support of them after other
+circumstances had been responsible for originating the stories. The more
+circumstantial Oriental stories of the splitting of stones giving birth
+to heroes and gods may have been suggested by the finding in pebbles of
+fossilized shells--themselves regarded already as the parents of
+mankind. But such interpretations were only possible because all the
+predisposing circumstances had already prepared the way for the
+acceptance of these specific illustrations of a general theory.
+
+These beliefs may have developed before and quite independently of the
+ideas concerning the animation of statues; but if so the latter event
+would have strengthened and in some places become merged with the other
+story.]
+
+[102: For an extensive collection of these remarkable petrifaction
+legends in almost every part of the world, see E. Sidney Hartland's "The
+Legend of Perseus," especially Volumes I and III. These distinctive
+stories will be found to be complexly interwoven with all the matters
+discussed in this address.]
+
+
+The Worship of the Cow.
+
+Intimately linked with the subjects I have been discussing is the
+worship of the cow. It would lead me too far afield to enter into the
+details of the process by which the earliest Mother-Goddesses became so
+closely associated or even identified with the cow, and why the cow's
+horns became associated with the moon among the emblems of Hathor.
+But it is essential that reference should be made to certain aspects of
+the subject.
+
+I do not think there is any evidence to justify the common theory that
+the likeness of the crescent moon to a cow's horns was the reason for
+the association. On the other hand, it is clear that both the moon and
+the cow became identified with the Mother-Goddess quite independently
+the one of the other, and at a very remote period.
+
+It is probable that the fundamental factor in the development of this
+association of the cow and the Mother-Goddess was the fact of the use of
+milk as food for human beings. For if the cow could assume this maternal
+function she was in fact a sort of foster-mother of mankind; and in
+course of time she came to be regarded as the actual mother of the human
+race and to be identified with the Great Mother.
+
+Many other considerations helped in this process of assimilation. The
+use of cattle not merely as meat for the sustenance of the living but as
+the usual and most characteristic life-giving food for the dead
+naturally played a part in conferring divinity upon the cow, just as an
+analogous relationship made incense a holy substance and was responsible
+for the personification of the incense-tree as a goddess. This influence
+was still further emphasized in the case of cattle because they also
+supplied the blood which was used for the ritual purpose of bestowing
+consciousness upon the dead, and in course of time upon the gods also,
+so that they might hear and attend to the prayers of supplicants.
+
+Other circumstances emphasize the significance attached to the cow: but
+it is difficult to decide whether they contributed in any way to the
+development of these beliefs or were merely some of the practices which
+were the result of the divination of the cow. The custom of placing
+butter in the mouths of the dead, in Egypt, Uganda, and India, the
+various ritual uses of milk, the employment of a cow's hide as a
+wrapping for the dead in the grave, and also in certain mysterious
+ceremonies,[103] all indicate the intimate connexion between the cow and
+the means of attaining a rebirth in the life to come.
+
+I think there are definite reasons for believing that once the cow
+became identified with the Mother-Goddess as the parent of mankind the
+first step was taken in the development of the curious system of ideas
+now known as "totemism".
+
+This, however, is a complex problem which I cannot stay to discuss here.
+
+When the cow became identified with the Great Mother and the moon was
+regarded as the dwelling or the personification of the same goddess, the
+Divine Cow by a process of confused syncretism came to be regarded as
+the sky or the heavens, to which the dead were raised up on the cow's
+back. When Re became the dominant deity, he was identified with the sky,
+and the sun and moon were then regarded as his eyes. Thus the moon, as
+the Great Mother as well as the Eye of Re, was the bond of
+identification of the Great Mother with an eye. This was probably how
+the eye acquired the animating powers of the Giver of Life.
+
+A whole volume might be written upon the almost world-wide diffusion of
+these beliefs regarding the cow, as far as Scotland and Ireland in the
+west, and in their easterly migration probably as far as America, to the
+confusion alike of its ancient artists and its modern ethnologists.[104]
+
+As an illustration of the identification of the cow's attributes with
+those of the life-giving Great Mother, I might refer to the late
+Professor Moulton's commentary[105] on the ancient Iranian Gathas, where
+cow's flesh is given to mortals by Yima to make them immortal. "May we
+connect it with another legend whereby at the Regeneration Mithra is to
+make men immortal by giving them to eat the fat of the ... primeval Cow
+from whose slain body, according to the Aryan legends adopted by
+Mithraism, mankind was first created?"[106]
+
+
+[103: See A. Moret, _op. cit._ p. 81, _inter alia_.]
+
+[104: See the Copan sculptured monuments described by Maudslay in Godman
+and Salvin's "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Archaeology, Plate 46,
+representing "Stela D," with two serpents in the places occupied by the
+Indian elephants in Stela B--concerning which see _Nature_, November 25,
+1915. To one of these intertwined serpents is attached a cow-headed
+human daemon. Compare also the Chiriqui figure depicted by MacCurdy,
+"A Study of Chiriquian Antiquities," Yale University Press, 1911, fig.
+361, p. 209.]
+
+[105: "Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 42 and 43.]
+
+[106: _Op. cit._ p. 43. But I think these legends accredited to the
+Aryans owe their parentage to the same source as the Egyptian beliefs
+concerning the cow, and especially the remarkable mysteries upon which
+Moret has been endeavouring to throw some light--"Mysteres Egyptiens,"
+p. 43.]
+
+
+The Diffusion of Culture.
+
+In these pages I have made no attempt to deal with the far-reaching and
+intricate problems of the diffusion abroad of the practices and beliefs
+which I have been discussing. But the thoughts and the aspirations of
+every cultured people are permeated through and through with their
+influence.
+
+It is important to remember that in almost every stage of the
+development of these complex customs and ideas not merely the "finished
+product" but also the ingredients out of which it was built up were
+being scattered abroad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I shall briefly refer to certain evidence from Asia and America in
+illustration of this fact and in substantiation of the reality of the
+diffusion to the East of some of the beliefs I have been discussing.
+
+The unity of Egyptian and Babylonian ideas is nowhere more strikingly
+demonstrated than in the essential identity of the attributes of Osiris
+and Ea. It affords the most positive proof of the derivation of the
+beliefs from some common source, and reveals the fact that Egyptian and
+Sumerian civilizations must have been in intimate cultural contact at
+the beginning of their developmental history. "In Babylonia, as in
+Egypt, there were differences of opinion regarding the origin of life
+and the particular natural element which represented the vital
+principle." "One section of the people, who were represented by the
+worshippers of Ea, appear to have believed that the essence of life was
+contained in water. The god of Eridu was the source of the 'water of
+life'."[107]
+
+"Offerings of water and food were made to the dead," not primarily so
+that they might be "prevented from troubling the living,"[108] but to
+supply them with the means of sustenance and to reanimate them to help
+the suppliants. It is a common belief that these and other procedures
+were inspired by fear of the dead. But such a statement does not
+accurately represent the attitude of mind of the people who devised
+these funerary ceremonies. For it is not the enemies of the dead or
+those against whom he had a grudge that run a risk at funerals, but
+rather his friends; and the more deeply he was attached to a particular
+person the greater the danger for the latter. For among many people
+the belief obtains that when a man dies he will endeavour to steal
+the "soul-substance" of those who are dearest to him so that they
+may accompany him to the other world. But as stealing the
+"soul-substance"[109] means death, it is easy to misunderstand such a
+display of affection. Hence most people who long for life and hate death
+do their utmost to evade such embarrassing tokens of love; and most
+ethnologists, misjudging such actions, write about "appeasing the dead".
+It was those whom the gods _loved_ who died young.
+
+Ea was not only the god of the deep, but also "lord of life," king of
+the river and god of creation. Like Osiris "he fertilized parched and
+sunburnt wastes through rivers and irrigating canals, and conferred upon
+man the sustaining 'food of life'.... The goddess of the dead commanded
+her servant to 'sprinkle the Lady Ishtar with the water of life'" (_op.
+cit._, p. 44).
+
+In Chapter III. of Mr. Mackenzie's book, from which I have just quoted,
+there is an interesting collection of quotations clearly showing that
+the conception of the vitalizing properties of the body moisture of gods
+is not restricted to Egypt, but is found also in Babylonia and India, in
+Western Asia and Greece, and also in Western Europe.
+
+It has been suggested that the name Ishtar has been derived from Semitic
+roots implying "she who waters," "she who makes fruitful".[110]
+
+Barton claims that: "The beginnings of Semitic religion as they were
+conceived by the Semites themselves go back to sexual relations ... the
+Semitic conception of deity ... embodies the truth--grossly indeed, but
+nevertheless embodies it--that 'God is love'" (_op. cit._ p. 107). [This
+statement, however, is very misleading--see Appendix C, p. 75.]
+
+Throughout the countries where Semitic[111] influence spread the
+primitive Mother-Goddesses or some of their specialized variants are
+found. But in every case the goddess is associated with many distinctive
+traits which reveal her identity with her homologues in Cyprus,
+Babylonia, and Egypt.
+
+Among the Sumerians "life comes on earth through the introduction of
+water and irrigation".[112] "Man also results from a union between the
+water-gods."
+
+The Akkadians held views which were almost the direct antithesis of
+these. To them "the watery deep is disorder, and the cosmos, the order
+of the world, is due to the victory of a god of light and spring over
+the monster of winter and water; man is directly made by the gods".[113]
+
+"The Sumerian account of Beginnings centres around the production by the
+gods of water, Enki and his consort Nin-ella (or Dangal), of a great
+number of canals bringing rain to the desolate fields of a dry
+continent. Life both of vegetables and animals follows the profusion of
+the vivifying waters.... In the process of life's production besides
+Enki, the personality of his consort is very conspicuous. She is called
+_Nin-Ella_, 'the pure Lady,' _Damgal-Nunna_, the 'great Lady of the
+Waters,' _Nin-Tu_, 'the Lady of Birth'" (p. 301). The child of Enki and
+Nin-ella was the ancestor of mankind.[114]
+
+"In later traditions, the personality of that Great Lady seems to have
+been overshadowed by that of Ishtar, who absorbed several of her
+functions" (p. 301).
+
+Professor Carnoy fully demonstrates the derivation of certain early
+so-called "Aryan" beliefs from Chaldea. In the Iranian account of the
+creation "the great spring Ardvi Sura Anahita is the
+life-increasing, the herd-increasing, the fold-increasing who makes
+prosperity for all countries (Yt. 5, 1) ... that precious spring is
+worshipped as a goddess ... and is personified as a handsome and stately
+woman. She is a fair maid, most strong, tall of form, high-girded. Her
+arms are white and thick as a horse's shoulder or still thicker. She is
+full of gracefulness" (Yt. 5, 7, 64, 78). "Professor Cumont thinks that
+Anahita is Ishtar ... she is a goddess of fecundation and birth.
+Moreover in Achaemenian inscriptions Anahita is associated with Ahura
+Mazdah and Mithra, a triad corresponding to the Chaldean triad:
+Sin-Shamash-Ishtar. [Greek: Anaitis] in Strabo and other Greek writers
+is treated as [Greek: Aphrodite]" (p. 302).
+
+But in Mesopotamia also the same views were entertained as in Egypt of
+the functions of statues.
+
+"The statues hidden in the recesses of the temples or erected on the
+summits of the 'Ziggurats' became imbued, by virtue of their
+consecration, with the actual body of the god whom they represented."
+Thus Marduk is said to "inhabit his image" (Maspero, _op. cit._ p. 64).
+
+This is precisely the idea which the Egyptians had. Even at the present
+day it survives among the Dravidian peoples of India.[115] They make
+images of their village deities, which may be permanent or only
+temporary, but in any case they are regarded not as actual deities but
+as the "bodies" so to speak into which these deities can enter. They are
+sacred only when they are so animated by the goddess. The ritual of
+animation is essentially identical with that found in Ancient Egypt.
+Libations are poured out; incense is burnt; the bleeding right fore-leg
+of a buffalo constitutes the blood-offering.[116] When the deity is
+reanimated by these procedures and its consciousness restored by the
+blood-offering it can hear appeals and speak.
+
+The same attitude towards their idols was adopted by the Polynesians.
+"The priest usually addressed the image, into which it was imagined the
+god entered when anyone came to inquire his will."[117]
+
+But there are certain other aspects of these Indian customs that are of
+peculiar interest. In my Ridgeway essay (_op. cit. supra_) I referred to
+the means by which in Nubia the degradation of the oblong Egyptian
+_mastaba_ gave rise to the simple stone circle. This type spread to the
+west along the North African littoral, and also to the Eastern desert
+and Palestine. At some subsequent time mariners from the Red Sea
+introduced this practice into India.
+
+[It is important to bear in mind that two other classes of stone circles
+were invented. One of them was derived, not from the _mastaba_ itself,
+but from the enclosing wall surrounding it (see my Ridgeway essay, Fig.
+13, p. 531, and compare with Figs. 3 and 4, p. 510, for illustrations of
+the transformed _mastaba_-type). This type of circle (enclosing a
+dolmen) is found both in the Caucasus-Caspian area as well as in India.
+A highly developed form of this encircling type of structure is seen in
+the famous rails surrounding the Buddhist _stupas_ and _dagabas_. A
+third and later form of circle, of which Stonehenge is an example, was
+developed out of the much later New Empire Egyptian conception of
+a temple.]
+
+But at the same time, as in Nubia, and possibly in Libya, the _mastaba_
+was being degraded into the first of the three main varieties of stone
+circle, other, though less drastic, forms of simplification of the
+_mastaba_ were taking place, possibly in Egypt itself, but certainly
+upon the neighbouring Mediterranean coasts. In some respects the least
+altered copies of the _mastaba_ are found in the so-called "giant's
+graves" of Sardinia and the "horned cairns" of the British Isles. But
+the real features of the Egyptian _serdab_, which was the essential
+part, the nucleus so to speak, of the _mastaba_, are best preserved in
+the so-called "holed dolmens" of the Levant, the Caucasus, and India.
+[They also occur sporadically in the West, as in France and Britain.]
+
+Such dolmens and more simplified forms are scattered in Palestine,[118]
+but are seen to best advantage upon the Eastern Littoral of the Black
+Sea, the Caucasus, and the neighbourhood of the Caspian. They are found
+only in scattered localities between the Black and Caspian Seas. As de
+Morgan has pointed out,[119] their distribution is explained by their
+association with ancient gold and copper mines. They were the tombs of
+immigrant mining colonies who had settled in these definite localities
+to exploit these minerals.
+
+Now the same types of dolmens, also associated with ancient mines,[120]
+are found in India. There is some evidence to suggest that these
+degraded types of Egyptian _mastabas_ were introduced into India at some
+time after the adoption of the other, the Nubian modification of the
+_mastaba_ which is represented by the first variety of stone
+circle.[121]
+
+I have referred to these Indian dolmens for the specific purpose of
+illustrating the complexities of the processes of diffusion of culture.
+For not only have several variously specialized degradation-products of
+the same original type of Egyptian _mastaba_ reached India, possibly by
+different routes and at different times, but also many of the ideas
+that developed out of the funerary ritual in Egypt--of which the
+_mastaba_ was merely one of the manifestations--made their way to India
+at various times and became secondarily blended with other expressions
+of the same or associated ideas there. I have already referred to the
+essential elements of the Egyptian funerary ritual--the statues,
+incense, libations, and the rest--as still persisting among the
+Dravidian peoples.
+
+But in the Madras Presidency dolmens are found converted into Siva
+temples.[122] Now in the inner chamber of the shrine--which represents
+the homologue of the _serdab_--in place of the statue or bas-relief of
+the deceased or of the deity, which is found in some of them (see Plate
+I), there is the stone _linga-yoni_ emblem in the position corresponding
+to that in which, in the later temple in the same locality (Kambaduru),
+there is an image of Parvati, the consort of Siva.
+
+The earliest deities in Egypt, both Osiris and Hathor, were really
+expressions of the creative principle. In the case of Hathor, the
+goddess was, in fact, the personification of the female organs of
+reproduction.[123] In these early Siva temples in India these principles
+of creation were given their literal interpretation, and represented
+frankly as the organs of reproduction of the two sexes. The gods of
+creation were symbolized by models in stone of the creating organs.
+Further illustrations of the same principle are witnessed in the
+Indonesian megalithic monuments which Perry calls "dissoliths".[124]
+
+The later Indian temples, both Buddhist and Hindu, were developed from
+these early dolmens, as Mr. Longhurst's reports so clearly demonstrate.
+But from time to time there was an influx of new ideas from the West
+which found expression in a series of modifications of the architecture.
+Thus India provides an admirable illustration of this principle of
+culture contact. A series of waves of megalithic culture introduced
+purely Western ideas. These were developed by the local people in their
+own way, constantly intermingling a variety of cultural influences to
+weave them into a distinctive fabric, which was compounded partly of
+imported, partly of local threads, woven locally into a truly Indian
+pattern. In this process of development one can detect the effects of
+Mycenaean accretions (see for example Longhurst's Plate XIII), probably
+modified during its indirect transmission by Phoenician and later
+influences; and also the more intimate part played by Babylonian,
+Egyptian, and, later, Greek and Persian art and architecture in
+directing the course of development of Indian culture.
+
+Incidentally, in the course of the discussions in the foregoing pages, I
+have referred to the profound influence of Egyptian, Babylonian and
+Indian ideas in Eastern Asia. Perry's important book (_op. cit. supra_)
+reveals their efforts in Indonesia. Thence they spread across the
+Pacific to America.
+
+In the "Migrations of Early Culture" (p. 114) I called attention to the
+fact that among the Aztecs water was poured upon the head of the mummy.
+This ritual procedure was inspired by the Egyptian idea of libations,
+for, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg, the pouring out of the water
+was accompanied by the remark "C'est cette eau que tu as recue en venant
+an monde".
+
+But incense-burning and blood-offering were also practised in America.
+In an interesting memoir[125] on the practice of blood-letting by
+piercing the ears and tongue, Mrs. Zelia Nuttall reproduces a remarkable
+picture from a "partly unpublished MS. of Sahagun's work preserved in
+Florence". "The image of the sun is held up by a man whose body is
+partly hidden, and two men, seated opposite to each other in the
+foreground, are in the act of piercing the helices or external borders
+of their ears." But in addition to these blood-offerings to the sun, two
+priests are burning incense in remarkably Egyptian-like censers, and
+another pair are blowing conch-shell trumpets.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Representation of the ancient Mexican Worship of
+the Sun.
+
+The image of the sun is held up by a man in front of his face; two men
+blow conch-shell trumpets; another pair burn incense; and a third pair
+make blood-offerings by piercing their ears--after Zelia Nuttall.]
+
+But it was not merely the use of incense and libations and the
+identities in the wholly arbitrary attributes of the American pantheon
+that reveal the sources of their derivation in the Old World. When the
+Spaniards first visited Yucatan they found traces of a Maya baptismal
+rite which the natives called _zihil_, signifying "to be born again". At
+the ceremony also incense was burnt.[126]
+
+The forehead, the face, the fingers and toes were moistened. "After they
+had been thus sprinkled with water, the priest arose and removed the
+cloths from the heads of the children, and then cut off with a stone
+knife a certain bead that was attached to the head from childhood."[127]
+
+[The custom of wearing such a bead during childhood is found in Egypt at
+the present day.]
+
+In the case of the girls, their mothers "divested them of a cord which
+was worn during their childhood, fastened round the loins, having a
+small shell that hung in front ('una conchuela asida que les venia a dar
+encima de la parte honesta'--Landa). The removal of this signified that
+they could marry."[128]
+
+This use of shells is found in the Soudan and East Africa at the present
+day.[129] The girdle upon which the shells were hung is the prototype of
+the cestus of Hathor, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Kali and all the goddesses of
+fertility in the Old World. It is an admirable illustration of the fact
+that not only were the finished products, the goddesses and their
+fantastic repertory of attributes, transmitted to the New World, but
+also the earliest and most primitive ingredients out of which the
+complexities of their traits were compounded.
+
+In Chapter III ("The Birth of Aphrodite") I shall explain what an
+important part the invention of this girdle played in the development of
+the material side of civilization and the even vaster influence it
+exerted upon beliefs and ethics. It represents the first stage in the
+evolution of clothing; and it was responsible for originating the belief
+in love-philtres and in the possibility of foretelling the future.
+
+It would lead me too far from my main purpose in this book to discuss
+the widespread geographical distribution and historical associations of
+the customs of baptism and pouring libations among different peoples. I
+may, however, refer the reader to an article by Mr. Elsdon Best,
+entitled "Ceremonial Performances Pertaining to Birth, as Performed by
+the Maori of New Zealand in Past Times" (_Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XLIV, 1914, p. 127), which sheds a
+clear light upon the general problem.
+
+The whole subject of baptismal ceremonies is well worth detailed study
+as a remarkable demonstration of the spread of culture in early times.
+
+
+[107: Donald A. Mackenzie, "Myths of Babylonia and Assyria," p. 44 _et
+seq._]
+
+[108: Dr. Alan Gardiner has protested against the assertions of "some
+Egyptologists, influenced more by anthropological theorists than by the
+unambiguous evidence of the Egyptian texts," to the effect that "the
+funerary rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main
+precautionary measures serving to protect the living against the dead"
+(Article "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of
+Religion and Ethics_). I should like to emphasize the fact that the
+"anthropological theorists," who so frequently put forward these claims
+have little more justification for them than "some Egyptologists".
+Careful study of the best evidence from Babylonia, India, Indonesia, and
+Japan, reveals the fact that anthropologists who make such claims have
+in many cases misinterpreted the facts. In an article on "Ancestor
+Worship" by Professor Nobushige Hozumi in A. Stead's "Japan by the
+Japanese" (1904) the true point of view is put very clearly: "The origin
+of ancestor-worship is ascribed by many eminent writers to the _dread of
+ghosts_ and the sacrifices made to the souls of ancestors for the
+purpose of _propitiating_ them. It appears to me more correct to
+attribute the origin of ancestor-worship to a contrary cause. It was the
+_love_ of ancestors, not the _dread_ of them" [Here he quotes the
+Chinese philosophers Shiu-ki and Confucius in corroboration] that
+impelled men to worship. "We celebrate the anniversary of our ancestors,
+pay visits to their graves, offer flowers, food and drink, burn incense
+and bow before their tombs, entirely from a feeling of love and respect
+for their memory, and no question of 'dread' enters our minds in doing
+so" (pp. 281 and 282). [See, however, Appendix B, p. 74.]]
+
+[109: For, as I have already explained, the idea so commonly and
+mistakenly conveyed by the term "soul-substance" by writers on
+Indonesian and Chinese beliefs would be much more accurately rendered
+simply by the word "life," so that the stealing of it necessarily means
+death.]
+
+[110: Barton, _op. cit._ p. 105.]
+
+[111: The evidence set forth in these pages makes it clear that such
+ideas are not restricted to the Semites: nor is there any reason to
+suppose that they originated amongst them.]
+
+[112: Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in Connexion with
+Similar Babylonian Beliefs," _Journal of the American Oriental Society_,
+Vol. XXXVI, 1916, pp. 300-20.]
+
+[113: This is Professor Carnoy's summary of Professor Jastrow's views as
+expressed in his article "Sumerian and Akkadian Views of Beginnings".]
+
+[114: Jastrow's interpretation of a recently-discovered tablet published
+by Langdon under the title _The Sumerian Epic of Paradise, the Flood and
+the Fall of Man_.]
+
+[115: I have already (p. 43) mentioned the fact that it is still
+preserved in China also.]
+
+[116: Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Deities of
+Southern India," Madras Government Museum, Bull., Vol. V, No. 3, 1907;
+Wilber Theodore Elmore, "Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism: A Study of
+the Local and Village Deities of Southern India," University Studies:
+University of Nebraska, Vol. XV, No. 1, Jan., 1915. Compare the
+sacrifice of the fore-leg of a living calf in Egypt--A. E. P. B.
+Weigall, "An Ancient Egyptian Funeral Ceremony," _Journal of Egyptian
+Archaeology_, Vol. II, 1915, p. 10. Early literary references from
+Babylonia suggest that a similar method of offering blood was practised
+there.]
+
+[117: William Ellis, "Polynesian Researches," 2nd edition, 1832, Vol. I,
+p. 373.]
+
+[118: See H. Vincent, "Canaan d'apres l'exploration recente," Paris,
+1907, p. 395.]
+
+[119: "Les Premieres Civilizations," Paris, 1909, p. 404: Memoires de la
+Delegation en Perse, Tome VIII, archeol.; and Mission Scientifique au
+Caucase, Tome I.]
+
+[120: W. J. Perry, "The Relationship between the Geographical
+Distribution of Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," _Memoirs and
+Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society_, Vol.
+60, Part I, 24th Nov., 1915.]
+
+[121: The evidence for this is being prepared for publication by Captain
+Leonard Munn, R.E., who has personally collected the data in Hyderabad.]
+
+[122: Annual Report of the Archaeological Department, Southern Circle,
+Madras, for the year 1915-1916. See for example Mr. A. H. Longhurst's
+photographs and plans (Plates I-IV) and especially that of the old Siva
+temple at Kambaduru, Plate IV (b).]
+
+[123: As I shall show in "The Birth of Aphrodite" (Chapter III).]
+
+[124: W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia".]
+
+[125: "A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans," Archaeological and
+Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. I,
+No. 7, 1904.]
+
+[126: Bancroft, _op. cit._ Vol. II, pp. 682 and 683.]
+
+[127: _Op. cit._ p. 684.]
+
+[128: _Ibid._]
+
+[129: See J. Wilfrid Jackson, _op. cit. supra_.]
+
+
+Summary.
+
+In these pages I have ranged over a very wide field of speculation,
+groping in the dim shadows of the early history of civilization. I have
+been attempting to pick up a few of the threads which ultimately became
+woven into the texture of human beliefs and aspirations, and to suggest
+that the practice of mummification was the woof around which the web of
+civilization was intimately intertwined.
+
+I have already explained how closely that practice was related to the
+origin and development of architecture, which Professor Lethaby has
+called the "matrix of civilization," and how nearly the ideas that grew
+up in explanation and in justification of the ritual of embalming were
+affected by the practice of agriculture, the second great pillar of
+support for the edifice of civilization. It has also been shown how
+far-reaching was the influence exerted by the needs of the embalmer,
+which impelled men, probably for the first time in history, to plan and
+carry out great expeditions by sea and land to obtain the necessary
+resins and the balsams, the wood and the spices. Incidentally also in
+course of time the practice of mummification came to exert a profound
+effect upon the means for the acquisition of a knowledge of medicine and
+all the sciences ancillary to it.
+
+But I have devoted chief attention to the bearing of the ideas which
+developed out of the practice and ritual of embalming upon the spirit of
+man. It gave shape and substance to the belief in a future life; it was
+perhaps the most important factor in the development of a definite
+conception of the gods: it laid the foundation of the ideas which
+subsequently were built up into a theory of the soul: in fact, it was
+intimately connected with the birth of all those ideals and aspirations
+which are now included in the conception of religious belief and ritual.
+A multitude of other trains of thought were started amidst the
+intellectual ferment of the formulation of the earliest concrete system
+of biological theory. The idea of the properties and functions of water
+which had previously sprung up in connexion with the development of
+agriculture became crystallized into a more definite form as the result
+of the development of mummification, and this has played an obtrusive
+part in religion, in philosophy and in medicine ever since. Moreover its
+influence has become embalmed for all time in many languages and in the
+ritual of every religion.
+
+But it was a factor in the development not merely of religious beliefs,
+temples and ritual, but it was also very closely related to the origin
+of much of the paraphernalia of the gods and of current popular beliefs.
+The swastika and the thunderbolt, dragons and demons, totemism and the
+sky-world are all of them conceptions that were more or less closely
+connected with the matters I have been discussing.
+
+The ideas which grew up in association with the practice of
+mummification were responsible for the development of the temple and its
+ritual and for a definite formulation of the conception of deities. But
+they were also responsible for originating a priesthood. For the
+resuscitation of the dead king, Osiris, and for the maintenance of his
+existence it was necessary for his successor, the reigning king, to
+perform the ritual of animation and the provision of food and drink. The
+king, therefore, was the first priest, and his functions were not
+primarily acts of worship but merely the necessary preliminaries for
+restoring life and consciousness to the dead seer so that he could
+consult him and secure his advice and help.
+
+It was only when the number of temples became so great and their ritual
+so complex and elaborate as to make it a physical impossibility for the
+king to act in this capacity in all of them and on every occasion that
+he was compelled to delegate some of his priestly functions to others,
+either members of the royal family or high officials. In course of time
+certain individuals devoted themselves exclusively to these duties and
+became professional priests; but it is important to remember that at
+first it was the exclusive privilege of Horus, the reigning king, to
+intercede with Osiris, the dead king, on behalf of men, and that the
+earliest priesthood consisted of those individuals to whom he had
+delegated some of these duties.
+
+In conclusion I should like to express in words what must be only too
+apparent to every reader of this statement. It claims to be nothing more
+than a contribution to the study of some of the most difficult problems
+in the history of human thought. For one so ill-equipped for a task of
+such a nature as I am to attempt it calls for a word of explanation. The
+clear light that recent research has shed upon the earliest literature
+in the world has done much to destroy the foundations upon which the
+theories propounded by scholars have been built up. It seemed to be
+worth while to attempt to read afresh the voluminous mass of old
+documents with the illumination of this new information.
+
+The other reason for making such an attempt is that almost every modern
+scholar who has discussed the matters at issue has assumed that the
+fashionable doctrine of the independent development of human beliefs and
+practices was a safe basis upon which to construct his theories. At best
+it is an unproven and reckless speculation. I am convinced it is utterly
+false. Holding such views I have attempted to read the evidence afresh.
+
+
+APPENDIX A.
+
+On re-reading the discussion of the significance of the _ka_ I realize
+that, in striving after brevity and conciseness--to keep the size of my
+statement within the limits of the _Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library_, generously elastic though it is--I have left the argument in a
+rather nebulous form.
+
+It must not be imagined that a concrete-minded people like the ancient
+Egyptians entertained highly abstract and ethereal ideas about "the
+soul". They recognized that all the expressions of consciousness and
+personality could cease during sleep; and at the same time the phenomena
+of dreams seemed to afford evidence that these absent elements of the
+individual's being were enjoying real experiences elsewhere. Thus there
+was an _alter ego_, identified by this matter-of-fact people with the
+twin (placenta) which was born with the child and was clearly concerned
+with its physical and intellectual nourishment--for it was obviously
+connected by its stalk to the embryo like a tree to its roots, and it
+seemed to be composed of blood, which was regarded as the vehicle of
+mind. But this intellectual "twin" kept pace in its growth with the
+physical body. When a statue was made to represent the latter the _ka_
+could dwell in the real body or the statue.
+
+The identification of the placenta with the moon helped the growth of
+the conception that this "birth-promoter" could not only bring about a
+re-birth in the life to come, but also facilitate a transference to the
+sky-world. The placenta had already been superintending the deceased's
+welfare upon earth and would continue to do so when he rejoined his _ka_
+in the sky world.
+
+The complexity of the conception is due to the fact that the simple
+early belief in "a double" was gradually elaborated, as one new idea
+after another became added to it, and rationalized to blend with the
+former complex in an increasingly involved synthesis. It was only when
+the elaborate scaffolding of material factors was cleared away that a
+more ethereal conception of "the soul" was sublimated.
+
+
+APPENDIX B.
+
+I should like to emphasize the fact that my protest (on p. 63) was
+directed against the claim that the custom of offering food and drink to
+the dead was inspired _primarily_ to prevent them from troubling the
+living. Its original purpose was to sustain and reanimate the dead; but,
+of course, when its real meaning was forgotten, it was explained in a
+great variety of ways by the people who made a practice of presenting
+offerings to the dead without really knowing why they did so.
+
+Dr. Alan Gardiner himself has made a statement which casual readers
+(i.e., those who do not discriminate between the motive for the
+invention of a procedure and the reasons subsequently given for its
+continuance) might regard as a contradiction of my quotation from his
+writings on p. 62. Thus he says: "Any god could doubtless attack human
+beings, but savage and malicious deities, like Seth [Set], the murderer
+of Osiris, or Sakhmet, [Sekhet], the 'lady of pestilence' (_nb-t 'idw_),
+were doubtless most to be feared." [This attitude of the malignant
+goddesses is revealed in a most obtrusive form in the village deities of
+the Dravidians of Southern India.] "The dead were specially to be
+feared; nor was it only those dead who were unhappy or unburied that
+might torment the living, for the magician sometimes warns them that
+their tombs are endangered" (Article "Magic (Egyptian)," _Hastings'
+Encycl. Ethics and Religion_, p. 264).
+
+But it is important to bear in mind, as the same scholar has explained
+elsewhere ["Life and Death (Egyptian)," _Hastings' Encycl._, p. 23]:
+"Nothing could be farther from the truth [than the statement that 'the
+funerary rites and practices of the Egyptians were in the main
+precautionary measures serving to protect the living against the dead'];
+it is of fundamental importance to realize that the vast stores of
+wealth and thought expended by the Egyptians on their tombs--that wealth
+and that thought which created not only the pyramids, but also the
+practice of mummification and a very extensive funerary literature--were
+due to the anxiety of each member of the community with regard to his
+own individual future welfare, and not to feelings of respect, or fear,
+or duty felt towards the other dead."
+
+It was only in response to certain binding obligations that the living
+observed all those costly and troublesome rules which were believed to
+insure the welfare of the deceased. But this recognition of the primary
+and real purpose of the food offerings as sustenance for the dead or the
+gods must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that there is
+widespread throughout the world a real fear of the dead and ghosts, and
+that in many places food-offerings are made for the specific purpose "of
+appeasing the fairies".
+
+Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me that offerings of milk and porridge are
+made at the stone monuments in Scotland, and children carry meal in
+their pockets to protect themselves from the fairies. For the dead went
+to Fairyland.
+
+Beliefs of a similar kind can be collected from most parts of the world:
+but the point I specially want to emphasize is that they are _secondary_
+rationalizations of a custom which originally had an utterly different
+significance.
+
+
+APPENDIX C.
+
+Prof. Barton's statement (_supra_, p. 64) is typical of a widespread
+misapprehension, resulting from the confusion between sexual relations
+and the giving of life. At first primitive people did not realize that
+the manifestations of the sex instinct had anything whatever to do with
+reproduction. They were aware of the fact that women gave birth to
+children; and the organ concerned in this process was regarded as the
+giver of life, the creator. The apotheosis of these powers led to the
+conception of the first deity. But it was only secondarily that these
+life-giving attributes were brought into association with the sexual act
+and the masculine powers of fertilization. Much confusion has been
+created by those writers who see manifestations of the sexual factor and
+phallic ideas in every aspect of primitive religion, where in most cases
+only the power of life-giving plays a part.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS.[130]
+
+
+An adequate account of the development of the dragon-legend would
+represent the history of the expression of mankind's aspirations and
+fears during the past fifty centuries and more. For the dragon was
+evolved along with civilization itself. The search for the elixir of
+life, to turn back the years from old age and confer the boon of
+immortality, has been the great driving force that compelled men to
+build up the material and the intellectual fabric of civilization. The
+dragon-legend is the history of that search which has been preserved by
+popular tradition: it has grown up and kept pace with the constant
+struggle to grasp the unattainable goal of men's desires; and the story
+has been constantly growing in complexity, as new incidents were drawn
+within its scope and confused with old incidents whose real meaning was
+forgotten or distorted. It has passed through all the phases with which
+the study of the spreading of rumours or the development of dreams has
+familiarized students of psychology. The simple original stories, which
+become blended and confused, their meaning distorted and reinterpreted
+by the rationalizing of incoherent incidents, are given the dramatic
+form with which the human mind invests all stories that make a strong
+appeal to its emotions, and then secondarily elaborated with a wealth of
+circumstantial detail. This is the history of popular legends and the
+development of rumours. But these phenomena are displayed in their most
+emphatic form in dreams.[131] In his waking state man restrains his
+roving fancies and exercises what Freud has called a "censorship" over
+the stream of his thoughts: but when he falls asleep, the "censor" dozes
+also; and free rein is given to his unrestrained fancies to make a
+hotch-potch of the most varied and unrelated incidents, and to create a
+fantastic mosaic built up from fragments of his actual experience, bound
+together by the cement of his aspirations and fears. The myth resembles
+the dream because it has developed without any consistent and effective
+censorship. The individual who tells one particular phase of the story
+may exert the controlling influence of his mind over the version he
+narrates: but as it is handed on from man to man and generation to
+generation the "censorship" also is constantly changing. This lack of
+unity of control implies that the development of the myth is not unlike
+the building-up of a dream-story. But the dragon-myth is vastly more
+complex than any dream, because mankind as a whole has taken a hand in
+the process of shaping it; and the number of centuries devoted to this
+work of elaboration has been far greater than the years spent by the
+average individual in accumulating the stuff of which most of his dreams
+have been made. But though the myth is enormously complex, so vast a
+mass of detailed evidence concerning every phase and every detail of its
+history has been preserved, both in the literature and the folk-lore of
+the world, that we are able to submit it to psychological analysis and
+determine the course of its development and the significance of every
+incident in its tortuous rambling.
+
+In instituting these comparisons between the development of myths and
+dreams, I should like to emphasize the fact that the interpretation of
+the _myth_ proposed in these pages is almost diametrically opposed to
+that suggested by Freud, and pushed to a _reductio ad absurdum_ by his
+more reckless followers, and especially by Yung.
+
+The dragon has been described as "the most venerable symbol employed in
+ornamental art and the favourite and most highly decorative motif in
+artistic design". It has been the inspiration of much, if not most, of
+the world's great literature in every age and clime, and the nucleus
+around which a wealth of ethical symbolism has accumulated throughout
+the ages. The dragon-myth represents also the earliest doctrine or
+systematic theory of astronomy and meteorology.
+
+In the course of its romantic and chequered history the dragon has been
+identified with all of the gods and all of the demons of every religion.
+But it is most intimately associated with the earliest stratum of
+divinities, for it has been homologized with each of the members of the
+earliest Trinity, the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun
+God, both individually and collectively. To add to the complexities of
+the story, the dragon-slayer is also represented by the same deities,
+either individually or collectively; and the weapon with which the hero
+slays the dragon is also homologous both with him and his victim, for it
+is animated by him who wields it, and its powers of destruction make it
+a symbol of the same power of evil which it itself destroys.
+
+Such a fantastic paradox of contradictions has supplied the materials
+with which the fancies of men of every race and land, and every stage of
+knowledge and ignorance, have been playing for all these centuries. It
+is not surprising, therefore, that an endless series of variations of
+the story has been evolved, each decked out with topical allusions and
+distinctive embellishments. But throughout the complex tissue of this
+highly embroidered fabric the essential threads of the web and woof of
+its foundation can be detected with surprising constancy and regularity.
+
+Within the limits of such an account as this it is obvious that I can
+deal only with the main threads of the argument and leave the
+interesting details of the local embellishments until some other time.
+
+The fundamental element in the dragon's powers is the control of water.
+Both in its beneficent and destructive aspects water was regarded as
+animated by the dragon, who thus assumed the role of Osiris or his enemy
+Set. But when the attributes of the Water God became confused with those
+of the Great Mother, and her evil avatar, the lioness (Sekhet) form of
+Hathor in Egypt, or in Babylonia the destructive Tiamat, became the
+symbol of disorder and chaos, the dragon became identified with
+her also.
+
+Similarly the third member of the Earliest Trinity also became the
+dragon. As the son and successor of the dead king Osiris the living king
+Horus became assimilated with him. When the belief became more and more
+insistent that the dead king had acquired the boon of immortality and
+was really alive, the distinction between him and the actually living
+king Horus became correspondingly minimized. This process of
+assimilation was advanced a further stage when the king became a god and
+was thus more closely identified with his father and predecessor. Hence
+Horus assumed many of the functions of Osiris; and amongst them those
+which in foreign lands contributed to making a dragon of the Water God.
+But if the distinction between Horus and Osiris became more and more
+attenuated with the lapse of time, the identification with his mother
+Hathor (Isis) was more complete still. For he took her place and assumed
+many of her attributes in the later versions of the great saga which is
+the nucleus of all the literature of mythology--I refer to the story of
+"The Destruction Of Mankind".
+
+The attributes of these three members of the Trinity, Hathor, Osiris,
+and Horus, thus became intimately linked the one with the other; and in
+Susa, where the earliest pictorial representation of a real dragon
+developed, it received concrete form (Fig. 1) as a monster compounded of
+the lioness of Hathor (Sekhet) with the falcon (or eagle) of Horus, but
+with the human attributes and water-controlling powers which originally
+belonged to Osiris. In some parts of Africa the earliest "dragon" was
+nothing more than Hathor's cow or the gazelle or antelope of Horus
+(Osiris) or of Set.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Early Representation of a "Dragon" Compounded of
+the Forepart of an Eagle and the Hindpart of a Lion--(from an Archaic
+Cylinder-seal from Susa, after Jequier).]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 2.--The Earliest Babylonian Conception of the Dragon
+Tiamat--(from a Cylinder-seal in the British Museum, after L. W. King).]
+
+But if the dragon was compounded of all three deities, who was the
+slayer of the evil dragon?
+
+The story of the dragon-conflict is really a recital of Horus's vendetta
+against Set, intimately blended and confused with different versions of
+"The Destruction of Mankind".[132] The commonplace incidents of the
+originally prosaic stories were distorted into an almost unrecognizable
+form, then secondarily elaborated without any attention to their
+original meaning, but with a wealth of circumstantial embellishment, in
+accordance with the usual methods of the human mind that I have already
+mentioned. The history of the legend is in fact the most complete,
+because it is the oldest and the most widespread, illustration of those
+instinctive tendencies of the human spirit to bridge the gaps in its
+disjointed experience, and to link together in a kind of mental mosaic
+the otherwise isolated incidents in the facts of daily life and the
+rumours and traditions that have been handed down from the
+story-teller's predecessors.
+
+In the "Destruction of Mankind," which I shall discuss more fully in the
+following pages (p. 109 _et seq._), Hathor does the slaying: in the
+later stories Horus takes his mother's place and earns his spurs as the
+Warrior Sun-god:[133] hence confusion was inevitably introduced between
+the enemies of Re, the original victims in the legend, and Horus's
+traditional enemies, the followers of Set. Against the latter it was
+Osiris himself who fought originally; and in many of the non-Egyptian
+variants of the legend it is the rain-god himself who is the warrior.
+
+Hence all three members of the Trinity were identified, not only with
+the dragon, but also with the hero who was the dragon-slayer.
+
+But the weapon used by the latter was also animated by the same Trinity,
+and in fact identified with them. In the Saga of the Winged Disk, Horus
+assumed the form of the sun equipped with the wings of his own falcon
+and the fire-spitting uraeus serpents. Flying down from heaven in this
+form he was at the same time the god and the god's weapon. As a fiery
+bolt from heaven he slew the enemies of Re, who were now identified with
+his own personal foes, the followers of Set. But in the earlier versions
+of the myth (i.e. the "Destruction of Mankind"), it was Hathor who was
+the "Eye of Re" and descended from heaven to destroy mankind with fire;
+she also was the vulture (Mut); and in the earliest version she did the
+slaughter with a knife or an axe with which she was animistically
+identified.
+
+But Osiris also was the weapon of destruction, both in the form of the
+flood (for he was the personification of the river) and the rain-storms
+from heaven. But he was also an instrument for vanquishing the demon,
+when the intoxicating beer or the sedative drink (the potency of which
+was due to the indwelling spirit of the god) was the chosen means of
+overcoming the dragon.
+
+This, in brief, is the framework of the dragon-story. The early Trinity
+as the hero, armed with the Trinity as weapon, slays the dragon,
+which again is the same Trinity. With its illimitable possibilities for
+dramatic development and fantastic embellishment with incident and
+ethical symbolism, this theme has provided countless thousands of
+story-tellers with the skeleton which they clothed with the living flesh
+of their stories, representing not merely the earliest theories of
+astronomy and meteorology, but all the emotional conflicts of daily
+life, the struggle between light and darkness, heat and cold, right and
+wrong, justice and injustice, prosperity and adversity, wealth and
+poverty. The whole gamut of human strivings and emotions was drawn
+into the legend until it became the great epic of the human spirit and
+the main theme that has appealed to the interest of all mankind in
+every age.
+
+An ancient Chinese philosopher, Wang Fu, writing in the time of the Han
+Dynasty, enumerates the "nine resemblances" of the dragon. "His horns
+resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes those of a
+demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam, his scales
+those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a
+tiger, his ears those of a cow."[134] But this list includes only a
+small minority of the menagerie of diverse creatures which at one time
+or another have contributed their quota to this truly astounding
+hotch-potch.
+
+This composite wonder-beast ranges from Western Europe to the Far East
+of Asia, and as we shall see, also even across the Pacific to America.
+Although in the different localities a great number of most varied
+ingredients enter into its composition, in most places where the dragon
+occurs the substratum of its anatomy consists of a serpent or a
+crocodile, usually with the scales of a fish for covering, and the feet
+and wings, and sometimes also the head, of an eagle, falcon, or hawk,
+and the forelimbs and sometimes the head of a lion. An association of
+anatomical features of so unnatural and arbitrary a nature can only mean
+that all dragons are the progeny of the same ultimate ancestors.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7.--A Mediaeval Picture of a Chinese Dragon upon its
+cloud (After the late Professor W. Anderson)]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8.--A Chinese Dragon (After de Groot)]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Dragon from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 10.--Babylonian Weather God]
+
+But it is not merely a case of structural or anatomical similarity, but
+also of physiological identity, that clinches the proof of the
+derivation of this fantastic brood from the same parents. Wherever the
+dragon is found, it displays a special partiality for water. It controls
+the rivers or seas, dwells in pools or wells, or in the clouds on the
+tops of mountains, regulates the tides, the flow of streams, or the
+rainfall, and is associated with thunder and lightning. Its home is a
+mansion at the bottom of the sea, where it guards vast treasures,
+usually pearls, but also gold and precious stones. In other instances
+the dwelling is upon the top of a high mountain; and the dragon's breath
+forms the rain-clouds. It emits thunder and lightning. Eating the
+dragon's heart enables the diner to acquire the knowledge stored in this
+"organ of the mind" so that he can understand the language of birds,
+and in fact of all the creatures that have contributed to the making
+of a dragon.
+
+It should not be necessary to rebut the numerous attempts that have been
+made to explain the dragon-myth as a story relating to extinct monsters.
+Such fantastic claims can be made only by writers devoid of any
+knowledge of palaeontology or of the distinctive features of the dragon
+and its history. But when the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian
+Antiquities in the British Museum, in a book that is not intended to be
+humorous,[135] seriously claims Dr. Andrews' discovery of a gigantic
+fossil snake as "proof" of the former existence of "the great
+serpent-devil Apep," it is time to protest.
+
+Those who attempt to derive the dragon from such living creatures as
+lizards like _Draco volans_ or _Moloch horridus_[136] ignore the
+evidence of the composite and unnatural features of the monsters.
+
+"Whatever be the origin of the Northern dragon, the myths, when they
+first became articulate for us, show him to be in all essentials the
+same as that of the South and East. He is a power of evil, guardian of
+hoards, the greedy withholder of good things from men; and the slaying
+of a dragon is the crowning achievement of heroes--of Siegmund, of
+Beowulf, of Sigurd, of Arthur, of Tristam--even of Lancelot, the _beau
+ideal_ of mediaeval chivalry" (_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, vol. viii., p.
+467). But if in the West the dragon is usually a "power of evil," in the
+far East he is equally emphatically a symbol of beneficence. He is
+identified with emperors and kings; he is the son of heaven the bestower
+of all bounties, not merely to mankind directly, but also to the earth
+as well.
+
+Even in our country his symbolism is not always wholly malevolent,
+otherwise--if for the moment we shut our eyes to the history of the
+development of heraldic ornament--dragons would hardly figure as the
+supporters of the arms of the City of London, and as the symbol of many
+of our aristocratic families, among which the Royal House of Tudor is
+included. It is only a few years since the Red Dragon of Cadwallader was
+added as an additional badge to the achievement of the Prince of Wales.
+But, "though a common ensign in war, both in the East and the West, as
+an ecclesiastical emblem his opposite qualities have remained
+consistently until the present day. Whenever the dragon is represented,
+it symbolizes the power of evil, the devil and his works. Hell in
+mediaeval art is a dragon with gaping jaws, belching fire."
+
+And in the East the dragon's reputation is not always blameless. For it
+figures in some disreputable incidents and does not escape the sort of
+punishment that tradition metes out to his European cousins.
+
+
+[130: An elaboration of a Lecture delivered in the John Rylands Library
+on 8 November, 1916.]
+
+[131: In his lecture, "Dreams and Primitive Culture," delivered at the
+John Rylands Library on 10 April, 1918, Dr. Rivers has expounded the
+principles of dream-development.]
+
+[132: _Vide infra_, p. 109 _et seq._]
+
+[133: Hence soldiers killed in battle and women dying in childbirth
+receive special consideration in the exclusive heaven of (Osiris's)
+Horus's Indian and American representatives, Indra and Tlaloc.]
+
+[134: M. W. de Visser, "The Dragon in China and Japan," _Verhandelingen
+der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam_, Afdeeling
+Letterkunde, Deel XIII, No. 2, 1913, p. 70.]
+
+[135: E. A. Wallis Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," 1904, vol. i,
+p. 11]
+
+[136: Gould's "Mythical Monsters," 1886.]
+
+
+The Dragon in America and Eastern Asia.
+
+In the early centuries of the Christian era, and probably also even for
+two or three hundred years earlier still, the leaven of the ancient
+civilizations of the Old World was at work in Mexico, Central America
+and Peru. The most obtrusive influences that were brought to bear,
+especially in the area from Yucatan to Mexico, were inspired by the
+Cambodian and Indonesian modifications of Indian beliefs and practices.
+The god who was most often depicted upon the ancient Maya and Aztec
+codices was the Indian rain-god Indra, who in America was provided with
+the head of the Indian elephant[137] (i.e. seems to have been confused
+with the Indian Ganesa) and given other attributes more suggestive of
+the Dravidian Naga than his enemy, the Aryan deity. In other words the
+character of the American god, known as _Chac_ by the Maya people and as
+_Tlaloc_ by the Aztecs, is an interesting illustration of the effects of
+such a mixture of cultures as Dr. Rivers has studied in Melanesia.[138]
+Not only does the elephant-headed god in America represent a blend of
+the two great Indian rain-gods which in the Old World are mortal
+enemies, the one of the other (partly for the political reason that the
+Dravidians and Aryans were rival and hostile peoples), but all the
+traits of each deity, even those depicting the old Aryan conception of
+their deadly combat, are reproduced in America under circumstances which
+reveal an ignorance on the part of the artists of the significance of
+the paradoxical contradictions they are representing. But even many
+incidents in the early history of the Vedic gods, which were due to
+arbitrary circumstances in the growth of the legends, reappear in
+America. To cite one instance (out of scores which might be quoted), in
+the Vedic story Indra assumed many of the attributes of the god Soma. In
+America the name of the god of rain and thunder, the Mexican Indra, is
+_Tlaloc_, which is generally translated "pulque of the earth," from
+_tlal[l]i_, "earth," and _oc[tli]_, "pulque, a fermented drink (like the
+Indian drink _soma_) made from the juice of the agave".[139]
+
+The so-called "long-nosed god" (the elephant-headed rain-god) has been
+given the non-committal designation "god B," by Schellhas.[140]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Reproduction of a Picture in the Maya Codex
+Troano representing the Rain-god _Chac_ treading upon the Serpent's
+head, which is interposed between the earth and the rain the god is
+pouring out of a bowl. A Rain-goddess stands upon the Serpent's tail.]
+
+I reproduce here a remarkable drawing (Fig. 11) from the Codex Troano,
+in which this god, whom the Maya people called _Chac_, is shown pouring
+the rain out of a water-jar (just as the deities of Babylonia and India
+are often represented), and putting his foot upon the head of a serpent,
+who is preventing the rain from reaching the earth. Here we find
+depicted with childlike simplicity and directness the Vedic conception
+of Indra overcoming the demon Vritra. Stempell describes this scene as
+"the elephant-headed god B standing upon the head of a serpent";[141]
+while Seler, who claims that god B is a tortoise, explains it as the
+serpent forming a footstool for the rain-god.[142] In the
+Codex Cortes the same theme is depicted in another way, which is truer
+to the Indian conception of Vritra, as "the restrainer"[143] (Fig. 12).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 12.--Another representation of the Elephant-headed
+Rain god. He is holding thunderbolts, conventionalised in a hand-like
+form. The Serpent is converted into a sac, holding up the rain-waters.]
+
+The serpent (the American rattlesnake) restrains the water by coiling
+itself into a sac to hold up the rain and so prevent it from reaching
+the earth. In the various American codices this episode is depicted in
+as great a variety of forms as the Vedic poets of India described when
+they sang of the exploits of Indra. The Maya Chac is, in fact, Indra
+transferred to the other side of the Pacific and there only thinly
+disguised by a veneer of American stylistic design.
+
+But the Aztec god Tlaloc is merely the Chac of the Maya people
+transferred to Mexico. Schellhas declares that the "god B," the "most
+common figure in the codices," is a "universal deity to whom the most
+varied elements, natural phenomena, and activities are subject". "Many
+authorities consider God B to represent Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent,
+whose Aztec equivalent is Quetzalcoatl. Others identify him with
+Itzamna, the Serpent God of the East, or with Chac, the Rain God of the
+four quarters and the equivalent of Tlaloc of the Mexicans."[144]
+
+From the point of view of its Indian analogies these confusions are
+peculiarly significant, for the same phenomena are found in India. The
+snake and the dragon can be either the rain-god of the East or the enemy
+of the rain-god; either the dragon-slayer or the evil dragon who has to
+be slain. The Indian word _Naga_, which is applied to the beneficent god
+or king identified with the cobra, can also mean "elephant," and this
+double significance probably played a part in the confusion of the
+deities in America.
+
+In the Dresden Codex the elephant-headed god is represented in one place
+grasping a serpent, in another issuing from a serpent's mouth, and again
+as an actual serpent (Fig. 13). Turning next to the attributes of these
+American gods we find that they reproduce with amazing precision those
+of Indra. Not only were they the divinities who controlled rain,
+thunder, lightning, and vegetation, but they also carried axes and
+thunderbolts (Fig. 13) like their homologues in the Old World. Like
+Indra, Tlaloc was intimately associated with the East and with the tops
+of mountains, where he had a special heaven, reserved for warriors who
+fell in battle and women who died in childbirth. As a water-god also he
+presided over the souls of the drowned and those who in life suffered
+from dropsical affections. Indra also specialized in the same branch
+of medicine.
+
+In fact, if one compares the account of Tlaloc's attributes and
+achievements, such as is given in Mr. Joyce's "Mexican Archaeology" or
+Professor Seler's monograph on the "Codex Vaticanus," with Professor
+Hopkins's summary of Indra's character ("Religions of India") the
+identity is so exact, even in the most arbitrary traits and confusions
+with other deities' peculiarities, that it becomes impossible for any
+serious investigator to refuse to admit that Tlaloc and Chac are merely
+American forms of Indra. Even so fantastic a practice as the
+representation of the American rain-god's face as composed of contorted
+snakes[145] finds its analogy in Siam, where in relatively recent times
+this curious device was still being used by artists.[146]
+
+"As the god of fertility maize belonged to him [Tlaloc], though not
+altogether by right, for according to one legend he stole it after it
+had been discovered by other gods concealed in the heart of a
+mountain."[147] Indra also obtained soma from the mountain by similar
+means.[148]
+
+In the ancient civilization of America one of the most prominent deities
+was called the "Feathered Serpent," in the Maya language, Kukulkan,
+Quiche Gukumatz, Aztec Quetzalcoatl, the Pueblo "Mother of Waters".
+Throughout a very extensive part of America the snake, like the Indian
+Naga, is the emblem of rain, clouds, thunder and lightning. But it is
+essentially and pre-eminently the symbol of rain; and the god who
+controls the rain, Chac of the Mayas, Tlaloc of the Aztecs, carried the
+axe and the thunderbolt like his homologues and prototypes in the Old
+World. In America also we find reproduced in full, not only the legends
+of the antagonism between the thunder-bird and the serpent, but also
+the identification of these two rivals in one composite monster, which,
+as I have already mentioned, is seen in the winged disks, both in the
+Old World and the New.[149] Hardly any incident in the history of the
+Egyptian falcon or the thunder-birds of Babylonia, Greece or India,
+fails to reappear in America and find pictorial expression in the Maya
+and Aztec codices.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 13.
+
+A photographic reproduction of the 36th page of the Dresden Maya Codex.
+
+Of the three pictures in the top row one represents the elephant-headed
+god _Chac_ with a snake's body. He is pouring out rain. The central
+picture represents the lightning animal carrying fire down from heaven
+to earth. On the right _Chac_ is shown in human guise carrying
+thunder-weapons in the form of burning torches.
+
+In the second row a goddess sits in the rain: her head is prolonged into
+that of a bird, holding a fish in its beak. The central picture shows
+_Chac_ in his boat ferrying a woman across the water from the East. The
+third illustration depicts the familiar conflict between the vulture and
+serpent.
+
+In the third row _Chac_ is seen with his axe: in the central picture he
+is standing in the water looking up towards a rain-cloud; and on the
+right he is shown sitting in a hut resting from his labours.]
+
+What makes America such a rich storehouse of historical data is the fact
+that it is stretched across the world almost from pole to pole; and for
+many centuries the jetsam and flotsam swept on to this vast strand has
+made it a museum of the cultural history of the Old World, much of which
+would have been lost for ever if America had not saved it. But a record
+preserved in this manner is necessarily in a highly confused state. For
+essentially the same materials reached America in manifold forms. The
+original immigrants into America brought from North-Eastern Asia such
+cultural equipment as had reached the area east of the Yenesei at the
+time when Europe was in the Neolithic phase of culture. Then when
+ancient mariners began to coast along the Eastern Asiatic littoral and
+make their way to America by the Aleutian route there was a further
+infiltration of new ideas. But when more venturesome sailors began to
+navigate the open seas and exploit Polynesia, for centuries[150] there
+was a more or less constant influx of customs and beliefs, which were
+drawn from Egypt and Babylonia, from the Mediterranean and East Africa,
+from India and Indonesia, China and Japan, Cambodia and Oceania. One and
+the same fundamental idea, such as the attributes of the serpent as a
+water-god, reached America in an infinite variety of guises, Egyptian,
+Babylonian, Indian, Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese, and from this
+amazing jumble of confusion the local priesthood of Central America
+built up a system of beliefs which is distinctively American, though
+most of the ingredients and the principles of synthetic composition were
+borrowed from the Old World.
+
+Every possible phase of the early history of the dragon-story and all
+the ingredients which in the Old World went to the making of it have
+been preserved in American pictures and legends in a bewildering variety
+of forms and with an amazing luxuriance of complicated symbolism and
+picturesque ingenuity. In America, as in India and Eastern Asia, the
+power controlling water was identified both with a serpent (which in the
+New World, as in the Old, was often equipped with such inappropriate and
+arbitrary appendages, as wings, horns and crests) and a god, who was
+either associated or confused with an elephant. Now many of the
+attributes of these gods, as personifications of the life-giving powers
+of water, are identical with those of the Babylonian god Ea and the
+Egyptian Osiris, and their reputations as warriors with the respective
+sons and representatives, Marduk and Horus. The composite animal of
+Ea-Marduk, the "sea-goat" (the Capricornus of the Zodiac), was also the
+vehicle of Varuna in India whose relationship to Indra was in some
+respects analogous to that of Ea to Marduk in Babylonia.[151] The Indian
+"sea-goat" or _Makara_ was in fact intimately associated both with
+Varuna and with Indra. This monster assumed a great variety of forms,
+such as the crocodile, the dolphin, the sea-serpent or dragon, or
+combinations of the heads of different animals with a fish's body (Fig.
+14). Amongst these we find an elephant-headed form of the _makara_,
+which was adopted as far east as Indonesia and as far west as Scotland.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 14.
+
+A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature compounded of the
+antelope and fish of Ea.
+
+B. The "sea-goat" as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.
+
+C to K--a series of varieties of the _makara_ from the Buddhist Rails at
+Buddha Gaya and Mathura, circa 70 B.C.-70 A.D., after Cunningham
+("Archaeological Survey of India," Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX and XXIX).
+
+L. The _makara_ as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood. It
+is not difficult to understand how, in the course of the easterly
+diffusion of culture, such a picture should develop into the Chinese
+Dragon or the American Elephant-headed God.]
+
+I have already called attention[152] to the part played by the _makara_
+in determining the development of the form of the elephant-headed god in
+America. Another form of the _makara_ is described in the following
+American legend, which is interesting also as a mutilated version of the
+original dragon-story of the Old World.
+
+In 1912 Hernandez translated and published a Maya manuscript[153] which
+had been written out in Spanish characters in the early days of the
+conquest of the Americas, but had been overlooked until six years ago.
+It is an account of the creation, and includes the following passages:
+"All at once came the water [? rain] after the dragon was carried away.
+The heaven was broken up; it fell upon the earth; and they say that
+_Cantul-ti-ku_ (four gods), the four Baccab, were those who destroyed
+it.... 'The whole world', said _Ah-uuc-chek-nale_ (he who seven times
+makes fruitful), 'proceeded from the seven bosoms of the earth.' And he
+descended to make fruitful _Itzam-kab-uin_ (the female whale with
+alligator-feet), when he came down from the central angle of the
+heavenly region" (p. 171).
+
+Hernandez adds that "the old fishermen of Yucatan still call the whale
+_Itzam_: this explains the name of _Itzaes_, by which the Mayas were
+known before the founding of Mayapan".
+
+The close analogy to the Indra-story is suggested by the phrase
+describing the coming of the water "after the dragon was carried away".
+Moreover, the Indian sea-elephant _makara_, which was confused in the
+Old World with the dolphin of Aphrodite, and was sometimes also regarded
+as a crocodile, naturally suggests that the "female whale with the
+alligator-feet" was only an American version of the old Indian legend.
+
+All this serves, not only to corroborate the inferences drawn from the
+other sources of information which I have already indicated, but also to
+suggest that, in addition to borrowing the chief divinities of their
+pantheon from India, the Maya people's original name was derived from
+the same mythology.[154]
+
+It is of considerable interest and importance to note that in the
+earliest dated example of Maya workmanship (from Tuxtla, in the Vera
+Cruz State of Mexico), for which Spinden assigns a tentative date of 235
+B.C., an unmistakable elephant figures among the four hieroglyphs which
+Spinden reproduces (_op. cit._, p. 171). A similar hieroglyphic sign is
+found in the Chinese records of the Early Chow Dynasty (John Ross, "The
+Origin of the Chinese People," 1916, P. 152).
+
+The use of the numerals four and seven in the narrative translated by
+Hernandez, as in so many other American documents, is itself, as Mrs.
+Zelia Nuttall has so conclusively demonstrated,[155] a most striking and
+conclusive demonstration of the link with the Old World.
+
+Indra was not the only Indian god who was transferred to America, for
+all the associated deities, with the characteristic stories of their
+exploits,[156] are also found depicted with childlike directness of
+incident, but amazingly luxuriant artistic phantasy, in the Maya and
+Aztec codices.
+
+We find scattered throughout the islands of the Pacific the familiar
+stories of the dragon. One mentioned by the Bishop of Wellington refers
+to a New Zealand dragon with jaws like a crocodile's, which spouted
+water like a whale. It lived in a fresh-water lake.[157] In the same
+number of the same _Journal_ Sir George Grey gives extracts from a Maori
+legend of the dragon, which he compares with corresponding passages from
+Spenser's "Faery Queen". "Their strict verbal and poetical conformity
+with the New Zealand legends are such as at first to lead to the
+impression either that Spenser must have stolen his images and language
+from the New Zealand poets, or that they must have acted unfairly by the
+English bard" (p. 362). The Maori legend describes the dragon as "in
+size large as a monstrous whale, in shape like a hideous lizard; for in
+its huge head, its limbs, its tail, its scales, its tough skin, its
+sharp spines, yes, in all these it resembled a lizard" (p. 364).
+
+Now the attributes of the Chinese and Japanese dragon as the controller
+of rain, thunder and lightning are identical with those of the American
+elephant-headed god. It also is associated with the East and with the
+tops of mountains. It is identified with the Indian Naga, but the
+conflict involved in this identification is less obtrusive than it is
+either in America or in India. In Dravidian India the rulers and the
+gods are identified with the serpent: but among the Aryans, who were
+hostile to the Dravidians, the rain-god is the enemy of the Naga. In
+America the confusion becomes more pronounced because Tlaloc (Chac)
+represents both Indra and his enemy the serpent. The representation in
+the codices of his conflict with the serpent is merely a tradition
+which the Maya and Aztec scribes followed, apparently without
+understanding its meaning.
+
+In China and Japan the Indra-episode plays a much less prominent part,
+for the dragon is, like the Indian Naga, a beneficent creature, which
+approximates more nearly to the Babylonian Ea or the Egyptian Osiris. It
+is not only the controller of water, but the impersonation of water and
+its life-giving powers: it is identified with the emperor, with his
+standard, with the sky, and with all the powers that give, maintain, and
+prolong life and guard against all kinds of danger to life. In other
+words, it is the bringer of good luck, the rejuvenator of mankind, the
+giver of immortality.
+
+But if the physiological functions of the dragon of the Far East can
+thus be assimilated to those of the Indian Naga and the Babylonian and
+Egyptian Water God, who is also the king, anatomically he is usually
+represented in a form which can only be regarded as the Babylonian
+composite monster, as a rule stripped of his wings, though not of his
+avian feet.
+
+In America we find preserved in the legends of the Indians an accurate
+and unmistakable description of the Japanese dragon (which is mainly
+Chinese in origin). Even Spinden, who "does not care to dignify by
+refutation the numerous empty theories of ethnic connections between
+Central America" [and in fact America as a whole] "and the Old World,"
+makes the following statement (in the course of a discussion of the
+myths relating to horned snakes in California): "a similar monster,
+possessing antlers, and sometimes wings, is also very common in Algonkin
+and Iroquois legends, although rare in art. As a rule the horned serpent
+is a water spirit and an enemy of the thunder bird. Among the Pueblo
+Indians the horned snake seems to have considerable prestige in
+religious belief.... It lives in the water or in the sky and is
+connected with rain or lightning."[158]
+
+Thus we find stories of a dragon equipped with those distinctive tokens
+of Chinese origin, the deer's antlers; and along with it a snake with
+less specialized horns suggesting the Cerastes of Egypt and Babylonia. A
+horned viper distantly akin to the Cerastes of the Old World does occur
+in California; but its "horns" are so insignificant as to make it highly
+improbable that they could have been in any way responsible for the
+obtrusive role played by horns in these widespread American stories.
+But the proof of the foreign origin of these stories is established by
+the horned serpent's achievements.
+
+It "lives in the water or the sky" like its homologue in the Old World,
+and it is "a water spirit". Now neither the Cobra nor the Cerastes is
+actually a water serpent. Their achievements in the myths therefore have
+no possible relationship with the natural habits of the real snakes.
+They are purely arbitrary attributes which they have acquired as the
+result of a peculiar and fortuitous series of historical incidents.
+
+It is therefore utterly inconceivable and in the highest degree
+improbable that this long chain of chance circumstances should have
+happened a second time in America, and have been responsible for the
+creation of the same bizarre story in reference to one of the rarer
+American snakes of a localized distribution, whose horns are mere
+vestiges, which no one but a trained morphologist is likely to have
+noticed or recognized as such.
+
+But the American horned serpent, like its Babylonian and Indian
+homologues, is also the enemy of the thunder bird. Here is a further
+corroboration of the transmission to America of ideas which were the
+chance result of certain historical events in the Old World, which I
+have mentioned in this lecture.
+
+In the figure on page 94 I reproduce a remarkable drawing of an American
+dragon. If the Algonkin Indians had not preserved legends of a winged
+serpent equipped with deer's antlers, no value could be assigned to this
+sketch: but as we know that this particular tribe retains the legend of
+just such a wonder-beast, we are justified in treating this drawing as
+something more than a jest.
+
+"Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. John Criley as occurring near Ava,
+Jackson County, Illinois. The outlines of the characters observed by him
+were drawn from memory and submitted to Mr. Charles S. Mason, of Toledo,
+Ohio, through whom they were furnished to the Bureau of Ethnology.
+Little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of such drawing, but
+from the general appearance of the sketches the originals of which they
+are copies were probably made by one of the middle Algonquin tribes of
+Indians.[159]
+
+"The 'Piasa' rock, as it is generally designated, was referred to by the
+missionary explorer Marquette in 1675. Its situation was immediately
+above the city of Alton, Illinois."
+
+Marquette's remarks are translated by Dr. Francis Parkman as follows:--
+
+"On the flat face of a high rock were painted, in red, black, and green,
+a pair of monsters, each 'as large as a calf, with horns like a deer,
+red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression of
+countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body covered
+with scales; and the tail so long that it passes entirely round the
+body, over the head, and between the legs, ending like that of a fish.'"
+
+Another version, by Davidson and Struve, of the discovery of the
+petroglyph is as follows:--
+
+"Again they (Joliet and Marquette) were floating on the broad bosom of
+the unknown stream. Passing the mouth of the Illinois, they soon fell
+into the shadow of a tall promontory, and with great astonishment beheld
+the representation of two monsters painted on its lofty limestone front.
+According to Marquette, each of these frightful figures had the face of
+a man, the horns of a deer, the beard of a tiger, and the tail of a fish
+so long that it passed around the body, over the head, and between the
+legs. It was an object of Indian worship and greatly impressed the mind
+of the pious missionary with the necessity of substituting for this
+monstrous idolatry the worship of the true God."
+
+A footnote connected with the foregoing quotation gives the following
+description of the same rock:--
+
+"Near the mouth of the Piasa creek, on the bluff, there is a smooth rock
+in a cavernous cleft, under an overhanging cliff, on whose face 50 feet
+from the base, are painted some ancient pictures or hieroglyphics, of
+great interest to the curious. They are placed in a horizontal line from
+east to west, representing men, plants and animals. The paintings,
+though protected from dampness and storms, are in great part destroyed,
+marred by portions of the rock becoming detached and falling down."
+
+Mr. McAdams, of Alton, Illinois, says, "The name Piasa is Indian and
+signifies, in the Illini, the bird which devours men". He furnishes a
+spirited pen-and-ink sketch, 12 by 15 inches in size and purporting to
+represent the ancient painting described by Marquette. On the picture
+is inscribed the following in ink: "Made by Wm. Dennis, April 3rd,
+1825". The date is in both letters and figures. On the top of the
+picture in large letters are the two words, "FLYING DRAGON". This
+picture, which has been kept in the old Gilham family of Madison county
+and bears the evidence of its age, is reproduced as Fig. 3.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Wm. Dennis's Drawing of the "Flying Dragon"
+Depicted on the Rocks at Piasa, Illinois.]
+
+He also publishes another representation with the following remarks:--
+
+"One of the most satisfactory pictures of the Piasa we have ever seen is
+in an old German publication entitled 'The Valley of the Mississippi
+Illustrated. Eighty illustrations from Nature, by H. Lewis, from the
+Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico,' published about the year
+1839 by Arenz & Co., Dusseldorf, Germany. One of the large full-page
+plates in this work gives a fine view of the bluff at Alton, with the
+figure of the Piasa on the face of the rock. It is represented to have
+been taken on the spot by artists from Germany.... In the German picture
+there is shown just behind the rather dim outlines of the second face a
+ragged crevice, as though of a fracture. Part of the bluff's face might
+have fallen and thus nearly destroyed one of the monsters, for in later
+years writers speak of but one figure. The whole face of the bluff was
+quarried away in 1846-47."
+
+The close agreement of this account with that of the Chinese and
+Japanese dragon at once arrests attention. The anatomical peculiarities
+are so extraordinary that if Pere Marquette's account is trustworthy
+there is no longer any room for doubt of the Chinese or Japanese
+derivation of this composite creature. If the account is not accepted we
+will be driven, not only to attribute to the pious seventeenth-century
+missionary serious dishonesty or culpable gullibility, but also to
+credit him with a remarkably precise knowledge of Mongolian archaeology.
+When Algonkin legends are recalled, however, I think we are bound to
+accept the missionary's account as substantially accurate.
+
+Minns claims that representations of the dragon are unknown in China
+before the Han dynasty. But the legend of the dragon is much more
+ancient. The evidence has been given in full by de Visser.[160]
+
+He tells us that the earliest reference is found in the _Yih King_, and
+shows that the dragon was "a water animal akin to the snake, which
+[used] to sleep in pools during winter and arises in the spring." "It is
+the god of thunder, who brings good crops when he appears in the rice
+fields (as rain) or in the sky (as dark and yellow clouds), in other
+words when he makes the rain fertilize the ground" (p. 38).
+
+In the _Shu King_ there is a reference to the dragon as one of the
+symbolic figures painted on the upper garment of the emperor Hwang Ti
+(who according to the Chinese legends, which of course are not above
+reproach, reigned in the twenty-seventh century B.C.). In this ancient
+literature there are numerous references to the dragon, and not merely
+to the legends, _but also to representations_ of the benign monster on
+garments, banners and metal tablets.[161] "The ancient texts ... are
+short, but sufficient to give us the main conceptions of Old China with
+regard to the dragon. In those early days [just as at present] he was
+the god of water, thunder, clouds, and rain, the harbinger of blessings,
+and the symbol of holy men. As the emperors are the holy beings on
+earth, the idea of the dragon being the symbol of Imperial power is
+based upon this ancient conception" (_op. cit._, p. 42).
+
+In the fifth appendix to the _Yih King_, which has been ascribed to
+Confucius, (i.e. three centuries earlier than the Han dynasty mentioned
+by Mr. Minns), it is stated that "_K'ien_ (Heaven) is a horse, _Kw'un_
+(Earth) is a cow, _Chen (Thunder) is a dragon_." (_op. cit._, p.
+37).[162]
+
+The philosopher Hwai Nan Tsze (who died 122 B.C.) declared that the
+dragon is the origin of all creatures, winged, hairy, scaly, and
+mailed; and he propounded a scheme of evolution (de Visser, p. 65). He
+seems to have tried to explain away the fact that he had never actually
+witnessed the dragon performing some of the remarkable feats attributed
+to it: "Mankind cannot see the dragons rise: wind and rain assist them
+to ascend to a great height" (_op. cit._, p. 65). Confucius also is
+credited with the frankness of a similar confession: "As to the dragon,
+we cannot understand his riding on the wind and clouds and his ascending
+to the sky. To-day I saw Lao Tsze; is he not like the dragon?" (p. 65).
+
+This does not necessarily mean that these learned men were sceptical of
+the beliefs which tradition had forged in their minds, but that the
+dragon had the power of hiding itself in a cloak of invisibility, just
+as clouds (in which the Chinese saw dragons) could be dissipated in the
+sky. The belief in these powers of the dragon was as sincere as that of
+learned men of other countries in the beneficent attributes which
+tradition had taught them to assign to their particular deities. In the
+passages I have quoted the Chinese scholars were presumably attempting
+to bridge the gap between the ideas inculcated by faith and the evidence
+of their senses, in much the same sort of spirit as, for instance,
+actuated Dean Buckland last century, when he claimed that the glacial
+deposits of this country afforded evidence in confirmation of the Deluge
+described in the Book of Genesis.
+
+The tiger and the dragon, the gods of wind and water, are the keystones
+of the doctrine called _fung shui_, which Professor de Groot has
+described in detail.[163]
+
+He describes it "as a quasi-scientific system, supposed to teach men
+where and how to build graves, temples, and dwellings, in order that the
+dead, the gods, and the living may be located therein exclusively, or as
+far as possible, under the auspicious influences of Nature". The dragon
+plays a most important part in this system, being "the chief spirit of
+water and rain, and at the same time representing one of the four
+quarters of heaven (i.e. the East, called the Azure Dragon, and the
+first of the seasons, spring)." The word Dragon comprises the high
+grounds in general, and the water streams which have their sources
+therein or wind their way through them.[164]
+
+The attributes thus assigned to the Blue Dragon, his control of water
+and streams, his dwelling on high mountains whence they spring, and his
+association with the East, will be seen to reveal his identity with the
+so-called "god B" of American archaeologists, the elephant-headed god
+_Tlaloc_ of the Aztecs, _Chac_ of the Mayas, whose more direct parent
+was Indra.
+
+It is of interest to note that, according to Gerini,[165] the word
+_Naga_ denotes not only a snake but also an elephant. Both the Chinese
+dragon and the Mexican elephant-god are thus linked with the Naga, who
+is identified both with Indra himself and Indra's enemy Vritra. This is
+another instance of those remarkable contradictions that one meets at
+every step in pursuing the dragon. In the confusion resulting from the
+blending of hostile tribes and diverse cultures the Aryan deity who,
+both for religious and political reasons, is the enemy of the Nagas
+becomes himself identified with a Naga!
+
+I have already called attention (_Nature_, Jan. 27, 1916) to the fact
+that the graphic form of representation of the American elephant-headed
+god was derived from Indonesian pictures of the _makara_. In India
+itself the _makara_ (see Fig. 14) is represented in a great variety of
+forms, most of which are prototypes of different kinds of dragons. Hence
+the homology of the elephant-headed god with the other dragons is
+further established and shown to be genetically related to the evolution
+of the protean manifestations of the dragon's form.
+
+The dragon in China is "the heavenly giver of fertilizing rain" (_op.
+cit._, p. 36). In the _Shu King_ "the emblematic figures of the ancients
+are given as the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountain, the _dragon_,
+and the variegated animals (pheasants) which are depicted on the upper
+sacrificial garment of the Emperor" (p. 39). In the _Li Ki_ the unicorn,
+the phoenix, the tortoise, and the dragon are called the four _ling_
+(p. 39), which de Visser translates "spiritual beings," creatures with
+enormously strong vital spirit. The dragon possesses the most _ling_ of
+all creatures (p. 64). The tiger is the deadly enemy of the dragon
+(p. 42).
+
+The dragon sheds a brilliant light at night (p. 44), usually from his
+glittering eyes. He is the giver of omens (p. 45), good and bad, rains
+and floods. The dragon-horse is a vital spirit of Heaven and Earth (p.
+58) and also of river water: it has the tail of a huge serpent.
+
+The ecclesiastical vestments of the Wu-ist priests are endowed with
+magical properties which are considered to enable the wearer to control
+the order of the world, to avert unseasonable and calamitous events,
+such as drought, untimely and superabundant rainfall, and eclipses.
+These powers are conferred by the decoration upon the dress. Upon the
+back of the chief vestment the representation of a range of mountains is
+embroidered as a symbol of the world: on each side (the right and left)
+of it a large dragon arises above the billows to represent the
+fertilizing rain. They are surrounded by gold-thread figures
+representing clouds and spirals typifying rolling thunder.[166]
+
+A ball, sometimes with a spiral decoration, is commonly represented in
+front of the Chinese dragon. The Chinese writer Koh Hung tells us that
+"a spiral denotes the rolling of thunder from which issues a flash of
+lightning".[167] De Visser discusses this question at some length and
+refers to Hirth's claim that the Chinese triquetrum, i.e., the
+well-known three-comma shaped figure, the Japanese _mitsu-tomoe_, the
+ancient spiral, represents thunder also.[168] Before discussing this
+question, which involves the consideration of the almost world-wide
+belief in a thunder-weapon and its relationship to the spiral ornament,
+the octopus, the pearl, the swastika and triskele, let us examine
+further the problem of the dragon's ball (see Fig. 15).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Photograph of a Chinese Embroidery in the
+Manchester School of Art representing the Dragon and the Pearl-Moon
+Symbol.]
+
+De Groot regards the dragon as a thunder-god and therefore, like Hirth,
+assumes that the supposed thunder-ball is being _belched forth_ and not
+being _swallowed_ by the dragon. But de Visser, as the result of a
+conversation with Mr. Kramp and the study of a Chinese picture in
+Blacker's "Chats on Oriental China" (1908, p. 54), puts forward the
+suggestion that the ball is the moon or the pearl-moon which the dragon
+is swallowing, thereby causing the fertilizing rain. The Chinese
+themselves refer to the ball as the "precious pearl," which, under the
+influence of Buddhism in China, was identified with "the pearl that
+grants all desires" and is under the special protection of the Naga,
+i.e., the dragon. Arising out of this de Visser puts the conundrum: "Was
+the ball originally also a pearl, not of Buddhism but of Taoism?"
+
+In reply to this question I may call attention to the fact that the
+germs of civilization were first planted in China by people strongly
+imbued with the belief that the pearl was the quintessence of
+life-giving and prosperity-conferring powers:[169] it was not only
+identified with the moon, but also was itself a particle of
+moon-substance which fell as dew into the gaping oyster. It was the very
+people who held such views about pearls and gold who, when searching for
+alluvial gold and fresh-water pearls in Turkestan, were responsible for
+transferring these same life-giving properties to jade; and the magical
+value thus attached to jade was the nucleus, so to speak, around which
+the earliest civilization of China was crystallized.
+
+As we shall see, in the discussion of the thunder-weapon (p. 121), the
+luminous pearl, which was believed to have fallen from the sky, was
+homologized with the thunderbolt, with the functions of which its own
+magical properties were assimilated.
+
+Kramp called de Visser's attention to the fact that the Chinese
+hieroglyphic character for the dragon's ball is compounded of the signs
+for _jewel_ and _moon_, which is also given in a Japanese lexicon as
+_divine pearl_, the pearl of the bright moon.
+
+"When the clouds approached and covered the moon, the ancient Chinese
+may have thought that the dragons had seized and swallowed this pearl,
+more brilliant than all the pearls of the sea" (de Visser, p. 108).
+
+The difficulty de Visser finds in regarding his own theory as wholly
+satisfactory is, first, the red colour of the ball, and secondly, the
+spiral pattern upon it. He explains the colour as possibly an attempt to
+represent the pearl's lustre. But de Visser seems to have overlooked the
+fact that red and rose-coloured pearls obtained from the conch-shell
+were used in China and Japan.[170]
+
+"The spiral is much used in delineating the sacred pearls of Buddhism,
+so that it might have served also to design those of Taoism; although I
+must acknowledge that the spiral of the Buddhist pearl goes upward,
+while the spiral of the dragon is flat" (p. 103).
+
+De Visser sums up the whole argument in these words:--
+
+"These are, however, all mere suppositions. The only facts we know are:
+the eager attitude of the dragons, ready to grasp and swallow the ball;
+the ideas of the Chinese themselves as to the ball being the moon or a
+pearl; the existence of a kind of sacred "moon-pearl"; the red colour of
+the ball, its emitting flames and its spiral-like form. As the three
+last facts are in favour of the thunder theory, I should be inclined to
+prefer the latter. Yet I am convinced that the dragons do not _belch
+out_ the thunder. If their trying to _grasp_ or _swallow_ the thunder
+could be explained, I should immediately accept the theory concerning
+the thunder-spiral, especially on account of the flames it emits. But I
+do not see the reason why the god of thunder should persecute thunder
+itself. Therefore, after having given the above facts that the reader
+may take them into consideration, I feel obliged to say: 'non liquet'"
+(p. 108).
+
+It does not seem to have occurred to the distinguished Dutch scholar,
+who has so lucidly put the issue before us, that his demonstration of
+the fact of the ball being the pearl-moon about to be swallowed by the
+dragon does not preclude it being also confused with the thunder.
+Elsewhere in this volume I have referred to the origin of the spiral
+symbolism and have shown that it became associated with the pearl
+_before_ it became the symbol of thunder. The pearl-association in fact
+was one of the links in the chain of events which made the pearl and
+the spirally-coiled arm of the octopus the sign of thunder.[171]
+
+It seems quite clear to me that de Visser's pearl-moon theory is the
+true interpretation. But when the pearl-ball was provided with the
+spiral, painted red, and given flames to represent its power of emitting
+light and shining by night, the fact of the spiral ornamentation and of
+the pearl being one of the surrogates of the thunder-weapon was
+rationalized into an identification of the ball with thunder and the
+light it was emitting as lightning. It is, of course, quite irrational
+for a thunder-god to swallow his own thunder: but popular
+interpretations of subtle symbolism, the true explanation of which is
+deeply buried in the history of the distant past, are rarely logical and
+almost invariably irrelevant.
+
+In his account of the state of Brahmanism in India after the times of
+the two earlier Vedas, Professor Hopkins[172] throws light upon the real
+significance of the ball in the dragon-symbolism. "Old legends are
+varied. The victory over Vritra is now expounded thus: Indra, who slays
+Vritra, is the sun. Vritra is the moon, who swims into the sun's mouth
+on the night of the new moon. The sun rises after swallowing him, and
+the moon is invisible because he is swallowed. The sun vomits out the
+moon, and the latter is then seen in the west, and increases again, to
+serve the sun as food. In another passage it is said that when the moon
+is invisible he is hiding in plants and waters."
+
+This seems to clear away any doubt as to the significance of the ball.
+It is the pearl-moon, which is both swallowed and vomited by the dragon.
+
+The snake takes a more obtrusive part in the Japanese than in the
+Chinese dragon and it frequently manifests itself as a god of the sea.
+The old Japanese sea-gods were often female water-snakes. The cultural
+influences which reached Japan from the south by way of Indonesia--many
+centuries before the coming of Buddhism--naturally emphasized the
+serpent form of the dragon and its connexion with the ocean.
+
+But the river-gods, or "water-fathers," were real four-footed dragons
+identified with the dragon-kings of Chinese myth, but at the same time
+were strictly homologous with the Naga Rajas or cobra-kings of India.
+
+The Japanese "Sea Lord" or "Sea Snake" was also called
+"Abundant-Pearl-Prince," who had a magnificent palace at the bottom of
+the sea. His daughter ("Abundant-Pearl-Princess") married a youth whom
+she observed, reflected in the well, sitting on a cassia tree near the
+castle gate. Ashamed at his presence at her lying-in she was changed
+into a _wani_ or crocodile (de Visser, p. 139), elsewhere described as a
+dragon (_makara_). De Visser gives it as his opinion that the _wani_ is
+"an old Japanese dragon, or serpent-shaped sea-god, and the legend is an
+ancient Japanese tale, dressed in an Indian garb by later generations"
+(p. 140). He is arguing that the Japanese dragon existed long before
+Japan came under Indian influence. But he ignores the fact that at a
+very early date both India and China were diversely influenced by
+Babylonia, the great breeding place of dragons; and, secondly, that
+Japan was influenced by Indonesia, and through it by the West, for many
+centuries before the arrival of such later Indian legends as those
+relating to the palace under the sea, the castle gate and the cassia
+tree. As Aston (quoted by de Visser) remarks, all these incidents and
+also the well that serves as a mirror, "form a combination not unknown
+to European folk-lore".
+
+After de Visser had given his own views, he modified them (on p. 141)
+when he learned that essentially the same dragon-stories had been
+recorded in the Kei Islands and Minahassa (Celebes). In the light of
+this new information he frankly admits that "the resemblance of several
+features of this myth with the Japanese one is so striking, that we may
+be sure that the latter is of Indonesian origin." He goes further when
+he recognizes that "probably the foreign invaders, who in prehistoric
+times conquered Japan, came from Indonesia, and brought the myth with
+them" (p. 141). The evidence recently brought together by W. J. Perry in
+his book "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia" makes it certain that the
+people of Indonesia in turn got it from the West.
+
+An old painting reproduced by F. W. K. Mueller,[173] who called de
+Visser's attention to these interesting stories, shows Hohodemi (the
+youth on the cassia tree who married the princess) returning home
+mounted on the back of a crocodile, like the Indian Varuna upon the
+_makara_ in a drawing reproduced by the late Sir George Birdwood.[174]
+
+The _wani_ or crocodile thus introduced from India, _via_ Indonesia, is
+really the Chinese and Japanese dragon, as Aston has claimed. Aston
+refers to Japanese pictures in which the Abundant-Pearl-Prince and his
+daughter are represented with dragon's heads appearing over their human
+ones, but in the old Indonesian version they maintain their forms as
+_wani_ or crocodiles.
+
+The dragon's head appearing over a human one is quite an Indian motive,
+transferred to China and from there to Korea and Japan (de Visser, p.
+142), and, I may add, also to America.
+
+[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been printed, the Curator of the
+Liverpool Museum has kindly called my attention to a remarkable series
+of Maya remains in the collection under his care, which were obtained in
+the course of excavations made by Mr. T. W. F. Gann, M.R.C.S., an
+officer in the Medical Service of British Honduras (see his account of
+the excavations in Part II. of the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of
+Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution of Washington). Among them is a
+pottery figure of a _wani_ or _makara_ in the form of an alligator,
+equipped with diminutive deer's horns (like the dragon of Eastern Asia);
+and its skin is studded with circular elevations, presumably meant to
+represent the spots upon the star-spangled "Celestial Stag" of the
+Aryans (p. 130). As in the Japanese pictures mentioned by Aston, a human
+head is seen emerging from the creature's throat. It affords a most
+definite and convincing demonstration of the sources of American
+culture.]
+
+The jewels of flood and ebb in the Japanese legends consist of the
+pearls of flood and ebb obtained from the dragon's palace at the bottom
+of the sea. By their aid storms and floods could be created to destroy
+enemies or calm to secure safety for friends. Such stories are the
+logical result of the identification of pearls with the moon, the
+influence of which upon the tides was probably one of the circumstances
+which was responsible for bringing the moon into the circle of the great
+scientific theory of the life-giving powers of water. This in turn
+played a great, if not decisive, part in originating the earliest belief
+in a sky world, or heaven.
+
+
+[137: "Precolumbian Representations of the Elephant in America,"
+_Nature_, Nov. 25, 1915, p. 340; Dec. 16, 1915, p. 425; and Jan. 27,
+1916, p. 593.]
+
+[138: "History of Melanesian Society," Cambridge, 1914.]
+
+[139: H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archeologie Americaine," 1912, p. 319.]
+
+[140: "Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts," _Papers of
+the Peabody Museum_, vol. iv., 1904.]
+
+[141: _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, Bd. 40, 1908, p. 716.]
+
+[142: "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Handschriften,"
+_Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, Bd. 42, 1910, pp. 75 and 77. In the
+remarkable series of drawings from Maya and Aztec sources reproduced by
+Seler in his articles in the _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, the _Peabody
+Museum Papers_, and his monograph on the _Codex Vaticanus_, not only is
+practically every episode of the dragon-myth of the Old World
+graphically depicted, but also every phase and incident of the legends
+from India (and Babylonia, Egypt and the AEgean) that contributed to the
+building-up of the myth.]
+
+[143: Compare Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 94.]
+
+[144: Herbert J. Spinden, "Maya Art," p. 62.]
+
+[145: Seler, "Codex Vaticanus," Figs. 299-304.]
+
+[146: See, for example, F. W. K. Mueller, "Nang," _Int. Arch. f.
+Ethnolog._, 1894, Suppl. zu Bd. vii., Taf. vii., where the mask of
+_Ravana_ (a late surrogate of Indra in the _Ramayana_) reveals a
+survival of the prototype of the Mexican designs.]
+
+[147: Joyce, _op. cit._, p. 37.]
+
+[148: For the incident of the stealing of the soma by Garuda, who in
+this legend is the representative of Indra, see Hopkins, "Religions of
+India," pp. 360-61.]
+
+[149: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
+America," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1916, Fig. 4, "The
+Serpent-Bird".]
+
+[150: Probably from about 300 B.C. to 700 A.D.]
+
+[151: For information concerning Ea's "Goat-Fish," which can truly be
+called the "Father of Dragons," as well as the prototype of the Indian
+_makara_, the mermaid, the "sea-serpent," the "dolphin of Aphrodite,"
+and of most composite sea-monsters, see W. H. Ward's "Seal Cylinders of
+Western Asia," pp. 382 _et seq._ and 399 _et seq._; and especially the
+detailed reports in de Morgan's _Memoires_ (Delegation en Perse).]
+
+[152: _Nature, op. cit., supra_.]
+
+[153: Juan Martinez Hernandez, "La Creacion del Mundo segun los Mayas,"
+Paginas Ineditas del MS. De Chumayel, _International Congress of
+Americanists, Proceedings of the XVIII. Session_, London, 1912, p. 164.]
+
+[154: From the folk-lore of America I have collected many interesting
+variants of the Indra story and other legends (and artistic designs) of
+the elephant. I hope to publish these in the near future.]
+
+[155: _Peabody Museum Papers_, 1901.]
+
+[156: See, for example, Wilfrid Jackson's "Shells as Evidence of the
+Migration of Early Culture," pp. 50-66.]
+
+[157: "Notes on the Maoris, etc.," _Journal of the Ethnological
+Society_, vol. i., 1869, p. 368.]
+
+[158: _Op. cit._, p. 231.]
+
+[159: I quote this and the following paragraphs verbatim from Garrick
+Mallery, "Picture Writing of the American Indians," _10th Annual Report,
+1888-89, Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institute)_. p. 78.]
+
+[160: _Op. cit._, pp. 35 _et seq._]
+
+[161: See de Visser, p. 41.]
+
+[162: There can be no doubt that the Chinese dragon is the descendant of
+the early Babylonian monster, and that the inspiration to create it
+probably reached Shensi during the third millennium B.C. by the route
+indicated in my "Incense and Libations" (_Bull. John Rylands Library_,
+vol. iv., No. 2, p. 239). Some centuries later the Indian dragon reached
+the Far East via Indonesia and mingled with his Babylonian cousin in
+Japan and China.]
+
+[163: "Religious System of China," vol. iii., chap, xii., pp. 936-1056.]
+
+[164: This paragraph is taken almost verbatim from de Visser, _op. cit._
+pp. 59 and 60.]
+
+[165: G. E. Gerini, "Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia,"
+_Asiatic Society's Monographs_, No. 1, 1909, p. 146.]
+
+[166: De Visser, p. 102, and de Groot, vi., p. 1265, Plate XVIII. The
+reference to "a range of mountains ... as a symbol of the world" recalls
+the Egyptian representation of the eastern horizon as two hills between
+which Hathor or her son arises (see Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol.
+ii., p. 101; and compare Griffith's "Hieroglyphs," p. 30): the same
+conception was adopted in Mesopotamia (see Ward, "Seal Cylinders of
+Western Asia," fig. 412, p. 156) and in the Mediterranean (see Evans,
+"Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 37 _et seq._). It is a remarkable
+fact that Sir Arthur Evans, who, upon p. 64 of his memoir, reproduces
+two drawings of the Egyptian "horizon" supporting the sun's disk, should
+have failed to recognize in it the prototype of what he calls "the horns
+of consecration". Even if the confusion of the "horizon" with a cow's
+horns was very ancient (for the horns of the Divine Cow supporting the
+moon made this inevitable), this rationalization should not blind us as
+to the real origin of the idea, which is preserved in the ancient
+Egyptian, Babylonian, Cretan and Chinese pictures (see Fig. 26, facing
+p. 188).]
+
+[167: De Visser, p. 103.]
+
+[168: P. 104. The Chinese triquetrum has a circle in the centre and five
+or eight commas.]
+
+[169: See on this my paper "The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization,"
+now being published in the _Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester
+Literary and Philosophical Society_.]
+
+[170: Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early
+Culture," p. 106.]
+
+[171: I shall discuss this more fully in "The Birth of Aphrodite".]
+
+[172: "Religions of India," p. 197.]
+
+[173: "Mythe der Kei-Insulaner und Verwandtes," _Zeitsch. f.
+Ethnologie_, vol. xxv., 1893, pp. 533 _et seq._]
+
+[174: See Fig. 14.]
+
+
+The Evolution of the Dragon.
+
+The American and Indonesian dragons can be referred back primarily to
+India, the Chinese and Japanese varieties to India and Babylonia. The
+dragons of Europe can be traced through Greek channels to the same
+ultimate source. But the cruder dragons of Africa are derived either
+from Egypt, from the AEgean, or from India. All dragons that strictly
+conform to the conventional idea of what such a wonder-beast should be
+can be shown to be sprung from the fertile imagination of ancient Sumer,
+the "great breeding place of monsters" (Minns).
+
+But the history of the dragon's evolution and transmission to other
+countries is full of complexities; and the dragon-myth is made up of
+many episodes, some of which were not derived from Babylonia.
+
+In Egypt we do not find the characteristic dragon and dragon-story. Yet
+all of the ingredients out of which both the monster and the legends are
+compounded have been preserved in Egypt, and in perhaps a more primitive
+and less altered form than elsewhere. Hence, if Egypt does not provide
+dragons for us to dissect, it does supply us with the evidence without
+which the dragon's evolution would be quite unintelligible.
+
+Egyptian literature affords a clearer insight into the development of
+the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun God than we can
+obtain from any other writings of the origin of this fundamental stratum
+of deities. And in the three legends: The Destruction of Mankind, The
+Story of the Winged Disk, and The Conflict between Horus and Set, it has
+preserved the germs of the great Dragon Saga. Babylonian literature has
+shown us how this raw material was worked up into the definite and
+familiar story, as well as how the features of a variety of animals were
+blended to form the composite monster. India and Greece, as well as more
+distant parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia, and even America have
+preserved many details that have been lost in the real home of the
+monster.
+
+In the earliest literature that has come down to us from antiquity a
+clear account is given of the original attributes of Osiris. "Horus
+comes, he recognizes his father in thee [Osiris], youthful in thy name
+of 'Fresh Water'." "Thou art indeed the Nile, great on the fields at the
+beginning of the seasons; gods and men live by the moisture that is in
+thee." He is also identified with the inundation of the river. "It is
+Unis [the dead king identified with Osiris] who inundates the land." He
+also brings the wind and guides it. It is the breath of life which
+raises the king from the dead as an Osiris. The wine-press god comes to
+Osiris bearing wine-juice and the great god becomes "Lord of the
+overflowing wine": he is also identified with barley and with the beer
+made from it. Certain trees also are personifications of the god.
+
+But Osiris was regarded not only as the waters upon earth, the rivers
+and streams, the moisture in the soil and in the bodies of animals and
+plants, but also as "the waters of life that are in the sky".
+
+"As Osiris was identified with the waters of earth and sky, he may even
+become the sea and the ocean itself. We find him addressed thus: 'Thou
+art great, thou art green, in thy name of Great Green (Sea); lo, thou
+art round as the Great Circle (Okeanos); lo, thou art turned about, thou
+art round as the circle that encircles the Haunebu (AEgeans)."
+
+This series of interesting extracts from Professor Breasted's "Religion
+and Thought in Ancient Egypt" (pp. 18-26) gives the earliest Egyptians'
+own ideas of the attributes of Osiris. The Babylonians regarded Ea in
+almost precisely the same light and endowed him with identical powers.
+But there is an important and significant difference between Osiris and
+Ea. The former was usually represented as a man, that is, as a dead
+king, whereas Ea was represented as a man wearing a fish-skin, as a
+fish, or as the composite monster with a fish's body and tail, which was
+the prototype of the Indian _makara_ and "the father of dragons".
+
+In attempting to understand the creation of the dragon it is important
+to remember that, although Osiris and Ea were regarded primarily as
+personifications of the beneficent life-giving powers of water, as the
+bringers of fertility to the soil and the givers of life and immortality
+to living creatures, they were also identified with the destructive
+forces of water, by which men were drowned or their welfare affected in
+various ways by storms of sea and wind.
+
+Thus Osiris or the fish-god Ea could destroy mankind. In other words the
+fish-dragon, or the composite monster formed of a fish and an antelope,
+could represent the destructive forces of wind and water. Thus even the
+malignant dragon can be the homologue of the usually beneficent gods
+Osiris and Ea, and their Aryan surrogates Mazdah and Varuna.
+
+By a somewhat analogous process of archaic rationalization the sons
+respectively of Osiris and Ea, the sun-gods Horus and Marduk, acquired a
+similarly confused reputation. Although their outstanding achievements
+were the overcoming of the powers of evil, and, as the givers of light,
+conquering darkness, their character as warriors made them also powers
+of destruction. The falcon of Horus thus became also a symbol of chaos,
+and as the thunder-bird became the most obtrusive feature in the weird
+anatomy of the composite Mesopotamian dragon and his more modern
+bird-footed brood, which ranges from Western Europe to the Far East of
+Asia and America.
+
+That the sun-god derived his functions directly or indirectly from
+Osiris and Hathor is shown by his most primitive attributes, for in "the
+earliest sun-temples at Abusir, he appears as the source of life and
+increase". "Men said of him: 'Thou hast driven away the storm, and hast
+expelled the rain, and hast broken up the clouds'." Horus was in fact
+the son of Osiris and Hathor, from whom he derived his attributes. The
+invention of the sun-god was not, as most scholars pretend, an attempt
+to give direct expression to the fact that the sun is the source of
+fertility. That is a discovery of modern science. The sun-god acquired
+his attributes secondarily (and for definite historical reasons) from
+his parents, who were responsible for his birth.
+
+The quotation from the Pyramid Texts is of special interest as an
+illustration of one of the results of the assimilation of the idea of
+Osiris as the controller of water with that of a sky-heaven and a
+sun-god. The sun-god's powers are rationalized so as to bring them
+into conformity with the earliest conception of a god as a power
+controlling water.
+
+Breasted attempts to interpret the statements concerning the storm and
+rain-clouds as references to the enemies of the sun, who steal the
+sky-god's eye, i.e., obscure the sun or moon.[175] The incident of
+Horus's loss of an eye, which looms so large in Egyptian legends, is
+possibly more closely related to the earliest attempts at explaining
+eclipses of the sun and moon, the "eyes" of the sky. The obscuring of
+the sun and moon by clouds is a matter of little significance to the
+Egyptian: but the modern Egyptian _fellah_, and no doubt his
+predecessors also, regard eclipses with much concern. Such events
+excite great alarm, for the peasants consider them as actual combats
+between the powers of good and evil.
+
+In other countries where rain is a blessing and not, as in Egypt, merely
+an unwelcome inconvenience, the clouds play a much more prominent part
+in the popular beliefs. In the Rig-Veda the power that holds up the
+clouds is evil: as an elaboration of the ancient Egyptian conception of
+the sky as a Divine Cow, the Great Mother, the Aryan Indians regarded
+the clouds as a herd of cattle which the Vedic warrior-god Indra (who in
+this respect is the homologue of the Egyptian warrior Horus) stole from
+the powers of evil and bestowed upon mankind. In other words, like
+Horus, he broke up the clouds and brought rain.
+
+The antithesis between the two aspects of the character of these ancient
+deities is most pronounced in the case of the other member of this most
+primitive Trinity, the Great Mother. She was the great beneficent giver
+of life, but also the controller of life, which implies that she was the
+death-dealer. But this evil aspect of her character developed only under
+the stress of a peculiar dilemma in which she was placed. On a famous
+occasion in the very remote past the great Giver of Life was summoned to
+rejuvenate the ageing king. The only elixir of life that was known to
+the pharmacopoeia of the times was human blood: but to obtain this
+life-blood the Giver of Life was compelled to slaughter mankind. She
+thus became the destroyer of mankind in her lioness _avatar_ as Sekhet.
+
+The earliest known pictorial representation of the dragon (Fig. 1)
+consists of the forepart of the sun-god's falcon or eagle united with
+the hindpart of the mother-goddess's lioness. The student of modern
+heraldry would not regard this as a dragon at all, but merely a gryphon
+or griffin. A recent writer on heraldry has complained that, "in spite
+of frequent corrections, this creature is persistently confused in the
+popular mind with the _dragon_, which is even more purely
+imaginary."[176] But the investigator of the early history of these
+wonder-beasts is compelled, even at the risk of incurring the herald's
+censure, to regard the gryphon as one of the earliest known tentative
+efforts at dragon-making. But though the fish, the falcon or eagle, and
+the composite eagle-lion monster are early known pictorial
+representations of the dragon, good or bad, the serpent is probably more
+ancient still (Fig. 2).
+
+The earliest form assumed by the power of evil was the serpent: but it
+is important to remember that, as each of the primary deities can be a
+power of either good or evil, any of the animals representing them can
+symbolize either aspect. Though Hathor in her cow manifestation is
+usually benevolent and as a lioness a power of destruction, the cow may
+become a demon in certain cases and the lioness a kindly creature. The
+falcon of Horus (or its representatives, eagle, hawk, woodpecker, dove,
+redbreast, etc) may be either good or bad: so also the gazelle (antelope
+or deer), the crocodile, the fish, or any of the menagerie of creatures
+that enter into the composition of good or bad demons.
+
+"The Nagas are semi-divine serpents which very often assume human shapes
+and whose kings live with their retinues in the utmost luxury in their
+magnificent abodes at the bottom of the sea or in rivers or lakes. When
+leaving the Naga world they are in constant danger of being grasped and
+killed by the gigantic semi-divine birds, the Garudas, which also change
+themselves into men" (de Visser, p. 7).
+
+"The Nagas are depicted in three forms: common snakes, guarding jewels;
+human beings with four snakes in their necks; and winged sea-dragons,
+the upper part of the body human, but with a horned, ox-like head, the
+lower part of the body that of a coiling-dragon. Here we find a link
+between the snake of ancient India and the four-legged Chinese dragon"
+(p. 6), hidden in the clouds, which the dragon himself emitted, like a
+modern battleship, for the purpose of rendering himself invisible. In
+other words, the rain clouds were the dragon's breath. The fertilizing
+rain was thus in fact the vital essence of the dragon, being both water
+and the breath of life.
+
+"We find the Naga king not only in the possession of numberless jewels
+and beautiful girls, but also of mighty charms, bestowing supernatural
+vision and hearing. The palaces of the Naga kings are always described
+as extremely splendid, abounding with gold and silver and precious
+stones, and the Naga women, when appearing in human shape, were
+beautiful beyond description" (p. 9).
+
+De Visser records the story of an evil Naga protecting a big tree that
+grew in a pond, who failed to emit clouds and thunder when the tree was
+cut down, because he was neither despised nor wounded: for his body
+became the support of the stupa and the tree became a beam of the
+stupa (p. 16). This aspect of the Naga as a tree-demon is rare in
+India, but common in China and Japan. It seems to be identical with the
+Mediterranean conception of the pillar of wood or stone, which is both a
+representative of the Great Mother and the chief support of a
+temple.[177]
+
+In the magnificent city that king Yacahketu saw, when he dived into
+the sea, "wishing trees that granted every desire" were among the
+objects that met his vision. There were also palaces of precious stones
+and gardens and tanks, and, of course, beautiful maidens (de Visser, p.
+20).
+
+In the Far Eastern stories it is interesting to note the antagonism of
+the dragon to the tiger, when we recall that the lioness-form of Hathor
+was the prototype of the earliest malevolent dragon.
+
+There are five sorts of dragons: serpent-dragons; lizard-dragons;
+fish-dragons; elephant-dragons; and toad-dragons (de Visser, p. 23).
+
+"According to de Groot, the blue colour is chosen in China because this
+is the colour of the East, from where the rain must come; this quarter
+is represented by the Azure Dragon, the highest in rank among all the
+dragons. We have seen, however, that the original sutra already
+prescribed to use the blue colour and to face the East.... Indra, the
+rain-god, is the patron of the East, and Indra-colour is _nila_, dark
+blue or rather blue-black, the regular epithet of the rain clouds. If
+the priest had not to face the East but the West, this would agree with
+the fact that the Nagas were said to live in the western quarter and
+that in India the West corresponds with the blue colour. Facing the
+East, however, seems to point to an old rain ceremony in which Indra was
+invoked to raise the blue-black clouds" (de Visser, pp. 30 and 31).
+
+
+[175: Breasted, _op. cit._, p. 11.]
+
+[176: G. W. Eve, "Decorative Heraldry," 1897, p. 35.]
+
+[177: Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 88 _et
+seq._]
+
+
+The Dragon Myth.
+
+The most important and fundamental legend in the whole history of
+mythology is the story of the "Destruction of Mankind". "It was
+discovered, translated, and commented upon by Naville ("La Destruction
+des hommes par les Dieux," in the _Transactions of the Society of
+Biblical Archaeology_, vol. iv., pp. 1-19, reproducing Hay's copies made
+at the beginning of [the nineteenth] century; and "L'Inscription de la
+Destruction des hommes dans le tombeau de Ramses III," in the
+_Transactions_, vol. viii., pp. 412-20); afterwards published anew by
+Herr von Bergmann (_Hieroglyphische Inscriften_, pls. lxxv.-lxxxii., and
+pp. 55, 56); completely translated by Brugsch (_Die neue Weltordnung
+nach Vernichtung des suendigen Menschengeschlechts nach einer
+Altaegyptischen Ueberlieferung_, 1881); and partly translated by Lauth
+(_Aus AEgyptens Vorzeit_, pp. 70-81) and by Lefebure ("Une chapitre de la
+chronique solaire," in the _Zeitschrift fuer AEgyptische Sprache_, 1883,
+pp 32, 33)".[178]
+
+Important commentaries upon this story have been published also by
+Brugsch and Gauthier.[179]
+
+As the really important features of the story consist of the incoherent
+and contradictory details, and it would take up too much space to
+reproduce the whole legend here, I must refer the reader to Maspero's
+account of it (_op. cit._), or to the versions given by Erman in his
+"Life in Ancient Egypt" (p. 267, from which I quote) or Budge in "The
+Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 388.
+
+Although the story as we know it was not written down until the time of
+Seti I (_circa_ 1300 B.C.), it is very old and had been circulating as a
+popular legend for more than twenty centuries before that time. The
+narrative itself tells its own story because it is composed of many
+contradictory interpretations of the same incidents flung together in a
+highly confused and incoherent form.
+
+The other legends to which I shall have constantly to refer are "The
+Saga of the Winged Disk," "The Feud between Horus and Set," "The
+Stealing of Re's Name by Isis," and a series of later variants and
+confusions of these stories.[180]
+
+The Egyptian legends cannot be fully appreciated unless they are in
+conjunction with those of Babylonia and Assyria,[181] the mythology of
+Greece,[182] Persia,[183] India,[184] China,[185] Indonesia,[186] and
+America.[187]
+
+For it will be found that essentially the same stream of legends was
+flowing in all these countries, and that the scribes and painters have
+caught and preserved certain definite phases of this verbal currency.
+The legends which have thus been preserved are not to be regarded as
+having been directly derived the one from the other but as collateral
+phases of a variety of waves of story spreading out from one centre.
+Thus the comparison of the whole range of homologous legends is
+peculiarly instructive and useful; because the gaps in the Egyptian
+series, for example, can be filled in by necessary phases which are
+missing in Egypt itself, but are preserved in Babylonia or Greece,
+Persia or India, China or Britain, or even Oceania and America.
+
+The incidents in the Destruction of Mankind may be briefly summarized:
+
+As Re grows old "the men who were begotten of his eye"[188] show signs
+of rebellion. Re calls a council of the gods and they advise him to
+"shoot forth his Eye[189] that it may slay the evil conspirators.... Let
+the goddess Hathor descend [from heaven] and slay the men on the
+mountains [to which they had fled in fear]." As the goddess complied she
+remarked: "it will be good for me when I subject mankind," and Re
+replied, "I shall subject them and slay them". Hence the goddess
+received the additional name of _Sekhmet_ from the word "to subject".
+The destructive Sekhmet[190] _avatar_ of Hathor is represented as a
+fierce lion-headed goddess of war wading in blood. For the goddess set
+to work slaughtering mankind and the land was flooded with blood[191].
+Re became alarmed and determined to save at least some remnant of
+mankind. For this purpose he sent messengers to Elephantine to obtain a
+substance called _d'd'_ in the Egyptian text, which he gave to the god
+Sektet of Heliopolis to grind up in a mortar. When the slaves had
+crushed barley to make beer the powdered _d'd'_ was mixed with it so as
+to make it red like human blood. Enough of this blood-coloured beer was
+made to fill 7000 jars. At nighttime this was poured out upon the
+fields, so that when the goddess came to resume her task of destruction
+in the morning she found the fields inundated and her face was mirrored
+in the fluid. She drank of the fluid and became intoxicated so that she
+no longer recognized mankind.[192]
+
+Thus Re saved a remnant of mankind from the bloodthirsty, terrible
+Hathor. But the god was weary of life on earth and withdrew to heaven
+upon the back of the Divine Cow.
+
+There can be no doubt as to the meaning of this legend, highly confused
+as it is. The king who was responsible for introducing irrigation came
+to be himself identified with the life-giving power of water. He was the
+river: his own vitality was the source of all fertility and prosperity.
+Hence when he showed signs that his vital powers were failing it became
+a logical necessity that he should be killed to safeguard the welfare of
+his country and people.[193]
+
+The time came when a king, rich in power and the enjoyment of life,
+refused to comply with this custom. When he realized that his virility
+was failing he consulted the Great Mother, as the source and giver of
+life, to obtain an elixir which would rejuvenate him and obviate the
+necessity of being killed. The only medicine in the pharmacopoeia of
+those times that was believed to be useful in minimizing danger to life
+was human blood. Wounds that gave rise to severe haemorrhage were known
+to produce unconsciousness and death. If the escape of the blood of
+life could produce these results it was not altogether illogical to
+assume that the exhibition of human blood could also add to the vitality
+of living men and so "turn back the years from their old age," as the
+Pyramid Texts express it.
+
+Thus the Great Mother, the giver of life to all mankind, was faced with
+the dilemma that, to provide the king with the elixir to restore his
+youth, she had to slay mankind, to take the life she herself had given
+to her own children. Thus she acquired an evil reputation which was to
+stick to her throughout her career. She was not only the beneficent
+creator of all things and the bestower of all blessings: but she was
+also a demon of destruction who did not hesitate to slaughter even her
+own children.
+
+In course of time the practice of human sacrifice was abandoned and
+substitutes were adopted in place of the blood of mankind. Either the
+blood of cattle,[194] who by means of appropriate ceremonies could be
+transformed into human beings (for the Great Mother herself was the
+Divine Cow and her offspring cattle), was employed in its stead; or red
+ochre was used to colour a liquid which was used ritually to replace the
+blood of sacrifice. When this phase of culture was reached the goddess
+provided for the king an elixir of life consisting of beer stained red
+by means of red ochre, so as to simulate human blood.
+
+But such a mixture was doubly potent, for the barley from which the beer
+was made and the drink itself was supposed to be imbued with the
+life-giving powers of Osiris, and the blood-colour reinforced its
+therapeutic usefulness. The legend now begins to become involved and
+confused. For the goddess is making the rejuvenator for the king, who in
+the meantime has died and become deified as Osiris; and the beer, which
+is the vehicle of the life-giving powers of Osiris, is now being used to
+rejuvenate his son and successor, the living king Horus, who in the
+version that has come down to us is replaced by the sun-god Re.
+
+It is Re who is king and is growing old: he asks Hathor, the Great
+Mother, to provide him with the elixir of life. But comparison with some
+of the legends of other countries suggests that Re has usurped the place
+previously occupied by Horus and originally by Osiris, who as the real
+personification of the life-giving power of water is obviously the
+appropriate person to be slain when his virility begins to fail. Dr.
+C. G. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker Lerpiu, which I have
+already quoted (p. 113) from Sir James Frazer's "Dying God," suggests
+that the slain king or god was originally Osiris.
+
+The introduction of Re into the story marks the beginning of the belief
+in the sky-world or heaven. Hathor was originally nothing more than an
+amulet to enhance fertility and vitality. Then she was personified as a
+woman and identified with a cow. But when the view developed that the
+moon controlled the powers of life-giving in women and exercised a
+direct influence upon their life-blood, the Great Mother was identified
+with the moon. But how was such a conception to be brought into harmony
+with the view that she was also a cow? The human mind displays an
+irresistible tendency to unify its experience and to bridge the gaps
+that necessarily exist in its broken series of scraps of knowledge and
+ideas. No break is too great to be bridged by this instinctive impulse
+to rationalize the products of diverse experience. Hence, early man,
+having identified the Great Mother both with a cow and the moon, had no
+compunction in making "the cow jump over the moon" to become the sky.
+The moon then became the "Eye" of the sky and the sun necessarily became
+its other "Eye". But, as the sun was clearly the more important "Eye,"
+seeing that it determined the day and gave warmth and light for man's
+daily work, it was the more important deity. Therefore Re, at first the
+Brother-Eye of Hathor, and afterwards her husband, became the supreme
+sky-deity, and Hathor merely one of his Eyes.
+
+When this stage of theological evolution was reached, the story of the
+"Destruction of Mankind" was re-edited, and Hathor was called the "Eye
+of Re". In the earlier versions she was called into consultation solely
+as the giver of life and, to obtain the life-blood, she cut men's
+throats with a knife.
+
+But as the Eye of Re she was identified with the fire-spitting
+uraeus-serpent which the king or god wore on his forehead. She was both
+the moon and the fiery bolt which shot down from the sky to slay the
+enemies of Re. For the men who were originally slaughtered to provide
+the blood for an elixir now became the enemies of Re. The reason for
+this was that, human sacrifice having been abandoned and substitutes
+provided to replace the human blood, the story-teller was at a loss to
+know why the goddess killed mankind. A reason had to be found--and the
+rationalization adopted was that men had rebelled against the gods and
+had to be killed. This interpretation was probably the result of a
+confusion with the old legend of the fight between Horus and Set, the
+rulers of the two kingdoms of Egypt. The possibility also suggests
+itself that a pun made by some priestly jester may have been the real
+factor that led to this mingling of two originally separate stories. In
+the "Destruction of Mankind" the story runs, according to Budge,[195]
+that Re, referring to his enemies, said: _ma-ten set uar er set_,
+"Behold ye them (_set_) fleeing into the mountain (_set_)". The enemies
+were thus identified with the mountain or stone and with Set, the enemy
+of the gods.[196]
+
+In Egyptian hieroglyphics the symbol for stone is used as the
+determinative for Set. When the "Eye of Re" destroyed mankind and the
+rebels were thus identified with the followers of Set, they were
+regarded as creatures of "stone". In other words the Medusa-eye
+petrified the enemies. From this feeble pun on the part of some ancient
+Egyptian scribe has arisen the world-wide stories of the influence of
+the "Evil Eye" and the petrification of the enemies of the gods.[197] As
+the name for Isis in Egyptian is "_Set_" it is possible that the
+confusion of the Power of Evil with the Great Mother may also have been
+facilitated by an extension of the same pun.
+
+It is important to recognize that the legend of Hathor descending from
+the moon or the sky in the form of destroying fire had nothing whatever
+to do, in the first instance, with the phenomena of lightning and
+meteorites. It was the result of verbal quibbling after the destructive
+goddess came to be identified with the moon, the sky and the "Eye of
+Re". But once the evolution of the story on these lines prepared the
+way, it was inevitable that in later times the powers of destruction
+exerted by the fire from the sky should have been identified with the
+lightning and meteorites.
+
+When the destructive force of the heavens was attributed to the "Eye of
+Re" and the god's enemies were identified with the followers of Set, it
+was natural that the traditional enemy of Set who was also the more
+potent other "Eye of Re" should assume his mother's role of punishing
+rebellious mankind. That Horus did in fact take the place at first
+occupied by Hathor in the story is revealed by the series of trivial
+episodes from the "Destruction of Mankind" that reappear in the "Saga of
+the Winged Disk". The king of Lower Egypt (Horus) was identified with a
+falcon, as Hathor was with the vulture (Mut): like her, he entered the
+sun-god's boat[198] and sailed up the river with him: he then mounted up
+to heaven as a winged disk, i.e. the sun of Re equipped with his own
+falcon's wings. The destructive force displayed by Hathor as the Eye of
+Re was symbolized by her identification with Tefnut, the fire-spitting
+uraeus-snake. When Horus assumed the form of the winged disk he added to
+his insignia two fire-spitting serpents to destroy Re's enemies. The
+winged disk was at once the instrument of destruction and the god
+himself. It swooped (or flew) down from heaven like a bolt of destroying
+fire and killed the enemies of Re. By a confusion with Horus's other
+fight against the followers of Set, the enemies of Re become identified
+with Set's army and they are transformed into crocodiles, hippopotami
+and all the other kinds of creatures whose shapes the enemies of Osiris
+assume.
+
+In the course of the development of these legends a multitude of other
+factors played a part and gave rise to transformations of the meaning of
+the incidents.
+
+The goddess originally slaughtered mankind, or perhaps it would be truer
+to say, made _a_ human sacrifice, to obtain blood to rejuvenate the
+king. But, as we have seen already, when the sacrifice was no longer a
+necessary part of the programme, the incident of the slaughter was not
+dropped out of the story, but a new explanation of it was framed.
+Instead of simply making a human sacrifice, mankind as a whole was
+destroyed for rebelling against the gods, the act of rebellion being
+murmuring about the king's old age and loss of virility. The elixir soon
+became something more than a rejuvenator: it was transformed into the
+food of the gods, the ambrosia that gave them their immortality, and
+distinguished them from mere mortals. Now when the development of the
+story led to the replacement of the single victim by the whole of
+mankind, the blood produced by the wholesale slaughter was so abundant
+that the fields were flooded by the life-giving elixir. By the sacrifice
+of men the soil was renewed and refertilized. When the blood-coloured
+beer was substituted for the actual blood the conception was brought
+into still closer harmony with Egyptian ideas, because the beer was
+animated with the life-giving powers of Osiris. But Osiris was the Nile.
+The blood-coloured fertilizing fluid was then identified with the annual
+inundation of the red-coloured waters of the Nile. Now the Nile waters
+were supposed to come from the First Cataract at Elephantine. Hence by a
+familiar psychological process the previous phase of the legend was
+recast, and by confusion the red ochre (which was used to colour the
+beer red) was said to have come from Elephantine.[199]
+
+Thus we have arrived at the stage where, by a distortion of a series of
+phases, the new incident emerges that by means of a human sacrifice the
+Nile flood can be produced. By a further confusion the goddess, who
+originally did the slaughter, becomes the victim. Hence the story
+assumed the form that by means of the sacrifice of a beautiful and
+attractive maiden the annual inundation can be produced. As the most
+potent symbol of life-giving it is essential that the victim should be
+sexually attractive, i.e. that she should be a virgin and the most
+beautiful and desirable in the land. When the practice of human
+sacrifice was abandoned a figure or an animal was substituted for the
+maiden in ritual practice, and in legends the hero rescued the maiden,
+as Andromeda was saved from the dragon.[200] The dragon is the
+personification of the monsters that dwell in the waters as well as the
+destructive forces of the flood itself. But the monsters were no other
+than the followers of Set; they were the victims of the slaughter who
+became identified with the god's other traditional enemies, the
+followers of Set. Thus the monster from whom Andromeda is rescued is
+merely another representative of herself!
+
+But the destructive forces of the flood now enter into the programme.
+In the phases we have so far discussed it was the slaughter of
+mankind which caused the inundation: but in the next phase it is
+the flood itself which causes the destruction, as in the later Egyptian
+and the borrowed Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew--and in fact the
+world-wide--versions. Re's boat becomes the ark; the winged disk which
+was despatched by Re from the boat becomes the dove and the other birds
+sent out to spy the land, as the winged Horus spied the enemies of Re.
+
+Thus the new weapon of the gods--we have already noted Hathor's knife
+and Horus's winged disk, which is the fire from heaven, the lightning
+and the thunderbolt--is the flood. Like the others it can be either a
+beneficent giver of life or a force of destruction.
+
+But the flood also becomes a weapon of another kind. One of the earlier
+incidents of the story represents Hathor in opposition to Re. The
+goddess becomes so maddened with the zest of killing that the god
+becomes alarmed and asks her to desist and spare some representatives of
+the race. But she is deaf to entreaties. Hence the god is said to have
+sent to Elephantine for the red ochre to make a sedative draught to
+overcome her destructive zeal. We have already seen that this incident
+had an entirely different meaning--it was merely intended to explain the
+obtaining of the colouring matter wherewith to redden the sacred beer so
+as to make it resemble blood as an elixir for the god. It was brought
+from Elephantine, because the red waters of inundation of the Nile were
+supposed by the Egyptians to come from Elephantine.
+
+But according to the story inscribed in Seti Ist's tomb, the red ochre
+was an essential ingredient of the sedative mixture (prepared under the
+direction of Re by the Sekti[201] of Heliopolis) to calm Hathor's
+murderous spirit.
+
+It has been claimed that the story simply means that the goddess became
+intoxicated with beer and that she became genially inoffensive solely as
+the effect of such inebriation. But the incident in the Egyptian story
+closely resembles the legends of other countries in which some herb is
+used specifically as a sedative. In most books on Egyptian mythology the
+word (_d'd'_) for the substance put into the drink to colour it is
+translated "mandragora," from its resemblance to the Hebrew word
+_dudaim_ in the Old Testament, which is often translated "mandrakes" or
+"love-apples". But Gauthier has clearly demonstrated that the Egyptian
+word does not refer to a vegetable but to a mineral substance, which he
+translates "red clay".[202] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me, however, that
+it is "red ochre". In any case, mandrake is not found at Elephantine
+(which, however, for the reasons I have already given, is a point of no
+importance so far as the identification of the substance is concerned),
+nor in fact anywhere in Egypt.
+
+But if some foreign story of the action of a sedative drug had become
+blended with and incorporated in the highly complex and composite
+Egyptian legend the narrative would be more intelligible. The mandrake
+is such a sedative as might have been employed to calm the murderous
+frenzy of a maniacal woman. In fact it is closely allied to hyoscyamus,
+whose active principle, hyoscin, is used in modern medicine precisely
+for such purposes. I venture to suggest that a folk-tale describing the
+effect of opium or some other "drowsy syrup" has been absorbed into the
+legend of the Destruction of Mankind, and has provided the starting
+point of all those incidents in the dragon-story in which poison or
+some sleep-producing drug plays a part. For when Hathor defies Re and
+continues the destruction, she is playing the part of her Babylonian
+representative Tiamat, and is a dragon who has to be vanquished by the
+drink which the god provides.
+
+The red earth which was pounded in the mortar to make the elixir of life
+and the fertilizer of the soil also came to be regarded as the material
+out of which the new race of men was made to replace those who were
+destroyed.
+
+The god fashioned mankind of this earth and, instead of the red ochre
+being merely the material to give the blood-colour to the draught of
+immortality, the story became confused: actual blood was presented to
+the clay images to give them life and consciousness.
+
+In a later elaboration the remains of the former race of mankind were
+ground up to provide the material out of which their successors were
+created. This version is a favourite story in Northern Europe, and has
+obviously been influenced by an intermediate variant which finds
+expression in the Indian legend of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.
+Instead of the material for the elixir of the gods being pounded by the
+Sekti of Heliopolis and incidentally becoming a sedative for Hathor, it
+is the milk of the Divine Cow herself which is churned to provide the
+_amrita_.
+
+
+[178: G. Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 164.]
+
+[179: H. Brugsch, "Die Alraune als altaegyptische Zauberpflanze," _Zeit.
+f. AEgypt. Sprache_, Bd. 29, 1891, pp. 31-3; and Henri Gauthier, "Le nom
+hieroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Elephantine," _Revue Egyptologique_,
+t. xi^e, Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]
+
+[180: These legends will be found in the works by Maspero, Erman and
+Budge, to which I have already referred. A very useful digest will be
+found in Donald A. Mackenzie's "Egyptian Myth and Legend". Mr. Mackenzie
+does not claim to have any first-hand knowledge of the subject, but his
+exceptionally wide and intimate knowledge of Scottish folk-lore, which
+has preserved a surprisingly large part of the same legends, has enabled
+him to present the Egyptian stories with exceptional clearness and
+sympathetic insight. But I refer to his book specially because he is one
+of the few modern writers who has made the attempt to compare the
+legends of Egypt, Babylonia, Crete, India and Western Europe. Hence the
+reader who is not familiar with the mythology of these countries will
+find his books particularly useful as works of reference in following
+the story I have to unfold: "Teutonic Myth and Legend," "Egyptian Myth
+and Legend," "Indian Myth and Legend," "Myths of Babylonia and Assyria"
+and "Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe".]
+
+[181: See Leonard W. King, "Babylonian Religion," 1899.]
+
+[182: For a useful collection of data see A. B. Cook, "Zeus".]
+
+[183: Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in connexion with
+Similar Babylonian Beliefs," _Journal of the American Oriental Society_,
+vol. xxxvi., 1916, pp. 300-20; and "The Moral Deities of Iran and India
+and their Origins," _The American Journal of Theology_, vol. xxi., No.
+i., January, 1917.]
+
+[184: Hopkins, "Religions of India".]
+
+[185: De Groot, "The Religious System of China".]
+
+[186: Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Manchester, 1918.]
+
+[187: H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archeologie Americaine," Paris, 1912; T. A.
+Joyce, "Mexican Archaeology," and especially the memoir by Seler on the
+"Codex Vaticanus" and his articles in the _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_
+and elsewhere.]
+
+[188: I.e. the offspring of the Great Mother of gods and men, Hathor,
+the "Eye of Re".]
+
+[189: That is, Hathor, who as the moon is the "Eye of Re".]
+
+[190: Elsewhere in these pages I have used the more generally adopted
+spelling "_Sekhet_".]
+
+[191: Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the translation "flooding the
+land" is erroneous and misleading. Comparison of the whole series of
+stories, however, suggests that the amount of blood shed rapidly
+increased in the development of the narrative: at first the blood of a
+single victim; then the blood of mankind; then 7000 jars of a substitute
+for blood; then the red inundation of the Nile.]
+
+[192: This version I have quoted mainly from Erman, _op. cit._, pp.
+267-9, but with certain alterations which I shall mention later. In
+another version of the legend wine replaces the beer and is made out of
+"the blood of those who formerly fought against the gods," _cf._
+Plutarch, De Iside (ed. Parthey) 6.]
+
+[193: It is still the custom in many places, and among them especially
+the regions near the headwaters of the Nile itself, to regard the king
+or rain-maker as the impersonation of the life-giving properties of
+water and the source of all fertility. When his own vitality shows signs
+of failing he is killed, so as not to endanger the fruitfulness of the
+community by allowing one who is weak in life-giving powers to control
+its destinies. Much of the evidence relating to these matters has been
+collected by Sir James Frazer in "The Dying God," 1911, who quotes from
+Dr. Seligman the following account of the Dinka "Osiris":
+
+"While the mighty spirit Lerpiu is supposed to be embodied in the
+rain-maker, it is also thought to inhabit a certain hut which serves as
+a shrine. In front of the hut stands a post to which are fastened the
+horns of many bullocks that have been sacrificed to Lerpiu; and in the
+hut is kept a very sacred spear which bears the name of Lerpiu and is
+said to have fallen from heaven six generations ago. As fallen stars are
+also called Lerpiu, we may suspect that an intimate connexion is
+supposed to exist between meteorites and the spirit which animates the
+rain-maker" (Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 32). Here then we have a house of
+the dead inhabited by Lerpiu, who can also enter the body of the
+rain-maker and animate him, as well as the ancient spear and the falling
+stars, which are also animate forms of the same god, who obviously is
+the homologue of Osiris, and is identified with the spear and the
+falling stars.
+
+In spring when the April moon is a few days old bullocks are sacrificed
+to Lerpiu. "Two bullocks are led twice round the shrine and afterwards
+tied by the rain-maker to the post in front of it. Then the drums beat
+and the people, old and young, men and women, dance round the shrine and
+sing, while the beasts are being sacrificed, 'Lerpiu, our ancestor, we
+have brought you a sacrifice. Be pleased to cause rain to fall.' The
+blood of the bullocks is collected in a gourd, boiled in a pot on the
+fire, and eaten by the old and important people of the clan. The horns
+of the animals are attached to the post in front of the shrine" (pp. 32
+and 33).]
+
+[194: In Northern Nigeria an official who bore the title of Killer of
+the Elephant throttled the king "as soon as he showed signs of failing
+health or growing infirmity". The king-elect was afterwards conducted to
+the centre of the town, called Head of the Elephant, where he was made
+to lie down on a bed. Then a black ox was slaughtered and its blood
+allowed to pour all over his body. Next the ox was flayed, and the
+remains of the dead king, which had been disembowelled and smoked for
+seven days over a slow fire, were wrapped up in the hide and dragged
+along to the place of burial, where they were interred in a circular
+pit. (Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 35).]
+
+[195: "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 392.]
+
+[196: "The eye of the sun-god, which was subsequently called the eye of
+Horus and identified with the Uraeus-snake on the forehead of Re and of
+the Pharaohs, the earthly representatives of Re, finally becoming
+synonymous with the crown of Lower Egypt, was a mighty goddess, Uto or
+Buto by name" (Alan Gardiner, Article "Magic (Egyptian)" in Hastings'
+_Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_, p. 268, quoting Sethe.)]
+
+[197: For an account of the distribution of this story see E. Sidney
+Hartland, "The Legend of Perseus"; also W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic
+Culture of Indonesia".]
+
+[198: The original "boat of the sky" was the crescent moon, which, from
+its likeness to the earliest form of Nile boat, was regarded as the
+vessel in which the moon (seen as a faint object upon the crescent), or
+the goddess who was supposed to be personified in the moon, travelled
+across the waters of the heavens. But as this "boat" was obviously part
+of the moon itself, it also was regarded as an animate form of the
+goddess, the "Eye of Re". When the Sun, as the other "Eye," assumed the
+chief role, Re was supposed to traverse the heavens in his own "boat,"
+which was also brought into relationship with the actual boat used in
+the Osirian burial ritual.
+
+The custom of employing the name "dragon" in reference to a boat is
+found in places as far apart as Scandinavia and China. It is the direct
+outcome of these identifications of the sun and moon with a boat
+animated by the respective deities. In India the _Makara_, the prototype
+of the dragon, was sometimes represented as a boat which was looked upon
+as the fish-_avatar_ of Vishnu, Buddha or some other deity.]
+
+[199: This is an instance of the well-known tendency of the human mind
+to blend numbers of different incidents into one story. An episode of
+one experience, having been transferred to an earlier one, becomes
+rationalized in adaptation to its different environment. This process of
+psychological transference is the explanation of the reference to
+Elephantine as the source of the _d'd'_, and has no relation to
+actuality. The naive efforts of Brugsch and Gauthier to study the
+natural products of Elephantine for the purpose of identifying _d'd'_
+were therefore wholly misplaced.]
+
+[200: In Hartland's "Legend of Perseus" a collection of variants of this
+story will be found.]
+
+[201: In the version I have quoted from Erman he refers to "the god
+Sektet".]
+
+[202: _Op. cit. supra_.]
+
+
+The Thunder-Weapon.[203]
+
+In the development of the dragon-story we have seen that the instruments
+of destruction were of a most varied kind. Each of the three primary
+deities, Hathor, Osiris and Horus can be a destructive power as well as
+a giver of life and of all kinds of boons. Every homologue or surrogate
+of these three deities can become a weapon for dragon-destroying, such
+as the moon or the lotus of Hathor, the water or the beer of Osiris,
+the sun or the falcon of Horus. Originally Hathor used a flint knife or
+axe: then she did the execution as "the Eye of Re," the moon, the fiery
+bolt from heaven: Osiris sent the destroying flood and the intoxicating
+beer, each of which, like the knife, axe and moon of Hathor, were
+animated by the deity. Then Horus came as the winged disk, the falcon,
+the sun, the lightning and the thunderbolt. As the dragon-story was
+spread abroad in the world any one of these "weapons" was confused with
+any of (or all) the rest. The Eye of Re was the fire-spitting
+uraeus-serpent; and foreign people, like the Greeks, Indians and others,
+gave the Egyptian verbal simile literal expression and converted it into
+an actual Cyclopean eye planted in the forehead, which shot out the
+destroying fire.
+
+The warrior god of Babylonia is called the bright one,[204] the sword or
+lightning of Ishtar, who was herself called both the sword or lightning
+of heaven.
+
+In the AEgean area also the sons of Zeus and the progeny of heaven may be
+axes, stone implements, meteoric stones and thunderbolts. In a Swahili
+tale the hero's weapon is "a sword like a flash of lightning".
+
+According to Bergaigne,[205] the myth of the celestial drink _soma_,
+brought down from heaven by a bird ordinarily called _cyena_, "eagle,"
+is parallel to that of Agni, the celestial fire brought by Mataricvan.
+This parallelism is even expressly stated in the Rig Veda, verse 6 of
+hymn 1 to Agni and Soma. Mataricvan brought the one from heaven, the
+eagle brought the other from the celestial mountain.
+
+Kuhn admits that the eagle represents Indra; and Lehmann regards the
+eagle who takes the fire as Agni himself. It is patent that both Indra
+and Agni are in fact merely specialized forms of Horus of the Winged
+Disk Saga, in one of which the warrior sun-god is represented, in the
+other the living fire. The elixir of life of the Egyptian story is
+represented by the _soma_, which by confusion is associated with the
+eagle: in other words, the god Soma is the homologue not only of Osiris,
+but also of Horus.
+
+Other incidents in the same original version are confused in the Greek
+story of Prometheus. He stole the fire from heaven and brought it to
+earth: but, in place of the episode of the elixir, which is adopted in
+the Indian story just mentioned, the creation of men from clay is
+accredited by the Greeks to the "flaming one," the "fire eagle"
+Prometheus.
+
+The double axe was the homologue of the winged disk which fell, or
+rather flew, from heaven as the tangible form of the god. This fire from
+heaven inevitably came to be identified with the lightning. According to
+Blinkenberg (_op. cit._, p. 19) "many points go to prove that the
+double-axe is a representation of the lightning (see Usener, p. 20)". He
+refers to the design on the famous gold ring from Mycenae where "the sun,
+the moon, a double curved line presumably representing the rainbow, and
+the double-axe, i.e. the lightning": but "the latter is placed lower
+than the others, probably because it descends from heaven to earth,"
+like Horus when he assumed the form of the winged disk and flew down to
+earth as a fiery bolt to destroy the enemies of Re.
+
+The recognition of the homology of the winged disk with the double axe
+solves a host of problems which have puzzled classical scholars within
+recent years. The form of the double axe on the Mycenaean ring[206] and
+the painted sarcophagus from Hagia Triada in Crete (and especially the
+oblique markings upon the axe) is probably a suggestion of the double
+series of feathers and the outlines of the individual feathers
+respectively on the wings. The position of the axe upon a symbolic tree
+is not intended, as Blinkenberg claims (_op. cit._, p. 21), as "a ritual
+representation of the trees struck by lightning": but is the familiar
+scene of Mesopotamian culture-area, the tree of life surmounted by the
+winged disk.[207]
+
+The bird poised upon the axe in the Cretan picture is the homologue of
+the falcon of Horus: it is in fact a second representation of the winged
+disk itself. This interpretation is not affected by the consideration
+that the falcon may be replaced by the eagle, pigeon, woodpecker or
+raven, for these substitutions were repeatedly made by the ancient
+priesthoods in flagrant defiance of the properties of ornithological
+homologies. The same phenomenon is displayed even more obtrusively in
+Central America and Mexico, where the ancient sculptors and painters
+represented the bird perched upon the tree of life as a falcon, an
+eagle, a vulture, a macaw or even a turkey.[208]
+
+The incident of the winged disk descending to effect the sun-god's
+purposes upon earth probably represents the earliest record of the
+recognition of thunder and lightning and the phenomena of rain as
+manifestations of the god's powers. All gods of thunder, lightning, rain
+and clouds derive their attributes, and the arbitrary graphic
+representation of them, from the legend which the Egyptian scribe has
+preserved for us in the Saga of the Winged Disk.
+
+The sacred axe of Crete is represented elsewhere as a sword which became
+the visible impersonation of the deity.[209] There is a Hittite story of
+a sword-handle coming to life. Hose and McDougall refer to the same
+incident in certain Sarawak legends; and the story is true to the
+original in the fact that the sword fell from the sun.[210]
+
+Sir Arthur Evans describes as "the aniconic image of the god" a stone
+pillar on which crude pictures of a double axe have been scratched.
+These representations of the axe in fact serve the same purpose as the
+winged disk in Egypt, and, as we shall see subsequently, there was an
+actual confusion between the Egyptian symbol and the Cretan axe.
+
+The obelisk at Abusir was the aniconic representative of the sun-god Re,
+or rather, the support of the pyramidal apex, the gilded surface of
+which reflected the sun's rays and so made manifest the god's presence
+in the stone.
+
+The Hittites seem to have substituted the winged disk as a
+representation of the sun: for in a design copied from a seal[211] we
+find the Egyptian symbol borne upon the apex of a cone.
+
+The transition from this to the great double axe from Hagia Triada in
+the Candia Museum[212] is a relatively easy one, which was materially
+helped, as we shall see, by the fact that the winged disk was actually
+homologized with an axe or knife as alternative weapons used by the
+sun-god for the destruction of mankind.
+
+In Dr. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker (_supra_, p. 113) we
+have already seen that the Soudanese Osiris was identified with a spear
+and falling stars.
+
+According to Dr. Budge[213] the Egyptian hieroglyph used as the
+determinative of the word _neter_, meaning god or spirit, is the axe
+with a handle. Mr. Griffith, however, interprets it as a roll of yellow
+cloth ("Hieroglyphics," p. 46). On Hittite seals the axe sometimes takes
+the place of the god Teshub.[214]
+
+Sir Arthur Evans endeavours to explain these conceptions by a vague
+appeal to certain natural phenomena (_op. cit._, pp. 20 and 21); but the
+identical traditions of widespread peoples are much too arbitrary and
+specific to be interpreted by any such speculations.
+
+Sanchoniathon's story of Baetylos being the son of Ouranos is merely a
+poetical way of saying that the sun-god fell to earth in the form of a
+stone or a weapon, as a Zeus Kappotas or a Horus in the form of a winged
+disk, flying down from heaven to destroy the enemies of Re.
+
+"The idea of their [the weapons] flying through the air or falling from
+heaven, and their supposed power of burning with inner fire or shining
+in the nighttime," was not primarily suggested, as Sir Arthur Evans
+claims (_op. cit._, p. 21), "by the phenomena associated with meteoric
+stones," but was a rationalization of the events described in the early
+Egyptian and Babylonian stories.
+
+They "shine at night" because the original weapon of destruction was the
+moon as the Eye of Re. They "burn with inward fire," like the Babylonian
+Marduk, when in the fight with the dragon Tiamat "he filled his body
+with burning flame" (King, _op. cit._, p. 71), because they _were_ fire,
+the fire of the sun and of lightning, the fire spat out by the Eye
+of Re.
+
+Further evidence in corroboration of these views is provided by the fact
+that in the AEgean area the double-axe replaces the moon between the
+cow's horns (Evans, _op. cit._, Fig. 3, p. 9).
+
+In King's "Babylonian Religion" (pp. 70 and 71) we are told how the gods
+provided Marduk with an invincible weapon in preparation for the combat
+with the dragon: and the ancient scribe himself sets forth a series of
+its homologues:--
+
+He made ready his bow ... He slung a spear ... The bow and quiver ... He
+set the lightning in front of him, With burning flame he filled his
+body.
+
+An ancient Egyptian writer has put on record further identifications of
+weapons. In the 95th Chapter of the Book of the Dead, the deceased is
+reported to have said: "I am he who sendeth forth terror into the powers
+of rain and thunder.... I have made to flourish my knife which is in the
+hand of Thoth in the powers of rain and thunder" (Budge, "Gods of the
+Egyptians," vol. i., p. 414).
+
+The identification of the winged disk with the thunderbolt which emerges
+so definitely from these homologies is not altogether new, for it was
+suggested some years ago by Count d'Alviella[215] in these words:--
+
+"On seeing some representations of the Thunderbolt which recall in a
+remarkable manner the outlines of the Winged Globe, it may be asked if
+it was not owing to this latter symbol that the Greeks transformed into
+a winged spindle the Double Trident derived from Assyria. At any rate
+the transition, or, if it be preferred, the combination of the two
+symbols is met with in those coins from Northern Africa where Greek art
+was most deeply impregnated with Phoenician types. Thus on coins of
+Bocchus II, King of Mauretania, figures are found which M. Lajard
+connected with the Winged Globe, and M. L. Mueller calls Thunderbolts,
+but which are really the result of crossing between these two emblems".
+
+The thunderbolt, however, is not always, or even commonly, the direct
+representative of the winged disk. It is more often derived from
+lightning or some floral design.[216]
+
+According to Count d'Alviella[217] "the Trident of Siva at times
+exhibits the form of a lotus calyx depicted in the Egyptian manner".
+
+"Perhaps other transformations of the _trisula_ might still be found at
+Boro-Budur [in Java].... The same Disk which, when transformed into a
+most complicated ornament, is sometimes crowned by a Trident, is also
+met with between two serpents--which brings us back to the origin of the
+Winged Circle--the Globe of Egypt with the uraei" (see d'Alviella's Fig.
+158). "Moreover this ornament, between which and certain forms of the
+_trisula_ the transition is easily traced, commonly surmounts the
+entrance to the pagodas depicted in the bas-reliefs--in exactly the same
+manner as the Winged Globe adorns the lintel of the temples in Egypt and
+Phoenicia."
+
+Thus we find traces of a blending of the two homologous designs, derived
+independently from the lotus and the winged disk, which acquired the
+same symbolic significance.
+
+The weapon of Poseidon, the so-called "Trident of Neptune," is
+"sometimes crowned with a trilobate lotus flower, or with three lotus
+buds; in other cases it is depicted in a shape that may well represent a
+fishing spear" (Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, pp. 53 and 54).
+
+"Even if Jacobsthal's interpretation of the flower as a common Greek
+symbol for fire be not accepted, the conventionalization of the trident
+as a lotus blossom is quite analogous to the change, on Greek soil, of
+the Assyrian thunderweapon to two flowers pointing in opposite
+directions" (p. 54).
+
+But the conception of a flower as a symbol of fire cannot thus summarily
+be dismissed. For Sir Arthur Evans has collected all the stages in the
+transformation of Egyptian palmette pillars into the rayed pillars of
+Cyprus, in which the leaflets of the palmette become converted (in the
+Cypro-Mycenaean derivatives) into the rays which he calls "the natural
+concomitant of divinities of light".[218]
+
+The underlying motive which makes such a transference easy is the
+Egyptian conception of Hathor as a sacred lotus from which the sun-god
+Horus is born. The god of light is identified with the water-plant,
+whether lotus, iris or lily; and the lotus form of Horus can be
+correlated with its Hellenic surrogate, Apollo Hyakinthos. "The
+fleur-de-lys type now takes its place beside the sacred lotus" (_op.
+cit._, p. 50). The trident and the fleur-de-lys are thunderweapons
+because they represent forms of Horus or his mother.
+
+The classical keraunos is still preserved in Tibet as the _dorje_, which
+is identified with Indra's thunderbolt, the _vajra_.[219] This word is
+also applied to the diamond, the "king of stones," which in turn
+acquired many of the attributes of the pearl, another of the Great
+Mother's surrogates, which is reputed to have fallen from heaven like
+the thunderbolt.[220]
+
+The Tibetan _dorje_, like its Greek original, is obviously a
+conventionalized flower, the leaf-design about the base of the corona
+being quite clearly defined.
+
+The influence of the Winged-Disk Saga is clearly revealed in such Greek
+myths as that relating to Ixion. "Euripides is represented by
+Aristophanes as declaring that _Aither_ at the creation devised
+
+  The eye to mimic the wheel of the sun."[221]
+
+When we read of Zeus in anger binding Ixion to a winged wheel made of
+fire, and sending him spinning through the air, we are merely dealing
+with a Greek variant of the Egyptian myth in which Re despatched Horus
+as a winged disk to slay his enemies. In the Hellenic version the
+sky-god is angry with the father of the centaurs for his ill-treatment
+of his father-in-law and his behaviour towards Hera and her
+cloud-manifestation: but though distorted all the incidents reveal their
+original inspiration in the Egyptian story and its early Aryan variants.
+
+It is remarkable that Mr. A. B. Cook, who compared the wheel of Ixion
+with the Egyptian winged disk (pp. 205-10), did not look deeper for a
+common origin of the two myths, especially when he got so far as to
+identify Ixion with the sun-god (p. 211).
+
+Blinkenberg sums up the development of the thunder-weapon thus: "From
+the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or three
+zigzag lines representing flames, a tripartite thunder-weapon was
+evolved and earned east and west from the ancient seat of civilization.
+Together with the axe (in Western Asia Minor the double-edged, and
+towards the centre of Asia the single-edged, axe) it became a regular
+attribute of the Asiatic thunder-gods.... The Indian trisula and the
+Greek triaina are both its descendants" (p. 57).
+
+Discussing the relationship of the sun-god to thunder, Dr. Rendel Harris
+refers to the fact that Apollo's "arrows are said to be lightnings," and
+he quotes Pausanias, Apollodorus and Mr. A. B. Cook in substantiation of
+his statements.[222] Both sons of Zeus, Dionysus and Apollo, are
+"concerned with the production of fire".
+
+According to Hyginus, Typhon was the son of Tartarus and the Earth: he
+made war against Jupiter for dominion, and, being struck by lightning,
+was thrown flaming to the earth, where Mount AEtna was placed upon
+him.[223]
+
+In this curious variant of the story of the winged disk, the conflict of
+Horus with Set is merged with the Destruction, for the son of Tartarus
+[Osiris] and the Earth [Isis] here is not Horus but his hostile brother
+Set. Instead of fighting for Jupiter (Re) as Horus did, he is against
+him. The lightning (which is Horus in the form of the winged disk)
+strikes Typhon and throws him flaming to earth. The episode of Mount
+AEtna is the antithesis of the incident in the Indian legend of the
+churning of the ocean: Mount Meru is placed in the sea upon the tortoise
+_avatar_ of Vishnu and is used to churn the food of immortality for the
+gods. In the Egyptian story the red ochre brought from Elephantine is
+pounded with the barley.
+
+The story told by Hyginus leads up to the vision in Revelations (xii., 7
+_et seq._): "There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought
+against the dragon; and the dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed
+not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great
+dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which
+deceiveth the whole world: he was cast into the earth, and his angels
+were cast out with him."
+
+In the later variants the original significance of the Destruction of
+Mankind seems to have been lost sight of. The life-giving Great Mother
+tends to drop out of the story and her son Horus takes her place. He
+becomes the warrior-god, but he not only assumes his mother's role but
+he also adopts her tactics. Just as she attacked Re's enemies in the
+capacity of the sky-god's "Eye," so Horus as the other "Eye," the sun,
+to which he gave his own falcon's wings, attacked in the form of the
+winged disk. The winged disk, like the other "Eye of Re," was not merely
+the sky weapon which shot down to destroy mankind, but also was the god
+Horus himself. This early conception involved the belief that the
+thunderbolt and lightning represented not merely the fiery weapon but
+the actual god.
+
+The winged disk thus exhibits the same confusion of attributes as we
+have already noticed in Osiris and Hathor. It is the commonest symbol of
+life-giving and beneficent protective power: yet it is the weapon used
+to slaughter mankind. It is in fact the healing caduceus as well as the
+baneful thunder-weapon.
+
+
+[203: The history of the thunder-weapon cannot wholly be ignored in
+discussing the dragon-myth because it forms an integral part of the
+story. It was animated both by the dragon and the dragon-slayer. But an
+adequate account of the weapon would be so highly involved and complex
+as to be unintelligible without a very large series of illustrations.
+Hence I am referring here only to certain aspects of the subject.
+Pending the preparation of a monograph upon the thunder-weapon, I may
+refer the reader to the works of Blinkenberg, d'Alviella, Ward, Evans
+and A. B. Cook (to which frequent reference is made in these pages) for
+material, especially in the form of illustrations, to supplement my
+brief and unavoidably involved summary.]
+
+[204: As in Egypt Osiris is described as "a ray of light" which issued
+from the moon (Hathor), _i.e._ was born of the Great Mother.]
+
+[205: "Religion vedique," i., p. 173, quoted by S. Reinach, "AEtos
+Prometheus," _Revue archeologique_, 4^ie serie, tome x., 1917, p. 72.]
+
+[206: Evans, _op. cit._, Fig. 4, p. 10.]
+
+[207: William Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," chapter
+xxxviii.]
+
+[208: Seler, "Codex Vaticanus, No. 3773," vol. i., p. 77 _et seq._]
+
+[209: Evans, _op. cit._, p. 8.]
+
+[210: "The Pagan Tribes of Borneo," 1912, vol. ii., p. 137.]
+
+[211: Evans, _op. cit._, Fig. 8, _c_, p. 17.]
+
+[212: There is an excellent photograph of this in Donald McKenzie's
+"Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe," facing p. 160.]
+
+[213: "The Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., pp. 63 _et seq_.]
+
+[214: See, for example, Ward, _op. cit._, p. 411.]
+
+[215: "The Migration of Symbols," pp. 220 and 221.]
+
+[216: Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, p. 53.]
+
+[217: _Op. cit._, p. 256.]
+
+[218: "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 51 and 52.]
+
+[219: See Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, pp. 45-8.]
+
+[220: I must defer consideration of the part played by certain of the
+Great Mother's surrogates in the development of the thunder-weapon's
+symbolism and the associated folk-lore. I have in mind especially the
+influence of the octopus and the cow. The former was responsible in part
+for the use of the spiral as a thunder-symbol; and the latter for the
+beliefs in the special protective power of thunder-stones over cows (see
+Blinkenberg, _op. cit._). The thunder-stone was placed over the lintel
+of the cow-shed for the same purpose as the winged disk over the door of
+an Egyptian temple. Until the relations of the octopus to the dragon
+have been set forth it is impossible adequately to discuss the question
+of the seven-headed dragon, which ranges from Scotland to Japan and from
+Scandinavia to the Zambesi. In "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall call
+attention to the basal factors in its evolution.]
+
+[221: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 198.]
+
+[222: "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 32.]
+
+[223: "Tartarus ex Terra procreavit Typhonem, immani magnitudine,
+specieque portentosa, cui centum capita draconum ex humeris enata erant.
+Hic Jovem provocavit, si vellet secum de regno centare. Jovis fulmine
+ardenti pectus ejus percussit. Cui cum flagraret, montem AEtnam, qui est
+in Sicilia, super eum imposuit; qui ex eo adhuc ardere dicitur"
+(Hyginus, fab. 152).]
+
+
+The Deer.
+
+One of the most surprising features of the dragon in China, Japan and
+America, is the equipment of deer's horns.
+
+In Babylonia both Ea and Marduk are intimately associated with the
+antelope or gazelle, and the combination of the head of the antelope (or
+in other cases the goat) with the body of a fish is the most
+characteristic manifestation of either god. In Egypt both Osiris and
+Horus are at times brought into relationship with the gazelle or
+antelope, but more often it represents their enemy Set. Hence, in some
+parts of Africa, especially in the west, the antelope plays the part of
+the dragon in Asiatic stories.[224] The cow[225] of Hathor (Tiamat) may
+represent the dragon also. In East Africa the antelope assumes the role
+of the hero,[226] and is the representative of Horus. In the AEgean area,
+Asia Minor and Europe the antelope, gazelle or the deer, may be
+associated with the Great Mother.[227]
+
+In India the god Soma's chariot is drawn by an antelope. I have already
+suggested that Soma is only a specialized form of the Babylonian Ea,
+whose evil _avatar_ is the dragon: there is thus suggested another link
+between the antelope and the latter. The Ea-element explains the
+fish-scales and the antelope provides the horns. I shall return to the
+discussion of this point later.
+
+Vayu or Pavana, the Indian god of the winds, who afterwards became
+merged with Indra, rides upon an antelope like the Egyptian Horus.
+Soma's attributes also were in large measure taken over by Indra. Hence
+in this complex tissue of contradictions we once more find the
+dragon-slayer acquiring the insignia, in this case the antelope, of his
+mortal enemy.
+
+I have already referred to the fact that the early Babylonian deities
+could also be demons. Tiamat, the dragon whom Marduk fought, was merely
+the malevolent _avatar_ of the Great Mother. The dragon acquired his
+covering of fish-scales from an evil form of Ea.
+
+In his Hibbert Lectures Professor Sayce claimed that the name of Ea was
+expressed by an ideograph which signifies literally "the antelope" (p.
+280). "Ea was called 'the antelope of the deep,' 'the antelope the
+creator,' 'the lusty antelope'. We should have expected the animal of Ea
+to have been the fish: the fact that it is not so points to the
+conclusion that the culture-god of Southern Babylonia was an
+amalgamation of two earlier deities, one the divine antelope and the
+other the divine fish." Ea was "originally the god of the river and was
+also associated with the snake". Nina was also both the fish-goddess and
+the divinity whose name is interchanged with that of the deep. Professor
+Sayce then refers to "the curious process of development which
+transformed the old serpent-goddess, 'the lady Nina,' into the
+embodiment of all that was hostile to the powers of heaven; but after
+all, Nina had sprung from the fish-god of the deep [who also was both
+antelope and serpent as well, see p. 282], and Tiamat is herself 'the
+deep' in Semitic dress" (p. 283).
+
+"At times Ea was regarded as a gazelle rather than as an antelope." The
+position of the name in the list of animals shows what species of animal
+must be meant. _Lulim_, "a stag," seems to be a re-duplicated form of
+the same word. Both _lulim_ and _elim_ are said to be equivalent to
+_sarru_, king (p. 284).
+
+Certain Assyriologists, from whom I asked for enlightenment upon these
+philological matters, express some doubt as to the antiquity or to the
+reality of the association of the names of Ea and the word for an
+antelope, gazelle or stag. But whatever the value of the linguistic
+evidence, the archaeological, at any rate as early as the time of
+Nebuchadnezzar I, brings both Ea and Marduk into close association with
+a strange creature equipped with the horns of an antelope or gazelle.
+The association with the antelope of the homologous deities in India and
+Egypt leaves the reality of the connexion in no doubt. I had hoped that
+Professor Sayce's evidence would have provided some explanation of the
+strange association of the antelope. But whether or not the philological
+data justify the inferences which Professor Sayce drew from them, there
+can be no doubt concerning the correctness of his statement that Ea was
+represented both by fish and antelope, for in the course of his
+excavations at Susa M. J. de Morgan brought to light representations of
+Ea's animal consisting of an antelope's head on the body of a fish.[228]
+He also makes the statement that the ideogram of Ea, _turahu-apsu_,
+means "antelope of the sea". I have already (p. 88) referred to the fact
+that this "antelope of the sea," the so-called "goat-fish," is identical
+with the prototype of the dragon.
+
+If his claim that the names of Ea meant both a "fish" and an "antelope"
+were well founded, the pun would have solved this problem, as it has
+done in the case of many other puzzles in the history of early
+civilization. But if this is not the case, the question is still open
+for solution. As Set was held to be personified in all the desert
+animals, the gazelle was identified with the demon of evil for this
+reason. In her important treatise on "The Asiatic Dionysos" Miss Gladys
+Davis tells us that "in his aspect of Moon 'the lord of stars' Soma has
+in this character the antelope as his symbol. In fact, one of the names
+given to the moon by the early Indians was 'mriga-piplu' or marked
+like an antelope" (p. 202). Further she adds: "The Sanskrit name for the
+lunar mansion over which Soma presides is 'mriga-siras' or the
+deer-headed." If it be admitted that Soma is merely the Aryan
+specialization of Ea and Osiris, as I have claimed, Sayce's association
+of Ea with the antelope is corroborated, even if it is not explained.
+
+In China the dragon was sometimes called "the celestial stag" (de Groot,
+_op. cit._, p. 1143). In Mexico the deer has the same intimate celestial
+relations as it has in the Old World (see Seler, _Zeit. f. Ethnologie_,
+Bd. 41, p. 414). I have already referred to the remarkable Maya
+deer-crocodile _makara_ in the Liverpool Museum (p. 103).
+
+The systematic zoology of the ancients was lacking in the precision of
+modern times; and there are reasons for supposing that the antelope and
+gazelle could exchange places the one with the other in their divine
+roles; the deer and the rabbit were also their surrogates. In India a
+spotted rabbit can take the place of the antelope in playing the part of
+what we call "the man in the moon". This interpretation is common, not
+only in India, but also in China, and is repeatedly found in the ancient
+Mexican codices (Seler, _op. cit._). In the spread of the ideas we have
+just been considering from Babylonia towards the north we find that the
+deer takes the place of the antelope.
+
+In view of the close resemblance between the Indian god Soma and the
+Phrygian Dionysus, which has been demonstrated by Miss Gladys Davis, it
+is of interest to note that in the service of the Greek god a man was
+disguised as a stag, slain and eaten.[229]
+
+Artemis also, one of the many _avatars_ of the Great Mother, who was
+also related to the moon, was closely associated with the deer.
+
+I have already referred to the fact that in Africa the dragon role of
+the female antelope may be assumed by the cow or buffalo. In the case of
+the gods Soma and Dionysus their association with the antelope or deer
+may be extended to the bull. Miss Davis (_op. cit._) states that in the
+Homa Yasht the deer-headed lunar mansion over which the god presides is
+spoken of as "leading the Paurvas," i.e. Pleiades: "Mazda brought to
+thee (Homa) the star-studded spirit-fashioned girdle (the belt of Orion)
+leading the Paurvas. Now the Bull-Dionysus was especially associated
+with the Pleiades on ancient gems and in classical mythology--which form
+part of the sign Taurus." The bull is a sign of Haoma (Homa) or Soma.
+The belt of the thunder-god Thor corroborates the fact of the diffusion
+of these Babylonian ideas as far as Northern Europe.
+
+
+[224: Frobenius, "The Voice of Africa," vol. ii., p. 467 _inter alia_.]
+
+[225: _Op. cit._, p. 468.]
+
+[226: J. F. Campbell, "The Celtic Dragon Myth," with the "Geste of
+Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with Introduction by George
+Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 136.]
+
+[227: For example the red deer occupies the place usually taken by the
+goddess's lions upon a Cretan gem (Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar
+Cult," Fig. 32, p. 56): on the bronze plate from Heddemheim (A. B. Cook,
+"Zeus," vol. i., pl. xxxiv., and p. 620) Isis is represented standing on
+a hind: Artemis, another _avatar_ of the same Great Mother, was
+intimately associated with deer.]
+
+[228: J. de Morgan, article on "Koudourrous," _Mem. Del. en Perse_, t.
+7, 1905. Figures on p. 143 and p. 148: see also an earlier article on
+the same subject in tome i. of the same series.]
+
+[229: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 674.]
+
+
+The Ram.
+
+The close association of the ram with the thunder-god is probably
+related with the fact that the sun-god Amon in Egypt was represented by
+the ram with a distinctive spiral horn. This spiral became a distinctive
+feature of the god of thunder throughout the Hellenic and Phoenician
+worlds and in those parts of Africa which were affected by their
+influence or directly by Egypt.
+
+An account of the widespread influence of the ram-headed god of thunder
+in the Soudan and West Africa has been given by Frobenius.[230]
+
+But the ram also became associated with Agni, the Indian fire-god, and
+the spiral as a head-appendage became the symbol of thunder throughout
+China and Japan, and from Asia spread to America where such deities as
+Tlaloc still retain this distinctive token of their origin from the
+Old World.
+
+In Europe this association of the ram and its spiral horn played an even
+more obtrusive part.
+
+The octopus as a surrogate of the Great Mother was primarily responsible
+for the development of the life-giving attributes of the spiral motif.
+But the close connexion of the Great Mother with the dragon and the
+thunder-weapon prepared the way for the special association of the
+spiral with thunder, which was confirmed when the ram with its spiral
+horn became the God of Thunder.
+
+
+[230: _Op. cit._, vol. i., pp. 212-27.]
+
+
+The Pig.
+
+The relationship of the pig to the dragon is on the whole analogous to
+that of the cow and the stag, for it can play either a beneficent or a
+malevolent part. But the nature of the special circumstances which gave
+the pig a peculiar notoriety as an unclean animal are so intimately
+associated with the "Birth of Aphrodite" that I shall defer the
+discussion of them for my lecture on the history of the goddess.
+
+
+Certain Incidents in the Dragon Myth.
+
+Throughout the greater part of the area which tradition has peopled with
+dragons, iron is regarded as peculiarly lethal to the monsters. This
+seems to be due to the part played by the "smiths" who forged iron
+weapons with which Horus overcame Set and his followers,[231] or in the
+earlier versions of the legend the metal weapons by means of which the
+people of Upper Egypt secured their historic victory over the Lower
+Egyptians. But the association of meteoric iron with the thunderbolt,
+the traditional weapon for destroying dragons, gave added force to the
+ancient legend and made it peculiarly apt as an incident in the story.
+
+But though the dragon is afraid of iron, he likes precious gems and
+_k'ung-ts'ing_ ("The Stone of Darkness") and is fond of roasted
+swallows.
+
+The partiality of dragons for swallows was due to the transmission of a
+very ancient story of the Great Mother, who in the form of Isis was
+identified with the swallow. In China, so ravenous is the monster for
+this delicacy, that anyone who has eaten of swallows should avoid
+crossing the water, lest the dragon whose home is in the deep should
+devour the traveller to secure the dainty morsel of swallow. But those
+who pray for rain use swallows to attract the beneficent deity. Even in
+England swallows flying low are believed to be omens of coming rain--a
+tale which is about as reliable as the Chinese variant of the same
+ancient legend.
+
+"The beautiful gems remind us of the Indian dragons; the pearls of the
+sea were, of course, in India as well as China and Japan, considered to
+be in the special possession of the dragon-shaped sea-gods" (de Visser,
+p. 69). The cultural drift from West to East along the southern coast of
+India was effected mainly by sailors who were searching for pearls.
+Sharks constituted the special dangers the divers had to incur in
+exploiting pearl-beds to obtain the precious "giver of life". But at the
+time these great enterprises were first undertaken in the Indian Ocean
+the people dwelling in the neighbourhood of the chief pearl-beds
+regarded the sea as the great source of all life-giving virtues and the
+god who exercised these powers was incarnated in a fish. The sharks
+therefore had to be brought into harmony with this scheme, and they
+were rationalized as the guardians of the storehouse of life-giving
+pearls at the bottom of the sea.
+
+I do not propose to discuss at present the diffusion to the East of the
+beliefs concerning the shark and the modifications which they underwent
+in the course of these migrations in Melanesia and elsewhere; but in my
+lecture upon "the Birth of Aphrodite" I shall have occasion to refer to
+its spread to the West and explain how the shark's role was transferred
+to the dog-fish in the Mediterranean. The dog-fish then assumed a
+terrestrial form and became simply the dog who plays such a strange part
+in the magical ceremony of digging up the mandrake.
+
+At present we are concerned merely with the shark as the guardian of the
+stores of pearls at the bottom of the sea. He became identified with the
+Naga and the dragon, and the store of pearls became a vast
+treasure-house which it became one of the chief functions of the dragon
+to guard. This episode in the wonder-beast's varied career has a place
+in most of the legends ranging from Western Europe to Farthest Asia.
+Sometimes the dragon carries a pearl under his tongue or in his chin as
+a reserve of life-giving substance.
+
+Mr. Donald Mackenzie has called attention[232] to the remarkable
+influence upon the development of the Dragon Myth of the familiar
+Egyptian representation of the child Horus with a finger touching his
+lips. On some pretence or other, many of the European dragon-slaying
+heroes, such as Sigurd and the Highland Finn, place their fingers in
+their mouths. This action is usually rationalized by the statement that
+the hero burnt his fingers while cooking the slain monster.
+
+
+[231: Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 476.]
+
+[232: "Egyptian Myth and Legend," pp. 340 _et seq._]
+
+
+The Ethical Aspect.
+
+So far in this discussion I have been dealing mainly with the problems
+of the dragon's evolution, the attainment of his or her distinctive
+anatomical features and physiological attributes. But during this
+process of development a moral and ethical aspect of the dragon's
+character was also emerging.
+
+Now that we have realized the fact of the dragon's homology with the
+moon-god it is important to remember that one of the primary functions
+of this deity, which later became specialized in the Egyptian god
+Thoth, was the measuring of time and the keeping of records. The moon,
+in fact, was the controller of accuracy, of truth, and order, and
+therefore the enemy of falsehood and chaos. The identification of the
+moon with Osiris, who from a dead king eventually developed into a king
+of the dead, conferred upon the great Father of Waters the power to
+exact from men respect for truth and order. For even if at first these
+ideas were only vaguely adumbrated and not expressed in set phrases, it
+must have been an incentive to good discipline when men remembered that
+the record-keeper and the guardian of law and order was also the deity
+upon whose tender mercies they would have to rely in the life after
+death. Set, the enemy of Osiris, who is the real prototype of the evil
+dragon, was the antithesis of the god of justice: he was the father of
+falsehood and the symbol of chaos. He was the prototype of Satan, as
+Osiris was the first definite representative of the Deity of which any
+record has been preserved.
+
+The history of the evil dragon is not merely the evolution of the devil,
+but it also affords the explanation of his traditional peculiarities,
+his bird-like features, his horns, his red colour, his wings and cloven
+hoofs, and his tail. They are all of them the dragon's distinctive
+features; and from time to time in the history of past ages we catch
+glimpses of the reality of these identifications. In one of the earliest
+woodcuts (Fig. 17) found in a printed book Satan is depicted as a monk
+with the bird's feet of the dragon. A most interesting intermediate
+phase is seen in a Chinese water-colour in the John Rylands Library, in
+which the thunder-dragon is represented in a form almost exactly
+reproducing that of the devil of European tradition (Fig. 16).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 16.--The God Of Thunder.
+
+(From a Chinese drawing (? 17th Century) in the John Rylands Library)]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 17.--From Joannes de Turrecremata's "Meditationes
+seu Contemplationes". _Romae: Ulrich Hau_. 1467]
+
+Early in the Christian era, when ancient beliefs in Egypt became
+disguised under a thin veneer of Christianity, the story of the conflict
+between Horus and Set was converted into a conflict between Christ and
+Satan. M. Clermont-Ganneau has described an interesting bas-relief in
+the Louvre in which a hawk-headed St. George, clad in Roman military
+uniform and mounted on a horse, is slaying a dragon which is represented
+by Set's crocodile.[233] But the Biblical references to Satan leave no
+doubt as to his identity with the dragon, who is specifically mentioned
+in the Book of Revelations as "the old serpent which is the Devil and
+Satan" (xx. 2).
+
+The devil Set was symbolic of disorder and darkness, while the god
+Osiris was the maintainer of order and the giver of light. Although the
+moon-god, in the form of Osiris, Thoth and other deities, thus came to
+acquire the moral attributes of a just judge, who regulated the
+movements of the celestial bodies, controlled the waters upon the earth,
+and was responsible for the maintenance of order in the Universe, the
+ethical aspect of his functions was in large measure disguised by the
+material importance of his duties. In Babylonia similar views were held
+with respect to the beneficent water-god Ea, who was the giver of
+civilization, order and justice, and Sin, the moon-god, who "had
+attained a high position in the Babylonian pantheon," as "the guide of
+the stars and the planets, the overseer of the world at night". "From
+that conception a god of high moral character soon developed." "He is an
+extremely beneficent deity, he is a king, he is the ruler of men, he
+produces order and stability, like Shamash and like the Indian Varuna
+and Mitra, but besides that, he is also a judge, he loosens the bonds of
+the imprisoned, like Varuna. His light, like that of Varuna, is
+the symbol of righteousness.... Like the Indian Varuna and the
+Iranian Mazdah, he is a god of wisdom."
+
+When these Egyptian and Babylonian ideas were borrowed by the Aryans,
+and the Iranian Mazdah and the Indian Varuna assumed the role of the
+beneficent deity of the former more ancient civilizations, the material
+aspect of the functions of the moon-god became less obtrusive; and there
+gradually emerged the conception, to which Zarathushtra first gave
+concrete expression, of the beneficent god Ahura Mazdah as "an
+omniscient protector of morality and creator of marvellous power and
+knowledge". "He is the most-knowing one, and the most-seeing one. No one
+can deceive him. He watches with radiant eyes everything that is done in
+open or in secret." "Although he has a strong personality he has no
+anthropomorphic features." He has shed the material aspects which loomed
+so large in his Egyptian, Babylonian and earlier Aryan prototypes, and a
+more ethereal conception of a God of the highest ethical qualities
+has emerged.
+
+The whole of this process of transformation has been described with deep
+insight and lucid exposition by Professor Cumont, from whose important
+and convincing memoir I have quoted so freely in the foregoing
+paragraphs.[234]
+
+The creation of a beneficent Deity of such moral grandeur inevitably
+emphasized the baseness and the malevolence of the "Power of Evil". No
+longer are the gods merely glorified human beings who can work good or
+evil as they will; but there is now an all-powerful God controlling the
+morals of the universe, and in opposition to Him "the dragon, the old
+serpent, which is the Devil and Satan".
+
+
+[233: "Horus et St. George d'apres un bas-relief inedit du Louvre,"
+_Revue Archeologique_, Nouvelle Serie, t. xxxii., 1876, p. 196, pl.
+xviii. It is right to explain that M. Clermont-Ganneau's interpretation
+of this relief has not been accepted by all scholars.]
+
+[234: Albert J. Carnoy, "The Moral Deities of Iran and India and their
+Origins," _The American Journal of Theology_, vol. xxi., No. 1, Jan.
+1917, p. 58.]
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE.[235]
+
+
+It may seem ungallant to discuss the birth of Aphrodite as part of the
+story of the evolution of the dragon. But the other chapters of this
+book, in which frequent references have been made to the early history
+of the Great Mother, have revealed how vital a part she played in the
+development of the dragon. The earliest real dragon was Tiamat, one of
+the forms assumed by the Great Mother; and an even earlier prototype was
+the lioness (Sekhet) manifestation of Hathor.
+
+Thus it becomes necessary to enquire more fully (than has been done in
+the other chapters) into the circumstances of the Great Mother's birth
+and development, and to investigate certain aspects of her ontogeny to
+which only scant attention has been paid in the preceding pages.
+
+Several reasons have led me to select Aphrodite from the vast legion of
+Great Mothers for special consideration. In spite of her high
+specialization in certain directions the Greek goddess of love retains
+in greater measure than any of her sisters some of the most primitive
+associations of her original parent. Like vestigial structures in
+biology, these traits afford invaluable evidence, not only of
+Aphrodite's own ancestry and early history, but also of that of the
+whole family of goddesses of which she is only a specialized type. For
+Aphrodite's connexion with shells is a survival of the circumstances
+which called into existence the first Great Mother and made her not only
+the Creator of mankind and the universe, but also the parent of all
+deities, as she was historically the first to be created by human
+inventiveness. In this lecture I propose to deal with the more general
+aspects of the evolution of all these daughters of the Great Mother:
+but I have used Aphrodite's name in the title because her
+shell-associations can be demonstrated more clearly and definitely than
+those of any of her sisters.
+
+In the past a vast array of learning has been brought to bear upon the
+problems of Aphrodite's origin; but this effort has, for the most part,
+been characterized by a narrowness of vision and a lack of adequate
+appreciation of the more vital factors in her embryological history. In
+the search for the deep human motives that found specific expression in
+the great goddess of love, too little attention has been paid to
+primitive man's psychology, and his persistent striving for an elixir of
+life to avert the risk of death, to renew youth and secure a continuance
+of existence after death. On the other hand, the possibility of
+obtaining any real explanation has been dashed aside by most scholars,
+who have been content simply to juggle with certain stereotyped
+catchphrases and baseless assumptions, simply because the traditions of
+classical scholarship have made these devices the pawns in a rather
+aimless game.
+
+It is unnecessary to cite specific illustrations in support of this
+statement. Reference to any of the standard works on classical
+archaeology, such as Roscher's "Lexikon," will testify to the truth of my
+accusation. In her "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion" Miss
+Jane Harrison devotes a chapter (VI) to "The Making of a Goddess," and
+discusses "The Birth of Aphrodite". But she strictly observes the
+traditions of the classical method; and assumes that the meaning of the
+myth of Aphrodite's birth from the sea--the germs of which are at least
+fifty centuries old--can be decided by the omission of any
+representation of the sea in the decoration of a pot made in the fifth
+century B.C.!
+
+But apart from this general criticism, the lack of resourcefulness and
+open mindedness, certain more specific factors have deflected classical
+scholars from the true path. In the search for the ancestry of
+Aphrodite, they have concentrated their attention too exclusively upon
+the Mediterranean area and Western Asia, and so ignored the most ancient
+of the historic Great Mothers, the African Hathor, with whom (as Sir
+Arthur Evans[236] clearly demonstrated more than fifteen years ago) the
+Cypriote goddess has much closer affinities than with any of her
+Asiatic sisters. Yet no scholar, either on the Greek or Egyptian side,
+has seriously attempted to follow up this clue and really investigate
+the nature of the connexions between Aphrodite and Hathor, and the
+history of the development of their respective specializations of
+functions.[237]
+
+But some explanation must be given for my temerity in venturing to
+invade the intensively cultivated domains of Aphrodite "with a mind
+undebauched by classical learning". I have already explained how the
+study of Libations and Dragons brought me face to face with the problems
+of the Great Mother's attributes. At that stage of the enquiry two
+circumstances directed my attention specifically to Aphrodite. Mr.
+Wilfrid Jackson was collecting the data relating to the cultural uses of
+shells, which he has since incorporated in a book.[238] As the results
+of his search accumulated, the fact soon emerged that the original
+Great Mother was nothing more than a cowry-shell used as a life-giving
+amulet; and that Aphrodite's shell-associations were a survival of the
+earliest phase in the Great Mother's history. At this psychological
+moment Dr. Rendel Harris[239] claimed that Aphrodite was a
+personification of the mandrake. But the magical attributes of the
+mandrake, which he claimed to have been responsible for converting the
+amulet into a goddess, were identical with those which Jackson's
+investigations had previously led me to regard as the reasons for
+deriving Aphrodite from the cowry. The mandrake was clearly a surrogate
+of the shell or vice versa.[240] The problem to be solved was to decide
+which amulet was responsible for suggesting the process of life-giving.
+The goddess Aphrodite was closely related to Cyprus; the mandrake was a
+magical plant there; and the cowry is so intimately associated with the
+island as to be called _Cypraea_. So far as is known, however, the
+shell-amulet is vastly more ancient than the magical reputation of the
+plant. Moreover, we know why the cowry was regarded as feminine and
+accredited with life-giving attributes. There are no such reasons for
+assigning life-giving powers or the female sex to the mandrake. The
+claim that its magical properties are due to the fancied resemblance of
+its root to a human being is wholly untenable.[241] The roots of many
+plants are at least as manlike; and, even if this character was the
+exclusive property of the mandrake, how does it help to explain the
+remarkable repetory of quite arbitrary and fantastic properties and the
+female sex assigned to the plant? Sir James Frazer's claim[242] that
+"such beliefs and practices illustrate the primitive tendency to
+personify nature" is a gratuitous and quite irrelevant assumption, which
+offers no explanation whatsoever of the specific and arbitrary nature of
+the form assumed by the personification. But when we investigate the
+historical development of the peculiar attributes of the cowry-shell,
+and appreciate why and how they were acquired, any doubt as to the
+source from which the mandrake obtained its "magic" is removed; and
+with it the fallacy of Sir James Frazer's wholly unwarranted claims is
+also exposed.
+
+If we ignore Sir James Frazer's naive speculations we can make use of
+the compilations of evidence which he makes with such remarkable
+assiduity. But it is more profitable to turn to the study of the
+remarkable lectures which Dr. Rendel Harris has been delivering in this
+room[243] during the last few years. Our genial friend has been
+cultivating his garden on the slopes of Olympus,[244] and has been
+plucking the rich fruits of his ripe scholarship and nimble wit. At the
+same time, with rougher implements and cruder methods, I have been
+burrowing in the depths of the earth, trying to recover information
+concerning the habits and thoughts of mankind many centuries before
+Dionysus and Apollo, and Artemis and Aphrodite, were dreamt of.
+
+In the course of these subterranean gropings no one was more surprised
+than I was to discover that I was getting entangled in the roots of the
+same plants whose golden fruit Dr. Rendel Harris was gathering from his
+Olympian heights. But the contrast in our respective points of view was
+perhaps responsible for the different appearance the growths assumed.
+
+To drop the metaphor, while he was searching for the origins of the
+deities a few centuries before the Christian era began, I was finding
+their more or less larval forms flourishing more than twenty centuries
+before the commencement of his story. For the gods and goddesses of his
+narrative were only the thinly disguised representatives of much more
+ancient deities decked out in the sumptuous habiliments of Greek
+culture.
+
+In his lecture on Aphrodite, Dr. Rendel Harris claimed that the goddess
+was a personification of the mandrake; and I think he made out a good
+prima facie case in support of his thesis. But other scholars have set
+forth equally valid reasons for associating Aphrodite with the argonaut,
+the octopus, the purpura, and a variety of other shells, both univalves
+and bivalves.[245]
+
+The goddess has also been regarded as a personification of water, the
+ocean, or its foam.[246] Then again she is closely linked with pigs,
+cows, lions, deer, goats, rams, dolphins, and a host of other creatures,
+not forgetting the dove, the swallow, the partridge, the sparling, the
+goose, and the swan.[247]
+
+The mandrake theory does not explain, or give adequate recognition to,
+any of these facts. Nor does Dr. Rendel Harris suggest why it is so
+dangerous an operation to dig up the mandrake which he identifies with
+the goddess, or why it is essential to secure the assistance of a
+dog[248] in the process. The explanation of this fantastic fable gives
+an important clue to Aphrodite's antecedents.
+
+
+[235: An elaboration of a lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library,
+on 14 November, 1917.]
+
+[236: "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 52. Compare also A. E. W.
+Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, p. 435.]
+
+[237: With a strange disregard of Sir Arthur Evans's "Mycenaean Tree and
+Pillar Cult," Mr. H. R. Hall makes the following remarks in his "AEgean
+Archaeology" (p. 150): "The origin of the goddess Aphrodite has long been
+taken for granted. It has been regarded as a settled fact that she was
+Semitic, and came to Greece from Phoenicia or Cyprus. But the new
+discoveries have thrown this, like other received ideas, into the
+melting-pot, for the Minoans undoubtedly worshipped an Aphrodite. We see
+her, naked and with her doves, on gold plaques from one of the Mycenaean
+shaft-graves (Schuchhardt, _Schliemann_, Figs. 180, 181), which must be
+as old as the First Late Minoan period (_c._ 1600-1500 B.C.), and--not
+rising from the foam, but sailing over it--in a boat, naked, on the lost
+gold ring from Mochlos. It is evident now that she was not only a
+Canaanitish-Syrian goddess, but was common to all the people of the
+Levant. She is Aphrodite-Paphia in Cyprus, Ashtaroth-Astarte in Canaan,
+Atargatis in Syria, Derketo in Philistria, Hathor in Egypt; what the
+Minoans called her we do not know, unless she was Britomartis. She must
+take her place by the side of Rhea-Diktynna in the Minoan pantheon."
+
+It is not without interest to note that on the Mochlos ring the goddess
+is sailing in a papyrus float of Egyptian type, like the moon-goddess in
+her crescent moon.
+
+The association of this early representative of Aphrodite with doves is
+of special interest in view of Highnard's attempt ("Le Mythe de Venus,"
+_Annales du Musee Guimet_, T. 1, 1880, p. 23) to derive the name of "la
+deesse a la colombe" from the Chaldean and Phoenician _phrit_ or _phrut_
+meaning "a dove".
+
+Mr. Hall might have extended his list of homologues to Mesopotamia,
+Iran, and India, to Europe and Further Asia, to America, and, in fact,
+every part of the world that harbours goddesses.]
+
+[238: "Shells as Evidence of the Migration of Early Culture."]
+
+[239: "The Ascent of Olympus."]
+
+[240: A striking confirmation of the fact that the mandrake is really a
+surrogate of the cowry is afforded by the practice in modern Greece of
+using the mandrake carried in a leather bag in the same way (and for the
+same magical purpose as a love philtre) as the Baganda of East Africa
+use the cowry (in a leather bag) at the present time.]
+
+[241: Old Gerade was frank enough to admit that he "never could perceive
+shape of man or woman" (quoted by Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 110).]
+
+[242: "Jacob and the Mandrakes," _Proceedings of the British Academy_,
+Vol. VIII, p. 22.]
+
+[243: The John Rylands Library.]
+
+[244: "The Ascent of Olympus."]
+
+[245: See the memoirs by Tuempel, Jahn, Houssay, and Jackson, to which
+reference is made elsewhere in these pages.]
+
+[246: The well-known circumstantial story told in Hesiod's theogony.]
+
+[247: See the article "Aphrodite" in Roscher's "Lexikon".]
+
+[248: Sir James Frazer's claim that the incident of the ass in a late
+Jewish story of Jacob and the mandrakes (_op. cit._, p. 20) "helps us to
+understand the function of the dog," is quite unsupported. The learned
+guardian of the Golden Bough does not explain _how_ it helps us to
+understand.]
+
+
+The Search for the Elixir of Life. Blood as Life.
+
+In delving into the remotely distant history of our species we cannot
+fail to be impressed with the persistence with which, throughout the
+whole of his career, man (of the species _sapiens_) has been
+seeking[249] for an elixir of life, to give added "vitality" to the dead
+(whose existence was not consciously regarded as ended), to prolong the
+days of active life to the living, to restore youth, and to protect his
+own life from all assaults, not merely of time, but also of
+circumstance. In other words, the elixir he sought was something that
+would bring "good luck" in all the events of his life and its
+continuation. Most of the amulets, even of modern times, the lucky
+trinkets, the averters of the "Evil Eye," the practices and devices for
+securing good luck in love and sport, in curing bodily ills or mental
+distress, in attaining material prosperity, or a continuation of
+existence after death, are survivals of this ancient and persistent
+striving after those objects which our earliest forefathers called
+collectively the "givers of life".
+
+From statements in the earliest literature[250] that has come down to us
+from antiquity, no less than from the views that still prevail among
+the relatively more primitive peoples of the present day, it is clear
+that originally man did not consciously formulate a belief in
+immortality.
+
+It was rather the result of a defect of thinking, or as the modern
+psychologist would express it, an instinctive repression of the
+unpleasant idea that death would come to him personally, that primitive
+man refused to contemplate or to entertain the possibility of life
+coming to an end. So intense was his instinctive love of life and dread
+of such physical damage as would destroy his body that man unconsciously
+avoided thinking of the chance of his own death: hence his belief in the
+continuance of life cannot be regarded as the outcome of an active
+process of constructive thought.
+
+This may seem altogether paradoxical and incredible.
+
+How, it may be asked, can man be said to repress the idea of death, if
+he instinctively refused to admit its possibility? How did he escape the
+inevitable process of applying to himself the analogy he might have been
+supposed to make from other men's experience and recognize that he
+must die?
+
+Man appreciated the fact that he could kill an animal or another man by
+inflicting certain physical injuries on him. But at first he seems to
+have believed that if he could avoid such direct assaults upon himself,
+his life would flow on unchecked. When death does occur and the
+onlookers recognize the reality, it is still the practice among certain
+relatively primitive people to search for the man who has inflicted
+death on his fellow.
+
+It would, of course, be absurd to pretend that any people could fail to
+recognize the reality of death in the great majority of cases. The mere
+fact of burial is an indication of this. But the point of difference
+between the views of these early men and ourselves, was the tacit
+assumption on the part of the former, that in spite of the obvious
+changes in his body (which made inhumation or some other procedure
+necessary) the deceased was still continuing an existence not unlike
+that which he enjoyed previously, only somewhat duller, less eventful
+and more precarious. He still needed food and drink, as he did before,
+and all the paraphernalia of his mortal life, but he was dependent upon
+his relatives for the maintenance of his existence.
+
+Such views were difficult of acceptance by a thoughtful people, once
+they appreciated the fact of the disintegration of the corpse in the
+grave; and in course of time it was regarded as essential for continued
+existence that the body should be preserved. The idea developed, that so
+long as the body of the deceased was preserved and there were restored
+to it all the elements of vitality which it had lost at death, the
+continuance of existence was theoretically possible and worthy of
+acceptance as an article of faith.
+
+Let us consider for a moment what were considered to be elements of
+vitality by the earliest members of our species.[251]
+
+From the remotest times man seems to have been aware of the fact that he
+could kill animals or his fellow men by means of certain physical
+injuries. He associated these results with the effusion of blood. The
+loss of blood could cause unconsciousness and death. Blood, therefore,
+must be the vehicle of consciousness and life, the material whose escape
+from the body could bring life to an end.[252]
+
+The first pictures painted by man, with which we are at present
+acquainted, are found upon the walls and roofs of certain caves in
+Southern France and Spain. They were the work of the earliest known
+representatives of our own species, _Homo sapiens_, in the phase of
+culture now distinguished by the name "Aurignacian".
+
+The animals man was in the habit of hunting for food are depicted.[253]
+In some of them arrows are shown implanted in the animal's flank near
+the region of the heart; and in others the heart itself is represented.
+
+This implies that at this distant time in the history of our species, it
+was already realized how vital a spot in the animal's anatomy the heart
+was. But even long before man began to speculate about the functions of
+the heart, he must have learned to associate the loss of blood on the
+part of man or animals with death, and to regard the pouring out of
+blood as the escape of its vitality. Many factors must have contributed
+to the new advance in physiology which made the heart the centre or the
+chief habitation of vitality, volition, feeling, and knowledge.
+
+Not merely the empirical fact, acquired by experience in hunting, of the
+peculiarly vulnerable nature of the heart, but perhaps also the
+knowledge that the heart contained life-giving blood, helped in
+developing the ideas about its functions as the bestower of life and
+consciousness.
+
+The palpitation of the heart after severe exertion or under the
+influence of intense emotion would impress the early physiologist with
+the relationship of the heart to the feelings, and afford confirmation
+of his earlier ideas of its functions.
+
+But whatever the explanation, it is known from the folk-lore of even the
+most unsophisticated peoples that the heart was originally regarded as
+the seat of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge, and that the blood
+was the life-stream. The Aurignacian pictures in the caves of Western
+Europe suggest that these beliefs were extremely ancient.
+
+The evidence at our disposal seems to indicate that not only were such
+ideas of physiology current in Aurignacian times, but also certain
+cultural applications of them had been inaugurated even then. The
+remarkable method of blood-letting by chopping off part of a finger
+seems to have been practised even in Aurignacian times.[254]
+
+If it is legitimate to attempt to guess at the meaning these early
+people attached to so singular a procedure, we may be guided by the
+ideas associated with this act in outlying corners of the world at the
+present time. On these grounds we may surmise that the motive underlying
+this, and other later methods of blood-letting, such as circumcision,
+piercing the ears, lips, and tongue, gashing the limbs and body, et
+cetera, was the offering of the life-giving fluid.
+
+Once it was recognized that the state of unconsciousness or death was
+due to the loss of blood it was a not illogical or irrational procedure
+to imagine that offerings of blood might restore consciousness and life
+to the dead.[255] If the blood was seriously believed to be the vehicle
+of feeling and knowledge, the exchange of blood or the offering of blood
+to the community was a reasonable method for initiating anyone into the
+wider knowledge of and sympathy with his fellow-men.
+
+Blood-letting, therefore, played a part in a great variety of
+ceremonies, of burial and of initiation, and also those of a
+therapeutic[256] and, later, of a religious significance.
+
+But from Aurignacian times onwards, it seems to have been admitted that
+substitutes for blood might be endowed with a similar potency.
+
+The extensive use of red ochre or other red materials for packing around
+the bodies of the dead was presumably inspired by the idea that
+materials simulating blood-stained earth, were endowed with the same
+life-giving properties as actual blood poured out upon the ground in
+similar vitalizing ceremonies.
+
+As the shedding of blood produced unconsciousness, the offering of blood
+or red ochre was, therefore, a logical and practical means of restoring
+consciousness and reinforcing the element of vitality which was
+diminished or lost in the corpse.
+
+The common statement that primitive man was a fantastically irrational
+child is based upon a fallacy. He was probably as well endowed mentally
+as his modern successors; and was as logical and rational as they are;
+but many of his premises were wrong, and he hadn't the necessary body of
+accumulated wisdom to help him to correct his false assumptions.
+
+If primitive man regarded the dead as still existing, but with a reduced
+vitality, it was a not irrational procedure on the part of the people of
+the Reindeer Epoch in Europe to pack the dead in red ochre (which they
+regarded as a surrogate of the life-giving fluid) to make good the lack
+of vitality in the corpse.
+
+If blood was the vehicle of consciousness and knowledge, the exchange of
+blood was clearly a logical procedure for establishing communion of
+thought and feeling and so enabling an initiate to assimilate the
+traditions of his people.
+
+If red carnelian was a surrogate of blood the wearing of bracelets or
+necklaces of this life-giving material was a proper means of warding off
+danger to life and of securing good luck.
+
+If red paint or the colour red brought these magical results, it was
+clearly justifiable to resort to its use.
+
+All these procedures are logical. It is only the premises that were
+erroneous.
+
+The persistence of such customs in Ancient Egypt makes it possible for
+us to obtain literary evidence to support the inferences drawn from
+archaeological data of a more remote age. For instance, the red jasper
+amulet sometimes called the "girdle-tie of Isis," was supposed to
+represent the blood of the goddess and was applied to the mummy "to
+stimulate the functions of his blood";[257] or perhaps it would be more
+accurate to say that it was intended to add to the vital substance which
+was so obviously lacking in the corpse.
+
+
+[249: In response to the prompting of the most fundamental of all
+instincts, that of the preservation of life.]
+
+[250: See Alan Gardiner, _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol. IV,
+Parts II-III, April-July, 1917, p. 205. Compare also the Babylonian
+story of Gilgamesh.]
+
+[251: Some of these have been discussed in Chapter 1 ("Incense and
+Libations") and will not be further considered here.]
+
+[252: "The life which is the blood thereof" (Gen. ix. 4).]
+
+[253: See, for example, Sollas, "Ancient Hunters," 2nd Edition, 1915,
+pp. 326 (fig. 163), 333 (fig. 171), and 36 (fig. 189).]
+
+[254: Sollas, _op. cit._, pp. 347 _et seq._]
+
+[255: The "redeeming blood," [Greek: Pharmakon athanasias].]
+
+[256: The practice of blood-letting for therapeutic purposes was
+probably first suggested by a confused rationalization. The act of
+blood-letting was a means of healing; and the victim himself supplied
+the vitalizing fluid!]
+
+[257: Davies and Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet," p. 112.]
+
+
+The Cowry as a Giver of Life.
+
+Blood and its substitutes, however, were not the only materials that had
+acquired a reputation for vitalizing qualities in the Reindeer Epoch.
+For there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that shells also were
+regarded, even in that remote time, as life-giving amulets.
+
+If the loss of blood was at first the only recognized cause of death,
+the act of birth was clearly the only process of life-giving. The portal
+by which a child entered the world was regarded, therefore, not only as
+the channel of birth, but also as the actual giver of life.[258] The
+large Red Sea cowry-shell, which closely simulates this "giver of life,"
+then came to be endowed by popular imagination with the same powers.
+Hence the shell was used in the same way as red ochre or carnelian: it
+was placed in the grave to confer vitality on the dead, and worn on
+bracelets and necklaces to secure good luck by using the "giver of life"
+to avert the risk of danger to life. Thus the general life-giving
+properties of blood, blood substitutes, and shells, came to be
+assimilated the one with the other.[259]
+
+At first it was probably its more general power of averting death or
+giving vitality to the dead that played the more obtrusive part in the
+magical use of the shell. But the circumstances which led to the
+development of the shell's symbolism naturally and inevitably conferred
+upon the cowry special power over women. It was the surrogate of the
+life-giving organ. It became an amulet to increase the fertility of
+women and to help them in childbirth. It was, therefore, worn by girls
+suspended from a girdle, so as to be as near as possible to the organ it
+was supposed to simulate and whose potency it was believed to be able to
+reinforce and intensify. Just as bracelets and necklaces of carnelian
+were used to confer on either sex the vitalizing virtues of blood, which
+it was supposed to simulate, so also cowries, or imitations of them made
+of metal or stone, were worn as bracelets, necklaces, or hair-ornaments,
+to confer health and good luck in both sexes. But these ideas received a
+much further extension.
+
+As the giver of life, the cowry came to have attributed to it by some
+people definite powers of creation. It was not merely an amulet to
+increase fertility: it was itself the actual parent of mankind, the
+creator of all living things; and the next step was to give these
+maternal functions material expression, and personify the cowry as an
+actual woman in the form of a statuette with the distinctly feminine
+characters grossly exaggerated;[260] and in the domain of belief to
+create the image of a Great Mother, who was the parent of the universe.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 18 (a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer
+showing, perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners of
+the palette) as a woman with cow's horns and ears (compare Flinders
+Petrie, "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Part I, 1900, Plate
+XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt from which are suspended
+four cow-headed Hathor figures in place of the cowry-amulets of more
+primitive peoples. This affords corroboration of the view that Hathor
+assumed the functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell.
+
+(b) The king's _sporran_, where Hathor-heads (H) take the place of the
+cowries of the primitive girdle.]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 19.--The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic
+representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners), one of the
+ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America (after Maudslay's
+photograph and diagram).
+
+The girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (_Oliva_ or
+_Conus_) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to the
+Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18).]
+
+Thus gradually there developed out of the cowry-amulet the conception of
+a creator, the giver of life, health, and good luck. This Great Mother,
+at first with only vaguely defined traits, was probably the first deity
+that the wit of man devised to console him with her watchful care over
+his welfare in this life and to give him assurance as to his fate in
+the future.
+
+At this stage I should like to emphasize the fact that these beliefs had
+taken shape long before any definite ideas had been formulated as to the
+physiology of animal reproduction and before agriculture was practised.
+
+Man had not yet come to appreciate the importance of vegetable
+fertility, nor had he yet begun to frame theories of the fertilizing
+powers of water, or give specific expression to them by creating the god
+Osiris in his own image.
+
+Nor had he begun to take anything more than the most casual interest in
+the sun, the moon, and the stars. He had not yet devised a sky-world nor
+created a heaven. When, for reasons that I have already discussed,[261]
+the theory of the fertilizing and the animating power of water was
+formulated, the beliefs concerning this element were assimilated with
+those which many ages previously had grown up in explanation of the
+potency of blood and shells. In addition to fertilizing the earth, water
+could also animate the dead. The rivers and the seas were in fact a vast
+reservoir of this animating substance. The powers of the cowry, as a
+product of the sea, were rationalized into an expression of the great
+creative force of the water.
+
+A bowl of water became the symbol of the fruitfulness of woman. Such
+symbolism implied that woman, or her uterus, was a receptacle into which
+the seminal fluid was poured and from which a new being emerged in a
+flood of amniotic fluid.
+
+The burial of shells with the dead is an extremely ancient practice, for
+cowries have been found upon human skeletons of the so-called "Upper
+Palaeolithic Age" of Southern Europe.
+
+At Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne) Mediterranean cowries were found arranged
+in pairs upon the body; two pairs on the forehead, one near each arm,
+four in the region of the thighs and knees, and two upon each foot.
+Others were found in the Mentone caves, and are peculiarly important,
+because, upon the same stratum as the skeleton with which they were
+associated, was found part of a _Cassis rufa_, a shell whose habitat
+does not extend any nearer than the Indian Ocean.[262]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts
+worn in (a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively.
+
+(c) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the
+Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones, and
+what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of cowries.
+
+(d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads of
+deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt between
+the heads recall Hathor's sistra.]
+
+These facts are very important. In the first place they reveal the great
+antiquity of the practice of burying shells with the dead, presumably
+for the purpose of "life-giving". Secondly, they suggest the possibility
+that their magical value as givers of life may be more ancient than
+their specific use as intensifiers of the fertility of women. Thirdly,
+the association of these practices with the use of the shell _Cassis
+rufa_ indicates a very early cultural contact between the people living
+upon the North-Western shores of the Mediterranean in the Reindeer Age
+and the dwellers on the coasts of the Indian Ocean; and the
+probability that these special uses of shells by the former were
+inspired by the latter.
+
+This hint assumes a special significance when we first get a clear view
+of the more fully-developed shell-cults of the Eastern Mediterranean
+many centuries later.[263] For then we find definite indications that
+the cultural uses of shells were obviously borrowed from the Erythraean
+area.
+
+Long before the shell-amulet became personified as a woman the
+Mediterranean people had definitely adopted the belief in the cowry's
+ability to give life and birth.
+
+
+[258: As it is still called in the Semitic languages. In the Egyptian
+Pyramid Texts there is a reference to a new being formed "by the vulva
+of Tefnut" (Breasted).]
+
+[259: Many customs and beliefs of primitive peoples suggest that this
+correlation of the attributes of blood and shells went much deeper than
+the similarity of their use in burial ceremonies and for making
+necklaces and bracelets. The fact that the monthly effusion of blood in
+women ceased during pregnancy seems to have given rise to the theory,
+that the new life of the child was actually formed from the blood thus
+retained. The beliefs that grew up in explanation of the placenta form
+part of the system of interpretation of these phenomena: for the
+placenta was regarded as a mass of clotted blood (intimately related to
+the child which was supposed to be derived from part of the same
+material) which harboured certain elements of the child's mentality
+(because blood was the substance of consciousness).]
+
+[260: See S. Reinach, "Les Deesses Nues dans l'Art Oriental et dans
+l'Art Grec," _Revue Archeol._, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 367. Compare also the
+figurines of the so-called Upper Palaeolithic Period in Europe.]
+
+[261: Chapter I.]
+
+[262: The literature relating to these important discoveries has been
+summarized by Wilfrid Jackson in his "Shells as Evidence of the
+Migrations of Early Culture," pp. 135-7.]
+
+[263: Cowries were obtained in Neolithic sites at Hissarlik and Spain
+(Siret, _op. cit._, p. 18).]
+
+
+The Origin of Clothing.
+
+The cowry and its surrogates were supposed to be potent to confer
+fertility on maidens; and it became the practice for growing girls to
+wear a girdle on which to suspend the shells as near as possible to the
+organ their magic was supposed to stimulate. Among many peoples[264]
+this girdle was discarded as soon as the girls reached maturity.
+
+This practice probably represents the beginning of the history of
+clothing; but it had other far-reaching effects in the domain of belief.
+
+It has often been claimed that the feeling of modesty was not the reason
+for the invention of clothing, but that the clothes begat modesty.[265]
+This doctrine contains a certain element of truth, but is by no means
+the whole explanation. For true modesty is displayed by people who have
+never worn clothes.
+
+Before mankind could appreciate the psychological fact that the wearing
+of clothing might add to an individual's allurement and enhance her
+sexual attractiveness, some other circumstances must have been
+responsible for suggesting the experiments out of which this empirical
+knowledge emerged. The use of a girdle (a) as a protection against
+danger to life, and (b) as a means of conferring fecundity on
+girls[266] provided the circumstances which enabled men to discover that
+the sexual attractiveness of maidens, which in a state of nature was
+originally associated with modesty and coyness, was profoundly
+intensified by the artifices of clothing and adornment.
+
+Among people (such as those of East Africa and Southern Arabia) in which
+it was customary for unmarried girls to adorn themselves with a girdle,
+it is easy to understand how the meaning of the practice underwent a
+change, and developed into a device for enhancing their charms and
+stimulating the imaginations of their suitors.
+
+Out of such experience developed the idea of the magical girdle as an
+allurement and a love-provoking charm or philtre. Thus Aphrodite's
+girdle acquired the reputation of being able to _compel_ love. When
+Ishtar removed her girdle in the under-world reproduction ceased in the
+world. The Teutonic Brunhild's great strength lay in her girdle. In fact
+magic virtues were conferred upon most goddesses in every part of the
+world by means of a cestus of some sort.[267] But the outstanding
+feature of Aphrodite's character as a goddess of love is intimately
+bound up with these conceptions which developed from the wearing of a
+girdle of cowries.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh).
+
+(a) The mother-goddess standing upon a lioness (which is her Sekhet
+form): she is wearing her girdle, and upon her head is the moon and the
+cow's horns, conventionalized so as to simulate the crescent moon. Her
+hair is represented in the conventional form which is sometimes used as
+Hathor's symbol. In her hands are the serpent and the lotus, which again
+are merely forms of the goddess herself.
+
+(b) Another picture of Astarte (from Roscher's "Lexikon") holding the
+papyrus sceptre which at times is regarded as an animate form of the
+mother-goddess herself and as such a thunder weapon.]
+
+In the Biblical narrative, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden
+fruit, "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
+naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons,"
+or, as the Revised Version expresses it, "girdles". The girdle of
+fig-leaves, however, was originally a surrogate of the girdle of
+cowries: it was an amulet to give fertility. The consciousness of
+nakedness was part of the knowledge acquired as _the result_ of the
+wearing of such girdles (and the clothing into which they developed),
+and was not originally the motive that impelled our remote ancestors to
+clothe themselves.
+
+The use of fig-leaves for the girdle in Palestine is an interesting
+connecting link between the employment of the cowry and the mandrake for
+similar purposes in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and in Cyprus and
+Syria respectively (_vide infra_).
+
+In Greece and Italy, the sweet basil has a reputation for magical
+properties analogous to those of the cowry. Maidens collect the plant
+and wear bunches of it upon their body or upon their girdles; while
+married women fix basil upon their heads.[268] It is believed that the
+odour of the plant will attract admirers: hence in Italy it is called
+_Bacia-nicola_. "Kiss me, Nicholas".[269]
+
+In Crete it is a sign of mourning presumably because its life-prolonging
+attributes, as a means of conferring continued existence to the dead,
+have been so rationalized in explanation of its use at funerals.
+
+On New Year's day in Athens boys carry a boat and people remark, "St.
+Basil is come from Caesarea".
+
+
+[264: See Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 139 _et seq._]
+
+[265: For a discussion of this subject see the chapter on "The
+Psychology of Modesty and Clothing," in William I. Thomas's "Sex and
+Society," Chicago, 1907; also S. Reinach, "Cults, Myths, and Religions,"
+p. 177; and Paton, "The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall," _Revue
+Archeol._, Serie IV. T. IX, 1907, p. 51.]
+
+[266: It is important to remember that shell-girdles were used by both
+sexes for general life-giving and luck-bringing purposes, in the
+funerary ritual of both sexes, in animating the dead or statues of the
+dead, to attain success in hunting, fishing, and head-hunting, as well
+as in games. Thus men also at times wore shells upon their belts or
+aprons, and upon their implements and fishing nets, and adorned their
+trophies of war and the chase with them. Such customs are found in all
+the continents of the Old World and also in America, as, for example, in
+the girdles of _Conus_- and _Oliva_-shells worn by the figures
+sculptured upon the Copan stelae. See, for example, Maudslay's pictures
+of stele N, Plate 82 (Biologia Centrali-Americana; Archaeology) _inter
+alia_. But they were much more widely used by women, not merely by
+maidens, but also by brides and married women, to heighten their
+fertility and cure sterility, and by pregnant women to ensure safe
+delivery in childbirth. It was their wider employment by women that
+gives these shells their peculiar cultural significance.]
+
+[267: Witness the importance of the girdle in early Indian and American
+sculptures: in the literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Western Europe, and
+the Mediterranean area. For important Indian analogies and Egyptian
+parallels see Moret, "Mysteres Egyptiens," p. 91, especially note 3. The
+magic girdle assumed a great variety of forms as the number of
+surrogates of the cowry increased. The mugwort (Artemisia) of Artemis
+was worn in the girdle on St. John's Eve (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p.
+91): the people of Zante use vervain in the same way; the people of
+France (Creuse et Correres) rye-stalks; Eve's fig-leaves; in Vedic India
+the initiate wore the "cincture of Munga's herbs"; and Kali had her
+girdle of hands. Breasted, ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p.
+29) says: "In the oldest fragments we hear of Isis the great, who
+_fastened on the girdle_ in Khemmis, when she brought her [censer] and
+burned incense before her son Horus."]
+
+[268: This distinction between the significance of the amulet when worn
+on the girdle and on the head (in the hair), or as a necklace or
+bracelet, is very widespread. On the girdle it _usually_ has the
+significance of stimulating the individual's fertility: worn elsewhere
+it was intended to ward off danger to life, _i.e._ to give good luck. An
+interesting surrogate of Hathor's distinctive emblem is the necklace of
+golden apples worn by a priestess of Apollo (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._,
+p. 42).]
+
+[269: De Gubernatis, "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 35.]
+
+
+Pearls.
+
+During the chequered history of the Great Mother the attributes of the
+original shell-amulet from which the goddess was sprung were also
+changing and being elaborated to fit into a more complex scheme. The
+magical properties of the cowry came to be acquired by other Red Sea
+shells, such as _Pterocera_, the pearl oyster, conch shells, and others.
+Each of these became intimately associated with the moon.[270] The
+pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little moons, drops of
+the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky into the gaping
+oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of "shining by night," like
+the moon from which they were believed to have come: and every surrogate
+of the Great Mother, whether plant, animal, mineral or mythical
+instrument, came to be endowed with the power of "shining by night". But
+pearls were also regarded as the quintessence of the shell's life-giving
+properties, which were considered to be all the more potent because they
+were sky-given emanations of the moon-goddess herself. Hence pearls
+acquired the reputation of being the "givers of life" _par excellence_,
+an idea which found literal expression in the ancient Persian word
+_margan_ (from _mar_, "giver" and _gan_, "life"). This word has been
+borrowed in all the Turanian languages (ranging from Hungary to
+Kamskatckha), but also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia,
+thence through Greek and Latin (_margarita_) to European languages.[271]
+The same life-giving attributes were also acquired by the other
+pearl-bearing shells; and at some subsequent period, when it was
+discovered that some of these shells could be used as trumpets, the
+sound produced was also believed to be life-giving or the voice of the
+great Giver of Life. The blast of the trumpet was also supposed to be
+able to animate the deity and restore his consciousness, so that he
+could attend to the appeals of supplicants. In other words the noise
+woke up the god from his sleep. Hence the shell-trumpet attained an
+important significance in early religious ceremonials for the ritual
+purpose of summoning the deity, especially in Crete and India, and
+ultimately in widely distant parts of the world.[272] Long before these
+shells are known to have been used as trumpets, they were employed like
+the other Red Sea shells as "givers of life" to the dead in Egypt. Their
+use as trumpets was secondary.
+
+And when it was discovered that purple dye could be obtained from
+certain of the trumpet-shells, the colouring-matter acquired the same
+life-giving powers as had already been conferred upon the trumpet and
+the pearls: thus it became regarded as a divine substance and as the
+exclusive property of gods and kings.
+
+Long before, the colour red had acquired magic potency as a surrogate of
+life-giving blood; and this colour-symbolism undoubtedly helped in the
+development of the similar beliefs concerning purple.
+
+
+[270: For the details see Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 57-69. Both the
+shells and the moon were identified with the Great Mother. Hence they
+were homologized the one with the other.]
+
+[271: Dr. Mingana has given me the following note: "It is very probable
+that the Graeco-Latin _margarita_, the Aramaeo-Syriac _margarita_, the
+Arabic _margan_, and the Turanian _margan_ are derived from the Persian
+_mar-gan_, meaning both 'pearl' and 'life,' or etymologically 'giver,
+owner, or possessor, of life'. The word _gan_, in Zend _yan_, is
+thoroughly Persian and is undoubtedly the original form of this
+expression."]
+
+[272: See Chapter II of Jackson's book, _op. cit._]
+
+
+Sharks and Dragons.
+
+When the life-giving attributes of water were confused with the same
+properties with which shells had independently been credited long
+before, the shell's reputation was rationalized as an expression of the
+vital powers of the ocean in which the mollusc was born. But the same
+explanation was also extended to include fishes, and other denizens of
+the water, as manifestations of similar divine powers. In the lecture on
+"Dragons and Rain Gods" I referred to the identification of Ea, the
+Babylonian Osiris, with a fish (p. 105). When the value of the pearl as
+the giver of life impelled men to incur any risks to obtain so precious
+an amulet, the chief dangers that threatened pearl-fishers were due to
+sharks. These came to be regarded as demons guarding the treasure-houses
+at the bottom of the sea. Out of these crude materials the imaginations
+of the early pearl-fishers created the picture of wonderful submarine
+palaces of Naga kings in which vast wealth, not merely of pearls, but
+also of gold, precious stones, and beautiful maidens (all of them
+"givers of life," _vide infra_, p. 224), were placed under the
+protection of shark-dragons.[273] The conception of the pearl (which is
+a surrogate of the life-giving Great Mother) guarded by dragons is
+linked by many bonds of affinity with early Erythraean and Mediterranean
+beliefs. The more usual form of the story, both in Southern Arabian
+legend and in Minoan and Mycenaean art, represents the Mother Goddess
+incarnate in a sacred tree or pillar with its protecting dragons in the
+form of serpents or lions, or a variety of dragon-surrogates, either
+real animals, such as deer or cattle, or composite monsters (Fig.
+26).[274]
+
+There are reasons for believing that these stories were first invented
+somewhere on the shores of the Erythraean Sea, probably in Southern
+Arabia. The animation of the incense-tree by the Great Mother, for the
+reasons which I have already expounded,[275] formed the link of her
+identification with the pearl, which probably acquired its magical
+reputation in the same region.
+
+"In the Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing in the
+lake Vourukasha: the fish Khar-mahi circles protectingly around it and
+defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life, children to
+women, husbands to girls, and horses to men. In the Minokhired the tree
+is called 'the preparer of the corpse'" (Spiegel, "Eran. Altertumskunde,"
+II, 115--quoted by Jung, "Psychology of the Unconscious," p. 532). The
+idea of guarding the divine tree[276] by dragons was probably the result
+of the transference to that particular surrogate of the Great Mother of
+the shark-stories which originated from the experiences of the seekers
+after pearls, her other representatives.
+
+There are many other bits of corroborative evidence to suggest that
+these shell-cults and the legends derived from them were actually
+transmitted from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. Nor is it
+surprising that this should have happened, when it is recalled that
+Egyptian sailors were trafficking in both seas long before the Pyramid
+Age, and no doubt carried the beliefs and the legends of one region to
+the other. I have already referred to the adoption in the Mediterranean
+area of the idea of the dragon-protectors of the tree- and pillar-forms
+of the Great Mother, and suggested that this was merely a garbled
+version of the pearl-fisher's experience of the dangers of attacks by
+sharks. But the same legends also reached the Levant in a less modified
+form, and then underwent another kind of transformation (and confusion
+with the tree-version) in Cyprus or Syria.
+
+As the shark would be a not wholly appropriate actor in the
+Mediterranean, its role is taken by its smaller Selachian relative, the
+dog-fish. In the notes on Pliny's Natural History, Dr. Bostock and Mr.
+H. T. Riley[277] refer to the habits of dog-fishes ("Canes marini"), and
+quote from Procopius ("De Bell. Pers." B. I, c. 4) the following
+"wonderful story in relation to this subject": "Sea-dogs are wonderful
+admirers of the pearl-fish, and follow them out to sea.... A certain
+fisherman, having watched for the moment when the shell-fish was
+deprived of the attention of its attendant sea-dog, ... seized the
+shell-fish and made for the shore. The sea-dog, however, was soon aware
+of the theft, and making straight for the fisherman, seized him. Finding
+himself thus caught, he made a last effort, and threw the pearl-fish on
+shore, immediately on which he was torn to pieces by its
+protector."[278]
+
+Though the written record of this story is relatively modern the
+incident thus described probably goes back to much more ancient times.
+It is only a very slightly modified version of an ancient narrative of a
+shark's attack upon a pearl-diver.
+
+For reasons which I shall discuss in the following pages, the role of
+the cowry and pearl as representatives of the Great Mother was in the
+Levant assumed by the mandrake, just as we have already seen the
+Southern Arabian conception of her as a tree adopted in Mycenaean lands.
+Having replaced the sea-shell by a land plant it became necessary, in
+adapting the legend, to substitute for the "sea-dog" some land animal.
+Not unnaturally it became a dog. Thus the story of the dangers incurred
+in the process of digging up a mandrake assumed the well-known
+form.[279] The attempt to dig up the mandrake was said to be fraught
+with great danger. The traditional means of circumventing these risks
+has been described by many writers, ancient and modern, and preserved in
+the folk-lore of most European and western Asiatic countries. The story
+as told by Josephus is as follows: "They dig a trench round it till the
+hidden part of the root is very small, then they tie a dog to it, and
+when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily
+plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man
+that would take the plant away."[280] Thus the dog takes the place of
+the dog-fish when the mandrake becomes the pearl's surrogate. The only
+discrepancy between the two stories is the point to which Josephus calls
+specific attention. For instead of the dog killing the thief, as the
+shark (dog-fish) kills the stealer of pearls, the dog becomes the victim
+as a substitute for the man. As Josephus remarks, "the dog dies
+immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant
+away". This distortion of the story is true to the traditions of
+legend-making. The dog-incident is so twisted as to be transformed into
+a device for plucking the dangerous plant without risk.
+
+It is quite possible that earlier associations of the dog with the Great
+Mother may have played some part in this transference of meaning, if
+only by creating confusion which made such rationalization necessary. I
+refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the
+fragments of Osiris; and the role played by Anubis, and his Greek
+_avatar_ Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the association of
+the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with the confusion is
+uncertain.[281]
+
+There was an intimate association of the dog with the goddess of the
+under-world (Hecate) and the ritual of rebirth of the dead.[282] Perhaps
+the development of the story of the underworld-goddess Aphrodite's dog
+and the mandrake may have been helped by this survival of the
+association of Isis with Anubis, even if there is not a more definite
+causal relationship between the dog-incidents in the various legends.
+
+The divine dog Anubis is frequently represented in connexion with the
+ritual of rebirth,[283] where it is shown upon a standard in association
+with the placenta. The hieroglyphic sign for the Egyptian word _mes_,
+"to give birth," consists of the skins of three dogs (or jackals, or
+foxes). The three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded the portal of Hades
+may possibly be a distorted survival of this ancient symbolism of the
+three-fold dog-skin as the graphic sign for the act of emergence from
+the portal of birth. Elsewhere (p. 223) in this lecture I have referred
+to Charon's _obolus_ as a surrogate of the life-giving pearl or cowry
+placed in the mouth of the dead to provide "vital substance". Rohde[284]
+regards Charon as the second Cerberus, corresponding to the Egyptian
+dog-faced god Anubis: just as Charon received his _obolus_, so in Attic
+custom the dead were provided with [Greek: melitoutia] the object of
+which is usually said to be to pacify the dog of hell.
+
+What seems to link all these fantastic beliefs and customs with the
+story of the dog and the mandrake is the fact that they are closely
+bound up with the conception of the dog as the guardian of hidden
+treasure.
+
+The mandrake story may have arisen out of a mingling of these two
+streams of legend--the shark (dog-fish) protecting the treasures at the
+bottom of the sea, and the ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning the
+dog-headed god who presides at the embalmer's operations and
+superintends the process of rebirth.
+
+The dog of the story is a representative of the dragon guarding the
+goddess in the form of the mandrake, just as the lions over the gate at
+Mycenae heraldically support her pillar-form, or the serpents in Southern
+Arabia protect her as an incense tree. Dog, Lion, and Serpent in these
+legends are all representatives of the goddess herself, i.e. merely her
+own _avatars_ (Fig. 26).
+
+At one time I imagined that the role of Anubis as a god of embalming and
+the restorer of the dead was merely an ingenuous device on the part of
+the early Egyptians to console themselves for the depredations of
+jackals in their cemeteries. For if the jackal were converted into a
+life-giving god it would be a comforting thought to believe that the
+dead man, even though devoured, was "in the bosom of his god" and
+thereby had attained a rebirth in the hereafter. In ancient Persia
+corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour. There was also the
+custom of leading a dog to the bed of a dying man who presented him with
+food, just as Cerberus was given honey-cakes by Hercules in his journey
+to hell. But I have not been able to obtain any corroboration of this
+supposition. It is a remarkable coincidence that the Great Mother has
+been identified with the necrophilic vulture as Mut; and it has been
+claimed by some writers[285] that, just as the jackal was regarded as a
+symbol of rebirth in Egypt and the dead were exposed for dogs to devour
+in Persia, so the vulture's corpse-devouring habits may have been
+primarily responsible for suggesting its identification with the Great
+Mother and for the motive behind the Indian practice of leaving the
+corpses of the dead for the vultures to dispose of.[286] It is not
+uncommon to find, even in English cathedrals, recumbent statues of
+bishops with dogs as footstools. Petronius ("Sat.," c. 71) makes the
+following statement: "valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae
+catellam pingas--ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem
+vivere".[287] The belief in the dog's service as a guide to the dead
+ranges from Western Europe to Peru.
+
+To return to the story of the dog and the mandrake: no doubt the demand
+will be made for further evidence that the mandrake actually assumed the
+role of the pearl in these stories. If the remarkable repertory of
+magical properties assigned to the mandrake[288] be compared with those
+which developed in connexion with the cowry and the pearl,[289] it will
+be found that the two series are identical. The mandrake also is the
+giver of life, of fertility to women, of safety in childbirth; and like
+the cowry and the pearl it exerts these magical influences only if it be
+worn in contact with the wearer's skin.[290] But the most definite
+indication of the mandrake's homology with the pearl is provided by the
+legend that "it shines by night". Some scholars,[291] both ancient and
+modern, have attempted to rationalize this tradition by interpreting it
+as a reference to the glow-worms that settle on the plant! But it is
+only one of many attributes borrowed by the mandrake from the pearl,
+which was credited with this remarkable reputation only when early
+scientists conceived the hypothesis that the gem was a bit of moon
+substance.
+
+As the memory of the real history of these beliefs grew dim, confusion
+was rapidly introduced into the stories. I have already explained how
+the diving for pearls started the story of the great palace of treasures
+under the waters which was guarded by dragons. As the pearl had the
+reputation of shining by night, it is not surprising that it or some of
+its surrogates should in course of time come to be credited with the
+power of "revealing hidden treasures," the treasures which in the
+original story were the pearls themselves. Thus the magic fern-seed and
+other treasure-disclosing vegetables[292] are surrogates of the
+mandrake, and like it derive their magical properties directly or
+indirectly from the pearl.
+
+The fantastic story of the dog and the mandrake provides the most
+definite evidence of the derivation of the mandrake-beliefs from the
+shell-cults of the Erythraean Sea. There are many other scraps of
+evidence to corroborate this. I shall refer here only to one of these.
+"The discovery of the art of purple-dyeing has been attributed to the
+Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many
+writers. According to Julius Pollux ('Onomasticon,' I, iv.) and Nonnus
+('Dionys.,' XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on the seashore
+accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom he was enamoured. The
+dog having found a _Murex_ with its head protruding from its shell,
+devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained with purple. The nymph,
+on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained with Hercules to provide her
+with a robe of like splendour."[293] This seems to be another variant of
+the same story.
+
+
+[273: In Eastern Asia (see, for example, Shinji Nishimura, "The
+Hisago-Bune," Tokio, 1918, published by the Tokio Society of Naval
+Architects, p. 18, where the dragon is identified with the _wani_, which
+can be either a crocodile or a shark); in Oceania (L. Frobenius, "Das
+Zeitalter des Sonnengottes," Bd. I., 1904, and C. E. Fox and F. H. Drew,
+"Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval," _Journal of the Royal
+Anthropological Institute_, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 140); and in America (see
+Thomas Gann, "Mounds in Northern Honduras," _Nineteenth Annual Report of
+the Bureau of American Ethnology_, 1897-8, Part II, p. 661) the dragon
+assumes the form of a shark, a crocodile, or a variety of other
+animals.]
+
+[274: Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," _op. cit.
+supra_: W. Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," _op. cit._:
+and Robertson Smith, "The Religion of the Semites," p. 133: "In
+Hadramant it is still dangerous to touch the sensitive mimosa, because
+the spirit that resides in the plant will avenge the injury". When men
+interfere with the incense trees it is reported: "the demons of the
+place flew away with doleful cries in the shape of white serpents, and
+the intruders died soon afterwards".]
+
+[275: _Vide supra_, p. 38.]
+
+[276: In Western mythology the dragon guarding the fruit-bearing tree of
+life is also identified with the Mother of Mankind (Campbell, "Celtic
+Dragon Myth," pp. xli and 18). Thus the tree and its defender are both
+surrogates of the Great Mother. When Eve ate the apple from the tree of
+Paradise she was committing an act of cannibalism, for the plant was
+only another form of herself. Her "sin" consisted in aspiring to attain
+the immortality which was the exclusive privilege of the gods. This
+incident is analogous to that found in the Indian tales where mortals
+steal the _amrita_. By Eve's sin "death came into the world" for the
+paradoxical reason that she had eaten the food of the gods which gives
+immortality. The punishment meted out to her by the Almighty seems to
+have been to inhibit the life-giving and birth-facilitating action of
+the fruit of immortality, so that she and all her progeny were doomed to
+be mortal and to suffer the pangs of child-bearing.
+
+There was a widespread belief among the ancients that ceremonies in
+connexion with the gods must (to be efficacious) be done in the reverse
+of the usual human way (Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 201). So also
+an act which gives immortality to the gods, brings death to man.
+
+The full realization of the fact that man was mortal imposed upon the
+early theologians the necessity of explaining the immortality of the
+gods. The elixir of life was the food of the gods that conferred eternal
+life upon them. By one of those paradoxes so dear to the maker of myths
+this same elixir brought death to man.]
+
+[277: Bohn's Edition, 1855, Vol. II, p. 433.]
+
+[278: A Cretan scene depicts a man attacking a dog-headed sea-monster
+(Mackenzie, _op. cit._, "Myths of Crete," p. 139).]
+
+[279: A number of versions of this widespread fable have been collected
+by Dr. Rendel Harris (_op. cit._) and Sir James Frazer (_op. cit._). I
+quote here from the former (p. 118).]
+
+[280: Josephus, "Bell. Jud.," VII, 6, 3, quoted by Rendel Harris, _op.
+cit._, p. 118.]
+
+[281: The dog-star became associated with Hathor for reasons which are
+explained on p. 209. It was "the opener of the Way" for the birth of the
+sun and the New Year.]
+
+[282: When Artemis acquired the reputation as a huntress and her deer
+became her quarry the dog was rationalized into the new scheme.]
+
+[283: See, for example, Moret's "Mysteres Egyptiens," pp. 77-80.]
+
+[284: "Psyche," p. 244.]
+
+[285: See, for example, Jung, _op. cit._, p. 268.]
+
+[286: Nekhebit, the Egyptian Vulture goddess, was identified by the
+Greeks with Eileithyia, the goddess of birth (Wiedemann, "Religion of
+the Ancient Egyptians," p. 141). She was usually represented as a
+vulture hovering over the king. Her place can be taken by the falcon of
+Horus or in the Babylonian story of Etana by the eagle. In the Indian
+Mahabharata the Garuda is described as "the bird of life ... destroyer
+of all, creator of all".]
+
+[287: Quoted by Jung, _op. cit._, p. 530.]
+
+[288: See Rendel Harris (_op. cit._) and Sir James Frazer (_op. cit._).]
+
+[289: Jackson, _op. cit._]
+
+[290: An interesting rationalization (of which Mr. T. H. Pear has kindly
+reminded me) of this ancient Oriental belief is still alive amongst
+British women. It is maintained that pearls "lose their lustre" unless
+they are worn in contact with the skin. This of course is a pure myth,
+but also an illuminating survival.]
+
+[291: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 16, especially the references to the
+"devil's candle" and "the lamp of the elves".]
+
+[292: Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 113: Other factors played a part in
+the development of this legend of opening up treasure-houses. Both
+Artemis and Hecate are associated with a magical plant capable of
+opening locks and helping the process of birth. Artemis is a goddess of
+the portal and her life-giving symbol in a multitude of varied forms is
+found appropriately placed above the lintel of doors.]
+
+[293: Jackson, _op. cit._, p. 195.]
+
+
+The Octopus.
+
+Aphrodite was associated not only with the cowry, the pearl, and the
+mandrake, but also with the octopus, the argonaut, and other
+cephalopods. Tuempel seems to imagine that the identification of the
+goddess with the argonaut and the octopus necessarily excludes her
+association with molluscs; and Dr. Rendel Harris attributes an equally
+exclusive importance to the mandrake. But in such methods of argument
+due recognition is not given to the outstanding fact in the history of
+primitive beliefs. The early philosophers built up their great
+generalizations in the same way as their modern successors. They were
+searching for some explanation of, or a working hypothesis to include,
+most diverse natural phenomena within a concise scheme. The very essence
+of such attempts was the institution of a series of homologies and
+fancied analogies between dissimilar objects. Aphrodite was at one and
+the same time the personification of the cowry, the conch shell, the
+purple shell, the pearl, the lotus, and the lily, the mandrake and the
+bryony, the incense tree and the cedar, the octopus and the argonaut,
+the pig, and the cow.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 21.--(a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A.
+Reisner in the temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh
+Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess Hathor, represented
+as a woman with the moon and the cow's horns upon her head, and on the
+left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon her head the jackal-symbol of
+her nome.
+
+(b) The Ecuador Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro Jaboncillo (after
+Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," Preliminary Report, 1907,
+Plate XXXVIII).
+
+A grotesque composite monster intended to represent a woman (compare
+Saville's Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a
+conventionalized Octopus, whose body is a _Loligo_, and whose limbs
+are human.]
+
+Every one of these identifications is the result of a long and chequered
+history, in which fancied resemblances and confusion of meaning play a
+very large part. But I cannot too strongly repudiate the claim made by
+Sir James Frazer that such events are merely so many evidences of the
+innate human tendency to personify nature. The history of the arbitrary
+circumstances that were responsible for the development of each one of
+these homologies is entirely fatal to this wholly unwarranted
+speculation.[294] Tuempel claims[295] the Aphrodite was associated more
+especially with "a species of _Sepia_". He refers to the attempts to
+associate the goddess of love with amulets of univalvular shells "in
+virtue of a certain peculiar and obscene symbolism".[296] Naturalists,
+however, designate with the term _Venus Cytherea_ certain gaping
+bivalve molluscs.
+
+But, according to Tuempel (p. 386), neither univalvular nor bivalve
+shells can be regarded as a real part of the goddess's cultural
+equipment. There is no representation of Aphrodite coming in a shell
+from across the sea.[297] The truly sacred Aphrodite-shell was entirely
+different, so Tuempel believes: it was obviously difficult to preserve,
+but for that reason more worthy of notice, for the small [Greek:
+choirinai] (pectines), virginalia marina (Apuleius de mag. 34, 35, and
+in reference thereto, Isidor. origg. 9, 5, 24) or spuria ([Greek:
+sporia]) were only the commoner and more readily obtained surrogates:
+the univalvular shells.
+
+([Greek: monothyra] of Aristotle), such as those just mentioned, and the
+other [Greek: ostrea] of Aphrodite, the Nerites (periwinkles, etc.), the
+purple shell and the Echineis were also real Veneriae conchae. Among the
+Nerites Aelian enumerates (N.A. 14, 28): [Greek: Aphroditen de
+syndiaitomenen en te thalatte hesthenai te to Nerite tode kai echein
+auton philon]. On account of their supposed medicinal value in cases of
+abortion and especially as a prophylactic for pregnant women the [Greek:
+Echeneis] (pure Latin re[mi]mora) was called [Greek: odinolyte][298]
+(Pliny, 32, 1, 5: pisciculus!). According to Mutianus (Pliny, 9, 25
+(41), 79 f.), it was a species of purple shell, but larger than the true
+_Murex purpura_. From this the sanctity of the Echineis to the Cnidian
+Aphrodite is demonstrated: "quibus (conchis) inhaerentibus plenam ventis
+stetisse navem portantem Periandro, ut castrarentur nobilis pueros,
+conchasque, quae id praestiterint, apud Cnidiorum Venerem coli" (Pliny).
+
+Tuempel then (p. 387) accuses Stephani of being mistaken in his
+interpretation of Martial's Cytheriacae (Epign. II, 47, 1 = purple
+shells) as the amulets of Aphrodite, and claims that Jahn has given the
+correct solution of the following passages from Pliny (N.H., 9, 33 [52],
+103, compare 32, 11 [53]): "navigant ex his (conchis) veneriae,
+praebentesque concavam sui partem et aurae opponentes per summa aequorum
+velificant"; and further (9, 30[49], 94): "in Propontide concham esse
+acatii modo carinatam inflexa puppe, prora rostrata, in hac condi
+nauplium animal saepiae simile ludendi societate sola, duobus hoc fieri
+generibus: tranquillum enim vectorem demissis palmulis ferire ut remis;
+si vero flatus invitet, easdem in usu gubernaculi porrigi pandique
+buccarum sinus aurae".
+
+Tuempel claims (pp. 387 and 388) that this quotation settles the
+question. Aphrodite's "shell," according to him, is the _Nauplius_
+(depicted as a shell-fish, with its sail-like palmulae spread out to the
+wind, but with the same sails flattened into plate-like arms for
+steering), clearly "a species of _Sepia_," wholly like Aphrodite
+herself, a ship-like shell-fish sailing over the surface of the water,
+the concha veneria. [The analogy to a ship bearing the Great Mother is
+extremely ancient and originally referred to the crescent moon carrying
+the moon-goddess across the heavenly ocean.]
+
+Elsewhere (p. 399) he discusses the reasons for the connexion of
+Aphrodite with the "nautilus," by which is meant the argonaut of
+zoologists.
+
+But if Jahn and Tuempel have thus clearly established the proof of the
+intimate association of Aphrodite with certain cephalopods, they are
+wholly unjustified in the assumption that their quotations from
+relatively modern authors disprove the reality of the equally close
+(though more ancient) relationship of the goddess to the cowry, the
+pearl-shell, the trumpet-shell, and the purple-shell.
+
+It must not be forgotten that, as we have already seen, the primitive
+shell-cults of the Erythraean Sea had been diffused throughout the
+Mediterranean area long before Aphrodite was born upon the shores of the
+Levant, and possibly before Hathor came into existence in the south. The
+use of the cowry and gold models of the cowry goes back to an early time
+in AEgean history.[299] And the influence of Aphrodite's early
+associations had become blurred and confused by the development of new
+links with other shells and their surrogates.
+
+But the connexion of Aphrodite with the octopus and its kindred played a
+very obtrusive part in Minoan and Mycenaean art; and its influence was
+spread abroad as far as Western Europe[300] and towards the East as far
+as America. In many ways it was a factor in the development of such
+artistic designs as the spiral and the volute, and not improbably also
+of the swastika.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 22.--(a) _Sepia officinalis_, after Tryon,
+"Cephalopoda".
+
+(b) _Loligo vulgaris_, after Tryon.
+
+(c) The position usually adopted by the resting Octopus, after Tryon.]
+
+Starting from the researches of Tuempel, a distinguished French
+zoologist, Dr. Frederic Houssay,[301] sought to demonstrate that the
+cult of Aphrodite was "based upon a pre-existing zoological philosophy".
+The argument in support of his claim that Aphrodite was a
+personification of the octopus must be sharply differentiated into two
+parts: first, the reality of the association of the octopus with the
+goddess, of which there can be no doubt; and secondly, his explanation
+of it, which (however popular it may be with classical writers and
+modern scholars)[302] is not only a gratuitous assumption, but also,
+even if it were based upon more valid evidence than the speculations
+of such recent writers as Pliny, would not really carry the explanation
+very far.
+
+I refer to his claim that "les premiers conquerants de la mer furent
+induits en veneration du poulpe nageur (octopus) parce qu'ils crurent
+que quelque-uns de ces cephalopodes, les poulpes sacres (argonauta)
+avaient, comme eux et avant eux, invente la navigation" (_op. cit._, p.
+15). Idle fancies of this sort do not help us to understand the
+arbitrary beliefs concerning the magical powers of the octopus.
+
+The real problem we have to solve is to discover why, among all the
+multitude of bizarre creatures to be found in the Mediterranean Sea, the
+octopus and its allies should thus have been singled out for distinctive
+appreciation, and also acquired the same remarkable attributes as the
+cowry.
+
+I believe that the Red Sea "Spider shell," _Pterocera_,[303] was the
+link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like the
+cowry, for funerary purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India.[304]
+But it was also depicted upon a series of remarkable primitive statues
+of the god Min, which were found at Coptos during the winter 1893-4 by
+Professor Flinders Petrie.[305] Some of these objects are now in the
+Cairo Museum and the others in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. They are
+supposed to be late predynastic representations of the god Min. If this
+supposition is correct they are the earliest idols (apart from mere
+amulets) that have been preserved from antiquity.
+
+Upon these statues, representations of the Red Sea shell _Pterocera
+bryonia_ are sculptured in low relief. Mr. F. Ll. Griffith is
+disinclined to accept my suggestion that the object of these pictures of
+the shell was to animate the statues. But whether this was their purpose
+or not, it is probably not without some significance that these
+life-giving shells were associated with so obtrusively phallic a deity
+as Min. In any case they afford concrete evidence of cultural contact
+between Coptos and the Red Sea, and indicate that these particular
+shells were chosen as symbols of that sea or its coast.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 5--Pterocera Bryonia. the Red Sea Spider-shell.
+_Col._--the columella 1-7--the "claws".]
+
+The distinctive feature of the _Pterocera_ is that the mantle in the
+adult expands into a series of long finger-like processes each of which
+secretes a calcareous process or "claw". There are seven[306] of these
+claws as well as the long columella (Fig. 5). Hence, when the
+shell-cults were diffused from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean (where
+the _Pterocera_ is not found), it is quite likely that the people of the
+Levant may have confused with the octopus some sailor's account of the
+eight-rayed shell (or perhaps representations of it on some amulet or
+statue). Whether this is the explanation of the confusion or not, it is
+certain that the beliefs associated with the cowry and the octopus in
+the AEgean area are identical with those linked up with the cowry and the
+_Pterocera_ in the Red Sea.
+
+I have already mentioned that the mandrake is believed to possess the
+same magical powers. Sir James Frazer has called attention to the fact
+that in Armenia the bryony (_Bryonia alba_) is a surrogate of the
+mandrake and is credited with the same attributes.[307] Lovell Reeve
+("Conchologia Iconica," VI, 1851) refers to the Red Sea _Pterocera_ as
+the "Wild Vine Root" species, previously known as _Strombus radix
+bryoniae_; and Chemnitz ("Conch. Cab.," 1788, Vol. X, p. 227) says the
+French call it "Racine de brione femelle imparfaite," and refer to it as
+"the maiden". Here then is further evidence that this shell (a) was
+associated in some way with a surrogate of the mandrake (Aphrodite), and
+(b) was regarded as a maiden. Thus clearly it has a place in the
+chequered history of Aphrodite. I have suggested the possibility of its
+confusion with the octopus, which may have led to the inclusion of the
+latter within the scope of the marine creatures in Aphrodite's cultural
+equipment. According to Matthioli (Lib. 2, p. 135), another of
+Aphrodite's creatures, the purple shell-fish, was also known as "the
+maiden". By Pliny it is called Pelogia, in Greek [Greek: porphyra]; and
+[Greek: porphyromata] was the term applied to the flesh of swine that
+had been sacrificed to Ceres and Proserpine (Hesych.). In fact, the
+purple-shell was "the maiden" and also "the sow": in other words it was
+Aphrodite. The use of the term "maiden" for the _Pterocera_ suggests a
+similar identification. To complete this web of proof it may be noted
+that an old writer has called the mandrake the plant of Circe, the
+sorceress who turned men into swine by a magic draught.[308] Thus we
+have a series of shells, plants, and marine creatures accredited with
+identical magical properties, and each of them known in popular
+tradition as "the maiden". They are all culturally associated with
+Aphrodite.
+
+I shall have occasion (_infra_, p. 177) to refer to M. Siret's account
+of the discovery of the AEgean octopus-motif upon AEneolithic objects in
+Spain, and of the widespread use in Western Europe of certain
+conventional designs derived from the octopus. M. Siret also (see the
+table, Fig. 6, on p. 34 of his book) makes the remarkable claim that the
+conventional form of the Egyptian Bes, which, according to Quibell,[309]
+is the god whose function it is to preside over sexual intercourse in
+its purely physical aspect, is derived from the octopus. If this is
+true--and I am bound to admit that it is far from being proved--it
+suggests that the Red Sea littoral may have been the place of origin of
+the cultural use of the octopus and an association with Hathor, for Bes
+and Hathor are said to have been introduced into Egypt from there.[310]
+
+That the octopus was actually identified with the Great Mother and also
+with the dragon is revealed by the fact of the latter assuming an
+octopus-form in Eastern Asia and Oceania, and by the occurrence of
+octopus-motifs in the representation of the goddess in America. One of
+the most remarkable series of pictures depicting the Great Mother is
+found sculptured in low relief upon a number of stone slabs from Manabi
+in Central America,[311] one of which I reproduce here (Fig. 21_b_).
+The head of the goddess is a conventionalized octopus; to that was added
+a body consisting of a _Loligo_; and, to give greater definiteness to
+this remarkable process of building up the form of the goddess,
+conventional representations of her arms and legs (and in some of the
+sculptures also the _pudendum muliebre_) were added. Thus there can
+be no doubt of the identification of this American Aphrodite and
+the octopus.
+
+In the Polynesian Rata-myth there is a very instructive series of
+manifestations of the dragon.[312] The first form assumed by the monster
+in this story was a gaping shell-fish of enormous size; then it appeared
+as a mighty octopus; and lastly, as a whale, into whose jaws the hero
+Nganaoa sprang, as his representatives are said to have done elsewhere
+throughout the world (Frobenius, _op. cit._, pp. 59-219).
+
+Houssay (_op. cit. infra_) calls attention to the fact that at times
+Astarte was shown carrying an octopus as her emblem,[313] and has
+suggested that it was mistaken for a hand, just as in America the
+thunderbolt of Chac was given a hand-like form in the Dresden Codex
+(_vide supra_. Fig. 13), and elsewhere (_e.g._ Fig. 12).
+
+If this suggestion should prove to be well founded it would provide a
+more convincing explanation of the girdle of hands worn by the Indian
+goddess Kali[314] than that usually given. If the "hands" really
+represent surrogates of the cowry, the wearing of such a girdle brings
+the Indian goddess into line, not only with Astarte and Aphrodite, but
+also with the East African maidens who still wear the girdle of cowries.
+Kali's exploits were in many respects identical with those of the
+bloodthirsty Sekhet-manifestation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Just
+as Sekhet had to be restrained by Re for her excess of zeal in murdering
+his foes, so Siva had to intervene with Kali upon the battlefield
+flooded with gore (as also in the Egyptian story) to spare the remnant
+of his enemies.[315]
+
+
+[294: Sir James Frazer, "Jacob and the Mandrakes," _Proc. Brit.
+Academy_.]
+
+[295: K. Tuempel, "Die 'Muschel der Aphrodite,'" _Philologus, Zeitschrift
+fuer das Classische Alterthum_, Bd. 51, 1892, p. 385: compare also, with
+reference to the "Muschel der Aphrodite," O. Jahn, _SB. d. k. Saechs. G.
+d. W._, VII, 1853, p. 16 ff.; also IX, 1855, p. 80; and Stephani,
+_Compte rendu pour l'an 1870-71_, p. 17 ff.]
+
+[296: See Jahn, _op. cit._, 1855, T. V, 6, and T. IV, 8: figures of the
+so-called [Greek: Choirinai] (from [Greek: Choiros] in the double sense
+as "pig" and "the female pudendum"): Aristophanes, Eq. 1147; Vesp. 332;
+Pollux, 8, 16; Hesch. s.v.]
+
+[297: The fact that no graphic representation of this event has been
+found is surely a wholly inadequate reason for refusing to credit the
+story. Very few episodes in the sacred history of the gods received
+concrete expression in pictures or sculptures until relatively late. A
+Hellenistic representation of the goddess emerging from a bivalve was
+found in Southern Russia (Minns, "Scythians and Greeks," p. 345).
+
+Tuempel cites the following statements: "te (Venus) ex concha natam esse
+autumant: cave tu harum conchas spernas!" Tibull. 3, 3, 24: "et faveas
+concha, Cypria, vecta tua"; Statius Silv. 1, 2, 117: Venus to
+Violentilla, "haec et caeruleis mecum consurgere digna fluctibus et
+nostra potuit considere concha"; Fulgent. myth. 2, 4 "concha etiam
+marina pingitur (Venus) portari (I. HS:--am portare)"; Paulus Diacon. p.
+52, "M. Cytherea Venus ab urbe Cythera, in quam primum devecta esse
+dicitur concha, cum in mari esset concepta cet".]
+
+[298: From [Greek: odino]--"to have the pains of childbirth".]
+
+[299: See Schliemann, "Ilios," p. 455; and Siret, _op. cit_.]
+
+[300: Siret, _op. cit. supra_, p. 59.]
+
+[301: "Les Theories de la Genese a Mycenes et le sens zoologique de
+certains symboles du culte d'Aphrodite," _Revue Archeologique_, 3^ie
+serie, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 13.]
+
+[302: It was adduced also by Tuempel and others before him.]
+
+[303: or _Pteroceras_.]
+
+[304: Jackson, _op. cit._, p. 38.]
+
+[305: "Koptos," pp. 7-9, Pls. III. and IV.: for a discussion of the
+significance of these statues see Jean Capart, "Les Debuts de l'Art en
+Egypte," Brussels, 1904, p. 216 _et seq._]
+
+[306: This may help to explain the peculiar sanctity of the shell.]
+
+[307: Frazer, _op. cit._, 4.]
+
+[308: Just as Hathor (or her surrogate Horus) turned men into the
+creatures of Set, _i.e._ pigs, crocodiles, _et cetera_.]
+
+[309: "Excavations at Saqqara," 1905-1906, p. 14.]
+
+[310: Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 34.]
+
+[311: Saville, "Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador," 1907.]
+
+[312: A detailed summary of the literature relating to the world-wide
+distribution of certain phases of the dragon-myth is given by Frobenius,
+"Das Zeitalter des Sonnesgottes," Berlin, 1904: on pp. 63-5 he gives the
+Rata-myth.]
+
+[313: Which can also be compared with the conventional form of the
+thunderbolt.]
+
+[314: Of course the hands had the additional significance as trophies of
+her murderous zeal. But I think this is a secondary rationalization of
+their meaning. An excellent photograph of a bronze statue (in the
+Calcutta Art Gallery), representing Kali with her girdle of hands, is
+given by Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie, "Indian Myth and Legend," p. xl.]
+
+[315: F. T. Elworthy has summarized the extensive literature relating to
+hand-amulets ("The Evil Eye," 1895; and "Horns of Honour," 1900). Many
+of these hands have the definite reputation as fertility charms which
+one would expect if Houssay's hypothesis of their derivation from the
+octopus is well founded.]
+
+
+The Swastika.
+
+Houssay (_op. cit. supra_) has made the interesting suggestion that the
+swastika may have been derived from such conventionalized
+representations of the octopus as are shown in Fig. 23. This series of
+sketches is taken from Tuempel's memoir, which provided the foundation
+for Houssay's hypothesis.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 23.--A series of Mycenaean conventionalizations of
+the Argonaut and the Octopus (after Tuempel), which provided the basis
+for Houssay's theory of the origin of the triskele (_a_, _c_, and _d_)
+and swastika (b and e), and Siret's theory to explain the design of
+Bes's face (f and g)]
+
+A vast amount of attention has been devoted to this lucky symbol,[316]
+which still enjoys a widespread vogue at the present day, after a
+history of several thousand years. Although so much has been written in
+attempted explanation of the swastika since Houssay made his suggestion,
+so far as I am aware no one has paid the slightest attention to his
+hypothesis or made even a passing reference to his memoir.[317]
+Fantastic and far-fetched though it may seem at first sight (though
+surely not more so than the strictly orthodox solar theory advocated by
+Mr. Cook or Mrs. Nuttall's astral speculations) Houssay's suggestion
+offers an explanation of some of the salient attributes of the swastika
+on which the alternative hypotheses shed little or no light.
+
+Among the earliest known examples of the symbol are those engraved upon
+the so-called "owl-shaped" (but, as Houssay has conclusively
+demonstrated, really octopus-shaped) vases and a metal figurine found by
+Schliemann in his excavations of the hill at Hissarlik.[318] The
+swastika is represented upon the _mons Veneris_ of these figures, which
+represent the Great Mother in her form as a woman or as a pot, which is
+an anthropomorphized octopus, one of the avatars of the Great Mother.
+The symbol seems to have been intended as a fertility amulet like the
+cowry, either suspended from a girdle or depicted upon a pubic shield or
+conventionalized fig-leaf.
+
+Wherever it is found the swastika is supposed to be an amulet to confer
+"good luck" and long life. Both this reputation and the association with
+the female organs of reproduction link up the symbol with the cowry, the
+_Pterocera_, and the octopus. It is clear then that the swastika has the
+same reputation for magic and the same attributes and associations as
+the octopus; and it may be a conventionalized representation of it, as
+Houssay has suggested.
+
+It must not be assumed that the identification of the swastika with the
+Great Mother and her powers of giving life and resurrection
+_necessarily_ invalidates the solar and astral theories recently
+championed by Mr. Cook and Mrs. Nuttall respectively. I have already
+called attention to the fact that the Sun-god derived his existence and
+all his attributes from his mother. The whole symbolism of the Winged
+Disk and the Wheel of the Sun and their reputation for life-giving and
+destruction were adopted from the Great Mother. These well-established
+facts should prepare us to recognize that the admission of the truth of
+Houssay's suggestion would not necessarily invalidate the more widely
+accepted solar significance of the swastika.
+
+Tuempel called attention to the fact that, when they set about
+conventionalizing the octopus, the Mycenaean artists often resorted to
+the practice of representing pairs of "arms" as units and so making
+four-limbed and three-limbed forms (Fig. 23), which Houssay regards as
+the prototypes of the swastika and the triskele respectively. That such
+a process may have played a part in the development of the symbol is
+further suggested by the form of a Transcaucasian swastika found by
+Roessler,[319] who assigns it to the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age. Each
+of the four limbs is bifurcated at its extremity. Moreover they exhibit
+the series of spots, so often found upon or alongside the limbs of the
+symbol, which suggest the conventional way of representing the suckers
+of the octopus in the Mycenaean designs (Fig. 23).
+
+Another remarkable picture of a swastika-like emblem has been found in
+America.[320] The elephant-headed god sits in the centre and four pairs
+of arms radiate from him, each of them equipped with definite suckers.
+
+Another possible way in which the design of a four-limbed swastika may
+have been derived from an octopus is suggested by the gypsum weight
+found in 1901 by Sir Arthur Evans[321] in the West Magazine of the
+palace at Knossos (_circa_ 1500 B.C.). Upon the surface of this weight
+the form of an octopus has been depicted, four of the arms of which
+stand out in much stronger relief than the others.
+
+The number four has a peculiar mystical significance (_vide infra_, p.
+206) and is especially associated with the Sun-god Horus. This fact may
+have played some part in the process of reduction of the number of limbs
+of the octopus to four; or alternatively it may have helped to emphasize
+the solar associations of the symbol, which other considerations were
+responsible for suggesting. The designs upon the pots from Hissarlik
+show that at a relatively early epoch the swastika was confused with the
+sun's disc represented as a wheel with four spokes.[322] But the solar
+attributes of the swastika are secondary to those of life-giving and
+luck-bringing, with which it was originally endowed as a form of the
+Great Mother.
+
+The only serious fact which arouses some doubt as to the validity of
+Houssay's theory is the discovery of an early painted vase at Susa
+decorated with an unmistakable swastika. Edmond Pottier, who has
+described the ceramic ware from Susa,[323] regards this pot as
+Proto-Elamite of the earliest period. If Pottier's claim is justified we
+have in this isolated specimen from Susa the earliest example of the
+swastika. Moreover, it comes from a region in which the symbol was
+supposed to be wholly absent.
+
+This raises a difficult problem for solution. Is the Proto-Elamite
+swastika the prototype of the symbol whose world-wide migrations have
+been studied by Wilson (_op. cit. supra_)? Or is it an instance of
+independent evolution? If it falls within the first category and is
+really the parent of the early Anatolian swastikas, how is it to be
+explained? Was the conventionalization of the octopus design much more
+ancient than the earliest Trojan examples of the symbol? Or was the
+Susian design adopted in the West and given a symbolic meaning which it
+did not have before then?
+
+These are questions which we are unable to answer at present because the
+necessary information is lacking. I have enumerated them merely to
+suggest that any hasty inferences regarding the bearing of the Susian
+design upon the general problem are apt to be misleading. Vincent[324]
+claims that the fact of the swastika having been in use by ceramic
+artists in Crete and Susiana many centuries before the appearance of
+Mycenaean art is fatal to Houssay's hypothesis. But I think it is too
+soon to make such an assumption. The swastika was already a rigidly
+conventionalized symbol when we first know it both in the Mediterranean
+and in Susiana. It may therefore have a long history behind it. The
+octopus may possibly have begun to play a part in the development of
+this symbolism before the Egyptian Bes (_vide supra_, p. 171) was
+evolved, perhaps even before the time of the Coptos statues of Min
+(_supra_, p. 169), or in the early days of Sumerian history when the
+conventional form of the water-pot was being determined (_infra_, p.
+179). These are mere conjectures, which I mention merely for the purpose
+of suggesting that the time is not yet ripe for using such arguments as
+Vincent's finally to dispose of Houssay's octopus-theory.
+
+There can be no doubt that the symbolism of the Mycenaean spiral and the
+volute is closely related to the octopus. In fact, the evidence provided
+by Minoan paintings and Mycenaean decorative art demonstrates that the
+spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the
+octopus. The use of the volute on Egyptian scarabs[325] and also in the
+decoration of an early Thracian statuette of a nude goddess[326]
+indicate that it was employed like the spiral and octopus as a
+life-symbol.
+
+In Spanish graves of the Early and Middle Neolithic types M. Siret found
+cowry-shells in association with a series of flint implements, crude
+idols, and pottery almost precisely reproducing the forms of similar
+objects found with cowries and pecten shells at Hissarlik.[327] But when
+the AEneolithic phase of culture dawned in Spain, and the AEgean
+octopus-motif made its appearance there, the culture as a whole reveals
+unmistakable evidence of a predominantly Egyptian inspiration.
+
+M. Siret claims, however, that, even in the Neolithic phase in Spain,
+the crude idols represent forms derived from the octopus in the Eastern
+Mediterranean (p. 59 _et seq._). He regards the octopus as "a
+conventional symbol of the ocean, or, more precisely, of the fertilizing
+watery principle" (p. 19). He elucidates a very interesting feature of
+the AEneolithic representation of the octopus in Spain. The spiral-motif
+of the AEgean gives place to an angular design, which he claims to be due
+to the influence of the conventional Egyptian way of representing water
+(p. 40). If this interpretation is correct--and, in spite of the
+slenderness of the evidence, I am inclined to accept it--it affords a
+remarkable illustration of the effects of culture-contact in the
+conventionalization of designs, to which Dr. Rivers has called
+attention.[328] Whatever explanation may be provided of this method of
+representing the arms of the octopus with its angularly bent
+extremities, it seems to have an important bearing on Houssay's
+hypothesis of the swastika's origin. For it would reveal the means by
+which the spiral or volute shape of the limbs of the swastika became
+transformed into the angular form, which is so characteristic of the
+conventional symbol.[329]
+
+The significance of the spiral as a form of the Great Mother inevitably
+led to its identification with the thunder weapon, like all her other
+surrogates. I have already referred (Chapter II, p. 98) to the
+association of the spiral with thunder and lightning in Eastern Asia.
+But other factors played a significant part in determining this
+specialization. In Egypt the god Amen was identified with the ram; and
+this creature's spirally curved horn became the symbol of the
+thunder-god throughout the Mediterranean area,[330] and then further
+afield in Europe, Africa, and Asia, where, for instance, we see Agni's
+ram with the characteristic horn. This blending of the influence of the
+octopus- and the ram's-horn-motifs made the spiral a conventional
+representation of thunder. This is displayed in its most definite form
+in China, Japan, Indonesia, and America, where we find the separate
+spiral used as a thunder-symbol, and the spiral appendage on the side of
+the head as a token of the god of thunder.[331]
+
+
+[316: Thomas Wilson ("The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and its
+Migrations; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in
+Prehistoric Times," _Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1894_,
+Washington, 1896) has given a full and well-illustrated summary of most
+of the literature: further information is provided by Count d'Alviella
+(_op. cit. supra_), "The Migration of Symbols"; by Zelia Nuttall ("The
+Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations,"
+_Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum_,
+Cambridge, Mass., 1901); and Arthur Bernard Cook ("Zeus, A Study in
+Ancient Religion," Vol. I, Cambridge, 1914, pp. 472 _et seq._).]
+
+[317: Since this has been printed Mr. W. J. Perry has called my
+attention to a short article by Rene Croste ("Le Svastika," _Bull.
+Trimestriel de la Societe Bayonnaise d'Etudes Regionales_, 1918), in
+which Houssay's hypothesis is mentioned as having been adopted by
+Guilleminot ("Les Nouveaux Horizons de la Science").]
+
+[318: Wilson (_op. cit._, pp. 829-33 and Figs. 125, 128, and 129) has
+collected the relevant passages and illustrations from Schliemann's
+writings.]
+
+[319: _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, Bd. 37, p. 148.]
+
+[320: Seler, _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, Bd., 41, p. 409.]
+
+[321: _Corolla Numismatica_, 1906, p. 342.]
+
+[322: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," pp. 198 _et seq_.]
+
+[323: "Etude Historique et Chronologique sur les Vases Peints de
+l'Acropole de Suse," _Memoires de la Delegation en Perse_, T. XIII,
+_Rech. Archeol._, 5^e serie, 1912, Plate XLI, Fig. 3.]
+
+[324: "Canaan," p. 340, footnote.]
+
+[325: Alice Grenfell, _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol. II, 1915,
+p. 217: and _Ancient Egypt_, 1916, Part I, p. 23.]
+
+[326: S. Reinach, _Revue Archeol._, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 369.]
+
+[327: L. Siret, "Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Iberiques,"
+1913, p. 18, Fig. 3.]
+
+[328: Rivers, "History of Melanesian Society," Vol. II, p. 374; also
+_Report Brit. Association_, 1912, p. 599.]
+
+[329: M. Siret assigns the date of the appearance in Spain of the highly
+conventionalized angular form of octopus to the time between the
+fifteenth and the twelfth centuries B.C.; and he attributes it to
+Phoenician influence (p. 63).]
+
+[330: Cook, "Zeus," p. 346 _et seq._]
+
+[331: This is well shown upon the Copan representations (Fig. 19) of the
+elephant-headed god--see _Nature_, November, 25, 1915, p. 340.]
+
+
+The Mother Pot.
+
+In the lecture on "Incense and Libations" (Chapter I) I referred to the
+enrichment of the conception of water's life-giving properties which the
+inclusion of the idea of human fertilization by water involved. When
+this event happened a new view developed in explanation of the part
+played by woman in reproduction. She was no longer regarded as the real
+parent of mankind, but as the matrix in which the seed was planted and
+nurtured during the course of its growth and development. Hence in the
+earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic writing the picture of a pot of water was
+taken as the symbol of womanhood, the "vessel" which received the seed.
+A globular water-pot, the common phonetic value of which is _Nw_ or
+_Nu_, was the symbol of the cosmic waters, the god _Nw (Nu)_, whose
+female counterpart was the goddess _Nut_.
+
+In his report, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs,"[332] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith
+discusses the bowl of water (a) and says that it stands for the female
+principle in the words for _vulva_ and woman. When it is recalled that
+the cowry (and other shells) had the same double significance, the
+possibility suggests itself whether at times confusion may not have
+arisen between the not very dissimilar hieroglyphic signs for "a shell"
+(h) and "the bowl of water" (woman) (f).[333]
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 6.
+
+(a) Picture of a bowl of water--the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to _hm_
+(the word _hmt_ means "woman")--Griffith, "Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate
+VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29.
+
+(b) "A basket of sycamore figs"--Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Vol.
+I, p. 323.
+
+(c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning
+"wife" and are apparently taken from (b). But (c) is identical with (i),
+which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve shell (g,
+from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely (h). The varying
+conventionalizations of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f)
+(Griffith, "Hieroglyphics," p. 34).
+
+(k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic equivalent of the
+sign (h), and, according to Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 26), "is
+probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like
+outline".
+
+(l) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as _Nu_
+and _Nut_.
+
+(m) A "pomegranate" (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column at
+Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 46).
+
+(n) The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the coins
+of Central Greece (compare Fig. 24 (d)). Its similarity to the Egyptian
+pot-sign (l) (which also has the significance of mother-goddess) is
+worthy of note.]
+
+Referring to the sign (g and h) for "a shell," Mr. Griffith says (p.
+25): "It is regularly found at all periods in the word _haw.t_ =
+altar,[334] and perhaps only in this word: but it is a peculiarity of
+the Pyramid Texts that the sign shown in the text-figures _c_, _h_,
+and _i_ is in them used very commonly, not as a word-sign, but also
+as a phonetic equivalent to the sign labelled _k_ (in the text-figure)
+for _h'_ (_kha_), or apparently for _h_ alone in many words.
+
+"The name of the lotus leaf is probably derived from the same root, on
+account of its shell-like outline or _vice versa_."
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 7.
+
+(a) An Egyptian design representing the sun-god Horus emerging from a
+lotus, representing his mother Hathor (Isis).
+
+(b) Papyrus sceptre often carried by goddesses and animistically
+identified with them either as an instrument of life-giving or
+destruction.
+
+(c) Conventionalized lily--the prototype of the trident and the
+thunder-weapon.
+
+(d) A water-plant associated with the Nile-gods.]
+
+The familiar representation of Horus (and his homologues in India and
+elsewhere) being born from the lotus suggests that the flower represents
+his mother Hathor. But as the argument in these pages has led us towards
+the inference that the original form of Hathor was a shell-amulet,[335]
+it seems not unlikely that her identification with the lotus may have
+arisen from the confusion between the latter and the cowry, which no
+doubt was also in part due to the belief that both the shell and the
+plant were expressions of the vital powers of the water in which they
+developed.
+
+The identification of the Great Mother with a pot was one of the factors
+that played a part in the assimilation of her attributes with those of
+the Water God, who in early Sumerian pictures was usually represented
+pouring the life-giving waters from his pot (Fig. 24, _h_ and _l_).
+
+[Illustration:
+
+Fig. 24.
+
+(a) and (b) Two Mycenaean pots (after Schliemann).
+
+(a) The so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the
+Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
+
+(b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon
+her head and another in her hands--a three-fold representation of the
+Great Mother as a pot.
+
+(c) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is
+represented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form.
+
+(d), (e), (f), (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after
+Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with its
+pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f).
+
+(i) _Sepia officinalis_ (after Tryon).
+
+(k) and (l) The so-called "spouting vases" in the hands of the
+Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of
+Tello, after Ward ("Seal Cylinders, etc.," p. 215).
+
+The "spouting vases" have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia to
+suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of
+the latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and
+cephalopods in Western Asia and the Mediterranean.]
+
+This idea of the Mother Pot is found not only in Babylonia, Egypt,
+India,[336] and the Eastern Mediterranean, but wherever the influence of
+these ancient civilizations made itself felt. It is widespread among the
+Celtic-speaking peoples. In Wales the pot's life-giving powers are
+enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea spread, its
+meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a
+basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's cauldron, the
+magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the
+faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense
+as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so Mr. Donald
+Mackenzie tells me, is closely associated with cows, serpents, frogs,
+dragons, birds, pearls, and "nine maidens that blow the fire under the
+cauldron"; and, if the nature of these relationships be examined, each
+of them will be found to be a link between the pot and the Great Mother.
+
+The witch's cauldron and the maidens who assist in the preparation of
+the witch's medicine seem to be the descendants respectively of Hathor's
+pots (in the story of the Destruction of Mankind) and the Sekti who
+churn up the _didi_ and the barley with which to make the elixir of
+immortality and the sedative draught for the destructive goddess
+herself.
+
+Mr. Donald Mackenzie has given me a number of additional references from
+Celtic and Indian literature in corroboration of these widespread
+associations of the pot with the Great Mother; and he reminds me that in
+Oceania the coco-nut has the same reputation as the pot in the Indian
+_Mahabharata_. It is the source of food and anything else that is
+wanted, and its supply can never be exhausted. [On some future occasion
+I hope to make use of the wonderful legends of the pot's life-giving
+powers, to which Mr. Mackenzie has directed my attention. At present,
+however, I must content myself with the statement that the pot's
+identity with the Great Mother is deeply rooted in ancient belief
+throughout the greater part of the world.[337]]
+
+The diverse conceptions of the Great Mother as a pot and as an octopus
+seem to have been blended in Mycenaean lands, where the so-called
+"owl-shaped" pots were clearly intended to represent the goddess in both
+these aspects united in one symbol. When the diffusion of these ideas
+into more remote parts of the world took place syntheses with other
+motives produced a great variety of most complex forms. In Honduras
+pottery vessels have been found[338] which give tangible expression to
+the blending of the ideas of the Mother Pot, the crocodile-like
+_Makara_, star-spangled like Hathor's cow, Aphrodite's pig, and Soma's
+deer, and provided with the deer's antlers of the Eastern Asiatic dragon
+(see Chapter II, p. 103).
+
+The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and
+rebirth. When Nicodemus asks: "How can a man be born again when he is
+old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" he
+is told: "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot
+enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh:
+and that which is born of the spirit is spirit" (John iii. 4, 5, and 6).
+
+The phrase "born of water" refers to the birth "of the flesh"; and the
+mother's womb is the vessel containing "the water" from which the new
+life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of Isis:
+"[Greek: tetarte de ten Isin en panygrois genesthai]". The great waters
+which produced all living things, the Egyptian god Nun and the goddess
+Nut, were expressed in hieroglyphic as pots of water. The goddess was
+identified with Hathor's celestial star-spangled cow, the original
+mother of the sun-god; and the word "Nun" was a symbol of all that was
+new, young, and fresh, and the fertilizing and life-giving waters of the
+annual inundation of the Nile. Hathor was the daughter of these waters,
+as Aphrodite was sprung from the sea-foam.
+
+
+[332: _Archaeol. Survey of Egypt_, 1898, p. 3.]
+
+[333: Compare the two-fold meaning of the Latin _testa_ as "shell" and
+"bowl".]
+
+[334: Compare the association of shells with altars in Minoan Crete and
+the widespread use of large shells as bowls for "holy water" in
+Christian churches.]
+
+[335: Miss Winifred M. Crompton, Assistant Keeper of the Egyptian
+Department of the Manchester Museum, has called my attention to a
+remarkable piece of evidence which affords additional corroboration of
+the view that Hathor was a development of the cowry-amulet. Upon the
+famous archaic palette of Narmer (Fig. 18), a sporran, composed of four
+representations of Hathor's head, takes the place of the original
+cowries that were suspended from more primitive girdles.
+
+The cowries of the head ornament of primitive peoples of Africa and Asia
+(and of the Mediterranean area in early times--Schliemann's "Ilios,"
+Fig. 685) are often replaced in Egypt by lotus flowers (W. D. Spanton,
+"Water Lilies of Egypt," _Ancient Egypt_, 1917, Part I, Figs. 19, 20,
+and 21). Upon the head-band of the statue of Nefert, which I have
+reproduced in Chapter I (Fig. 4), a conventional lotus design is found
+(see Spanton's Fig. 19), which is almost identical with the classical
+thunder-weapon.]
+
+[336: Among the Dravidian people at the present day the seven goddesses
+(corresponding to the seven Hathors) are often represented by seven
+pots.]
+
+[337: The luxuriant crop of stories of the Holy Grail was not inspired
+originally by mere literary invention. A tradition sprung from the
+fountain-head of all mythology, the parent-story of the Destruction of
+Mankind, provided the materials which a series of writers elaborated
+into the varied assortment of legends of the Mother Pot. The true
+meaning of the Quest of the Holy Grail can be understood only by reading
+the fabled accounts of it in the light of the ancient search for the
+elixir of life and the historical development of the narrative
+describing that search.
+
+A concise summary of the Grail literature will be found in Jessie L.
+Weston's "The Quest of the Holy Grail" (1913). Her theory will be found,
+after some slight modifications, to fall into line with the general
+argument of this book.
+
+Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the verb
+"coire cum" gives frank expression to the real meaning of the symbolism
+of the pot as the matrix which receives the seed. The same idea provides
+the material for the incident of the birth of Drona (the pot-born) in
+the Adi Parva (Sections CXXXI, CXXXIX, and CLXVIII, in Roy's
+translation) of the Mahabharata, to which Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie has
+kindly called my attention. Drona was conceived in a pot from the seed
+of a Rishi. A widespread variant of the same story is the conception of
+a child from a drop of blood in a pot (see, for example, Hartland,
+"Legend of Perseus," Vol. I, pp. 98 and 144). If the pot can thus create
+a human being, it is easy to understand how it acquired its reputation
+of being also able to multiply food and provide an inexhaustible supply.
+Similarly, all substances, such as barley, rice, gold, pearls, and jade,
+to which the possession of a special vital essence or "soul substance"
+was attributed, were believed to be able to reproduce themselves and so
+increase in quantity of their own activities. As "givers of life" they
+were also able to add to their own life-substance, in other words to
+grow like any other living being.]
+
+[338: "An American Dragon," _Man_, November, 1918.]
+
+
+Artemis and the Guardian of the Portal.
+
+Sir Gardner Wilkinson states (see text-figure, p. 179, _b_) that "a
+basket of sycamore figs" was originally the hieroglyphic sign for a
+woman, a goddess, or a mother. Later on (p. 199) I shall refer to the
+possible bearing of this Egyptian idea upon the origin of the Hebrew
+word for mandrakes and the allusion to "a basket of figs" in the Book
+of Jeremiah.
+
+The life-giving powers attributed to "love-apples" and the association
+of these ideas with the fig-tree may have facilitated the transference
+of these attributes of "apples" to those actually growing upon a tree.
+
+We know that Aphrodite was intimately associated, not only with
+"love-apples," but also with real apples. The sun-god Apollo's connexion
+with the apple-tree, which Dr. Rendel Harris, with great daring, wants
+to convert into an identity of name, was probably only one of the
+results of that long series of confusions between the Great Mother
+(Hathor) and the Sun-god (Horus), to which I have referred in my
+discussion of the dragon-story.
+
+But when Apollo's form emerges more clearly he is associated not with
+Aphrodite but with Artemis, whom Dr. Rendel Harris has shown to be
+identified with the mugwort, _Artemisia_. The association of the goddess
+with this plant is probably related to the identification of Sekhet with
+the marsh-plants of the Egyptian Delta and of Hathor and Isis with the
+lotus and other water plants. Any doubt as to the reality of these
+associations and Egyptian connexions is banished by the evidence of
+Artemis's male counterpart Apollo Hyakinthos and his relations to the
+sacred lily and other water plants.[339] Artemis was a gynaecological
+specialist: for she assisted women not only in childbirth and the
+expulsion of the placenta, but also in cases of amenorrhoea and
+affections of the uterus. She was regarded as the goddess of the portal,
+not merely of birth,[340] but also of gold and treasure, of which she
+possessed the key, and of the year (January).
+
+This brings us back to the guardianship of gold and treasures which
+plays so vital a part in the evolution of the Mediterranean goddesses.
+For, like the story of the dog and the mandrake, it emphasizes the
+conchological ancestry of these deities and their connexion with the
+guardians of the subterranean palaces where pearls are found. But
+Artemis was not only the opener of the treasure-houses, but she also
+possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone: she could transmute
+base substances into gold,[341] for was she not the offspring of the
+Golden Hathor? To open the portal either of birth or wealth she used her
+magic wand or key. As _Nub_, the lady of gold, the Great Mother could
+not only change other substances into gold, but she was also the
+guardian of the treasure house of gold, pearls, and precious stones.
+Hence she could grant riches. Elsewhere in this chapter (p. 221) I shall
+explain how the goddess came to be identified with gold.
+
+Just as Hathor, the Eye of Re, descended to provide the elixir of youth
+for the king who was the sun-god, so Artemis is described as
+travelling through the air in a car drawn by two serpents[342] seeking
+the most pious of kings in order that she might establish her cult with
+him and bless him with renewed youth.[343]
+
+Artemis was a moon-goddess closely related to Britomartis and Diktynna,
+the Cretan prototype of Aphrodite. These goddesses afforded help to
+women in childbirth and were regarded as guardians of the portal. The
+goddess of streams and marshes was identified with the mugwort
+(_Artemisia_), which was hung above the door in the place occupied at
+other times by the winged disk, the thunder-stone, or a crocodile
+(dragon). As the guardian of portals Artemis's magic plant could open
+locks and doors. As the giver of life she could also withhold the vital
+essence and so cause disease or death; but she possessed the means of
+curing the ills she inflicted. Artemis, in fact, like all the other
+goddesses, was a witch.
+
+In former lectures[344] I have often discussed the remarkable feature of
+Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate
+the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples
+become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways
+or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by
+this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the
+symbolic gateways of China and Japan.
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 25.
+
+(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I.
+
+(b) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal
+Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109).
+
+(c) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life
+in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).
+
+(d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the
+design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670).
+
+(e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig.
+663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains:
+alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle.
+
+(f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig.
+9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe, into
+which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was the
+prototype of the Winged Disk has been added.
+
+(g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenae (after
+Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10).
+
+(h) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the
+wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in _g_.
+
+(i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate" (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the
+Goddess of the Portal.
+
+(k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the form
+suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, _c_).
+
+(l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized
+(Ward, Fig. 695).
+
+(m) Assyrian Tree of Life and "Winged Disk" in which the god is riding
+in a crescent replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695).]
+
+This significance of gates was no doubt suggested by the idea that they
+represented the means of communication between the living and the dead,
+and, symbolically, the portal by which the dead acquired a rebirth into
+a new form of existence. It was presumably for this reason that the
+winged disk as a symbol of life-giving, was placed above the lintels of
+these doors, not merely in Egypt, Phoenicia, the Mediterranean Area, and
+Western Asia, but also in America,[345] and in modified forms in India,
+Indonesia, Melanesia, Cambodia, China, and Japan.
+
+The discussion (Chapter II) of the means by which the winged disk came
+to acquire the power of life-giving, "the healing in its wings," will
+have made it clear that the sun became accredited with these virtues
+only when it assumed the place of the other "Eye of Re," the Great
+Mother. In fact, it was a not uncommon practice in Egypt to represent
+the eyes of Re or of Horus himself in place of the more usual winged
+disk. In the AEgean area the original practice of representing the Great
+Mother was retained long after it was superseded in Egypt by the use of
+the winged disk (the sun-god).
+
+Over the lintel of the famous "Lion Gate" at Mycenae, instead of the
+winged disk, we find a vertical pillar to represent the Mother Goddess,
+flanked by two lions which are nothing more than other representatives
+of herself (Fig. 26). [Illustration: Fig. 26.
+
+(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains of the horizon
+(on which trees are growing) (after Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," Vol.
+II, p. 101). [This is a part only of a scene in which the goddess Nut is
+giving birth to the sun, whose rays illuminate Hathor on the horizon, as
+Sothis, the "Opener of the Way" for the sun.]
+
+(b) The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a surrogate
+of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in the
+Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, _op. cit._, p. 39). This indicates the
+identity of what Evans calls "the horns of consecration" and the
+"mountains of the horizon," and also suggests how confusion may have
+arisen between the mountains and the cow's horns.
+
+(c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the Eastern
+Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, _op. cit._, p. 373).
+
+(d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the
+Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to "the
+ridiculous mouse"--Smintheus). The _ankh_ (life-sign) below the sun is
+the determinative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is
+heraldically supported by the Great Mother's lionesses.
+
+(e) Part of the design from a Mycenaean vase from Old Salamis (after
+Evans, p. 9). The cow's head and the Eastern Mountains are shown
+alongside one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe
+representing the god.
+
+(f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Idaean Cave, now in
+the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). If this design be compared
+with the Egyptian picture (a), it will be seen that Hathor's place is
+taken by the tree-form of the Great Mother, and the trees which in the
+former (a) are growing upon the Eastern Mountains are now placed
+alongside the "horns". In the complete design (_vide_ Evans, _op. cit._,
+p. 44) a votary is represented blowing a conch-shell trumpet to animate
+the deity in the sacred tree.
+
+(g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of the goddess
+(after Evans, Fig. 66).
+
+(h) Another Mycenaean design comparable with (e).
+
+(i) Design from a signet-ring from Mycenae (after Evans, Fig. 34). If
+this be compared with the Egyptian picture (a) it will be noted that the
+Great Mother is now replaced by a tree: the Eastern Mountains by bulls,
+from whose backs the trees of the Eastern Mountains are sprouting. This
+design affords interesting corroboration of the suggestion that the
+Eastern Mountains may be confused with the cow's head (see _b_ and _c_)
+or with the cow itself. Newberry (_Annals of Archaeology and
+Anthropology_, Liverpool, Vol. I, p. 28) has called attention to the
+intimate association (in Protodynastic Egypt) of the Eastern Mountains,
+the Bull and the Double Axe--a certain token of cultural contact
+with Crete.
+
+(k) The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycenae. The pillar form
+of the Great Mother heraldically supported by her lioness-avatars, which
+correspond to the cattle of the design (i) and the Eastern Mountains of
+(a). The use of this design above the lintel of the gate brings it into
+homology with the Winged Disk. The Pillar represents the Goddess, as the
+Disk represents her Egyptian _locum tenens_, Horus; her destructive
+representatives (the lionesses) correspond to the two uraei of the Winged
+Disk design.]
+
+In his "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," Sir Arthur Evans has shown that
+all possible transitional forms can be found (in Crete and the AEgean
+area) between the representation of the actual goddess and her
+pillar-and tree-manifestations, until the stage is reached where the sun
+itself appears above the pillar between the lions.[346] In the large
+series of seals from Mesopotamia and Western Asia which have been
+described in Mr. William Hayes Ward's monograph,[347] we find manifold
+links between both the Egyptian and the Minoan cults.
+
+The tree-form of the Great Mother there becomes transformed into the
+"tree of life" and the winged disk is perched upon its summit. Thus we
+have a duplication of the life-giving deities. The "tree of life" of the
+Great Mother surmounted by the winged disk which is really her surrogate
+or that of the sun-god, who took over from her the power of life-giving
+(Figs. 25 and 26).
+
+In an interesting Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada[348] the
+life-giving power is _tripled_. There is not only the tree representing
+the Great Mother herself; but also the double axe (the winged-disk
+homologue of the sun-god); and the more direct representation of him as
+a bird perched upon the axe (Fig. 25, _f_).
+
+The identification of the Great Mother with the tree or pillar seems
+also to have led to her confusion with the pestle with which the
+materials for her draught of immortality was pounded. She was also the
+bowl or mortar in which the pestle worked.[349]
+
+As the Great Mother became confused with the pestle, so, "the
+Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the
+Soma-libation, becomes in the _Vedas_ itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a
+very characteristic and frequent Oriental conceit in accordance with
+which the agent and the person or thing acted on are identified".[350]
+
+"The pressing-stones by means of which Soma is crushed typify
+thunderbolts." "In the _Rig-Veda_, we read of him [Soma] as
+_jyotihrathah_, _i.e._ 'mounted on a car of light' (IX, 5, 86, verse
+43); or again: 'Like a hero he holds weapons in his hand ... mounted on
+a chariot' (IX, 4, 76, verse 2)"--(p. 171).
+
+"Soma was the giver of power, of riches and treasures, flocks and herds,
+but above all, the giver of immortality" (p. 140).
+
+Sir Arthur Evans is of opinion "that in the case of the Cypriote
+cylinders the attendant monsters and, to a certain extent, the symbolic
+column itself, are taken from an Egyptian solar cycle, and the inference
+has been drawn that the aniconic pillars among the Mycenaeans of Cyprus
+were identified with divinities having some points in common with the
+sun-gods Ra, or Horus, and Hathor, the Great Mother" (_op. cit._, pp. 63
+and 64).
+
+In attempting to find some explanation of how the tree or pillar of the
+goddess came to be replaced in the Indian legend by Mount Meru, the
+possibility suggests itself whether the aniconic form of the Great
+Mother placed between two relatively diminutive hills may not have
+helped, by confusion, to convert the cone itself into a yet bigger hill,
+which was identified with Mount Meru, the summit of which in other
+legends produced the _amrita_ of the gods, either in the form of the
+soma plant that grew upon its heights, or the rain clouds which
+collected there. But, as the subsequent argument will make clear, the
+real reason for the identification of the Great Mother with a mountain
+was the belief that the sun was born from the splitting of the eastern
+mountain, which thus assumed the function of the sun-god's mother.
+Possibly the association of the tops of mountains with cloud- and
+rain-phenomena and the gods that controlled them played some part in
+the development of the symbolism of mountains. [When I referred (in
+Chapter II, p. 98) to the fact that what Sir Arthur Evans calls "the
+horns of consecration" was primarily the split mountain of the dawn, I
+was not aware that Professor Newberry ("Two Cults of the Old Kingdom,"
+_Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology_, Liverpool, Vol. I, 1908, p. 28)
+had already suggested this identification.]
+
+In the Egyptian story the god Re instructed the Sekti of Heliopolis to
+pound the materials for the food of immortality. In the Indian version,
+the gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover some elixir
+which would make them immortal. To this end, Mount Meru [the Great
+Mother] was cast into the sea [of milk]. Vishnu, in his second avatar as
+a tortoise[351] supported the mountain on his back; and the Naga serpent
+Vasuki was then twisted around the mountain, the gods seizing its head
+and the demons his tail twirled the mountain until they had churned the
+amrita or water of life. Wilfrid Jackson has called attention to the
+fact that this scene has been depicted, not only in India and Japan, but
+also in the Precolumbian _Codex Cortes_ drawn by some Maya artist in
+Central America.[352]
+
+The horizon is the birthplace of the gods; and the birth of the deity is
+depicted with literal crudity as an emergence from the portal between
+its two mountains. The mountain splits to give birth to the sun-god,
+just as in the later fable the parturient mountain produced the
+"ridiculous mouse" (Apollo Smintheus). The Great Mother is described as
+giving birth--"the gates of the firmament are undone for Teti himself at
+break of day" [that is when the sun-god is born on the horizon]. "He
+comes forth from the Field of Earu" (Egyptian Pyramid Texts--Breasted's
+translation).
+
+In the domain of Olympian obstetrics the analogy between birth and the
+emergence from the door of a house or the gateway of a temple is a
+common theme of veiled reference. Artemis, for instance, is a goddess of
+the portal, and is not only a helper in childbirth, but also grows in
+her garden a magical herb which is capable of opening locks. This
+reputation, however, was acquired not merely by reason of her skill in
+midwifery, but also as an outcome of the legend[353] of the
+treasure-house of pearls which was under the guardianship of the great
+"giver of life" and of which she kept the magic key. She was in fact
+the feminine form of Janus, the doorkeeper who presided over all
+beginnings, whether of birth, or of any kind of enterprise or new
+venture, or the commencement of the year (like Hathor). Janus was the
+guardian of the door of Olympus itself, the gate of rebirth into the
+immortality of the gods.
+
+The ideas underlying these conceptions found expression in an endless
+variety of forms, material, intellectual, and moral, wherever the
+influence of civilization made itself felt. I shall refer only to one
+group of these expressions that is directly relevant to the
+subject-matter of this book. I mean the custom of suspending or
+representing the life-giving symbol above the portal of temples and
+houses. Thus the plant peculiar to Artemis herself, the mugwort or
+Artemisia, was hung above the door,[354] just as the winged disk was
+sculptured upon the lintel, or the thunder-stone was placed above the
+door of the cowhouse[355] to afford the protection of the Great Mother's
+powers of life-giving to her own cattle.
+
+In the Pyramid Texts the rebirth of a dead pharaoh is described with
+vivid realism and directness. "The waters of life which are in the sky
+come. The waters of life which are in the earth come. The sky burns for
+thee, the earth trembles for thee, before the birth of the god. The two
+hills are divided, the god comes into being, the god takes possession of
+his body. The two hills are divided, this Neferkere comes into being,
+this Neferkere takes possession of his body. Behold this Neferkere--his
+feet are kissed by the pure waters which are from Atum, which the
+phallus of Shu made, which the vulva of Tefnut brought into being. They
+have come, they have brought for thee the pure waters from their
+father."[356]
+
+The Egyptians entertained the belief[357] that the sun-god was born of
+the celestial cow Mehetweret, a name which means "Great Flood," and
+is the equivalent of the primeval ocean Nun. In other words the
+celestial cow Hathor, the embodiment of the life-giving waters of heaven
+and earth, is the mother of Horus. So also Aphrodite was born of the
+"Great Flood" which is the ocean.
+
+In his report upon the hieroglyphs of Beni Hasan,[358] Mr. Griffith
+refers to the picture of "a woman of the marshes," which is read
+_sekht_, and is "used to denote the goddess Sekhet, the goddess of the
+marshes, who presided over the occupations of the dwellers there. Chief
+among these occupations must have been the capture of fish and fowl and
+the culture and gathering of water-plants, especially the papyrus and
+the lotus". Sekhet was in fact a rude prototype of Artemis in the
+character depicted by Dr. Rendel Harris.[359]
+
+It is perhaps not without significance that the root of a marsh plant,
+the _Iris pseudacorus_[360] is regarded in Germany as a luck-bringer
+which can take the place of the mandrake.[361]
+
+The Great Mother wields a magic wand which the ancient Egyptian scribes
+called the "Great Magician". It was endowed with the two-fold powers of
+life-giving and opening, which from the beginning were intimately
+associated the one with the other from the analogy of the act of birth,
+which was both an opening and a giving of life. Hence the "magic wand"
+was a key or "opener of the ways," wherewith, at the ceremonies of
+resurrection, the mouth was opened for speech and the taking of food, as
+well as for the passage of the breath of life, the eyes were opened for
+sight, and the ears for hearing. Both the physical act of opening (the
+"key" aspect) as well as the vital aspect of life-giving (which we may
+call the "uterine" aspect) were implied in this symbolism. Mr. Griffith
+suggests that the form of the magic wand may have been derived from that
+of a conventionalized picture of the uterus,[362] in its aspect as a
+giver of life. But it is possible also that its other significance as an
+"opener of the ways" may have helped in the confusion of the
+hieroglyphic uterus-symbol with the key-symbol, and possibly also with
+double-axe symbol which the vaguely defined early Cretan Mother-Goddess
+wielded. For, as we have already seen (_supra_, p. 122), the axe also
+was a life-giving divinity and a magic wand (Fig. 8).
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 8.
+
+(a) "Ceremonial forked object," or "magic wand," used in the ceremony of
+"opening the mouth," possibly connected with (b) (a bicornuate uterus),
+according to Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 60).
+
+(c) The Egyptian sign for a key.
+
+(d) The double axe of Crete and Egypt.]
+
+
+In his chapter on "the Origin of the Cult of Artemis," Dr. Rendel Harris
+refers to the reputation of Artemis as the patron of travellers, and to
+Parkinson's statement: "It is said of Pliny that if a traveller binde
+some of the hearbe [Artemisia] with him, he shall feele no weariness at
+all in his journey" (p. 72). Hence the high Dutch name _Beifuss_ is
+applied to it.
+
+The left foot of the dead was called "the staff of Hathor" by the
+Egyptians; and the goddess was said "to make the deceased's legs to
+walk".[363]
+
+It was a common practice to tie flowers to a mummy's feet, as I
+discovered in unwrapping the royal mummies. According to Moret (_op.
+cit._) the flowers of Upper and Lower Egypt were tied under the king's
+feet at the celebration of the Sed festival.
+
+Mr. Battiscombe Gunn (quoted by Dr. Alan Gardiner) states that the
+familiar symbol of life known as the _ankh_ represents the string of a
+sandal.[364]
+
+It seems to be worth considering whether the symbolism of the
+sandal-string may not have been derived from the life-girdle, which in
+ancient Indian medical treatises was linked in name with the female
+organs of reproduction and the pubic bones. According to Moret (_op.
+cit._, p. 91) a girdle furnished with a tail was used as a sign of
+consecration or attainment of the divine life after death. Jung (_op.
+cit._, p. 270), who, however, tries to find a phallic meaning in all
+symbolism, claims that reference to the foot has such a significance.
+
+
+[339: Evans, _op. cit._, p. 50.]
+
+[340: Her Latin representative, Diana, had a male counterpart and
+conjugate, Dianus, _i.e._ Janus, of whom it was said: "Ipse primum Janus
+cum puerperium concipitur ... aditum aperit recipiendo semini". For
+other quotations see Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 88 and the article
+"Janus" in Roscher's "Lexikon".]
+
+[341: Rendel Harris, p. 73.]
+
+[342: No doubt the two uraei of the Saga of the Winged Disk.]
+
+[343: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 244.]
+
+[344: _Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society_, 1916.]
+
+[345: "The Influence of Egyptian Civilization in the East and in
+America," _Bulletin of the John Rylands Library_, 1916.]
+
+[346: Evans's, Fig. 41, p. 63.]
+
+[347: "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," 1910.]
+
+[348: Paribeni, "Monumenti antichi dell'accademia dei Lincei," XIX,
+punt. 1, pll. 1-3; and V. Duhn, "Arch. f. Religionswissensch.," XII, p.
+161, pll. 2-4; quoted by Blinkenberg, "The Thunder Weapon," pp. 20 and
+21, Fig. 9.]
+
+[349: Without just reason, many writers have assumed that the pestle,
+which was identified with the handle used in the churning of the ocean
+(see de Gubernatis, "Zoological Mythology," Vol II, p. 361), was a
+phallic emblem. This meaning may have been given to the handle of the
+churn at a later period, when the churn itself was regarded as the
+Mother Pot or uterus; but we are not justified in assuming that this was
+its primary significance.]
+
+[350: Gladys M. N. Davis, "The Asiatic Dionysos," p. 172.]
+
+[351: The tortoise was the vehicle of Aphrodite also and her
+representatives in Central America.]
+
+[352: Jackson, "Shells, etc.," pp. 57 _et seq._]
+
+[353: _Vide supra_, p. 158.]
+
+[354: Rendel Harris, "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 80. In the building up
+of the idea of rebirth the ancients kept constantly before their minds a
+very concrete picture of the actual process of parturition and of the
+anatomy of the organs concerned in this physiological process. This is
+not the place to enter into a discussion of the anatomical facts
+represented in the symbolism of the "giver of life" presiding over the
+portal and the "two hills" which are divided at the birth of the deity:
+but the real significance of the primitive imagery cannot be wholly
+ignored if we want to understand the meaning of the phraseology used by
+the ancient writers.]
+
+[355: Blinkenberg, "The Thunder-weapon," p. 72.]
+
+[356: Aylward M. Blackman, "Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient
+Egypt," _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, March,
+1918, p. 64.]
+
+[357: _Op. cit._, p. 60.]
+
+[358: "Archaeol. Survey of Egypt," 5th Memoir, 1896, p. 31.]
+
+[359: See especially _op. cit._, p. 35, the goddess of streams and
+marshes, who was also herself "the mother plant," like the mother of
+Horus.]
+
+[360: Whose cultural associations with the Great Mother in the Eastern
+Mediterranean littoral has been discussed by Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenaean
+Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 49 _et seq._ Compare also _Apollo hyakinthos_
+as further evidence of the link with Artemis.]
+
+[361: P. J. Veth, "Internat. Arch. f. Ethnol.," Bd. 7, pp. 203 and 204.]
+
+[362: "Hieroglyphics," p. 60.]
+
+[363: Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, pp. 436 and 437.]
+
+[364: Alan Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings'
+_Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_.]
+
+
+The Mandrake.
+
+We have now given reasons for believing that the personification of the
+mandrake was in some way brought about by the transference to the plant
+of the magical virtues that originally belonged to the cowry shell.
+
+The problem that still awaits solution is the nature of the process by
+which the transference was effected.
+
+When I began this investigation the story of the Destruction of Mankind
+(see Chapter II) seemed to offer an explanation of the confusion.
+Brugsch, Naville, Maspero, Erman, and in fact most Egyptologists, seemed
+to be agreed that the magical substance from which the Egyptian elixir
+of life was made was the mandrake. As there was no hint[365] in the
+Egyptian story of the derivation of its reputation from the fancied
+likeness to the human form, its identification with Hathor seemed to be
+merely another instance of those confusions with which the pathway of
+mythology is so thickly strewn. In other words, the plant seemed to have
+been used merely to soothe the excited goddess: then the other
+properties of "the food of the gods," of which it was an ingredient,
+became transferred to the mandrake, so that it acquired the reputation
+of being a "giver of life" as well as a sedative. If this had been true
+it would have been a simple process to identify this "giver of life"
+with the goddess herself in her role as the "giver of life," and her
+cowry-ancestor which was credited with the same reputation.
+
+But this hypothesis is no longer tenable, because the word _d'd'_
+(variously transliterated _doudou_ or _didi_), which Brugsch[366] and
+his followers interpreted as "mandragora," is now believed to have
+another meaning.
+
+In a closely reasoned memoir, Henri Gauthier[367] has completely
+demolished Brugsch's interpretation of this word. He says there are
+numerous instances of the use of _d'd'_ (which he transliterates
+_doudouiou_) in the medical papyri. In the Ebers papyrus "_doudou_
+d'Elephantine broye" is prescribed as a remedy for external application
+in diseases of the heart, and as an astringent and emollient dressing
+for ulcers. He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the
+interior of Africa and the coasts of Arabia.
+
+Mr. F. Ll. Griffith informs me that Gauthier's criticism of the
+translation "mandrakes" is undoubtedly just: but that the substance
+referred to was most probably "red ochre" or "haematite".[368]
+
+The relevant passage in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind (in Seti
+I's tomb) will then read as follows: "When they had brought the red
+ochre, the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded it, and the priestesses mixed the
+pulverized substance with the beer, so that the mixture resembled human
+blood".
+
+I would call special attention to Gauthier's comment that the
+blood-coloured beer "had _some magical and marvellous property which is
+unknown to us_".[369]
+
+In his dictionary Brugsch considered the determinative [Symbol: circle
+over three vertical lines] to refer to the fruits of a tree which he
+called "apple tree," on the supposed analogy with the Coptic [jiji
+(janja iota janja iota)], _fructus autumnalis_, _pomus_, the Greek
+[Greek: opora]; and he proposed to identify the supposed fruit, then
+transliterated _doudou_, with the Hebrew _doudaim_, and translate it
+_poma amatoria_, mandragora, or in German, _Alraune_. This
+interpretation was adopted by most scholars until Gauthier raised
+objections to it.
+
+As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in
+Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley.[370]
+
+But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew
+_duda'im_ by [Greek: mandragoras] and the Copts did not use the
+word [Coptic: jiji] in their translations, but either the Greek word or
+a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff
+has shown (_Zeitsch. f. AEgypt. Sprache_, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that
+the word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated "_didi_"
+instead of "_doudou_".
+
+Finally, in a letter Mr. Griffith tells me the identification of _didi_
+with the Coptic [Coptic: jiji], "apple (?)" is philologically
+impossible.
+
+Although this red colouring matter is thus definitely proved not to be
+the fruit of a plant, there are reasons to suggest that when the story
+of the Destruction of Mankind spread abroad--and the whole argument of
+this book establishes the fact that it did spread abroad--the substance
+_didi_ was actually confused in the Levant with the mandrake. We have
+already seen that in the Delta a prototype of Artemis was already
+identified with certain plants.
+
+In all probability _didi_ was originally brought into the Egyptian
+legend merely as a surrogate of the life-blood, and the mixture of which
+it was an ingredient was simply a restorer of youth to the king. But the
+determinative (in the tomb of Seti I)--a little yellow disc with a red
+border, which misled Naville into believing the substance to be yellow
+berries--may also have created confusion in the minds of ancient
+Levantine visitors to Egypt, and led them to believe that reference was
+being made to their own yellow-berried drug, the mandrake. Such an
+incident might have had a two-fold effect. It would explain the
+introduction into the Egyptian story of the sedative effects of _didi_,
+which would easily be rationalized as a means of soothing the maniacal
+goddess; and in the Levant it would have added to the real properties of
+mandrake[371] the magical virtues which originally belonged to _didi_
+(and blood, the cowry, and water).
+
+In my lecture on "Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II) I explained that
+the Egyptian story of the Destruction of Mankind is merely one version
+of a saga of almost world-wide currency. In many of the non-Egyptian
+versions[372] the role of _didi_ in the Egyptian story is taken by some
+_vegetable_ product of a _red_ colour; and many of these versions reveal
+a definite confusion between the red fruit and the red clay, thus
+proving that the confusion of _didi_ with the mandrake is no mere
+hypothetical device to evade a difficulty on my part, but did actually
+occur.
+
+In the course of the development of the Egyptian story the red clay from
+Elephantine became the colouring matter of the Nile flood, and this in
+turn was rationalized as the blood or red clay into which the bodies of
+the slaughtered enemies of Re were transformed,[373] and the material
+out of which the new race of mankind was created.[374] In other words,
+the new race was formed of _didi_. There is a widespread legend that the
+mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies[375] often
+represented as innocent or chaste men wrongly killed, just as the red
+clay was the substance of mankind killed to appease Re's wrath, "the
+blood of the slaughtered saints".[376]
+
+But the original belief is found in a more definite form in the ancient
+story that "the mandrake was fashioned out of the same earth whereof God
+formed Adam".[377] In other words the mandrake was part of the same
+substance as the earth _didi_.[378]
+
+Further corroboration of this confusion is afforded by a story from
+Little Russia, quoted by de Gubernatis.[379] If bryony (a widely
+recognized surrogate of mandrake) be suspended from the girdle all the
+dead Cossacks (who, like the enemies of Re in the Egyptian story, had
+been killed and broken to pieces in the earth) will come to life again.
+_Thus we have positive evidence of the homology of the mandrake with red
+clay or haematite._
+
+The transference to the mandrake of the properties of the cowry (and the
+goddesses who were personifications of the shell) and blood (and its
+surrogates) was facilitated by the manifold homologies of the Great
+Mother with plants. We have already seen that the goddess was identified
+with: (a) incense-trees and other trees, such as the sycamore, which
+played some definite part in the burial ceremonies, either by providing
+the divine incense, the materials for preserving the body, or for making
+coffins to ensure the protection of the dead, and so make it possible
+for them to continue their existence; and (b) the lotus, the lily, the
+iris, and other marsh plants,[380] for reasons that I have already
+mentioned (p. 184).
+
+The Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh represents one of the innumerable
+versions of the great theme which has engaged the attention of writers
+in every age and country attempting to express the deepest longings of
+the human spirit. It is the search for the elixir of life. The object of
+Gilgamesh's search is a magic _plant_ to prolong life and restore youth.
+The hero of the story went on a voyage by water in order to obtain what
+appears to have been a marsh plant called _dittu_.[381] The question
+naturally arises whether this Babylonian story and the name of the plant
+played any part in Palestine in blending the Egyptian and Babylonian
+stories and confusing the Egyptian elixir of life, the red earth _didi_,
+with the Babylonian elixir, the plant _dittu_?
+
+In the Babylonian story a serpent-demon steals the magic plant, just as
+in India _soma_, the food of immortality, is stolen. In Egypt Isis
+steals Re's name,[382] and in Babylonia the Zu bird steals the tablets
+of destiny, the _logos_. In Greek legend apples are stolen from the
+garden of Hesperides. Apples are surrogates of the mandrake and _didi_.
+
+We have now seen that the mandrake is definitely a surrogate (a) of the
+cowry and a series of its shell-homologues, and (b) of the red substance
+in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind.
+
+There still remain to be determined (i) the means by which the mandrake
+became identified with the goddess, (ii) the significance of the Hebrew
+word _duda-im_, and (iii) the origin of the Greek word
+_mandragora_.
+
+The answer to the first of these three queries should now be obvious
+enough. As the result of the confusion of the life-giving magical
+substance _didi_ with the sedative drug, mandrake, the latter acquired
+the reputation of being a "giver of life" and became identified with
+_the_ "giver of life," the Great Mother, the story of whose exploits was
+responsible for the confusion.
+
+The erroneous identification of _didi_ with the mandrake was originally
+suggested by Brugsch from the likeness of the word (then transliterated
+_doudou_) with the Hebrew word _duda-im_ in Genesis, usually
+translated "mandrakes". I have already quoted the opinion of Gauthier
+and Griffith as to the error of such identification. But the evidence
+now at our disposal seems to me to leave no doubt as to the reality of
+the confusion of the Egyptian red substance with the mandrake. This
+naturally suggests the possibility that the similarity of the sounds of
+the words _may_ have played some part in creating the confusion: but it
+is impossible to admit this as a factor in the development of the story,
+because the Hebrew word probably arose out of the identification of the
+mandrake with the Great Mother and not by any confusion of names. In
+other words the similarity of the names of these homologous substances
+is a mere coincidence.
+
+Dr. Rendel Harris claims (and Sir James Frazer seems to approve of the
+suggestion) that the Hebrew word _duda-im_ was derived from
+_dodim_, "love"; and, on the strength of this derivation, he soars
+into a lofty flight of philological conjecture to transmute
+_dodim_, into _Aphrodite_, "love" into the "goddess of love". It
+would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to follow these
+excursions into unknown heights of cloudland.
+
+But my colleagues Professor Canney and Principal Bennett tell me that
+the derivation of _duda-im_ from _dodim_ is improbable;
+and the former authority suggests that _duda-im_ may be merely
+the plural of _dud_, a "pot".[383] Now I have already explained how a
+pot came to symbolize a woman or a goddess, not merely in Egypt, but
+also in Southern India, and in Mycenaean Greece, and, in fact, the
+Mediterranean generally.[384] Hence the use of the term _dud_ for the
+mandrake implies either (a) an identification of the plant with the
+goddess who is the giver of life, or (b) an analogy between the form of
+the mandrake-fruit and a pot, which in turn led to it being called a
+pot, and from that being identified with the goddess.[385]
+
+I should explain that when Professor Canney gave me this statement he
+was not aware of the fact that I had already arrived at the conclusion
+that the Great Mother was identified with a pot and also with the
+mandrake; but in ignorance of the meaning of the Hebrew words I had
+hesitated to equate the pot with the mandrake. As soon as I received his
+note, and especially when I read his reference to the second meaning,
+"basket of figs," in Jeremiah, I recalled Mr. Griffith's discussion of
+the Egyptian hieroglyphic ("a pot of water") for woman, wife, or
+goddess, and the claim made by Sir Gardner Wilkinson that this manner of
+representing the word for "wife" was apparently taken from a
+conventionalized picture of "a basket of sycamore figs".[386] The
+interpretation has now clearly emerged that the mandrake was called
+_duda'im_ by the Hebrews because it was identified with the
+Mother Pot. The symbolism involved in the use of the Hebrew word also
+suggests that the inspiration may have come from Egypt, where a woman
+was called "a pot of water" or "a basket of figs".
+
+When the mandrake acquired the definite significance as a symbol of the
+Great Mother and the power of life-giving, its fruit, "the love apple,"
+became the quintessence of vitality and fertility. The apple and the
+pomegranate became surrogates of the "love apple," and were graphically
+represented in forms hardly distinguishable from pots, occupying places
+which mark them out clearly as homologues of the Great Mother
+herself.[387]
+
+But once the mandrake was identified with the Great Mother in the Levant
+the attributes of the plant were naturally acquired from her local
+reputation there. This explains the pre-eminently conchological aspect
+of the magical properties of the mandrake and the bryony.
+
+I shall not attempt to refer in detail to the innumerable stories of red
+and brown apples, of rowan berries, and a variety of other red fruits
+that play a part in the folk-lore of so many peoples, such as _didi_
+played in the Egyptian myth. These fruits can be either elixirs of life
+and food of the gods, or weapons for overcoming the dragon as Hathor
+(Sekhet) was conquered by her sedative draught.[388]
+
+In his account of the peony, Pliny ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXVIII, Chap. LX)
+says it has "a stem two cubits in length, accompanied by two or three
+others, and of a reddish colour, with a bark like that of the laurel ...
+the seed is enclosed in capsules, _some being red_ and some black ... it
+has an _astringent taste_. The leaves of the female plant _smell like
+myrrh_". Bostock and Riley, from whose translation I have made this
+quotation, add that in reality the plant is destitute of smell. In the
+Ebers papyrus _didi_ was mixed with incense in one of the
+prescriptions;[389] and in the Berlin medical papyrus it was one of the
+ingredients of a fumigation used for treating heart disease. If my
+contention is justified, it may provide the explanation of how the
+confusion arose by which the peony came to have attributed to it a
+"smell like myrrh".
+
+Pliny proceeds: "Both plants [_i.e._ male and female] grow in the woods,
+and they should always be taken up at night, it is said; as it would be
+dangerous to do so in the day-time, the woodpecker of Mars being sure to
+attack the person so engaged.[390] It is stated also that the person,
+while taking up the root, runs great risk of being attacked with
+[prolapsus ani].... Both plants are used[391] for various purposes: the
+red seed, taken in red wine, about fifteen in number, arrest
+menstruation; while the black seed, taken in the same proportion, in
+either raisin or other wine, are curative of diseases of the uterus." I
+refer to these red-coloured beverages and their therapeutic use in
+women's complaints to suggest the analogy with that other red drink
+administered to the Great Mother, Hathor.
+
+In his essay, "Jacob and the Mandrakes,"[392] Sir James Frazer has
+called attention to the homologies between the attributes of the peony
+and the mandrake and to the reasons for regarding the former as Aelian's
+_aglaophotis_.
+
+Pliny states ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXIV, Chap. CII) that the
+_aglaophotis_ "is found growing among the marble quarries of Arabia, on
+the side of Persia," just as the Egyptian _didi_ was obtained near the
+granite quarries at Aswan. "By means of this plant [aglaophotis],
+according to Democritus, the Magi can summon the deities into their
+presence when they please, "just as the users of the conch-shell trumpet
+believed they could do with this instrument. I have already (p. 196)
+emphasized the fact that all of these plants, mandrake, bryony, peony,
+and the rest, were really surrogates of the cowry, the pearl, and the
+conch-shell. The first is the ultimate source of their influence on
+womankind, the second the origin of their attribute of _aglaophotis_,
+and the third of their supposed power of summoning the deity. The
+attributes of some of the plants which Pliny discusses along with the
+peony are suggestive. Pieces of the root of the _achaemenis_ (? perhaps
+_Euphorbia antiquorum_ or else a night-shade) taken in wine, torment the
+guilty to such an extent in their dreams as to extort from them a
+confession of their crimes. He gives it the name also of "hippophobas,"
+it being an especial object of terror to mares. The complementary story
+is told of the mandrake in mediaeval Europe. The decomposing tissues of
+the body of an innocent victim on the gallows when they fall upon the
+earth can become reincarnated in a mandrake--the _main de gloire_ of old
+French writers.
+
+Then there is the plant _adamantis_, grown in Armenia and
+Cappadocia, which when _presented to a lion makes the beast fall upon
+its back_, and drop its jaws. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the
+lion-manifestation of Hathor who was calmed by the substance _didi_? A
+more direct link with the story of the destruction of mankind is
+suggested by the account of the _ophiusa_, "which is found in
+Elephantine, an island of Ethiopia". This plant is of a livid colour,
+and hideous to the sight. Taken by a person in drink, it inspires such a
+horror of serpents, which his imagination continually represents as
+menacing him that he commits suicide at last: hence it is that persons
+guilty of sacrilege are compelled to drink an infusion of it (Pliny,
+"Nat. Hist.," XXIV, 102). I am inclined to regard this as a variant of
+the myth of the Destruction of Mankind in which the "snake-plant" from
+Elephantine takes the place of the uraei of the Winged Disk Saga, and
+punishes the act of sacrilege by driving the delinquent into a state of
+delirium tremens.
+
+The next problem to be considered is the derivation of the word
+_mandragora_. Dr. Mingana tells me it is a great puzzle to discover any
+adequate meaning. The attempt to explain it through the Sanskrit _mand_,
+"joy," "intoxication," or _mantasana_, "sleep," "life," or _mandra_,
+"pleasure," or _mantara_, "paradise tree," and _agru_, "unmarried,
+violently passionate," is hazardous and possibly far-fetched.
+
+The Persian is _mardumgiah_, "man-like plant".
+
+The Syro-Arabic word for it is _Yabrouh_, Aramaic _Yahb-kouh_, "giver of
+life". This is possibly the source of the Chinese _Yah-puh-lu_ (Syriac
+_ya-bru-ha_) and _Yah-puh-lu-Yak_. The termination _Yak_ is merely the
+Turanian termination meaning "diminutive".
+
+The interest of the Levantine terms for the mandrake lies in the fact
+that they have the same significance as the word for pearl, _i.e._
+"giver of life". This adds another argument (to those which I have
+already given) for regarding the mandrake as a surrogate of the pearl.
+But they also reveal the essential fact that led to the identification
+of the plant with the Mother-Goddess, which I have already discussed.
+
+In Arabic the mandrake is called _abou ruhr_, "father of life," _i.e._
+"giver of life".[393]
+
+In Arabic _margan_ means "coral" as well as "pearl". In the
+Mediterranean area coral is explained as a new and marvellous plant
+sprung from the petrified blood-stained branches on which Perseus hung
+the bleeding head of Medusa. Eustathius ("Comment. ad Dionys. Perieget."
+1097) derives [Greek: koralion] from [Greek: kore], personifying the
+monstrous virgin: but Chaeroboscos claims that it comes from [Greek:
+kore] and [Greek: alion], because it is a maritime product used to make
+ornaments for maidens. In any case coral is a "giver of life" and as
+such identified with a maiden,[394] as the most potential embodiment of
+life-giving force. But this specific application of the word for "giver
+of life" was due to the fact that in all the Semitic languages, as well
+as in literary references in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, this phrase was
+understood as a reference to the female organs of reproduction. The
+same _double entendre_ is implied in the use of the Greek word for "pig"
+and "cowry," these two surrogates of the Great Mother, each of which can
+be taken to mean the "giver of life" or the "pudendum muliebre".
+
+Perhaps the most plausible suggestion that has been made as to the
+derivation of the word "mandragora" is Delatre's claim[395] that it is
+compounded of the words _mandros_, "sleep," and _agora_, "object or
+substance," and that mandragora means "the sleep-producing substance".
+
+This derivation is in harmony with my suggestion as to the means by
+which the plant acquired its magical properties. The sedative substance
+that, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs (of the Story of the Destruction of
+Mankind), was represented by yellow spheres with a red covering was
+confused in Western Asia with the yellow-berried plant which was known
+to have sedative properties. Hence the plant was confused with the
+mineral and so acquired all the magical properties of the Great Mother's
+elixir. But the Indian name is descriptive of the actual properties of
+the plant and is possibly the origin of the Greek word.
+
+Another suggestion that has been made deserves some notice. It has been
+claimed that the first syllable of the name is derived from the Sanskrit
+_mandara_, one of the trees in the Indian paradise, and the instrument
+with which the churning of the ocean was accomplished.[396] The mandrake
+has been claimed to be the tree of the Hebrew paradise; and a connexion
+has thus been instituted between it and the _mandara_. This hypothesis,
+however, does not offer any explanation of how either the mandrake or
+the _mandara_ acquired its magical attributes. The Indian tree of life
+was supposed to "sweat" _amrita_ just as the incense trees of Arabia
+produce the divine life-giving incense.
+
+But there are reasons[397] for the belief that the Indian story of the
+churning of the sea of milk is a much modified version of the old
+Egyptian story of the pounding of the materials for the elixir of life.
+The _mandara_ churn-stick, which is often supposed to represent the
+phallus,[398] was originally the tree of life, the tree or pillar which
+was animated by the Great Mother herself.[399] So that the _mandara_ is
+homologous with the _mandragora_. But so far as I am aware, there is no
+adequate reason for deriving the latter word from the former.
+
+The derivation from the Sanskrit words _mandros_ and _agora_ seems to
+fit naturally into the scheme of explanation which I have been
+formulating.
+
+In the Egyptian story the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded the _didi_ in a
+mortar to make "the giver of life," which by a simple confusion might be
+identified with the goddess herself in her capacity as "the giver of
+life". This seems to have occurred in the Indian legend. Lakshmi, or
+Sri, was born at the churning of the ocean. Like Aphrodite, who was born
+from the sea-foam churned from the ocean, Lakshmi was the goddess of
+beauty, love, and prosperity.
+
+Before leaving the problems of mandrake and the homologous plants and
+substances, it is important that I should emphasize the role of blood
+and blood-substitutes, red-stained beer, red wine, red earth, and red
+berries in the various legends. These life-giving and death-dealing
+substances were all associated with the colour red, and the destructive
+demons Sekhet and Set were given red forms, which in turn were
+transmitted to the dragon, and to that specialized form of the dragon
+which has become the conventional way of representing Satan.
+
+[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became attached to
+the plants _ginseng_ and _shang-luh_--see de Groot, Vol. II, p. 316 _et
+seq._; also Kumagusu Minakata, _Nature_, Vol. LI, April 25, 1895, p.
+608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The fact that the Chinese
+make use of the Syriac word _yabruha_ (_vide supra_) suggests the source
+of these Chinese legends.]
+
+
+[365: As Maspero has specifically mentioned ("Dawn of Civilization," p.
+166).]
+
+[366: "Die Alraune als altaegyptische Zauberpflanze," _Zeitsch. f. AEgypt.
+Sprache_, Bd. XXIX, 1891, pp. 31-3.]
+
+[367: "Le nom hieroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Elephantine," _Revue
+Egyptologique_, XI^e Vol., Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]
+
+[368: It is quite possible that the use of the name "haematite" for this
+ancient substitute for blood may itself be the result of the survival of
+the old tradition.]
+
+[369: It is very important to keep in mind the two distinct properties
+of _didi_: (a) its magical life-giving powers, and (b) its sedative
+influence.]
+
+[370: In Chapter II, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a
+psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical
+question.]
+
+[371: For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the _British Medical
+Journal_, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.]
+
+[372: Even in Egypt itself _didi_ may be replaced by fruit in the more
+specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in the Saga of
+the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: "Thou didst put
+grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu". Wiedemann ("Religion
+of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 70) interprets this as meaning: "thou
+didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it". But by analogy
+with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation of
+_didi_, it should read: "thou didst make the water blood-red with
+grape-juice"; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two
+meanings.]
+
+[373: In the Babylonian story of the Deluge "Ishtar cried aloud like a
+woman in travail, the Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice
+(saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I
+assented to an evil thing in the council of the gods, and agreed to a
+storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth" (King,
+"Babylonian Religion," p. 134).
+
+The Nile god, Knum, Lord of Elephantine, was reputed to have formed the
+world of alluvial soil. The coming of the waters from Elephantine
+brought life to the earth.]
+
+[374: In the Babylonian story, Bel "bade one of the gods cut off his
+head and mix the earth with the blood that flowed from him, and from the
+mixture he directed him to fashion men and animals" (King, "Babylonian
+Religion," p. 56). Bel (Marduk) represents the Egyptian Horus who
+assumes his mother's role as the Creator. The red earth as a surrogate
+of blood in the Egyptian story is here replaced by earth _and_ blood.
+
+But Marduk created not only men and animals but heaven and earth also.
+To do this he split asunder the carcase of the dragon which he had
+slain, the Great Mother Tiamat, the evil _avatar_ of the Mother-Goddess
+whose mantle had fallen upon his own shoulders. In other words, he
+created the world out of the substance of the "giver of life" who was
+identified with the red earth, which was the elixir of life in the
+Egyptian story. This is only one more instance of the way in which the
+same fundamental idea was twisted and distorted in every conceivable
+manner in the process of rationalization. In one version of the Osirian
+myth Horus cut off the head of his mother Isis and the moon-god Thoth
+replaced it with a cow's head, just as in the Indian myth Ganesa's head
+was replaced by an elephant's.]
+
+[375: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 9.]
+
+[376: Compare with this the story of Picus the giant who fled to Kirke's
+isle and there was slain by Helios, the plant [Greek: moly] springing
+from his blood (A. B. Cook, "Zeus," p. 241, footnote 15). For a
+discussion of _moly_ see Andrew Lang's "Custom and Myth".]
+
+[377: Frazer, p. 6.]
+
+[378: In Socotra a tree (dracaena) has been identified with the dragon,
+and its exudation, "dragon's blood," was called cinnabar, and confused
+with the mineral (red sulphide of mercury), or simply with red ochre. In
+the Socotran dragon-myth the elephant takes the hero's role, as in the
+American stories of Chac and Tlaloc (see Chapter II). The word
+_kinnabari_ was applied to the thick matter that issues from the dragon
+when crushed beneath the weight of the dying elephant during these
+combats (Pliny, XXXIII, 28 and VIII, 12). The dragon had a passion for
+elephant's blood. Any thick red earth attributed to such combats was
+called _kinnabari_ (Schoff, _op. cit._, p. 137). This is another
+illustration of the ancient belief in the identification of blood and
+red ochre.]
+
+[379: "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 101.]
+
+[380: In an interesting article on "The Water Lilies of Ancient Egypt"
+(_Ancient Egypt_, 1917, Part I, p. 1) Mr. W. D. Spanton has collected a
+series of illustrations of the symbolic use of these plants. In view of
+the fact that the papyrus- and lotus-sceptres and the lotus-designs
+played so prominent a part in the evolution of the Greek thunder-weapon,
+it is peculiarly interesting to find (in the remote times of the Pyramid
+Age) lotus designs built up into the form of the double-axe (Spanton's
+Figs. 28 and 29) and the classical _keraunos_ (his Fig. 19).]
+
+[381: The Babylonian magic plant to prolong life and renew youth, like
+the red mineral _didi_ of the Egyptian story. It was also "the plant of
+birth" and "the plant of life".]
+
+[382: Mueller, Quibell, Maspero, and Sethe regard the "round cartouche,"
+which the divine falcon often carries in place of the _ankh_-symbol of
+life, as a representation of the royal name (R. Weill, "Les Origines de
+l'Egypte pharaonique," _Annales du Musee Guimet_, 1908, p. 111). The
+analogous Babylonian sign known as "the rod and ring" is described by
+Ward (_op. cit._, p. 413) as "the emblem of the sun-god's supremacy," a
+"symbol of majesty and power, like the tablets of destiny".
+
+As it was believed in Egypt and Babylonia that the possession of a name
+"was equivalent to being in existence," we can regard the object carried
+by the hawk or vulture as a token of the giving of life and the
+controlling of destiny. It can probably be equated with the "tablets of
+destiny" so often mentioned in the Babylonian stories, which the bird
+god _Zu_ stole from Bel and was compelled by the sun-god to restore
+again. Marduk was given the power to destroy or to create, _to speak the
+word of command_ and to control fate, to wield the invincible weapon and
+to be able to render objects invisible. This form of the weapon, "the
+word" or _logos_, like all the other varieties of the thunder-weapon,
+could "become flesh," in other words, be an animate form of the god.
+
+In Egyptian art it is usually the hawk of Horus (the homologue of
+Marduk) which carries the "round cartouche," which is the _logos_, the
+tablets of destiny.]
+
+[383: I quote Professor Canney's notes on the word _duda'im_
+(Genesis xxx. 14) verbatim: "The _Encyclopaedia Biblica_ says (s.v.
+'Mandrakes'): 'The Hebrew name, _duda'im_, was no doubt popularly
+associated with _dodim_, [Hebrew: dodim], "love"; but its real
+etymology (like that of [Greek: mandragoras]) is obscure".
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The same word is translated 'mandrakes' in Song of Songs vii. 13.
+
+"_Duda'im_ occurs also in Jeremiah xxiv, 1, where it is usually
+translated 'baskets' ('baskets of figs'). Here it is the plural of a
+word _dud_, which means sometimes a 'pot' or 'kettle,' sometimes a
+'basket'. The etymology is again doubtful.
+
+"I should imagine that the words in Jeremiah and Genesis have somehow or
+other the same etymology, and that _duda-im_ in Genesis has no
+real connexion with _dodim_ 'love'.
+
+"The meaning 'pot' (_dud_, plur. _duda-im_) is probably more
+original than 'basket'. Does _duda-im_ in Genesis and Song of
+Songs denote some kind of pot or caldron-shaped flower or fruit?"]
+
+[384: The Mother Pot is really a fundamental conception of all religious
+beliefs and is almost world-wide in its distribution.]
+
+[385: The fruit of the lotus (which is a form of Hathor) assumes a form
+(Spanton, _op. cit._, Fig. 51) that is identical with a common
+Mediterranean symbol of the Great Mother, called "pomegranate" by Sir
+Arthur Evans (see my text-fig. 6, p. 179, _m_), which is a surrogate of
+the apple and mandrake. The likeness to the Egyptian hieroglyph for a
+jar of water (text-fig. 6, _l_) and the goddess _Nu_ of the fruit of the
+poppy (which was closely associated with the mandrake by reason of its
+soporific properties) may have assisted in the transference of their
+attributes. The design of the water-plant (text-fig. 7, _d_) associated
+with the Nile god may have helped such a confusion and exchange.]
+
+[386: "A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians," revised and
+abridged, 1890, Vol. I, p. 323.]
+
+[387: See, for example, Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar
+Worship," Fig. 27, p. 46.]
+
+[388: In a Japanese dragon-story the dragon drinks "sake" from pots set
+out on the shore (as Hathor drank the _didi_ mixture from pots
+associated with the river); and the intoxicated monster was then slain.
+From its tail the hero extracted a sword (as in the case of the Western
+dragons), which is now said to be the Mikado's state sword.]
+
+[389: See Gauthier, _op. cit._, pp. 2 and 3.]
+
+[390: Compare the dog-incident in the mandrake story.]
+
+[391: Bostock and Riley add the comment that "the peony has no medicinal
+virtues whatever".]
+
+[392: _Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol. VIII, 1917, p. 16 (in
+the reprint).]
+
+[393: I am indebted to Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this information. But
+the philological question is discussed in a learned memoir by the late
+Professor P. J. Veth, "De Leer der Signatuur," _Internationales Archiv
+fuer Ethnographie_, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75 and 105, and especially
+the appendix, p. 199 _et seq._, "De Mandragora, Naschrift op het tweede
+Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling over de Leer der Signatuur".]
+
+[394: Like the _Purpura_ and the _Pterocera_, the bryony and other
+shells and plants.]
+
+[395: Larousse, Article "Mandragore".]
+
+[396: I have already referred to another version of the churning of the
+ocean in which Mount Meru was used as a churn-stick and identified with
+the Great Mother, of whom the _mandara_ was also an avatar.]
+
+[397: Which I shall discuss in my forthcoming book on "The Story of the
+Flood".]
+
+[398: The phallic interpretation is certainly a secondary
+rationalization of an incident which had no such implication
+originally.]
+
+[399: The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis ii. 17)
+produced fruit the eating of which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, so
+that they realized their nakedness: they became conscious of sex and
+made girdles of fig-leaves (_vide supra_, p. 155). In other words, the
+tree of life had the power of love-provoking like the mandrake. In
+Henderson's "Celtic Dragon Myth" (p. xl) we read: "The berries for which
+she [Medb] craved were from the Tree of Life, the food of the gods, the
+eating of which by mortals brings death," and further: "The berries of
+the rowan tree are the berries of the gods" (p. xliii). I have already
+suggested the homology between these red berries, the mandrake, and the
+red ochre of Hathor's elixir. Thus we have another suggestion of the
+identity of the tree of paradise and the mandrake.]
+
+
+The Measurement of Time.
+
+It was the similarity of the periodic phases of the moon and of
+womankind that originally suggested the identification of the Great
+Mother with the moon, and originated the belief that the moon was the
+regulator of human beings.[400] This was the starting-point of the
+system of astrology and the belief in Fates. The goddess of birth and
+death controlled and measured the lives of mankind.
+
+But incidentally the moon determined the earliest subdivision of time
+into months; and the moon-goddess lent the sanctity of her divine
+attributes to the number twenty-eight.
+
+The sun was obviously the determiner of day and night, and its rising
+and setting directed men's attention to the east and the west as
+cardinal points intimately associated with the daily birth and death of
+the sun. We have no certain clue as to the factors which first brought
+the north and the south into prominence. But it seems probable that the
+direction of the river Nile,[401] which was the guide to the orientation
+of the corpse in its grave, may have been responsible for giving special
+sanctity to these other cardinal points. The association of the
+direction of the deceased's head with the position of the original
+homeland and the eventual home of the dead would have made the south a
+"divine" region in Predynastic times. For similar reasons the north may
+have acquired special significance in the Early Dynastic period.[402]
+
+When the north and the south were added to the other two cardinal points
+the intimate association of the east and the west with the measurement
+of time would be extended to include all the four cardinal points.[403]
+Four became a sacred number associated with time-measurement, and
+especially with the sun.[404]
+
+Many other factors played a part in the establishment of the sanctity
+of the number four. Professor Lethaby has suggested[405] that the
+four-sided building was determined by certain practical factors, such as
+the desirability of fashioning a room to accommodate a woven mat, which
+was necessarily of a square or oblong form. But the study of the
+evolution of the early Egyptian grave and tomb-superstructures suggests
+that the early use of slabs of stone, wooden boards, and mud-bricks
+helped in the process of determining the four-sided form of house and
+room.
+
+When, out of these rude beginnings, the vast four-sided pyramid was
+developed, the direction of its sides was brought into relationship with
+the four cardinal points; and there was a corresponding development and
+enrichment of the symbolism of the number four. The form of the divine
+house of the dead king, who was the god, was thus assimilated to the
+form of the universe, which was conceived as an oblong area at the four
+corners of which pillars supported the sky, as the four legs supported
+the Celestial Cow.
+
+Having invested the numbers four and twenty-eight with special sanctity
+and brought them into association with the measurement of time, it was a
+not unnatural proceeding to subdivide the month into four parts and so
+bring the number seven into the sacred scheme. Once this was done the
+moon's phases were used to justify and rationalize this procedure, and
+the length of the week was incidentally brought into association with
+the moon-goddess, who had seven _avatars_, perhaps originally one for
+each day of the week. At a later period the number seven was arbitrarily
+brought into relationship with the Pleiades.
+
+The seven Hathors were not only mothers but fates also. Aphrodite was
+chief of the fates.
+
+The number seven is associated with the pots used by Hathor's
+priestesses at the celebration inaugurating the new year; and it plays a
+prominent part in the Story of the Flood. In Babylonia the sanctity of
+the number received special recognition. When the goddess became the
+destroyer of mankind, the device seems to have been adopted of
+intensifying her powers of destruction by representing her at times as
+seven demons.[406]
+
+But the Great Mother was associated not only with the week and month but
+also with the year. The evidence at our disposal seems to suggest that
+the earliest year-count was determined by the annual inundation of the
+river. The annual recurrence of the alternation of winter and summer
+would naturally suggest in a vague way such a subdivision of time as the
+year; but the exact measurement of that period and the fixing of an
+arbitrary commencement, a New Year's day, were due to other reasons. In
+the Story of the Destruction of Mankind it is recorded that the incident
+of the soothing of Hathor by means of the blood-coloured beer (which, as
+I have explained elsewhere,[407] is a reference to the annual Nile
+flood) was celebrated annually on New Year's day.
+
+Hathor was regarded in tradition as the cause of the inundation. She
+slaughtered mankind and so caused the original "flood": in the next
+phase she was associated with the 7000 jars of red beer; and in the
+ultimate version with the red-coloured river flood, which in another
+story was reputed to be "the tears of Isis".
+
+Hathor's day was in fact the date of the commencement of the inundation
+and of the year; and the former event marked the beginning of the year
+and enabled men for the first time to measure its duration. Thus
+Hathor[408] was the measurer of the year, the month, and the week; while
+her son Horus (Chronus) was the day-measurer.
+
+In Tylor's "Early History of Mankind" (pp. 352 _et seq._) there is a
+concise summary of some of the widespread stories of the Fountain of
+Youth which restores youthfulness to the aged who drank of it or bathed
+in it. He cites instances from India, Ethiopia, Europe, Indonesia,
+Polynesia, and America. "The Moslem geographer, Ibn-el-Wardi, places the
+Fountain of Life in the dark south-western regions of the earth"
+(p. 353).
+
+The star Sothis rose heliacally on the first day of the Egyptian New
+Year.[409] Hence it became "the second sun in heaven," and was
+identified with the goddess of the New Year's Day. The identification of
+Hathor with this "second sun"[410] may explain why the goddess is said
+to have entered Re's boat. She took her place as a crown upon his
+forehead, which afterwards was assumed by her surrogate, the
+fire-spitting uraeus-serpent. When Horus took his mother's place in the
+myth, he also entered the sun-god's boat, and became the prototype of
+Noah seeking refuge from the Flood in the ship the Almighty instructed
+him to make.
+
+In memory of the beer-drinking episode in the Destruction of Mankind,
+New Year's Day was celebrated by Hathor's priestesses in wild orgies of
+beer drinking.
+
+This event was necessarily the earliest celebration of an anniversary,
+and the prototype of all the incidents associated with some special day
+in the year which have been so many milestones in the historical
+progress of civilization.
+
+The first measurement of the year also naturally forms the
+starting-point in the framing of a calendar.
+
+Similar celebrations took place to inaugurate the commencement of the
+year in all countries which came, either directly or indirectly, under
+Egyptian influence.
+
+The month [Greek: Aphrodisia] (so-called from the festival of the
+goddess) began the calendar of Bithynia, Cyprus, and Iasos, just as
+Hathor's feast was a New Year's celebration in Egypt.
+
+In the celebration of these anniversaries the priestesses of Aphrodite
+worked themselves up in a wild state of frenzy; and the term [Greek:
+hysteria][411] became identified with the state of emotional derangement
+associated with such orgies. The common belief that the term "hysteria"
+is derived directly from the Greek word for uterus is certainly
+erroneous. The word [Greek: hysteria] was used in the same sense as
+[Greek: Aphrodisia], that is as a synonym for the festivals of the
+goddess. The "hysteria" was the name for the orgy in celebration of the
+goddess on New Year's day: then it was applied to the condition produced
+by these excesses; and ultimately it was adopted in medicine to apply to
+similar emotional disturbances. Thus both the terms "hysteria" and
+"lunacy"[412] are intimately associated with the earliest phases in the
+moon-goddess's history; and their survival in modern medicine is a
+striking tribute to the strong hold of effete superstition in this
+branch of the diagnosis and treatment of disease.[413]
+
+I have already referred to the association of Artemis with the portal of
+birth and rebirth. As the guardian of the door her Roman representative
+Diana and her masculine _avatar_ Dianus or Janus gave the name to the
+commencement of the year. The Great Mother not only initiated the
+measurement of the year, but she (or her representative) lent her name
+to the opening of the year in various countries.
+
+But the story of the Destruction of Mankind has preserved the record not
+only of the circumstances which were responsible for originating the
+measurement of the year and the making of a calendar, but also of the
+materials out of which were formed the mythical epochs preserved in the
+legends of Greece and India and many other countries further removed
+from the original centre of civilization. When the elaboration of the
+early story involved the destruction of mankind, it became necessary to
+provide some explanation of the continued existence of man upon the
+earth. This difficulty was got rid of by creating a new race of men from
+the fragments of the old or from the clay into which they had been
+transformed (_supra_, p. 196). In course of time this _secondary_
+creation became the basis of the familiar story of the _original_
+creation of mankind. But the story also became transformed in other
+ways. Different versions of the process of destruction were blended into
+one narrative, and made into a series of catastrophes and a succession
+of acts of creation. I shall quote (from Mr. T. A. Joyce's "Mexican
+Archaeology," p. 50) one example of these series of mythical epochs or
+world ages to illustrate the method of synthesis:--
+
+When all was dark Tezcatlipoca transformed himself into the sun to give
+light to men.
+
+1. This sun terminated in the destruction of mankind, including a race
+of giants, by _jaguars_.
+
+2. The second sun was Quetzalcoatl, and his age terminated in a terrible
+_hurricane_, during which mankind was transformed into monkeys.
+
+3. The third sun was Tlaloc, and the destruction came by a _rain of
+fire_.
+
+4. The fourth was Chalchintlicue, and mankind was finally destroyed by a
+_deluge_, during which they became fishes.
+
+The first episode is clearly based upon the story of the lioness-form of
+Hathor destroying mankind: the second is the Babylonian story of Tiamat,
+modified by such Indian influences as are revealed in the _Ramayana_:
+the third is inspired by the Saga of the Winged Disk; and the fourth by
+the story of the Deluge.
+
+Similar stories of world ages have been preserved in the mythologies of
+Eastern Asia, India, Western Asia, and Greece, and no doubt were derived
+from the same original source.
+
+
+[400: The Greek Chronus was the son of Selene.]
+
+[401: Or possibly the situations of Upper and Lower Egypt.]
+
+[402: See G. Elliot Smith, "The Ancient Egyptians".]
+
+[403: The association of north and south with the primary subdivision of
+the state probably led to the inclusion of the other two cardinal points
+to make the subdivision four-fold.]
+
+[404: The number four was associated with the sun-god. There were four
+"children of Horus" and four spokes to the wheel of the sun.]
+
+[405: "Architecture," p. 24.]
+
+[406: See the chapter on "Magic" in Jevons, "Comparative Religion". In
+his article "Magic (Egyptian)," in Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of Religion
+and Ethics_ (p. 266), Dr. Alan Gardiner makes the following statement:
+"The mystical potency attaching to certain _numbers_ doubtless
+originated in associations of thought that to us are obscure. The number
+seven, in Egyptian magic, was regarded as particularly efficacious. Thus
+we find references to the seven Hathors: _cf._ [Greek: ai hepta Tychai
+tou ouranou] (A. Dieterich, _Eine Mithrasliturgie_, Leipzig, 1910, p.
+71): 'the seven daughters of Re,' who 'stand and weep and make seven
+knots in their seven tunics'; and similarly 'the seven hawks who are in
+front of the barque of Re'."
+
+Are the seven daughters of Re the seven days of the week, or the
+representatives of Hathor corresponding to the seven days?]
+
+[407: Chapter II, p. 118.]
+
+[408: We have already seen that the primitive aspect of life-giving that
+played an essential part in the development of the story we are
+considering was the search for the means by which youth could be
+restored. It is significant that Hathor's reputed ability to restore
+youth is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts in association with her
+functions as the measurer of years: for she is said "to turn back the
+years from King Teti," so that they pass over him without increasing his
+age (Breasted, "Thought and Religion in Ancient Egypt," p. 124).]
+
+[409: Breasted ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 22) states
+that as the inundation began at the rising of Sothis, the star of Isis,
+sister of Osiris, they said to him [_i.e._ Osiris]: "The beloved
+daughter, Sothis, makes thy fruits (rnpwt) in her name of 'Year'
+(rnpt)".]
+
+[410: The Great Mother was identified with the moon, but when she became
+specialized, her representative adopted Sothis or Venus as her star.]
+
+[411: "At Argos the principal fete of Aphrodite was called [Greek:
+hysteria] because they offered sacrifices of pigs ("Athen." III, 49, 96;
+"Clem. Alex. Protr." 33)"--Article "Aphrodisia," _Dict. des Antiquites_,
+p. 308. The Greek word for pig had the double significance of "pig" and
+"female organs of reproduction".]
+
+[412: Aphrodite sends Aphrodisiac "mania" (see Tuempel, _op. cit._, pp.
+394 and 395).]
+
+[413: There is still widely prevalent the belief in the possibility of
+being "moonstruck," and many people, even medical men who ought to know
+better, solemnly expound to their students the influence of the moon in
+producing "lunacy". If it were not invidious one could cite instances of
+this from the writings of certain teachers of psychological medicine in
+this country within the last few months. The persistence of these kinds
+of traditions is one of the factors that make it so difficult to effect
+any real reform in the treatment of mental disease in this country.]
+
+
+The Seven-headed Dragon.
+
+I have already referred to the magical significance attached to the
+number seven and the widespread references to the seven Hathors, the
+seven winds to destroy Tiamat, the seven demons, and the seven fates.
+In the story of the Flood there is a similar insistence on the
+seven-fold nature of many incidents of good and ill meaning in the
+narrative. But the dragon with this seven-fold power of wreaking
+vengeance came to be symbolized by a creature with seven heads.
+
+A Japanese story told in Henderson's notes to Campbell's "Celtic Dragon
+Myth"[414] will serve as an introduction to the seven-headed monster:--
+
+"A man came to a house where all were weeping, and learned that the last
+daughter of the house was to be given to a dragon with _seven or
+eight_[415] heads who came to the sea-shore yearly to claim a victim. He
+went with her, enticed the dragon to drink _sake_ from pots set out on
+the shore, and then he slew the monster. From the end of his tail he
+took out a sword, which is supposed to be the Mikado's state sword. He
+married the maiden, and with her got a jewel or talisman which is
+preserved with the regalia. A third thing of price so preserved is a
+mirror."
+
+The seven-headed dragon is found also in the Scottish dragon-myth, and
+the legends of Cambodia, India, Persia, Western Asia, East Africa, and
+the Mediterranean area.
+
+The seven-headed dragon probably originated from the seven Hathors. In
+Southern India the Dravidian people seem to have borrowed the Egyptian
+idea of the seven Hathors. "There are seven Mari deities, all sisters,
+who are worshipped in Mysore. All the seven sisters are regarded vaguely
+as wives or sisters of Siva."[416] At one village in the Trichinopoly
+district Bishop Whitehead found that the goddess Kaliamma was
+represented by seven brass pots, and adds: "It is possible that the
+seven brass pots represent seven sisters or the seven virgins sometimes
+found in Tamil shrines" (p. 36). But the goddess who animates seven
+pots, who is also the seven Hathors, is probably well on the way to
+becoming a dragon with seven heads.
+
+There is a close analogy between the Swahili and the Gaelic stories that
+reveals their ultimate derivation from Babylonia. In the Scottish story
+the seven-headed dragon comes in a storm of wind and spray. The East
+African serpent comes in a storm of wind and dust.[417] In the
+Babylonian story seven winds destroy Tiamat.
+
+"The famous legend of the seven devils current in antiquity was of
+Babylonian origin, and belief in these evil spirits, who fought against
+the gods for the possession of the souls and bodies of men, was
+widespread throughout the lands of the Mediterranean basin. Here is one
+of the descriptions of the seven demons:--
+
+"Of the seven the first is the south wind....
+
+"The second is a dragon whose open mouth....
+
+"The third is a panther whose mouth spares not.
+
+"The fourth is a frightful python....
+
+"The fifth is a wrathful ... who knows no turning back.
+
+"The sixth is an on-rushing ... who against god and king [attacks].
+
+"The seventh is a hurricane, an evil wind which [has no mercy].
+
+"The Babylonians were inconsistent in their description of the seven
+devils, describing them in various passages in different ways. In fact
+they actually conceived of a very large number of these demons, and
+their visions of the other evil spirits are innumerable. According to
+the incantation of Shamash-shum-ukin fifteen evil spirits had come into
+his body and
+
+"'My God who walks at my side they drove away.'
+
+"The king calls himself 'the son of his God'. We have here the most
+fundamental doctrines of Babylonian theology, borrowed originally from
+the religious beliefs of the Sumerians. For them man in his natural
+condition, at peace with the gods and in a state of atonement, is
+protected by a divine spirit whom they conceived of as dwelling in their
+bodies along with their souls or 'the breath of life'. In many ways the
+Egyptians held the same doctrine, in their belief concerning the
+_ka_[418] or the soul's double. According to the beliefs of the
+Sumerians and Babylonians these devils, evil spirits, and all evil
+powers stand for ever waiting to attach (_sic_) (? attack) the divine
+genius with each man. By means of insinuating snares they entrap mankind
+in the meshes of their magic. They secure possession of his soul and
+body by leading him into sin, or bringing him into contact with tabooed
+things, or by overcoming his divine protector with sympathetic
+magic.... These adversaries of humanity thus expel a man's god, or
+genius, or occupy his body. These rituals of atonement have as their
+primary object the ejection of the demons and the restoration of the
+divine protector. Many of the prayers end with the petition, 'Into the
+kind hands of his god and goddess restore him'.
+
+"Representations of the seven devils are somewhat rare.... The Brit.
+Mus. figurine represents the demon of the winds with body of a dog,
+scorpion tail, bird legs and feet" (S. Langdon, "A Ritual of Atonement
+for a Babylonian King," _The Museum Journal_ [University of
+Pennsylvania], Vol. VIII, No. 1, March, 1917, pp. 39-44).
+
+But the Babylonians not only adopted the Egyptian conception of the
+power of evil as being seven demons, but they also seem to have fused
+these seven into one, or rather given the real dragon seven-fold
+attributes.[419]
+
+In "The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia"[420] (British Museum),
+Marduk's weapon is compared to "the fish with seven wings".
+
+The god himself is represented as addressing it in these words: "The
+tempest of battle, my weapon of fifty heads, which like the great
+serpent of seven heads is yoked with seven heads, which like the strong
+serpent of the sea (sweeps away) the foe".
+
+In the Japanese story which I have quoted, the number of the dragon's
+heads is given as _seven_ or _eight_; and de Visser is at a loss to know
+why "the number eight should be stereotyped in these stories of
+[Japanese] dragons".[421]
+
+I have already emphasized the world-wide association of the
+seven-headed dragon with storms. The Argonaut (usually called
+"Nautilus" by classical scholars) was the prophet of ill-luck and the
+storm-bringer: but, true to the paradox that runs through the whole
+tissue of mythology, this form of the Great Mother is also a benevolent
+warner against storms. This seems to be another link between the
+seven-headed dragon and these cephalopoda.
+
+I would suggest, merely as a tentative working hypothesis, that the
+process of blending the seven _avatars_ of the dragon into a
+seven-headed dragon may have been facilitated by its identification with
+the _Pterocera_ and the octopus. We know that the octopus and the
+shell-fish were forms assumed by the dragon (see p. 172): the confusion
+between the numbers seven and eight is such as might have been created
+during the transference of the _Pterocera's_ attributes to the octopus
+(_vide supra_, p. 170); and the Babylonian reference to "the fish with
+seven wings," which was afterwards rationalized into "a great serpent
+with seven heads," seems to provide the clue which explains the origin
+of the seven-headed dragon. If Hathor was a seven-fold goddess and at
+the same time was identified with the seven-spiked spider-shell
+(_Pterocera_), the process of converting the shell-fish's seven "wings"
+into seven heads would be a very simple one for an ancient story-teller.
+If this hypothesis has any basis in fact, the circumstance that the
+beliefs concerning the _Pterocera_ must (from the habitat of the
+shell-fish) have come into existence upon the shores of Southern Arabia
+would explain the appearance of the derived myth of the seven-headed
+dragon in Babylonia.
+
+My attention was first called to the possibility of the octopus being
+the parent of the seven-headed dragon, and one of the forms assumed by
+the thunderbolt, by the design upon a krater from Apulia.[422] The
+weapon seemed to be a conventionalization of the octopus. Though further
+research has led me to distrust this interpretation, it has convinced me
+of the intimate association of the octopus and the derived spiral
+ornament with thunder and the dragon, and has suggested that the process
+of blending the seven demons into a seven-headed demon has been assisted
+by the symbolism of the octopus and the _Pterocera_.
+
+
+[414: "The Celtic Dragon Myth," by J. F. Campbell, with the "Geste of
+Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with introduction by George
+Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 134.]
+
+[415: My italics.]
+
+[416: Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Gods of South
+India," Oxford, 1916, p. 24.]
+
+[417: "The Celtic Dragon Myth," p. 136.]
+
+[418: See Chapter I, p. 47.]
+
+[419: I do not propose to discuss here the interesting problems raised
+by this identification of the dragon with a man's good or evil spirit.
+But it is worthy of note that while the Babylonian might be possessed by
+seven evil spirits, the Egyptian could have as many as fourteen good
+spirits or _kas_. In a form somewhat modified by the Indian and
+Indonesian channels, through which they must have passed, these beliefs
+still persist in Melanesia; and the illuminating account of them given
+by C. E. Fox and F. W. Drew ("Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval,"
+_Journ. Roy. Anthropol. Inst._, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 161), makes it easier
+to us to form some conception of their original meaning in ancient
+Babylonia and Egypt. The _ataro_ which possesses a man (and there may be
+as many as a hundred of these "ghosts") leaves his body at death and
+usually enters a shark (or in other cases an octopus, skate, turtle,
+crocodile, hawk, kingfisher, tree, or stone).]
+
+[420: Vol. II, 19, 11-18, and 65, quoted by Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_,
+p. 282.]
+
+[421: _Op. cit._, p. 150.]
+
+[422: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 337, in which (Fig. 269) the rider
+in the car is _welcoming_ the thunderbolt as a divine gift from heaven,
+_i.e._ as a life-amulet, a giver of fertility and good luck. For a
+design representing the octopus as a weapon of the god Eros see the
+title-page of Usener's "Die Sintfluthsagen," 1899.]
+
+
+The Pig.
+
+I have already referred to the circumstances that were responsible for
+the identification of the cow with the Great Mother, the sky, and the
+moon. Once this had happened, the process seems to have been extended to
+include other animals which were used as food, such as the sheep, goat,
+pig, and antelope (or gazelle and deer). In Egypt the cow continued to
+occupy the pre-eminent place as a divine animal; and the cow-cult
+extended from the Mediterreanean to equatorial Africa, to Western
+Europe, and as far East as India. But in the Mediterranean area the pig
+played a more prominent part than it did in Egypt.[423] In the latter
+country Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with the pig;
+and in Syria the place of Set as the enemy of Osiris (Adonis) was taken
+by an actual pig. But throughout the Eastern Mediterranean the pig was
+also identified with the Great Mother and associated with lunar and sky
+phenomena. In fact at Troy the pig was represented[424] with the
+star-shaped decorations with which Hathor's divine cow (in her role as a
+sky-goddess) was embellished in Egypt. To complete the identification
+with the cow-mother Cretan fable represents a sow suckling the infant
+Minos or the youthful Zeus-Dionysus as his Egyptian prototype was
+suckled by the divine cow.
+
+Now the cowry-shell was called [Greek: choiros] by the Greeks. The pig,
+in fact, was identified both with the Great Mother and the shell; and it
+is clear from what has been said already in these pages that the reason
+for this strange homology was the fact that originally the Great Mother
+was nothing more than the cowry-shell.
+
+But it was not only with the shell itself that the pig was identified
+but also with what the shell symbolized. Thus the term [Greek: choiros]
+had an obscene significance in addition to its usual meaning "pig" and
+its acquired meaning "cowry". This fact seems to have played some part
+in fixing upon the pig the notoriety of being "an unclean animal".[425]
+But it was mainly for other reasons of a very different kind that the
+eating of swine-flesh was forbidden. The tabu seems to have arisen
+originally because the pig was a sacred animal identified with the Great
+Mother and the Water God, and especially associated with both these
+deities in their lunar aspects.
+
+According to a Cretan legend the youthful god Zeus-Dionysus was suckled
+by a sow. For this reason "the Cretans consider this animal sacred, and
+will not taste of its flesh; and the men of Praesos perform sacred rites
+with the sow, making her the first offering at the sacrifice".[426]
+
+But when the pig also assumed the role of Set, as the enemy of Osiris,
+and became the prototype of the devil, an active aversion took the place
+of the sacred tabu, and inspired the belief in the unwholesomeness of
+pig flesh. To this was added the unpleasant reputation as a dirty animal
+which the pig itself acquired, for the reasons which I have already
+stated.
+
+I have already referred to the irrelevance of Miss Jane Harrison's
+denial of the birth of Aphrodite from the sea (p. 141). Miss Harrison
+does not seem to have realized that in her book[427] she has collected
+evidence which is much more relevant to the point at issue. For, in the
+interesting account of the Eleusinian Mysteries (pp. 150 _et seq._), she
+has called attention to the important rite upon the day "called in
+popular parlance '[Greek: halade mystai],' 'to the sea ye mystics'" (p.
+152), which, I think, has a direct bearing upon the myth of Aphrodite's
+birth from the sea.
+
+The Mysteries were celebrated at full moon; and each of the candidates
+for admission "took with him his own pharmakos,[428] a young pig".
+
+"Arrived at the sea, each man bathed with his pig" (p. 152). On one
+occasion, so it is said, "when a mystic was bathing his pig, a
+sea-monster ate off the lower part of his body" (p. 153). So important
+was the pig in this ritual "that when Eleusis was permitted (B.C.
+350-327) to issue her autonomous coinage it is the pig she chooses as
+the sign and symbol of her mysteries" (p. 153).
+
+"On the final day of the Mysteries, according to Athenaeus, two vessels
+called _plemochoae_ are emptied, one towards the East and the other
+towards the West, and at the moment of outpouring a mystic formulary
+was pronounced.... What the mystic formulary was we cannot certainly
+say, but it is tempting to connect the libation of the _plemochoae_ with
+a formulary recorded by Proclos. He says 'In the Eleusinian mysteries,
+looking up to the sky they cried aloud "Rain," and looking down to earth
+they cried "Be fruitful"'" (p. 161).
+
+In these latter incidents we see, perhaps, a distant echo of Hathor's
+pots of blood-coloured beer that were poured out upon the soil, which in
+a later version of the story became the symbol of the inundation of the
+river and the token of the earth's fruitfulness. The personification in
+the Great Mother of these life-giving powers of the river occurred at
+about the same time; and this was rationalized by the myth that she was
+born of the sea. She was also identified with the moon and a sow. Hence
+these Mysteries were celebrated, both in Egypt and in the Mediterranean,
+at full moon, and the pig played a prominent part in them. The
+candidates washed the sacrificial pig in the sea, not primarily as a
+rite of purification,[429] as is commonly claimed, but because the
+sacrificial animal was merely a surrogate of the cowry, which lived in
+the sea, and of the Great Mother,[430] who was sprung from the cowry and
+hence born of the sea. In the story of the man carrying the pig being
+attacked by a sea-monster, perhaps we have an incident of that
+widespread story of the shark guarding the pearls. We have already seen
+how it was distorted into the fantastic legend of the dog's role in the
+digging up of mandrakes. In the version we are now considering the
+pearl's place is taken by the pig, both of them surrogates of the cowry.
+
+The object of the ceremony of carrying the pig into the sea was not the
+cleansing of "the unclean animal," nor was it _primarily_ a rite of
+purification in any sense of the term: it was simply a ritual procedure
+for identifying the sacrifice with the goddess by putting it in her own
+medium, and so transforming the surrogate of the sea-shell, the
+prototype of the sea-born goddess, into the actual Great Mother.
+
+The question naturally arises: what was the real purpose of the
+sacrifice of the pig?
+
+In the story of the Destruction of Mankind we have seen that originally
+a human victim was slain for the purpose of obtaining the life-giving
+human blood to rejuvenate the ageing king. Two circumstances were
+responsible for the modification of this procedure. In the first place,
+there was the abandonment of human sacrifice and the substitution of
+either beer coloured red with ochre to resemble blood (or in other cases
+red wine) or the actual blood of an animal sacrifice in place of the
+human blood. Secondly, the blood of the Great Mother herself
+(personified in the special _avatar_ that was recognized in a particular
+locality, the cow in one place, the pig in another, and so on) was
+regarded as more potent as a life-giving force than that of a mere
+mortal human being. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that this was
+the real reason for the abandoning of human sacrifice and the
+substitution of an animal for a human being. For it is unlikely that, in
+the rude state of society which had become familiarized with and
+brutalized by the practice of these bloody rites of homicide, ethical
+motives alone would have prompted the abolition of the custom of human
+sacrifice, to which such deep significance was attached. The
+substitution of the animal was prompted rather by the idea of obtaining
+a more potent elixir from the life-blood of the Great Mother herself in
+her cow- or sow-forms.
+
+In the transitional stage of the process of substitution of an animal
+for a human being some confusion seems to have arisen as to the ritual
+meaning of the new procedure. If Moret's account of the Egyptian
+Mysteries[431] is correct--and without a knowledge of Egyptian philology
+I am not competent to express an opinion upon this matter--the attempt
+was made to identify the animal victim of sacrifice with the human being
+whose place it had taken. In the procession a human being wore the skin
+of an animal; and, according to Moret, there was a ceremony of passing a
+human being through the skin as a ritual procedure for transforming the
+mock victim into the animal which was to be sacrificed in his place. If
+there is any truth in this interpretation, such a ceremony must have
+been prompted by a misunderstanding of the meaning of the sacrifice,
+unless the identification of the sacrificial animal with the goddess was
+merely a secondary rationalization of the substitution which had been
+made for ethical or some other reasons.
+
+We know that the dead were often buried in the skins of sacrificial
+animals, and so identified with the life-giving deities and given
+rebirth. We know also that in certain ceremonies the appropriate skins
+were worn by those who were impersonating particular gods or goddesses.
+The wearing of these skins of divine animals seems to have been prompted
+not so much by the idea of a reincarnation in animal form as by the
+desire for identification and communion with the particular deity which
+the animal represented. The whole question, however, is one of great
+complexity, which can only be settled by a critical study of the texts
+by some scholar who keeps clearly before his mind the real issues, and
+refuses to take refuge in the stereotyped evasions of conventional
+methods of interpretation.
+
+The sacrifice of the sow to Demeter is merely a late variant of Hathor's
+sacrifice of a human being to rejuvenate the king Re. How the real
+meaning of the story became distorted I have already explained in
+Chapter II ("Dragons and Rain Gods"). The killing of the sow to obtain a
+good harvest is homologous with the sacrifice of a maiden to obtain a
+good inundation of the river. The sow is the surrogate of the beautiful
+princess of the fairy tale. Instead of the maiden being slain, in one
+case, as Andromeda, she is rescued by the hero, in the other her place
+is taken by a sow. These late rationalizations are merely glosses of the
+deep motives which more than fifty centuries ago seem to have prompted
+early pharmacologists to obtain a more potent elixir than human blood by
+stealing from the heights of Olympus the divine blood of the life-giving
+deities themselves.
+
+The pig was identified not only with the Great Mother, but with Osiris
+and Set also. With the pig's lunar and astral associations I do not
+propose to deal in these pages, as the astronomical aspects of the
+problems are so vast as to need much more space than the limits imposed
+in this statement. But it is important to note that the identification
+of Set with a pig was perhaps the main factor in riveting upon this
+creature the fetters of a reputation for evil. The evil dragon was the
+representative of both Set and the Great Mother (Sekhet or Tiamat); and
+both of them were identified with the pig. Just as Set killed Osiris, so
+the pig gave Adonis his mortal injury.[432] When these earthly incidents
+were embellished with a celestial significance, the conflict of Horus
+with Set was interpreted as the struggle between the forces of light and
+order and the powers of darkness and chaos. When worshipped as a
+tempest-god the Mesopotamian Rimmon was known as "the pig"[433] and, as
+"the wild boar of the desert," was a form of Set.
+
+I have discussed the pig at this length because the use of the words
+[Greek: choiros] by the Greeks, and _porcus_ and _porculus_ by the
+Romans, reveals the fact that the terms had the double significance of
+"pig" and "cowry-shell". As it is manifestly impossible to derive the
+word "cowry" from the Greek word for "pig," the only explanation that
+will stand examination is that the two meanings must have been acquired
+from the identification of both the cowry and the pig with the Great
+Mother and the female reproductive organs. In other words, the
+pig-associations of Aphrodite afford clear evidence that the goddess was
+originally a personification of the cowry.[434]
+
+The fundamental nature of the identification of the cowry, the pig, and
+the Great Mother, the one with the other, is revealed not merely in the
+archaeology of the AEgean, but also in the modern customs and ancient
+pictures of the most distant peoples. For example, in New Guinea the
+place of the sacrificial pig may be taken by the cowry-shell;[435] and
+upon the chief facade of the east wing of the ancient American monument,
+known as the Casa de las Monjas at Chichen Itza, the hieroglyph of the
+planet Venus is placed in conjunction with a picture of a wild pig.[436]
+
+
+[423: And also, in a misunderstood form, even as far as America.]
+
+[424: Schliemann, "Ilios," Fig. 1450, p. 616.]
+
+[425: This is seen in the case of the Persian word _khor_, which means
+both "pig" and "harlot" or "filthy woman". The possibility of the
+derivation of the old English word "[w]hore" from the same source is
+worth considering.]
+
+[426: L. R. Farnell, "Cults of the Greek States," Vol. I, p. 37.]
+
+[427: "Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion."]
+
+[428: Which, in fact, was intended as the equivalent of [Greek:
+pharmakon athanasias], "the redeeming blood".]
+
+[429: Blackman ("Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt,"
+_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, March, 1918, p. 57;
+and May, 1918, p. 85) has shown that the idea of purification was
+certainly entertained.]
+
+[430: In some places an image of the goddess was washed in the sea.]
+
+[431: "Mysteres Egyptiens."]
+
+[432: Mr. Donald Mackenzie has collected a good deal of folk-lore
+concerning the pig ("Myths of Egypt," pp. 66 _et seq._; also his books
+on Babylonian, Indian, and Cretan myths, _op. cit. supra_).]
+
+[433: According to Sayce, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 153, note 6.]
+
+[434: In Egypt not only was the sow identified with Isis, but "lucky
+pigs" were worn on necklaces just like the earlier cowry-amulets (Budge,
+"Guide to the Egyptian Collections" (British Museum), p. 96).]
+
+[435: Malinowski, _Trans. and Proc. Royal Society, South Australia_,
+XXXIX, 1915, p. 587 _et. seq._]
+
+[436: Seler, "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der
+Maya-Handschriften," _Zeitsch. f. Ethnologie_, Bd. 41, 1909, p. 405, and
+Fig. 242 in Maudslay, "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Vol. III, Pl. 13.]
+
+
+Gold and the Golden Aphrodite.
+
+The evidence which has been collected by Mr. Wilfrid Jackson seems to
+suggest that the shell-cults originated in the neighbourhood of the
+Red Sea.
+
+With the introduction of the practice of wearing shells on girdles and
+necklaces and as hair ornaments the time arrived when people living some
+distance from the sea experienced difficulty in obtaining these amulets
+in quantities sufficient to meet their demands. Hence they resorted to
+the manufacture of imitations of these shells in clay and stone. But at
+an early period in their history the inhabitants of the deserts between
+the Nile and the Red Sea (Hathor's special province) discovered that
+they could make more durable and attractive models of cowries and other
+shells by using the plastic yellow metal which was lying about in these
+deserts unused and unappreciated. This practice first gave to the metal
+gold an arbitrary value which it did not possess before. For the
+peculiar life-giving attributes of the shells modelled in the yellow
+metal came to be transferred to the gold itself. No doubt the lightness
+and especially the beauty of such gold models appealed to the early
+Egyptians, and were in large measure responsible for the hold gold
+acquired over mankind. But this was an outcome of the empirical
+knowledge gained from a practice that originally was inspired purely by
+cultural and not aesthetic motives. The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic
+sign for gold was a picture of a necklace of such amulets; and this
+emblem became the determinative of the Great Mother Hathor, not only
+because she was originally the personification of the life-giving
+shells, but also because she was the guardian deity both of the Eastern
+wadys where the gold was found and of the Red Sea coasts where the
+cowries were obtained. Hence she became the "Golden Hathor," the
+prototype of the "Golden Aphrodite".
+
+[Illustration: Fig. 9.--The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign _nub_. It
+represents a collar from which golden amulets, probably representing
+cowries, are suspended.]
+
+It is a significant token of the influence of these Egyptian incidents
+upon the history of the AEgean that among the earliest gold ornaments
+found by Schliemann at Troy were a series of crude representations of
+cowries worn as pendants to a hair ornament.[437]
+
+It is hardly necessary to insist upon the vast influence upon the
+history of civilization which this arbitrary value of gold has been
+responsible for exerting. For more than fifty centuries men have been
+searching for the precious metal, and have been spreading abroad
+throughout the world the elements of our civilization. It has been not
+only the chief factor in bringing about the contact of peoples[438] and
+incidentally in building up our culture, but it has been the cause,
+directly or indirectly, of most of the warfare which has afflicted
+mankind. Yet these mighty forces were let loose upon the world as the
+result of the circumstance that early searchers for an elixir of life
+used the valueless metal to make imitations of their shell amulets!
+
+The identification of gold with cowries may not have been the primary
+reason for the invention of gold currency. In fact, Professor Ridgeway
+has called attention to certain historical events which in his opinion
+forced men to convert their jewellery into coinage. But the fact that
+cowries were the earliest form of currency may have prepared the way for
+the recognition of the use of gold for a similar purpose. Moreover, we
+know that long before a real gold currency came into being rings of gold
+were in Egypt a form of tribute and a sign of wealth. Cowries acquired
+their significance as currency as the result of incidents in some
+respects analogous to those which impelled the early Egyptians to make
+gold models of the shells. In places in Africa far removed from the sea
+where the practice has grown up of offering vast numbers of cowries to
+brides on the occasion of their marriage (as fertility amulets) or of
+putting the shells in the grave (to secure for the dead fresh vital
+energy), the people offered their most treasured possessions, such as
+their cattle, in exchange for the amulets which were believed to confer
+such priceless social and religious boons. Cattle were therefore given
+in exchange for cowries, or the shells were used for the purchase of
+wives. When the new significance as currency developed a remarkable
+confusion occurred. In many places cowries were placed in the mouth of
+the dead to confer the breath of life: but when the cowries acquired the
+new meaning as currency, the people who had lost all knowledge of the
+original significance of this practice explained the cowries as money
+with which to pay Charon's fare to the other world. Then, in many
+places, the cowry was replaced by an actual metallic coin. Most scholars
+fall into the same error as these ancient rationalists, and accept
+their explanation of the _obolus_ as though it were the real meaning of
+the act.
+
+Another result of the use of gold models of shells as life-giving
+amulets was that the metal also acquired the reputation of being a giver
+of life,[439] which originally belonged merely to the shell or the
+imitation of its form, whatever the substance used for making the model.
+
+Thus gold came to share the same magical reputation as the cowry and the
+pearl. It was also put to the same use: it was buried with the dead to
+confer a continuation of existence.
+
+Not only was Hathor called _Nub_, _i.e._ "gold" or the golden Hathor:
+but the place where the funerary statue was made ("born") in Egypt was
+called the "House of Gold" and personified as a goddess who gave rebirth
+to the dead (Alan Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhet," p. 95; and A. M.
+Blackman, _Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, Vol. IV, p. 127).
+
+When ancient prospectors from the South exploited the rivers of
+Turkestan for alluvial gold and fresh water pearls, incidentally they
+also collected pebbles of jade for the purpose of making seals. The
+local inhabitants confused the properties of the stone with the magical
+reputation of the gold and the pearls. One outcome of this jade-fishing
+in Turkestan was the transference of the credit of life-giving to jade.
+Prospectors searching for these precious materials gradually made their
+way east past Lob Nor, and eventually discovered the deposits of gold
+and jade in the Shensi province. Thus jade became the nucleus around
+which the distinctive civilization of China became crystallized. It
+played an obtrusive part not only in attracting men from the West and in
+determining the locality where the germs of Western civilization were
+planted in China, but also in giving Chinese culture its distinctive
+shape.
+
+"The ancient Chinese, wishing to facilitate the resurrection of the
+dead, surrounded them with jade, gold, pearls, timber, and other things
+imbued with influences emitted from the heavens, or, in other words,
+with such objects as are pervaded with vital energy derived from the
+_Yang_ matter of which the heavens are the principal depository." (De
+Groot, _op. cit._, p. 316).
+
+By a similar process diamonds acquired the same reputation in India when
+searchers after gold discovered the precious metal in Hyderabad, and
+the diamonds of Golconda came to be accredited with life-giving
+powers.[440]
+
+According to the beliefs of the Indians "the Naga owns riches, the water
+of life, and a jewel that restores the dead to life".
+
+Thus gold, pearls, jade, and diamonds in course of time acquired the
+reputation of elixirs of life, but the hold they established upon
+mankind was due to the fact (a) that the amulets made of these materials
+made a strong appeal to the aesthetic sense, and (b) the arbitrary value
+assigned to them made them desirable objects to search for.
+
+In his "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult" (1901) Sir Arthur Evans gives
+cogent reasons for the view that at the time when Mycenaean influence was
+powerful in Cyprus "the 'golden Aphrodite' of the Egyptians seems to
+play a much more important part than any form of Astarte or Mylitta"
+(p. 52). "The Cypriote parallels will be found to have a fundamental
+importance as demonstrating in detail that these ['a simple form of the
+palmette pillar, approaching a fleur-de-lys in outline,' in association
+with its guardian monsters] are in fact taken over from the cult of
+Mentu-Ra, the Warrior Sun-god of Egypt, of Hathor, and of Horus"
+(p. 52).
+
+
+[437: So far as I am aware the fact that these objects were intended to
+represent cowries does not appear to have been recognized hitherto. I am
+indebted to Mr. Wilfrid Jackson for calling my attention to the figures
+685 and 832 in Schliemann's "Ilios" (1880), and for identifying the
+objects.]
+
+[438: See Perry, "Megalithic Monuments and Ancient Mines," _Proceedings
+and Memorials of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society_,
+1916; also "War and Civilization," _Bulletin of the John Rylands
+Library_, 1918.]
+
+[439: "Danae pregnant with immortal gold."]
+
+[440: See Laufer, "The Diamond," also Munn, "The Ancient Gold Mines of
+Hyderabad," paper now being published in the _Proceedings of the
+Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society_.]
+
+
+Aphrodite as the Thunder-stone.
+
+As a surrogate of the Great Mother, the Eye of Re, the thunder-weapon
+was also identified with any of her varied manifestations.
+
+The thunderbolt is one of the manifestations of the life-giving and
+death-dealing Divine Cow, and therefore is able specially to protect
+mundane cows.[441]
+
+There are numerous hints in the ancient literature of other countries in
+confirmation of the association of the Great Mother with "falling
+stars". "In a fragment of Sanchoniathon, Astarte, travelling about the
+habitable world, is said to have found a star falling through the air,
+which she took up and consecrated."[442]
+
+Aphrodite also was looked upon as a meteoric stone that fell from the
+moon. In the "Iliad," Zeus is said to have sent Athena as a meteorite
+from heaven to earth.[443]
+
+The association of Aphrodite with meteoric stones and the ancient belief
+that they fell from the moon serve to confirm the identification of
+these life-giving and death-dealing objects with the pearl and the
+thunderbolt. In Southern India the goddesses may be represented either
+by small stones or by pots of water, usually seven in number. During the
+ceremony around the stone-form of the goddess the _kappukaran_ runs
+thrice around the stone, as the mandrake-digger does around the plant.
+The _pujari_ who represents the goddess is painted like a leopard
+(Hathor's lioness) and kills the sacrificial sheep. The goddess (like
+Hathor) is supposed to drink the blood of the sacrificial victims
+(Whitehead, _op. cit._, pp. 164-8).
+
+Many factors played a part in the development of the beliefs about the
+origin of mankind from stones, with which the identification of the
+thunderbolt with the winged disk plays a part.
+
+The idea that the cowry was the giver of life and the parent of men was
+also transferred to crude stone imitations of the shell. Perhaps the
+belief in such stones as creators of human beings may have been
+reinforced by finding actual fossilized shells within pebbles.[444]
+
+A further corroboration of this theory was provided when the pearl came
+to be regarded as the quintessence of the life-giving substance of
+shells and as a little particle of moon-substance which fell as a drop
+of dew into the gaping oyster. Perry (_op. cit._, p. 78) refers to an
+Indonesian belief among the Tsalisen that their ancestors came out of
+the moon; and the chief of this people has a spherical stone which is
+said to represent the moon.
+
+This association of the moon with round stones may be connected with the
+identification of the sun (as the winged disk) with a stone axe, when
+they came to be regarded as alternative weapons for the destruction or
+the creation of men. Perry records a story of a rock being lowered down
+from the sun, from which it was born, and out of a cleft in it man and
+woman emerged, as they were believed to have been born from the cleft in
+the cowry.
+
+Then there are the Egyptian beliefs concerning stone statues, obelisks,
+or even unshaped blocks of stone which could be animated by human beings
+or gods.[445]
+
+The cycle of these stories was completed when the "Eye of Re"
+slaughtered the enemies of the god and they became identified with the
+followers of Set, "creatures of stone". Thus the evil eye petrified
+rebellious men: and so was launched upon its course the peculiar group
+of legends which in time encircled the world.
+
+It is particularly significant that in Indonesia, in association with
+these ideas about stone-origins and petrifaction, Perry (p. 133) found
+also the clear-cut belief that the thunder-weapon was a stone, or the
+tooth of a cloud-dragon in the sky.
+
+In Indonesia also petrifaction, thunder-stones, rain, floods, lightning,
+and an arrow shot to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning were the
+punishments traditionally assigned for certain offences, such as incest
+and laughing at animals.
+
+The same people who introduced into the Malay Archipelago these
+characteristic fragments of the dragon-myth also believed that certain
+animals were impersonations of their gods: they also brought stories of
+incestuous unions on the part of their deities and rulers. To laugh at
+their sacred animals, or to imitate privileged customs permitted to
+their deities, but not to ordinary mortals, merited the same sort of
+punishments as were meted out to those other rebels against the ruling
+class and the gods in the home of these beliefs.[446]
+
+To laugh at the divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a divine
+prerogative, was analogous to "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,"
+which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable offence, and in
+pagan legend was punished by the divine wrath, thunder, lightning, rain,
+floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instruments. Oedipus put out
+his own eyes to forestall the traditional wrath of the gods.
+
+
+[441: Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, p. 70 _et seq._]
+
+[442: Quoted by Layard, "Nineveh and its Remains," Vol. II, p. 457.]
+
+[443: Cook, "Zeus," I, p. 760.]
+
+[444: Striking examples of these stories about birth from split stones
+have been given by Perry, "Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Chapter X,
+and de Groot's "Religious System of China". It is possible that the
+double meaning of the Egyptian word _set_, as "stone" and "mountain"
+played a part in originating these stories. I have already quoted from
+the Pyramid Texts the account of the daily birth of the sun-god by a
+splitting of the "mountain" of the dawn. By a pun on this word the god's
+origin might have been interpreted as having taken place from a split
+"stone". The fact that the Great Mother was identified with a "mountain"
+(_set_) may also have facilitated the homology with the other meaning of
+_set_, _i.e._ "a stone".]
+
+[445: "Incense and Libations".]
+
+[446: As the character and attributes of the early goddesses became more
+complex, and contradictory traits were more sharply contrasted, the
+inevitable tendency developed to differentiate the goddesses themselves,
+and provide distinctive names for the new personalities thus split off
+from the common parent. We see this in Egypt in the case of Hathor and
+Sekhet, and in Babylonia in Ishtar and Tiamat. But the process of
+specialization and differentiation might even involve a change of sex.
+There can be no doubt that the _god_ Horus was originally a
+differentiation of certain of the aspects of the sky-goddess Hathor, at
+first as a brother "Eye". But as the _king_ Horus was the son of Osiris
+(as the dead king), when the confusion of the attributes of Osiris and
+Hathor--the actual father and the divine mother of Horus--made their
+marriage inevitable, the maternal relationship of the goddess to her
+"brother" was emphasized. But as the Great Mother, Hathor was the parent
+of the universe, and the mother not only of Horus but also of his father
+Osiris. This complicated rationalization made Hathor the sister, mother,
+and grandmother of Horus, and was responsible for originating the belief
+in the incestuous practices of the divine family. When the royal family
+assumed the role of gods and goddesses they were bound by these
+traditions (which had their origin purely in theological sophistry) and
+were driven to indulge in actual incest, as we know from the records of
+the Egyptian royal family and their imitators in other countries. But
+incest became a royal and divine prerogative which was sternly forbidden
+to mere mortals and regarded as a peculiarly detestable sin.]
+
+
+The Serpent and the Lioness.
+
+When the development of the story of the Destruction of Mankind
+necessitated the finding of a human sacrifice and drove the Great Mother
+to homicide, this side of her character was symbolized by identifying
+her with a man-slaying lion and the venomous uraeus-serpent.
+
+She had previously been represented by such beneficent food-providing
+and life-sustaining creatures as the cow, the sow, and the gazelle
+(antelope or deer): but when she developed into a malevolent creature
+and became the destroyer of mankind it was appropriate that she should
+assume the form of such man-destroyers as the lion and the cobra.
+
+Once the reason for such identifications grew dim, the uraeus-form of the
+Great Mother became her symbol in either of her aspects, good or bad,
+although the legend of her poison-spitting, man-destroying powers
+persisted.[447] The identification of the destroying-goddess with the
+moon, "the Eye of the Sun-god," prepared the way for the rationalization
+of her character as a uraeus-serpent spitting venom and the sun's Eye
+spitting fire at the Sun-god's enemies. Such was the goddess of Buto in
+Lower Egypt, whose uraeus-symbol was worn on the king's forehead, and was
+misinterpreted by the Greeks as not merely a symbolic "eye," but an
+actual median eye upon the king's or the god's forehead.
+
+It is not without special significance that in the ancient legend (see
+Sethe, _op. cit._) the lioness-goddess Tefnut was reputed to have come
+from Elephantine (or at any rate the region of Sehel and Biga, which has
+the same significance), which serves to demonstrate her connexion with
+the story of the Destruction of Mankind and to corroborate the inference
+as to its remote antiquity. She was identified with Hathor, Sekhet,
+Bast, and other goddesses.
+
+But the uraeus was not merely the goddess who destroyed the king's
+enemies and the emblem of his kingship: in course of time the cobra
+became identified with the ruler himself and the dead king, who was the
+god Osiris. When this happened the snake acquired the god's reputation
+of being the controller of water.
+
+The fashionable speculation of modern scholars that the movements of the
+snake naturally suggest rippling water[448] and provide "the obvious
+reason" which led many people quite independently the one of the other
+to associate the snake with water, is thus shown to have no foundation
+in fact.
+
+One would have imagined that, if any natural association between snakes
+and water was the reason for this association, a water-snake would have
+been chosen to express the symbolism; or, if it was the mere rippling
+motion of the reptile, that all snakes or any snake would have been
+drawn into the analogy. But primarily only one kind of snake, a cobra,
+was selected[449]; and it is not a water snake, and cannot live in or
+under water. It was selected _because it was venomous_ and the
+appropriate symbol of man-slaying.
+
+The circumstances which led to the identification of this particular
+serpent with water were the result of a process of legend-making of so
+arbitrary and eccentric a nature as to make it impossible seriously to
+pretend that so tortuous a ratiocination should have been exactly
+followed to the same unexpected destination also in Crete and Western
+Europe, in Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia, and in America, without
+prompting the one of the other. No serious investigator who is capable
+of estimating the value of evidence can honestly deny that the belief in
+the serpent's control over water was diffused abroad from one centre
+where a concatenation of peculiar circumstances and beliefs led to the
+identification of the ruler with the cobra and the control of water.
+
+We are surely on safe ground in assuming the improbability of such a
+wholly fortuitous set of events happening a second time and producing
+the same result elsewhere. Thus when we find in India the Naga rajas
+identified with the cobra, and credited with the ability to control the
+waters, we can confidently assume that in some way the influence of
+these early Egyptian events made itself felt in India. As we compare the
+details of the Naga worship in India[450] with early Egyptian beliefs,
+all doubt as to their common origin disappears.
+
+The Naga rulers were closely associated with springs, streams, and
+lakes. "To this day the rulers of the Hindu Kush states, Hunza and
+Nagar, though now Mohammedans, are believed, by their subjects, to be
+able to command the elements."
+
+Oldham adds: "This power is still ascribed to the serpent-gods of the
+sun-worshipping countries of China, Manchuria, and Korea, and was so,
+until the introduction of Christianity, in Mexico and Peru". This is put
+forward in support of his argument that the Naga kings' "supposed
+ability to control the elements, and especially the waters," arose "from
+their connexion with the sun". But this is not so.[451] The belief in
+the Egyptian king's power over water was certainly older than
+sun-worship, which did not begin until Osirian beliefs and the
+personification of the moon as the Great Mother brought the sky-deities
+and the control of water into correlation the one with the other. The
+association of the sun and the serpent in the royal insignia was a later
+development.
+
+The early Egyptian goddess was identified with the uraeus-serpent in that
+vitally important nodal point of primitive civilization, Buto, in Lower
+Egypt. The earliest deity in Crete and the Eastern Mediterranean seems
+to have been a goddess who was also closely associated with the serpent.
+According to Langdon "the ophidian nature of the earliest Sumerian
+mother-goddess _Innini_ is unmistakable.... She carries the caduceus in
+her hand, two serpents twining about a staff."[452]
+
+The earliest Indian deities also were goddesses, and the first rulers of
+whom any record has been preserved were regarded as divine cobras, to
+whom was attributed the power of controlling water. These Nagas, whether
+kings or queens, gods or goddesses, were the prototypes of the Eastern
+Asiatic dragon, whose origin is discussed in Chapter II.
+
+In Japan the earliest sun-deity was a goddess who was identified with a
+snake. Elsewhere in this volume (Chapter II) I have referred to the
+completeness of the transference to America of these Old World ideas of
+the serpent. Right on the route taken by the main stream of cultural
+diffusion across the Pacific we still find in their fully-developed form
+the old beliefs concerning the good Mother Serpent of the ancient
+civilizations (C. E. Fox and F. H. Drew, _op. cit. supra_, p. 139). She
+could be re-incarnated as a coconut: she controlled crops; she was
+associated with the coming of death into the world, with the
+introduction of agriculture and the discovery of fire. Like her
+predecessors in the West she was also a Mother Pot or Basket that
+never emptied.
+
+All the _hiona_ or _figona_ (_i.e._ spirits) of San Cristoval have a
+serpent incarnation from Agunua the creator, worshipped by every one, to
+Oharimae and others, only known to particular persons. Other spirits,
+called _ataro_, might be incarnate in almost any animal. Agunua, who
+took the form of a serpent, was good, not evil (p. 134). Very many
+pools, rocks, water-falls, or large trees were thought to be the abode
+of _figona_. These serpent spirits could take the form of a stone, or
+retire within a stone, and sacred stones seem to be connected with
+_figona_ rather than with _ataro_ (p. 135). Almost all the local
+_figona_ are represented as female snakes, but Agunua is a male snake
+(p. 137).
+
+As the real significance of the snake's symbolism originated from its
+identification with the Great Mother in her destructive aspect, it is
+not surprising that the snake is the most primitive form of the evil
+dragon. The Babylonian Tiamat was originally represented as a huge
+serpent,[453] and throughout the world the serpent is pre-eminently a
+symbol of the evil dragon and the powers of evil.
+
+The serpent that tempted Eve was the homologue both of the mother of
+mankind herself and also of the tree of paradise. It was the
+representative of the dragon-protector of pearls and of other kinds of
+treasure: it was also the goddess who animated the sacred tree as well
+as the protector who attacked all who approached it. It was the evil
+dragon that tempted Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit which brought
+her mortality.
+
+The identification of the Great Mother with the lioness (and the
+secondary association of her husband and son with the lion) was
+responsible for a widespread relationship of these creatures with the
+gods and goddesses in Egypt and the Mediterranean, in Western Asia, in
+Babylonia and India, in Eastern Asia [tiger] and America [ocelot, and
+forms borrowed from the conventionalized lions and tigers of the Old
+World].
+
+The account of the Great Mother's attributes and associations throws
+into clear relief certain aspects of the evolution of the dragon which
+were left in a somewhat nebulous state in Chapter II. The earliest form
+assumed by the power of evil was the serpent or the lion, because these
+death-dealing creatures were adopted as symbols of the Great Mother in
+her role as the Destroyer of Mankind. When Horus was differentiated from
+the Great Mother and became her _locum tenens_, his falcon (or eagle)
+was blended with Hathor's lioness to make the composite monster which is
+represented on Elamite and Babylonian monuments (see p. 79). But when
+the role of water as the instrument of destruction became prominent,
+Ea's antelope and fish were blended to make a monster, usually known as
+the "goat-fish," which in India and elsewhere assumed a great variety of
+forms. Some of the varieties of _makara_ were sufficiently like a
+crocodile to be confused or identified with this representative of the
+followers of Set.
+
+The real dragon was created when all three larval types--serpent,
+eagle-lion, and antelope-fish--were blended to form a monster with
+bird's feet and wings, a lion's forelimbs and head, the fish's scales,
+the antelope's horns, and a more or less serpentine form of trunk and
+tail, and sometimes also of head. Repeated substitution of parts of
+other animals, such as the spiral horn of Amen's ram, a deer's antlers,
+and the elephant's head, led to endless variation in the dragon's
+traits.
+
+The essential unity of the motives and incidents of the myths of all
+peoples and of every age is a token, not of independent origin or the
+result of "the similarity of the working of the human mind," but of
+their derivation from the same ultimate source.
+
+The question naturally arises: what is a myth? The dragon-myth of the
+West is the religion of China. The literature of every religion is
+saturated with the influence of the myth. In what respect does religion
+differ from myth? In Chapter I, I attempted to explain how originally
+science and religion were not differentiated. Both were the outcome of
+man's attempt to peer into the meaning of natural phenomena, and to
+extract from such knowledge practical measures for circumventing fate.
+His ever-insistent aim was to combat danger to life.
+
+Religion was differentiated from science when the measures for
+controlling fate became invested with the assurance of supernatural
+help, for which the growth of a knowledge of natural phenomena made it
+impossible for the mere scientist to be the sponsor. It became a
+question of faith rather than knowledge; and man's instinctive struggle
+against the risk of extinction impelled him to cling to this larger hope
+of salvation, and to embellish it with an ethical and moral significance
+which at first was lacking in the eternal search for the elixir of life.
+
+If religion can be regarded as archaic science enriched with the belief
+in supernatural control, the myth can be regarded as effete religion
+which has been superseded by the growth of a loftier ethical purpose.
+The myth is to religion what alchemy is to chemistry or astrology is to
+astronomy. Like these sciences, religion retains much of the material of
+the cruder phase of thought that is displayed in myth, alchemy, and
+astrology, but it has been refined and elaborated. The dross has been to
+a large extent eliminated, and the pure metal has been moulded into a
+more beautiful and attractive form. In searching for the elixir of life,
+the makers of religion have discovered the philosopher's stone, and with
+its aid have transmuted the base materials of myth into the gold of
+religion.
+
+If we seek for the deep motives which have prompted men in all ages so
+persistently to search for the elixir of life, for some means of
+averting the dangers to which their existence is exposed, it will be
+found in the instinct of self-preservation, which is the fundamental
+factor in the behaviour of all living beings, the means of preservation
+of the life which is their distinctive attribute and the very essence of
+their being.
+
+The dragon was originally a concrete expression of the divine powers of
+life-giving; but with the development of a higher conception of
+religious ideals it became relegated to a baser role, and eventually
+became the symbol of the powers of evil.
+
+
+[447: Sethe, "Zur altaegyptische Sage von Sonnenaugen das im Fremde war,"
+_Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde AEgyptens_, V, p. 23.
+[Transcriber's note: the title of the paper has been misprinted. It
+should read "...vom Sonnenauge, das..."]]
+
+[448: See especially the claims put forward by Brinton, which have been
+accepted by Spinden, Joyce, and many other recent writers.]
+
+[449: Possibly also the Cerastes. At a relatively late period other
+snakes were adopted as surrogates of the cobra and Cerastes.]
+
+[450: See Oldham, "Sun and Serpent," p. 51 _inter alia_.]
+
+[451: Blackman, however, has recently advanced this claim in reference
+to Egypt (_op. cit._, _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archaeology_, 1918, p. 57), as
+Breasted and others have done before.]
+
+[452: S. Langdon, "A Seal of Nidaba, the Goddess of Vegetation,"
+_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, Vol. XXXVI, 1914,
+p. 281.]
+
+[453: L. W. King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 58.]
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Numerous obvious printing errors have been corrected.
+However, inconsistent hyphenation in the original has been retained.]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of the Dragon, by G. Elliot Smith
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