 |
Another remarkable picture of a swastika-like emblem has been found in America.[320] The elephant-headed god sits in the centre and four pairs of arms radiate from him, each of them equipped with definite suckers.
Another possible way in which the design of a four-limbed swastika may have been derived from an octopus is suggested by the gypsum weight found in 1901 by Sir Arthur Evans[321] in the West Magazine of the palace at Knossos (circa 1500 B.C.). Upon the surface of this weight the form of an octopus has been depicted, four of the arms of which stand out in much stronger relief than the others.
The number four has a peculiar mystical significance (vide infra, p. 206) and is especially associated with the Sun-god Horus. This fact may have played some part in the process of reduction of the number of limbs of the octopus to four; or alternatively it may have helped to emphasize the solar associations of the symbol, which other considerations were responsible for suggesting. The designs upon the pots from Hissarlik show that at a relatively early epoch the swastika was confused with the sun's disc represented as a wheel with four spokes.[322] But the solar attributes of the swastika are secondary to those of life-giving and luck-bringing, with which it was originally endowed as a form of the Great Mother.
The only serious fact which arouses some doubt as to the validity of Houssay's theory is the discovery of an early painted vase at Susa decorated with an unmistakable swastika. Edmond Pottier, who has described the ceramic ware from Susa,[323] regards this pot as Proto-Elamite of the earliest period. If Pottier's claim is justified we have in this isolated specimen from Susa the earliest example of the swastika. Moreover, it comes from a region in which the symbol was supposed to be wholly absent.
This raises a difficult problem for solution. Is the Proto-Elamite swastika the prototype of the symbol whose world-wide migrations have been studied by Wilson (op. cit. supra)? Or is it an instance of independent evolution? If it falls within the first category and is really the parent of the early Anatolian swastikas, how is it to be explained? Was the conventionalization of the octopus design much more ancient than the earliest Trojan examples of the symbol? Or was the Susian design adopted in the West and given a symbolic meaning which it did not have before then?
These are questions which we are unable to answer at present because the necessary information is lacking. I have enumerated them merely to suggest that any hasty inferences regarding the bearing of the Susian design upon the general problem are apt to be misleading. Vincent[324] claims that the fact of the swastika having been in use by ceramic artists in Crete and Susiana many centuries before the appearance of Mycenaean art is fatal to Houssay's hypothesis. But I think it is too soon to make such an assumption. The swastika was already a rigidly conventionalized symbol when we first know it both in the Mediterranean and in Susiana. It may therefore have a long history behind it. The octopus may possibly have begun to play a part in the development of this symbolism before the Egyptian Bes (vide supra, p. 171) was evolved, perhaps even before the time of the Coptos statues of Min (supra, p. 169), or in the early days of Sumerian history when the conventional form of the water-pot was being determined (infra, p. 179). These are mere conjectures, which I mention merely for the purpose of suggesting that the time is not yet ripe for using such arguments as Vincent's finally to dispose of Houssay's octopus-theory.
There can be no doubt that the symbolism of the Mycenaean spiral and the volute is closely related to the octopus. In fact, the evidence provided by Minoan paintings and Mycenaean decorative art demonstrates that the spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the octopus. The use of the volute on Egyptian scarabs[325] and also in the decoration of an early Thracian statuette of a nude goddess[326] indicate that it was employed like the spiral and octopus as a life-symbol.
In Spanish graves of the Early and Middle Neolithic types M. Siret found cowry-shells in association with a series of flint implements, crude idols, and pottery almost precisely reproducing the forms of similar objects found with cowries and pecten shells at Hissarlik.[327] But when the AEneolithic phase of culture dawned in Spain, and the AEgean octopus-motif made its appearance there, the culture as a whole reveals unmistakable evidence of a predominantly Egyptian inspiration.
M. Siret claims, however, that, even in the Neolithic phase in Spain, the crude idols represent forms derived from the octopus in the Eastern Mediterranean (p. 59 et seq.). He regards the octopus as "a conventional symbol of the ocean, or, more precisely, of the fertilizing watery principle" (p. 19). He elucidates a very interesting feature of the AEneolithic representation of the octopus in Spain. The spiral-motif of the AEgean gives place to an angular design, which he claims to be due to the influence of the conventional Egyptian way of representing water (p. 40). If this interpretation is correct—and, in spite of the slenderness of the evidence, I am inclined to accept it—it affords a remarkable illustration of the effects of culture-contact in the conventionalization of designs, to which Dr. Rivers has called attention.[328] Whatever explanation may be provided of this method of representing the arms of the octopus with its angularly bent extremities, it seems to have an important bearing on Houssay's hypothesis of the swastika's origin. For it would reveal the means by which the spiral or volute shape of the limbs of the swastika became transformed into the angular form, which is so characteristic of the conventional symbol.[329]
The significance of the spiral as a form of the Great Mother inevitably led to its identification with the thunder weapon, like all her other surrogates. I have already referred (Chapter II, p. 98) to the association of the spiral with thunder and lightning in Eastern Asia. But other factors played a significant part in determining this specialization. In Egypt the god Amen was identified with the ram; and this creature's spirally curved horn became the symbol of the thunder-god throughout the Mediterranean area,[330] and then further afield in Europe, Africa, and Asia, where, for instance, we see Agni's ram with the characteristic horn. This blending of the influence of the octopus- and the ram's-horn-motifs made the spiral a conventional representation of thunder. This is displayed in its most definite form in China, Japan, Indonesia, and America, where we find the separate spiral used as a thunder-symbol, and the spiral appendage on the side of the head as a token of the god of thunder.[331]
[316: Thomas Wilson ("The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and its Migrations; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times," Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1894, Washington, 1896) has given a full and well-illustrated summary of most of the literature: further information is provided by Count d'Alviella (op. cit. supra), "The Migration of Symbols"; by Zelia Nuttall ("The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations," Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass., 1901); and Arthur Bernard Cook ("Zeus, A Study in Ancient Religion," Vol. I, Cambridge, 1914, pp. 472 et seq.).]
[317: Since this has been printed Mr. W. J. Perry has called my attention to a short article by Rene Croste ("Le Svastika," Bull. Trimestriel de la Societe Bayonnaise d'Etudes Regionales, 1918), in which Houssay's hypothesis is mentioned as having been adopted by Guilleminot ("Les Nouveaux Horizons de la Science").]
[318: Wilson (op. cit., pp. 829-33 and Figs. 125, 128, and 129) has collected the relevant passages and illustrations from Schliemann's writings.]
[319: Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, Bd. 37, p. 148.]
[320: Seler, Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, Bd., 41, p. 409.]
[321: Corolla Numismatica, 1906, p. 342.]
[322: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," pp. 198 et seq.]
[323: "Etude Historique et Chronologique sur les Vases Peints de l'Acropole de Suse," Memoires de la Delegation en Perse, T. XIII, Rech. Archeol., 5^e serie, 1912, Plate XLI, Fig. 3.]
[324: "Canaan," p. 340, footnote.]
[325: Alice Grenfell, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. II, 1915, p. 217: and Ancient Egypt, 1916, Part I, p. 23.]
[326: S. Reinach, Revue Archeol., T. XXVI, 1895, p. 369.]
[327: L. Siret, "Questions de Chronologie et d'Ethnographie Iberiques," 1913, p. 18, Fig. 3.]
[328: Rivers, "History of Melanesian Society," Vol. II, p. 374; also Report Brit. Association, 1912, p. 599.]
[329: M. Siret assigns the date of the appearance in Spain of the highly conventionalized angular form of octopus to the time between the fifteenth and the twelfth centuries B.C.; and he attributes it to Phoenician influence (p. 63).]
[330: Cook, "Zeus," p. 346 et seq.]
[331: This is well shown upon the Copan representations (Fig. 19) of the elephant-headed god—see Nature, November, 25, 1915, p. 340.]
The Mother Pot.
In the lecture on "Incense and Libations" (Chapter I) I referred to the enrichment of the conception of water's life-giving properties which the inclusion of the idea of human fertilization by water involved. When this event happened a new view developed in explanation of the part played by woman in reproduction. She was no longer regarded as the real parent of mankind, but as the matrix in which the seed was planted and nurtured during the course of its growth and development. Hence in the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic writing the picture of a pot of water was taken as the symbol of womanhood, the "vessel" which received the seed. A globular water-pot, the common phonetic value of which is Nw or Nu, was the symbol of the cosmic waters, the god Nw (Nu), whose female counterpart was the goddess Nut.
In his report, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs,"[332] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith discusses the bowl of water (a) and says that it stands for the female principle in the words for vulva and woman. When it is recalled that the cowry (and other shells) had the same double significance, the possibility suggests itself whether at times confusion may not have arisen between the not very dissimilar hieroglyphic signs for "a shell" (h) and "the bowl of water" (woman) (f).[333]
[Illustration: Fig. 6.
(a) Picture of a bowl of water—the hieroglyphic sign equivalent to hm (the word hmt means "woman")—Griffith, "Beni Hasan," Part III, Plate VI, Fig. 88 and p. 29.
(b) "A basket of sycamore figs"—Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians," Vol. I, p. 323.
(c) and (d) are said by Wilkinson to be hieroglyphic signs meaning "wife" and are apparently taken from (b). But (c) is identical with (i), which, according to Griffith (p. 14), represents a bivalve shell (g, from Plate III, Fig. 3), more usually placed obliquely (h). The varying conventionalizations of (a) or (b) are shown in (d), (e), and (f) (Griffith, "Hieroglyphics," p. 34).
(k) The sign for a lotus leaf, which is a phonetic equivalent of the sign (h), and, according to Griffith ("Hieroglyphics," p. 26), "is probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like outline".
(l) The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water in such words as Nu and Nut.
(m) A "pomegranate" (replacing a bust of Tanit) upon a sacred column at Carthage (Arthur J. Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 46).
(n) The form of the body of an octopus as conventionalized on the coins of Central Greece (compare Fig. 24 (d)). Its similarity to the Egyptian pot-sign (l) (which also has the significance of mother-goddess) is worthy of note.]
Referring to the sign (g and h) for "a shell," Mr. Griffith says (p. 25): "It is regularly found at all periods in the word haw.t = altar,[334] and perhaps only in this word: but it is a peculiarity of the Pyramid Texts that the sign shown in the text-figures c, h, and i is in them used very commonly, not as a word-sign, but also as a phonetic equivalent to the sign labelled k (in the text-figure) for h' (kha), or apparently for h alone in many words.
"The name of the lotus leaf is probably derived from the same root, on account of its shell-like outline or vice versa."
The familiar representation of Horus (and his homologues in India and elsewhere) being born from the lotus suggests that the flower represents his mother Hathor. But as the argument in these pages has led us towards the inference that the original form of Hathor was a shell-amulet,[335] it seems not unlikely that her identification with the lotus may have arisen from the confusion between the latter and the cowry, which no doubt was also in part due to the belief that both the shell and the plant were expressions of the vital powers of the water in which they developed.
The identification of the Great Mother with a pot was one of the factors that played a part in the assimilation of her attributes with those of the Water God, who in early Sumerian pictures was usually represented pouring the life-giving waters from his pot (Fig. 24, h and l).
[Illustration:
Fig. 24.
(a) and (b) Two Mycenaean pots (after Schliemann).
(a) The so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).
(b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon her head and another in her hands—a three-fold representation of the Great Mother as a pot.
(c) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form.
(d), (e), (f), (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f).
(i) Sepia officinalis (after Tryon).
(k) and (l) The so-called "spouting vases" in the hands of the Babylonian god Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of Tello, after Ward ("Seal Cylinders, etc.," p. 215).
The "spouting vases" have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia to suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of the latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and cephalopods in Western Asia and the Mediterranean.]
This idea of the Mother Pot is found not only in Babylonia, Egypt, India,[336] and the Eastern Mediterranean, but wherever the influence of these ancient civilizations made itself felt. It is widespread among the Celtic-speaking peoples. In Wales the pot's life-giving powers are enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea spread, its meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's cauldron, the magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me, is closely associated with cows, serpents, frogs, dragons, birds, pearls, and "nine maidens that blow the fire under the cauldron"; and, if the nature of these relationships be examined, each of them will be found to be a link between the pot and the Great Mother.
The witch's cauldron and the maidens who assist in the preparation of the witch's medicine seem to be the descendants respectively of Hathor's pots (in the story of the Destruction of Mankind) and the Sekti who churn up the didi and the barley with which to make the elixir of immortality and the sedative draught for the destructive goddess herself.
Mr. Donald Mackenzie has given me a number of additional references from Celtic and Indian literature in corroboration of these widespread associations of the pot with the Great Mother; and he reminds me that in Oceania the coco-nut has the same reputation as the pot in the Indian Mahabharata. It is the source of food and anything else that is wanted, and its supply can never be exhausted. [On some future occasion I hope to make use of the wonderful legends of the pot's life-giving powers, to which Mr. Mackenzie has directed my attention. At present, however, I must content myself with the statement that the pot's identity with the Great Mother is deeply rooted in ancient belief throughout the greater part of the world.[337]]
The diverse conceptions of the Great Mother as a pot and as an octopus seem to have been blended in Mycenaean lands, where the so-called "owl-shaped" pots were clearly intended to represent the goddess in both these aspects united in one symbol. When the diffusion of these ideas into more remote parts of the world took place syntheses with other motives produced a great variety of most complex forms. In Honduras pottery vessels have been found[338] which give tangible expression to the blending of the ideas of the Mother Pot, the crocodile-like Makara, star-spangled like Hathor's cow, Aphrodite's pig, and Soma's deer, and provided with the deer's antlers of the Eastern Asiatic dragon (see Chapter II, p. 103).
The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and rebirth. When Nicodemus asks: "How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" he is told: "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh: and that which is born of the spirit is spirit" (John iii. 4, 5, and 6).
The phrase "born of water" refers to the birth "of the flesh"; and the mother's womb is the vessel containing "the water" from which the new life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of Isis: "[Greek: tetarte de ten Isin en panygrois genesthai]". The great waters which produced all living things, the Egyptian god Nun and the goddess Nut, were expressed in hieroglyphic as pots of water. The goddess was identified with Hathor's celestial star-spangled cow, the original mother of the sun-god; and the word "Nun" was a symbol of all that was new, young, and fresh, and the fertilizing and life-giving waters of the annual inundation of the Nile. Hathor was the daughter of these waters, as Aphrodite was sprung from the sea-foam.
[332: Archaeol. Survey of Egypt, 1898, p. 3.]
[333: Compare the two-fold meaning of the Latin testa as "shell" and "bowl".]
[334: Compare the association of shells with altars in Minoan Crete and the widespread use of large shells as bowls for "holy water" in Christian churches.]
[335: Miss Winifred M. Crompton, Assistant Keeper of the Egyptian Department of the Manchester Museum, has called my attention to a remarkable piece of evidence which affords additional corroboration of the view that Hathor was a development of the cowry-amulet. Upon the famous archaic palette of Narmer (Fig. 18), a sporran, composed of four representations of Hathor's head, takes the place of the original cowries that were suspended from more primitive girdles.
The cowries of the head ornament of primitive peoples of Africa and Asia (and of the Mediterranean area in early times—Schliemann's "Ilios," Fig. 685) are often replaced in Egypt by lotus flowers (W. D. Spanton, "Water Lilies of Egypt," Ancient Egypt, 1917, Part I, Figs. 19, 20, and 21). Upon the head-band of the statue of Nefert, which I have reproduced in Chapter I (Fig. 4), a conventional lotus design is found (see Spanton's Fig. 19), which is almost identical with the classical thunder-weapon.]
[336: Among the Dravidian people at the present day the seven goddesses (corresponding to the seven Hathors) are often represented by seven pots.]
[337: The luxuriant crop of stories of the Holy Grail was not inspired originally by mere literary invention. A tradition sprung from the fountain-head of all mythology, the parent-story of the Destruction of Mankind, provided the materials which a series of writers elaborated into the varied assortment of legends of the Mother Pot. The true meaning of the Quest of the Holy Grail can be understood only by reading the fabled accounts of it in the light of the ancient search for the elixir of life and the historical development of the narrative describing that search.
A concise summary of the Grail literature will be found in Jessie L. Weston's "The Quest of the Holy Grail" (1913). Her theory will be found, after some slight modifications, to fall into line with the general argument of this book.
Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the verb "coire cum" gives frank expression to the real meaning of the symbolism of the pot as the matrix which receives the seed. The same idea provides the material for the incident of the birth of Drona (the pot-born) in the Adi Parva (Sections CXXXI, CXXXIX, and CLXVIII, in Roy's translation) of the Mahabharata, to which Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie has kindly called my attention. Drona was conceived in a pot from the seed of a Rishi. A widespread variant of the same story is the conception of a child from a drop of blood in a pot (see, for example, Hartland, "Legend of Perseus," Vol. I, pp. 98 and 144). If the pot can thus create a human being, it is easy to understand how it acquired its reputation of being also able to multiply food and provide an inexhaustible supply. Similarly, all substances, such as barley, rice, gold, pearls, and jade, to which the possession of a special vital essence or "soul substance" was attributed, were believed to be able to reproduce themselves and so increase in quantity of their own activities. As "givers of life" they were also able to add to their own life-substance, in other words to grow like any other living being.]
[338: "An American Dragon," Man, November, 1918.]
Artemis and the Guardian of the Portal.
Sir Gardner Wilkinson states (see text-figure, p. 179, b) that "a basket of sycamore figs" was originally the hieroglyphic sign for a woman, a goddess, or a mother. Later on (p. 199) I shall refer to the possible bearing of this Egyptian idea upon the origin of the Hebrew word for mandrakes and the allusion to "a basket of figs" in the Book of Jeremiah.
The life-giving powers attributed to "love-apples" and the association of these ideas with the fig-tree may have facilitated the transference of these attributes of "apples" to those actually growing upon a tree.
We know that Aphrodite was intimately associated, not only with "love-apples," but also with real apples. The sun-god Apollo's connexion with the apple-tree, which Dr. Rendel Harris, with great daring, wants to convert into an identity of name, was probably only one of the results of that long series of confusions between the Great Mother (Hathor) and the Sun-god (Horus), to which I have referred in my discussion of the dragon-story.
But when Apollo's form emerges more clearly he is associated not with Aphrodite but with Artemis, whom Dr. Rendel Harris has shown to be identified with the mugwort, Artemisia. The association of the goddess with this plant is probably related to the identification of Sekhet with the marsh-plants of the Egyptian Delta and of Hathor and Isis with the lotus and other water plants. Any doubt as to the reality of these associations and Egyptian connexions is banished by the evidence of Artemis's male counterpart Apollo Hyakinthos and his relations to the sacred lily and other water plants.[339] Artemis was a gynaecological specialist: for she assisted women not only in childbirth and the expulsion of the placenta, but also in cases of amenorrhoea and affections of the uterus. She was regarded as the goddess of the portal, not merely of birth,[340] but also of gold and treasure, of which she possessed the key, and of the year (January).
This brings us back to the guardianship of gold and treasures which plays so vital a part in the evolution of the Mediterranean goddesses. For, like the story of the dog and the mandrake, it emphasizes the conchological ancestry of these deities and their connexion with the guardians of the subterranean palaces where pearls are found. But Artemis was not only the opener of the treasure-houses, but she also possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone: she could transmute base substances into gold,[341] for was she not the offspring of the Golden Hathor? To open the portal either of birth or wealth she used her magic wand or key. As Nub, the lady of gold, the Great Mother could not only change other substances into gold, but she was also the guardian of the treasure house of gold, pearls, and precious stones. Hence she could grant riches. Elsewhere in this chapter (p. 221) I shall explain how the goddess came to be identified with gold.
Just as Hathor, the Eye of Re, descended to provide the elixir of youth for the king who was the sun-god, so Artemis is described as travelling through the air in a car drawn by two serpents[342] seeking the most pious of kings in order that she might establish her cult with him and bless him with renewed youth.[343]
Artemis was a moon-goddess closely related to Britomartis and Diktynna, the Cretan prototype of Aphrodite. These goddesses afforded help to women in childbirth and were regarded as guardians of the portal. The goddess of streams and marshes was identified with the mugwort (Artemisia), which was hung above the door in the place occupied at other times by the winged disk, the thunder-stone, or a crocodile (dragon). As the guardian of portals Artemis's magic plant could open locks and doors. As the giver of life she could also withhold the vital essence and so cause disease or death; but she possessed the means of curing the ills she inflicted. Artemis, in fact, like all the other goddesses, was a witch.
In former lectures[344] I have often discussed the remarkable feature of Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the symbolic gateways of China and Japan.
[Illustration: Fig. 25.
(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I.
(b) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109).
(c) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).
(d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670).
(e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig. 663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains: alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle.
(f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig. 9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe, into which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was the prototype of the Winged Disk has been added.
(g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenae (after Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10).
(h) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in g.
(i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate" (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the Goddess of the Portal.
(k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the form suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, c).
(l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 695).
(m) Assyrian Tree of Life and "Winged Disk" in which the god is riding in a crescent replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695).]
This significance of gates was no doubt suggested by the idea that they represented the means of communication between the living and the dead, and, symbolically, the portal by which the dead acquired a rebirth into a new form of existence. It was presumably for this reason that the winged disk as a symbol of life-giving, was placed above the lintels of these doors, not merely in Egypt, Phoenicia, the Mediterranean Area, and Western Asia, but also in America,[345] and in modified forms in India, Indonesia, Melanesia, Cambodia, China, and Japan.
The discussion (Chapter II) of the means by which the winged disk came to acquire the power of life-giving, "the healing in its wings," will have made it clear that the sun became accredited with these virtues only when it assumed the place of the other "Eye of Re," the Great Mother. In fact, it was a not uncommon practice in Egypt to represent the eyes of Re or of Horus himself in place of the more usual winged disk. In the AEgean area the original practice of representing the Great Mother was retained long after it was superseded in Egypt by the use of the winged disk (the sun-god).
Over the lintel of the famous "Lion Gate" at Mycenae, instead of the winged disk, we find a vertical pillar to represent the Mother Goddess, flanked by two lions which are nothing more than other representatives of herself (Fig. 26).
(b) The mountains of the horizon supporting a cow's head as a surrogate of Hathor, from a stele found at Teima in Northern Arabia, now in the Louvre (after Sir Arthur Evans, op. cit., p. 39). This indicates the identity of what Evans calls "the horns of consecration" and the "mountains of the horizon," and also suggests how confusion may have arisen between the mountains and the cow's horns.
(c) The Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash rising between the Eastern Mountains, the Gates of Dawn (Ward, op. cit., p. 373).
(d) The familiar Egyptian representation of the sun rising between the Eastern Mountains (the splitting of the mountain giving birth to "the ridiculous mouse"—Smintheus). The ankh (life-sign) below the sun is the determinative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is heraldically supported by the Great Mother's lionesses.
(e) Part of the design from a Mycenaean vase from Old Salamis (after Evans, p. 9). The cow's head and the Eastern Mountains are shown alongside one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe representing the god.
(f) Part of the design from a lentoid gem from the Idaean Cave, now in the Candia Museum (after Evans, Fig. 25). If this design be compared with the Egyptian picture (a), it will be seen that Hathor's place is taken by the tree-form of the Great Mother, and the trees which in the former (a) are growing upon the Eastern Mountains are now placed alongside the "horns". In the complete design (vide Evans, op. cit., p. 44) a votary is represented blowing a conch-shell trumpet to animate the deity in the sacred tree.
(g) The Eastern Mountains supporting the pillar-form of the goddess (after Evans, Fig. 66).
(h) Another Mycenaean design comparable with (e).
(i) Design from a signet-ring from Mycenae (after Evans, Fig. 34). If this be compared with the Egyptian picture (a) it will be noted that the Great Mother is now replaced by a tree: the Eastern Mountains by bulls, from whose backs the trees of the Eastern Mountains are sprouting. This design affords interesting corroboration of the suggestion that the Eastern Mountains may be confused with the cow's head (see b and c) or with the cow itself. Newberry (Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, Liverpool, Vol. I, p. 28) has called attention to the intimate association (in Protodynastic Egypt) of the Eastern Mountains, the Bull and the Double Axe—a certain token of cultural contact with Crete.
(k) The famous sculpture above the Lion Gate at Mycenae. The pillar form of the Great Mother heraldically supported by her lioness-avatars, which correspond to the cattle of the design (i) and the Eastern Mountains of (a). The use of this design above the lintel of the gate brings it into homology with the Winged Disk. The Pillar represents the Goddess, as the Disk represents her Egyptian locum tenens, Horus; her destructive representatives (the lionesses) correspond to the two uraei of the Winged Disk design.]
In his "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," Sir Arthur Evans has shown that all possible transitional forms can be found (in Crete and the AEgean area) between the representation of the actual goddess and her pillar-and tree-manifestations, until the stage is reached where the sun itself appears above the pillar between the lions.[346] In the large series of seals from Mesopotamia and Western Asia which have been described in Mr. William Hayes Ward's monograph,[347] we find manifold links between both the Egyptian and the Minoan cults.
The tree-form of the Great Mother there becomes transformed into the "tree of life" and the winged disk is perched upon its summit. Thus we have a duplication of the life-giving deities. The "tree of life" of the Great Mother surmounted by the winged disk which is really her surrogate or that of the sun-god, who took over from her the power of life-giving (Figs. 25 and 26).
In an interesting Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada[348] the life-giving power is tripled. There is not only the tree representing the Great Mother herself; but also the double axe (the winged-disk homologue of the sun-god); and the more direct representation of him as a bird perched upon the axe (Fig. 25, f).
The identification of the Great Mother with the tree or pillar seems also to have led to her confusion with the pestle with which the materials for her draught of immortality was pounded. She was also the bowl or mortar in which the pestle worked.[349]
As the Great Mother became confused with the pestle, so, "the Soma-plant, whose stalks are crushed by the priests to make the Soma-libation, becomes in the Vedas itself the Crusher or Smiter, by a very characteristic and frequent Oriental conceit in accordance with which the agent and the person or thing acted on are identified".[350]
"The pressing-stones by means of which Soma is crushed typify thunderbolts." "In the Rig-Veda, we read of him [Soma] as jyotihrathah, i.e. 'mounted on a car of light' (IX, 5, 86, verse 43); or again: 'Like a hero he holds weapons in his hand ... mounted on a chariot' (IX, 4, 76, verse 2)"—(p. 171).
"Soma was the giver of power, of riches and treasures, flocks and herds, but above all, the giver of immortality" (p. 140).
Sir Arthur Evans is of opinion "that in the case of the Cypriote cylinders the attendant monsters and, to a certain extent, the symbolic column itself, are taken from an Egyptian solar cycle, and the inference has been drawn that the aniconic pillars among the Mycenaeans of Cyprus were identified with divinities having some points in common with the sun-gods Ra, or Horus, and Hathor, the Great Mother" (op. cit., pp. 63 and 64).
In attempting to find some explanation of how the tree or pillar of the goddess came to be replaced in the Indian legend by Mount Meru, the possibility suggests itself whether the aniconic form of the Great Mother placed between two relatively diminutive hills may not have helped, by confusion, to convert the cone itself into a yet bigger hill, which was identified with Mount Meru, the summit of which in other legends produced the amrita of the gods, either in the form of the soma plant that grew upon its heights, or the rain clouds which collected there. But, as the subsequent argument will make clear, the real reason for the identification of the Great Mother with a mountain was the belief that the sun was born from the splitting of the eastern mountain, which thus assumed the function of the sun-god's mother. Possibly the association of the tops of mountains with cloud- and rain-phenomena and the gods that controlled them played some part in the development of the symbolism of mountains. [When I referred (in Chapter II, p. 98) to the fact that what Sir Arthur Evans calls "the horns of consecration" was primarily the split mountain of the dawn, I was not aware that Professor Newberry ("Two Cults of the Old Kingdom," Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, Liverpool, Vol. I, 1908, p. 28) had already suggested this identification.]
In the Egyptian story the god Re instructed the Sekti of Heliopolis to pound the materials for the food of immortality. In the Indian version, the gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover some elixir which would make them immortal. To this end, Mount Meru [the Great Mother] was cast into the sea [of milk]. Vishnu, in his second avatar as a tortoise[351] supported the mountain on his back; and the Naga serpent Vasuki was then twisted around the mountain, the gods seizing its head and the demons his tail twirled the mountain until they had churned the amrita or water of life. Wilfrid Jackson has called attention to the fact that this scene has been depicted, not only in India and Japan, but also in the Precolumbian Codex Cortes drawn by some Maya artist in Central America.[352]
The horizon is the birthplace of the gods; and the birth of the deity is depicted with literal crudity as an emergence from the portal between its two mountains. The mountain splits to give birth to the sun-god, just as in the later fable the parturient mountain produced the "ridiculous mouse" (Apollo Smintheus). The Great Mother is described as giving birth—"the gates of the firmament are undone for Teti himself at break of day" [that is when the sun-god is born on the horizon]. "He comes forth from the Field of Earu" (Egyptian Pyramid Texts—Breasted's translation).
In the domain of Olympian obstetrics the analogy between birth and the emergence from the door of a house or the gateway of a temple is a common theme of veiled reference. Artemis, for instance, is a goddess of the portal, and is not only a helper in childbirth, but also grows in her garden a magical herb which is capable of opening locks. This reputation, however, was acquired not merely by reason of her skill in midwifery, but also as an outcome of the legend[353] of the treasure-house of pearls which was under the guardianship of the great "giver of life" and of which she kept the magic key. She was in fact the feminine form of Janus, the doorkeeper who presided over all beginnings, whether of birth, or of any kind of enterprise or new venture, or the commencement of the year (like Hathor). Janus was the guardian of the door of Olympus itself, the gate of rebirth into the immortality of the gods.
The ideas underlying these conceptions found expression in an endless variety of forms, material, intellectual, and moral, wherever the influence of civilization made itself felt. I shall refer only to one group of these expressions that is directly relevant to the subject-matter of this book. I mean the custom of suspending or representing the life-giving symbol above the portal of temples and houses. Thus the plant peculiar to Artemis herself, the mugwort or Artemisia, was hung above the door,[354] just as the winged disk was sculptured upon the lintel, or the thunder-stone was placed above the door of the cowhouse[355] to afford the protection of the Great Mother's powers of life-giving to her own cattle.
In the Pyramid Texts the rebirth of a dead pharaoh is described with vivid realism and directness. "The waters of life which are in the sky come. The waters of life which are in the earth come. The sky burns for thee, the earth trembles for thee, before the birth of the god. The two hills are divided, the god comes into being, the god takes possession of his body. The two hills are divided, this Neferkere comes into being, this Neferkere takes possession of his body. Behold this Neferkere—his feet are kissed by the pure waters which are from Atum, which the phallus of Shu made, which the vulva of Tefnut brought into being. They have come, they have brought for thee the pure waters from their father."[356]
The Egyptians entertained the belief[357] that the sun-god was born of the celestial cow Mehetweret, a name which means "Great Flood," and is the equivalent of the primeval ocean Nun. In other words the celestial cow Hathor, the embodiment of the life-giving waters of heaven and earth, is the mother of Horus. So also Aphrodite was born of the "Great Flood" which is the ocean.
In his report upon the hieroglyphs of Beni Hasan,[358] Mr. Griffith refers to the picture of "a woman of the marshes," which is read sekht, and is "used to denote the goddess Sekhet, the goddess of the marshes, who presided over the occupations of the dwellers there. Chief among these occupations must have been the capture of fish and fowl and the culture and gathering of water-plants, especially the papyrus and the lotus". Sekhet was in fact a rude prototype of Artemis in the character depicted by Dr. Rendel Harris.[359]
It is perhaps not without significance that the root of a marsh plant, the Iris pseudacorus[360] is regarded in Germany as a luck-bringer which can take the place of the mandrake.[361]
The Great Mother wields a magic wand which the ancient Egyptian scribes called the "Great Magician". It was endowed with the two-fold powers of life-giving and opening, which from the beginning were intimately associated the one with the other from the analogy of the act of birth, which was both an opening and a giving of life. Hence the "magic wand" was a key or "opener of the ways," wherewith, at the ceremonies of resurrection, the mouth was opened for speech and the taking of food, as well as for the passage of the breath of life, the eyes were opened for sight, and the ears for hearing. Both the physical act of opening (the "key" aspect) as well as the vital aspect of life-giving (which we may call the "uterine" aspect) were implied in this symbolism. Mr. Griffith suggests that the form of the magic wand may have been derived from that of a conventionalized picture of the uterus,[362] in its aspect as a giver of life. But it is possible also that its other significance as an "opener of the ways" may have helped in the confusion of the hieroglyphic uterus-symbol with the key-symbol, and possibly also with double-axe symbol which the vaguely defined early Cretan Mother-Goddess wielded. For, as we have already seen (supra, p. 122), the axe also was a life-giving divinity and a magic wand (Fig. 8).
In his chapter on "the Origin of the Cult of Artemis," Dr. Rendel Harris refers to the reputation of Artemis as the patron of travellers, and to Parkinson's statement: "It is said of Pliny that if a traveller binde some of the hearbe [Artemisia] with him, he shall feele no weariness at all in his journey" (p. 72). Hence the high Dutch name Beifuss is applied to it.
The left foot of the dead was called "the staff of Hathor" by the Egyptians; and the goddess was said "to make the deceased's legs to walk".[363]
It was a common practice to tie flowers to a mummy's feet, as I discovered in unwrapping the royal mummies. According to Moret (op. cit.) the flowers of Upper and Lower Egypt were tied under the king's feet at the celebration of the Sed festival.
Mr. Battiscombe Gunn (quoted by Dr. Alan Gardiner) states that the familiar symbol of life known as the ankh represents the string of a sandal.[364]
It seems to be worth considering whether the symbolism of the sandal-string may not have been derived from the life-girdle, which in ancient Indian medical treatises was linked in name with the female organs of reproduction and the pubic bones. According to Moret (op. cit., p. 91) a girdle furnished with a tail was used as a sign of consecration or attainment of the divine life after death. Jung (op. cit., p. 270), who, however, tries to find a phallic meaning in all symbolism, claims that reference to the foot has such a significance.
[339: Evans, op. cit., p. 50.]
[340: Her Latin representative, Diana, had a male counterpart and conjugate, Dianus, i.e. Janus, of whom it was said: "Ipse primum Janus cum puerperium concipitur ... aditum aperit recipiendo semini". For other quotations see Rendel Harris, op. cit., p. 88 and the article "Janus" in Roscher's "Lexikon".]
[341: Rendel Harris, p. 73.]
[342: No doubt the two uraei of the Saga of the Winged Disk.]
[343: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 244.]
[344: Journal of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society, 1916.]
[345: "The Influence of Egyptian Civilization in the East and in America," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1916.]
[346: Evans's, Fig. 41, p. 63.]
[347: "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," 1910.]
[348: Paribeni, "Monumenti antichi dell'accademia dei Lincei," XIX, punt. 1, pll. 1-3; and V. Duhn, "Arch. f. Religionswissensch.," XII, p. 161, pll. 2-4; quoted by Blinkenberg, "The Thunder Weapon," pp. 20 and 21, Fig. 9.]
[349: Without just reason, many writers have assumed that the pestle, which was identified with the handle used in the churning of the ocean (see de Gubernatis, "Zoological Mythology," Vol II, p. 361), was a phallic emblem. This meaning may have been given to the handle of the churn at a later period, when the churn itself was regarded as the Mother Pot or uterus; but we are not justified in assuming that this was its primary significance.]
[350: Gladys M. N. Davis, "The Asiatic Dionysos," p. 172.]
[351: The tortoise was the vehicle of Aphrodite also and her representatives in Central America.]
[352: Jackson, "Shells, etc.," pp. 57 et seq.]
[353: Vide supra, p. 158.]
[354: Rendel Harris, "The Ascent of Olympus," p. 80. In the building up of the idea of rebirth the ancients kept constantly before their minds a very concrete picture of the actual process of parturition and of the anatomy of the organs concerned in this physiological process. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of the anatomical facts represented in the symbolism of the "giver of life" presiding over the portal and the "two hills" which are divided at the birth of the deity: but the real significance of the primitive imagery cannot be wholly ignored if we want to understand the meaning of the phraseology used by the ancient writers.]
[355: Blinkenberg, "The Thunder-weapon," p. 72.]
[356: Aylward M. Blackman, "Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt," Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, March, 1918, p. 64.]
[357: Op. cit., p. 60.]
[358: "Archaeol. Survey of Egypt," 5th Memoir, 1896, p. 31.]
[359: See especially op. cit., p. 35, the goddess of streams and marshes, who was also herself "the mother plant," like the mother of Horus.]
[360: Whose cultural associations with the Great Mother in the Eastern Mediterranean littoral has been discussed by Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 49 et seq. Compare also Apollo hyakinthos as further evidence of the link with Artemis.]
[361: P. J. Veth, "Internat. Arch. f. Ethnol.," Bd. 7, pp. 203 and 204.]
[362: "Hieroglyphics," p. 60.]
[363: Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, pp. 436 and 437.]
[364: Alan Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.]
The Mandrake.
We have now given reasons for believing that the personification of the mandrake was in some way brought about by the transference to the plant of the magical virtues that originally belonged to the cowry shell.
The problem that still awaits solution is the nature of the process by which the transference was effected.
When I began this investigation the story of the Destruction of Mankind (see Chapter II) seemed to offer an explanation of the confusion. Brugsch, Naville, Maspero, Erman, and in fact most Egyptologists, seemed to be agreed that the magical substance from which the Egyptian elixir of life was made was the mandrake. As there was no hint[365] in the Egyptian story of the derivation of its reputation from the fancied likeness to the human form, its identification with Hathor seemed to be merely another instance of those confusions with which the pathway of mythology is so thickly strewn. In other words, the plant seemed to have been used merely to soothe the excited goddess: then the other properties of "the food of the gods," of which it was an ingredient, became transferred to the mandrake, so that it acquired the reputation of being a "giver of life" as well as a sedative. If this had been true it would have been a simple process to identify this "giver of life" with the goddess herself in her role as the "giver of life," and her cowry-ancestor which was credited with the same reputation.
But this hypothesis is no longer tenable, because the word d'd' (variously transliterated doudou or didi), which Brugsch[366] and his followers interpreted as "mandragora," is now believed to have another meaning.
In a closely reasoned memoir, Henri Gauthier[367] has completely demolished Brugsch's interpretation of this word. He says there are numerous instances of the use of d'd' (which he transliterates doudouiou) in the medical papyri. In the Ebers papyrus "doudou d'Elephantine broye" is prescribed as a remedy for external application in diseases of the heart, and as an astringent and emollient dressing for ulcers. He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the interior of Africa and the coasts of Arabia.
Mr. F. Ll. Griffith informs me that Gauthier's criticism of the translation "mandrakes" is undoubtedly just: but that the substance referred to was most probably "red ochre" or "haematite".[368]
The relevant passage in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind (in Seti I's tomb) will then read as follows: "When they had brought the red ochre, the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded it, and the priestesses mixed the pulverized substance with the beer, so that the mixture resembled human blood".
I would call special attention to Gauthier's comment that the blood-coloured beer "had some magical and marvellous property which is unknown to us".[369]
In his dictionary Brugsch considered the determinative [Symbol: circle over three vertical lines] to refer to the fruits of a tree which he called "apple tree," on the supposed analogy with the Coptic [jiji (janja iota janja iota)], fructus autumnalis, pomus, the Greek [Greek: opora]; and he proposed to identify the supposed fruit, then transliterated doudou, with the Hebrew doudaim, and translate it poma amatoria, mandragora, or in German, Alraune. This interpretation was adopted by most scholars until Gauthier raised objections to it.
As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley.[370]
But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew duda'im by [Greek: mandragoras] and the Copts did not use the word [Coptic: jiji] in their translations, but either the Greek word or a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff has shown (Zeitsch. f. AEgypt. Sprache, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that the word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated "didi" instead of "doudou".
Finally, in a letter Mr. Griffith tells me the identification of didi with the Coptic [Coptic: jiji], "apple (?)" is philologically impossible.
Although this red colouring matter is thus definitely proved not to be the fruit of a plant, there are reasons to suggest that when the story of the Destruction of Mankind spread abroad—and the whole argument of this book establishes the fact that it did spread abroad—the substance didi was actually confused in the Levant with the mandrake. We have already seen that in the Delta a prototype of Artemis was already identified with certain plants.
In all probability didi was originally brought into the Egyptian legend merely as a surrogate of the life-blood, and the mixture of which it was an ingredient was simply a restorer of youth to the king. But the determinative (in the tomb of Seti I)—a little yellow disc with a red border, which misled Naville into believing the substance to be yellow berries—may also have created confusion in the minds of ancient Levantine visitors to Egypt, and led them to believe that reference was being made to their own yellow-berried drug, the mandrake. Such an incident might have had a two-fold effect. It would explain the introduction into the Egyptian story of the sedative effects of didi, which would easily be rationalized as a means of soothing the maniacal goddess; and in the Levant it would have added to the real properties of mandrake[371] the magical virtues which originally belonged to didi (and blood, the cowry, and water).
In my lecture on "Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II) I explained that the Egyptian story of the Destruction of Mankind is merely one version of a saga of almost world-wide currency. In many of the non-Egyptian versions[372] the role of didi in the Egyptian story is taken by some vegetable product of a red colour; and many of these versions reveal a definite confusion between the red fruit and the red clay, thus proving that the confusion of didi with the mandrake is no mere hypothetical device to evade a difficulty on my part, but did actually occur.
In the course of the development of the Egyptian story the red clay from Elephantine became the colouring matter of the Nile flood, and this in turn was rationalized as the blood or red clay into which the bodies of the slaughtered enemies of Re were transformed,[373] and the material out of which the new race of mankind was created.[374] In other words, the new race was formed of didi. There is a widespread legend that the mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies[375] often represented as innocent or chaste men wrongly killed, just as the red clay was the substance of mankind killed to appease Re's wrath, "the blood of the slaughtered saints".[376]
But the original belief is found in a more definite form in the ancient story that "the mandrake was fashioned out of the same earth whereof God formed Adam".[377] In other words the mandrake was part of the same substance as the earth didi.[378]
Further corroboration of this confusion is afforded by a story from Little Russia, quoted by de Gubernatis.[379] If bryony (a widely recognized surrogate of mandrake) be suspended from the girdle all the dead Cossacks (who, like the enemies of Re in the Egyptian story, had been killed and broken to pieces in the earth) will come to life again. Thus we have positive evidence of the homology of the mandrake with red clay or haematite.
The transference to the mandrake of the properties of the cowry (and the goddesses who were personifications of the shell) and blood (and its surrogates) was facilitated by the manifold homologies of the Great Mother with plants. We have already seen that the goddess was identified with: (a) incense-trees and other trees, such as the sycamore, which played some definite part in the burial ceremonies, either by providing the divine incense, the materials for preserving the body, or for making coffins to ensure the protection of the dead, and so make it possible for them to continue their existence; and (b) the lotus, the lily, the iris, and other marsh plants,[380] for reasons that I have already mentioned (p. 184).
The Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh represents one of the innumerable versions of the great theme which has engaged the attention of writers in every age and country attempting to express the deepest longings of the human spirit. It is the search for the elixir of life. The object of Gilgamesh's search is a magic plant to prolong life and restore youth. The hero of the story went on a voyage by water in order to obtain what appears to have been a marsh plant called dittu.[381] The question naturally arises whether this Babylonian story and the name of the plant played any part in Palestine in blending the Egyptian and Babylonian stories and confusing the Egyptian elixir of life, the red earth didi, with the Babylonian elixir, the plant dittu?
In the Babylonian story a serpent-demon steals the magic plant, just as in India soma, the food of immortality, is stolen. In Egypt Isis steals Re's name,[382] and in Babylonia the Zu bird steals the tablets of destiny, the logos. In Greek legend apples are stolen from the garden of Hesperides. Apples are surrogates of the mandrake and didi.
We have now seen that the mandrake is definitely a surrogate (a) of the cowry and a series of its shell-homologues, and (b) of the red substance in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind.
There still remain to be determined (i) the means by which the mandrake became identified with the goddess, (ii) the significance of the Hebrew word duda-im, and (iii) the origin of the Greek word mandragora.
The answer to the first of these three queries should now be obvious enough. As the result of the confusion of the life-giving magical substance didi with the sedative drug, mandrake, the latter acquired the reputation of being a "giver of life" and became identified with the "giver of life," the Great Mother, the story of whose exploits was responsible for the confusion.
The erroneous identification of didi with the mandrake was originally suggested by Brugsch from the likeness of the word (then transliterated doudou) with the Hebrew word duda-im in Genesis, usually translated "mandrakes". I have already quoted the opinion of Gauthier and Griffith as to the error of such identification. But the evidence now at our disposal seems to me to leave no doubt as to the reality of the confusion of the Egyptian red substance with the mandrake. This naturally suggests the possibility that the similarity of the sounds of the words may have played some part in creating the confusion: but it is impossible to admit this as a factor in the development of the story, because the Hebrew word probably arose out of the identification of the mandrake with the Great Mother and not by any confusion of names. In other words the similarity of the names of these homologous substances is a mere coincidence.
Dr. Rendel Harris claims (and Sir James Frazer seems to approve of the suggestion) that the Hebrew word duda-im was derived from dodim, "love"; and, on the strength of this derivation, he soars into a lofty flight of philological conjecture to transmute dodim, into Aphrodite, "love" into the "goddess of love". It would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to follow these excursions into unknown heights of cloudland.
But my colleagues Professor Canney and Principal Bennett tell me that the derivation of duda-im from dodim is improbable; and the former authority suggests that duda-im may be merely the plural of dud, a "pot".[383] Now I have already explained how a pot came to symbolize a woman or a goddess, not merely in Egypt, but also in Southern India, and in Mycenaean Greece, and, in fact, the Mediterranean generally.[384] Hence the use of the term dud for the mandrake implies either (a) an identification of the plant with the goddess who is the giver of life, or (b) an analogy between the form of the mandrake-fruit and a pot, which in turn led to it being called a pot, and from that being identified with the goddess.[385]
I should explain that when Professor Canney gave me this statement he was not aware of the fact that I had already arrived at the conclusion that the Great Mother was identified with a pot and also with the mandrake; but in ignorance of the meaning of the Hebrew words I had hesitated to equate the pot with the mandrake. As soon as I received his note, and especially when I read his reference to the second meaning, "basket of figs," in Jeremiah, I recalled Mr. Griffith's discussion of the Egyptian hieroglyphic ("a pot of water") for woman, wife, or goddess, and the claim made by Sir Gardner Wilkinson that this manner of representing the word for "wife" was apparently taken from a conventionalized picture of "a basket of sycamore figs".[386] The interpretation has now clearly emerged that the mandrake was called duda'im by the Hebrews because it was identified with the Mother Pot. The symbolism involved in the use of the Hebrew word also suggests that the inspiration may have come from Egypt, where a woman was called "a pot of water" or "a basket of figs".
When the mandrake acquired the definite significance as a symbol of the Great Mother and the power of life-giving, its fruit, "the love apple," became the quintessence of vitality and fertility. The apple and the pomegranate became surrogates of the "love apple," and were graphically represented in forms hardly distinguishable from pots, occupying places which mark them out clearly as homologues of the Great Mother herself.[387]
But once the mandrake was identified with the Great Mother in the Levant the attributes of the plant were naturally acquired from her local reputation there. This explains the pre-eminently conchological aspect of the magical properties of the mandrake and the bryony.
I shall not attempt to refer in detail to the innumerable stories of red and brown apples, of rowan berries, and a variety of other red fruits that play a part in the folk-lore of so many peoples, such as didi played in the Egyptian myth. These fruits can be either elixirs of life and food of the gods, or weapons for overcoming the dragon as Hathor (Sekhet) was conquered by her sedative draught.[388]
In his account of the peony, Pliny ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXVIII, Chap. LX) says it has "a stem two cubits in length, accompanied by two or three others, and of a reddish colour, with a bark like that of the laurel ... the seed is enclosed in capsules, some being red and some black ... it has an astringent taste. The leaves of the female plant smell like myrrh". Bostock and Riley, from whose translation I have made this quotation, add that in reality the plant is destitute of smell. In the Ebers papyrus didi was mixed with incense in one of the prescriptions;[389] and in the Berlin medical papyrus it was one of the ingredients of a fumigation used for treating heart disease. If my contention is justified, it may provide the explanation of how the confusion arose by which the peony came to have attributed to it a "smell like myrrh".
Pliny proceeds: "Both plants [i.e. male and female] grow in the woods, and they should always be taken up at night, it is said; as it would be dangerous to do so in the day-time, the woodpecker of Mars being sure to attack the person so engaged.[390] It is stated also that the person, while taking up the root, runs great risk of being attacked with [prolapsus ani].... Both plants are used[391] for various purposes: the red seed, taken in red wine, about fifteen in number, arrest menstruation; while the black seed, taken in the same proportion, in either raisin or other wine, are curative of diseases of the uterus." I refer to these red-coloured beverages and their therapeutic use in women's complaints to suggest the analogy with that other red drink administered to the Great Mother, Hathor.
In his essay, "Jacob and the Mandrakes,"[392] Sir James Frazer has called attention to the homologies between the attributes of the peony and the mandrake and to the reasons for regarding the former as Aelian's aglaophotis.
Pliny states ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXIV, Chap. CII) that the aglaophotis "is found growing among the marble quarries of Arabia, on the side of Persia," just as the Egyptian didi was obtained near the granite quarries at Aswan. "By means of this plant [aglaophotis], according to Democritus, the Magi can summon the deities into their presence when they please, "just as the users of the conch-shell trumpet believed they could do with this instrument. I have already (p. 196) emphasized the fact that all of these plants, mandrake, bryony, peony, and the rest, were really surrogates of the cowry, the pearl, and the conch-shell. The first is the ultimate source of their influence on womankind, the second the origin of their attribute of aglaophotis, and the third of their supposed power of summoning the deity. The attributes of some of the plants which Pliny discusses along with the peony are suggestive. Pieces of the root of the achaemenis (? perhaps Euphorbia antiquorum or else a night-shade) taken in wine, torment the guilty to such an extent in their dreams as to extort from them a confession of their crimes. He gives it the name also of "hippophobas," it being an especial object of terror to mares. The complementary story is told of the mandrake in mediaeval Europe. The decomposing tissues of the body of an innocent victim on the gallows when they fall upon the earth can become reincarnated in a mandrake—the main de gloire of old French writers.
Then there is the plant adamantis, grown in Armenia and Cappadocia, which when presented to a lion makes the beast fall upon its back, and drop its jaws. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the lion-manifestation of Hathor who was calmed by the substance didi? A more direct link with the story of the destruction of mankind is suggested by the account of the ophiusa, "which is found in Elephantine, an island of Ethiopia". This plant is of a livid colour, and hideous to the sight. Taken by a person in drink, it inspires such a horror of serpents, which his imagination continually represents as menacing him that he commits suicide at last: hence it is that persons guilty of sacrilege are compelled to drink an infusion of it (Pliny, "Nat. Hist.," XXIV, 102). I am inclined to regard this as a variant of the myth of the Destruction of Mankind in which the "snake-plant" from Elephantine takes the place of the uraei of the Winged Disk Saga, and punishes the act of sacrilege by driving the delinquent into a state of delirium tremens.
The next problem to be considered is the derivation of the word mandragora. Dr. Mingana tells me it is a great puzzle to discover any adequate meaning. The attempt to explain it through the Sanskrit mand, "joy," "intoxication," or mantasana, "sleep," "life," or mandra, "pleasure," or mantara, "paradise tree," and agru, "unmarried, violently passionate," is hazardous and possibly far-fetched.
The Persian is mardumgiah, "man-like plant".
The Syro-Arabic word for it is Yabrouh, Aramaic Yahb-kouh, "giver of life". This is possibly the source of the Chinese Yah-puh-lu (Syriac ya-bru-ha) and Yah-puh-lu-Yak. The termination Yak is merely the Turanian termination meaning "diminutive".
The interest of the Levantine terms for the mandrake lies in the fact that they have the same significance as the word for pearl, i.e. "giver of life". This adds another argument (to those which I have already given) for regarding the mandrake as a surrogate of the pearl. But they also reveal the essential fact that led to the identification of the plant with the Mother-Goddess, which I have already discussed.
In Arabic the mandrake is called abou ruhr, "father of life," i.e. "giver of life".[393]
In Arabic margan means "coral" as well as "pearl". In the Mediterranean area coral is explained as a new and marvellous plant sprung from the petrified blood-stained branches on which Perseus hung the bleeding head of Medusa. Eustathius ("Comment. ad Dionys. Perieget." 1097) derives [Greek: koralion] from [Greek: kore], personifying the monstrous virgin: but Chaeroboscos claims that it comes from [Greek: kore] and [Greek: alion], because it is a maritime product used to make ornaments for maidens. In any case coral is a "giver of life" and as such identified with a maiden,[394] as the most potential embodiment of life-giving force. But this specific application of the word for "giver of life" was due to the fact that in all the Semitic languages, as well as in literary references in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, this phrase was understood as a reference to the female organs of reproduction. The same double entendre is implied in the use of the Greek word for "pig" and "cowry," these two surrogates of the Great Mother, each of which can be taken to mean the "giver of life" or the "pudendum muliebre".
Perhaps the most plausible suggestion that has been made as to the derivation of the word "mandragora" is Delatre's claim[395] that it is compounded of the words mandros, "sleep," and agora, "object or substance," and that mandragora means "the sleep-producing substance".
This derivation is in harmony with my suggestion as to the means by which the plant acquired its magical properties. The sedative substance that, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs (of the Story of the Destruction of Mankind), was represented by yellow spheres with a red covering was confused in Western Asia with the yellow-berried plant which was known to have sedative properties. Hence the plant was confused with the mineral and so acquired all the magical properties of the Great Mother's elixir. But the Indian name is descriptive of the actual properties of the plant and is possibly the origin of the Greek word.
Another suggestion that has been made deserves some notice. It has been claimed that the first syllable of the name is derived from the Sanskrit mandara, one of the trees in the Indian paradise, and the instrument with which the churning of the ocean was accomplished.[396] The mandrake has been claimed to be the tree of the Hebrew paradise; and a connexion has thus been instituted between it and the mandara. This hypothesis, however, does not offer any explanation of how either the mandrake or the mandara acquired its magical attributes. The Indian tree of life was supposed to "sweat" amrita just as the incense trees of Arabia produce the divine life-giving incense.
But there are reasons[397] for the belief that the Indian story of the churning of the sea of milk is a much modified version of the old Egyptian story of the pounding of the materials for the elixir of life. The mandara churn-stick, which is often supposed to represent the phallus,[398] was originally the tree of life, the tree or pillar which was animated by the Great Mother herself.[399] So that the mandara is homologous with the mandragora. But so far as I am aware, there is no adequate reason for deriving the latter word from the former.
The derivation from the Sanskrit words mandros and agora seems to fit naturally into the scheme of explanation which I have been formulating.
In the Egyptian story the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded the didi in a mortar to make "the giver of life," which by a simple confusion might be identified with the goddess herself in her capacity as "the giver of life". This seems to have occurred in the Indian legend. Lakshmi, or Sri, was born at the churning of the ocean. Like Aphrodite, who was born from the sea-foam churned from the ocean, Lakshmi was the goddess of beauty, love, and prosperity.
Before leaving the problems of mandrake and the homologous plants and substances, it is important that I should emphasize the role of blood and blood-substitutes, red-stained beer, red wine, red earth, and red berries in the various legends. These life-giving and death-dealing substances were all associated with the colour red, and the destructive demons Sekhet and Set were given red forms, which in turn were transmitted to the dragon, and to that specialized form of the dragon which has become the conventional way of representing Satan.
[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became attached to the plants ginseng and shang-luh—see de Groot, Vol. II, p. 316 et seq.; also Kumagusu Minakata, Nature, Vol. LI, April 25, 1895, p. 608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The fact that the Chinese make use of the Syriac word yabruha (vide supra) suggests the source of these Chinese legends.]
[365: As Maspero has specifically mentioned ("Dawn of Civilization," p. 166).]
[366: "Die Alraune als altaegyptische Zauberpflanze," Zeitsch. f. AEgypt. Sprache, Bd. XXIX, 1891, pp. 31-3.]
[367: "Le nom hieroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Elephantine," Revue Egyptologique, XI^e Vol., Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]
[368: It is quite possible that the use of the name "haematite" for this ancient substitute for blood may itself be the result of the survival of the old tradition.]
[369: It is very important to keep in mind the two distinct properties of didi: (a) its magical life-giving powers, and (b) its sedative influence.]
[370: In Chapter II, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical question.]
[371: For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the British Medical Journal, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.]
[372: Even in Egypt itself didi may be replaced by fruit in the more specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in the Saga of the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: "Thou didst put grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu". Wiedemann ("Religion of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 70) interprets this as meaning: "thou didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it". But by analogy with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation of didi, it should read: "thou didst make the water blood-red with grape-juice"; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two meanings.]
[373: In the Babylonian story of the Deluge "Ishtar cried aloud like a woman in travail, the Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice (saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I assented to an evil thing in the council of the gods, and agreed to a storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth" (King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 134).
The Nile god, Knum, Lord of Elephantine, was reputed to have formed the world of alluvial soil. The coming of the waters from Elephantine brought life to the earth.]
[374: In the Babylonian story, Bel "bade one of the gods cut off his head and mix the earth with the blood that flowed from him, and from the mixture he directed him to fashion men and animals" (King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 56). Bel (Marduk) represents the Egyptian Horus who assumes his mother's role as the Creator. The red earth as a surrogate of blood in the Egyptian story is here replaced by earth and blood.
But Marduk created not only men and animals but heaven and earth also. To do this he split asunder the carcase of the dragon which he had slain, the Great Mother Tiamat, the evil avatar of the Mother-Goddess whose mantle had fallen upon his own shoulders. In other words, he created the world out of the substance of the "giver of life" who was identified with the red earth, which was the elixir of life in the Egyptian story. This is only one more instance of the way in which the same fundamental idea was twisted and distorted in every conceivable manner in the process of rationalization. In one version of the Osirian myth Horus cut off the head of his mother Isis and the moon-god Thoth replaced it with a cow's head, just as in the Indian myth Ganesa's head was replaced by an elephant's.]
[375: See Frazer, op. cit., p. 9.]
[376: Compare with this the story of Picus the giant who fled to Kirke's isle and there was slain by Helios, the plant [Greek: moly] springing from his blood (A. B. Cook, "Zeus," p. 241, footnote 15). For a discussion of moly see Andrew Lang's "Custom and Myth".]
[377: Frazer, p. 6.]
[378: In Socotra a tree (dracaena) has been identified with the dragon, and its exudation, "dragon's blood," was called cinnabar, and confused with the mineral (red sulphide of mercury), or simply with red ochre. In the Socotran dragon-myth the elephant takes the hero's role, as in the American stories of Chac and Tlaloc (see Chapter II). The word kinnabari was applied to the thick matter that issues from the dragon when crushed beneath the weight of the dying elephant during these combats (Pliny, XXXIII, 28 and VIII, 12). The dragon had a passion for elephant's blood. Any thick red earth attributed to such combats was called kinnabari (Schoff, op. cit., p. 137). This is another illustration of the ancient belief in the identification of blood and red ochre.]
[379: "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 101.]
[380: In an interesting article on "The Water Lilies of Ancient Egypt" (Ancient Egypt, 1917, Part I, p. 1) Mr. W. D. Spanton has collected a series of illustrations of the symbolic use of these plants. In view of the fact that the papyrus- and lotus-sceptres and the lotus-designs played so prominent a part in the evolution of the Greek thunder-weapon, it is peculiarly interesting to find (in the remote times of the Pyramid Age) lotus designs built up into the form of the double-axe (Spanton's Figs. 28 and 29) and the classical keraunos (his Fig. 19).]
[381: The Babylonian magic plant to prolong life and renew youth, like the red mineral didi of the Egyptian story. It was also "the plant of birth" and "the plant of life".]
[382: Mueller, Quibell, Maspero, and Sethe regard the "round cartouche," which the divine falcon often carries in place of the ankh-symbol of life, as a representation of the royal name (R. Weill, "Les Origines de l'Egypte pharaonique," Annales du Musee Guimet, 1908, p. 111). The analogous Babylonian sign known as "the rod and ring" is described by Ward (op. cit., p. 413) as "the emblem of the sun-god's supremacy," a "symbol of majesty and power, like the tablets of destiny".
As it was believed in Egypt and Babylonia that the possession of a name "was equivalent to being in existence," we can regard the object carried by the hawk or vulture as a token of the giving of life and the controlling of destiny. It can probably be equated with the "tablets of destiny" so often mentioned in the Babylonian stories, which the bird god Zu stole from Bel and was compelled by the sun-god to restore again. Marduk was given the power to destroy or to create, to speak the word of command and to control fate, to wield the invincible weapon and to be able to render objects invisible. This form of the weapon, "the word" or logos, like all the other varieties of the thunder-weapon, could "become flesh," in other words, be an animate form of the god.
In Egyptian art it is usually the hawk of Horus (the homologue of Marduk) which carries the "round cartouche," which is the logos, the tablets of destiny.]
[383: I quote Professor Canney's notes on the word duda'im (Genesis xxx. 14) verbatim: "The Encyclopaedia Biblica says (s.v. 'Mandrakes'): 'The Hebrew name, duda'im, was no doubt popularly associated with dodim, [Hebrew: dodim], "love"; but its real etymology (like that of [Greek: mandragoras]) is obscure".
* * * * *
"The same word is translated 'mandrakes' in Song of Songs vii. 13.
"Duda'im occurs also in Jeremiah xxiv, 1, where it is usually translated 'baskets' ('baskets of figs'). Here it is the plural of a word dud, which means sometimes a 'pot' or 'kettle,' sometimes a 'basket'. The etymology is again doubtful.
"I should imagine that the words in Jeremiah and Genesis have somehow or other the same etymology, and that duda-im in Genesis has no real connexion with dodim 'love'.
"The meaning 'pot' (dud, plur. duda-im) is probably more original than 'basket'. Does duda-im in Genesis and Song of Songs denote some kind of pot or caldron-shaped flower or fruit?"]
[384: The Mother Pot is really a fundamental conception of all religious beliefs and is almost world-wide in its distribution.]
[385: The fruit of the lotus (which is a form of Hathor) assumes a form (Spanton, op. cit., Fig. 51) that is identical with a common Mediterranean symbol of the Great Mother, called "pomegranate" by Sir Arthur Evans (see my text-fig. 6, p. 179, m), which is a surrogate of the apple and mandrake. The likeness to the Egyptian hieroglyph for a jar of water (text-fig. 6, l) and the goddess Nu of the fruit of the poppy (which was closely associated with the mandrake by reason of its soporific properties) may have assisted in the transference of their attributes. The design of the water-plant (text-fig. 7, d) associated with the Nile god may have helped such a confusion and exchange.]
[386: "A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians," revised and abridged, 1890, Vol. I, p. 323.]
[387: See, for example, Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Worship," Fig. 27, p. 46.]
[388: In a Japanese dragon-story the dragon drinks "sake" from pots set out on the shore (as Hathor drank the didi mixture from pots associated with the river); and the intoxicated monster was then slain. From its tail the hero extracted a sword (as in the case of the Western dragons), which is now said to be the Mikado's state sword.]
[389: See Gauthier, op. cit., pp. 2 and 3.]
[390: Compare the dog-incident in the mandrake story.]
[391: Bostock and Riley add the comment that "the peony has no medicinal virtues whatever".]
[392: Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VIII, 1917, p. 16 (in the reprint).]
[393: I am indebted to Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this information. But the philological question is discussed in a learned memoir by the late Professor P. J. Veth, "De Leer der Signatuur," Internationales Archiv fuer Ethnographie, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75 and 105, and especially the appendix, p. 199 et seq., "De Mandragora, Naschrift op het tweede Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling over de Leer der Signatuur".]
[394: Like the Purpura and the Pterocera, the bryony and other shells and plants.]
[395: Larousse, Article "Mandragore".]
[396: I have already referred to another version of the churning of the ocean in which Mount Meru was used as a churn-stick and identified with the Great Mother, of whom the mandara was also an avatar.]
[397: Which I shall discuss in my forthcoming book on "The Story of the Flood".]
[398: The phallic interpretation is certainly a secondary rationalization of an incident which had no such implication originally.]
[399: The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis ii. 17) produced fruit the eating of which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, so that they realized their nakedness: they became conscious of sex and made girdles of fig-leaves (vide supra, p. 155). In other words, the tree of life had the power of love-provoking like the mandrake. In Henderson's "Celtic Dragon Myth" (p. xl) we read: "The berries for which she [Medb] craved were from the Tree of Life, the food of the gods, the eating of which by mortals brings death," and further: "The berries of the rowan tree are the berries of the gods" (p. xliii). I have already suggested the homology between these red berries, the mandrake, and the red ochre of Hathor's elixir. Thus we have another suggestion of the identity of the tree of paradise and the mandrake.]
The Measurement of Time.
It was the similarity of the periodic phases of the moon and of womankind that originally suggested the identification of the Great Mother with the moon, and originated the belief that the moon was the regulator of human beings.[400] This was the starting-point of the system of astrology and the belief in Fates. The goddess of birth and death controlled and measured the lives of mankind.
But incidentally the moon determined the earliest subdivision of time into months; and the moon-goddess lent the sanctity of her divine attributes to the number twenty-eight.
The sun was obviously the determiner of day and night, and its rising and setting directed men's attention to the east and the west as cardinal points intimately associated with the daily birth and death of the sun. We have no certain clue as to the factors which first brought the north and the south into prominence. But it seems probable that the direction of the river Nile,[401] which was the guide to the orientation of the corpse in its grave, may have been responsible for giving special sanctity to these other cardinal points. The association of the direction of the deceased's head with the position of the original homeland and the eventual home of the dead would have made the south a "divine" region in Predynastic times. For similar reasons the north may have acquired special significance in the Early Dynastic period.[402]
When the north and the south were added to the other two cardinal points the intimate association of the east and the west with the measurement of time would be extended to include all the four cardinal points.[403] Four became a sacred number associated with time-measurement, and especially with the sun.[404]
Many other factors played a part in the establishment of the sanctity of the number four. Professor Lethaby has suggested[405] that the four-sided building was determined by certain practical factors, such as the desirability of fashioning a room to accommodate a woven mat, which was necessarily of a square or oblong form. But the study of the evolution of the early Egyptian grave and tomb-superstructures suggests that the early use of slabs of stone, wooden boards, and mud-bricks helped in the process of determining the four-sided form of house and room.
When, out of these rude beginnings, the vast four-sided pyramid was developed, the direction of its sides was brought into relationship with the four cardinal points; and there was a corresponding development and enrichment of the symbolism of the number four. The form of the divine house of the dead king, who was the god, was thus assimilated to the form of the universe, which was conceived as an oblong area at the four corners of which pillars supported the sky, as the four legs supported the Celestial Cow.
Having invested the numbers four and twenty-eight with special sanctity and brought them into association with the measurement of time, it was a not unnatural proceeding to subdivide the month into four parts and so bring the number seven into the sacred scheme. Once this was done the moon's phases were used to justify and rationalize this procedure, and the length of the week was incidentally brought into association with the moon-goddess, who had seven avatars, perhaps originally one for each day of the week. At a later period the number seven was arbitrarily brought into relationship with the Pleiades.
The seven Hathors were not only mothers but fates also. Aphrodite was chief of the fates.
The number seven is associated with the pots used by Hathor's priestesses at the celebration inaugurating the new year; and it plays a prominent part in the Story of the Flood. In Babylonia the sanctity of the number received special recognition. When the goddess became the destroyer of mankind, the device seems to have been adopted of intensifying her powers of destruction by representing her at times as seven demons.[406]
But the Great Mother was associated not only with the week and month but also with the year. The evidence at our disposal seems to suggest that the earliest year-count was determined by the annual inundation of the river. The annual recurrence of the alternation of winter and summer would naturally suggest in a vague way such a subdivision of time as the year; but the exact measurement of that period and the fixing of an arbitrary commencement, a New Year's day, were due to other reasons. In the Story of the Destruction of Mankind it is recorded that the incident of the soothing of Hathor by means of the blood-coloured beer (which, as I have explained elsewhere,[407] is a reference to the annual Nile flood) was celebrated annually on New Year's day.
Hathor was regarded in tradition as the cause of the inundation. She slaughtered mankind and so caused the original "flood": in the next phase she was associated with the 7000 jars of red beer; and in the ultimate version with the red-coloured river flood, which in another story was reputed to be "the tears of Isis".
Hathor's day was in fact the date of the commencement of the inundation and of the year; and the former event marked the beginning of the year and enabled men for the first time to measure its duration. Thus Hathor[408] was the measurer of the year, the month, and the week; while her son Horus (Chronus) was the day-measurer.
In Tylor's "Early History of Mankind" (pp. 352 et seq.) there is a concise summary of some of the widespread stories of the Fountain of Youth which restores youthfulness to the aged who drank of it or bathed in it. He cites instances from India, Ethiopia, Europe, Indonesia, Polynesia, and America. "The Moslem geographer, Ibn-el-Wardi, places the Fountain of Life in the dark south-western regions of the earth" (p. 353).
The star Sothis rose heliacally on the first day of the Egyptian New Year.[409] Hence it became "the second sun in heaven," and was identified with the goddess of the New Year's Day. The identification of Hathor with this "second sun"[410] may explain why the goddess is said to have entered Re's boat. She took her place as a crown upon his forehead, which afterwards was assumed by her surrogate, the fire-spitting uraeus-serpent. When Horus took his mother's place in the myth, he also entered the sun-god's boat, and became the prototype of Noah seeking refuge from the Flood in the ship the Almighty instructed him to make.
In memory of the beer-drinking episode in the Destruction of Mankind, New Year's Day was celebrated by Hathor's priestesses in wild orgies of beer drinking.
This event was necessarily the earliest celebration of an anniversary, and the prototype of all the incidents associated with some special day in the year which have been so many milestones in the historical progress of civilization.
The first measurement of the year also naturally forms the starting-point in the framing of a calendar.
Similar celebrations took place to inaugurate the commencement of the year in all countries which came, either directly or indirectly, under Egyptian influence.
The month [Greek: Aphrodisia] (so-called from the festival of the goddess) began the calendar of Bithynia, Cyprus, and Iasos, just as Hathor's feast was a New Year's celebration in Egypt.
In the celebration of these anniversaries the priestesses of Aphrodite worked themselves up in a wild state of frenzy; and the term [Greek: hysteria][411] became identified with the state of emotional derangement associated with such orgies. The common belief that the term "hysteria" is derived directly from the Greek word for uterus is certainly erroneous. The word [Greek: hysteria] was used in the same sense as [Greek: Aphrodisia], that is as a synonym for the festivals of the goddess. The "hysteria" was the name for the orgy in celebration of the goddess on New Year's day: then it was applied to the condition produced by these excesses; and ultimately it was adopted in medicine to apply to similar emotional disturbances. Thus both the terms "hysteria" and "lunacy"[412] are intimately associated with the earliest phases in the moon-goddess's history; and their survival in modern medicine is a striking tribute to the strong hold of effete superstition in this branch of the diagnosis and treatment of disease.[413] |
|
