As we shall see, in the discussion of the thunder-weapon (p. 121), the luminous pearl, which was believed to have fallen from the sky, was homologized with the thunderbolt, with the functions of which its own magical properties were assimilated.

Kramp called de Visser's attention to the fact that the Chinese hieroglyphic character for the dragon's ball is compounded of the signs for jewel and moon, which is also given in a Japanese lexicon as divine pearl, the pearl of the bright moon.

"When the clouds approached and covered the moon, the ancient Chinese may have thought that the dragons had seized and swallowed this pearl, more brilliant than all the pearls of the sea" (de Visser, p. 108).

The difficulty de Visser finds in regarding his own theory as wholly satisfactory is, first, the red colour of the ball, and secondly, the spiral pattern upon it. He explains the colour as possibly an attempt to represent the pearl's lustre. But de Visser seems to have overlooked the fact that red and rose-coloured pearls obtained from the conch-shell were used in China and Japan.[170]

"The spiral is much used in delineating the sacred pearls of Buddhism, so that it might have served also to design those of Taoism; although I must acknowledge that the spiral of the Buddhist pearl goes upward, while the spiral of the dragon is flat" (p. 103).

De Visser sums up the whole argument in these words:—

"These are, however, all mere suppositions. The only facts we know are: the eager attitude of the dragons, ready to grasp and swallow the ball; the ideas of the Chinese themselves as to the ball being the moon or a pearl; the existence of a kind of sacred "moon-pearl"; the red colour of the ball, its emitting flames and its spiral-like form. As the three last facts are in favour of the thunder theory, I should be inclined to prefer the latter. Yet I am convinced that the dragons do not belch out the thunder. If their trying to grasp or swallow the thunder could be explained, I should immediately accept the theory concerning the thunder-spiral, especially on account of the flames it emits. But I do not see the reason why the god of thunder should persecute thunder itself. Therefore, after having given the above facts that the reader may take them into consideration, I feel obliged to say: 'non liquet'" (p. 108).

It does not seem to have occurred to the distinguished Dutch scholar, who has so lucidly put the issue before us, that his demonstration of the fact of the ball being the pearl-moon about to be swallowed by the dragon does not preclude it being also confused with the thunder. Elsewhere in this volume I have referred to the origin of the spiral symbolism and have shown that it became associated with the pearl before it became the symbol of thunder. The pearl-association in fact was one of the links in the chain of events which made the pearl and the spirally-coiled arm of the octopus the sign of thunder.[171]

It seems quite clear to me that de Visser's pearl-moon theory is the true interpretation. But when the pearl-ball was provided with the spiral, painted red, and given flames to represent its power of emitting light and shining by night, the fact of the spiral ornamentation and of the pearl being one of the surrogates of the thunder-weapon was rationalized into an identification of the ball with thunder and the light it was emitting as lightning. It is, of course, quite irrational for a thunder-god to swallow his own thunder: but popular interpretations of subtle symbolism, the true explanation of which is deeply buried in the history of the distant past, are rarely logical and almost invariably irrelevant.

In his account of the state of Brahmanism in India after the times of the two earlier Vedas, Professor Hopkins[172] throws light upon the real significance of the ball in the dragon-symbolism. "Old legends are varied. The victory over Vritra is now expounded thus: Indra, who slays Vritra, is the sun. Vritra is the moon, who swims into the sun's mouth on the night of the new moon. The sun rises after swallowing him, and the moon is invisible because he is swallowed. The sun vomits out the moon, and the latter is then seen in the west, and increases again, to serve the sun as food. In another passage it is said that when the moon is invisible he is hiding in plants and waters."

This seems to clear away any doubt as to the significance of the ball. It is the pearl-moon, which is both swallowed and vomited by the dragon.

The snake takes a more obtrusive part in the Japanese than in the Chinese dragon and it frequently manifests itself as a god of the sea. The old Japanese sea-gods were often female water-snakes. The cultural influences which reached Japan from the south by way of Indonesia—many centuries before the coming of Buddhism—naturally emphasized the serpent form of the dragon and its connexion with the ocean.

But the river-gods, or "water-fathers," were real four-footed dragons identified with the dragon-kings of Chinese myth, but at the same time were strictly homologous with the Naga Rajas or cobra-kings of India.

The Japanese "Sea Lord" or "Sea Snake" was also called "Abundant-Pearl-Prince," who had a magnificent palace at the bottom of the sea. His daughter ("Abundant-Pearl-Princess") married a youth whom she observed, reflected in the well, sitting on a cassia tree near the castle gate. Ashamed at his presence at her lying-in she was changed into a wani or crocodile (de Visser, p. 139), elsewhere described as a dragon (makara). De Visser gives it as his opinion that the wani is "an old Japanese dragon, or serpent-shaped sea-god, and the legend is an ancient Japanese tale, dressed in an Indian garb by later generations" (p. 140). He is arguing that the Japanese dragon existed long before Japan came under Indian influence. But he ignores the fact that at a very early date both India and China were diversely influenced by Babylonia, the great breeding place of dragons; and, secondly, that Japan was influenced by Indonesia, and through it by the West, for many centuries before the arrival of such later Indian legends as those relating to the palace under the sea, the castle gate and the cassia tree. As Aston (quoted by de Visser) remarks, all these incidents and also the well that serves as a mirror, "form a combination not unknown to European folk-lore".

After de Visser had given his own views, he modified them (on p. 141) when he learned that essentially the same dragon-stories had been recorded in the Kei Islands and Minahassa (Celebes). In the light of this new information he frankly admits that "the resemblance of several features of this myth with the Japanese one is so striking, that we may be sure that the latter is of Indonesian origin." He goes further when he recognizes that "probably the foreign invaders, who in prehistoric times conquered Japan, came from Indonesia, and brought the myth with them" (p. 141). The evidence recently brought together by W. J. Perry in his book "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia" makes it certain that the people of Indonesia in turn got it from the West.

An old painting reproduced by F. W. K. Mueller,[173] who called de Visser's attention to these interesting stories, shows Hohodemi (the youth on the cassia tree who married the princess) returning home mounted on the back of a crocodile, like the Indian Varuna upon the makara in a drawing reproduced by the late Sir George Birdwood.[174]

The wani or crocodile thus introduced from India, via Indonesia, is really the Chinese and Japanese dragon, as Aston has claimed. Aston refers to Japanese pictures in which the Abundant-Pearl-Prince and his daughter are represented with dragon's heads appearing over their human ones, but in the old Indonesian version they maintain their forms as wani or crocodiles.

The dragon's head appearing over a human one is quite an Indian motive, transferred to China and from there to Korea and Japan (de Visser, p. 142), and, I may add, also to America.

[Since the foregoing paragraphs have been printed, the Curator of the Liverpool Museum has kindly called my attention to a remarkable series of Maya remains in the collection under his care, which were obtained in the course of excavations made by Mr. T. W. F. Gann, M.R.C.S., an officer in the Medical Service of British Honduras (see his account of the excavations in Part II. of the 19th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution of Washington). Among them is a pottery figure of a wani or makara in the form of an alligator, equipped with diminutive deer's horns (like the dragon of Eastern Asia); and its skin is studded with circular elevations, presumably meant to represent the spots upon the star-spangled "Celestial Stag" of the Aryans (p. 130). As in the Japanese pictures mentioned by Aston, a human head is seen emerging from the creature's throat. It affords a most definite and convincing demonstration of the sources of American culture.]

The jewels of flood and ebb in the Japanese legends consist of the pearls of flood and ebb obtained from the dragon's palace at the bottom of the sea. By their aid storms and floods could be created to destroy enemies or calm to secure safety for friends. Such stories are the logical result of the identification of pearls with the moon, the influence of which upon the tides was probably one of the circumstances which was responsible for bringing the moon into the circle of the great scientific theory of the life-giving powers of water. This in turn played a great, if not decisive, part in originating the earliest belief in a sky world, or heaven.

[137: "Precolumbian Representations of the Elephant in America," Nature, Nov. 25, 1915, p. 340; Dec. 16, 1915, p. 425; and Jan. 27, 1916, p. 593.]

[138: "History of Melanesian Society," Cambridge, 1914.]

[139: H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archeologie Americaine," 1912, p. 319.]

[140: "Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts," Papers of the Peabody Museum, vol. iv., 1904.]

[141: Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, Bd. 40, 1908, p. 716.]

[142: "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Handschriften," Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, Bd. 42, 1910, pp. 75 and 77. In the remarkable series of drawings from Maya and Aztec sources reproduced by Seler in his articles in the Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, the Peabody Museum Papers, and his monograph on the Codex Vaticanus, not only is practically every episode of the dragon-myth of the Old World graphically depicted, but also every phase and incident of the legends from India (and Babylonia, Egypt and the AEgean) that contributed to the building-up of the myth.]

[143: Compare Hopkins, "Religions of India," p. 94.]

[144: Herbert J. Spinden, "Maya Art," p. 62.]

[145: Seler, "Codex Vaticanus," Figs. 299-304.]

[146: See, for example, F. W. K. Mueller, "Nang," Int. Arch. f. Ethnolog., 1894, Suppl. zu Bd. vii., Taf. vii., where the mask of Ravana (a late surrogate of Indra in the Ramayana) reveals a survival of the prototype of the Mexican designs.]

[147: Joyce, op. cit., p. 37.]

[148: For the incident of the stealing of the soma by Garuda, who in this legend is the representative of Indra, see Hopkins, "Religions of India," pp. 360-61.]

[149: "The Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in America," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1916, Fig. 4, "The Serpent-Bird".]

[150: Probably from about 300 B.C. to 700 A.D.]

[151: For information concerning Ea's "Goat-Fish," which can truly be called the "Father of Dragons," as well as the prototype of the Indian makara, the mermaid, the "sea-serpent," the "dolphin of Aphrodite," and of most composite sea-monsters, see W. H. Ward's "Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," pp. 382 et seq. and 399 et seq.; and especially the detailed reports in de Morgan's Memoires (Delegation en Perse).]

[152: Nature, op. cit., supra.]

[153: Juan Martinez Hernandez, "La Creacion del Mundo segun los Mayas," Paginas Ineditas del MS. De Chumayel, International Congress of Americanists, Proceedings of the XVIII. Session, London, 1912, p. 164.]

[154: From the folk-lore of America I have collected many interesting variants of the Indra story and other legends (and artistic designs) of the elephant. I hope to publish these in the near future.]

[155: Peabody Museum Papers, 1901.]

[156: See, for example, Wilfrid Jackson's "Shells as Evidence of the Migration of Early Culture," pp. 50-66.]

[157: "Notes on the Maoris, etc.," Journal of the Ethnological Society, vol. i., 1869, p. 368.]

[158: Op. cit., p. 231.]

[159: I quote this and the following paragraphs verbatim from Garrick Mallery, "Picture Writing of the American Indians," 10th Annual Report, 1888-89, Bureau of Ethnology (Smithsonian Institute). p. 78.]

[160: Op. cit., pp. 35 et seq.]

[161: See de Visser, p. 41.]

[162: There can be no doubt that the Chinese dragon is the descendant of the early Babylonian monster, and that the inspiration to create it probably reached Shensi during the third millennium B.C. by the route indicated in my "Incense and Libations" (Bull. John Rylands Library, vol. iv., No. 2, p. 239). Some centuries later the Indian dragon reached the Far East via Indonesia and mingled with his Babylonian cousin in Japan and China.]

[163: "Religious System of China," vol. iii., chap, xii., pp. 936-1056.]

[164: This paragraph is taken almost verbatim from de Visser, op. cit. pp. 59 and 60.]

[165: G. E. Gerini, "Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia," Asiatic Society's Monographs, No. 1, 1909, p. 146.]

[166: De Visser, p. 102, and de Groot, vi., p. 1265, Plate XVIII. The reference to "a range of mountains ... as a symbol of the world" recalls the Egyptian representation of the eastern horizon as two hills between which Hathor or her son arises (see Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. ii., p. 101; and compare Griffith's "Hieroglyphs," p. 30): the same conception was adopted in Mesopotamia (see Ward, "Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," fig. 412, p. 156) and in the Mediterranean (see Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 37 et seq.). It is a remarkable fact that Sir Arthur Evans, who, upon p. 64 of his memoir, reproduces two drawings of the Egyptian "horizon" supporting the sun's disk, should have failed to recognize in it the prototype of what he calls "the horns of consecration". Even if the confusion of the "horizon" with a cow's horns was very ancient (for the horns of the Divine Cow supporting the moon made this inevitable), this rationalization should not blind us as to the real origin of the idea, which is preserved in the ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Cretan and Chinese pictures (see Fig. 26, facing p. 188).]

[167: De Visser, p. 103.]

[168: P. 104. The Chinese triquetrum has a circle in the centre and five or eight commas.]

[169: See on this my paper "The Origin of Early Siberian Civilization," now being published in the Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.]

[170: Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early Culture," p. 106.]

[171: I shall discuss this more fully in "The Birth of Aphrodite".]

[172: "Religions of India," p. 197.]

[173: "Mythe der Kei-Insulaner und Verwandtes," Zeitsch. f. Ethnologie, vol. xxv., 1893, pp. 533 et seq.]

[174: See Fig. 14.]

The Evolution of the Dragon.

The American and Indonesian dragons can be referred back primarily to India, the Chinese and Japanese varieties to India and Babylonia. The dragons of Europe can be traced through Greek channels to the same ultimate source. But the cruder dragons of Africa are derived either from Egypt, from the AEgean, or from India. All dragons that strictly conform to the conventional idea of what such a wonder-beast should be can be shown to be sprung from the fertile imagination of ancient Sumer, the "great breeding place of monsters" (Minns).

But the history of the dragon's evolution and transmission to other countries is full of complexities; and the dragon-myth is made up of many episodes, some of which were not derived from Babylonia.

In Egypt we do not find the characteristic dragon and dragon-story. Yet all of the ingredients out of which both the monster and the legends are compounded have been preserved in Egypt, and in perhaps a more primitive and less altered form than elsewhere. Hence, if Egypt does not provide dragons for us to dissect, it does supply us with the evidence without which the dragon's evolution would be quite unintelligible.

Egyptian literature affords a clearer insight into the development of the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun God than we can obtain from any other writings of the origin of this fundamental stratum of deities. And in the three legends: The Destruction of Mankind, The Story of the Winged Disk, and The Conflict between Horus and Set, it has preserved the germs of the great Dragon Saga. Babylonian literature has shown us how this raw material was worked up into the definite and familiar story, as well as how the features of a variety of animals were blended to form the composite monster. India and Greece, as well as more distant parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia, and even America have preserved many details that have been lost in the real home of the monster.

In the earliest literature that has come down to us from antiquity a clear account is given of the original attributes of Osiris. "Horus comes, he recognizes his father in thee [Osiris], youthful in thy name of 'Fresh Water'." "Thou art indeed the Nile, great on the fields at the beginning of the seasons; gods and men live by the moisture that is in thee." He is also identified with the inundation of the river. "It is Unis [the dead king identified with Osiris] who inundates the land." He also brings the wind and guides it. It is the breath of life which raises the king from the dead as an Osiris. The wine-press god comes to Osiris bearing wine-juice and the great god becomes "Lord of the overflowing wine": he is also identified with barley and with the beer made from it. Certain trees also are personifications of the god.

But Osiris was regarded not only as the waters upon earth, the rivers and streams, the moisture in the soil and in the bodies of animals and plants, but also as "the waters of life that are in the sky".

"As Osiris was identified with the waters of earth and sky, he may even become the sea and the ocean itself. We find him addressed thus: 'Thou art great, thou art green, in thy name of Great Green (Sea); lo, thou art round as the Great Circle (Okeanos); lo, thou art turned about, thou art round as the circle that encircles the Haunebu (AEgeans)."

This series of interesting extracts from Professor Breasted's "Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt" (pp. 18-26) gives the earliest Egyptians' own ideas of the attributes of Osiris. The Babylonians regarded Ea in almost precisely the same light and endowed him with identical powers. But there is an important and significant difference between Osiris and Ea. The former was usually represented as a man, that is, as a dead king, whereas Ea was represented as a man wearing a fish-skin, as a fish, or as the composite monster with a fish's body and tail, which was the prototype of the Indian makara and "the father of dragons".

In attempting to understand the creation of the dragon it is important to remember that, although Osiris and Ea were regarded primarily as personifications of the beneficent life-giving powers of water, as the bringers of fertility to the soil and the givers of life and immortality to living creatures, they were also identified with the destructive forces of water, by which men were drowned or their welfare affected in various ways by storms of sea and wind.

Thus Osiris or the fish-god Ea could destroy mankind. In other words the fish-dragon, or the composite monster formed of a fish and an antelope, could represent the destructive forces of wind and water. Thus even the malignant dragon can be the homologue of the usually beneficent gods Osiris and Ea, and their Aryan surrogates Mazdah and Varuna.

By a somewhat analogous process of archaic rationalization the sons respectively of Osiris and Ea, the sun-gods Horus and Marduk, acquired a similarly confused reputation. Although their outstanding achievements were the overcoming of the powers of evil, and, as the givers of light, conquering darkness, their character as warriors made them also powers of destruction. The falcon of Horus thus became also a symbol of chaos, and as the thunder-bird became the most obtrusive feature in the weird anatomy of the composite Mesopotamian dragon and his more modern bird-footed brood, which ranges from Western Europe to the Far East of Asia and America.

That the sun-god derived his functions directly or indirectly from Osiris and Hathor is shown by his most primitive attributes, for in "the earliest sun-temples at Abusir, he appears as the source of life and increase". "Men said of him: 'Thou hast driven away the storm, and hast expelled the rain, and hast broken up the clouds'." Horus was in fact the son of Osiris and Hathor, from whom he derived his attributes. The invention of the sun-god was not, as most scholars pretend, an attempt to give direct expression to the fact that the sun is the source of fertility. That is a discovery of modern science. The sun-god acquired his attributes secondarily (and for definite historical reasons) from his parents, who were responsible for his birth.

The quotation from the Pyramid Texts is of special interest as an illustration of one of the results of the assimilation of the idea of Osiris as the controller of water with that of a sky-heaven and a sun-god. The sun-god's powers are rationalized so as to bring them into conformity with the earliest conception of a god as a power controlling water.

Breasted attempts to interpret the statements concerning the storm and rain-clouds as references to the enemies of the sun, who steal the sky-god's eye, i.e., obscure the sun or moon.[175] The incident of Horus's loss of an eye, which looms so large in Egyptian legends, is possibly more closely related to the earliest attempts at explaining eclipses of the sun and moon, the "eyes" of the sky. The obscuring of the sun and moon by clouds is a matter of little significance to the Egyptian: but the modern Egyptian fellah, and no doubt his predecessors also, regard eclipses with much concern. Such events excite great alarm, for the peasants consider them as actual combats between the powers of good and evil.

In other countries where rain is a blessing and not, as in Egypt, merely an unwelcome inconvenience, the clouds play a much more prominent part in the popular beliefs. In the Rig-Veda the power that holds up the clouds is evil: as an elaboration of the ancient Egyptian conception of the sky as a Divine Cow, the Great Mother, the Aryan Indians regarded the clouds as a herd of cattle which the Vedic warrior-god Indra (who in this respect is the homologue of the Egyptian warrior Horus) stole from the powers of evil and bestowed upon mankind. In other words, like Horus, he broke up the clouds and brought rain.

The antithesis between the two aspects of the character of these ancient deities is most pronounced in the case of the other member of this most primitive Trinity, the Great Mother. She was the great beneficent giver of life, but also the controller of life, which implies that she was the death-dealer. But this evil aspect of her character developed only under the stress of a peculiar dilemma in which she was placed. On a famous occasion in the very remote past the great Giver of Life was summoned to rejuvenate the ageing king. The only elixir of life that was known to the pharmacopoeia of the times was human blood: but to obtain this life-blood the Giver of Life was compelled to slaughter mankind. She thus became the destroyer of mankind in her lioness avatar as Sekhet.

The earliest known pictorial representation of the dragon (Fig. 1) consists of the forepart of the sun-god's falcon or eagle united with the hindpart of the mother-goddess's lioness. The student of modern heraldry would not regard this as a dragon at all, but merely a gryphon or griffin. A recent writer on heraldry has complained that, "in spite of frequent corrections, this creature is persistently confused in the popular mind with the dragon, which is even more purely imaginary."[176] But the investigator of the early history of these wonder-beasts is compelled, even at the risk of incurring the herald's censure, to regard the gryphon as one of the earliest known tentative efforts at dragon-making. But though the fish, the falcon or eagle, and the composite eagle-lion monster are early known pictorial representations of the dragon, good or bad, the serpent is probably more ancient still (Fig. 2).

The earliest form assumed by the power of evil was the serpent: but it is important to remember that, as each of the primary deities can be a power of either good or evil, any of the animals representing them can symbolize either aspect. Though Hathor in her cow manifestation is usually benevolent and as a lioness a power of destruction, the cow may become a demon in certain cases and the lioness a kindly creature. The falcon of Horus (or its representatives, eagle, hawk, woodpecker, dove, redbreast, etc) may be either good or bad: so also the gazelle (antelope or deer), the crocodile, the fish, or any of the menagerie of creatures that enter into the composition of good or bad demons.

"The Nagas are semi-divine serpents which very often assume human shapes and whose kings live with their retinues in the utmost luxury in their magnificent abodes at the bottom of the sea or in rivers or lakes. When leaving the Naga world they are in constant danger of being grasped and killed by the gigantic semi-divine birds, the Garudas, which also change themselves into men" (de Visser, p. 7).

"The Nagas are depicted in three forms: common snakes, guarding jewels; human beings with four snakes in their necks; and winged sea-dragons, the upper part of the body human, but with a horned, ox-like head, the lower part of the body that of a coiling-dragon. Here we find a link between the snake of ancient India and the four-legged Chinese dragon" (p. 6), hidden in the clouds, which the dragon himself emitted, like a modern battleship, for the purpose of rendering himself invisible. In other words, the rain clouds were the dragon's breath. The fertilizing rain was thus in fact the vital essence of the dragon, being both water and the breath of life.

"We find the Naga king not only in the possession of numberless jewels and beautiful girls, but also of mighty charms, bestowing supernatural vision and hearing. The palaces of the Naga kings are always described as extremely splendid, abounding with gold and silver and precious stones, and the Naga women, when appearing in human shape, were beautiful beyond description" (p. 9).

De Visser records the story of an evil Naga protecting a big tree that grew in a pond, who failed to emit clouds and thunder when the tree was cut down, because he was neither despised nor wounded: for his body became the support of the stupa and the tree became a beam of the stupa (p. 16). This aspect of the Naga as a tree-demon is rare in India, but common in China and Japan. It seems to be identical with the Mediterranean conception of the pillar of wood or stone, which is both a representative of the Great Mother and the chief support of a temple.[177]

In the magnificent city that king Yacahketu saw, when he dived into the sea, "wishing trees that granted every desire" were among the objects that met his vision. There were also palaces of precious stones and gardens and tanks, and, of course, beautiful maidens (de Visser, p. 20).

In the Far Eastern stories it is interesting to note the antagonism of the dragon to the tiger, when we recall that the lioness-form of Hathor was the prototype of the earliest malevolent dragon.

There are five sorts of dragons: serpent-dragons; lizard-dragons; fish-dragons; elephant-dragons; and toad-dragons (de Visser, p. 23).

"According to de Groot, the blue colour is chosen in China because this is the colour of the East, from where the rain must come; this quarter is represented by the Azure Dragon, the highest in rank among all the dragons. We have seen, however, that the original sutra already prescribed to use the blue colour and to face the East.... Indra, the rain-god, is the patron of the East, and Indra-colour is nila, dark blue or rather blue-black, the regular epithet of the rain clouds. If the priest had not to face the East but the West, this would agree with the fact that the Nagas were said to live in the western quarter and that in India the West corresponds with the blue colour. Facing the East, however, seems to point to an old rain ceremony in which Indra was invoked to raise the blue-black clouds" (de Visser, pp. 30 and 31).

[175: Breasted, op. cit., p. 11.]

[176: G. W. Eve, "Decorative Heraldry," 1897, p. 35.]

[177: Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 88 et seq.]

The Dragon Myth.

The most important and fundamental legend in the whole history of mythology is the story of the "Destruction of Mankind". "It was discovered, translated, and commented upon by Naville ("La Destruction des hommes par les Dieux," in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, vol. iv., pp. 1-19, reproducing Hay's copies made at the beginning of [the nineteenth] century; and "L'Inscription de la Destruction des hommes dans le tombeau de Ramses III," in the Transactions, vol. viii., pp. 412-20); afterwards published anew by Herr von Bergmann (Hieroglyphische Inscriften, pls. lxxv.-lxxxii., and pp. 55, 56); completely translated by Brugsch (Die neue Weltordnung nach Vernichtung des suendigen Menschengeschlechts nach einer Altaegyptischen Ueberlieferung, 1881); and partly translated by Lauth (Aus AEgyptens Vorzeit, pp. 70-81) and by Lefebure ("Une chapitre de la chronique solaire," in the Zeitschrift fuer AEgyptische Sprache, 1883, pp 32, 33)".[178]

Important commentaries upon this story have been published also by Brugsch and Gauthier.[179]

As the really important features of the story consist of the incoherent and contradictory details, and it would take up too much space to reproduce the whole legend here, I must refer the reader to Maspero's account of it (op. cit.), or to the versions given by Erman in his "Life in Ancient Egypt" (p. 267, from which I quote) or Budge in "The Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 388.

Although the story as we know it was not written down until the time of Seti I (circa 1300 B.C.), it is very old and had been circulating as a popular legend for more than twenty centuries before that time. The narrative itself tells its own story because it is composed of many contradictory interpretations of the same incidents flung together in a highly confused and incoherent form.

The other legends to which I shall have constantly to refer are "The Saga of the Winged Disk," "The Feud between Horus and Set," "The Stealing of Re's Name by Isis," and a series of later variants and confusions of these stories.[180]

The Egyptian legends cannot be fully appreciated unless they are in conjunction with those of Babylonia and Assyria,[181] the mythology of Greece,[182] Persia,[183] India,[184] China,[185] Indonesia,[186] and America.[187]

For it will be found that essentially the same stream of legends was flowing in all these countries, and that the scribes and painters have caught and preserved certain definite phases of this verbal currency. The legends which have thus been preserved are not to be regarded as having been directly derived the one from the other but as collateral phases of a variety of waves of story spreading out from one centre. Thus the comparison of the whole range of homologous legends is peculiarly instructive and useful; because the gaps in the Egyptian series, for example, can be filled in by necessary phases which are missing in Egypt itself, but are preserved in Babylonia or Greece, Persia or India, China or Britain, or even Oceania and America.

The incidents in the Destruction of Mankind may be briefly summarized:

As Re grows old "the men who were begotten of his eye"[188] show signs of rebellion. Re calls a council of the gods and they advise him to "shoot forth his Eye[189] that it may slay the evil conspirators.... Let the goddess Hathor descend [from heaven] and slay the men on the mountains [to which they had fled in fear]." As the goddess complied she remarked: "it will be good for me when I subject mankind," and Re replied, "I shall subject them and slay them". Hence the goddess received the additional name of Sekhmet from the word "to subject". The destructive Sekhmet[190] avatar of Hathor is represented as a fierce lion-headed goddess of war wading in blood. For the goddess set to work slaughtering mankind and the land was flooded with blood[191]. Re became alarmed and determined to save at least some remnant of mankind. For this purpose he sent messengers to Elephantine to obtain a substance called d'd' in the Egyptian text, which he gave to the god Sektet of Heliopolis to grind up in a mortar. When the slaves had crushed barley to make beer the powdered d'd' was mixed with it so as to make it red like human blood. Enough of this blood-coloured beer was made to fill 7000 jars. At nighttime this was poured out upon the fields, so that when the goddess came to resume her task of destruction in the morning she found the fields inundated and her face was mirrored in the fluid. She drank of the fluid and became intoxicated so that she no longer recognized mankind.[192]

Thus Re saved a remnant of mankind from the bloodthirsty, terrible Hathor. But the god was weary of life on earth and withdrew to heaven upon the back of the Divine Cow.

There can be no doubt as to the meaning of this legend, highly confused as it is. The king who was responsible for introducing irrigation came to be himself identified with the life-giving power of water. He was the river: his own vitality was the source of all fertility and prosperity. Hence when he showed signs that his vital powers were failing it became a logical necessity that he should be killed to safeguard the welfare of his country and people.[193]

The time came when a king, rich in power and the enjoyment of life, refused to comply with this custom. When he realized that his virility was failing he consulted the Great Mother, as the source and giver of life, to obtain an elixir which would rejuvenate him and obviate the necessity of being killed. The only medicine in the pharmacopoeia of those times that was believed to be useful in minimizing danger to life was human blood. Wounds that gave rise to severe haemorrhage were known to produce unconsciousness and death. If the escape of the blood of life could produce these results it was not altogether illogical to assume that the exhibition of human blood could also add to the vitality of living men and so "turn back the years from their old age," as the Pyramid Texts express it.

Thus the Great Mother, the giver of life to all mankind, was faced with the dilemma that, to provide the king with the elixir to restore his youth, she had to slay mankind, to take the life she herself had given to her own children. Thus she acquired an evil reputation which was to stick to her throughout her career. She was not only the beneficent creator of all things and the bestower of all blessings: but she was also a demon of destruction who did not hesitate to slaughter even her own children.

In course of time the practice of human sacrifice was abandoned and substitutes were adopted in place of the blood of mankind. Either the blood of cattle,[194] who by means of appropriate ceremonies could be transformed into human beings (for the Great Mother herself was the Divine Cow and her offspring cattle), was employed in its stead; or red ochre was used to colour a liquid which was used ritually to replace the blood of sacrifice. When this phase of culture was reached the goddess provided for the king an elixir of life consisting of beer stained red by means of red ochre, so as to simulate human blood.

But such a mixture was doubly potent, for the barley from which the beer was made and the drink itself was supposed to be imbued with the life-giving powers of Osiris, and the blood-colour reinforced its therapeutic usefulness. The legend now begins to become involved and confused. For the goddess is making the rejuvenator for the king, who in the meantime has died and become deified as Osiris; and the beer, which is the vehicle of the life-giving powers of Osiris, is now being used to rejuvenate his son and successor, the living king Horus, who in the version that has come down to us is replaced by the sun-god Re.

It is Re who is king and is growing old: he asks Hathor, the Great Mother, to provide him with the elixir of life. But comparison with some of the legends of other countries suggests that Re has usurped the place previously occupied by Horus and originally by Osiris, who as the real personification of the life-giving power of water is obviously the appropriate person to be slain when his virility begins to fail. Dr. C. G. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker Lerpiu, which I have already quoted (p. 113) from Sir James Frazer's "Dying God," suggests that the slain king or god was originally Osiris.

The introduction of Re into the story marks the beginning of the belief in the sky-world or heaven. Hathor was originally nothing more than an amulet to enhance fertility and vitality. Then she was personified as a woman and identified with a cow. But when the view developed that the moon controlled the powers of life-giving in women and exercised a direct influence upon their life-blood, the Great Mother was identified with the moon. But how was such a conception to be brought into harmony with the view that she was also a cow? The human mind displays an irresistible tendency to unify its experience and to bridge the gaps that necessarily exist in its broken series of scraps of knowledge and ideas. No break is too great to be bridged by this instinctive impulse to rationalize the products of diverse experience. Hence, early man, having identified the Great Mother both with a cow and the moon, had no compunction in making "the cow jump over the moon" to become the sky. The moon then became the "Eye" of the sky and the sun necessarily became its other "Eye". But, as the sun was clearly the more important "Eye," seeing that it determined the day and gave warmth and light for man's daily work, it was the more important deity. Therefore Re, at first the Brother-Eye of Hathor, and afterwards her husband, became the supreme sky-deity, and Hathor merely one of his Eyes.

When this stage of theological evolution was reached, the story of the "Destruction of Mankind" was re-edited, and Hathor was called the "Eye of Re". In the earlier versions she was called into consultation solely as the giver of life and, to obtain the life-blood, she cut men's throats with a knife.

But as the Eye of Re she was identified with the fire-spitting uraeus-serpent which the king or god wore on his forehead. She was both the moon and the fiery bolt which shot down from the sky to slay the enemies of Re. For the men who were originally slaughtered to provide the blood for an elixir now became the enemies of Re. The reason for this was that, human sacrifice having been abandoned and substitutes provided to replace the human blood, the story-teller was at a loss to know why the goddess killed mankind. A reason had to be found—and the rationalization adopted was that men had rebelled against the gods and had to be killed. This interpretation was probably the result of a confusion with the old legend of the fight between Horus and Set, the rulers of the two kingdoms of Egypt. The possibility also suggests itself that a pun made by some priestly jester may have been the real factor that led to this mingling of two originally separate stories. In the "Destruction of Mankind" the story runs, according to Budge,[195] that Re, referring to his enemies, said: ma-ten set uar er set, "Behold ye them (set) fleeing into the mountain (set)". The enemies were thus identified with the mountain or stone and with Set, the enemy of the gods.[196]

In Egyptian hieroglyphics the symbol for stone is used as the determinative for Set. When the "Eye of Re" destroyed mankind and the rebels were thus identified with the followers of Set, they were regarded as creatures of "stone". In other words the Medusa-eye petrified the enemies. From this feeble pun on the part of some ancient Egyptian scribe has arisen the world-wide stories of the influence of the "Evil Eye" and the petrification of the enemies of the gods.[197] As the name for Isis in Egyptian is "Set" it is possible that the confusion of the Power of Evil with the Great Mother may also have been facilitated by an extension of the same pun.

It is important to recognize that the legend of Hathor descending from the moon or the sky in the form of destroying fire had nothing whatever to do, in the first instance, with the phenomena of lightning and meteorites. It was the result of verbal quibbling after the destructive goddess came to be identified with the moon, the sky and the "Eye of Re". But once the evolution of the story on these lines prepared the way, it was inevitable that in later times the powers of destruction exerted by the fire from the sky should have been identified with the lightning and meteorites.

When the destructive force of the heavens was attributed to the "Eye of Re" and the god's enemies were identified with the followers of Set, it was natural that the traditional enemy of Set who was also the more potent other "Eye of Re" should assume his mother's role of punishing rebellious mankind. That Horus did in fact take the place at first occupied by Hathor in the story is revealed by the series of trivial episodes from the "Destruction of Mankind" that reappear in the "Saga of the Winged Disk". The king of Lower Egypt (Horus) was identified with a falcon, as Hathor was with the vulture (Mut): like her, he entered the sun-god's boat[198] and sailed up the river with him: he then mounted up to heaven as a winged disk, i.e. the sun of Re equipped with his own falcon's wings. The destructive force displayed by Hathor as the Eye of Re was symbolized by her identification with Tefnut, the fire-spitting uraeus-snake. When Horus assumed the form of the winged disk he added to his insignia two fire-spitting serpents to destroy Re's enemies. The winged disk was at once the instrument of destruction and the god himself. It swooped (or flew) down from heaven like a bolt of destroying fire and killed the enemies of Re. By a confusion with Horus's other fight against the followers of Set, the enemies of Re become identified with Set's army and they are transformed into crocodiles, hippopotami and all the other kinds of creatures whose shapes the enemies of Osiris assume.

In the course of the development of these legends a multitude of other factors played a part and gave rise to transformations of the meaning of the incidents.

The goddess originally slaughtered mankind, or perhaps it would be truer to say, made a human sacrifice, to obtain blood to rejuvenate the king. But, as we have seen already, when the sacrifice was no longer a necessary part of the programme, the incident of the slaughter was not dropped out of the story, but a new explanation of it was framed. Instead of simply making a human sacrifice, mankind as a whole was destroyed for rebelling against the gods, the act of rebellion being murmuring about the king's old age and loss of virility. The elixir soon became something more than a rejuvenator: it was transformed into the food of the gods, the ambrosia that gave them their immortality, and distinguished them from mere mortals. Now when the development of the story led to the replacement of the single victim by the whole of mankind, the blood produced by the wholesale slaughter was so abundant that the fields were flooded by the life-giving elixir. By the sacrifice of men the soil was renewed and refertilized. When the blood-coloured beer was substituted for the actual blood the conception was brought into still closer harmony with Egyptian ideas, because the beer was animated with the life-giving powers of Osiris. But Osiris was the Nile. The blood-coloured fertilizing fluid was then identified with the annual inundation of the red-coloured waters of the Nile. Now the Nile waters were supposed to come from the First Cataract at Elephantine. Hence by a familiar psychological process the previous phase of the legend was recast, and by confusion the red ochre (which was used to colour the beer red) was said to have come from Elephantine.[199]

Thus we have arrived at the stage where, by a distortion of a series of phases, the new incident emerges that by means of a human sacrifice the Nile flood can be produced. By a further confusion the goddess, who originally did the slaughter, becomes the victim. Hence the story assumed the form that by means of the sacrifice of a beautiful and attractive maiden the annual inundation can be produced. As the most potent symbol of life-giving it is essential that the victim should be sexually attractive, i.e. that she should be a virgin and the most beautiful and desirable in the land. When the practice of human sacrifice was abandoned a figure or an animal was substituted for the maiden in ritual practice, and in legends the hero rescued the maiden, as Andromeda was saved from the dragon.[200] The dragon is the personification of the monsters that dwell in the waters as well as the destructive forces of the flood itself. But the monsters were no other than the followers of Set; they were the victims of the slaughter who became identified with the god's other traditional enemies, the followers of Set. Thus the monster from whom Andromeda is rescued is merely another representative of herself!

But the destructive forces of the flood now enter into the programme. In the phases we have so far discussed it was the slaughter of mankind which caused the inundation: but in the next phase it is the flood itself which causes the destruction, as in the later Egyptian and the borrowed Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew—and in fact the world-wide—versions. Re's boat becomes the ark; the winged disk which was despatched by Re from the boat becomes the dove and the other birds sent out to spy the land, as the winged Horus spied the enemies of Re.

Thus the new weapon of the gods—we have already noted Hathor's knife and Horus's winged disk, which is the fire from heaven, the lightning and the thunderbolt—is the flood. Like the others it can be either a beneficent giver of life or a force of destruction.

But the flood also becomes a weapon of another kind. One of the earlier incidents of the story represents Hathor in opposition to Re. The goddess becomes so maddened with the zest of killing that the god becomes alarmed and asks her to desist and spare some representatives of the race. But she is deaf to entreaties. Hence the god is said to have sent to Elephantine for the red ochre to make a sedative draught to overcome her destructive zeal. We have already seen that this incident had an entirely different meaning—it was merely intended to explain the obtaining of the colouring matter wherewith to redden the sacred beer so as to make it resemble blood as an elixir for the god. It was brought from Elephantine, because the red waters of inundation of the Nile were supposed by the Egyptians to come from Elephantine.

But according to the story inscribed in Seti Ist's tomb, the red ochre was an essential ingredient of the sedative mixture (prepared under the direction of Re by the Sekti[201] of Heliopolis) to calm Hathor's murderous spirit.

It has been claimed that the story simply means that the goddess became intoxicated with beer and that she became genially inoffensive solely as the effect of such inebriation. But the incident in the Egyptian story closely resembles the legends of other countries in which some herb is used specifically as a sedative. In most books on Egyptian mythology the word (d'd') for the substance put into the drink to colour it is translated "mandragora," from its resemblance to the Hebrew word dudaim in the Old Testament, which is often translated "mandrakes" or "love-apples". But Gauthier has clearly demonstrated that the Egyptian word does not refer to a vegetable but to a mineral substance, which he translates "red clay".[202] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me, however, that it is "red ochre". In any case, mandrake is not found at Elephantine (which, however, for the reasons I have already given, is a point of no importance so far as the identification of the substance is concerned), nor in fact anywhere in Egypt.

But if some foreign story of the action of a sedative drug had become blended with and incorporated in the highly complex and composite Egyptian legend the narrative would be more intelligible. The mandrake is such a sedative as might have been employed to calm the murderous frenzy of a maniacal woman. In fact it is closely allied to hyoscyamus, whose active principle, hyoscin, is used in modern medicine precisely for such purposes. I venture to suggest that a folk-tale describing the effect of opium or some other "drowsy syrup" has been absorbed into the legend of the Destruction of Mankind, and has provided the starting point of all those incidents in the dragon-story in which poison or some sleep-producing drug plays a part. For when Hathor defies Re and continues the destruction, she is playing the part of her Babylonian representative Tiamat, and is a dragon who has to be vanquished by the drink which the god provides.

The red earth which was pounded in the mortar to make the elixir of life and the fertilizer of the soil also came to be regarded as the material out of which the new race of men was made to replace those who were destroyed.

The god fashioned mankind of this earth and, instead of the red ochre being merely the material to give the blood-colour to the draught of immortality, the story became confused: actual blood was presented to the clay images to give them life and consciousness.

In a later elaboration the remains of the former race of mankind were ground up to provide the material out of which their successors were created. This version is a favourite story in Northern Europe, and has obviously been influenced by an intermediate variant which finds expression in the Indian legend of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk. Instead of the material for the elixir of the gods being pounded by the Sekti of Heliopolis and incidentally becoming a sedative for Hathor, it is the milk of the Divine Cow herself which is churned to provide the amrita.

[178: G. Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 164.]

[179: H. Brugsch, "Die Alraune als altaegyptische Zauberpflanze," Zeit. f. AEgypt. Sprache, Bd. 29, 1891, pp. 31-3; and Henri Gauthier, "Le nom hieroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Elephantine," Revue Egyptologique, t. xi^e, Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]

[180: These legends will be found in the works by Maspero, Erman and Budge, to which I have already referred. A very useful digest will be found in Donald A. Mackenzie's "Egyptian Myth and Legend". Mr. Mackenzie does not claim to have any first-hand knowledge of the subject, but his exceptionally wide and intimate knowledge of Scottish folk-lore, which has preserved a surprisingly large part of the same legends, has enabled him to present the Egyptian stories with exceptional clearness and sympathetic insight. But I refer to his book specially because he is one of the few modern writers who has made the attempt to compare the legends of Egypt, Babylonia, Crete, India and Western Europe. Hence the reader who is not familiar with the mythology of these countries will find his books particularly useful as works of reference in following the story I have to unfold: "Teutonic Myth and Legend," "Egyptian Myth and Legend," "Indian Myth and Legend," "Myths of Babylonia and Assyria" and "Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe".]

[181: See Leonard W. King, "Babylonian Religion," 1899.]

[182: For a useful collection of data see A. B. Cook, "Zeus".]

[183: Albert J. Carnoy, "Iranian Views of Origins in connexion with Similar Babylonian Beliefs," Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xxxvi., 1916, pp. 300-20; and "The Moral Deities of Iran and India and their Origins," The American Journal of Theology, vol. xxi., No. i., January, 1917.]

[184: Hopkins, "Religions of India".]

[185: De Groot, "The Religious System of China".]

[186: Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Manchester, 1918.]

[187: H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archeologie Americaine," Paris, 1912; T. A. Joyce, "Mexican Archaeology," and especially the memoir by Seler on the "Codex Vaticanus" and his articles in the Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie and elsewhere.]

[188: I.e. the offspring of the Great Mother of gods and men, Hathor, the "Eye of Re".]

[189: That is, Hathor, who as the moon is the "Eye of Re".]

[190: Elsewhere in these pages I have used the more generally adopted spelling "Sekhet".]

[191: Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the translation "flooding the land" is erroneous and misleading. Comparison of the whole series of stories, however, suggests that the amount of blood shed rapidly increased in the development of the narrative: at first the blood of a single victim; then the blood of mankind; then 7000 jars of a substitute for blood; then the red inundation of the Nile.]

[192: This version I have quoted mainly from Erman, op. cit., pp. 267-9, but with certain alterations which I shall mention later. In another version of the legend wine replaces the beer and is made out of "the blood of those who formerly fought against the gods," cf. Plutarch, De Iside (ed. Parthey) 6.]

[193: It is still the custom in many places, and among them especially the regions near the headwaters of the Nile itself, to regard the king or rain-maker as the impersonation of the life-giving properties of water and the source of all fertility. When his own vitality shows signs of failing he is killed, so as not to endanger the fruitfulness of the community by allowing one who is weak in life-giving powers to control its destinies. Much of the evidence relating to these matters has been collected by Sir James Frazer in "The Dying God," 1911, who quotes from Dr. Seligman the following account of the Dinka "Osiris":

"While the mighty spirit Lerpiu is supposed to be embodied in the rain-maker, it is also thought to inhabit a certain hut which serves as a shrine. In front of the hut stands a post to which are fastened the horns of many bullocks that have been sacrificed to Lerpiu; and in the hut is kept a very sacred spear which bears the name of Lerpiu and is said to have fallen from heaven six generations ago. As fallen stars are also called Lerpiu, we may suspect that an intimate connexion is supposed to exist between meteorites and the spirit which animates the rain-maker" (Frazer, op. cit., p. 32). Here then we have a house of the dead inhabited by Lerpiu, who can also enter the body of the rain-maker and animate him, as well as the ancient spear and the falling stars, which are also animate forms of the same god, who obviously is the homologue of Osiris, and is identified with the spear and the falling stars.

In spring when the April moon is a few days old bullocks are sacrificed to Lerpiu. "Two bullocks are led twice round the shrine and afterwards tied by the rain-maker to the post in front of it. Then the drums beat and the people, old and young, men and women, dance round the shrine and sing, while the beasts are being sacrificed, 'Lerpiu, our ancestor, we have brought you a sacrifice. Be pleased to cause rain to fall.' The blood of the bullocks is collected in a gourd, boiled in a pot on the fire, and eaten by the old and important people of the clan. The horns of the animals are attached to the post in front of the shrine" (pp. 32 and 33).]

[194: In Northern Nigeria an official who bore the title of Killer of the Elephant throttled the king "as soon as he showed signs of failing health or growing infirmity". The king-elect was afterwards conducted to the centre of the town, called Head of the Elephant, where he was made to lie down on a bed. Then a black ox was slaughtered and its blood allowed to pour all over his body. Next the ox was flayed, and the remains of the dead king, which had been disembowelled and smoked for seven days over a slow fire, were wrapped up in the hide and dragged along to the place of burial, where they were interred in a circular pit. (Frazer, op. cit., p. 35).]

[195: "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 392.]

[196: "The eye of the sun-god, which was subsequently called the eye of Horus and identified with the Uraeus-snake on the forehead of Re and of the Pharaohs, the earthly representatives of Re, finally becoming synonymous with the crown of Lower Egypt, was a mighty goddess, Uto or Buto by name" (Alan Gardiner, Article "Magic (Egyptian)" in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, p. 268, quoting Sethe.)]

[197: For an account of the distribution of this story see E. Sidney Hartland, "The Legend of Perseus"; also W. J. Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia".]

[198: The original "boat of the sky" was the crescent moon, which, from its likeness to the earliest form of Nile boat, was regarded as the vessel in which the moon (seen as a faint object upon the crescent), or the goddess who was supposed to be personified in the moon, travelled across the waters of the heavens. But as this "boat" was obviously part of the moon itself, it also was regarded as an animate form of the goddess, the "Eye of Re". When the Sun, as the other "Eye," assumed the chief role, Re was supposed to traverse the heavens in his own "boat," which was also brought into relationship with the actual boat used in the Osirian burial ritual.

The custom of employing the name "dragon" in reference to a boat is found in places as far apart as Scandinavia and China. It is the direct outcome of these identifications of the sun and moon with a boat animated by the respective deities. In India the Makara, the prototype of the dragon, was sometimes represented as a boat which was looked upon as the fish-avatar of Vishnu, Buddha or some other deity.]

[199: This is an instance of the well-known tendency of the human mind to blend numbers of different incidents into one story. An episode of one experience, having been transferred to an earlier one, becomes rationalized in adaptation to its different environment. This process of psychological transference is the explanation of the reference to Elephantine as the source of the d'd', and has no relation to actuality. The naive efforts of Brugsch and Gauthier to study the natural products of Elephantine for the purpose of identifying d'd' were therefore wholly misplaced.]

[200: In Hartland's "Legend of Perseus" a collection of variants of this story will be found.]

[201: In the version I have quoted from Erman he refers to "the god Sektet".]

[202: Op. cit. supra.]

The Thunder-Weapon.[203]

In the development of the dragon-story we have seen that the instruments of destruction were of a most varied kind. Each of the three primary deities, Hathor, Osiris and Horus can be a destructive power as well as a giver of life and of all kinds of boons. Every homologue or surrogate of these three deities can become a weapon for dragon-destroying, such as the moon or the lotus of Hathor, the water or the beer of Osiris, the sun or the falcon of Horus. Originally Hathor used a flint knife or axe: then she did the execution as "the Eye of Re," the moon, the fiery bolt from heaven: Osiris sent the destroying flood and the intoxicating beer, each of which, like the knife, axe and moon of Hathor, were animated by the deity. Then Horus came as the winged disk, the falcon, the sun, the lightning and the thunderbolt. As the dragon-story was spread abroad in the world any one of these "weapons" was confused with any of (or all) the rest. The Eye of Re was the fire-spitting uraeus-serpent; and foreign people, like the Greeks, Indians and others, gave the Egyptian verbal simile literal expression and converted it into an actual Cyclopean eye planted in the forehead, which shot out the destroying fire.

The warrior god of Babylonia is called the bright one,[204] the sword or lightning of Ishtar, who was herself called both the sword or lightning of heaven.

In the AEgean area also the sons of Zeus and the progeny of heaven may be axes, stone implements, meteoric stones and thunderbolts. In a Swahili tale the hero's weapon is "a sword like a flash of lightning".

According to Bergaigne,[205] the myth of the celestial drink soma, brought down from heaven by a bird ordinarily called cyena, "eagle," is parallel to that of Agni, the celestial fire brought by Mataricvan. This parallelism is even expressly stated in the Rig Veda, verse 6 of hymn 1 to Agni and Soma. Mataricvan brought the one from heaven, the eagle brought the other from the celestial mountain.

Kuhn admits that the eagle represents Indra; and Lehmann regards the eagle who takes the fire as Agni himself. It is patent that both Indra and Agni are in fact merely specialized forms of Horus of the Winged Disk Saga, in one of which the warrior sun-god is represented, in the other the living fire. The elixir of life of the Egyptian story is represented by the soma, which by confusion is associated with the eagle: in other words, the god Soma is the homologue not only of Osiris, but also of Horus.

Other incidents in the same original version are confused in the Greek story of Prometheus. He stole the fire from heaven and brought it to earth: but, in place of the episode of the elixir, which is adopted in the Indian story just mentioned, the creation of men from clay is accredited by the Greeks to the "flaming one," the "fire eagle" Prometheus.

The double axe was the homologue of the winged disk which fell, or rather flew, from heaven as the tangible form of the god. This fire from heaven inevitably came to be identified with the lightning. According to Blinkenberg (op. cit., p. 19) "many points go to prove that the double-axe is a representation of the lightning (see Usener, p. 20)". He refers to the design on the famous gold ring from Mycenae where "the sun, the moon, a double curved line presumably representing the rainbow, and the double-axe, i.e. the lightning": but "the latter is placed lower than the others, probably because it descends from heaven to earth," like Horus when he assumed the form of the winged disk and flew down to earth as a fiery bolt to destroy the enemies of Re.

The recognition of the homology of the winged disk with the double axe solves a host of problems which have puzzled classical scholars within recent years. The form of the double axe on the Mycenaean ring[206] and the painted sarcophagus from Hagia Triada in Crete (and especially the oblique markings upon the axe) is probably a suggestion of the double series of feathers and the outlines of the individual feathers respectively on the wings. The position of the axe upon a symbolic tree is not intended, as Blinkenberg claims (op. cit., p. 21), as "a ritual representation of the trees struck by lightning": but is the familiar scene of Mesopotamian culture-area, the tree of life surmounted by the winged disk.[207]

The bird poised upon the axe in the Cretan picture is the homologue of the falcon of Horus: it is in fact a second representation of the winged disk itself. This interpretation is not affected by the consideration that the falcon may be replaced by the eagle, pigeon, woodpecker or raven, for these substitutions were repeatedly made by the ancient priesthoods in flagrant defiance of the properties of ornithological homologies. The same phenomenon is displayed even more obtrusively in Central America and Mexico, where the ancient sculptors and painters represented the bird perched upon the tree of life as a falcon, an eagle, a vulture, a macaw or even a turkey.[208]

The incident of the winged disk descending to effect the sun-god's purposes upon earth probably represents the earliest record of the recognition of thunder and lightning and the phenomena of rain as manifestations of the god's powers. All gods of thunder, lightning, rain and clouds derive their attributes, and the arbitrary graphic representation of them, from the legend which the Egyptian scribe has preserved for us in the Saga of the Winged Disk.

The sacred axe of Crete is represented elsewhere as a sword which became the visible impersonation of the deity.[209] There is a Hittite story of a sword-handle coming to life. Hose and McDougall refer to the same incident in certain Sarawak legends; and the story is true to the original in the fact that the sword fell from the sun.[210]

Sir Arthur Evans describes as "the aniconic image of the god" a stone pillar on which crude pictures of a double axe have been scratched. These representations of the axe in fact serve the same purpose as the winged disk in Egypt, and, as we shall see subsequently, there was an actual confusion between the Egyptian symbol and the Cretan axe.

The obelisk at Abusir was the aniconic representative of the sun-god Re, or rather, the support of the pyramidal apex, the gilded surface of which reflected the sun's rays and so made manifest the god's presence in the stone.

The Hittites seem to have substituted the winged disk as a representation of the sun: for in a design copied from a seal[211] we find the Egyptian symbol borne upon the apex of a cone.

The transition from this to the great double axe from Hagia Triada in the Candia Museum[212] is a relatively easy one, which was materially helped, as we shall see, by the fact that the winged disk was actually homologized with an axe or knife as alternative weapons used by the sun-god for the destruction of mankind.

In Dr. Seligman's account of the Dinka rain-maker (supra, p. 113) we have already seen that the Soudanese Osiris was identified with a spear and falling stars.

According to Dr. Budge[213] the Egyptian hieroglyph used as the determinative of the word neter, meaning god or spirit, is the axe with a handle. Mr. Griffith, however, interprets it as a roll of yellow cloth ("Hieroglyphics," p. 46). On Hittite seals the axe sometimes takes the place of the god Teshub.[214]

Sir Arthur Evans endeavours to explain these conceptions by a vague appeal to certain natural phenomena (op. cit., pp. 20 and 21); but the identical traditions of widespread peoples are much too arbitrary and specific to be interpreted by any such speculations.

Sanchoniathon's story of Baetylos being the son of Ouranos is merely a poetical way of saying that the sun-god fell to earth in the form of a stone or a weapon, as a Zeus Kappotas or a Horus in the form of a winged disk, flying down from heaven to destroy the enemies of Re.

"The idea of their [the weapons] flying through the air or falling from heaven, and their supposed power of burning with inner fire or shining in the nighttime," was not primarily suggested, as Sir Arthur Evans claims (op. cit., p. 21), "by the phenomena associated with meteoric stones," but was a rationalization of the events described in the early Egyptian and Babylonian stories.

They "shine at night" because the original weapon of destruction was the moon as the Eye of Re. They "burn with inward fire," like the Babylonian Marduk, when in the fight with the dragon Tiamat "he filled his body with burning flame" (King, op. cit., p. 71), because they were fire, the fire of the sun and of lightning, the fire spat out by the Eye of Re.

Further evidence in corroboration of these views is provided by the fact that in the AEgean area the double-axe replaces the moon between the cow's horns (Evans, op. cit., Fig. 3, p. 9).

In King's "Babylonian Religion" (pp. 70 and 71) we are told how the gods provided Marduk with an invincible weapon in preparation for the combat with the dragon: and the ancient scribe himself sets forth a series of its homologues:—

He made ready his bow ... He slung a spear ... The bow and quiver ... He set the lightning in front of him, With burning flame he filled his body.

An ancient Egyptian writer has put on record further identifications of weapons. In the 95th Chapter of the Book of the Dead, the deceased is reported to have said: "I am he who sendeth forth terror into the powers of rain and thunder.... I have made to flourish my knife which is in the hand of Thoth in the powers of rain and thunder" (Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 414).

The identification of the winged disk with the thunderbolt which emerges so definitely from these homologies is not altogether new, for it was suggested some years ago by Count d'Alviella[215] in these words:—

"On seeing some representations of the Thunderbolt which recall in a remarkable manner the outlines of the Winged Globe, it may be asked if it was not owing to this latter symbol that the Greeks transformed into a winged spindle the Double Trident derived from Assyria. At any rate the transition, or, if it be preferred, the combination of the two symbols is met with in those coins from Northern Africa where Greek art was most deeply impregnated with Phoenician types. Thus on coins of Bocchus II, King of Mauretania, figures are found which M. Lajard connected with the Winged Globe, and M. L. Mueller calls Thunderbolts, but which are really the result of crossing between these two emblems".

The thunderbolt, however, is not always, or even commonly, the direct representative of the winged disk. It is more often derived from lightning or some floral design.[216]

According to Count d'Alviella[217] "the Trident of Siva at times exhibits the form of a lotus calyx depicted in the Egyptian manner".

"Perhaps other transformations of the trisula might still be found at Boro-Budur [in Java].... The same Disk which, when transformed into a most complicated ornament, is sometimes crowned by a Trident, is also met with between two serpents—which brings us back to the origin of the Winged Circle—the Globe of Egypt with the uraei" (see d'Alviella's Fig. 158). "Moreover this ornament, between which and certain forms of the trisula the transition is easily traced, commonly surmounts the entrance to the pagodas depicted in the bas-reliefs—in exactly the same manner as the Winged Globe adorns the lintel of the temples in Egypt and Phoenicia."

Thus we find traces of a blending of the two homologous designs, derived independently from the lotus and the winged disk, which acquired the same symbolic significance.

The weapon of Poseidon, the so-called "Trident of Neptune," is "sometimes crowned with a trilobate lotus flower, or with three lotus buds; in other cases it is depicted in a shape that may well represent a fishing spear" (Blinkenberg, op. cit., pp. 53 and 54).

"Even if Jacobsthal's interpretation of the flower as a common Greek symbol for fire be not accepted, the conventionalization of the trident as a lotus blossom is quite analogous to the change, on Greek soil, of the Assyrian thunderweapon to two flowers pointing in opposite directions" (p. 54).

But the conception of a flower as a symbol of fire cannot thus summarily be dismissed. For Sir Arthur Evans has collected all the stages in the transformation of Egyptian palmette pillars into the rayed pillars of Cyprus, in which the leaflets of the palmette become converted (in the Cypro-Mycenaean derivatives) into the rays which he calls "the natural concomitant of divinities of light".[218]

The underlying motive which makes such a transference easy is the Egyptian conception of Hathor as a sacred lotus from which the sun-god Horus is born. The god of light is identified with the water-plant, whether lotus, iris or lily; and the lotus form of Horus can be correlated with its Hellenic surrogate, Apollo Hyakinthos. "The fleur-de-lys type now takes its place beside the sacred lotus" (op. cit., p. 50). The trident and the fleur-de-lys are thunderweapons because they represent forms of Horus or his mother.

The classical keraunos is still preserved in Tibet as the dorje, which is identified with Indra's thunderbolt, the vajra.[219] This word is also applied to the diamond, the "king of stones," which in turn acquired many of the attributes of the pearl, another of the Great Mother's surrogates, which is reputed to have fallen from heaven like the thunderbolt.[220]

The Tibetan dorje, like its Greek original, is obviously a conventionalized flower, the leaf-design about the base of the corona being quite clearly defined.

The influence of the Winged-Disk Saga is clearly revealed in such Greek myths as that relating to Ixion. "Euripides is represented by Aristophanes as declaring that Aither at the creation devised

The eye to mimic the wheel of the sun."[221]

When we read of Zeus in anger binding Ixion to a winged wheel made of fire, and sending him spinning through the air, we are merely dealing with a Greek variant of the Egyptian myth in which Re despatched Horus as a winged disk to slay his enemies. In the Hellenic version the sky-god is angry with the father of the centaurs for his ill-treatment of his father-in-law and his behaviour towards Hera and her cloud-manifestation: but though distorted all the incidents reveal their original inspiration in the Egyptian story and its early Aryan variants.

It is remarkable that Mr. A. B. Cook, who compared the wheel of Ixion with the Egyptian winged disk (pp. 205-10), did not look deeper for a common origin of the two myths, especially when he got so far as to identify Ixion with the sun-god (p. 211).

Blinkenberg sums up the development of the thunder-weapon thus: "From the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or three zigzag lines representing flames, a tripartite thunder-weapon was evolved and earned east and west from the ancient seat of civilization. Together with the axe (in Western Asia Minor the double-edged, and towards the centre of Asia the single-edged, axe) it became a regular attribute of the Asiatic thunder-gods.... The Indian trisula and the Greek triaina are both its descendants" (p. 57).

Discussing the relationship of the sun-god to thunder, Dr. Rendel Harris refers to the fact that Apollo's "arrows are said to be lightnings," and he quotes Pausanias, Apollodorus and Mr. A. B. Cook in substantiation of his statements.[222] Both sons of Zeus, Dionysus and Apollo, are "concerned with the production of fire".

According to Hyginus, Typhon was the son of Tartarus and the Earth: he made war against Jupiter for dominion, and, being struck by lightning, was thrown flaming to the earth, where Mount AEtna was placed upon him.[223]

In this curious variant of the story of the winged disk, the conflict of Horus with Set is merged with the Destruction, for the son of Tartarus [Osiris] and the Earth [Isis] here is not Horus but his hostile brother Set. Instead of fighting for Jupiter (Re) as Horus did, he is against him. The lightning (which is Horus in the form of the winged disk) strikes Typhon and throws him flaming to earth. The episode of Mount AEtna is the antithesis of the incident in the Indian legend of the churning of the ocean: Mount Meru is placed in the sea upon the tortoise avatar of Vishnu and is used to churn the food of immortality for the gods. In the Egyptian story the red ochre brought from Elephantine is pounded with the barley.

The story told by Hyginus leads up to the vision in Revelations (xii., 7 et seq.): "There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought, and his angels, and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."

In the later variants the original significance of the Destruction of Mankind seems to have been lost sight of. The life-giving Great Mother tends to drop out of the story and her son Horus takes her place. He becomes the warrior-god, but he not only assumes his mother's role but he also adopts her tactics. Just as she attacked Re's enemies in the capacity of the sky-god's "Eye," so Horus as the other "Eye," the sun, to which he gave his own falcon's wings, attacked in the form of the winged disk. The winged disk, like the other "Eye of Re," was not merely the sky weapon which shot down to destroy mankind, but also was the god Horus himself. This early conception involved the belief that the thunderbolt and lightning represented not merely the fiery weapon but the actual god.

The winged disk thus exhibits the same confusion of attributes as we have already noticed in Osiris and Hathor. It is the commonest symbol of life-giving and beneficent protective power: yet it is the weapon used to slaughter mankind. It is in fact the healing caduceus as well as the baneful thunder-weapon.

[203: The history of the thunder-weapon cannot wholly be ignored in discussing the dragon-myth because it forms an integral part of the story. It was animated both by the dragon and the dragon-slayer. But an adequate account of the weapon would be so highly involved and complex as to be unintelligible without a very large series of illustrations. Hence I am referring here only to certain aspects of the subject. Pending the preparation of a monograph upon the thunder-weapon, I may refer the reader to the works of Blinkenberg, d'Alviella, Ward, Evans and A. B. Cook (to which frequent reference is made in these pages) for material, especially in the form of illustrations, to supplement my brief and unavoidably involved summary.]

[204: As in Egypt Osiris is described as "a ray of light" which issued from the moon (Hathor), i.e. was born of the Great Mother.]

[205: "Religion vedique," i., p. 173, quoted by S. Reinach, "AEtos Prometheus," Revue archeologique, 4^ie serie, tome x., 1917, p. 72.]

[206: Evans, op. cit., Fig. 4, p. 10.]

[207: William Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," chapter xxxviii.]

[208: Seler, "Codex Vaticanus, No. 3773," vol. i., p. 77 et seq.]

[209: Evans, op. cit., p. 8.]

[210: "The Pagan Tribes of Borneo," 1912, vol. ii., p. 137.]

[211: Evans, op. cit., Fig. 8, c, p. 17.]

[212: There is an excellent photograph of this in Donald McKenzie's "Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe," facing p. 160.]

[213: "The Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., pp. 63 et seq.]

[214: See, for example, Ward, op. cit., p. 411.]

[215: "The Migration of Symbols," pp. 220 and 221.]

[216: Blinkenberg, op. cit., p. 53.]

[217: Op. cit., p. 256.]

[218: "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 51 and 52.]

[219: See Blinkenberg, op. cit., pp. 45-8.]

[220: I must defer consideration of the part played by certain of the Great Mother's surrogates in the development of the thunder-weapon's symbolism and the associated folk-lore. I have in mind especially the influence of the octopus and the cow. The former was responsible in part for the use of the spiral as a thunder-symbol; and the latter for the beliefs in the special protective power of thunder-stones over cows (see Blinkenberg, op. cit.). The thunder-stone was placed over the lintel of the cow-shed for the same purpose as the winged disk over the door of an Egyptian temple. Until the relations of the octopus to the dragon have been set forth it is impossible adequately to discuss the question of the seven-headed dragon, which ranges from Scotland to Japan and from Scandinavia to the Zambesi. In "The Birth of Aphrodite" I shall call attention to the basal factors in its evolution.]

[221: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 198.]

[222: "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 32.]

[223: "Tartarus ex Terra procreavit Typhonem, immani magnitudine, specieque portentosa, cui centum capita draconum ex humeris enata erant. Hic Jovem provocavit, si vellet secum de regno centare. Jovis fulmine ardenti pectus ejus percussit. Cui cum flagraret, montem AEtnam, qui est in Sicilia, super eum imposuit; qui ex eo adhuc ardere dicitur" (Hyginus, fab. 152).]

The Deer.

One of the most surprising features of the dragon in China, Japan and America, is the equipment of deer's horns.

In Babylonia both Ea and Marduk are intimately associated with the antelope or gazelle, and the combination of the head of the antelope (or in other cases the goat) with the body of a fish is the most characteristic manifestation of either god. In Egypt both Osiris and Horus are at times brought into relationship with the gazelle or antelope, but more often it represents their enemy Set. Hence, in some parts of Africa, especially in the west, the antelope plays the part of the dragon in Asiatic stories.[224] The cow[225] of Hathor (Tiamat) may represent the dragon also. In East Africa the antelope assumes the role of the hero,[226] and is the representative of Horus. In the AEgean area, Asia Minor and Europe the antelope, gazelle or the deer, may be associated with the Great Mother.[227]

In India the god Soma's chariot is drawn by an antelope. I have already suggested that Soma is only a specialized form of the Babylonian Ea, whose evil avatar is the dragon: there is thus suggested another link between the antelope and the latter. The Ea-element explains the fish-scales and the antelope provides the horns. I shall return to the discussion of this point later.

Vayu or Pavana, the Indian god of the winds, who afterwards became merged with Indra, rides upon an antelope like the Egyptian Horus. Soma's attributes also were in large measure taken over by Indra. Hence in this complex tissue of contradictions we once more find the dragon-slayer acquiring the insignia, in this case the antelope, of his mortal enemy.

I have already referred to the fact that the early Babylonian deities could also be demons. Tiamat, the dragon whom Marduk fought, was merely the malevolent avatar of the Great Mother. The dragon acquired his covering of fish-scales from an evil form of Ea.

In his Hibbert Lectures Professor Sayce claimed that the name of Ea was expressed by an ideograph which signifies literally "the antelope" (p. 280). "Ea was called 'the antelope of the deep,' 'the antelope the creator,' 'the lusty antelope'. We should have expected the animal of Ea to have been the fish: the fact that it is not so points to the conclusion that the culture-god of Southern Babylonia was an amalgamation of two earlier deities, one the divine antelope and the other the divine fish." Ea was "originally the god of the river and was also associated with the snake". Nina was also both the fish-goddess and the divinity whose name is interchanged with that of the deep. Professor Sayce then refers to "the curious process of development which transformed the old serpent-goddess, 'the lady Nina,' into the embodiment of all that was hostile to the powers of heaven; but after all, Nina had sprung from the fish-god of the deep [who also was both antelope and serpent as well, see p. 282], and Tiamat is herself 'the deep' in Semitic dress" (p. 283).

"At times Ea was regarded as a gazelle rather than as an antelope." The position of the name in the list of animals shows what species of animal must be meant. Lulim, "a stag," seems to be a re-duplicated form of the same word. Both lulim and elim are said to be equivalent to sarru, king (p. 284).

Certain Assyriologists, from whom I asked for enlightenment upon these philological matters, express some doubt as to the antiquity or to the reality of the association of the names of Ea and the word for an antelope, gazelle or stag. But whatever the value of the linguistic evidence, the archaeological, at any rate as early as the time of Nebuchadnezzar I, brings both Ea and Marduk into close association with a strange creature equipped with the horns of an antelope or gazelle. The association with the antelope of the homologous deities in India and Egypt leaves the reality of the connexion in no doubt. I had hoped that Professor Sayce's evidence would have provided some explanation of the strange association of the antelope. But whether or not the philological data justify the inferences which Professor Sayce drew from them, there can be no doubt concerning the correctness of his statement that Ea was represented both by fish and antelope, for in the course of his excavations at Susa M. J. de Morgan brought to light representations of Ea's animal consisting of an antelope's head on the body of a fish.[228] He also makes the statement that the ideogram of Ea, turahu-apsu, means "antelope of the sea". I have already (p. 88) referred to the fact that this "antelope of the sea," the so-called "goat-fish," is identical with the prototype of the dragon.

If his claim that the names of Ea meant both a "fish" and an "antelope" were well founded, the pun would have solved this problem, as it has done in the case of many other puzzles in the history of early civilization. But if this is not the case, the question is still open for solution. As Set was held to be personified in all the desert animals, the gazelle was identified with the demon of evil for this reason. In her important treatise on "The Asiatic Dionysos" Miss Gladys Davis tells us that "in his aspect of Moon 'the lord of stars' Soma has in this character the antelope as his symbol. In fact, one of the names given to the moon by the early Indians was 'mriga-piplu' or marked like an antelope" (p. 202). Further she adds: "The Sanskrit name for the lunar mansion over which Soma presides is 'mriga-siras' or the deer-headed." If it be admitted that Soma is merely the Aryan specialization of Ea and Osiris, as I have claimed, Sayce's association of Ea with the antelope is corroborated, even if it is not explained.

In China the dragon was sometimes called "the celestial stag" (de Groot, op. cit., p. 1143). In Mexico the deer has the same intimate celestial relations as it has in the Old World (see Seler, Zeit. f. Ethnologie, Bd. 41, p. 414). I have already referred to the remarkable Maya deer-crocodile makara in the Liverpool Museum (p. 103).

The systematic zoology of the ancients was lacking in the precision of modern times; and there are reasons for supposing that the antelope and gazelle could exchange places the one with the other in their divine roles; the deer and the rabbit were also their surrogates. In India a spotted rabbit can take the place of the antelope in playing the part of what we call "the man in the moon". This interpretation is common, not only in India, but also in China, and is repeatedly found in the ancient Mexican codices (Seler, op. cit.). In the spread of the ideas we have just been considering from Babylonia towards the north we find that the deer takes the place of the antelope.

In view of the close resemblance between the Indian god Soma and the Phrygian Dionysus, which has been demonstrated by Miss Gladys Davis, it is of interest to note that in the service of the Greek god a man was disguised as a stag, slain and eaten.[229]

Artemis also, one of the many avatars of the Great Mother, who was also related to the moon, was closely associated with the deer.

I have already referred to the fact that in Africa the dragon role of the female antelope may be assumed by the cow or buffalo. In the case of the gods Soma and Dionysus their association with the antelope or deer may be extended to the bull. Miss Davis (op. cit.) states that in the Homa Yasht the deer-headed lunar mansion over which the god presides is spoken of as "leading the Paurvas," i.e. Pleiades: "Mazda brought to thee (Homa) the star-studded spirit-fashioned girdle (the belt of Orion) leading the Paurvas. Now the Bull-Dionysus was especially associated with the Pleiades on ancient gems and in classical mythology—which form part of the sign Taurus." The bull is a sign of Haoma (Homa) or Soma. The belt of the thunder-god Thor corroborates the fact of the diffusion of these Babylonian ideas as far as Northern Europe.

[224: Frobenius, "The Voice of Africa," vol. ii., p. 467 inter alia.]

[225: Op. cit., p. 468.]

[226: J. F. Campbell, "The Celtic Dragon Myth," with the "Geste of Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with Introduction by George Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 136.]

[227: For example the red deer occupies the place usually taken by the goddess's lions upon a Cretan gem (Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," Fig. 32, p. 56): on the bronze plate from Heddemheim (A. B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., pl. xxxiv., and p. 620) Isis is represented standing on a hind: Artemis, another avatar of the same Great Mother, was intimately associated with deer.]

[228: J. de Morgan, article on "Koudourrous," Mem. Del. en Perse, t. 7, 1905. Figures on p. 143 and p. 148: see also an earlier article on the same subject in tome i. of the same series.]

[229: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," vol. i., p. 674.]

The Ram.

The close association of the ram with the thunder-god is probably related with the fact that the sun-god Amon in Egypt was represented by the ram with a distinctive spiral horn. This spiral became a distinctive feature of the god of thunder throughout the Hellenic and Phoenician worlds and in those parts of Africa which were affected by their influence or directly by Egypt.

An account of the widespread influence of the ram-headed god of thunder in the Soudan and West Africa has been given by Frobenius.[230]

But the ram also became associated with Agni, the Indian fire-god, and the spiral as a head-appendage became the symbol of thunder throughout China and Japan, and from Asia spread to America where such deities as Tlaloc still retain this distinctive token of their origin from the Old World.

In Europe this association of the ram and its spiral horn played an even more obtrusive part.

The octopus as a surrogate of the Great Mother was primarily responsible for the development of the life-giving attributes of the spiral motif. But the close connexion of the Great Mother with the dragon and the thunder-weapon prepared the way for the special association of the spiral with thunder, which was confirmed when the ram with its spiral horn became the God of Thunder.

[230: Op. cit., vol. i., pp. 212-27.]

The Pig.

The relationship of the pig to the dragon is on the whole analogous to that of the cow and the stag, for it can play either a beneficent or a malevolent part. But the nature of the special circumstances which gave the pig a peculiar notoriety as an unclean animal are so intimately associated with the "Birth of Aphrodite" that I shall defer the discussion of them for my lecture on the history of the goddess.

Certain Incidents in the Dragon Myth.

Throughout the greater part of the area which tradition has peopled with dragons, iron is regarded as peculiarly lethal to the monsters. This seems to be due to the part played by the "smiths" who forged iron weapons with which Horus overcame Set and his followers,[231] or in the earlier versions of the legend the metal weapons by means of which the people of Upper Egypt secured their historic victory over the Lower Egyptians. But the association of meteoric iron with the thunderbolt, the traditional weapon for destroying dragons, gave added force to the ancient legend and made it peculiarly apt as an incident in the story.

But though the dragon is afraid of iron, he likes precious gems and k'ung-ts'ing ("The Stone of Darkness") and is fond of roasted swallows.

The partiality of dragons for swallows was due to the transmission of a very ancient story of the Great Mother, who in the form of Isis was identified with the swallow. In China, so ravenous is the monster for this delicacy, that anyone who has eaten of swallows should avoid crossing the water, lest the dragon whose home is in the deep should devour the traveller to secure the dainty morsel of swallow. But those who pray for rain use swallows to attract the beneficent deity. Even in England swallows flying low are believed to be omens of coming rain—a tale which is about as reliable as the Chinese variant of the same ancient legend.

"The beautiful gems remind us of the Indian dragons; the pearls of the sea were, of course, in India as well as China and Japan, considered to be in the special possession of the dragon-shaped sea-gods" (de Visser, p. 69). The cultural drift from West to East along the southern coast of India was effected mainly by sailors who were searching for pearls. Sharks constituted the special dangers the divers had to incur in exploiting pearl-beds to obtain the precious "giver of life". But at the time these great enterprises were first undertaken in the Indian Ocean the people dwelling in the neighbourhood of the chief pearl-beds regarded the sea as the great source of all life-giving virtues and the god who exercised these powers was incarnated in a fish. The sharks therefore had to be brought into harmony with this scheme, and they were rationalized as the guardians of the storehouse of life-giving pearls at the bottom of the sea.

I do not propose to discuss at present the diffusion to the East of the beliefs concerning the shark and the modifications which they underwent in the course of these migrations in Melanesia and elsewhere; but in my lecture upon "the Birth of Aphrodite" I shall have occasion to refer to its spread to the West and explain how the shark's role was transferred to the dog-fish in the Mediterranean. The dog-fish then assumed a terrestrial form and became simply the dog who plays such a strange part in the magical ceremony of digging up the mandrake.

At present we are concerned merely with the shark as the guardian of the stores of pearls at the bottom of the sea. He became identified with the Naga and the dragon, and the store of pearls became a vast treasure-house which it became one of the chief functions of the dragon to guard. This episode in the wonder-beast's varied career has a place in most of the legends ranging from Western Europe to Farthest Asia. Sometimes the dragon carries a pearl under his tongue or in his chin as a reserve of life-giving substance.

Mr. Donald Mackenzie has called attention[232] to the remarkable influence upon the development of the Dragon Myth of the familiar Egyptian representation of the child Horus with a finger touching his lips. On some pretence or other, many of the European dragon-slaying heroes, such as Sigurd and the Highland Finn, place their fingers in their mouths. This action is usually rationalized by the statement that the hero burnt his fingers while cooking the slain monster.

[231: Budge, "Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 476.]

[232: "Egyptian Myth and Legend," pp. 340 et seq.]

The Ethical Aspect.

So far in this discussion I have been dealing mainly with the problems of the dragon's evolution, the attainment of his or her distinctive anatomical features and physiological attributes. But during this process of development a moral and ethical aspect of the dragon's character was also emerging.

Now that we have realized the fact of the dragon's homology with the moon-god it is important to remember that one of the primary functions of this deity, which later became specialized in the Egyptian god Thoth, was the measuring of time and the keeping of records. The moon, in fact, was the controller of accuracy, of truth, and order, and therefore the enemy of falsehood and chaos. The identification of the moon with Osiris, who from a dead king eventually developed into a king of the dead, conferred upon the great Father of Waters the power to exact from men respect for truth and order. For even if at first these ideas were only vaguely adumbrated and not expressed in set phrases, it must have been an incentive to good discipline when men remembered that the record-keeper and the guardian of law and order was also the deity upon whose tender mercies they would have to rely in the life after death. Set, the enemy of Osiris, who is the real prototype of the evil dragon, was the antithesis of the god of justice: he was the father of falsehood and the symbol of chaos. He was the prototype of Satan, as Osiris was the first definite representative of the Deity of which any record has been preserved.

The history of the evil dragon is not merely the evolution of the devil, but it also affords the explanation of his traditional peculiarities, his bird-like features, his horns, his red colour, his wings and cloven hoofs, and his tail. They are all of them the dragon's distinctive features; and from time to time in the history of past ages we catch glimpses of the reality of these identifications. In one of the earliest woodcuts (Fig. 17) found in a printed book Satan is depicted as a monk with the bird's feet of the dragon. A most interesting intermediate phase is seen in a Chinese water-colour in the John Rylands Library, in which the thunder-dragon is represented in a form almost exactly reproducing that of the devil of European tradition (Fig. 16).



Early in the Christian era, when ancient beliefs in Egypt became disguised under a thin veneer of Christianity, the story of the conflict between Horus and Set was converted into a conflict between Christ and Satan. M. Clermont-Ganneau has described an interesting bas-relief in the Louvre in which a hawk-headed St. George, clad in Roman military uniform and mounted on a horse, is slaying a dragon which is represented by Set's crocodile.[233] But the Biblical references to Satan leave no doubt as to his identity with the dragon, who is specifically mentioned in the Book of Revelations as "the old serpent which is the Devil and Satan" (xx. 2).