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.]