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