Part 15 (1/2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

”The Nagas are depicted in three forms: common snakes, guarding jewels; human beings with four snakes in their necks; and winged sea-dragons, the upper part of the body human, but with a horned, ox-like head, the lower part of the body that of a coiling-dragon. Here we find a link between the snake of ancient India and the four-legged Chinese dragon”

(p. 6), hidden in the clouds, which the dragon himself emitted, like a modern battles.h.i.+p, for the purpose of rendering himself invisible. In other words, the rain clouds were the dragon's breath. The fertilizing rain was thus in fact the vital essence of the dragon, being both water and the breath of life.

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

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

In the magnificent city that king Yaca?ketu saw, when he dived into the sea, ”wis.h.i.+ng trees that granted every desire” were among the objects that met his vision. There were also palaces of precious stones and gardens and tanks, and, of course, beautiful maidens (de Visser, p.

20).

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

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

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

[175: Breasted, _op. cit._, p. 11.]

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

[177: Arthur J. Evans, ”Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,” pp. 88 _et seq._]

The Dragon Myth.

The most important and fundamental legend in the whole history of mythology is the story of the ”Destruction of Mankind”. ”It was discovered, translated, and commented upon by Naville (”La Destruction des hommes par les Dieux,” in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, vol. iv., pp. 1-19, reproducing Hay's copies made at the beginning of [the nineteenth] century; and ”L'Inscription de la Destruction des hommes dans le tombeau de Ramses III,” in the _Transactions_, vol. viii., pp. 412-20); afterwards published anew by Herr von Bergmann (_Hieroglyphische Inscriften_, pls. lxxv.-lx.x.xii., and pp. 55, 56); completely translated by Brugsch (_Die neue Weltordnung nach Vernichtung des sundigen Menschengeschlechts nach einer Altagyptischen Ueberlieferung_, 1881); and partly translated by Lauth (_Aus aegyptens Vorzeit_, pp. 70-81) and by Lefebure (”Une chapitre de la chronique solaire,” in the _Zeitschrift fur aegyptische Sprache_, 1883, pp 32, 33)”.[178]

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

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

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

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

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

For it will be found that essentially the same stream of legends was flowing in all these countries, and that the scribes and painters have caught and preserved certain definite phases of this verbal currency.

The legends which have thus been preserved are not to be regarded as having been directly derived the one from the other but as collateral phases of a variety of waves of story spreading out from one centre.

Thus the comparison of the whole range of h.o.m.ologous legends is peculiarly instructive and useful; because the gaps in the Egyptian series, for example, can be filled in by necessary phases which are missing in Egypt itself, but are preserved in Babylonia or Greece, Persia or India, China or Britain, or even Oceania and America.

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