The Seven-headed Dragon.

[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 certainnumbersdoubtless originated in associations of thought that to us are obscure. The number seven, in Egyptian magic, was regarded as particularly efficacious. Thus we find references to the seven Hathors:cf.αἰ ἑπτὰ Τύχαι τοῦ οὐρανοῦ (A. Dieterich,Eine Mithrasliturgie, Leipzig, 1910, p. 71): 'the seven daughters of Re,' who 'stand and weep and make seven knots in their seven tunics'; and similarly 'the seven hawks who are in front of the barque of Re'."Are the seven daughters of Re the seven days of the week, or the representatives of Hathor corresponding to the seven days?[407]Chapter II, p. 118.[408]We have already seen that the primitive aspect of life-giving that played an essential part in the development of the story we are considering was the search for the means by which youth could be restored. It is significant that Hathor's reputed ability to restore youth is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts in association with her functions as the measurer of years: for she is said "to turn back the years from King Teti," so that they pass over him without increasing his age (Breasted, "Thought and Religion in Ancient Egypt," p. 124).[409]Breasted ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 22) states that as the inundation began at the rising of Sothis, the star of Isis, sister of Osiris, they said to him [i.e.Osiris]: "The beloved daughter, Sothis, makes thy fruits (rnpwt) in her name of 'Year' (rnpt)".[410]The Great Mother was identified with the moon, but when she became specialized, her representative adopted Sothis or Venus as her star.[411]"At Argos the principal fête of Aphrodite was called ὑστήρια because they offered sacrifices of pigs ("Athen." III, 49, 96; "Clem. Alex. Protr." 33)"—Article "Aphrodisia,"Dict. des Antiquités, p. 308. The Greek word for pig had the double significance of "pig" and "female organs of reproduction".[412]Aphrodite sends Aphrodisiac "mania" (see Tümpel,op. cit., pp. 394 and 395).[413]There is still widely prevalent the belief in the possibility of being "moonstruck," and many people, even medical men who ought to know better, solemnly expound to their students the influence of the moon in producing "lunacy". If it were not invidious one could cite instances of this from the writings of certain teachers of psychological medicine in this country within the last few months. The persistence of these kinds of traditions is one of the factors that make it so difficult to effect any real reform in the treatment of mental disease in this country.

[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 certainnumbersdoubtless originated in associations of thought that to us are obscure. The number seven, in Egyptian magic, was regarded as particularly efficacious. Thus we find references to the seven Hathors:cf.αἰ ἑπτὰ Τύχαι τοῦ οὐρανοῦ (A. Dieterich,Eine Mithrasliturgie, Leipzig, 1910, p. 71): 'the seven daughters of Re,' who 'stand and weep and make seven knots in their seven tunics'; and similarly 'the seven hawks who are in front of the barque of Re'."Are the seven daughters of Re the seven days of the week, or the representatives of Hathor corresponding to the seven days?

Are the seven daughters of Re the seven days of the week, or the representatives of Hathor corresponding to the seven days?

[407]Chapter II, p. 118.

[408]We have already seen that the primitive aspect of life-giving that played an essential part in the development of the story we are considering was the search for the means by which youth could be restored. It is significant that Hathor's reputed ability to restore youth is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts in association with her functions as the measurer of years: for she is said "to turn back the years from King Teti," so that they pass over him without increasing his age (Breasted, "Thought and Religion in Ancient Egypt," p. 124).

[409]Breasted ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p. 22) states that as the inundation began at the rising of Sothis, the star of Isis, sister of Osiris, they said to him [i.e.Osiris]: "The beloved daughter, Sothis, makes thy fruits (rnpwt) in her name of 'Year' (rnpt)".

[410]The Great Mother was identified with the moon, but when she became specialized, her representative adopted Sothis or Venus as her star.

[411]"At Argos the principal fête of Aphrodite was called ὑστήρια because they offered sacrifices of pigs ("Athen." III, 49, 96; "Clem. Alex. Protr." 33)"—Article "Aphrodisia,"Dict. des Antiquités, p. 308. The Greek word for pig had the double significance of "pig" and "female organs of reproduction".

[412]Aphrodite sends Aphrodisiac "mania" (see Tümpel,op. cit., pp. 394 and 395).

[413]There is still widely prevalent the belief in the possibility of being "moonstruck," and many people, even medical men who ought to know better, solemnly expound to their students the influence of the moon in producing "lunacy". If it were not invidious one could cite instances of this from the writings of certain teachers of psychological medicine in this country within the last few months. The persistence of these kinds of traditions is one of the factors that make it so difficult to effect any real reform in the treatment of mental disease in this country.

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 withseven or eight[415]heads who came to the sea-shore yearly to claim a victim. He went with her, enticed the dragon to drinksakefrom pots set out on the shore, and then he slew the monster. From the end of his tail he took out a sword, which is supposed to be the Mikado's state sword. He married the maiden, and with her got a jewel or talisman which is preserved with the regalia. A third thing of price so preserved is a mirror."

The seven-headed dragon is found also in the Scottish dragon-myth, and the legends of Cambodia, India, Persia, Western Asia, East Africa, and the Mediterranean area.

The seven-headed dragon probably originated from the seven Hathors. In Southern India the Dravidian people seem to have borrowed the Egyptian idea of the seven Hathors. "There are seven Mari deities, all sisters, who are worshipped in Mysore. All the seven sisters are regarded vaguely as wives or sisters of Siva."[416]At one village in the Trichinopoly district Bishop Whitehead found that the goddess Kālīamma was represented by seven brass pots, and adds: "It is possible that the seven brass pots represent seven sisters or the seven virgins sometimes found in Tamil shrines" (p. 36). But the goddess who animates seven pots, who is also the seven Hathors, is probably well on the way to becoming a dragon with seven heads.

There is a close analogy between the Swahili and the Gaelic stories that reveals their ultimate derivation from Babylonia. In the Scottishstory 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 theka[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 assevenoreight; 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-headeddragon 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 sevenavatarsof the dragon into a seven-headed dragon may have been facilitated by its identification with thePteroceraand 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 thePterocera'sattributes 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 thePteroceramust (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 thePterocera.

[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 orkas. 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. Theatarowhich 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 iswelcomingthe 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.

[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 orkas. 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. Theatarowhich 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 iswelcomingthe 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.

I have already referred to the circumstances that were responsible for the identification of the cow with the Great Mother, the sky, and the moon. Once this had happened, the process seems to have been extended to include other animals which were used as food, such as the sheep, goat, pig, and antelope (or gazelle and deer). In Egypt the cow continued to occupy the pre-eminent place as a divine animal; and the cow-cult extended from the Mediterreanean to equatorial Africa, to Western Europe, and as far East as India. But in the Mediterranean area the pig played a more prominent part than it did in Egypt.[423]In the latter country Osiris, Isis, and especially Set, were identified with the pig; and in Syria the place of Set as the enemy of Osiris (Adonis) was taken by an actual pig. But throughout the Eastern Mediterranean the pig was also identified with the Great Mother and associated with lunar and sky phenomena. In fact at Troy the pig was represented[424]with the star-shaped decorations with which Hathor's divine cow (in her rôle as a sky-goddess) was embellished in Egypt. To complete the identification with the cow-mother Cretan fable represents a sow suckling the infant Minos or the youthful Zeus-Dionysus as his Egyptian prototype was suckled by the divine cow.

Now the cowry-shell was called χοῖρος by the Greeks. The pig, in fact, was identified both with the Great Mother and the shell; and it is clear from what has been said already in these pages that the reason for this strange homology was the fact that originally the Great Mother was nothing more than the cowry-shell.

But it was not only with the shell itself that the pig was identified but also with what the shell symbolized. Thus the term χοῖρος had an obscene significance in addition to its usual meaning "pig" and its acquired meaning "cowry". This fact seems to have played some part in fixing upon the pig the notoriety of being "an unclean animal".[425]But it was mainly for other reasons of a very different kind that the eating of swine-flesh was forbidden. The tabu seems to have arisenoriginally 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. 150et seq.), she has called attention to the important rite upon the day "called in popular parlance 'ἄλαδε μύσται,' 'to the sea ye mystics'" (p. 152), which, I think, has a direct bearing upon the myth of Aphrodite's birth from the sea.

The Mysteries were celebrated at full moon; and each of the candidates for admission "took with him his own pharmakos,[428]a young pig".

"Arrived at the sea, each man bathed with his pig" (p. 152). On one occasion, so it is said, "when a mystic was bathing his pig, a sea-monster ate off the lower part of his body" (p. 153). So important was the pig in this ritual "that when Eleusis was permitted (b.c.350-327) to issue her autonomous coinage it is the pig she chooses as the sign and symbol of her mysteries" (p. 153).

"On the final day of the Mysteries, according to Athenæus, two vessels calledplemochoæare emptied, one towards the East and the other towards the West, and at the moment of outpouring a mysticformulary was pronounced.... What the mystic formulary was we cannot certainly say, but it is tempting to connect the libation of theplemochoæwith 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 itprimarilya 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 specialavatarthat 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 sacrificialanimals, and so identified with the life-giving deities and given rebirth. We know also that in certain ceremonies the appropriate skins were worn by those who were impersonating particular gods or goddesses. The wearing of these skins of divine animals seems to have been prompted not so much by the idea of a reincarnation in animal form as by the desire for identification and communion with the particular deity which the animal represented. The whole question, however, is one of great complexity, which can only be settled by a critical study of the texts by some scholar who keeps clearly before his mind the real issues, and refuses to take refuge in the stereotyped evasions of conventional methods of interpretation.

The sacrifice of the sow to Demeter is merely a late variant of Hathor's sacrifice of a human being to rejuvenate the king Re. How the real meaning of the story became distorted I have already explained in Chapter II ("Dragons and Rain Gods"). The killing of the sow to obtain a good harvest is homologous with the sacrifice of a maiden to obtain a good inundation of the river. The sow is the surrogate of the beautiful princess of the fairy tale. Instead of the maiden being slain, in one case, as Andromeda, she is rescued by the hero, in the other her place is taken by a sow. These late rationalizations are merely glosses of the deep motives which more than fifty centuries ago seem to have prompted early pharmacologists to obtain a more potent elixir than human blood by stealing from the heights of Olympus the divine blood of the life-giving deities themselves.

The pig was identified not only with the Great Mother, but with Osiris and Set also. With the pig's lunar and astral associations I do not propose to deal in these pages, as the astronomical aspects of the problems are so vast as to need much more space than the limits imposed in this statement. But it is important to note that the identification of Set with a pig was perhaps the main factor in riveting upon this creature the fetters of a reputation for evil. The evil dragon was the representative of both Set and the Great Mother (Sekhet or Tiamat); and both of them were identified with the pig. Just as Set killed Osiris, so the pig gave Adonis his mortal injury.[432]When these earthly incidents were embellished with a celestial significance, the conflict of Horus with Set was interpreted as the struggle between the forces of light and order and the powers of darkness and chaos. When worshipped as a tempest-god the Mesopotamian Rimmon was known as "the pig"[433]and, as "the wild boar of the desert," was a form of Set.

I have discussed the pig at this length because the use of the words χοῖρος by the Greeks, andporcusandporculusby the Romans, reveals the fact that the terms had the double significance of "pig" and "cowry-shell". As it is manifestly impossible to derive the word "cowry" from the Greek word for "pig," the only explanation that will stand examination is that the two meanings must have been acquired from the identification of both the cowry and the pig with the Great Mother and the female reproductive organs. In other words, the pig-associations of Aphrodite afford clear evidence that the goddess was originally a personification of the cowry.[434]

The fundamental nature of the identification of the cowry, the pig, and the Great Mother, the one with the other, is revealed not merely in the archæology of the Ægean, but also in the modern customs and ancient pictures of the most distant peoples. For example, in New Guinea the place of the sacrificial pig may be taken by the cowry-shell;[435]and upon the chief façade of the east wing of the ancient American monument, known as the Casa de las Monjas at Chichen Itza, the hieroglyph of the planet Venus is placed in conjunction with a picture of a wild pig.[436]

[423]And also, in a misunderstood form, even as far as America.[424]Schliemann, "Ilios," Fig. 1450, p. 616.[425]This is seen in the case of the Persian wordkhor, which means both "pig" and "harlot" or "filthy woman". The possibility of the derivation of the old English word "[w]hore" from the same source is worth considering.[426]L. R. Farnell, "Cults of the Greek States," Vol. I, p. 37.[427]"Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion."[428]Which, in fact, was intended as the equivalent of φάρμακον ἀθανασίας, "the redeeming blood".[429]Blackman ("Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt,"Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, March, 1918, p. 57; and May, 1918, p. 85) has shown that the idea of purification was certainly entertained.[430]In some places an image of the goddess was washed in the sea.[431]"Mystères Égyptiens."[432]Mr. Donald Mackenzie has collected a good deal of folk-lore concerning the pig ("Myths of Egypt," pp. 66et seq.; also his books on Babylonian, Indian, and Cretan myths,op. cit. supra).[433]According to Sayce, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 153, note 6.[434]In Egypt not only was the sow identified with Isis, but "lucky pigs" were worn on necklaces just like the earlier cowry-amulets (Budge, "Guide to the Egyptian Collections" (British Museum), p. 96).[435]Malinowski,Trans. and Proc. Royal Society, South Australia, XXXIX, 1915, p. 587et. seq.[436]Seler, "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Handschriften,"Zeitsch. f. Ethnologie, Bd. 41, 1909, p. 405, and Fig. 242 in Maudslay, "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Vol. III, Pl. 13.

[423]And also, in a misunderstood form, even as far as America.

[424]Schliemann, "Ilios," Fig. 1450, p. 616.

[425]This is seen in the case of the Persian wordkhor, which means both "pig" and "harlot" or "filthy woman". The possibility of the derivation of the old English word "[w]hore" from the same source is worth considering.

[426]L. R. Farnell, "Cults of the Greek States," Vol. I, p. 37.

[427]"Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion."

[428]Which, in fact, was intended as the equivalent of φάρμακον ἀθανασίας, "the redeeming blood".

[429]Blackman ("Sacramental Ideas and Usages in Ancient Egypt,"Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, March, 1918, p. 57; and May, 1918, p. 85) has shown that the idea of purification was certainly entertained.

[430]In some places an image of the goddess was washed in the sea.

[431]"Mystères Égyptiens."

[432]Mr. Donald Mackenzie has collected a good deal of folk-lore concerning the pig ("Myths of Egypt," pp. 66et seq.; also his books on Babylonian, Indian, and Cretan myths,op. cit. supra).

[433]According to Sayce, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 153, note 6.

[434]In Egypt not only was the sow identified with Isis, but "lucky pigs" were worn on necklaces just like the earlier cowry-amulets (Budge, "Guide to the Egyptian Collections" (British Museum), p. 96).

[435]Malinowski,Trans. and Proc. Royal Society, South Australia, XXXIX, 1915, p. 587et. seq.

[436]Seler, "Die Tierbilder der mexikanischen und der Maya-Handschriften,"Zeitsch. f. Ethnologie, Bd. 41, 1909, p. 405, and Fig. 242 in Maudslay, "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Vol. III, Pl. 13.

The evidence which has been collected by Mr. Wilfrid Jackson seems to suggest that the shell-cults originated in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea.

With the introduction of the practice of wearing shells on girdlesand necklaces and as hair ornaments the time arrived when people living some distance from the sea experienced difficulty in obtaining these amulets in quantities sufficient to meet their demands. Hence they resorted to the manufacture of imitations of these shells in clay and stone. But at an early period in their history the inhabitants of the deserts between the Nile and the Red Sea (Hathor's special province) discovered that they could make more durable and attractive models of cowries and other shells by using the plastic yellow metal which was lying about in these deserts unused and unappreciated. This practice first gave to the metal gold an arbitrary value which it did not possess before. For the peculiar life-giving attributes of the shells modelled in the yellow metal came to be transferred to the gold itself. No doubt the lightness and especially the beauty of such gold models appealed to the early Egyptians, and were in large measure responsible for the hold gold acquired over mankind. But this was an outcome of the empirical knowledge gained from a practice that originally was inspired purely by cultural and not æsthetic motives. The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic sign for gold was a picture of a necklace of such amulets; and this emblem became the determinative of the Great Mother Hathor, not only because she was originally the personification of the life-giving shells, but also because she was the guardian deity both of the Eastern wadys where the gold was found and of the Red Sea coasts where the cowries were obtained. Hence she became the "Golden Hathor," the prototype of the "Golden Aphrodite".

Fig. 9.—The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign nub. It represents a collar from which golden amulets, probably representing cowries, are suspended.Fig. 9.—The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign nub. It represents a collar from which golden amulets, probably representing cowries, are suspended.

Fig. 9.—The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign nub. It represents a collar from which golden amulets, probably representing cowries, are suspended.

It is a significant token of the influence of these Egyptian incidents upon the history of the Ægean that among the earliest gold ornaments found by Schliemann at Troy were a series of crude representations of cowries worn as pendants to a hair ornament.[437]

It is hardly necessary to insist upon the vast influence upon the history of civilization which this arbitrary value of gold has been responsible for exerting. For more than fifty centuries men have beensearching for the precious metal, and have been spreading abroad throughout the world the elements of our civilization. It has been not only the chief factor in bringing about the contact of peoples[438]and incidentally in building up our culture, but it has been the cause, directly or indirectly, of most of the warfare which has afflicted mankind. Yet these mighty forces were let loose upon the world as the result of the circumstance that early searchers for an elixir of life used the valueless metal to make imitations of their shell amulets!

The identification of gold with cowries may not have been the primary reason for the invention of gold currency. In fact, Professor Ridgeway has called attention to certain historical events which in his opinion forced men to convert their jewellery into coinage. But the fact that cowries were the earliest form of currency may have prepared the way for the recognition of the use of gold for a similar purpose. Moreover, we know that long before a real gold currency came into being rings of gold were in Egypt a form of tribute and a sign of wealth. Cowries acquired their significance as currency as the result of incidents in some respects analogous to those which impelled the early Egyptians to make gold models of the shells. In places in Africa far removed from the sea where the practice has grown up of offering vast numbers of cowries to brides on the occasion of their marriage (as fertility amulets) or of putting the shells in the grave (to secure for the dead fresh vital energy), the people offered their most treasured possessions, such as their cattle, in exchange for the amulets which were believed to confer such priceless social and religious boons. Cattle were therefore given in exchange for cowries, or the shells were used for the purchase of wives. When the new significance as currency developed a remarkable confusion occurred. In many places cowries were placed in the mouth of the dead to confer the breath of life: but when the cowries acquired the new meaning as currency, the people who had lost all knowledge of the original significance of this practice explained the cowries as money with which to pay Charon's fare to the other world. Then, in many places, the cowry was replaced by an actual metallic coin. Most scholars fall into the same error as these ancient rationalists,and accept their explanation of theobolusas though it were the real meaning of the act.

Another result of the use of gold models of shells as life-giving amulets was that the metal also acquired the reputation of being a giver of life,[439]which originally belonged merely to the shell or the imitation of its form, whatever the substance used for making the model.

Thus gold came to share the same magical reputation as the cowry and the pearl. It was also put to the same use: it was buried with the dead to confer a continuation of existence.

Not only was Hathor calledNūb,i.e."gold" or the golden Hathor: but the place where the funerary statue was made ("born") in Egypt was called the "House of Gold" and personified as a goddess who gave rebirth to the dead (Alan Gardiner, "The Tomb of Amenemhēt," p. 95; and A. M. Blackman,Journal of Egyptian Archæology, Vol. IV, p. 127).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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