Chapter III — The Birth of Aphrodite — The Evolution of the Dragon by Grafton Elliot Smith

Chapter III The Birth of Aphrodite235

It may seem ungallant to discuss the birth of Aphrodite as part of the story of the evolution of the dragon. But the other chapters of this book, in which frequent references have been made to the early history of the Great Mother, have revealed how vital a part she played in the development of the dragon. The earliest real dragon was Tiamat, one of the forms assumed by the Great Mother; and an even earlier prototype was the lioness (Sekhet) manifestation of Hathor.

Thus it becomes necessary to enquire more fully (than has been done in the other chapters) into the circumstances of the Great Mother’s birth and development, and to investigate certain aspects of her ontogeny to which only scant attention has been paid in the preceding pages.

Several reasons have led me to select Aphrodite from the vast legion of Great Mothers for special consideration. In spite of her high specialization in certain directions the Greek goddess of love retains in greater measure than any of her sisters some of the most primitive associations of her original parent. Like vestigial structures in biology, these traits afford invaluable evidence, not only of Aphrodite’s own ancestry and early history, but also of that of the whole family of goddesses of which she is only a specialized type. For Aphrodite’s connexion with shells is a survival of the circumstances which called into existence the first Great Mother and made her not only the Creator of mankind and the universe, but also the parent of all deities, as she was historically the first to be created by human inventiveness. In this lecture I propose to deal with the more general aspects of the evolution of all these daughters of the Great Mother: but I have used Aphrodite’s name in the title because her shell-associations can be demonstrated more clearly and definitely than those of any of her sisters.

In the past a vast array of learning has been brought to bear upon the problems of Aphrodite’s origin; but this effort has, for the most part, been characterized by a narrowness of vision and a lack of adequate appreciation of the more vital factors in her embryological history. In the search for the deep human motives that found specific expression in the great goddess of love, too little attention has been paid to primitive man’s psychology, and his persistent striving for an elixir of life to avert the risk of death, to renew youth and secure a continuance of existence after death. On the other hand, the possibility of obtaining any real explanation has been dashed aside by most scholars, who have been content simply to juggle with certain stereotyped catchphrases and baseless assumptions, simply because the traditions of classical scholarship have made these devices the pawns in a rather aimless game.

It is unnecessary to cite specific illustrations in support of this statement. Reference to any of the standard works on classical archæology, such as Roscher’s “Lexikon,” will testify to the truth of my accusation. In her “Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion” Miss Jane Harrison devotes a chapter (VI) to “The Making of a Goddess,” and discusses “The Birth of Aphrodite”. But she strictly observes the traditions of the classical method; and assumes that the meaning of the myth of Aphrodite’s birth from the sea—the germs of which are at least fifty centuries old—can be decided by the omission of any representation of the sea in the decoration of a pot made in the fifth century b.c.!

But apart from this general criticism, the lack of resourcefulness and open mindedness, certain more specific factors have deflected classical scholars from the true path. In the search for the ancestry of Aphrodite, they have concentrated their attention too exclusively upon the Mediterranean area and Western Asia, and so ignored the most ancient of the historic Great Mothers, the African Hathor, with whom (as Sir Arthur Evans 236 clearly demonstrated more than fifteen years ago) the Cypriote goddess has much closer affinities than with any of her Asiatic sisters. Yet no scholar, either on the Greek or Egyptian side, has seriously attempted to follow up this clue and really investigate the nature of the connexions between Aphrodite and Hathor, and the history of the development of their respective specializations of functions.237

But some explanation must be given for my temerity in venturing to invade the intensively cultivated domains of Aphrodite “with a mind undebauched by classical learning”. I have already explained how the study of Libations and Dragons brought me face to face with the problems of the Great Mother’s attributes. At that stage of the enquiry two circumstances directed my attention specifically to Aphrodite. Mr. Wilfrid Jackson was collecting the data relating to the cultural uses of shells, which he has since incorporated in a book.238 As the results of his search accumulated, the fact soon emerged that the original Great Mother was nothing more than a cowry-shell used as a life-giving amulet; and that Aphrodite’s shell-associations were a survival of the earliest phase in the Great Mother’s history. At this psychological moment Dr. Rendel Harris 239 claimed that Aphrodite was a personification of the mandrake. But the magical attributes of the mandrake, which he claimed to have been responsible for converting the amulet into a goddess, were identical with those which Jackson’s investigations had previously led me to regard as the reasons for deriving Aphrodite from the cowry. The mandrake was clearly a surrogate of the shell or vice versa.240 The problem to be solved was to decide which amulet was responsible for suggesting the process of life-giving. The goddess Aphrodite was closely related to Cyprus; the mandrake was a magical plant there; and the cowry is so intimately associated with the island as to be called Cypræa. So far as is known, however, the shell-amulet is vastly more ancient than the magical reputation of the plant. Moreover, we know why the cowry was regarded as feminine and accredited with life-giving attributes. There are no such reasons for assigning life-giving powers or the female sex to the mandrake. The claim that its magical properties are due to the fancied resemblance of its root to a human being is wholly untenable.241 The roots of many plants are at least as manlike; and, even if this character was the exclusive property of the mandrake, how does it help to explain the remarkable repetory of quite arbitrary and fantastic properties and the female sex assigned to the plant? Sir James Frazer’s claim 242 that “such beliefs and practices illustrate the primitive tendency to personify nature” is a gratuitous and quite irrelevant assumption, which offers no explanation whatsoever of the specific and arbitrary nature of the form assumed by the personification. But when we investigate the historical development of the peculiar attributes of the cowry-shell, and appreciate why and how they were acquired, any doubt as to the source from which the mandrake obtained its “magic” is removed; and with it the fallacy of Sir James Frazer’s wholly unwarranted claims is also exposed.

If we ignore Sir James Frazer’s naïve speculations we can make use of the compilations of evidence which he makes with such remarkable assiduity. But it is more profitable to turn to the study of the remarkable lectures which Dr. Rendel Harris has been delivering in this room 243 during the last few years. Our genial friend has been cultivating his garden on the slopes of Olympus,244 and has been plucking the rich fruits of his ripe scholarship and nimble wit. At the same time, with rougher implements and cruder methods, I have been burrowing in the depths of the earth, trying to recover information concerning the habits and thoughts of mankind many centuries before Dionysus and Apollo, and Artemis and Aphrodite, were dreamt of.

In the course of these subterranean gropings no one was more surprised than I was to discover that I was getting entangled in the roots of the same plants whose golden fruit Dr. Rendel Harris was gathering from his Olympian heights. But the contrast in our respective points of view was perhaps responsible for the different appearance the growths assumed.

To drop the metaphor, while he was searching for the origins of the deities a few centuries before the Christian era began, I was finding their more or less larval forms flourishing more than twenty centuries before the commencement of his story. For the gods and goddesses of his narrative were only the thinly disguised representatives of much more ancient deities decked out in the sumptuous habiliments of Greek culture.

In his lecture on Aphrodite, Dr. Rendel Harris claimed that the goddess was a personification of the mandrake; and I think he made out a good prima facie case in support of his thesis. But other scholars have set forth equally valid reasons for associating Aphrodite with the argonaut, the octopus, the purpura, and a variety of other shells, both univalves and bivalves.245

The goddess has also been regarded as a personification of water, the ocean, or its foam.246 Then again she is closely linked with pigs, cows, lions, deer, goats, rams, dolphins, and a host of other creatures, not forgetting the dove, the swallow, the partridge, the sparling, the goose, and the swan.247

The mandrake theory does not explain, or give adequate recognition to, any of these facts. Nor does Dr. Rendel Harris suggest why it is so dangerous an operation to dig up the mandrake which he identifies with the goddess, or why it is essential to secure the assistance of a dog 248 in the process. The explanation of this fantastic fable gives an important clue to Aphrodite’s antecedents.

The Search for the Elixir of Life. Blood as Life

In delving into the remotely distant history of our species we cannot fail to be impressed with the persistence with which, throughout the whole of his career, man (of the species sapiens) has been seeking 249 for an elixir of life, to give added “vitality” to the dead (whose existence was not consciously regarded as ended), to prolong the days of active life to the living, to restore youth, and to protect his own life from all assaults, not merely of time, but also of circumstance. In other words, the elixir he sought was something that would bring “good luck” in all the events of his life and its continuation. Most of the amulets, even of modern times, the lucky trinkets, the averters of the “Evil Eye,” the practices and devices for securing good luck in love and sport, in curing bodily ills or mental distress, in attaining material prosperity, or a continuation of existence after death, are survivals of this ancient and persistent striving after those objects which our earliest forefathers called collectively the “givers of life”.

From statements in the earliest literature 250 that has come down to us from antiquity, no less than from the views that still prevail among the relatively more primitive peoples of the present day, it is clear that originally man did not consciously formulate a belief in immortality.

It was rather the result of a defect of thinking, or as the modern psychologist would express it, an instinctive repression of the unpleasant idea that death would come to him personally, that primitive man refused to contemplate or to entertain the possibility of life coming to an end. So intense was his instinctive love of life and dread of such physical damage as would destroy his body that man unconsciously avoided thinking of the chance of his own death: hence his belief in the continuance of life cannot be regarded as the outcome of an active process of constructive thought.

This may seem altogether paradoxical and incredible.

How, it may be asked, can man be said to repress the idea of death, if he instinctively refused to admit its possibility? How did he escape the inevitable process of applying to himself the analogy he might have been supposed to make from other men’s experience and recognize that he must die?

Man appreciated the fact that he could kill an animal or another man by inflicting certain physical injuries on him. But at first he seems to have believed that if he could avoid such direct assaults upon himself, his life would flow on unchecked. When death does occur and the onlookers recognize the reality, it is still the practice among certain relatively primitive people to search for the man who has inflicted death on his fellow.

It would, of course, be absurd to pretend that any people could fail to recognize the reality of death in the great majority of cases. The mere fact of burial is an indication of this. But the point of difference between the views of these early men and ourselves, was the tacit assumption on the part of the former, that in spite of the obvious changes in his body (which made inhumation or some other procedure necessary) the deceased was still continuing an existence not unlike that which he enjoyed previously, only somewhat duller, less eventful and more precarious. He still needed food and drink, as he did before, and all the paraphernalia of his mortal life, but he was dependent upon his relatives for the maintenance of his existence.

Such views were difficult of acceptance by a thoughtful people, once they appreciated the fact of the disintegration of the corpse in the grave; and in course of time it was regarded as essential for continued existence that the body should be preserved. The idea developed, that so long as the body of the deceased was preserved and there were restored to it all the elements of vitality which it had lost at death, the continuance of existence was theoretically possible and worthy of acceptance as an article of faith.

Let us consider for a moment what were considered to be elements of vitality by the earliest members of our species.251

From the remotest times man seems to have been aware of the fact that he could kill animals or his fellow men by means of certain physical injuries. He associated these results with the effusion of blood. The loss of blood could cause unconsciousness and death. Blood, therefore, must be the vehicle of consciousness and life, the material whose escape from the body could bring life to an end.252

The first pictures painted by man, with which we are at present acquainted, are found upon the walls and roofs of certain caves in Southern France and Spain. They were the work of the earliest known representatives of our own species, Homo sapiens, in the phase of culture now distinguished by the name “Aurignacian”.

The animals man was in the habit of hunting for food are depicted.253 In some of them arrows are shown implanted in the animal’s flank near the region of the heart; and in others the heart itself is represented.

This implies that at this distant time in the history of our species, it was already realized how vital a spot in the animal’s anatomy the heart was. But even long before man began to speculate about the functions of the heart, he must have learned to associate the loss of blood on the part of man or animals with death, and to regard the pouring out of blood as the escape of its vitality. Many factors must have contributed to the new advance in physiology which made the heart the centre or the chief habitation of vitality, volition, feeling, and knowledge.

Not merely the empirical fact, acquired by experience in hunting, of the peculiarly vulnerable nature of the heart, but perhaps also the knowledge that the heart contained life-giving blood, helped in developing the ideas about its functions as the bestower of life and consciousness.

The palpitation of the heart after severe exertion or under the influence of intense emotion would impress the early physiologist with the relationship of the heart to the feelings, and afford confirmation of his earlier ideas of its functions.

But whatever the explanation, it is known from the folk-lore of even the most unsophisticated peoples that the heart was originally regarded as the seat of life, feeling, volition, and knowledge, and that the blood was the life-stream. The Aurignacian pictures in the caves of Western Europe suggest that these beliefs were extremely ancient.

The evidence at our disposal seems to indicate that not only were such ideas of physiology current in Aurignacian times, but also certain cultural applications of them had been inaugurated even then. The remarkable method of blood-letting by chopping off part of a finger seems to have been practised even in Aurignacian times.254

If it is legitimate to attempt to guess at the meaning these early people attached to so singular a procedure, we may be guided by the ideas associated with this act in outlying corners of the world at the present time. On these grounds we may surmise that the motive underlying this, and other later methods of blood-letting, such as circumcision, piercing the ears, lips, and tongue, gashing the limbs and body, et cetera, was the offering of the life-giving fluid.

Once it was recognized that the state of unconsciousness or death was due to the loss of blood it was a not illogical or irrational procedure to imagine that offerings of blood might restore consciousness and life to the dead.255 If the blood was seriously believed to be the vehicle of feeling and knowledge, the exchange of blood or the offering of blood to the community was a reasonable method for initiating anyone into the wider knowledge of and sympathy with his fellow-men.

Blood-letting, therefore, played a part in a great variety of ceremonies, of burial and of initiation, and also those of a therapeutic 256 and, later, of a religious significance.

But from Aurignacian times onwards, it seems to have been admitted that substitutes for blood might be endowed with a similar potency.

The extensive use of red ochre or other red materials for packing around the bodies of the dead was presumably inspired by the idea that materials simulating blood-stained earth, were endowed with the same life-giving properties as actual blood poured out upon the ground in similar vitalizing ceremonies.

As the shedding of blood produced unconsciousness, the offering of blood or red ochre was, therefore, a logical and practical means of restoring consciousness and reinforcing the element of vitality which was diminished or lost in the corpse.

The common statement that primitive man was a fantastically irrational child is based upon a fallacy. He was probably as well endowed mentally as his modern successors; and was as logical and rational as they are; but many of his premises were wrong, and he hadn’t the necessary body of accumulated wisdom to help him to correct his false assumptions.

If primitive man regarded the dead as still existing, but with a reduced vitality, it was a not irrational procedure on the part of the people of the Reindeer Epoch in Europe to pack the dead in red ochre (which they regarded as a surrogate of the life-giving fluid) to make good the lack of vitality in the corpse.

If blood was the vehicle of consciousness and knowledge, the exchange of blood was clearly a logical procedure for establishing communion of thought and feeling and so enabling an initiate to assimilate the traditions of his people.

If red carnelian was a surrogate of blood the wearing of bracelets or necklaces of this life-giving material was a proper means of warding off danger to life and of securing good luck.

If red paint or the colour red brought these magical results, it was clearly justifiable to resort to its use.

All these procedures are logical. It is only the premises that were erroneous.

The persistence of such customs in Ancient Egypt makes it possible for us to obtain literary evidence to support the inferences drawn from archæological data of a more remote age. For instance, the red jasper amulet sometimes called the “girdle-tie of Isis,” was supposed to represent the blood of the goddess and was applied to the mummy “to stimulate the functions of his blood”;257 or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was intended to add to the vital substance which was so obviously lacking in the corpse.

The Cowry as a Giver of Life

Blood and its substitutes, however, were not the only materials that had acquired a reputation for vitalizing qualities in the Reindeer Epoch. For there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that shells also were regarded, even in that remote time, as life-giving amulets.

If the loss of blood was at first the only recognized cause of death, the act of birth was clearly the only process of life-giving. The portal by which a child entered the world was regarded, therefore, not only as the channel of birth, but also as the actual giver of life.258 The large Red Sea cowry-shell, which closely simulates this “giver of life,” then came to be endowed by popular imagination with the same powers. Hence the shell was used in the same way as red ochre or carnelian: it was placed in the grave to confer vitality on the dead, and worn on bracelets and necklaces to secure good luck by using the “giver of life” to avert the risk of danger to life. Thus the general life-giving properties of blood, blood substitutes, and shells, came to be assimilated the one with the other.259

At first it was probably its more general power of averting death or giving vitality to the dead that played the more obtrusive part in the magical use of the shell. But the circumstances which led to the development of the shell’s symbolism naturally and inevitably conferred upon the cowry special power over women. It was the surrogate of the life-giving organ. It became an amulet to increase the fertility of women and to help them in childbirth. It was, therefore, worn by girls suspended from a girdle, so as to be as near as possible to the organ it was supposed to simulate and whose potency it was believed to be able to reinforce and intensify. Just as bracelets and necklaces of carnelian were used to confer on either sex the vitalizing virtues of blood, which it was supposed to simulate, so also cowries, or imitations of them made of metal or stone, were worn as bracelets, necklaces, or hair-ornaments, to confer health and good luck in both sexes. But these ideas received a much further extension.

As the giver of life, the cowry came to have attributed to it by some people definite powers of creation. It was not merely an amulet to increase fertility: it was itself the actual parent of mankind, the creator of all living things; and the next step was to give these maternal functions material expression, and personify the cowry as an actual woman in the form of a statuette with the distinctly feminine characters grossly exaggerated;260 and in the domain of belief to create the image of a Great Mother, who was the parent of the universe.

Fig. 18 (a) The Archaic Egyptian slate palette of Narmer showing, perhaps, the earliest design of Hathor (at the upper corners of the palette) as a woman with cow’s horns and ears (compare Flinders Petrie, “The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty,” Part I, 1900, Plate XXVII, Fig. 71). The pharaoh is wearing a belt from which are suspended four cow-headed Hathor figures in place of the cowry-amulets of more primitive peoples. This affords corroboration of the view that Hathor assumed the functions originally attributed to the cowry-shell. (b) The king’s sporran, where Hathor-heads (h) take the place of the cowries of the primitive girdle.

Fig. 19.—The front of Stela B (famous for the realistic representations of the Indian elephant at its upper corners), one of the ancient Maya monuments at Copan, Central America (after Maudslay’s photograph and diagram). The girdle of the chief figure is decorated both with shells (Oliva or Conus) and amulets representing human faces corresponding to the Hathor-heads on the Narmer palette (Fig. 18).

Thus gradually there developed out of the cowry-amulet the conception of a creator, the giver of life, health, and good luck. This Great Mother, at first with only vaguely defined traits, was probably the first deity that the wit of man devised to console him with her watchful care over his welfare in this life and to give him assurance as to his fate in the future.

At this stage I should like to emphasize the fact that these beliefs had taken shape long before any definite ideas had been formulated as to the physiology of animal reproduction and before agriculture was practised.

Man had not yet come to appreciate the importance of vegetable fertility, nor had he yet begun to frame theories of the fertilizing powers of water, or give specific expression to them by creating the god Osiris in his own image.

Nor had he begun to take anything more than the most casual interest in the sun, the moon, and the stars. He had not yet devised a sky-world nor created a heaven. When, for reasons that I have already discussed,261 the theory of the fertilizing and the animating power of water was formulated, the beliefs concerning this element were assimilated with those which many ages previously had grown up in explanation of the potency of blood and shells. In addition to fertilizing the earth, water could also animate the dead. The rivers and the seas were in fact a vast reservoir of this animating substance. The powers of the cowry, as a product of the sea, were rationalized into an expression of the great creative force of the water.

A bowl of water became the symbol of the fruitfulness of woman. Such symbolism implied that woman, or her uterus, was a receptacle into which the seminal fluid was poured and from which a new being emerged in a flood of amniotic fluid.

The burial of shells with the dead is an extremely ancient practice, for cowries have been found upon human skeletons of the so-called “Upper Palæolithic Age” of Southern Europe.

At Laugerie-Basse (Dordogne) Mediterranean cowries were found arranged in pairs upon the body; two pairs on the forehead, one near each arm, four in the region of the thighs and knees, and two upon each foot. Others were found in the Mentone caves, and are peculiarly important, because, upon the same stratum as the skeleton with which they were associated, was found part of a Cassis rufa, a shell whose habitat does not extend any nearer than the Indian Ocean.262

Fig. 20.—Diagrams illustrating the form of cowry-belts worn in (a) East Africa and (b) Oceania respectively. (c) Ancient Indian girdle (from the figure of Sirima Devata on the Bharat Tope), consisting of strings of pearls and precious stones, and what seem to be (fourth row from the top) models of cowries. (d) The Copan girdle (from Fig. 19) in which both shells and heads of deities are represented. The two objects suspended from the belt between the heads recall Hathor’s sistra.

These facts are very important. In the first place they reveal the great antiquity of the practice of burying shells with the dead, presumably for the purpose of “life-giving”. Secondly, they suggest the possibility that their magical value as givers of life may be more ancient than their specific use as intensifiers of the fertility of women. Thirdly, the association of these practices with the use of the shell Cassis rufa indicates a very early cultural contact between the people living upon the North-Western shores of the Mediterranean in the Reindeer Age and the dwellers on the coasts of the Indian Ocean; and the probability that these special uses of shells by the former were inspired by the latter.

This hint assumes a special significance when we first get a clear view of the more fully-developed shell-cults of the Eastern Mediterranean many centuries later.263 For then we find definite indications that the cultural uses of shells were obviously borrowed from the Erythræan area.

Long before the shell-amulet became personified as a woman the Mediterranean people had definitely adopted the belief in the cowry’s ability to give life and birth.

The Origin of Clothing

The cowry and its surrogates were supposed to be potent to confer fertility on maidens; and it became the practice for growing girls to wear a girdle on which to suspend the shells as near as possible to the organ their magic was supposed to stimulate. Among many peoples 264 this girdle was discarded as soon as the girls reached maturity.

This practice probably represents the beginning of the history of clothing; but it had other far-reaching effects in the domain of belief.

It has often been claimed that the feeling of modesty was not the reason for the invention of clothing, but that the clothes begat modesty.265 This doctrine contains a certain element of truth, but is by no means the whole explanation. For true modesty is displayed by people who have never worn clothes.

Before mankind could appreciate the psychological fact that the wearing of clothing might add to an individual’s allurement and enhance her sexual attractiveness, some other circumstances must have been responsible for suggesting the experiments out of which this empirical knowledge emerged. The use of a girdle (a) as a protection against danger to life, and (b) as a means of conferring fecundity on girls 266 provided the circumstances which enabled men to discover that the sexual attractiveness of maidens, which in a state of nature was originally associated with modesty and coyness, was profoundly intensified by the artifices of clothing and adornment.

Among people (such as those of East Africa and Southern Arabia) in which it was customary for unmarried girls to adorn themselves with a girdle, it is easy to understand how the meaning of the practice underwent a change, and developed into a device for enhancing their charms and stimulating the imaginations of their suitors.

Out of such experience developed the idea of the magical girdle as an allurement and a love-provoking charm or philtre. Thus Aphrodite’s girdle acquired the reputation of being able to compel love. When Ishtar removed her girdle in the under-world reproduction ceased in the world. The Teutonic Brunhild’s great strength lay in her girdle. In fact magic virtues were conferred upon most goddesses in every part of the world by means of a cestus of some sort.267 But the outstanding feature of Aphrodite’s character as a goddess of love is intimately bound up with these conceptions which developed from the wearing of a girdle of cowries.

Fig. 4.—Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh). (a) The mother-goddess standing upon a lioness (which is her Sekhet form): she is wearing her girdle, and upon her head is the moon and the cow’s horns, conventionalized so as to simulate the crescent moon. Her hair is represented in the conventional form which is sometimes used as Hathor’s symbol. In her hands are the serpent and the lotus, which again are merely forms of the goddess herself. (b) Another picture of Astarte (from Roscher’s “Lexikon”) holding the papyrus sceptre which at times is regarded as an animate form of the mother-goddess herself and as such a thunder weapon.

In the Biblical narrative, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons,” or, as the Revised Version expresses it, “girdles”. The girdle of fig-leaves, however, was originally a surrogate of the girdle of cowries: it was an amulet to give fertility. The consciousness of nakedness was part of the knowledge acquired as the result of the wearing of such girdles (and the clothing into which they developed), and was not originally the motive that impelled our remote ancestors to clothe themselves.

The use of fig-leaves for the girdle in Palestine is an interesting connecting link between the employment of the cowry and the mandrake for similar purposes in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and in Cyprus and Syria respectively (vide infra).

In Greece and Italy, the sweet basil has a reputation for magical properties analogous to those of the cowry. Maidens collect the plant and wear bunches of it upon their body or upon their girdles; while married women fix basil upon their heads.268 It is believed that the odour of the plant will attract admirers: hence in Italy it is called Bacia-nicola. “Kiss me, Nicholas”.269

In Crete it is a sign of mourning presumably because its life-prolonging attributes, as a means of conferring continued existence to the dead, have been so rationalized in explanation of its use at funerals.

On New Year’s day in Athens boys carry a boat and people remark, “St. Basil is come from Cæsarea”.

Pearls

During the chequered history of the Great Mother the attributes of the original shell-amulet from which the goddess was sprung were also changing and being elaborated to fit into a more complex scheme. The magical properties of the cowry came to be acquired by other Red Sea shells, such as Pterocera, the pearl oyster, conch shells, and others. Each of these became intimately associated with the moon.270 The pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little moons, drops of the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky into the gaping oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of “shining by night,” like the moon from which they were believed to have come: and every surrogate of the Great Mother, whether plant, animal, mineral or mythical instrument, came to be endowed with the power of “shining by night”. But pearls were also regarded as the quintessence of the shell’s life-giving properties, which were considered to be all the more potent because they were sky-given emanations of the moon-goddess herself. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of being the “givers of life” par excellence, an idea which found literal expression in the ancient Persian word margan (from mar, “giver” and gan, “life”). This word has been borrowed in all the Turanian languages (ranging from Hungary to Kamskatckha), but also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia, thence through Greek and Latin (margarita) to European languages.271 The same life-giving attributes were also acquired by the other pearl-bearing shells; and at some subsequent period, when it was discovered that some of these shells could be used as trumpets, the sound produced was also believed to be life-giving or the voice of the great Giver of Life. The blast of the trumpet was also supposed to be able to animate the deity and restore his consciousness, so that he could attend to the appeals of supplicants. In other words the noise woke up the god from his sleep. Hence the shell-trumpet attained an important significance in early religious ceremonials for the ritual purpose of summoning the deity, especially in Crete and India, and ultimately in widely distant parts of the world.272 Long before these shells are known to have been used as trumpets, they were employed like the other Red Sea shells as “givers of life” to the dead in Egypt. Their use as trumpets was secondary.

And when it was discovered that purple dye could be obtained from certain of the trumpet-shells, the colouring-matter acquired the same life-giving powers as had already been conferred upon the trumpet and the pearls: thus it became regarded as a divine substance and as the exclusive property of gods and kings.

Long before, the colour red had acquired magic potency as a surrogate of life-giving blood; and this colour-symbolism undoubtedly helped in the development of the similar beliefs concerning purple.

Sharks and Dragons

When the life-giving attributes of water were confused with the same properties with which shells had independently been credited long before, the shell’s reputation was rationalized as an expression of the vital powers of the ocean in which the mollusc was born. But the same explanation was also extended to include fishes, and other denizens of the water, as manifestations of similar divine powers. In the lecture on “Dragons and Rain Gods” I referred to the identification of Ea, the Babylonian Osiris, with a fish (p. 105). When the value of the pearl as the giver of life impelled men to incur any risks to obtain so precious an amulet, the chief dangers that threatened pearl-fishers were due to sharks. These came to be regarded as demons guarding the treasure-houses at the bottom of the sea. Out of these crude materials the imaginations of the early pearl-fishers created the picture of wonderful submarine palaces of Nâga kings in which vast wealth, not merely of pearls, but also of gold, precious stones, and beautiful maidens (all of them “givers of life,” vide infra, p. 224), were placed under the protection of shark-dragons.273 The conception of the pearl (which is a surrogate of the life-giving Great Mother) guarded by dragons is linked by many bonds of affinity with early Erythræan and Mediterranean beliefs. The more usual form of the story, both in Southern Arabian legend and in Minoan and Mycenæan art, represents the Mother Goddess incarnate in a sacred tree or pillar with its protecting dragons in the form of serpents or lions, or a variety of dragon-surrogates, either real animals, such as deer or cattle, or composite monsters (Fig. 26).274

There are reasons for believing that these stories were first invented somewhere on the shores of the Erythræan Sea, probably in Southern Arabia. The animation of the incense-tree by the Great Mother, for the reasons which I have already expounded,275 formed the link of her identification with the pearl, which probably acquired its magical reputation in the same region.

“In the Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing in the lake Vourukasha: the fish Khar-mâhi circles protectingly around it and defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life, children to women, husbands to girls, and horses to men. In the Minôkhired the tree is called ‘the preparer of the corpse’” (Spiegel, “Eran. Altertumskunde,” II, 115—quoted by Jung, “Psychology of the Unconscious,” p. 532). The idea of guarding the divine tree 276 by dragons was probably the result of the transference to that particular surrogate of the Great Mother of the shark-stories which originated from the experiences of the seekers after pearls, her other representatives.

There are many other bits of corroborative evidence to suggest that these shell-cults and the legends derived from them were actually transmitted from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. Nor is it surprising that this should have happened, when it is recalled that Egyptian sailors were trafficking in both seas long before the Pyramid Age, and no doubt carried the beliefs and the legends of one region to the other. I have already referred to the adoption in the Mediterranean area of the idea of the dragon-protectors of the tree- and pillar-forms of the Great Mother, and suggested that this was merely a garbled version of the pearl-fisher’s experience of the dangers of attacks by sharks. But the same legends also reached the Levant in a less modified form, and then underwent another kind of transformation (and confusion with the tree-version) in Cyprus or Syria.

As the shark would be a not wholly appropriate actor in the Mediterranean, its rôle is taken by its smaller Selachian relative, the dog-fish. In the notes on Pliny’s Natural History, Dr. Bostock and Mr. H. T. Riley 277 refer to the habits of dog-fishes (“Canes marini”), and quote from Procopius (“De Bell. Pers.” B. I, c. 4) the following “wonderful story in relation to this subject”: “Sea-dogs are wonderful admirers of the pearl-fish, and follow them out to sea.... A certain fisherman, having watched for the moment when the shell-fish was deprived of the attention of its attendant sea-dog,... seized the shell-fish and made for the shore. The sea-dog, however, was soon aware of the theft, and making straight for the fisherman, seized him. Finding himself thus caught, he made a last effort, and threw the pearl-fish on shore, immediately on which he was torn to pieces by its protector.”278

Though the written record of this story is relatively modern the incident thus described probably goes back to much more ancient times. It is only a very slightly modified version of an ancient narrative of a shark’s attack upon a pearl-diver.

For reasons which I shall discuss in the following pages, the rôle of the cowry and pearl as representatives of the Great Mother was in the Levant assumed by the mandrake, just as we have already seen the Southern Arabian conception of her as a tree adopted in Mycenæan lands. Having replaced the sea-shell by a land plant it became necessary, in adapting the legend, to substitute for the “sea-dog” some land animal. Not unnaturally it became a dog. Thus the story of the dangers incurred in the process of digging up a mandrake assumed the well-known form.279 The attempt to dig up the mandrake was said to be fraught with great danger. The traditional means of circumventing these risks has been described by many writers, ancient and modern, and preserved in the folk-lore of most European and western Asiatic countries. The story as told by Josephus is as follows: “They dig a trench round it till the hidden part of the root is very small, then they tie a dog to it, and when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant away.”280 Thus the dog takes the place of the dog-fish when the mandrake becomes the pearl’s surrogate. The only discrepancy between the two stories is the point to which Josephus calls specific attention. For instead of the dog killing the thief, as the shark (dog-fish) kills the stealer of pearls, the dog becomes the victim as a substitute for the man. As Josephus remarks, “the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant away”. This distortion of the story is true to the traditions of legend-making. The dog-incident is so twisted as to be transformed into a device for plucking the dangerous plant without risk.

It is quite possible that earlier associations of the dog with the Great Mother may have played some part in this transference of meaning, if only by creating confusion which made such rationalization necessary. I refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the fragments of Osiris; and the rôle played by Anubis, and his Greek avatar Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the association of the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with the confusion is uncertain.281

There was an intimate association of the dog with the goddess of the under-world (Hecate) and the ritual of rebirth of the dead.282 Perhaps the development of the story of the underworld-goddess Aphrodite’s dog and the mandrake may have been helped by this survival of the association of Isis with Anubis, even if there is not a more definite causal relationship between the dog-incidents in the various legends.

The divine dog Anubis is frequently represented in connexion with the ritual of rebirth,283 where it is shown upon a standard in association with the placenta. The hieroglyphic sign for the Egyptian word mes, “to give birth,” consists of the skins of three dogs (or jackals, or foxes). The three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded the portal of Hades may possibly be a distorted survival of this ancient symbolism of the three-fold dog-skin as the graphic sign for the act of emergence from the portal of birth. Elsewhere (p. 223) in this lecture I have referred to Charon’s obolus as a surrogate of the life-giving pearl or cowry placed in the mouth of the dead to provide “vital substance”. Rohde 284 regards Charon as the second Cerberus, corresponding to the Egyptian dog-faced god Anubis: just as Charon received his obolus, so in Attic custom the dead were provided with μελιτοῦτια the object of which is usually said to be to pacify the dog of hell.

What seems to link all these fantastic beliefs and customs with the story of the dog and the mandrake is the fact that they are closely bound up with the conception of the dog as the guardian of hidden treasure.

The mandrake story may have arisen out of a mingling of these two streams of legend—the shark (dog-fish) protecting the treasures at the bottom of the sea, and the ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning the dog-headed god who presides at the embalmer’s operations and superintends the process of rebirth.

The dog of the story is a representative of the dragon guarding the goddess in the form of the mandrake, just as the lions over the gate at Mycenæ heraldically support her pillar-form, or the serpents in Southern Arabia protect her as an incense tree. Dog, Lion, and Serpent in these legends are all representatives of the goddess herself, i.e. merely her own avatars (Fig. 26).

At one time I imagined that the rôle of Anubis as a god of embalming and the restorer of the dead was merely an ingenuous device on the part of the early Egyptians to console themselves for the depredations of jackals in their cemeteries. For if the jackal were converted into a life-giving god it would be a comforting thought to believe that the dead man, even though devoured, was “in the bosom of his god” and thereby had attained a rebirth in the hereafter. In ancient Persia corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour. There was also the custom of leading a dog to the bed of a dying man who presented him with food, just as Cerberus was given honey-cakes by Hercules in his journey to hell. But I have not been able to obtain any corroboration of this supposition. It is a remarkable coincidence that the Great Mother has been identified with the necrophilic vulture as Mut; and it has been claimed by some writers 285 that, just as the jackal was regarded as a symbol of rebirth in Egypt and the dead were exposed for dogs to devour in Persia, so the vulture’s corpse-devouring habits may have been primarily responsible for suggesting its identification with the Great Mother and for the motive behind the Indian practice of leaving the corpses of the dead for the vultures to dispose of.286 It is not uncommon to find, even in English cathedrals, recumbent statues of bishops with dogs as footstools. Petronius (“Sat.,” c. 71) makes the following statement: “valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae catellam pingas—ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem vivere”.287 The belief in the dog’s service as a guide to the dead ranges from Western Europe to Peru.

To return to the story of the dog and the mandrake: no doubt the demand will be made for further evidence that the mandrake actually assumed the rôle of the pearl in these stories. If the remarkable repertory of magical properties assigned to the mandrake 288 be compared with those which developed in connexion with the cowry and the pearl,289 it will be found that the two series are identical. The mandrake also is the giver of life, of fertility to women, of safety in childbirth; and like the cowry and the pearl it exerts these magical influences only if it be worn in contact with the wearer’s skin.290 But the most definite indication of the mandrake’s homology with the pearl is provided by the legend that “it shines by night”. Some scholars,291 both ancient and modern, have attempted to rationalize this tradition by interpreting it as a reference to the glow-worms that settle on the plant! But it is only one of many attributes borrowed by the mandrake from the pearl, which was credited with this remarkable reputation only when early scientists conceived the hypothesis that the gem was a bit of moon substance.

As the memory of the real history of these beliefs grew dim, confusion was rapidly introduced into the stories. I have already explained how the diving for pearls started the story of the great palace of treasures under the waters which was guarded by dragons. As the pearl had the reputation of shining by night, it is not surprising that it or some of its surrogates should in course of time come to be credited with the power of “revealing hidden treasures,” the treasures which in the original story were the pearls themselves. Thus the magic fern-seed and other treasure-disclosing vegetables 292 are surrogates of the mandrake, and like it derive their magical properties directly or indirectly from the pearl.

The fantastic story of the dog and the mandrake provides the most definite evidence of the derivation of the mandrake-beliefs from the shell-cults of the Erythræan Sea. There are many other scraps of evidence to corroborate this. I shall refer here only to one of these. “The discovery of the art of purple-dyeing has been attributed to the Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many writers. According to Julius Pollux (‘Onomasticon,’ I, iv.) and Nonnus (‘Dionys.,’ XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on the seashore accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom he was enamoured. The dog having found a Murex with its head protruding from its shell, devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained with purple. The nymph, on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained with Hercules to provide her with a robe of like splendour.”293 This seems to be another variant of the same story.

The Octopus

Aphrodite was associated not only with the cowry, the pearl, and the mandrake, but also with the octopus, the argonaut, and other cephalopods. Tümpel seems to imagine that the identification of the goddess with the argonaut and the octopus necessarily excludes her association with molluscs; and Dr. Rendel Harris attributes an equally exclusive importance to the mandrake. But in such methods of argument due recognition is not given to the outstanding fact in the history of primitive beliefs. The early philosophers built up their great generalizations in the same way as their modern successors. They were searching for some explanation of, or a working hypothesis to include, most diverse natural phenomena within a concise scheme. The very essence of such attempts was the institution of a series of homologies and fancied analogies between dissimilar objects. Aphrodite was at one and the same time the personification of the cowry, the conch shell, the purple shell, the pearl, the lotus, and the lily, the mandrake and the bryony, the incense tree and the cedar, the octopus and the argonaut, the pig, and the cow.

Fig. 21.—(a) A slate triad found by Professor G. A. Reisner in the temple of the Third Pyramid at Giza. It shows the Pharaoh Mycerinus supported on his right side by the goddess Hathor, represented as a woman with the moon and the cow’s horns upon her head, and on the left side by a nome goddess, bearing upon her head the jackal-symbol of her nome. (b) The Ecuador Aphrodite. Bas-relief from Cerro Jaboncillo (after Saville, “Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador,” Preliminary Report, 1907, Plate XXXVIII). A grotesque composite monster intended to represent a woman (compare Saville’s Plates XXXV, XXXVI, and XXXIX), whose head is a conventionalized Octopus, whose body is a Loligo, and whose limbs are human.

Every one of these identifications is the result of a long and chequered history, in which fancied resemblances and confusion of meaning play a very large part. But I cannot too strongly repudiate the claim made by Sir James Frazer that such events are merely so many evidences of the innate human tendency to personify nature. The history of the arbitrary circumstances that were responsible for the development of each one of these homologies is entirely fatal to this wholly unwarranted speculation.294 Tümpel claims 295 the Aphrodite was associated more especially with “a species of Sepia”. He refers to the attempts to associate the goddess of love with amulets of univalvular shells “in virtue of a certain peculiar and obscene symbolism”.296 Naturalists, however, designate with the term Venus Cytherea certain gaping bivalve molluscs.

But, according to Tümpel (p. 386), neither univalvular nor bivalve shells can be regarded as a real part of the goddess’s cultural equipment. There is no representation of Aphrodite coming in a shell from across the sea.297 The truly sacred Aphrodite-shell was entirely different, so Tümpel believes: it was obviously difficult to preserve, but for that reason more worthy of notice, for the small χοίριναι (pectines), virginalia marina (Apuleius de mag. 34, 35, and in reference thereto, Isidor. origg. 9, 5, 24) or spuria (σπόρια) were only the commoner and more readily obtained surrogates: the univalvular shells. (μονόθυρα of Aristotle), such as those just mentioned, and the other ὄστρεα of Aphrodite, the Nerites (periwinkles, etc.), the purple shell and the Echineïs were also real Veneriae conchae. Among the Nerites Aelian enumerates (N.A. 14, 28): Ἀφροδίτην δὲ συνδιαιτωμένην έν τῂ θάλαττη ἡσθὴναι τε τῷ Νηρίτη τῷδε καὶ ἔχειν ἀυτον φίλον. On account of their supposed medicinal value in cases of abortion and especially as a prophylactic for pregnant women the Ἐχενηΐς (pure Latin re[mi]mora) was called ὠδινολύτη 298 (Pliny, 32, 1, 5: pisciculus!). According to Mutianus (Pliny, 9, 25 (41), 79 f.), it was a species of purple shell, but larger than the true Murex purpura. From this the sanctity of the Echineïs to the Cnidian Aphrodite is demonstrated: “quibus (conchis) inhaerentibus plenam ventis stetisse navem portantem Periandro, ut castrarentur nobilis pueros, conchasque, quae id praestiterint, apud Cnidiorum Venerem coli” (Pliny).

Tümpel then (p. 387) accuses Stephani of being mistaken in his interpretation of Martial’s Cytheriacae (Epign. II, 47, 1 = purple shells) as the amulets of Aphrodite, and claims that Jahn has given the correct solution of the following passages from Pliny (N.H., 9, 33 [52], 103, compare 32, 11 [53]): “navigant ex his (conchis) veneriae, praebentesque concavam sui partem et aurae opponentes per summa aequorum velificant”; and further (9, 30[49], 94): “in Propontide concham esse acatii modo carinatam inflexa puppe, prora rostrata, in hac condi nauplium animal saepiae simile ludendi societate sola, duobus hoc fieri generibus: tranquillum enim vectorem demissis palmulis ferire ut remis; si vero flatus invitet, easdem in usu gubernaculi porrigi pandique buccarum sinus aurae”.

Tümpel claims (pp. 387 and 388) that this quotation settles the question. Aphrodite’s “shell,” according to him, is the Nauplius (depicted as a shell-fish, with its sail-like palmulæ spread out to the wind, but with the same sails flattened into plate-like arms for steering), clearly “a species of Sepia,” wholly like Aphrodite herself, a ship-like shell-fish sailing over the surface of the water, the concha veneria. [The analogy to a ship bearing the Great Mother is extremely ancient and originally referred to the crescent moon carrying the moon-goddess across the heavenly ocean.]

Elsewhere (p. 399) he discusses the reasons for the connexion of Aphrodite with the “nautilus,” by which is meant the argonaut of zoologists.

But if Jahn and Tümpel have thus clearly established the proof of the intimate association of Aphrodite with certain cephalopods, they are wholly unjustified in the assumption that their quotations from relatively modern authors disprove the reality of the equally close (though more ancient) relationship of the goddess to the cowry, the pearl-shell, the trumpet-shell, and the purple-shell.

It must not be forgotten that, as we have already seen, the primitive shell-cults of the Erythræan Sea had been diffused throughout the Mediterranean area long before Aphrodite was born upon the shores of the Levant, and possibly before Hathor came into existence in the south. The use of the cowry and gold models of the cowry goes back to an early time in Ægean history.299 And the influence of Aphrodite’s early associations had become blurred and confused by the development of new links with other shells and their surrogates.

But the connexion of Aphrodite with the octopus and its kindred played a very obtrusive part in Minoan and Mycenæan art; and its influence was spread abroad as far as Western Europe 300 and towards the East as far as America. In many ways it was a factor in the development of such artistic designs as the spiral and the volute, and not improbably also of the swastika.

Starting from the researches of Tümpel, a distinguished French zoologist, Dr. Frédéric Houssay,301 sought to demonstrate that the cult of Aphrodite was “based upon a pre-existing zoological philosophy”. The argument in support of his claim that Aphrodite was a personification of the octopus must be sharply differentiated into two parts: first, the reality of the association of the octopus with the goddess, of which there can be no doubt; and secondly, his explanation of it, which (however popular it may be with classical writers and modern scholars)302 is not only a gratuitous assumption, but also, even if it were based upon more valid evidence than the speculations of such recent writers as Pliny, would not really carry the explanation very far.

I refer to his claim that “les premiers conquérants de la mer furent induits en vénération du poulpe nageur (octopus) parce qu’ils crurent que quelque-uns de ces céphalopodes, les poulpes sacrés (argonauta) avaient, comme eux et avant eux, inventé la navigation” (op. cit., p. 15). Idle fancies of this sort do not help us to understand the arbitrary beliefs concerning the magical powers of the octopus.

The real problem we have to solve is to discover why, among all the multitude of bizarre creatures to be found in the Mediterranean Sea, the octopus and its allies should thus have been singled out for distinctive appreciation, and also acquired the same remarkable attributes as the cowry.

I believe that the Red Sea “Spider shell,” Pterocera,303 was the link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like the cowry, for funerary purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India.304 But it was also depicted upon a series of remarkable primitive statues of the god Min, which were found at Coptos during the winter 1893-4 by Professor Flinders Petrie.305 Some of these objects are now in the Cairo Museum and the others in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. They are supposed to be late predynastic representations of the god Min. If this supposition is correct they are the earliest idols (apart from mere amulets) that have been preserved from antiquity.

Upon these statues, representations of the Red Sea shell Pterocera bryonia are sculptured in low relief. Mr. F. Ll. Griffith is disinclined to accept my suggestion that the object of these pictures of the shell was to animate the statues. But whether this was their purpose or not, it is probably not without some significance that these life-giving shells were associated with so obtrusively phallic a deity as Min. In any case they afford concrete evidence of cultural contact between Coptos and the Red Sea, and indicate that these particular shells were chosen as symbols of that sea or its coast.

The distinctive feature of the Pterocera is that the mantle in the adult expands into a series of long finger-like processes each of which secretes a calcareous process or “claw”. There are seven 306 of these claws as well as the long columella (Fig. 5). Hence, when the shell-cults were diffused from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean (where the Pterocera is not found), it is quite likely that the people of the Levant may have confused with the octopus some sailor’s account of the eight-rayed shell (or perhaps representations of it on some amulet or statue). Whether this is the explanation of the confusion or not, it is certain that the beliefs associated with the cowry and the octopus in the Ægean area are identical with those linked up with the cowry and the Pterocera in the Red Sea.

I have already mentioned that the mandrake is believed to possess the same magical powers. Sir James Frazer has called attention to the fact that in Armenia the bryony (Bryonia alba) is a surrogate of the mandrake and is credited with the same attributes.307 Lovell Reeve (“Conchologia Iconica,” VI, 1851) refers to the Red Sea Pterocera as the “Wild Vine Root” species, previously known as Strombus radix bryoniae; and Chemnitz (“Conch. Cab.,” 1788, Vol. X, p. 227) says the French call it “Racine de brione femelle imparfaite,” and refer to it as “the maiden”. Here then is further evidence that this shell (a) was associated in some way with a surrogate of the mandrake (Aphrodite), and (b) was regarded as a maiden. Thus clearly it has a place in the chequered history of Aphrodite. I have suggested the possibility of its confusion with the octopus, which may have led to the inclusion of the latter within the scope of the marine creatures in Aphrodite’s cultural equipment. According to Matthioli (Lib. 2, p. 135), another of Aphrodite’s creatures, the purple shell-fish, was also known as “the maiden”. By Pliny it is called Pelogia, in Greek πορφύρα; and πορφυρώματα was the term applied to the flesh of swine that had been sacrificed to Ceres and Proserpine (Hesych.). In fact, the purple-shell was “the maiden” and also “the sow”: in other words it was Aphrodite. The use of the term “maiden” for the Pterocera suggests a similar identification. To complete this web of proof it may be noted that an old writer has called the mandrake the plant of Circe, the sorceress who turned men into swine by a magic draught.308 Thus we have a series of shells, plants, and marine creatures accredited with identical magical properties, and each of them known in popular tradition as “the maiden”. They are all culturally associated with Aphrodite.

I shall have occasion (infra, p. 177) to refer to M. Siret’s account of the discovery of the Ægean octopus-motif upon Æneolithic objects in Spain, and of the widespread use in Western Europe of certain conventional designs derived from the octopus. M. Siret also (see the table, Fig. 6, on p. 34 of his book) makes the remarkable claim that the conventional form of the Egyptian Bes, which, according to Quibell,309 is the god whose function it is to preside over sexual intercourse in its purely physical aspect, is derived from the octopus. If this is true—and I am bound to admit that it is far from being proved—it suggests that the Red Sea littoral may have been the place of origin of the cultural use of the octopus and an association with Hathor, for Bes and Hathor are said to have been introduced into Egypt from there.310

That the octopus was actually identified with the Great Mother and also with the dragon is revealed by the fact of the latter assuming an octopus-form in Eastern Asia and Oceania, and by the occurrence of octopus-motifs in the representation of the goddess in America. One of the most remarkable series of pictures depicting the Great Mother is found sculptured in low relief upon a number of stone slabs from Manabi in Central America,311 one of which I reproduce here (Fig. 21b). The head of the goddess is a conventionalized octopus; to that was added a body consisting of a Loligo; and, to give greater definiteness to this remarkable process of building up the form of the goddess, conventional representations of her arms and legs (and in some of the sculptures also the pudendum muliebre) were added. Thus there can be no doubt of the identification of this American Aphrodite and the octopus.

In the Polynesian Rata-myth there is a very instructive series of manifestations of the dragon.312 The first form assumed by the monster in this story was a gaping shell-fish of enormous size; then it appeared as a mighty octopus; and lastly, as a whale, into whose jaws the hero Nganaoa sprang, as his representatives are said to have done elsewhere throughout the world (Frobenius, op. cit., pp. 59-219).

Houssay (op. cit. infra) calls attention to the fact that at times Astarte was shown carrying an octopus as her emblem,313 and has suggested that it was mistaken for a hand, just as in America the thunderbolt of Chac was given a hand-like form in the Dresden Codex (vide supra. Fig. 13), and elsewhere (e.g. Fig. 12).

If this suggestion should prove to be well founded it would provide a more convincing explanation of the girdle of hands worn by the Indian goddess Kali 314 than that usually given. If the “hands” really represent surrogates of the cowry, the wearing of such a girdle brings the Indian goddess into line, not only with Astarte and Aphrodite, but also with the East African maidens who still wear the girdle of cowries. Kali’s exploits were in many respects identical with those of the bloodthirsty Sekhet-manifestation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Just as Sekhet had to be restrained by Re for her excess of zeal in murdering his foes, so Siva had to intervene with Kali upon the battlefield flooded with gore (as also in the Egyptian story) to spare the remnant of his enemies.315

The Swastika

Houssay (op. cit. supra) has made the interesting suggestion that the swastika may have been derived from such conventionalized representations of the octopus as are shown in Fig. 23. This series of sketches is taken from Tümpel’s memoir, which provided the foundation for Houssay’s hypothesis.

A vast amount of attention has been devoted to this lucky symbol,316 which still enjoys a widespread vogue at the present day, after a history of several thousand years. Although so much has been written in attempted explanation of the swastika since Houssay made his suggestion, so far as I am aware no one has paid the slightest attention to his hypothesis or made even a passing reference to his memoir.317 Fantastic and far-fetched though it may seem at first sight (though surely not more so than the strictly orthodox solar theory advocated by Mr. Cook or Mrs. Nuttall’s astral speculations) Houssay’s suggestion offers an explanation of some of the salient attributes of the swastika on which the alternative hypotheses shed little or no light.

Among the earliest known examples of the symbol are those engraved upon the so-called “owl-shaped” (but, as Houssay has conclusively demonstrated, really octopus-shaped) vases and a metal figurine found by Schliemann in his excavations of the hill at Hissarlik.318 The swastika is represented upon the mons Veneris of these figures, which represent the Great Mother in her form as a woman or as a pot, which is an anthropomorphized octopus, one of the avatars of the Great Mother. The symbol seems to have been intended as a fertility amulet like the cowry, either suspended from a girdle or depicted upon a pubic shield or conventionalized fig-leaf.

Wherever it is found the swastika is supposed to be an amulet to confer “good luck” and long life. Both this reputation and the association with the female organs of reproduction link up the symbol with the cowry, the Pterocera, and the octopus. It is clear then that the swastika has the same reputation for magic and the same attributes and associations as the octopus; and it may be a conventionalized representation of it, as Houssay has suggested.

It must not be assumed that the identification of the swastika with the Great Mother and her powers of giving life and resurrection necessarily invalidates the solar and astral theories recently championed by Mr. Cook and Mrs. Nuttall respectively. I have already called attention to the fact that the Sun-god derived his existence and all his attributes from his mother. The whole symbolism of the Winged Disk and the Wheel of the Sun and their reputation for life-giving and destruction were adopted from the Great Mother. These well-established facts should prepare us to recognize that the admission of the truth of Houssay’s suggestion would not necessarily invalidate the more widely accepted solar significance of the swastika.

Tümpel called attention to the fact that, when they set about conventionalizing the octopus, the Mycenæan artists often resorted to the practice of representing pairs of “arms” as units and so making four-limbed and three-limbed forms (Fig. 23), which Houssay regards as the prototypes of the swastika and the triskele respectively. That such a process may have played a part in the development of the symbol is further suggested by the form of a Transcaucasian swastika found by Rössler,319 who assigns it to the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age. Each of the four limbs is bifurcated at its extremity. Moreover they exhibit the series of spots, so often found upon or alongside the limbs of the symbol, which suggest the conventional way of representing the suckers of the octopus in the Mycenæan designs (Fig. 23).

Another remarkable picture of a swastika-like emblem has been found in America.320 The elephant-headed god sits in the centre and four pairs of arms radiate from him, each of them equipped with definite suckers.

Another possible way in which the design of a four-limbed swastika may have been derived from an octopus is suggested by the gypsum weight found in 1901 by Sir Arthur Evans 321 in the West Magazine of the palace at Knossos (circa 1500 b.c.). Upon the surface of this weight the form of an octopus has been depicted, four of the arms of which stand out in much stronger relief than the others.

The number four has a peculiar mystical significance (vide infra, p. 206) and is especially associated with the Sun-god Horus. This fact may have played some part in the process of reduction of the number of limbs of the octopus to four; or alternatively it may have helped to emphasize the solar associations of the symbol, which other considerations were responsible for suggesting. The designs upon the pots from Hissarlik show that at a relatively early epoch the swastika was confused with the sun’s disc represented as a wheel with four spokes.322 But the solar attributes of the swastika are secondary to those of life-giving and luck-bringing, with which it was originally endowed as a form of the Great Mother.

The only serious fact which arouses some doubt as to the validity of Houssay’s theory is the discovery of an early painted vase at Susa decorated with an unmistakable swastika. Edmond Pottier, who has described the ceramic ware from Susa,323 regards this pot as Proto-Elamite of the earliest period. If Pottier’s claim is justified we have in this isolated specimen from Susa the earliest example of the swastika. Moreover, it comes from a region in which the symbol was supposed to be wholly absent.

This raises a difficult problem for solution. Is the Proto-Elamite swastika the prototype of the symbol whose world-wide migrations have been studied by Wilson (op. cit. supra)? Or is it an instance of independent evolution? If it falls within the first category and is really the parent of the early Anatolian swastikas, how is it to be explained? Was the conventionalization of the octopus design much more ancient than the earliest Trojan examples of the symbol? Or was the Susian design adopted in the West and given a symbolic meaning which it did not have before then?

These are questions which we are unable to answer at present because the necessary information is lacking. I have enumerated them merely to suggest that any hasty inferences regarding the bearing of the Susian design upon the general problem are apt to be misleading. Vincent 324 claims that the fact of the swastika having been in use by ceramic artists in Crete and Susiana many centuries before the appearance of Mycenæan art is fatal to Houssay’s hypothesis. But I think it is too soon to make such an assumption. The swastika was already a rigidly conventionalized symbol when we first know it both in the Mediterranean and in Susiana. It may therefore have a long history behind it. The octopus may possibly have begun to play a part in the development of this symbolism before the Egyptian Bes (vide supra, p. 171) was evolved, perhaps even before the time of the Coptos statues of Min (supra, p. 169), or in the early days of Sumerian history when the conventional form of the water-pot was being determined (infra, p. 179). These are mere conjectures, which I mention merely for the purpose of suggesting that the time is not yet ripe for using such arguments as Vincent’s finally to dispose of Houssay’s octopus-theory.

There can be no doubt that the symbolism of the Mycenæan spiral and the volute is closely related to the octopus. In fact, the evidence provided by Minoan paintings and Mycenæan decorative art demonstrates that the spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the octopus. The use of the volute on Egyptian scarabs 325 and also in the decoration of an early Thracian statuette of a nude goddess 326 indicate that it was employed like the spiral and octopus as a life-symbol.

In Spanish graves of the Early and Middle Neolithic types M. Siret found cowry-shells in association with a series of flint implements, crude idols, and pottery almost precisely reproducing the forms of similar objects found with cowries and pecten shells at Hissarlik.327 But when the Æneolithic phase of culture dawned in Spain, and the Ægean octopus-motif made its appearance there, the culture as a whole reveals unmistakable evidence of a predominantly Egyptian inspiration.

M. Siret claims, however, that, even in the Neolithic phase in Spain, the crude idols represent forms derived from the octopus in the Eastern Mediterranean (p. 59 et seq.). He regards the octopus as “a conventional symbol of the ocean, or, more precisely, of the fertilizing watery principle” (p. 19). He elucidates a very interesting feature of the Æneolithic representation of the octopus in Spain. The spiral-motif of the Ægean gives place to an angular design, which he claims to be due to the influence of the conventional Egyptian way of representing water (p. 40). If this interpretation is correct—and, in spite of the slenderness of the evidence, I am inclined to accept it—it affords a remarkable illustration of the effects of culture-contact in the conventionalization of designs, to which Dr. Rivers has called attention.328 Whatever explanation may be provided of this method of representing the arms of the octopus with its angularly bent extremities, it seems to have an important bearing on Houssay’s hypothesis of the swastika’s origin. For it would reveal the means by which the spiral or volute shape of the limbs of the swastika became transformed into the angular form, which is so characteristic of the conventional symbol.329

The significance of the spiral as a form of the Great Mother inevitably led to its identification with the thunder weapon, like all her other surrogates. I have already referred (Chapter II, p. 98) to the association of the spiral with thunder and lightning in Eastern Asia. But other factors played a significant part in determining this specialization. In Egypt the god Amen was identified with the ram; and this creature’s spirally curved horn became the symbol of the thunder-god throughout the Mediterranean area,330 and then further afield in Europe, Africa, and Asia, where, for instance, we see Agni’s ram with the characteristic horn. This blending of the influence of the octopus- and the ram’s-horn-motifs made the spiral a conventional representation of thunder. This is displayed in its most definite form in China, Japan, Indonesia, and America, where we find the separate spiral used as a thunder-symbol, and the spiral appendage on the side of the head as a token of the god of thunder.331

The Mother Pot

In the lecture on “Incense and Libations” (Chapter I) I referred to the enrichment of the conception of water’s life-giving properties which the inclusion of the idea of human fertilization by water involved. When this event happened a new view developed in explanation of the part played by woman in reproduction. She was no longer regarded as the real parent of mankind, but as the matrix in which the seed was planted and nurtured during the course of its growth and development. Hence in the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic writing the picture of a pot of water was taken as the symbol of womanhood, the “vessel” which received the seed. A globular water-pot, the common phonetic value of which is Nw or Nu, was the symbol of the cosmic waters, the god Nw (Nu), whose female counterpart was the goddess Nut.

In his report, “A Collection of Hieroglyphs,”332 Mr. F.L Ll.Griffith discusses the bowl of water (a) and says that it stands for the female principle in the words for vulva and woman. When it is recalled that the cowry (and other shells) had the same double significance, the possibility suggests itself whether at times confusion may not have arisen between the not very dissimilar hieroglyphic signs for “a shell” (h) and “the bowl of water” (woman) (f).333

Fig. 6. (a) Picture of a bowl of water—the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to hm (the word hmt means “woman”)—Griffith, “Beni Hasan,” Part III, Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29. (b) “A basket of sycamore figs”—Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” Vol. I, p. 323. (c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning “wife” and are apparently taken from (b). But (c) is identical with (i), which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve shell (g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely (h). The varying conventionalizations of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f) (Griffith, “Hieroglyphics,” p. 34). (k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic equivalent of the sign (h), and, according to Griffith (“Hieroglyphics,” p. 26), “is probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like outline”. (l) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as Nu and Nut. (m) A “pomegranate” (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column at Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,” p. 46). (n) The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the coins of Central Greece (compare Fig. 24 (d)). Its similarity to the Egyptian pot-sign (l) (which also has the significance of mother-goddess) is worthy of note.

(a) Picture of a bowl of water—the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to hm (the word hmt means “woman”)—Griffith, “Beni Hasan,” Part III, Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29.

(b) “A basket of sycamore figs”—Wilkinson’s “Ancient Egyptians,” Vol. I, p. 323.

(c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning “wife” and are apparently taken from (b). But (c) is identical with (i), which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve shell (g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely (h). The varying conventionalizations of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f) (Griffith, “Hieroglyphics,” p. 34).

(k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic equivalent of the sign (h), and, according to Griffith (“Hieroglyphics,” p. 26), “is probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like outline”.

(l) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as Nu and Nut.

(m) A “pomegranate” (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column at Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,” p. 46).

(n) The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the coins of Central Greece (compare Fig. 24 (d)). Its similarity to the Egyptian pot-sign (l) (which also has the significance of mother-goddess) is worthy of note.

Referring to the sign (g and h) for “a shell,” Mr. Griffith says (p. 25): “It is regularly found at all periods in the word ḫaw·t=altar,334 and perhaps only in this word: but it is a peculiarity of the Pyramid Texts that the sign shown in the text-figures c, h, and i is in them used very commonly, not as a word-sign, but also as a phonetic equivalent to the sign labelled k (in the text-figure) for ḫ’ (kha), or apparently for ḫ alone in many words.

“The name of the lotus leaf is probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like outline or vice versa.”

The familiar representation of Horus (and his homologues in India and elsewhere) being born from the lotus suggests that the flower represents his mother Hathor. But as the argument in these pages has led us towards the inference that the original form of Hathor was a shell-amulet,335 it seems not unlikely that her identification with the lotus may have arisen from the confusion between the latter and the cowry, which no doubt was also in part due to the belief that both the shell and the plant were expressions of the vital powers of the water in which they developed.

The identification of the Great Mother with a pot was one of the factors that played a part in the assimilation of her attributes with those of the Water God, who in early Sumerian pictures was usually represented pouring the life-giving waters from his pot (Fig. 24, h and l).

Fig. 24. (a) and (b) Two Mycenæan pots (after Schliemann). (a) The so-called “owl-shaped” vase is really a representation of the Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay). (b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon her head and another in her hands—a three-fold representation of the Great Mother as a pot. (c) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form. (d), (e), (f), (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f). (i) Sepia officinalis (after Tryon). (k) and (l) The so-called “spouting vases” in the hands of the Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of Tello, after Ward (“Seal Cylinders, etc.,” p. 215). The “spouting vases” have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia to suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of the latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and cephalopods in Western Asia and the Mediterranean.

(a) and (b) Two Mycenæan pots (after Schliemann).

(a) The so-called “owl-shaped” vase is really a representation of the Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).

(b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon her head and another in her hands—a three-fold representation of the Great Mother as a pot.

(c) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form.

(d), (e), (f), (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f).

(i) Sepia officinalis (after Tryon).

(k) and (l) The so-called “spouting vases” in the hands of the Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of Tello, after Ward (“Seal Cylinders, etc.,” p. 215).

The “spouting vases” have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia to suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of the latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and cephalopods in Western Asia and the Mediterranean.

This idea of the Mother Pot is found not only in Babylonia, Egypt, India,336 and the Eastern Mediterranean, but wherever the influence of these ancient civilizations made itself felt. It is widespread among the Celtic-speaking peoples. In Wales the pot’s life-giving powers are enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea spread, its meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch’s cauldron, the magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me, is closely associated with cows, serpents, frogs, dragons, birds, pearls, and “nine maidens that blow the fire under the cauldron”; and, if the nature of these relationships be examined, each of them will be found to be a link between the pot and the Great Mother.

The witch’s cauldron and the maidens who assist in the preparation of the witch’s medicine seem to be the descendants respectively of Hathor’s pots (in the story of the Destruction of Mankind) and the Sekti who churn up the didi and the barley with which to make the elixir of immortality and the sedative draught for the destructive goddess herself.

Mr. Donald Mackenzie has given me a number of additional references from Celtic and Indian literature in corroboration of these widespread associations of the pot with the Great Mother; and he reminds me that in Oceania the coco-nut has the same reputation as the pot in the Indian Mahābhārata. It is the source of food and anything else that is wanted, and its supply can never be exhausted. [On some future occasion I hope to make use of the wonderful legends of the pot’s life-giving powers, to which Mr. Mackenzie has directed my attention. At present, however, I must content myself with the statement that the pot’s identity with the Great Mother is deeply rooted in ancient belief throughout the greater part of the world.337]

The diverse conceptions of the Great Mother as a pot and as an octopus seem to have been blended in Mycenæan lands, where the so-called “owl-shaped” pots were clearly intended to represent the goddess in both these aspects united in one symbol. When the diffusion of these ideas into more remote parts of the world took place syntheses with other motives produced a great variety of most complex forms. In Honduras pottery vessels have been found 338 which give tangible expression to the blending of the ideas of the Mother Pot, the crocodile-like Makara, star-spangled like Hathor’s cow, Aphrodite’s pig, and Soma’s deer, and provided with the deer’s antlers of the Eastern Asiatic dragon (see Chapter II, p. 103).

The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and rebirth. When Nicodemus asks: “How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” he is told: “Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh: and that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (John iii. 4, 5, and 6).

The phrase “born of water” refers to the birth “of the flesh”; and the mother’s womb is the vessel containing “the water” from which the new life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of Isis: “τετάρτη δε την Ἴσιν ἐν πανυγροις γενέσθαι”. The great waters which produced all living things, the Egyptian god Nun and the goddess Nut, were expressed in hieroglyphic as pots of water. The goddess was identified with Hathor’s celestial star-spangled cow, the original mother of the sun-god; and the word “Nun” was a symbol of all that was new, young, and fresh, and the fertilizing and life-giving waters of the annual inundation of the Nile. Hathor was the daughter of these waters, as Aphrodite was sprung from the sea-foam.

Artemis and the Guardian of the Portal

Sir Gardner Wilkinson states (see text-figure, p. 179, b) that “a basket of sycamore figs” was originally the hieroglyphic sign for a woman, a goddess, or a mother. Later on (p. 199) I shall refer to the possible bearing of this Egyptian idea upon the origin of the Hebrew word for mandrakes and the allusion to “a basket of figs” in the Book of Jeremiah.

The life-giving powers attributed to “love-apples” and the association of these ideas with the fig-tree may have facilitated the transference of these attributes of “apples” to those actually growing upon a tree.

We know that Aphrodite was intimately associated, not only with “love-apples,” but also with real apples. The sun-god Apollo’s connexion with the apple-tree, which Dr. Rendel Harris, with great daring, wants to convert into an identity of name, was probably only one of the results of that long series of confusions between the Great Mother (Hathor) and the Sun-god (Horus), to which I have referred in my discussion of the dragon-story.

But when Apollo’s form emerges more clearly he is associated not with Aphrodite but with Artemis, whom Dr. Rendel Harris has shown to be identified with the mugwort, Artemisia. The association of the goddess with this plant is probably related to the identification of Sekhet with the marsh-plants of the Egyptian Delta and of Hathor and Isis with the lotus and other water plants. Any doubt as to the reality of these associations and Egyptian connexions is banished by the evidence of Artemis’s male counterpart Apollo Hyakinthos and his relations to the sacred lily and other water plants.339 Artemis was a gynæcological specialist: for she assisted women not only in childbirth and the expulsion of the placenta, but also in cases of amenorrhœa and affections of the uterus. She was regarded as the goddess of the portal, not merely of birth,340 but also of gold and treasure, of which she possessed the key, and of the year (January).

This brings us back to the guardianship of gold and treasures which plays so vital a part in the evolution of the Mediterranean goddesses. For, like the story of the dog and the mandrake, it emphasizes the conchological ancestry of these deities and their connexion with the guardians of the subterranean palaces where pearls are found. But Artemis was not only the opener of the treasure-houses, but she also possessed the secret of the philosopher’s stone: she could transmute base substances into gold,341 for was she not the offspring of the Golden Hathor? To open the portal either of birth or wealth she used her magic wand or key. As Nūb, the lady of gold, the Great Mother could not only change other substances into gold, but she was also the guardian of the treasure house of gold, pearls, and precious stones. Hence she could grant riches. Elsewhere in this chapter (p. 221) I shall explain how the goddess came to be identified with gold.

Just as Hathor, the Eye of Re, descended to provide the elixir of youth for the king who was the sun-god, so Artemis is described as travelling through the air in a car drawn by two serpents 342 seeking the most pious of kings in order that she might establish her cult with him and bless him with renewed youth.343

Artemis was a moon-goddess closely related to Britomartis and Diktynna, the Cretan prototype of Aphrodite. These goddesses afforded help to women in childbirth and were regarded as guardians of the portal. The goddess of streams and marshes was identified with the mugwort (Artemisia), which was hung above the door in the place occupied at other times by the winged disk, the thunder-stone, or a crocodile (dragon). As the guardian of portals Artemis’s magic plant could open locks and doors. As the giver of life she could also withhold the vital essence and so cause disease or death; but she possessed the means of curing the ills she inflicted. Artemis, in fact, like all the other goddesses, was a witch.

In former lectures 344 I have often discussed the remarkable feature of Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the symbolic gateways of China and Japan.

Fig. 25. (a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I. (b) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, “Seal Cylinders of Western Asia,” Fig. 1109). (c) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310). (d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670). (e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig. 663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains: alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle. (f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig. 9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe, into which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was the prototype of the Winged Disk has been added. (g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenæ (after Sir Arthur Evans, “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,” p. 10). (h) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in g. (i) “Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate” (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the Goddess of the Portal. (k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the form suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, c). (l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 695). (m) Assyrian Tree of Life and “Winged Disk” in which the god is riding in a crescent replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695).

(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I.

(b) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, “Seal Cylinders of Western Asia,” Fig. 1109).

(c) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).

(d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670).

(e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig. 663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains: alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle.

(f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig. 9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe, into which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was the prototype of the Winged Disk has been added.

(g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenæ (after Sir Arthur Evans, “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,” p. 10).

(h) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in g.

(i) “Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate” (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the Goddess of the Portal.

(k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the form suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, c).

(l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 695).

(m) Assyrian Tree of Life and “Winged Disk” in which the god is riding in a crescent replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695).

This significance of gates was no doubt suggested by the idea that they represented the means of communication between the living and the dead, and, symbolically, the portal by which the dead acquired a rebirth into a new form of existence. It was presumably for this reason that the winged disk as a symbol of life-giving, was placed above the lintels of these doors, not merely in Egypt, Phœnicia, the Mediterranean Area, and Western Asia, but also in America,345 and in modified forms in India, Indonesia, Melanesia, Cambodia, China, and Japan.

The discussion (Chapter II) of the means by which the winged disk came to acquire the power of life-giving, “the healing in its wings,” will have made it clear that the sun became accredited with these virtues only when it assumed the place of the other “Eye of Re,” the Great Mother. In fact, it was a not uncommon practice in Egypt to represent the eyes of Re or of Horus himself in place of the more usual winged disk. In the Ægean area the original practice of representing the Great Mother was retained long after it was superseded in Egypt by the use of the winged disk (the sun-god).

Over the lintel of the famous “Lion Gate” at Mycenæ, instead of the winged disk, we find a vertical pillar to represent the Mother Goddess, flanked by two lions which are nothing more than other representatives of herself (Fig. 26).

Fig. 26. (a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains of the horizon (on which trees are growing) (after Budge, “Gods of the Egyptians,” Vol. II, p. 101). [This is a part only of a scene in which the goddess Nut is giving birth to the sun, whose rays illuminate Hathor on the horizon, as Sothis, the “Opener of the Way” for the sun. (b) The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow’s head as a surrogate of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, op. cit., p. 39). This indicates the identity of what Evans calls “the horns of consecration” and the “mountains of the horizon,” and also suggests how confusion may have arisen between the mountains and the cow’s horns. (c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the Eastern Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, op. cit., p. 373). (d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to “the ridiculous mouse”—Smintheus). The ankh (life-sign) below the sun is the determinative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is heraldically supported by the Great Mother’s lionesses. (e) Part of the design from a Mycenæan vase from Old Salamis (after Evans, p. 9). The cow’s head and the Eastern Mountains are shown alongside one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe representing the god. (f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Idæan Cave, now in the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). If this design be compared with the Egyptian picture (a), it will be seen that Hathor’s place is taken by the tree-form of the Great Mother, and the trees which in the former (a) are growing upon the Eastern Mountains are now placed alongside the “horns”. In the complete design (vide Evans, op. cit., p. 44) a votary is represented blowing a conch-shell trumpet to animate the deity in the sacred tree. (g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of the goddess (after Evans, Fig. 66). (h) Another Mycenæan design comparable with (e). (i) Design from a signet-ring from Mycenæ (after Evans, Fig. 34). If this be compared with the Egyptian picture (a) it will be noted that the Great Mother is now replaced by a tree: the Eastern Mountains by bulls, from whose backs the trees of the Eastern Mountains are sprouting. This design affords interesting corroboration of the suggestion that the Eastern Mountains may be confused with the cow’s head (see b and c) or with the cow itself. Newberry (Annals of Archæology and Anthropology, Liverpool, Vol. I, p. 28) has called attention to the intimate association (in Protodynastic Egypt) of the Eastern Mountains, the Bull and the Double Axe—a certain token of cultural contact with Crete. (k) The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycenæ. The pillar form of the Great Mother heraldically supported by her lioness-avatars, which correspond to the cattle of the design (i) and the Eastern Mountains of (a). The use of this design above the lintel of the gate brings it into homology with the Winged Disk. The Pillar represents the Goddess, as the Disk represents her Egyptian locum tenens, Horus; her destructive representatives (the lionesses) correspond to the two uræi of the Winged Disk design.

(a) An Egyptian picture of Hathor between the mountains of the horizon (on which trees are growing) (after Budge, “Gods of the Egyptians,” Vol. II, p. 101). [This is a part only of a scene in which the goddess Nut is giving birth to the sun, whose rays illuminate Hathor on the horizon, as Sothis, the “Opener of the Way” for the sun.

(b) The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow’s head as a surrogate of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, op. cit., p. 39). This indicates the identity of what Evans calls “the horns of consecration” and the “mountains of the horizon,” and also suggests how confusion may have arisen between the mountains and the cow’s horns.

(d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to “the ridiculous mouse”—Smintheus). The ankh (life-sign) below the sun is the determinative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is heraldically supported by the Great Mother’s lionesses.

(e) Part of the design from a Mycenæan vase from Old Salamis (after Evans, p. 9). The cow’s head and the Eastern Mountains are shown alongside one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe representing the god.

(f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Idæan Cave, now in the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). If this design be compared with the Egyptian picture (a), it will be seen that Hathor’s place is taken by the tree-form of the Great Mother, and the trees which in the former (a) are growing upon the Eastern Mountains are now placed alongside the “horns”. In the complete design (vide Evans, op. cit., p. 44) a votary is represented blowing a conch-shell trumpet to animate the deity in the sacred tree.

(g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of the goddess (after Evans, Fig. 66).

(h) Another Mycenæan design comparable with (e).

(i) Design from a signet-ring from Mycenæ (after Evans, Fig. 34). If this be compared with the Egyptian picture (a) it will be noted that the Great Mother is now replaced by a tree: the Eastern Mountains by bulls, from whose backs the trees of the Eastern Mountains are sprouting. This design affords interesting corroboration of the suggestion that the Eastern Mountains may be confused with the cow’s head (see b and c) or with the cow itself. Newberry (Annals of Archæology and Anthropology, Liverpool, Vol. I, p. 28) has called attention to the intimate association (in Protodynastic Egypt) of the Eastern Mountains, the Bull and the Double Axe—a certain token of cultural contact with Crete.

(k) The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycenæ. The pillar form of the Great Mother heraldically supported by her lioness-avatars, which correspond to the cattle of the design (i) and the Eastern Mountains of (a). The use of this design above the lintel of the gate brings it into homology with the Winged Disk. The Pillar represents the Goddess, as the Disk represents her Egyptian locum tenens, Horus; her destructive representatives (the lionesses) correspond to the two uræi of the Winged Disk design.

In his “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,” Sir Arthur Evans has shown that all possible transitional forms can be found (in Crete and the Ægean area) between the representation of the actual goddess and her pillar-and tree-manifestations, until the stage is reached where the sun itself appears above the pillar between the lions.346 In the large series of seals from Mesopotamia and Western Asia which have been described in Mr. William Hayes Ward’s monograph,347 we find manifold links between both the Egyptian and the Minoan cults.

The tree-form of the Great Mother there becomes transformed into the “tree of life” and the winged disk is perched upon its summit. Thus we have a duplication of the life-giving deities. The “tree of life” of the Great Mother surmounted by the winged disk which is really her surrogate or that of the sun-god, who took over from her the power of life-giving (Figs. 25 and 26).

In an interesting Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada 348 the life-giving power is tripled. There is not only the tree representing the Great Mother herself; but also the double axe (the winged-disk homologue of the sun-god); and the more direct representation of him as a bird perched upon the axe (Fig. 25, f).

The identification of the Great Mother with the tree or pillar seems also to have led to her confusion with the pestle with which the materials for her draught of immortality was pounded. She was also the bowl or mortar in which the pestle worked.349

As the Great Mother became confused with the pestle, so, “the Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the Soma-libation, becomes in the Vedas itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a very characteristic and frequent Oriental conceit in accordance with which the agent and the person or thing acted on are identified”.350

“The pressing-stones by means of which Soma is crushed typify thunderbolts.” “In the Rig-Veda, we read of him [Soma] as jyotihrathah, i.e. ‘mounted on a car of light’ (IX, 5, 86, verse 43); or again: ‘Like a hero he holds weapons in his hand... mounted on a chariot’ (IX, 4, 76, verse 2)”—(p. 171).

“Soma was the giver of power, of riches and treasures, flocks and herds, but above all, the giver of immortality” (p. 140).

Sir Arthur Evans is of opinion “that in the case of the Cypriote cylinders the attendant monsters and, to a certain extent, the symbolic column itself, are taken from an Egyptian solar cycle, and the inference has been drawn that the aniconic pillars among the Mycenæans of Cyprus were identified with divinities having some points in common with the sun-gods Ra, or Horus, and Hathor, the Great Mother” (op. cit., pp. 63 and 64).

In attempting to find some explanation of how the tree or pillar of the goddess came to be replaced in the Indian legend by Mount Meru, the possibility suggests itself whether the aniconic form of the Great Mother placed between two relatively diminutive hills may not have helped, by confusion, to convert the cone itself into a yet bigger hill, which was identified with Mount Meru, the summit of which in other legends produced the amrita of the gods, either in the form of the soma plant that grew upon its heights, or the rain clouds which collected there. But, as the subsequent argument will make clear, the real reason for the identification of the Great Mother with a mountain was the belief that the sun was born from the splitting of the eastern mountain, which thus assumed the function of the sun-god’s mother. Possibly the association of the tops of mountains with cloud- and rain-phenomena and the gods that controlled them played some part in the development of the symbolism of mountains. [When I referred (in Chapter II, p. 98) to the fact that what Sir Arthur Evans calls “the horns of consecration” was primarily the split mountain of the dawn, I was not aware that Professor Newberry (“Two Cults of the Old Kingdom,” Annals of Archæology and Anthropology, Liverpool, Vol. I, 1908, p. 28) had already suggested this identification.]

In the Egyptian story the god Re instructed the Sekti of Heliopolis to pound the materials for the food of immortality. In the Indian version, the gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover some elixir which would make them immortal. To this end, Mount Meru [the Great Mother] was cast into the sea [of milk]. Vishnu, in his second avatar as a tortoise 351 supported the mountain on his back; and the Nâga serpent Vasuki was then twisted around the mountain, the gods seizing its head and the demons his tail twirled the mountain until they had churned the amrita or water of life. Wilfrid Jackson has called attention to the fact that this scene has been depicted, not only in India and Japan, but also in the Precolumbian Codex Cortes drawn by some Maya artist in Central America.352

The horizon is the birthplace of the gods; and the birth of the deity is depicted with literal crudity as an emergence from the portal between its two mountains. The mountain splits to give birth to the sun-god, just as in the later fable the parturient mountain produced the “ridiculous mouse” (Apollo Smintheus). The Great Mother is described as giving birth—“the gates of the firmament are undone for Teti himself at break of day” [that is when the sun-god is born on the horizon]. “He comes forth from the Field of Earu” (Egyptian Pyramid Texts—Breasted’s translation).

In the domain of Olympian obstetrics the analogy between birth and the emergence from the door of a house or the gateway of a temple is a common theme of veiled reference. Artemis, for instance, is a goddess of the portal, and is not only a helper in childbirth, but also grows in her garden a magical herb which is capable of opening locks. This reputation, however, was acquired not merely by reason of her skill in midwifery, but also as an outcome of the legend 353 of the treasure-house of pearls which was under the guardianship of the great “giver of life” and of which she kept the magic key. She was in fact the feminine form of Janus, the doorkeeper who presided over all beginnings, whether of birth, or of any kind of enterprise or new venture, or the commencement of the year (like Hathor). Janus was the guardian of the door of Olympus itself, the gate of rebirth into the immortality of the gods.

The ideas underlying these conceptions found expression in an endless variety of forms, material, intellectual, and moral, wherever the influence of civilization made itself felt. I shall refer only to one group of these expressions that is directly relevant to the subject-matter of this book. I mean the custom of suspending or representing the life-giving symbol above the portal of temples and houses. Thus the plant peculiar to Artemis herself, the mugwort or Artemisia, was hung above the door,354 just as the winged disk was sculptured upon the lintel, or the thunder-stone was placed above the door of the cowhouse 355 to afford the protection of the Great Mother’s powers of life-giving to her own cattle.

In the Pyramid Texts the rebirth of a dead pharaoh is described with vivid realism and directness. “The waters of life which are in the sky come. The waters of life which are in the earth come. The sky burns for thee, the earth trembles for thee, before the birth of the god. The two hills are divided, the god comes into being, the god takes possession of his body. The two hills are divided, this Neferkere comes into being, this Neferkere takes possession of his body. Behold this Neferkere—his feet are kissed by the pure waters which are from Atum, which the phallus of Shu made, which the vulva of Tefnut brought into being. They have come, they have brought for thee the pure waters from their father.”356

The Egyptians entertained the belief 357 that the sun-god was born of the celestial cow Mehetwēret, a name which means “Great Flood,” and is the equivalent of the primeval ocean Nun. In other words the celestial cow Hathor, the embodiment of the life-giving waters of heaven and earth, is the mother of Horus. So also Aphrodite was born of the “Great Flood” which is the ocean.

In his report upon the hieroglyphs of Beni Hasan,358 Mr. Griffith refers to the picture of “a woman of the marshes,” which is read sekht, and is “used to denote the goddess Sekhet, the goddess of the marshes, who presided over the occupations of the dwellers there. Chief among these occupations must have been the capture of fish and fowl and the culture and gathering of water-plants, especially the papyrus and the lotus”. Sekhet was in fact a rude prototype of Artemis in the character depicted by Dr. Rendel Harris.359

It is perhaps not without significance that the root of a marsh plant, the Iris pseudacorus360 is regarded in Germany as a luck-bringer which can take the place of the mandrake.361

The Great Mother wields a magic wand which the ancient Egyptian scribes called the “Great Magician”. It was endowed with the two-fold powers of life-giving and opening, which from the beginning were intimately associated the one with the other from the analogy of the act of birth, which was both an opening and a giving of life. Hence the “magic wand” was a key or “opener of the ways,” wherewith, at the ceremonies of resurrection, the mouth was opened for speech and the taking of food, as well as for the passage of the breath of life, the eyes were opened for sight, and the ears for hearing. Both the physical act of opening (the “key” aspect) as well as the vital aspect of life-giving (which we may call the “uterine” aspect) were implied in this symbolism. Mr. Griffith suggests that the form of the magic wand may have been derived from that of a conventionalized picture of the uterus,362 in its aspect as a giver of life. But it is possible also that its other significance as an “opener of the ways” may have helped in the confusion of the hieroglyphic uterus-symbol with the key-symbol, and possibly also with double-axe symbol which the vaguely defined early Cretan Mother-Goddess wielded. For, as we have already seen (supra, p. 122), the axe also was a life-giving divinity and a magic wand (Fig. 8).

In his chapter on “the Origin of the Cult of Artemis,” Dr. Rendel Harris refers to the reputation of Artemis as the patron of travellers, and to Parkinson’s statement: “It is said of Pliny that if a traveller binde some of the hearbe [Artemisia] with him, he shall feele no weariness at all in his journey” (p. 72). Hence the high Dutch name Beifuss is applied to it.

The left foot of the dead was called “the staff of Hathor” by the Egyptians; and the goddess was said “to make the deceased’s legs to walk”.363

It was a common practice to tie flowers to a mummy’s feet, as I discovered in unwrapping the royal mummies. According to Moret (op. cit.) the flowers of Upper and Lower Egypt were tied under the king’s feet at the celebration of the Sed festival.

Mr. Battiscombe Gunn (quoted by Dr. Alan Gardiner) states that the familiar symbol of life known as the ankh represents the string of a sandal.364

It seems to be worth considering whether the symbolism of the sandal-string may not have been derived from the life-girdle, which in ancient Indian medical treatises was linked in name with the female organs of reproduction and the pubic bones. According to Moret (op. cit., p. 91) a girdle furnished with a tail was used as a sign of consecration or attainment of the divine life after death. Jung (op. cit., p. 270), who, however, tries to find a phallic meaning in all symbolism, claims that reference to the foot has such a significance.

The Mandrake

We have now given reasons for believing that the personification of the mandrake was in some way brought about by the transference to the plant of the magical virtues that originally belonged to the cowry shell.

The problem that still awaits solution is the nature of the process by which the transference was effected.

When I began this investigation the story of the Destruction of Mankind (see Chapter II) seemed to offer an explanation of the confusion. Brugsch, Naville, Maspero, Erman, and in fact most Egyptologists, seemed to be agreed that the magical substance from which the Egyptian elixir of life was made was the mandrake. As there was no hint 365 in the Egyptian story of the derivation of its reputation from the fancied likeness to the human form, its identification with Hathor seemed to be merely another instance of those confusions with which the pathway of mythology is so thickly strewn. In other words, the plant seemed to have been used merely to soothe the excited goddess: then the other properties of “the food of the gods,” of which it was an ingredient, became transferred to the mandrake, so that it acquired the reputation of being a “giver of life” as well as a sedative. If this had been true it would have been a simple process to identify this “giver of life” with the goddess herself in her rôle as the “giver of life,” and her cowry-ancestor which was credited with the same reputation.

But this hypothesis is no longer tenable, because the word d’d’ (variously transliterated doudou or didi), which Brugsch 366 and his followers interpreted as “mandragora,” is now believed to have another meaning.

In a closely reasoned memoir, Henri Gauthier 367 has completely demolished Brugsch’s interpretation of this word. He says there are numerous instances of the use of d’d’ (which he transliterates doudouiou) in the medical papyri. In the Ebers papyrus “doudou d’Eléphantine broyé” is prescribed as a remedy for external application in diseases of the heart, and as an astringent and emollient dressing for ulcers. He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the interior of Africa and the coasts of Arabia.

Mr. F. Ll. Griffith informs me that Gauthier’s criticism of the translation “mandrakes” is undoubtedly just: but that the substance referred to was most probably “red ochre” or “hæmatite”.368

The relevant passage in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind (in Seti I’s tomb) will then read as follows: “When they had brought the red ochre, the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded it, and the priestesses mixed the pulverized substance with the beer, so that the mixture resembled human blood”.

I would call special attention to Gauthier’s comment that the blood-coloured beer “had some magical and marvellous property which is unknown to us”.369

In his dictionary Brugsch considered the determinative Circle with three vertical lines underneath to refer to the fruits of a tree which he called “apple tree,” on the supposed analogy with the Coptic ϫιϫι, fructus autumnalis, pomus, the Greek ὀπώρα; and he proposed to identify the supposed fruit, then transliterated doudou, with the Hebrew doudaïm, and translate it poma amatoria, mandragora, or in German, Alraune. This interpretation was adopted by most scholars until Gauthier raised objections to it.

As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley.370

But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew dūdā’im by μανδράγορας and the Copts did not use the word ϫιϫι in their translations, but either the Greek word or a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff has shown (Zeitsch. f. Ægypt. Sprache, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that the word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated “didi” instead of “doudou”.

Finally, in a letter Mr. Griffith tells me the identification of didi with the Coptic ϫιϫι, “apple (?)” is philologically impossible.

Although this red colouring matter is thus definitely proved not to be the fruit of a plant, there are reasons to suggest that when the story of the Destruction of Mankind spread abroad—and the whole argument of this book establishes the fact that it did spread abroad—the substance didi was actually confused in the Levant with the mandrake. We have already seen that in the Delta a prototype of Artemis was already identified with certain plants.

In all probability didi was originally brought into the Egyptian legend merely as a surrogate of the life-blood, and the mixture of which it was an ingredient was simply a restorer of youth to the king. But the determinative (in the tomb of Seti I)—a little yellow disc with a red border, which misled Naville into believing the substance to be yellow berries—may also have created confusion in the minds of ancient Levantine visitors to Egypt, and led them to believe that reference was being made to their own yellow-berried drug, the mandrake. Such an incident might have had a two-fold effect. It would explain the introduction into the Egyptian story of the sedative effects of didi, which would easily be rationalized as a means of soothing the maniacal goddess; and in the Levant it would have added to the real properties of mandrake 371 the magical virtues which originally belonged to didi (and blood, the cowry, and water).

In my lecture on “Dragons and Rain Gods” (Chapter II) I explained that the Egyptian story of the Destruction of Mankind is merely one version of a saga of almost world-wide currency. In many of the non-Egyptian versions 372 the rôle of didi in the Egyptian story is taken by some vegetable product of a red colour; and many of these versions reveal a definite confusion between the red fruit and the red clay, thus proving that the confusion of didi with the mandrake is no mere hypothetical device to evade a difficulty on my part, but did actually occur.

In the course of the development of the Egyptian story the red clay from Elephantine became the colouring matter of the Nile flood, and this in turn was rationalized as the blood or red clay into which the bodies of the slaughtered enemies of Re were transformed,373 and the material out of which the new race of mankind was created.374 In other words, the new race was formed of didi. There is a widespread legend that the mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies 375 often represented as innocent or chaste men wrongly killed, just as the red clay was the substance of mankind killed to appease Re’s wrath, “the blood of the slaughtered saints”.376

But the original belief is found in a more definite form in the ancient story that “the mandrake was fashioned out of the same earth whereof God formed Adam”.377 In other words the mandrake was part of the same substance as the earth didi.378

Further corroboration of this confusion is afforded by a story from Little Russia, quoted by de Gubernatis.379 If bryony (a widely recognized surrogate of mandrake) be suspended from the girdle all the dead Cossacks (who, like the enemies of Re in the Egyptian story, had been killed and broken to pieces in the earth) will come to life again. Thus we have positive evidence of the homology of the mandrake with red clay or hæmatite.

The transference to the mandrake of the properties of the cowry (and the goddesses who were personifications of the shell) and blood (and its surrogates) was facilitated by the manifold homologies of the Great Mother with plants. We have already seen that the goddess was identified with: (a) incense-trees and other trees, such as the sycamore, which played some definite part in the burial ceremonies, either by providing the divine incense, the materials for preserving the body, or for making coffins to ensure the protection of the dead, and so make it possible for them to continue their existence; and (b) the lotus, the lily, the iris, and other marsh plants,380 for reasons that I have already mentioned (p. 184).

The Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh represents one of the innumerable versions of the great theme which has engaged the attention of writers in every age and country attempting to express the deepest longings of the human spirit. It is the search for the elixir of life. The object of Gilgamesh’s search is a magic plant to prolong life and restore youth. The hero of the story went on a voyage by water in order to obtain what appears to have been a marsh plant called dittu.381 The question naturally arises whether this Babylonian story and the name of the plant played any part in Palestine in blending the Egyptian and Babylonian stories and confusing the Egyptian elixir of life, the red earth didi, with the Babylonian elixir, the plant dittu?

In the Babylonian story a serpent-demon steals the magic plant, just as in India soma, the food of immortality, is stolen. In Egypt Isis steals Re’s name,382 and in Babylonia the Zu bird steals the tablets of destiny, the logos. In Greek legend apples are stolen from the garden of Hesperides. Apples are surrogates of the mandrake and didi.

We have now seen that the mandrake is definitely a surrogate (a) of the cowry and a series of its shell-homologues, and (b) of the red substance in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind.

There still remain to be determined (i) the means by which the mandrake became identified with the goddess, (ii) the significance of the Hebrew word dūdā-īm, and (iii) the origin of the Greek word mandragora.

The answer to the first of these three queries should now be obvious enough. As the result of the confusion of the life-giving magical substance didi with the sedative drug, mandrake, the latter acquired the reputation of being a “giver of life” and became identified with the “giver of life,” the Great Mother, the story of whose exploits was responsible for the confusion.

The erroneous identification of didi with the mandrake was originally suggested by Brugsch from the likeness of the word (then transliterated doudou) with the Hebrew word dūdā-īm in Genesis, usually translated “mandrakes”. I have already quoted the opinion of Gauthier and Griffith as to the error of such identification. But the evidence now at our disposal seems to me to leave no doubt as to the reality of the confusion of the Egyptian red substance with the mandrake. This naturally suggests the possibility that the similarity of the sounds of the words may have played some part in creating the confusion: but it is impossible to admit this as a factor in the development of the story, because the Hebrew word probably arose out of the identification of the mandrake with the Great Mother and not by any confusion of names. In other words the similarity of the names of these homologous substances is a mere coincidence.

Dr. Rendel Harris claims (and Sir James Frazer seems to approve of the suggestion) that the Hebrew word dūdā-īm was derived from dōdīm, “love”; and, on the strength of this derivation, he soars into a lofty flight of philological conjecture to transmute dōdīm, into Aphrodite, “love” into the “goddess of love”. It would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to follow these excursions into unknown heights of cloudland.

But my colleagues Professor Canney and Principal Bennett tell me that the derivation of dūdā-īm from dōdīm is improbable; and the former authority suggests that dūdā-īm may be merely the plural of dūd, a “pot”.383 Now I have already explained how a pot came to symbolize a woman or a goddess, not merely in Egypt, but also in Southern India, and in Mycenæan Greece, and, in fact, the Mediterranean generally.384 Hence the use of the term dūd for the mandrake implies either (a) an identification of the plant with the goddess who is the giver of life, or (b) an analogy between the form of the mandrake-fruit and a pot, which in turn led to it being called a pot, and from that being identified with the goddess.385

I should explain that when Professor Canney gave me this statement he was not aware of the fact that I had already arrived at the conclusion that the Great Mother was identified with a pot and also with the mandrake; but in ignorance of the meaning of the Hebrew words I had hesitated to equate the pot with the mandrake. As soon as I received his note, and especially when I read his reference to the second meaning, “basket of figs,” in Jeremiah, I recalled Mr. Griffith’s discussion of the Egyptian hieroglyphic (“a pot of water”) for woman, wife, or goddess, and the claim made by Sir Gardner Wilkinson that this manner of representing the word for “wife” was apparently taken from a conventionalized picture of “a basket of sycamore figs”.386 The interpretation has now clearly emerged that the mandrake was called dūdā’īm by the Hebrews because it was identified with the Mother Pot. The symbolism involved in the use of the Hebrew word also suggests that the inspiration may have come from Egypt, where a woman was called “a pot of water” or “a basket of figs”.

When the mandrake acquired the definite significance as a symbol of the Great Mother and the power of life-giving, its fruit, “the love apple,” became the quintessence of vitality and fertility. The apple and the pomegranate became surrogates of the “love apple,” and were graphically represented in forms hardly distinguishable from pots, occupying places which mark them out clearly as homologues of the Great Mother herself.387

But once the mandrake was identified with the Great Mother in the Levant the attributes of the plant were naturally acquired from her local reputation there. This explains the pre-eminently conchological aspect of the magical properties of the mandrake and the bryony.

I shall not attempt to refer in detail to the innumerable stories of red and brown apples, of rowan berries, and a variety of other red fruits that play a part in the folk-lore of so many peoples, such as didi played in the Egyptian myth. These fruits can be either elixirs of life and food of the gods, or weapons for overcoming the dragon as Hathor (Sekhet) was conquered by her sedative draught.388

In his account of the peony, Pliny (“Nat. Hist.,” Book XXVIII, Chap. LX) says it has “a stem two cubits in length, accompanied by two or three others, and of a reddish colour, with a bark like that of the laurel... the seed is enclosed in capsules, some being red and some black... it has an astringent taste. The leaves of the female plant smell like myrrh”. Bostock and Riley, from whose translation I have made this quotation, add that in reality the plant is destitute of smell. In the Ebers papyrus didi was mixed with incense in one of the prescriptions;389 and in the Berlin medical papyrus it was one of the ingredients of a fumigation used for treating heart disease. If my contention is justified, it may provide the explanation of how the confusion arose by which the peony came to have attributed to it a “smell like myrrh”.

Pliny proceeds: “Both plants [i.e. male and female] grow in the woods, and they should always be taken up at night, it is said; as it would be dangerous to do so in the day-time, the woodpecker of Mars being sure to attack the person so engaged.390 It is stated also that the person, while taking up the root, runs great risk of being attacked with [prolapsus ani].... Both plants are used 391 for various purposes: the red seed, taken in red wine, about fifteen in number, arrest menstruation; while the black seed, taken in the same proportion, in either raisin or other wine, are curative of diseases of the uterus.” I refer to these red-coloured beverages and their therapeutic use in women’s complaints to suggest the analogy with that other red drink administered to the Great Mother, Hathor.

In his essay, “Jacob and the Mandrakes,”392 Sir James Frazer has called attention to the homologies between the attributes of the peony and the mandrake and to the reasons for regarding the former as Aelian’s aglaophotis.

Pliny states (“Nat. Hist.,” Book XXIV, Chap. CII) that the aglaophotis “is found growing among the marble quarries of Arabia, on the side of Persia,” just as the Egyptian didi was obtained near the granite quarries at Aswan. “By means of this plant [aglaophotis], according to Democritus, the Magi can summon the deities into their presence when they please, “just as the users of the conch-shell trumpet believed they could do with this instrument. I have already (p. 196) emphasized the fact that all of these plants, mandrake, bryony, peony, and the rest, were really surrogates of the cowry, the pearl, and the conch-shell. The first is the ultimate source of their influence on womankind, the second the origin of their attribute of aglaophotis, and the third of their supposed power of summoning the deity. The attributes of some of the plants which Pliny discusses along with the peony are suggestive. Pieces of the root of the achaemenis (? perhaps Euphorbia antiquorum or else a night-shade) taken in wine, torment the guilty to such an extent in their dreams as to extort from them a confession of their crimes. He gives it the name also of “hippophobas,” it being an especial object of terror to mares. The complementary story is told of the mandrake in mediæval Europe. The decomposing tissues of the body of an innocent victim on the gallows when they fall upon the earth can become reincarnated in a mandrake—the main de gloire of old French writers.

Then there is the plant adamantis, grown in Armenia and Cappadocia, which when presented to a lion makes the beast fall upon its back, and drop its jaws. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the lion-manifestation of Hathor who was calmed by the substance didi? A more direct link with the story of the destruction of mankind is suggested by the account of the ophiusa, “which is found in Elephantine, an island of Ethiopia”. This plant is of a livid colour, and hideous to the sight. Taken by a person in drink, it inspires such a horror of serpents, which his imagination continually represents as menacing him that he commits suicide at last: hence it is that persons guilty of sacrilege are compelled to drink an infusion of it (Pliny, “Nat. Hist.,” XXIV, 102). I am inclined to regard this as a variant of the myth of the Destruction of Mankind in which the “snake-plant” from Elephantine takes the place of the uræi of the Winged Disk Saga, and punishes the act of sacrilege by driving the delinquent into a state of delirium tremens.

The next problem to be considered is the derivation of the word mandragora. Dr. Mingana tells me it is a great puzzle to discover any adequate meaning. The attempt to explain it through the Sanskrit mand, “joy,” “intoxication,” or mantasana, “sleep,” “life,” or mandra, “pleasure,” or mantara, “paradise tree,” and agru, “unmarried, violently passionate,” is hazardous and possibly far-fetched.

The Persian is mardumgiah, “man-like plant”.

The Syro-Arabic word for it is Yabrouh, Aramaic Yahb-kouh, “giver of life”. This is possibly the source of the Chinese Yah-puh-lu (Syriac ya-bru-ha) and Yah-puh-lu-Yak. The termination Yak is merely the Turanian termination meaning “diminutive”.

The interest of the Levantine terms for the mandrake lies in the fact that they have the same significance as the word for pearl, i.e. “giver of life”. This adds another argument (to those which I have already given) for regarding the mandrake as a surrogate of the pearl. But they also reveal the essential fact that led to the identification of the plant with the Mother-Goddess, which I have already discussed.

In Arabic the mandrake is called abou ruhr, “father of life,” i.e. “giver of life”.393

In Arabic margan means “coral” as well as “pearl”. In the Mediterranean area coral is explained as a new and marvellous plant sprung from the petrified blood-stained branches on which Perseus hung the bleeding head of Medusa. Eustathius (“Comment. ad Dionys. Perieget.” 1097) derives κοράλιον from κόρη, personifying the monstrous virgin: but Chæroboscos claims that it comes from κόρη and ἄλιον, because it is a maritime product used to make ornaments for maidens. In any case coral is a “giver of life” and as such identified with a maiden,394 as the most potential embodiment of life-giving force. But this specific application of the word for “giver of life” was due to the fact that in all the Semitic languages, as well as in literary references in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, this phrase was understood as a reference to the female organs of reproduction. The same double entendre is implied in the use of the Greek word for “pig” and “cowry,” these two surrogates of the Great Mother, each of which can be taken to mean the “giver of life” or the “pudendum muliebre”.

Perhaps the most plausible suggestion that has been made as to the derivation of the word “mandragora” is Delâtre’s claim 395 that it is compounded of the words mandros, “sleep,” and agora, “object or substance,” and that mandragora means “the sleep-producing substance”.

This derivation is in harmony with my suggestion as to the means by which the plant acquired its magical properties. The sedative substance that, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs (of the Story of the Destruction of Mankind), was represented by yellow spheres with a red covering was confused in Western Asia with the yellow-berried plant which was known to have sedative properties. Hence the plant was confused with the mineral and so acquired all the magical properties of the Great Mother’s elixir. But the Indian name is descriptive of the actual properties of the plant and is possibly the origin of the Greek word.

Another suggestion that has been made deserves some notice. It has been claimed that the first syllable of the name is derived from the Sanskrit mandara, one of the trees in the Indian paradise, and the instrument with which the churning of the ocean was accomplished.396 The mandrake has been claimed to be the tree of the Hebrew paradise; and a connexion has thus been instituted between it and the mandara. This hypothesis, however, does not offer any explanation of how either the mandrake or the mandara acquired its magical attributes. The Indian tree of life was supposed to “sweat” amrita just as the incense trees of Arabia produce the divine life-giving incense.

But there are reasons 397 for the belief that the Indian story of the churning of the sea of milk is a much modified version of the old Egyptian story of the pounding of the materials for the elixir of life. The mandara churn-stick, which is often supposed to represent the phallus,398 was originally the tree of life, the tree or pillar which was animated by the Great Mother herself.399 So that the mandara is homologous with the mandragora. But so far as I am aware, there is no adequate reason for deriving the latter word from the former.

The derivation from the Sanskrit words mandros and agora seems to fit naturally into the scheme of explanation which I have been formulating.

In the Egyptian story the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded the didi in a mortar to make “the giver of life,” which by a simple confusion might be identified with the goddess herself in her capacity as “the giver of life”. This seems to have occurred in the Indian legend. Lakshmi, or Sri, was born at the churning of the ocean. Like Aphrodite, who was born from the sea-foam churned from the ocean, Lakshmi was the goddess of beauty, love, and prosperity.

Before leaving the problems of mandrake and the homologous plants and substances, it is important that I should emphasize the rôle of blood and blood-substitutes, red-stained beer, red wine, red earth, and red berries in the various legends. These life-giving and death-dealing substances were all associated with the colour red, and the destructive demons Sekhet and Set were given red forms, which in turn were transmitted to the dragon, and to that specialized form of the dragon which has become the conventional way of representing Satan.

[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became attached to the plants ginseng and shang-luh—see de Groot, Vol. II, p. 316 et seq.; also Kumagusu Minakata, Nature, Vol. LI, April 25, 1895, p. 608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The fact that the Chinese make use of the Syriac word yabruha (vide supra) suggests the source of these Chinese legends.]

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 Ἀφροδίσια (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 ὑστήρια 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 ὑστήρια was used in the same sense as Ἀφροδίσια, 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.

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 eight415 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 Kālīamma 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.

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 χοῖρος 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 χοῖρος 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 ‘ἄλαδε μύσται,’ ‘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 χοῖρος 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

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”.

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 Nūb, i.e. “gold” or the golden Hathor: but the place where the funerary statue was made (“born”) in Egypt was called the “House of Gold” and personified as a goddess who gave rebirth to the dead (Alan Gardiner, “The Tomb of Amenemhēt,” p. 95; and A. M. Blackman, Journal of Egyptian Archæology, Vol. IV, p. 127).

When ancient prospectors from the South exploited the rivers of Turkestan for alluvial gold and fresh water pearls, incidentally they also collected pebbles of jade for the purpose of making seals. The local inhabitants confused the properties of the stone with the magical reputation of the gold and the pearls. One outcome of this jade-fishing in Turkestan was the transference of the credit of life-giving to jade. Prospectors searching for these precious materials gradually made their way east past Lob Nor, and eventually discovered the deposits of gold and jade in the Shensi province. Thus jade became the nucleus around which the distinctive civilization of China became crystallized. It played an obtrusive part not only in attracting men from the West and in determining the locality where the germs of Western civilization were planted in China, but also in giving Chinese culture its distinctive shape.

“The ancient Chinese, wishing to facilitate the resurrection of the dead, surrounded them with jade, gold, pearls, timber, and other things imbued with influences emitted from the heavens, or, in other words, with such objects as are pervaded with vital energy derived from the Yang matter of which the heavens are the principal depository.” (De Groot, op. cit., p. 316).

By a similar process diamonds acquired the same reputation in India when searchers after gold discovered the precious metal in Hyderabad, and the diamonds of Golconda came to be accredited with life-giving powers.440

According to the beliefs of the Indians “the Nâga owns riches, the water of life, and a jewel that restores the dead to life”.

Thus gold, pearls, jade, and diamonds in course of time acquired the reputation of elixirs of life, but the hold they established upon mankind was due to the fact (a) that the amulets made of these materials made a strong appeal to the æsthetic sense, and (b) the arbitrary value assigned to them made them desirable objects to search for.

In his “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult” (1901) Sir Arthur Evans gives cogent reasons for the view that at the time when Mycenæan influence was powerful in Cyprus “the ’golden Aphroditê’ of the Egyptians seems to play a much more important part than any form of Astarte or Mylitta” (p. 52). “The Cypriote parallels will be found to have a fundamental importance as demonstrating in detail that these [‘a simple form of the palmette pillar, approaching a fleur-de-lys in outline,’ in association with its guardian monsters] are in fact taken over from the cult of Mentu-Ra, the Warrior Sun-god of Egypt, of Hathor, and of Horus” (p. 52).

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. Œdipus put out his own eyes to forestall the traditional wrath of the gods.

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.

Notes

235 An elaboration of a lecture delivered at the John Rylands Library, on 14 November, 1917.

236 “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,” p. 52. Compare also A. E. W. Budge, “The Gods of the Egyptians,” Vol. I, p. 435.

237 With a strange disregard of Sir Arthur Evans’s “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,” Mr. H. R. Hall makes the following remarks in his “Ægean Archæology” (p. 150): “The origin of the goddess Aphrodite has long been taken for granted. It has been regarded as a settled fact that she was Semitic, and came to Greece from Phœnicia or Cyprus. But the new discoveries have thrown this, like other received ideas, into the melting-pot, for the Minoans undoubtedly worshipped an Aphrodite. We see her, naked and with her doves, on gold plaques from one of the Mycenæan shaft-graves (Schuchhardt, Schliemann, Figs. 180, 181), which must be as old as the First Late Minoan period (c. 1600-1500 b.c.), and—not rising from the foam, but sailing over it—in a boat, naked, on the lost gold ring from Mochlos. It is evident now that she was not only a Canaanitish-Syrian goddess, but was common to all the people of the Levant. She is Aphrodite-Paphia in Cyprus, Ashtaroth-Astarte in Canaan, Atargatis in Syria, Derketo in Philistria, Hathor in Egypt; what the Minoans called her we do not know, unless she was Britomartis. She must take her place by the side of Rhea-Diktynna in the Minoan pantheon.”
It is not without interest to note that on the Mochlos ring the goddess is sailing in a papyrus float of Egyptian type, like the moon-goddess in her crescent moon.
The association of this early representative of Aphrodite with doves is of special interest in view of Highnard’s attempt (“Le Mythe de Venus,” Annales du Musée Guimet, T. 1, 1880, p. 23) to derive the name of “la déesse à la colombe” from the Chaldean and Phœnician phrit or phrut meaning “a dove”.
Mr. Hall might have extended his list of homologues to Mesopotamia, Iran, and India, to Europe and Further Asia, to America, and, in fact, every part of the world that harbours goddesses.

238 “Shells as Evidence of the Migration of Early Culture.”

239 “The Ascent of Olympus.”

240 A striking confirmation of the fact that the mandrake is really a surrogate of the cowry is afforded by the practice in modern Greece of using the mandrake carried in a leather bag in the same way (and for the same magical purpose as a love philtre) as the Baganda of East Africa use the cowry (in a leather bag) at the present time.

241 Old Gerade was frank enough to admit that he “never could perceive shape of man or woman” (quoted by Rendel Harris, op. cit., p. 110).

242 “Jacob and the Mandrakes,” Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VIII, p. 22.

243 The John Rylands Library.

244 “The Ascent of Olympus.”

245 See the memoirs by Tümpel, Jahn, Houssay, and Jackson, to which reference is made elsewhere in these pages.

[246] The well-known circumstantial story told in Hesiod’s theogony.

247 See the article “Aphrodite” in Roscher’s “Lexikon”.

248 Sir James Frazer’s claim that the incident of the ass in a late Jewish story of Jacob and the mandrakes (op. cit., p. 20) “helps us to understand the function of the dog,” is quite unsupported. The learned guardian of the Golden Bough does not explain how it helps us to understand.

249 In response to the prompting of the most fundamental of all instincts, that of the preservation of life.

250 See Alan Gardiner, Journal of Egyptian Archæology, Vol. IV, Parts II-III, April-July, 1917, p. 205. Compare also the Babylonian story of Gilgamesh.

251 Some of these have been discussed in Chapter 1 (“Incense and Libations”) and will not be further considered here.

252 “The life which is the blood thereof” (Gen. ix. 4).

253 See, for example, Sollas, “Ancient Hunters,” 2nd Edition, 1915, pp. 326 (fig. 163), 333 (fig. 171), and 36 (fig. 189).

254 Sollas, op. cit., pp. 347 et seq.

255 The “redeeming blood,” Φάρμακον ἀθανασίας.

256 The practice of blood-letting for therapeutic purposes was probably first suggested by a confused rationalization. The act of blood-letting was a means of healing; and the victim himself supplied the vitalizing fluid!

257 Davies and Gardiner, “The Tomb of Amenemhet,” p. 112.

258 As it is still called in the Semitic languages. In the Egyptian Pyramid Texts there is a reference to a new being formed “by the vulva of Tefnut” (Breasted).

259 Many customs and beliefs of primitive peoples suggest that this correlation of the attributes of blood and shells went much deeper than the similarity of their use in burial ceremonies and for making necklaces and bracelets. The fact that the monthly effusion of blood in women ceased during pregnancy seems to have given rise to the theory, that the new life of the child was actually formed from the blood thus retained. The beliefs that grew up in explanation of the placenta form part of the system of interpretation of these phenomena: for the placenta was regarded as a mass of clotted blood (intimately related to the child which was supposed to be derived from part of the same material) which harboured certain elements of the child’s mentality (because blood was the substance of consciousness).

260 See S. Reinach, “Les Déesses Nues dans l’Art Oriental et dans l’Art Grec,” Revue Archéol., T. XXVI, 1895, p. 367. Compare also the figurines of the so-called Upper Palæolithic Period in Europe.

261 Chapter I.

262 The literature relating to these important discoveries has been summarized by Wilfrid Jackson in his “Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture,” pp. 135-7.

263 Cowries were obtained in Neolithic sites at Hissarlik and Spain (Siret, op. cit., p. 18).

264 See Jackson, op. cit., pp. 139 et seq.

265 For a discussion of this subject see the chapter on “The Psychology of Modesty and Clothing,” in William I. Thomas’s “Sex and Society,” Chicago, 1907; also S. Reinach, “Cults, Myths, and Religions,” p. 177; and Paton, “The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall,” Revue Archéol., Serie IV. T. IX, 1907, p. 51.

266 It is important to remember that shell-girdles were used by both sexes for general life-giving and luck-bringing purposes, in the funerary ritual of both sexes, in animating the dead or statues of the dead, to attain success in hunting, fishing, and head-hunting, as well as in games. Thus men also at times wore shells upon their belts or aprons, and upon their implements and fishing nets, and adorned their trophies of war and the chase with them. Such customs are found in all the continents of the Old World and also in America, as, for example, in the girdles of Conus- and Oliva-shells worn by the figures sculptured upon the Copan stelæ. See, for example, Maudslay’s pictures of stele N, Plate 82 (Biologia Centrali-Americana; Archæology) inter alia. But they were much more widely used by women, not merely by maidens, but also by brides and married women, to heighten their fertility and cure sterility, and by pregnant women to ensure safe delivery in childbirth. It was their wider employment by women that gives these shells their peculiar cultural significance.

267 Witness the importance of the girdle in early Indian and American sculptures: in the literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Western Europe, and the Mediterranean area. For important Indian analogies and Egyptian parallels see Moret, “Mystères Égyptiens,” p. 91, especially note 3. The magic girdle assumed a great variety of forms as the number of surrogates of the cowry increased. The mugwort (Artemisia) of Artemis was worn in the girdle on St. John’s Eve (Rendel Harris, op. cit., p. 91): the people of Zante use vervain in the same way; the people of France (Creuse et Corrères) rye-stalks; Eve’s fig-leaves; in Vedic India the initiate wore the “cincture of Munga’s herbs”; and Kali had her girdle of hands. Breasted, (“Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt,” p. 29) says: “In the oldest fragments we hear of Isis the great, who fastened on the girdle in Khemmis, when she brought her [censer] and burned incense before her son Horus.”

268 This distinction between the significance of the amulet when worn on the girdle and on the head (in the hair), or as a necklace or bracelet, is very widespread. On the girdle it usually has the significance of stimulating the individual’s fertility: worn elsewhere it was intended to ward off danger to life, i.e. to give good luck. An interesting surrogate of Hathor’s distinctive emblem is the necklace of golden apples worn by a priestess of Apollo (Rendel Harris, op. cit., p. 42).

269 De Gubernatis, “Mythologie des Plantes,” Vol. II, p. 35.

270 For the details see Jackson, op. cit., pp. 57-69. Both the shells and the moon were identified with the Great Mother. Hence they were homologized the one with the other.

271 Dr. Mingana has given me the following note: “It is very probable that the Græco-Latin margarita, the Aramæo-Syriac margarita, the Arabic margan, and the Turanian margan are derived from the Persian mar-gân, meaning both ‘pearl’ and ‘life,’ or etymologically ‘giver, owner, or possessor, of life’. The word gān, in Zend yān, is thoroughly Persian and is undoubtedly the original form of this expression.”

272 See Chapter II of Jackson’s book, op. cit.

273 In Eastern Asia (see, for example, Shinji Nishimura, “The Hisago-Bune,” Tokio, 1918, published by the Tokio Society of Naval Architects, p. 18, where the dragon is identified with the wani, which can be either a crocodile or a shark); in Oceania (L. Frobenius, “Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes,” Bd. I., 1904, and C. E. Fox and F. H. Drew, “Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 140); and in America (see Thomas Gann, “Mounds in Northern Honduras,” Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897-8, Part II, p. 661) the dragon assumes the form of a shark, a crocodile, or a variety of other animals.

274 Sir Arthur Evans, “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,” op. cit. supra: W. Hayes Ward, “The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia,” op. cit.: and Robertson Smith, “The Religion of the Semites,” p. 133: “In Hadramant it is still dangerous to touch the sensitive mimosa, because the spirit that resides in the plant will avenge the injury”. When men interfere with the incense trees it is reported: “the demons of the place flew away with doleful cries in the shape of white serpents, and the intruders died soon afterwards”.

275 Vide supra, p. 38.

276 In Western mythology the dragon guarding the fruit-bearing tree of life is also identified with the Mother of Mankind (Campbell, “Celtic Dragon Myth,” pp. xli and 18). Thus the tree and its defender are both surrogates of the Great Mother. When Eve ate the apple from the tree of Paradise she was committing an act of cannibalism, for the plant was only another form of herself. Her “sin” consisted in aspiring to attain the immortality which was the exclusive privilege of the gods. This incident is analogous to that found in the Indian tales where mortals steal the amrita. By Eve’s sin “death came into the world” for the paradoxical reason that she had eaten the food of the gods which gives immortality. The punishment meted out to her by the Almighty seems to have been to inhibit the life-giving and birth-facilitating action of the fruit of immortality, so that she and all her progeny were doomed to be mortal and to suffer the pangs of child-bearing.
There was a widespread belief among the ancients that ceremonies in connexion with the gods must (to be efficacious) be done in the reverse of the usual human way (Hopkins, “Religions of India,” p. 201). So also an act which gives immortality to the gods, brings death to man.
The full realization of the fact that man was mortal imposed upon the early theologians the necessity of explaining the immortality of the gods. The elixir of life was the food of the gods that conferred eternal life upon them. By one of those paradoxes so dear to the maker of myths this same elixir brought death to man.

277 Bohn’s Edition, 1855, Vol. II, p. 433.

278 A Cretan scene depicts a man attacking a dog-headed sea-monster (Mackenzie, op. cit., “Myths of Crete,” p. 139).

279 A number of versions of this widespread fable have been collected by Dr. Rendel Harris (op. cit.) and Sir James Frazer (op. cit.). I quote here from the former (p. 118).

280 Josephus, “Bell. Jud.,” VII, 6, 3, quoted by Rendel Harris, op. cit., p. 118.

281 The dog-star became associated with Hathor for reasons which are explained on p. 209. It was “the opener of the Way” for the birth of the sun and the New Year.

282 When Artemis acquired the reputation as a huntress and her deer became her quarry the dog was rationalized into the new scheme.

283 See, for example, Moret’s “Mystères Égyptiens,” pp. 77-80.

284 “Psyche,” p. 244.

285 See, for example, Jung, op. cit., p. 268.

286 Nekhebit, the Egyptian Vulture goddess, was identified by the Greeks with Eileithyia, the goddess of birth (Wiedemann, “Religion of the Ancient Egyptians,” p. 141). She was usually represented as a vulture hovering over the king. Her place can be taken by the falcon of Horus or in the Babylonian story of Etana by the eagle. In the Indian Mahábhárata the Garuda is described as “the bird of life... destroyer of all, creator of all”.

287 Quoted by Jung, op. cit., p. 530.

288 See Rendel Harris (op. cit.) and Sir James Frazer (op. cit.).

289 Jackson, op. cit.

290 An interesting rationalization (of which Mr. T. H. Pear has kindly reminded me) of this ancient Oriental belief is still alive amongst British women. It is maintained that pearls “lose their lustre” unless they are worn in contact with the skin. This of course is a pure myth, but also an illuminating survival.

291 See Frazer, op. cit., p. 16, especially the references to the “devil’s candle” and “the lamp of the elves”.

292 Rendel Harris, op. cit., p. 113: Other factors played a part in the development of this legend of opening up treasure-houses. Both Artemis and Hecate are associated with a magical plant capable of opening locks and helping the process of birth. Artemis is a goddess of the portal and her life-giving symbol in a multitude of varied forms is found appropriately placed above the lintel of doors.

293 Jackson, op. cit., p. 195.

294 Sir James Frazer, “Jacob and the Mandrakes,” Proc. Brit. Academy.

295 K. Tümpel, “Die ‘Muschel der Aphrodite,’” Philologus, Zeitschrift für das Classische Alterthum, Bd. 51, 1892, p. 385: compare also, with reference to the “Muschel der Aphrodite,” O. Jahn, SB. d. k. Sächs. G. d. W., VII, 1853, p. 16 ff.; also IX, 1855, p. 80; and Stephani, Compte rendu pour l’an 1870-71, p. 17 ff.

296 See Jahn, op. cit., 1855, T. V, 6, and T. IV, 8: figures of the so-called Χοιρίναι (from Χοῖρος in the double sense as “pig” and “the female pudendum”): Aristophanes, Eq. 1147; Vesp. 332; Pollux, 8, 16; Hesch. s.v.

297 The fact that no graphic representation of this event has been found is surely a wholly inadequate reason for refusing to credit the story. Very few episodes in the sacred history of the gods received concrete expression in pictures or sculptures until relatively late. A Hellenistic representation of the goddess emerging from a bivalve was found in Southern Russia (Minns, “Scythians and Greeks,” p. 345).
Tümpel cites the following statements: “te (Venus) ex concha natam esse autumant: cave tu harum conchas spernas!” Tibull. 3, 3, 24: “et faveas concha, Cypria, vecta tua”; Statius Silv. 1, 2, 117: Venus to Violentilla, “haec et caeruleïs mecum consurgere digna fluctibus et nostra potuit considere concha”; Fulgent. myth. 2, 4 “concha etiam marina pingitur (Venus) portari (I. HS:—am portare)”; Paulus Diacon. p. 52, “M. Cytherea Venus ab urbe Cythera, in quam primum devecta esse dicitur concha, cum in mari esset concepta cet”.

298 From ὠδίνο—“to have the pains of childbirth”.

299 See Schliemann, “Ilios,” p. 455; and Siret, op. cit.

300 Siret, op. cit. supra, p. 59.

301 “Les Théories de la Genèse à Mycènes et le sens zoologique de certains symboles du culte d’Aphrodite,” Revue Archéologique, 3^ie série, T. XXVI, 1895, p. 13.

302 It was adduced also by Tümpel and others before him.

303 or Pteroceras.

304 Jackson, op. cit., p. 38.

305 “Koptos,” pp. 7-9, Pls. III. and IV.: for a discussion of the significance of these statues see Jean Capart, “Les Débuts de l’Art en Égypte,” Brussels, 1904, p. 216 et seq.

306 This may help to explain the peculiar sanctity of the shell.

307 Frazer, op. cit., 4.

308 Just as Hathor (or her surrogate Horus) turned men into the creatures of Set, i.e. pigs, crocodiles, et cetera.

309 “Excavations at Saqqara,” 1905-1906, p. 14.

310 Maspero, “The Dawn of Civilization,” p. 34.

311 Saville, “Antiquities of Manabi, Ecuador,” 1907.

312 A detailed summary of the literature relating to the world-wide distribution of certain phases of the dragon-myth is given by Frobenius, “Das Zeitalter des Sonnesgottes,” Berlin, 1904: on pp. 63-5 he gives the Rata-myth.

313 Which can also be compared with the conventional form of the thunderbolt.

314 Of course the hands had the additional significance as trophies of her murderous zeal. But I think this is a secondary rationalization of their meaning. An excellent photograph of a bronze statue (in the Calcutta Art Gallery), representing Kali with her girdle of hands, is given by Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie, “Indian Myth and Legend,” p. xl.

315 F. T. Elworthy has summarized the extensive literature relating to hand-amulets (“The Evil Eye,” 1895; and “Horns of Honour,” 1900). Many of these hands have the definite reputation as fertility charms which one would expect if Houssay’s hypothesis of their derivation from the octopus is well founded.

316 Thomas Wilson (“The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and its Migrations; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times,” Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1894, Washington, 1896) has given a full and well-illustrated summary of most of the literature: further information is provided by Count d’Alviella (op. cit. supra), “The Migration of Symbols”; by Zelia Nuttall (“The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations,” Archæological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass., 1901); and Arthur Bernard Cook (“Zeus, A Study in Ancient Religion,” Vol. I, Cambridge, 1914, pp. 472 et seq.).

317 Since this has been printed Mr. W. J. Perry has called my attention to a short article by René Croste (“Le Svastika,” Bull. Trimestriel de la Société Bayonnaise d’Études Regionales, 1918), in which Houssay’s hypothesis is mentioned as having been adopted by Guilleminot (“Les Nouveaux Horizons de la Science”).

318 Wilson (op. cit., pp. 829-33 and Figs. 125, 128, and 129) has collected the relevant passages and illustrations from Schliemann’s writings.

319 Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Bd. 37, p. 148.

320 Seler, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Bd., 41, p. 409.

321 Corolla Numismatica, 1906, p. 342.

322 A. B. Cook, “Zeus,” pp. 198 et seq.

323 “Etude Historique et Chronologique sur les Vases Peints de l’Acropole de Suse,” Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, T. XIII, Rech. Archéol., 5^e série, 1912, Plate XLI, Fig. 3.

324 “Canaan,” p. 340, footnote.

325 Alice Grenfell, Journal of Egyptian Archæology, Vol. II, 1915, p. 217: and Ancient Egypt, 1916, Part I, p. 23.

326 S. Reinach, Revue Archéol., T. XXVI, 1895, p. 369.

327 L. Siret, “Questions de Chronologie et d’Ethnographie Ibériques,” 1913, p. 18, Fig. 3.

328 Rivers, “History of Melanesian Society,” Vol. II, p. 374; also Report Brit. Association, 1912, p. 599.

329 M. Siret assigns the date of the appearance in Spain of the highly conventionalized angular form of octopus to the time between the fifteenth and the twelfth centuries b.c.; and he attributes it to Phœnician influence (p. 63).

330 Cook, “Zeus,” p. 346 et seq.

331 This is well shown upon the Copan representations (Fig. 19) of the elephant-headed god—see Nature, November, 25, 1915, p. 340.

332 Archæol. Survey of Egypt, 1898, p. 3.

333 Compare the two-fold meaning of the Latin testa as “shell” and “bowl”.

334 Compare the association of shells with altars in Minoan Crete and the widespread use of large shells as bowls for “holy water” in Christian churches.

335 Miss Winifred M. Crompton, Assistant Keeper of the Egyptian Department of the Manchester Museum, has called my attention to a remarkable piece of evidence which affords additional corroboration of the view that Hathor was a development of the cowry-amulet. Upon the famous archaic palette of Narmer (Fig. 18), a sporran, composed of four representations of Hathor’s head, takes the place of the original cowries that were suspended from more primitive girdles.
The cowries of the head ornament of primitive peoples of Africa and Asia (and of the Mediterranean area in early times—Schliemann’s “Ilios,” Fig. 685) are often replaced in Egypt by lotus flowers (W. D. Spanton, “Water Lilies of Egypt,” Ancient Egypt, 1917, Part I, Figs. 19, 20, and 21). Upon the head-band of the statue of Nefert, which I have reproduced in Chapter I (Fig. 4), a conventional lotus design is found (see Spanton’s Fig. 19), which is almost identical with the classical thunder-weapon.

336 Among the Dravidian people at the present day the seven goddesses (corresponding to the seven Hathors) are often represented by seven pots.

337 The luxuriant crop of stories of the Holy Grail was not inspired originally by mere literary invention. A tradition sprung from the fountain-head of all mythology, the parent-story of the Destruction of Mankind, provided the materials which a series of writers elaborated into the varied assortment of legends of the Mother Pot. The true meaning of the Quest of the Holy Grail can be understood only by reading the fabled accounts of it in the light of the ancient search for the elixir of life and the historical development of the narrative describing that search.
A concise summary of the Grail literature will be found in Jessie L. Weston’s “The Quest of the Holy Grail” (1913). Her theory will be found, after some slight modifications, to fall into line with the general argument of this book.
Mr. F.L Ll.Griffith tells me that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the verb “coire cum” gives frank expression to the real meaning of the symbolism of the pot as the matrix which receives the seed. The same idea provides the material for the incident of the birth of Drona (the pot-born) in the Adi Parva (Sections CXXXI, CXXXIX, and CLXVIII, in Roy’s translation) of the Mahabharata, to which Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie has kindly called my attention. Drona was conceived in a pot from the seed of a Rishi. A widespread variant of the same story is the conception of a child from a drop of blood in a pot (see, for example, Hartland, “Legend of Perseus,” Vol. I, pp. 98 and 144). If the pot can thus create a human being, it is easy to understand how it acquired its reputation of being also able to multiply food and provide an inexhaustible supply. Similarly, all substances, such as barley, rice, gold, pearls, and jade, to which the possession of a special vital essence or “soul substance” was attributed, were believed to be able to reproduce themselves and so increase in quantity of their own activities. As “givers of life” they were also able to add to their own life-substance, in other words to grow like any other living being.

338 “An American Dragon,” Man, November, 1918.

339 Evans, op. cit., p. 50.

340 Her Latin representative, Diana, had a male counterpart and conjugate, Dianus, i.e. Janus, of whom it was said: “Ipse primum Janus cum puerperium concipitur... aditum aperit recipiendo semini”. For other quotations see Rendel Harris, op. cit., p. 88 and the article “Janus” in Roscher’s “Lexikon”.

341 Rendel Harris, p. 73.

342 No doubt the two uræi of the Saga of the Winged Disk.

343 A. B. Cook, “Zeus,” Vol. I, p. 244.

344Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society, 1916.

345 “The Influence of Egyptian Civilization in the East and in America,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1916.

346 Evans’s, Fig. 41, p. 63.

347 “The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia,” 1910.

348 Paribeni, “Monumenti antichi dell’accademia dei Lincei,” XIX, punt. 1, pll. 1-3; and V. Duhn, “Arch. f. Religionswissensch.,” XII, p. 161, pll. 2-4; quoted by Blinkenberg, “The Thunder Weapon,” pp. 20 and 21, Fig. 9.

349 Without just reason, many writers have assumed that the pestle, which was identified with the handle used in the churning of the ocean (see de Gubernatis, “Zoological Mythology,” Vol II, p. 361), was a phallic emblem. This meaning may have been given to the handle of the churn at a later period, when the churn itself was regarded as the Mother Pot or uterus; but we are not justified in assuming that this was its primary significance.

350 Gladys M. N. Davis, “The Asiatic Dionysos,” p. 172.

351 The tortoise was the vehicle of Aphrodite also and her representatives in Central America.

352 Jackson, “Shells, etc.,” pp. 57 et seq.

353 Vide supra, p. 158.

354 Rendel Harris, “The Ascent of Olympus,” p. 80. In the building up of the idea of rebirth the ancients kept constantly before their minds a very concrete picture of the actual process of parturition and of the anatomy of the organs concerned in this physiological process. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of the anatomical facts represented in the symbolism of the “giver of life” presiding over the portal and the “two hills” which are divided at the birth of the deity: but the real significance of the primitive imagery cannot be wholly ignored if we want to understand the meaning of the phraseology used by the ancient writers.

355 Blinkenberg, “The Thunder-weapon,” p. 72.

356 Aylward M. Blackman, “Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt,” Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, March, 1918, p. 64.

357 Op. cit., p. 60.

358 “Archæol. Survey of Egypt,” 5th Memoir, 1896, p. 31.

359 See especially op. cit., p. 35, the goddess of streams and marshes, who was also herself “the mother plant,” like the mother of Horus.

360 Whose cultural associations with the Great Mother in the Eastern Mediterranean littoral has been discussed by Sir Arthur Evans, “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult,” pp. 49 et seq. Compare also Apollo hyakinthos as further evidence of the link with Artemis.

361 P. J. Veth, “Internat. Arch. f. Ethnol.,” Bd. 7, pp. 203 and 204.

362 “Hieroglyphics,” p. 60.

363 Budge, “The Gods of the Egyptians,” Vol. I, pp. 436 and 437.

364 Alan Gardiner, “Life and Death (Egyptian),” Hastings’ Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics.

365 As Maspero has specifically mentioned (“Dawn of Civilization,” p. 166).

366 “Die Alraune als altägyptische Zauberpflanze,” Zeitsch. f. Ægypt. Sprache, Bd. XXIX, 1891, pp. 31-3.

367 “Le nom hiéroglyphique de l’argile rouge d’Eléphantine,” Revue Égyptologique, XI^e Vol., Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.

368 It is quite possible that the use of the name “hæmatite” for this ancient substitute for blood may itself be the result of the survival of the old tradition.

369 It is very important to keep in mind the two distinct properties of didi: (a) its magical life-giving powers, and (b) its sedative influence.

370 In Chapter II, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical question.

371 For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the British Medical Journal, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.

372 Even in Egypt itself didi may be replaced by fruit in the more specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in the Saga of the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: “Thou didst put grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu”. Wiedemann (“Religion of the Ancient Egyptians,” p. 70) interprets this as meaning: “thou didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it”. But by analogy with the original version, as modified by Gauthier’s translation of didi, it should read: “thou didst make the water blood-red with grape-juice”; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two meanings.

373 In the Babylonian story of the Deluge “Ishtar cried aloud like a woman in travail, the Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice (saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I assented to an evil thing in the council of the gods, and agreed to a storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth” (King, “Babylonian Religion,” p. 134).
The Nile god, Knum, Lord of Elephantine, was reputed to have formed the world of alluvial soil. The coming of the waters from Elephantine brought life to the earth.

374 In the Babylonian story, Bēl “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). Bēl (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 μῶλυ 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 Bēl 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 dūdā’im (Genesis xxx. 14) verbatim: “The Encyclopædia Biblica says (s.v. ‘Mandrakes’): ‘The Hebrew name, dūdā’im, was no doubt popularly associated with dōdīm, דוֹדִים, “love”; but its real etymology (like that of μανδράγορας) is obscure”.
⁂
“The same word is translated ’mandrakes’ in Song of Songs vii. 13.
“Dūdā’īm occurs also in Jeremiah xxiv, 1, where it is usually translated ’baskets’ (’baskets of figs’). Here it is the plural of a word dūd, which means sometimes a ’pot’ or ’kettle,’ sometimes a ’basket’. The etymology is again doubtful.
“I should imagine that the words in Jeremiah and Genesis have somehow or other the same etymology, and that dūdā-īm in Genesis has no real connexion with dōdīm ’love’.
“The meaning ’pot’ (dūd, plur. dūdā-īm) is probably more original than ’basket’. Does dūdā-īm in Genesis and Song of Songs denote some kind of pot or caldron-shaped flower or fruit?”

384 The Mother Pot is really a fundamental conception of all religious beliefs and is almost world-wide in its distribution.

385 The fruit of the lotus (which is a form of Hathor) assumes a form (Spanton, op. cit., Fig. 51) that is identical with a common Mediterranean symbol of the Great Mother, called “pomegranate” by Sir Arthur Evans (see my text-fig. 6, p. 179, m), which is a surrogate of the apple and mandrake. The likeness to the Egyptian hieroglyph for a jar of water (text-fig. 6, l) and the goddess Nu of the fruit of the poppy (which was closely associated with the mandrake by reason of its soporific properties) may have assisted in the transference of their attributes. The design of the water-plant (text-fig. 7, d) associated with the Nile god may have helped such a confusion and exchange.

386 “A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians,” revised and abridged, 1890, Vol. I, p. 323.

387 See, for example, Sir Arthur Evans, “Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Worship,” Fig. 27, p. 46.

388 In a Japanese dragon-story the dragon drinks “sake” from pots set out on the shore (as Hathor drank the didi mixture from pots associated with the river); and the intoxicated monster was then slain. From its tail the hero extracted a sword (as in the case of the Western dragons), which is now said to be the Mikado’s state sword.

389 See Gauthier, op. cit., pp. 2 and 3.

390 Compare the dog-incident in the mandrake story.

391 Bostock and Riley add the comment that “the peony has no medicinal virtues whatever”.

392 Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VIII, 1917, p. 16 (in the reprint).

393 I am indebted to Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this information. But the philological question is discussed in a learned memoir by the late Professor P. J. Veth, “De Leer der Signatuur,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75 and 105, and especially the appendix, p. 199 et seq., “De Mandragora, Naschrift op het tweede Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling over de Leer der Signatur”.

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.

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. αἰ ἑπτὰ Τύχαι τοῦ οὐρανοῦ (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 ὑστήρια 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.

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.

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 φάρμακον ἀθανασίας, “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.

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.

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.

447 Sethe, “Zur altägyptische Sage von Sonnenaugen das im Fremde war,” Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ægyptens, V, p. 23.

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.

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