The Evolution of the Dragon

Aphrodite's "shell,"according to him, is the Nauphus depicted as a shell-fish, with its sail-like palmulae spread out to the wind, but with the same sails flattened into plate-like arms for steering , clearly "a species of Sepia" wholly like Aphrodite herself, a ship- like shell-fish sailing over the surface of the water, the concha veneria. It must not be forgotten that, as we have already seen, the primitive shell-cults of the Erythraean Sea had been diffused throughout the Mediterranean area long before Aphrodite was born upon the shores of the Levant, and possibly before Hathor came into existence in the south.

The use of the cowry and gold models of the cowry goes back to an early time in AEgean history. But the connexion of Aphrodite with the octopus and its kindred played a very obtrusive part in Minoan and Mycenaean art ; and its influence was spread abroad as far as Western Europe " and towards the East as far as America. In many ways it was a factor in the development of such artistic designs as the spiral and the volute, and not improbably also of the swastika.

Starting from the researches of Tumpel, a distinguished French zoologist, Dr. Frederic Houssay, 3 sought to demonstrate that the cult of Aphrodite was "based upon a pre-existing zoological philosophy ". The argument in support of his claim that Aphrodite was a personification of the octopus must be sharply differentiated into two parts: Idle fancies of this sort do not help us to understand the arbi trary beliefs concerning the magical powers of the octopus.

The Evolution of the Dragon by Sir Grafton Elliot Smith

The real problem we have to solve is to discover why, among all the multitude of bizarre creatures to be found in the Mediterranean Sea, the octopus and its allies should thus have been singled out for distinctive appreciation, and also acquired the same remarkable attri butes as the cowry. I believe that the Red Sea "Spider shell,"Pterocera, was the link between the cowry and the octopus. This shell was used, like the cowry, for funeraiy purposes in Egypt and as a trumpet in India. They are supposed to be late predynastic representations of the god Min. If this supposition is correct they are the earliest idols apart from mere amulets that have been preserved from antiquity.

Upon these statues, representations of the Red Sea shell Pterocera bryonia are sculptured in low relief. Griffith is disinclined to accept my suggestion that the object of these pictures of the shell was to animate the statues. But whether this was their purpose or not, it is probably not without some significance that these life-giving shells were associated with so obtrusively phallic a deity as Min.

In any case they afford concrete evidence of cultural contact between Coptos and the Red Sea, and indicate that these particular shells were chosen as symbols of that sea or its coast. The distinctive feature of the Pterocera is that the mantle in the adult expands into a series of long finger-like processes each of which secretes a calcareous process or "claw ". There are seven of these claws as well as the long columella Fig. Hence, when the shell-cults were diffused from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean where the Pterocera is not found , it is quite likely that the people of the Levant may have confused with the octopus some sailor's account of the eight-rayed shell or perhaps representations of it on some amulet or statue.

Whether this is the explanation of the confusion or not, it is certain that the beliefs associated with the cowry and the octopus in the AEgean area are identical with those linked up with the cowry and the Pterocera in the Red Sea. I have already mentioned that the mandrake is believed to possess the same magical powers. Sir James Frazer has called attention to the fact that in Armenia the bryony Bryonia alba is a surrogate of the mandrake and is credited with the same attributes. Here then is further evidence that this shell a was associated in some way with a suiTogate of the mandrake Aphrodite , and b] was re garded as a maiden.

T hus clearly it has a place in the chequered history of Aphrodite. I have suggested the possibility of its con fusion with the octopus, which may have led to the inclusion of the latter within the scope of the marine creatures in Aphrodite s cultural equipment. According to Matthioli Lib. By Pliny it is called Pelogia, in Greek was the term applied to the flesh of swine that had been sacrificed to Ceres and Proserpine Hesych.

In fact, the purple-shell was "the maiden "and also "the sow ": In other words it was Aphrodite. The use of the term "maiden "for the Pterocera suggests a similar identification. To complete this web of proof it may be noted that an old writer has called the mandrake the plant of Circe, the sorceress who turned men into swine by a magic draught. They are all culturally associated with Aphrodite. I shall have occasion to refer to M. Siret's account of the discovery of the AEgean octopus-motif upon AEneolithic objects in Spain, and of the widespread use in Western Europe of certain conventional designs derived from the octopus.

Siret also see the table, Fig. If this is true - and I am bound to admit that it is far from being proved - it suggests that the Red Sea littoral may have been the place of origin of the cultural use of the octopus and an association with Hathor, for Bes and Hathor are said to have been introduced into Egypt from there. That the octopus was actually identified with the Great Mother and also with the dragon is revealed by the fact of the latter assuming an octopus-form in Eastern Asia and Oceania, and by the occurrence of octopus-motifs in the representation of the goddess in America.

The Evolution of the Dragon

One of the most remarkable series of pictures depicting the Great Mother is found sculptured in low relief upon a number of stone slabs from Manabi in Central America, one of which I reproduce here. Thus there can be no doubt of the identification of this American Aphrodite and the octopus. In the Polynesian Rata-myth there is a very instructive series of manifestations of the dragon.

If this suggestion should prove to be well founded it would provide a more convincing explanation of the girdle of hands worn by the Indian goddess Kali 1 than that usually given. If the "hands "really represent surrogates of the cowry, the wearing of such a girdle brings the Indian goddess into line, not only with Astarte and Aphrodite, but also with the East African maidens who still wear the girdle of cowries. Kali's exploits were in many respects identical with those of the bloodthirsty Sekhet-manifestation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor.

Just as Sekhet had to be restrained by Re for her excess of zeal in murdering his foes, so Siva had to intervene with Kali upon the battle field flooded with gore as also in the Egyptian story to spare the remnant of his enemies. But I think this is a secondary rationalization of their meaning. An excellent photograph of a bronze statue in the Calcutta Art Gallery , representing Kali with her girdle of hands, is given by Mr. Mackenzie, "Indian Myth and Legend,"p. Houssay has made the interesting suggestion that the swastika may have been derived from such conventionalised representations of the octopus as are shown in Fig.

This series of sketches is taken from Tumpel's memoir, which provided the foundation for Houssay's hypothesis. A vast amount of attention has been devoted to this lucky symbol," which still enjoys a widespread vogue at the present day, after a history of several thousand years. Although so much has been written in attempted explanation of the swastika since Houssay made his suggestion, so far as I am aware no one has paid the slightest attention to his hypothesis or made even a passing reference to his memoir. Nuttall's astral speculations Houssay's suggestion offers an explanation of some of the salient attributes of the swastika on which the alternative hypotheses shed little or no light.

Among the earliest known examples of the symbol are those engraved upon the so-called "owl-shaped " but, as Houssay has conclusively demonstrated, really octopus-shaped vases and a metal figurine found by Schliemann in his excavations of the hill at Hissarlit. The swastika is represented upon the mons Veneris of these figures which represent the Great Mother in her form as a woman or as a pot, which is an anthropomorphized octopus, one of the avatars of the Great Mother.

The symbol seems to have been intended as a fertility amulet like the cowry, either suspended from a girdle or depicted upon a pubic shield or conventionalised fig-leaf. Wherever it is found the swastika is supposed to be an amulet to confer "good luck "and long life. Both this reputation and the association with the female organs of reproduction link up the symbol with the cowry, the Pterocera, and the octopus.

It is clear then that the swastika has the same reputation for magic and the same attributes and associations as the octopus ; and it may be a conventionalised representation of it, as Houssay has suggested. It must not be assumed that the identification of the swastika with the Great Mother and her powers of giving life and resurrection necessarily invalidates the solar and astral theories recently championed by Mr. I have already called attention to the fact that the Sun-god derived his existence and all his attributes from his mother.

The whole symbolism of the Winged Disk and the Wheel of the Sun and their reputation for life-giving and destruction were adopted from the Great Mother. These well- established facts should prepare us to recognize that the admission of the truth of Houssay's suggestion would not necessarily invalidate the more widely accepted solar significance of the swastika. Tumpel called attention to the fact that, when they set about con ventionalizing the octopus, the Mycenaean artists often resorted to the practice of representing pairs of "arms"as units and so making four- limbed and three-limbed forms Fig.

That such a process may have played a part in the development of the symbol is further suggested by the form of a Transcaucasian swastika found by Rossler, who assigns it to the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age. Each of the four limbs is bifurcated at its extremity. Moreover they exhibit the series of spots, so often found upon or alongside the limbs of the symbol, which suggest the conventional way of representing the suckers of the octopus in the Mycenaean designs Fig.

Another remarkable picture of a swastika-like emblem has been found in America. Another possible way in which the design of a four-limbed swastika may have been derived from an octopus is suggested by the sypsum weight found in by Sir Arthur Evans in the West Magazine of the palace at Knossos circa B. 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. 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. 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, 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-Elamjte swastika the prototype of the symbol whose world-wide migrations have been studied by Wilson pp.

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.

Vincent1 claims that the fact of the swastika having been in use by ceramic artists in Crete and Susiana many centuries before the appear ance 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 szipra, p.

These are mere conjectures, which 1 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 demon strates that the spiral as a symbol of life-giving was definitely derived from the octopus. The use of the volute on Egyptian scarabs2 and also in the decoration of an early Thracian statuette of a nude goddess indicate that it was employed like the spiral and octopus as a life-symbol.

But when the AEneolithic phase of culture dawned in Spain, aud the AEgean octopus-motif made its appearance there, the culture as a whole reveals unmistakable evidence of a predominantly Egyptian inspiration. 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.

He regards the octopus as "a conventional symbol of the ocean, or, more precisely, of the fer tilizing watery principle " p. 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.

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. 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 fonn, which is so characteristic of the conventional symbol.

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. 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, 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. 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 ATu, was the symbol of the cosmic waters, the god Niv Nu whose female counterpart was the goddess Nut. In his report, "A Collection of Hieroglyphs,"3 Mr. Griffith discusses the bowl of water a and says that it stands for the female principle in the words for maiden and woman. When it is re called 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.

But c is identical with i , which, according to Griffith p. The varying conventionalizations of a or b are shown in d , c , and f Griffith, " Hieroglyphics,"p. I The hieroglyphic sign for a pot of water m such words as Nu and Nut. Evans, "Mycenian Tree and Pillar Cult,"p. Its similarity to the Egyptian pot-sign I which also has the significance of mother-goddess is worthy of note.

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. The familiar representation of Horus and his homologues in India and elsewhere being born from the lotus suggests that the flower re presents 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, 1 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.

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.

The cowries of the head ornament of primitive peoples of Africa and Asia and of the Mediterranean area in early times - Schliemann's "llios, Fig. 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 Sumerjan pictures was usually represented pouring the life-giving waters from his pot Fig. This idea of the Mother Pot is found not only in Babylonia, Egypt, India, 1 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 rne, 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. Among the Dravidian people at the present day the seven goddesses corresponding to the seven Hathors are often represented by seven pots.

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. It is the source of food and anything else that is wanted, and its supply can never be exhausted.

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. 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. Her theory will be found, after some slight modifications, to fall into line with the general argument of this book. 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. Mackenzie has kindly called my attention.

Drona was conceived in a pot from the seed of a Rishi. A wide spread 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. If the pot can thus create a human being, it is easy to under stand 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 ,.

As "give is of life "they were also able to add to their own life-substance, in other words to grow like any other living being. 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"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 cow and Soma's deer, and provided with the deer's antlers of the Eastern Asiatic dragon see Chapter II, p.

The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and - birth. Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, nd be born? That which is born of the flesh is flesh: The phrase "born of water "refers to the birth "of the flesh "; and the mother's wornb is the vessel containing "the water "from which the new life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of Isis. 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 sym bol of all that was new, young, and fresh, and the fertilizing and life-giving waters of the annual inundation of he Nile. Hathor was the daughter of these waters, as Aphrodite was sprung from the sea-foarn. Sir Gardner Wilkinson states that "a basket of sycamore figs " was originally the hieroglyphic sign for a woman, a goddess, or a mother. 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 connections is banished by the evidence of Artemis's male counterpart Apollo Hyakinthos and his relations to the sacred lily and other water plants.

Artemis was a gynaecological specialist: She was regarded as the goddess of the portal, not merely of birth, 1 but also of gold and treasure, of which she possessed the key, and of the year January. Her Latin representative, Diana, had a male counterpart and conjugate, Dianus, i.

Janus, of whom it was said: For other quotations see Rendel Harris, op. 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: To open the portal either of birth or wealth she used her magic wand or key.

Hence she could grant riches. Elsewhere in this chapter p. 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 seeking the most pious of kings in order that she might establish her cult with him and bless him with renewed youth. The Tree of Life or the Great Mother between the two mountains: But the bird which was the prototype of the Winged Disk has been added. Artemis was a moon-goddess closely related to Britomartis and Qiktynna, 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 with hold 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 "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 over grown 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. 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,4 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 renting 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.

In his "Mycenean 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 die sun itself appears above the pillar between the lions. William Hayes Ward's monograph, 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 sum mit 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. In an interesting Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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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. 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 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.

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].

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 "of the treasure- house of pearls which was under the guardianship of the great "giver 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 land 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. 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. The ankh life-sign below the sun is the de terminative of the act of giving birth or life. The design is heraldically supported by the Great Mother's lionesses. The cow's head and the Eastern Mountains are shown along side one another, each of them supporting the Double Axe representing the god.

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, of. If this be compared with the Egyptian picture it will be noted that the Great Mother is now replaced by a tree: The 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 urasi of the Winged Disk design. 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, 1 just as the winged disk was sculptured upon the lintel, or the thunder-stone was placed above the door of the cowhouse2 to afford the protection of the Great Mother's powers of life-giving to her own cattle.

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: 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 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.

The Egyptians entertained the belief that the sun-god was born of the celestial cow Mehetweret, a name which means "Great Flood,'1 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, 2 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. It is perhaps not without significance that the root of a marsh plant, the Iris psendacorus is regarded in Germany as a luck-bringer which can take the place of the mandrake.

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. Griffith suggests that the form of the magic wand may have been derived from that of a conntionalized picture of the uterus, in its aspect as a giver of life. But it is possible also that its other significance as an " opener of the waves "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. 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: 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 ".

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. Battiscombe Gunn quoted by Dr. Alan Gardiner states that the familiar symbol of life known as the ankh represents the string of a sandal. It seems to be worth considering whether the symbolism of the sandal-string may not have been derived irom 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 a girdle furnished with a tail was used as a sign of consecration or attainment of the divine life after death. 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 con fusion.

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 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 path way of mythology is so thickly strewn. In other words, the plant seemed to have been used merely to soothe the excited goddess: 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..

In a closely reasoned memoir, Henri Gauthier has completely demolished Brugsch's interpretation of this word. He says there are numerous instances of the use of d'd1 which he transliterates doudouiou in the medical papyri.

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He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the interior of Africa and the coasts of Arabia. Griffith informs me that Gauthier's criticism of the translation "mandrakes "is undoubtedly just: The relevant passage in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind in Seti I's tomb will then read as follows: 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 ".

As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley. But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew duda and the Copts did not use the word in their translations, but either the Greek word or a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties.

Finally, in a letter Mr. 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 argu ment 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 aningredient 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 Navilie 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.

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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 mandrake1 the magical virtues which originally belonged to didi and blood, the cowry, and water. In many of the non-Egyptian versions 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.

Even in Egypt itself didi may be replaced by fruit in the more specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Wiedeinann "Religion of the Ancient Egyptians,"p. But by analogy with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation of didi, it should read: 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, 1 and the material out of which the new race of mankind was created.

There is a widespread legend that the mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies 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". 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.

The red earth as a surrogate of blood in the Egyptian story is here replaced by earth and blood. 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. But Marduk created not only men and animals but heaven and earth also. To do this he split asunder the carcass 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 die 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 he Indian myth Ganesa's head was replaced by an elephant's.

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. In other words the mandrake was part of the same substance as the earth didi. Further corroboration of this confusion is afforded by a story from Little Russia, quoted by de Gubernatis. 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.

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: 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 a voyage by water in order to obtain what appears to have been a marsh plant called dittu? 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, 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.

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