Chapter 5
horns of consecration" was primarily the split mountain of the dawn, I was not aware that Professor Newberry ("Two Cults of the Old Kingdom," _Annals of Archæology and Anthropology_, Liverpool, Vol. I, 1908, p. 28) had already suggested this identification.]
In the Egyptian story the god Re instructed the Sekti of Heliopolis to pound the materials for the food of immortality. In the Indian version, the gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover some elixir which would make them immortal. To this end, Mount Meru [the Great Mother] was cast into the sea [of milk]. Vishnu, in his second avatar as a tortoise[351] supported the mountain on his back; and the Nâga serpent Vasuki was then twisted around the mountain, the gods seizing its head and the demons his tail twirled the mountain until they had churned the amrita or water of life. Wilfrid Jackson has called attention to the fact that this scene has been depicted, not only in India and Japan, but also in the Precolumbian _Codex Cortes_ drawn by some Maya artist in Central America.[352]
The horizon is the birthplace of the gods; and the birth of the deity is depicted with literal crudity as an emergence from the portal between its two mountains. The mountain splits to give birth to the sun-god, just as in the later fable the parturient mountain produced the "ridiculous mouse" (Apollo Smintheus). The Great Mother is described as giving birth--"the gates of the firmament are undone for Teti himself at break of day" [that is when the sun-god is born on the horizon]. "He comes forth from the Field of Earu" (Egyptian Pyramid Texts--Breasted's translation).
In the domain of Olympian obstetrics the analogy between birth and the emergence from the door of a house or the gateway of a temple is a common theme of veiled reference. Artemis, for instance, is a goddess of the portal, and is not only a helper in childbirth, but also grows in her garden a magical herb which is capable of opening locks. This reputation, however, was acquired not merely by reason of her skill in midwifery, but also as an outcome of the legend[353] of the treasure-house of pearls which was under the guardianship of the great "giver of life" and of which she kept the magic key. She was in fact the feminine form of Janus, the doorkeeper who presided over all beginnings, whether of birth, or of any kind of enterprise or new venture, or the commencement of the year (like Hathor). Janus was the guardian of the door of Olympus itself, the gate of rebirth into the immortality of the gods.
The ideas underlying these conceptions found expression in an endless variety of forms, material, intellectual, and moral, wherever the influence of civilization made itself felt. I shall refer only to one group of these expressions that is directly relevant to the subject-matter of this book. I mean the custom of suspending or representing the life-giving symbol above the portal of temples and houses. Thus the plant peculiar to Artemis herself, the mugwort or Artemisia, was hung above the door,[354] just as the winged disk was sculptured upon the lintel, or the thunder-stone was placed above the door of the cowhouse[355] to afford the protection of the Great Mother's powers of life-giving to her own cattle.
In the Pyramid Texts the rebirth of a dead pharaoh is described with vivid realism and directness. "The waters of life which are in the sky come. The waters of life which are in the earth come. The sky burns for thee, the earth trembles for thee, before the birth of the god. The two hills are divided, the god comes into being, the god takes possession of his body. The two hills are divided, this Neferkere comes into being, this Neferkere takes possession of his body. Behold this Neferkere--his feet are kissed by the pure waters which are from Atum, which the phallus of Shu made, which the vulva of Tefnut brought into being. They have come, they have brought for thee the pure waters from their father."[356]
The Egyptians entertained the belief[357] that the sun-god was born of the celestial cow 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 uræi 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 Archæology_, March, 1918, p. 64.]
[357: _Op. cit._, p. 60.]
[358: "Archæol. Survey of Egypt," 5th Memoir, 1896, p. 31.]
[359: See especially _op. cit._, p. 35, the goddess of streams and marshes, who was also herself "the mother plant," like the mother of Horus.]
[360: Whose cultural associations with the Great Mother in the Eastern Mediterranean littoral has been discussed by Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," pp. 49 _et seq._ Compare also _Apollo hyakinthos_ as further evidence of the link with Artemis.]
[361: P. J. Veth, "Internat. Arch. f. Ethnol.," Bd. 7, pp. 203 and 204.]
[362: "Hieroglyphics," p. 60.]
[363: Budge, "The Gods of the Egyptians," Vol. I, pp. 436 and 437.]
[364: Alan Gardiner, "Life and Death (Egyptian)," Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_.]
The Mandrake.
We have now given reasons for believing that the personification of the mandrake was in some way brought about by the transference to the plant of the magical virtues that originally belonged to the cowry shell.
The problem that still awaits solution is the nature of the process by which the transference was effected.
When I began this investigation the story of the Destruction of Mankind (see Chapter II) seemed to offer an explanation of the confusion. Brugsch, Naville, Maspero, Erman, and in fact most Egyptologists, seemed to be agreed that the magical substance from which the Egyptian elixir of life was made was the mandrake. As there was no hint[365] in the Egyptian story of the derivation of its reputation from the fancied likeness to the human form, its identification with Hathor seemed to be merely another instance of those confusions with which the pathway of mythology is so thickly strewn. In other words, the plant seemed to have been used merely to soothe the excited goddess: then the other properties of "the food of the gods," of which it was an ingredient, became transferred to the mandrake, so that it acquired the reputation of being a "giver of life" as well as a sedative. If this had been true it would have been a simple process to identify this "giver of life" with the goddess herself in her rôle as the "giver of life," and her cowry-ancestor which was credited with the same reputation.
But this hypothesis is no longer tenable, because the word _d'd'_ (variously transliterated _doudou_ or _didi_), which Brugsch[366] and his followers interpreted as "mandragora," is now believed to have another meaning.
In a closely reasoned memoir, Henri Gauthier[367] has completely demolished Brugsch's interpretation of this word. He says there are numerous instances of the use of _d'd'_ (which he transliterates _doudouiou_) in the medical papyri. In the Ebers papyrus "_doudou_ d'Eléphantine broyé" is prescribed as a remedy for external application in diseases of the heart, and as an astringent and emollient dressing for ulcers. He says the substance was brought to Elephantine from the interior of Africa and the coasts of Arabia.
Mr. F. Ll. Griffith informs me that Gauthier's criticism of the translation "mandrakes" is undoubtedly just: but that the substance referred to was most probably "red ochre" or "hæmatite".[368]
The relevant passage in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind (in Seti I's tomb) will then read as follows: "When they had brought the red ochre, the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded it, and the priestesses mixed the pulverized substance with the beer, so that the mixture resembled human blood".
I would call special attention to Gauthier's comment that the blood-coloured beer "had _some magical and marvellous property which is unknown to us_".[369]
In his dictionary Brugsch considered the determinative [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: opôra]; and he proposed to identify the supposed fruit, then transliterated _doudou_, with the Hebrew _doudaïm_, and translate it _poma amatoria_, mandragora, or in German, _Alraune_. This interpretation was adopted by most scholars until Gauthier raised objections to it.
As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley.[370]
But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew _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. Ægypt. Sprache_, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that the word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated "_didi_" instead of "_doudou_".
Finally, in a letter Mr. Griffith tells me the identification of _didi_ with the Coptic [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 rôle of _didi_ in the Egyptian story is taken by some _vegetable_ product of a _red_ colour; and many of these versions reveal a definite confusion between the red fruit and the red clay, thus proving that the confusion of _didi_ with the mandrake is no mere hypothetical device to evade a difficulty on my part, but did actually occur.
In the course of the development of the Egyptian story the red clay from Elephantine became the colouring matter of the Nile flood, and this in turn was rationalized as the blood or red clay into which the bodies of the slaughtered enemies of Re were transformed,[373] and the material out of which the new race of mankind was created.[374] In other words, the new race was formed of _didi_. There is a widespread legend that the mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies[375] often represented as innocent or chaste men wrongly killed, just as the red clay was the substance of mankind killed to appease Re's wrath, "the blood of the slaughtered saints".[376]
But the original belief is found in a more definite form in the ancient story that "the mandrake was fashioned out of the same earth whereof God formed Adam".[377] In other words the mandrake was part of the same substance as the earth _didi_.[378]
Further corroboration of this confusion is afforded by a story from Little Russia, quoted by de Gubernatis.[379] If bryony (a widely recognized surrogate of mandrake) be suspended from the girdle all the dead Cossacks (who, like the enemies of Re in the Egyptian story, had been killed and broken to pieces in the earth) will come to life again. _Thus we have positive evidence of the homology of the mandrake with red clay or hæmatite._
The transference to the mandrake of the properties of the cowry (and the goddesses who were personifications of the shell) and blood (and its surrogates) was facilitated by the manifold homologies of the Great Mother with plants. We have already seen that the goddess was identified with: (a) incense-trees and other trees, such as the sycamore, which played some definite part in the burial ceremonies, either by providing the divine incense, the materials for preserving the body, or for making coffins to ensure the protection of the dead, and so make it possible for them to continue their existence; and (b) the lotus, the lily, the iris, and other marsh plants,[380] for reasons that I have already mentioned (p. 184).
The Babylonian poem of Gilgamesh represents one of the innumerable versions of the great theme which has engaged the attention of writers in every age and country attempting to express the deepest longings of the human spirit. It is the search for the elixir of life. The object of Gilgamesh's search is a magic _plant_ to prolong life and restore youth. The hero of the story went on a voyage by water in order to obtain what appears to have been a marsh plant called _dittu_.[381] The question naturally arises whether this Babylonian story and the name of the plant played any part in Palestine in blending the Egyptian and Babylonian stories and confusing the Egyptian elixir of life, the red earth _didi_, with the Babylonian elixir, the plant _dittu_?
In the Babylonian story a serpent-demon steals the magic plant, just as in India _soma_, the food of immortality, is stolen. In Egypt Isis steals Re's name,[382] and in Babylonia the Zu bird steals the tablets of destiny, the _logos_. In Greek legend apples are stolen from the garden of Hesperides. Apples are surrogates of the mandrake and _didi_.
We have now seen that the mandrake is definitely a surrogate (a) of the cowry and a series of its shell-homologues, and (b) of the red substance in the Story of the Destruction of Mankind.
There still remain to be determined (i) the means by which the mandrake became identified with the goddess, (ii) the significance of the Hebrew word _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 Mycenæan 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 mediæval Europe. The decomposing tissues of the body of an innocent victim on the gallows when they fall upon the earth can become reincarnated in a mandrake--the _main de gloire_ of old French writers.
Then there is the plant _adamantis_, grown in Armenia and Cappadocia, which when _presented to a lion makes the beast fall upon its back_, and drop its jaws. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the lion-manifestation of Hathor who was calmed by the substance _didi_? A more direct link with the story of the destruction of mankind is suggested by the account of the _ophiusa_, "which is found in Elephantine, an island of Ethiopia". This plant is of a livid colour, and hideous to the sight. Taken by a person in drink, it inspires such a horror of serpents, which his imagination continually represents as menacing him that he commits suicide at last: hence it is that persons guilty of sacrilege are compelled to drink an infusion of it (Pliny, "Nat. Hist.," XXIV, 102). I am inclined to regard this as a variant of the myth of the Destruction of Mankind in which the "snake-plant" from Elephantine takes the place of the uræi of the Winged Disk Saga, and punishes the act of sacrilege by driving the delinquent into a state of delirium tremens.
The next problem to be considered is the derivation of the word _mandragora_. Dr. Mingana tells me it is a great puzzle to discover any adequate meaning. The attempt to explain it through the Sanskrit _mand_, "joy," "intoxication," or _mantasana_, "sleep," "life," or _mandra_, "pleasure," or _mantara_, "paradise tree," and _agru_, "unmarried, violently passionate," is hazardous and possibly far-fetched.
The Persian is _mardumgiah_, "man-like plant".
The Syro-Arabic word for it is _Yabrouh_, Aramaic _Yahb-kouh_, "giver of life". This is possibly the source of the Chinese _Yah-puh-lu_ (Syriac _ya-bru-ha_) and _Yah-puh-lu-Yak_. The termination _Yak_ is merely the Turanian termination meaning "diminutive".
The interest of the Levantine terms for the mandrake lies in the fact that they have the same significance as the word for pearl, _i.e._ "giver of life". This adds another argument (to those which I have already given) for regarding the mandrake as a surrogate of the pearl. But they also reveal the essential fact that led to the identification of the plant with the Mother-Goddess, which I have already discussed.
In Arabic the mandrake is called _abou ruhr_, "father of life," _i.e._ "giver of life".[393]
In Arabic _margan_ means "coral" as well as "pearl". In the Mediterranean area coral is explained as a new and marvellous plant sprung from the petrified blood-stained branches on which Perseus hung the bleeding head of Medusa. Eustathius ("Comment. ad Dionys. Perieget." 1097) derives [Greek: koralion] from [Greek: korê], personifying the monstrous virgin: but Chæroboscos claims that it comes from [Greek: korê] 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 Delâtre's claim[395] that it is compounded of the words _mandros_, "sleep," and _agora_, "object or substance," and that mandragora means "the sleep-producing substance".
This derivation is in harmony with my suggestion as to the means by which the plant acquired its magical properties. The sedative substance that, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs (of the Story of the Destruction of Mankind), was represented by yellow spheres with a red covering was confused in Western Asia with the yellow-berried plant which was known to have sedative properties. Hence the plant was confused with the mineral and so acquired all the magical properties of the Great Mother's elixir. But the Indian name is descriptive of the actual properties of the plant and is possibly the origin of the Greek word.
Another suggestion that has been made deserves some notice. It has been claimed that the first syllable of the name is derived from the Sanskrit _mandara_, one of the trees in the Indian paradise, and the instrument with which the churning of the ocean was accomplished.[396] The mandrake has been claimed to be the tree of the Hebrew paradise; and a connexion has thus been instituted between it and the _mandara_. This hypothesis, however, does not offer any explanation of how either the mandrake or the _mandara_ acquired its magical attributes. The Indian tree of life was supposed to "sweat" _amrita_ just as the incense trees of Arabia produce the divine life-giving incense.
But there are reasons[397] for the belief that the Indian story of the churning of the sea of milk is a much modified version of the old Egyptian story of the pounding of the materials for the elixir of life. The _mandara_ churn-stick, which is often supposed to represent the phallus,[398] was originally the tree of life, the tree or pillar which was animated by the Great Mother herself.[399] So that the _mandara_ is homologous with the _mandragora_. But so far as I am aware, there is no adequate reason for deriving the latter word from the former.
The derivation from the Sanskrit words _mandros_ and _agora_ seems to fit naturally into the scheme of explanation which I have been formulating.
In the Egyptian story the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded the _didi_ in a mortar to make "the giver of life," which by a simple confusion might be identified with the goddess herself in her capacity as "the giver of life". This seems to have occurred in the Indian legend. Lakshmi, or Sri, was born at the churning of the ocean. Like Aphrodite, who was born from the sea-foam churned from the ocean, Lakshmi was the goddess of beauty, love, and prosperity.
Before leaving the problems of mandrake and the homologous plants and substances, it is important that I should emphasize the rôle of blood and blood-substitutes, red-stained beer, red wine, red earth, and red berries in the various legends. These life-giving and death-dealing substances were all associated with the colour red, and the destructive demons Sekhet and Set were given red forms, which in turn were transmitted to the dragon, and to that specialized form of the dragon which has become the conventional way of representing Satan.
[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became attached to the plants _ginseng_ and _shang-luh_--see de Groot, Vol. II, p. 316 _et seq._; also Kumagusu Minakata, _Nature_, Vol. LI, April 25, 1895, p. 608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The fact that the Chinese make use of the Syriac word _yabruha_ (_vide supra_) suggests the source of these Chinese legends.]
[365: As Maspero has specifically mentioned ("Dawn of Civilization," p. 166).]
[366: "Die Alraune als altägyptische Zauberpflanze," _Zeitsch. f. Ægypt. Sprache_, Bd. XXIX, 1891, pp. 31-3.]
[367: "Le nom hiéroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Eléphantine," _Revue Égyptologique_, XI^e Vol., Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]
[368: It is quite possible that the use of the name "hæmatite" for this ancient substitute for blood may itself be the result of the survival of the old tradition.]
[369: It is very important to keep in mind the two distinct properties of _didi_: (a) its magical life-giving powers, and (b) its sedative influence.]
[370: In Chapter II, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical question.]
[371: For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the _British Medical Journal_, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.]
[372: Even in Egypt itself _didi_ may be replaced by fruit in the more specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in the Saga of the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: "Thou didst put grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu". Wiedemann ("Religion of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 70) interprets this as meaning: "thou didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it". But by analogy with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation of _didi_, it should read: "thou didst make the water blood-red with grape-juice"; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two meanings.]
[373: In the Babylonian story of the Deluge "Ishtar cried aloud like a woman in travail, the Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice (saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I assented to an evil thing in the council of the gods, and agreed to a storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth" (King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 134).
The Nile god, Knum, Lord of Elephantine, was reputed to have formed the world of alluvial soil. The coming of the waters from Elephantine brought life to the earth.]
[374: In the Babylonian story, Bel "bade one of the gods cut off his head and mix the earth with the blood that flowed from him, and from the mixture he directed him to fashion men and animals" (King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 56). Bel (Marduk) represents the Egyptian Horus who assumes his mother's rôle as the Creator. The red earth as a surrogate of blood in the Egyptian story is here replaced by earth _and_ blood.
But Marduk created not only men and animals but heaven and earth also. To do this he split asunder the carcase of the dragon which he had slain, the Great Mother Tiamat, the evil _avatar_ of the Mother-Goddess whose mantle had fallen upon his own shoulders. In other words, he created the world out of the substance of the "giver of life" who was identified with the red earth, which was the elixir of life in the Egyptian story. This is only one more instance of the way in which the same fundamental idea was twisted and distorted in every conceivable manner in the process of rationalization. In one version of the Osirian myth Horus cut off the head of his mother Isis and the moon-god Thoth replaced it with a cow's head, just as in the Indian myth Ganesa's head was replaced by an elephant's.]
[375: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 9.]
[376: Compare with this the story of Picus the giant who fled to Kirke's isle and there was slain by Helios, the plant [Greek: môly] springing from his blood (A. B. Cook, "Zeus," p. 241, footnote 15). For a discussion of _moly_ see Andrew Lang's "Custom and Myth".]
[377: Frazer, p. 6.]
[378: In Socotra a tree (dracæna) has been identified with the dragon, and its exudation, "dragon's blood," was called cinnabar, and confused with the mineral (red sulphide of mercury), or simply with red ochre. In the Socotran dragon-myth the elephant takes the hero's rôle, as in the American stories of Chac and Tlaloc (see Chapter II). The word _kinnabari_ was applied to the thick matter that issues from the dragon when crushed beneath the weight of the dying elephant during these combats (Pliny, XXXIII, 28 and VIII, 12). The dragon had a passion for elephant's blood. Any thick red earth attributed to such combats was called _kinnabari_ (Schoff, _op. cit._, p. 137). This is another illustration of the ancient belief in the identification of blood and red ochre.]
[379: "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 101.]
[380: In an interesting article on "The Water Lilies of Ancient Egypt" (_Ancient Egypt_, 1917, Part I, p. 1) Mr. W. D. Spanton has collected a series of illustrations of the symbolic use of these plants. In view of the fact that the papyrus- and lotus-sceptres and the lotus-designs played so prominent a part in the evolution of the Greek thunder-weapon, it is peculiarly interesting to find (in the remote times of the Pyramid Age) lotus designs built up into the form of the double-axe (Spanton's Figs. 28 and 29) and the classical _keraunos_ (his Fig. 19).]
[381: The Babylonian magic plant to prolong life and renew youth, like the red mineral _didi_ of the Egyptian story. It was also "the plant of birth" and "the plant of life".]
[382: Müller, Quibell, Maspero, and Sethe regard the "round cartouche," which the divine falcon often carries in place of the _ankh_-symbol of life, as a representation of the royal name (R. Weill, "Les Origines de l'Egypte pharaonique," _Annales du Musée Guimet_, 1908, p. 111). The analogous Babylonian sign known as "the rod and ring" is described by Ward (_op. cit._, p. 413) as "the emblem of the sun-god's supremacy," a "symbol of majesty and power, like the tablets of destiny".
As it was believed in Egypt and Babylonia that the possession of a name "was equivalent to being in existence," we can regard the object carried by the hawk or vulture as a token of the giving of life and the controlling of destiny. It can probably be equated with the "tablets of destiny" so often mentioned in the Babylonian stories, which the bird god _Zu_ stole from Bel and was compelled by the sun-god to restore again. Marduk was given the power to destroy or to create, _to speak the word of command_ and to control fate, to wield the invincible weapon and to be able to render objects invisible. This form of the weapon, "the word" or _logos_, like all the other varieties of the thunder-weapon, could "become flesh," in other words, be an animate form of the god.
In Egyptian art it is usually the hawk of Horus (the homologue of Marduk) which carries the "round cartouche," which is the _logos_, the tablets of destiny.]
[383: I quote Professor Canney's notes on the word _duda'im_ (Genesis xxx. 14) verbatim: "The _Encyclopædia Biblica_ says (s.v. 'Mandrakes'): 'The Hebrew name, _duda'im_, was no doubt popularly associated with _dodim_, [Hebrew: dodim], "love"; but its real etymology (like that of [Greek: mandragoras]) is obscure".
* * * * *
"The same word is translated 'mandrakes' in Song of Songs vii. 13.
"_Duda'im_ occurs also in Jeremiah xxiv, 1, where it is usually translated 'baskets' ('baskets of figs'). Here it is the plural of a word _dud_, which means sometimes a 'pot' or 'kettle,' sometimes a 'basket'. The etymology is again doubtful.
"I should imagine that the words in Jeremiah and Genesis have somehow or other the same etymology, and that _duda-im_ in Genesis has no real connexion with _dodim_ 'love'.
"The meaning 'pot' (_dud_, plur. _duda-im_) is probably more original than 'basket'. Does _duda-im_ in Genesis and Song of Songs denote some kind of pot or caldron-shaped flower or fruit?"]
[384: The Mother Pot is really a fundamental conception of all religious beliefs and is almost world-wide in its distribution.]
[385: The fruit of the lotus (which is a form of Hathor) assumes a form (Spanton, _op. cit._, Fig. 51) that is identical with a common Mediterranean symbol of the Great Mother, called "pomegranate" by Sir Arthur Evans (see my text-fig. 6, p. 179, _m_), which is a surrogate of the apple and mandrake. The likeness to the Egyptian hieroglyph for a jar of water (text-fig. 6, _l_) and the goddess _Nu_ of the fruit of the poppy (which was closely associated with the mandrake by reason of its soporific properties) may have assisted in the transference of their attributes. The design of the water-plant (text-fig. 7, _d_) associated with the Nile god may have helped such a confusion and exchange.]
[386: "A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians," revised and abridged, 1890, Vol. I, p. 323.]
[387: See, for example, Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Worship," Fig. 27, p. 46.]
[388: In a Japanese dragon-story the dragon drinks "sake" from pots set out on the shore (as Hathor drank the _didi_ mixture from pots associated with the river); and the intoxicated monster was then slain. From its tail the hero extracted a sword (as in the case of the Western dragons), which is now said to be the Mikado's state sword.]
[389: See Gauthier, _op. cit._, pp. 2 and 3.]
[390: Compare the dog-incident in the mandrake story.]
[391: Bostock and Riley add the comment that "the peony has no medicinal virtues whatever".]
[392: _Proceedings of the British Academy_, Vol. VIII, 1917, p. 16 (in the reprint).]
[393: I am indebted to Dr. Alphonse Mingana for this information. But the philological question is discussed in a learned memoir by the late Professor P. J. Veth, "De Leer der Signatuur," _Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie_, Leiden, Bd. VII, 1894, pp. 75 and 105, and especially the appendix, p. 199 _et seq._, "De Mandragora, Naschrift op het tweede Hoofdstuk der Verhandeling over de Leer der Signatuur".]
[394: Like the _Purpura_ and the _Pterocera_, the bryony and other shells and plants.]
[395: Larousse, Article "Mandragore".]
[396: I have already referred to another version of the churning of the ocean in which Mount Meru was used as a churn-stick and identified with the Great Mother, of whom the _mandara_ was also an avatar.]
[397: Which I shall discuss in my forthcoming book on "The Story of the Flood".]
[398: The phallic interpretation is certainly a secondary rationalization of an incident which had no such implication originally.]
[399: The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis ii. 17) produced fruit the eating of which opened the eyes of Adam and Eve, so that they realized their nakedness: they became conscious of sex and made girdles of fig-leaves (_vide supra_, p. 155). In other words, the tree of life had the power of love-provoking like the mandrake. In Henderson's "Celtic Dragon Myth" (p. xl) we read: "The berries for which she [Medb] craved were from the Tree of Life, the food of the gods, the eating of which by mortals brings death," and further: "The berries of the rowan tree are the berries of the gods" (p. xliii). I have already suggested the homology between these red berries, the mandrake, and the red ochre of Hathor's elixir. Thus we have another suggestion of the identity of the tree of paradise and the mandrake.]
The Measurement of Time.
It was the similarity of the periodic phases of the moon and of womankind that originally suggested the identification of the Great Mother with the moon, and originated the belief that the moon was the regulator of human beings.[400] This was the starting-point of the system of astrology and the belief in Fates. The goddess of birth and death controlled and measured the lives of mankind.
But incidentally the moon determined the earliest subdivision of time into months; and the moon-goddess lent the sanctity of her divine attributes to the number twenty-eight.
The sun was obviously the determiner of day and night, and its rising and setting directed men's attention to the east and the west as cardinal points intimately associated with the daily birth and death of the sun. We have no certain clue as to the factors which first brought the north and the south into prominence. But it seems probable that the direction of the river Nile,[401] which was the guide to the orientation of the corpse in its grave, may have been responsible for giving special sanctity to these other cardinal points. The association of the direction of the deceased's head with the position of the original homeland and the eventual home of the dead would have made the south a "divine" region in Predynastic times. For similar reasons the north may have acquired special significance in the Early Dynastic period.[402]
When the north and the south were added to the other two cardinal points the intimate association of the east and the west with the measurement of time would be extended to include all the four cardinal points.[403] Four became a sacred number associated with time-measurement, and especially with the sun.[404]
Many other factors played a part in the establishment of the sanctity of the number four. Professor Lethaby has suggested[405] that the four-sided building was determined by certain practical factors, such as the desirability of fashioning a room to accommodate a woven mat, which was necessarily of a square or oblong form. But the study of the evolution of the early Egyptian grave and tomb-superstructures suggests that the early use of slabs of stone, wooden boards, and mud-bricks helped in the process of determining the four-sided form of house and room.
When, out of these rude beginnings, the vast four-sided pyramid was developed, the direction of its sides was brought into relationship with the four cardinal points; and there was a corresponding development and enrichment of the symbolism of the number four. The form of the divine house of the dead king, who was the god, was thus assimilated to the form of the universe, which was conceived as an oblong area at the four corners of which pillars supported the sky, as the four legs supported the Celestial Cow.
Having invested the numbers four and twenty-eight with special sanctity and brought them into association with the measurement of time, it was a not unnatural proceeding to subdivide the month into four parts and so bring the number seven into the sacred scheme. Once this was done the moon's phases were used to justify and rationalize this procedure, and the length of the week was incidentally brought into association with the moon-goddess, who had seven _avatars_, perhaps originally one for each day of the week. At a later period the number seven was arbitrarily brought into relationship with the Pleiades.
The seven Hathors were not only mothers but fates also. Aphrodite was chief of the fates.
The number seven is associated with the pots used by Hathor's priestesses at the celebration inaugurating the new year; and it plays a prominent part in the Story of the Flood. In Babylonia the sanctity of the number received special recognition. When the goddess became the destroyer of mankind, the device seems to have been adopted of intensifying her powers of destruction by representing her at times as seven demons.[406]
But the Great Mother was associated not only with the week and month but also with the year. The evidence at our disposal seems to suggest that the earliest year-count was determined by the annual inundation of the river. The annual recurrence of the alternation of winter and summer would naturally suggest in a vague way such a subdivision of time as the year; but the exact measurement of that period and the fixing of an arbitrary commencement, a New Year's day, were due to other reasons. In the Story of the Destruction of Mankind it is recorded that the incident of the soothing of Hathor by means of the blood-coloured beer (which, as I have explained elsewhere,[407] is a reference to the annual Nile flood) was celebrated annually on New Year's day.
Hathor was regarded in tradition as the cause of the inundation. She slaughtered mankind and so caused the original "flood": in the next phase she was associated with the 7000 jars of red beer; and in the ultimate version with the red-coloured river flood, which in another story was reputed to be "the tears of Isis".
Hathor's day was in fact the date of the commencement of the inundation and of the year; and the former event marked the beginning of the year and enabled men for the first time to measure its duration. Thus Hathor[408] was the measurer of the year, the month, and the week; while her son Horus (Chronus) was the day-measurer.
In Tylor's "Early History of Mankind" (pp. 352 _et seq._) there is a concise summary of some of the widespread stories of the Fountain of Youth which restores youthfulness to the aged who drank of it or bathed in it. He cites instances from India, Ethiopia, Europe, Indonesia, Polynesia, and America. "The Moslem geographer, Ibn-el-Wardi, places the Fountain of Life in the dark south-western regions of the earth" (p. 353).
The star Sothis rose heliacally on the first day of the Egyptian New Year.[409] Hence it became "the second sun in heaven," and was identified with the goddess of the New Year's Day. The identification of Hathor with this "second sun"[410] may explain why the goddess is said to have entered Re's boat. She took her place as a crown upon his forehead, which afterwards was assumed by her surrogate, the fire-spitting uræus-serpent. When Horus took his mother's place in the myth, he also entered the sun-god's boat, and became the prototype of Noah seeking refuge from the Flood in the ship the Almighty instructed him to make.
In memory of the beer-drinking episode in the Destruction of Mankind, New Year's Day was celebrated by Hathor's priestesses in wild orgies of beer drinking.
This event was necessarily the earliest celebration of an anniversary, and the prototype of all the incidents associated with some special day in the year which have been so many milestones in the historical progress of civilization.
The first measurement of the year also naturally forms the starting-point in the framing of a calendar.
Similar celebrations took place to inaugurate the commencement of the year in all countries which came, either directly or indirectly, under Egyptian influence.
The month [Greek: Aphrodisia] (so-called from the festival of the goddess) began the calendar of Bithynia, Cyprus, and Iasos, just as Hathor's feast was a New Year's celebration in Egypt.
In the celebration of these anniversaries the priestesses of Aphrodite worked themselves up in a wild state of frenzy; and the term [Greek: hystêria][411] became identified with the state of emotional derangement associated with such orgies. The common belief that the term "hysteria" is derived directly from the Greek word for uterus is certainly erroneous. The word [Greek: hystêria] was used in the same sense as [Greek: Aphrodisia], that is as a synonym for the festivals of the goddess. The "hysteria" was the name for the orgy in celebration of the goddess on New Year's day: then it was applied to the condition produced by these excesses; and ultimately it was adopted in medicine to apply to similar emotional disturbances. Thus both the terms "hysteria" and "lunacy"[412] are intimately associated with the earliest phases in the moon-goddess's history; and their survival in modern medicine is a striking tribute to the strong hold of effete superstition in this branch of the diagnosis and treatment of disease.[413]
I have already referred to the association of Artemis with the portal of birth and rebirth. As the guardian of the door her Roman representative Diana and her masculine _avatar_ Dianus or Janus gave the name to the commencement of the year. The Great Mother not only initiated the measurement of the year, but she (or her representative) lent her name to the opening of the year in various countries.
But the story of the Destruction of Mankind has preserved the record not only of the circumstances which were responsible for originating the measurement of the year and the making of a calendar, but also of the materials out of which were formed the mythical epochs preserved in the legends of Greece and India and many other countries further removed from the original centre of civilization. When the elaboration of the early story involved the destruction of mankind, it became necessary to provide some explanation of the continued existence of man upon the earth. This difficulty was got rid of by creating a new race of men from the fragments of the old or from the clay into which they had been transformed (_supra_, p. 196). In course of time this _secondary_ creation became the basis of the familiar story of the _original_ creation of mankind. But the story also became transformed in other ways. Different versions of the process of destruction were blended into one narrative, and made into a series of catastrophes and a succession of acts of creation. I shall quote (from Mr. T. A. Joyce's "Mexican Archæology," p. 50) one example of these series of mythical epochs or world ages to illustrate the method of synthesis:--
When all was dark Tezcatlipoca transformed himself into the sun to give light to men.
1. This sun terminated in the destruction of mankind, including a race of giants, by _jaguars_.
2. The second sun was Quetzalcoatl, and his age terminated in a terrible _hurricane_, during which mankind was transformed into monkeys.
3. The third sun was Tlaloc, and the destruction came by a _rain of fire_.
4. The fourth was Chalchintlicue, and mankind was finally destroyed by a _deluge_, during which they became fishes.
The first episode is clearly based upon the story of the lioness-form of Hathor destroying mankind: the second is the Babylonian story of Tiamat, modified by such Indian influences as are revealed in the _Ramayana_: the third is inspired by the Saga of the Winged Disk; and the fourth by the story of the Deluge.
Similar stories of world ages have been preserved in the mythologies of Eastern Asia, India, Western Asia, and Greece, and no doubt were derived from the same original source.
[400: The Greek Chronus was the son of Selene.]
[401: Or possibly the situations of Upper and Lower Egypt.]
[402: See G. Elliot Smith, "The Ancient Egyptians".]
[403: The association of north and south with the primary subdivision of the state probably led to the inclusion of the other two cardinal points to make the subdivision four-fold.]
[404: The number four was associated with the sun-god. There were four "children of Horus" and four spokes to the wheel of the sun.]
[405: "Architecture," p. 24.]
[406: See the chapter on "Magic" in Jevons, "Comparative Religion". In his article "Magic (Egyptian)," in Hastings' _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_ (p. 266), Dr. Alan Gardiner makes the following statement: "The mystical potency attaching to certain _numbers_ doubtless originated in associations of thought that to us are obscure. The number seven, in Egyptian magic, was regarded as particularly efficacious. Thus we find references to the seven Hathors: _cf._ [Greek: ai hepta Tychai tou ouranou] (A. Dieterich, _Eine Mithrasliturgie_, Leipzig, 1910, p. 71): 'the seven daughters of Re,' who 'stand and weep and make seven knots in their seven tunics'; and similarly 'the seven hawks who are in front of the barque of Re'."
Are the seven daughters of Re the seven days of the week, or the representatives of Hathor corresponding to the seven days?]
[407: Chapter II, p. 118.]
[408: We have already seen that the primitive aspect of life-giving that played an essential part in the development of the story we are considering was the search for the means by which youth could be restored. It is significant that Hathor's reputed ability to restore youth is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts in association with her functions as the measurer of years: for she is said "to turn back the years from King Teti," so that they pass over him without increasing his age (Breasted, "Thought and Religion in Ancient Egypt," p. 124).]
[409: Breasted ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 22) states that as the inundation began at the rising of Sothis, the star of Isis, sister of Osiris, they said to him [_i.e._ Osiris]: "The beloved daughter, Sothis, makes thy fruits (rnpwt) in her name of 'Year' (rnpt)".]
[410: The Great Mother was identified with the moon, but when she became specialized, her representative adopted Sothis or Venus as her star.]
[411: "At Argos the principal fête of Aphrodite was called [Greek: hystêria] because they offered sacrifices of pigs ("Athen." III, 49, 96; "Clem. Alex. Protr." 33)"--Article "Aphrodisia," _Dict. des Antiquités_, p. 308. The Greek word for pig had the double significance of "pig" and "female organs of reproduction".]
[412: Aphrodite sends Aphrodisiac "mania" (see Tümpel, _op. cit._, pp. 394 and 395).]
[413: There is still widely prevalent the belief in the possibility of being "moonstruck," and many people, even medical men who ought to know better, solemnly expound to their students the influence of the moon in producing "lunacy". If it were not invidious one could cite instances of this from the writings of certain teachers of psychological medicine in this country within the last few months. The persistence of these kinds of traditions is one of the factors that make it so difficult to effect any real reform in the treatment of mental disease in this country.]
The Seven-headed Dragon.
I have already referred to the magical significance attached to the number seven and the widespread references to the seven Hathors, the seven winds to destroy Tiamat, the seven demons, and the seven fates. In the story of the Flood there is a similar insistence on the seven-fold nature of many incidents of good and ill meaning in the narrative. But the dragon with this seven-fold power of wreaking vengeance came to be symbolized by a creature with seven heads.
A Japanese story told in Henderson's notes to Campbell's "Celtic Dragon Myth"[414] will serve as an introduction to the seven-headed monster:--
"A man came to a house where all were weeping, and learned that the last daughter of the house was to be given to a dragon with _seven or eight_[415] heads who came to the sea-shore yearly to claim a victim. He went with her, enticed the dragon to drink _sake_ from pots set out on the shore, and then he slew the monster. From the end of his tail he took out a sword, which is supposed to be the Mikado's state sword. He married the maiden, and with her got a jewel or talisman which is preserved with the regalia. A third thing of price so preserved is a mirror."
The seven-headed dragon is found also in the Scottish dragon-myth, and the legends of Cambodia, India, Persia, Western Asia, East Africa, and the Mediterranean area.
The seven-headed dragon probably originated from the seven Hathors. In Southern India the Dravidian people seem to have borrowed the Egyptian idea of the seven Hathors. "There are seven Mari deities, all sisters, who are worshipped in Mysore. All the seven sisters are regarded vaguely as wives or sisters of Siva."[416] At one village in the Trichinopoly district Bishop Whitehead found that the goddess Kaliamma was represented by seven brass pots, and adds: "It is possible that the seven brass pots represent seven sisters or the seven virgins sometimes found in Tamil shrines" (p. 36). But the goddess who animates seven pots, who is also the seven Hathors, is probably well on the way to becoming a dragon with seven heads.
There is a close analogy between the Swahili and the Gaelic stories that reveals their ultimate derivation from Babylonia. In the Scottish story the seven-headed dragon comes in a storm of wind and spray. The East African serpent comes in a storm of wind and dust.[417] In the Babylonian story seven winds destroy Tiamat.
"The famous legend of the seven devils current in antiquity was of Babylonian origin, and belief in these evil spirits, who fought against the gods for the possession of the souls and bodies of men, was widespread throughout the lands of the Mediterranean basin. Here is one of the descriptions of the seven demons:--
"Of the seven the first is the south wind....
"The second is a dragon whose open mouth....
"The third is a panther whose mouth spares not.
"The fourth is a frightful python....
"The fifth is a wrathful ... who knows no turning back.
"The sixth is an on-rushing ... who against god and king [attacks].
"The seventh is a hurricane, an evil wind which [has no mercy].
"The Babylonians were inconsistent in their description of the seven devils, describing them in various passages in different ways. In fact they actually conceived of a very large number of these demons, and their visions of the other evil spirits are innumerable. According to the incantation of Shamash-shum-ukin fifteen evil spirits had come into his body and
"'My God who walks at my side they drove away.'
"The king calls himself 'the son of his God'. We have here the most fundamental doctrines of Babylonian theology, borrowed originally from the religious beliefs of the Sumerians. For them man in his natural condition, at peace with the gods and in a state of atonement, is protected by a divine spirit whom they conceived of as dwelling in their bodies along with their souls or 'the breath of life'. In many ways the Egyptians held the same doctrine, in their belief concerning the _ka_[418] or the soul's double. According to the beliefs of the Sumerians and Babylonians these devils, evil spirits, and all evil powers stand for ever waiting to attach (_sic_) (? attack) the divine genius with each man. By means of insinuating snares they entrap mankind in the meshes of their magic. They secure possession of his soul and body by leading him into sin, or bringing him into contact with tabooed things, or by overcoming his divine protector with sympathetic magic.... These adversaries of humanity thus expel a man's god, or genius, or occupy his body. These rituals of atonement have as their primary object the ejection of the demons and the restoration of the divine protector. Many of the prayers end with the petition, 'Into the kind hands of his god and goddess restore him'.
"Representations of the seven devils are somewhat rare.... The Brit. Mus. figurine represents the demon of the winds with body of a dog, scorpion tail, bird legs and feet" (S. Langdon, "A Ritual of Atonement for a Babylonian King," _The Museum Journal_ [University of Pennsylvania], Vol. VIII, No. 1, March, 1917, pp. 39-44).
But the Babylonians not only adopted the Egyptian conception of the power of evil as being seven demons, but they also seem to have fused these seven into one, or rather given the real dragon seven-fold attributes.[419]
In "The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia"[420] (British Museum), Marduk's weapon is compared to "the fish with seven wings".
The god himself is represented as addressing it in these words: "The tempest of battle, my weapon of fifty heads, which like the great serpent of seven heads is yoked with seven heads, which like the strong serpent of the sea (sweeps away) the foe".
In the Japanese story which I have quoted, the number of the dragon's heads is given as _seven_ or _eight_; and de Visser is at a loss to know why "the number eight should be stereotyped in these stories of [Japanese] dragons".[421]
I have already emphasized the world-wide association of the seven-headed dragon with storms. The Argonaut (usually called "Nautilus" by classical scholars) was the prophet of ill-luck and the storm-bringer: but, true to the paradox that runs through the whole tissue of mythology, this form of the Great Mother is also a benevolent warner against storms. This seems to be another link between the seven-headed dragon and these cephalopoda.
I would suggest, merely as a tentative working hypothesis, that the process of blending the seven _avatars_ of the dragon into a seven-headed dragon may have been facilitated by its identification with the _Pterocera_ and the octopus. We know that the octopus and the shell-fish were forms assumed by the dragon (see p. 172): the confusion between the numbers seven and eight is such as might have been created during the transference of the _Pterocera's_ attributes to the octopus (_vide supra_, p. 170); and the Babylonian reference to "the fish with seven wings," which was afterwards rationalized into "a great serpent with seven heads," seems to provide the clue which explains the origin of the seven-headed dragon. If Hathor was a seven-fold goddess and at the same time was identified with the seven-spiked spider-shell (_Pterocera_), the process of converting the shell-fish's seven "wings" into seven heads would be a very simple one for an ancient story-teller. If this hypothesis has any basis in fact, the circumstance that the beliefs concerning the _Pterocera_ must (from the habitat of the shell-fish) have come into existence upon the shores of Southern Arabia would explain the appearance of the derived myth of the seven-headed dragon in Babylonia.
My attention was first called to the possibility of the octopus being the parent of the seven-headed dragon, and one of the forms assumed by the thunderbolt, by the design upon a krater from Apulia.[422] The weapon seemed to be a conventionalization of the octopus. Though further research has led me to distrust this interpretation, it has convinced me of the intimate association of the octopus and the derived spiral ornament with thunder and the dragon, and has suggested that the process of blending the seven demons into a seven-headed demon has been assisted by the symbolism of the octopus and the _Pterocera_.
[414: "The Celtic Dragon Myth," by J. F. Campbell, with the "Geste of Fraoch and the Dragon," translated with introduction by George Henderson, Edinburgh, 1911, p. 134.]
[415: My italics.]
[416: Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras), "The Village Gods of South India," Oxford, 1916, p. 24.]
[417: "The Celtic Dragon Myth," p. 136.]
[418: See Chapter I, p. 47.]
[419: I do not propose to discuss here the interesting problems raised by this identification of the dragon with a man's good or evil spirit. But it is worthy of note that while the Babylonian might be possessed by seven evil spirits, the Egyptian could have as many as fourteen good spirits or _kas_. In a form somewhat modified by the Indian and Indonesian channels, through which they must have passed, these beliefs still persist in Melanesia; and the illuminating account of them given by C. E. Fox and F. W. Drew ("Beliefs and Tales of San Cristoval," _Journ. Roy. Anthropol. Inst._, Vol. XLV, 1915, p. 161), makes it easier to us to form some conception of their original meaning in ancient Babylonia and Egypt. The _ataro_ which possesses a man (and there may be as many as a hundred of these "ghosts") leaves his body at death and usually enters a shark (or in other cases an octopus, skate, turtle, crocodile, hawk, kingfisher, tree, or stone).]
[420: Vol. II, 19, 11-18, and 65, quoted by Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 282.]
[421: _Op. cit._, p. 150.]
[422: A. B. Cook, "Zeus," Vol. I, p. 337, in which (Fig. 269) the rider in the car is _welcoming_ the thunderbolt as a divine gift from heaven, _i.e._ as a life-amulet, a giver of fertility and good luck. For a design representing the octopus as a weapon of the god Eros see the title-page of Usener's "Die Sintfluthsagen," 1899.]
The Pig.
I have already referred to the circumstances that were responsible for the identification of the cow with the Great Mother, the sky, and the moon. Once this had happened, the process seems to have been extended to include other animals which were used as food, such as the sheep, goat, pig, and antelope (or gazelle and deer). In Egypt the cow continued to occupy the pre-eminent place as a divine animal; and the cow-cult extended from the Mediterreanean to equatorial Africa, to Western Europe, and as far East as India. But in the Mediterranean area the pig played a more prominent part than it did in Egypt.[423] In the latter country Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with the pig; and in Syria the place of Set as the enemy of Osiris (Adonis) was taken by an actual pig. But throughout the Eastern Mediterranean the pig was also identified with the Great Mother and associated with lunar and sky phenomena. In fact at Troy the pig was represented[424] with the star-shaped decorations with which Hathor's divine cow (in her rôle as a sky-goddess) was embellished in Egypt. To complete the identification with the cow-mother Cretan fable represents a sow suckling the infant Minos or the youthful Zeus-Dionysus as his Egyptian prototype was suckled by the divine cow.
Now the cowry-shell was called [Greek: choiros] by the Greeks. The pig, in fact, was identified both with the Great Mother and the shell; and it is clear from what has been said already in these pages that the reason for this strange homology was the fact that originally the Great Mother was nothing more than the cowry-shell.
But it was not only with the shell itself that the pig was identified but also with what the shell symbolized. Thus the term [Greek: choiros] had an obscene significance in addition to its usual meaning "pig" and its acquired meaning "cowry". This fact seems to have played some part in fixing upon the pig the notoriety of being "an unclean animal".[425] But it was mainly for other reasons of a very different kind that the eating of swine-flesh was forbidden. The tabu seems to have arisen originally because the pig was a sacred animal identified with the Great Mother and the Water God, and especially associated with both these deities in their lunar aspects.
According to a Cretan legend the youthful god Zeus-Dionysus was suckled by a sow. For this reason "the Cretans consider this animal sacred, and will not taste of its flesh; and the men of Præsos perform sacred rites with the sow, making her the first offering at the sacrifice".[426]
But when the pig also assumed the rôle of Set, as the enemy of Osiris, and became the prototype of the devil, an active aversion took the place of the sacred tabu, and inspired the belief in the unwholesomeness of pig flesh. To this was added the unpleasant reputation as a dirty animal which the pig itself acquired, for the reasons which I have already stated.
I have already referred to the irrelevance of Miss Jane Harrison's denial of the birth of Aphrodite from the sea (p. 141). Miss Harrison does not seem to have realized that in her book[427] she has collected evidence which is much more relevant to the point at issue. For, in the interesting account of the Eleusinian Mysteries (pp. 150 _et seq._), she has called attention to the important rite upon the day "called in popular parlance '[Greek: halade mystai],' 'to the sea ye mystics'" (p. 152), which, I think, has a direct bearing upon the myth of Aphrodite's birth from the sea.
The Mysteries were celebrated at full moon; and each of the candidates for admission "took with him his own pharmakos,[428] a young pig".
"Arrived at the sea, each man bathed with his pig" (p. 152). On one occasion, so it is said, "when a mystic was bathing his pig, a sea-monster ate off the lower part of his body" (p. 153). So important was the pig in this ritual "that when Eleusis was permitted (B.C. 350-327) to issue her autonomous coinage it is the pig she chooses as the sign and symbol of her mysteries" (p. 153).
"On the final day of the Mysteries, according to Athenæus, two vessels called _plemochoæ_ are emptied, one towards the East and the other towards the West, and at the moment of outpouring a mystic formulary was pronounced.... What the mystic formulary was we cannot certainly say, but it is tempting to connect the libation of the _plemochoæ_ with a formulary recorded by Proclos. He says 'In the Eleusinian mysteries, looking up to the sky they cried aloud "Rain," and looking down to earth they cried "Be fruitful"'" (p. 161).
In these latter incidents we see, perhaps, a distant echo of Hathor's pots of blood-coloured beer that were poured out upon the soil, which in a later version of the story became the symbol of the inundation of the river and the token of the earth's fruitfulness. The personification in the Great Mother of these life-giving powers of the river occurred at about the same time; and this was rationalized by the myth that she was born of the sea. She was also identified with the moon and a sow. Hence these Mysteries were celebrated, both in Egypt and in the Mediterranean, at full moon, and the pig played a prominent part in them. The candidates washed the sacrificial pig in the sea, not primarily as a rite of purification,[429] as is commonly claimed, but because the sacrificial animal was merely a surrogate of the cowry, which lived in the sea, and of the Great Mother,[430] who was sprung from the cowry and hence born of the sea. In the story of the man carrying the pig being attacked by a sea-monster, perhaps we have an incident of that widespread story of the shark guarding the pearls. We have already seen how it was distorted into the fantastic legend of the dog's rôle in the digging up of mandrakes. In the version we are now considering the pearl's place is taken by the pig, both of them surrogates of the cowry.
The object of the ceremony of carrying the pig into the sea was not the cleansing of "the unclean animal," nor was it _primarily_ a rite of purification in any sense of the term: it was simply a ritual procedure for identifying the sacrifice with the goddess by putting it in her own medium, and so transforming the surrogate of the sea-shell, the prototype of the sea-born goddess, into the actual Great Mother.
The question naturally arises: what was the real purpose of the sacrifice of the pig?
In the story of the Destruction of Mankind we have seen that originally a human victim was slain for the purpose of obtaining the life-giving human blood to rejuvenate the ageing king. Two circumstances were responsible for the modification of this procedure. In the first place, there was the abandonment of human sacrifice and the substitution of either beer coloured red with ochre to resemble blood (or in other cases red wine) or the actual blood of an animal sacrifice in place of the human blood. Secondly, the blood of the Great Mother herself (personified in the special _avatar_ that was recognized in a particular locality, the cow in one place, the pig in another, and so on) was regarded as more potent as a life-giving force than that of a mere mortal human being. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that this was the real reason for the abandoning of human sacrifice and the substitution of an animal for a human being. For it is unlikely that, in the rude state of society which had become familiarized with and brutalized by the practice of these bloody rites of homicide, ethical motives alone would have prompted the abolition of the custom of human sacrifice, to which such deep significance was attached. The substitution of the animal was prompted rather by the idea of obtaining a more potent elixir from the life-blood of the Great Mother herself in her cow- or sow-forms.
In the transitional stage of the process of substitution of an animal for a human being some confusion seems to have arisen as to the ritual meaning of the new procedure. If Moret's account of the Egyptian Mysteries[431] is correct--and without a knowledge of Egyptian philology I am not competent to express an opinion upon this matter--the attempt was made to identify the animal victim of sacrifice with the human being whose place it had taken. In the procession a human being wore the skin of an animal; and, according to Moret, there was a ceremony of passing a human being through the skin as a ritual procedure for transforming the mock victim into the animal which was to be sacrificed in his place. If there is any truth in this interpretation, such a ceremony must have been prompted by a misunderstanding of the meaning of the sacrifice, unless the identification of the sacrificial animal with the goddess was merely a secondary rationalization of the substitution which had been made for ethical or some other reasons.
We know that the dead were often buried in the skins of sacrificial animals, and so identified with the life-giving deities and given rebirth. We know also that in certain ceremonies the appropriate skins were worn by those who were impersonating particular gods or goddesses. The wearing of these skins of divine animals seems to have been prompted not so much by the idea of a reincarnation in animal form as by the desire for identification and communion with the particular deity which the animal represented. The whole question, however, is one of great complexity, which can only be settled by a critical study of the texts by some scholar who keeps clearly before his mind the real issues, and refuses to take refuge in the stereotyped evasions of conventional methods of interpretation.
The sacrifice of the sow to Demeter is merely a late variant of Hathor's sacrifice of a human being to rejuvenate the king Re. How the real meaning of the story became distorted I have already explained in