Serpent-Worship, and Other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism. C. Staniland Wake
to a connection with the Egyptian Her Her, or Hathor, who was the daughter of Seb and Netpe, as Hera was the daughter of Chronos and Rhea. The name of the god Kiyun, or Kevan, who was worshipped by the Hebrews, and who in Syria was said to devour children, seems, from its connection with the root kun, to erect, to point to the antediluvian Kain or Kevan. Kon, derived from the same root, was, according to Bunsen, a Phœnician designation of Saturn.167 Even the great Carthaginian sun-god Melekh, who was also “held in universal honour throughout Phœnicia,” seems, although Bunsen does not thus identify him, to be no other than Lamekh, the father of Noah, in one of the genealogies of Genesis. We may, perhaps, have in the sacrifices to the Phœnician deities, when the first-born sons of the people were offered on his altars, an explanation168 of the passage in Genesis which has so much puzzled commentators, where Lamekh is made to declare that he has “slain a man for his wound, and a youth for his hurt,” for which, while Cain was avenged seven times, Lamekh should be avenged seventy times seven times.169 The Phœnicians had a tradition that Kronos (Saturn) had sacrificed his own beloved son Yadid, and some ancient writers said that the human sacrifices to Moloch were in imitation of this act.170 This reason may not be the correct one for the use of human sacrifices, but the seventy times seven times in which Lamekh was avenged may well refer to the abundance of the victims offered on the altar of the Phœnician deity.
The priority of the Phallic superstition over “Arkism,” or rather the existence of that superstition before the formation of the Deluge legend, is proved, moreover, by its agreement with the myth of Osiris and Isis. This agreement forms the central idea of the explanation of pagan idolatry given by Faber, and yet it conclusively proves that the Noachian Deluge was simply a myth, having, like that of Osiris, a Phallic basis. Bunsen says “the myth of Osiris and Typhon, heretofore considered as primeval, can now be authoritatively proved to be of modern date in Egypt—that is to say, about the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C.”171 But it is this version of the Osirian myth which is said to be founded on the Noachian catastrophe, Typhon or The Evil Being, the persecutor of Osiris, being the Waters of the Deluge. The very foundation of the Hebrew legend is thus cut away, and from the fact, moreover, that the Egyptians had no tradition of a great flood, we must seek for another origin for the legend of which different phases were held by so many of the peoples of antiquity. The fact of Typhon (Seth) having been venerated in Egypt to so late a date as the thirteenth century B.C. is a proof that the myth, according to which he was the cruel persecutor of his brother Osiris, must have been of a later origin. The primitive form of the myth is easily recognised when it is known that both Osiris and Typhon (Seth) were sun-gods. Thus, according to Bunsen, “the myth of Osiris typifies the solar year, the power of Osiris is the sun of the lower hemisphere, the winter solstice. The birth of Horus typifies the vernal equinox—the victory of Horus, the summer equinox—the inundation of the Nile. Typhon is the autumnal equinox—Osiris is slain on the seventeenth of Athyr (November). … The rule of Typhon lasts from the autumnal equinox to the middle of December. He reigns twenty-eight years, or lives as long.”172 Thus the history of Osiris is “the history of the circle of the year,” and in his resurrection as Horus we see the sun resuscitating itself after its temporary eclipse during the winter solstice. Here Typhon is also a sun-god, his rule being at the autumnal equinox when the sun has its full power. This was the deity of the Semites and of the inhabitants of Lower Egypt, and his scorching force, doubtless, prepared the Egyptians, who venerated the milder Osiris, to look with abhorrence on Typhon-Seth, who had already, probably under the same influence, become a savage deity, delighting in burnt offerings and human sacrifices.173 No wonder, therefore, that when the worshippers of the Semitic god were driven out of Egypt, the god himself was treated as an enemy. Thus we are told that the enemies of Egypt and their gods contended with the gods of Egypt, who veiled themselves under the heads of animals in order to save themselves from Typhon. Moreover, when this Semitic god was thus degraded and transformed into an Evil Being, he would naturally come to be looked upon as the enemy of Osiris, seeing that he was already identified with the autumn sun, which during the autumnal equinox triumphs over the sun of Osiris; and we can easily understand how, if the myth of a Deluge, and the consequent destruction of all mankind but the father of the renewed human race, was introduced, Typhon would be the destroying enemy and Osiris the suffering and restored man-god.
If, as Dr. Faber supposes, the Egyptian myth was a form of that which relates to the Noachian Deluge, we can only suppose them to have had a similar basis, a basis which, from the very circumstances of the case, must be purely “Phallic.” This explanation is the only one which is consistent with a peculiarity in the Hebrew legend which is an insurmountable objection to its reception as the expression of a literal fact. We are told by the Mosaic narrative that Jehovah directed Noah to take with him into the ark “of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort.” Now, according to the ordinary acceptation of the legend, this passage expresses a simple absurdity, even on the hypothesis of a partial Deluge. If, however, we read the narrative in a Phallic sense, and by the ark understand the sacred Argha of Hindu mythology, the Yoni of Parvati, which, like the moon in Zoroastrian teaching, carries in itself the “germs of all things,” we see the full propriety of what otherwise is incomprehensible. The Elohim “created” the heavens and the earth, and on its destruction the seeds of all things were preserved in the ark to again cover the earth. Taken in this sense, we see the reason of the curious analogy which exists in various points between the Hebrew legends of the Creation and of the Deluge, this analogy being one of the grounds on which the hypothesis of the Great Father as the central idea of all mythologies has been based. Thus, the primeval ship, the navigation of which is ascribed to the mythological being, is not the ark of Noah or Osiris, or the vessel of the Phœnician Kabiri. It was the moon, the ship of the sun, in which his seed is supposed to be hidden until it bursts forth in new life and power. The fact that the moon was, in early mythologies, a male deity, almost necessitates, however, that there should have been another origin for the sacred vessel of Osiris. This we have in the Hastoreth-karnaim, the cow-goddess, whose horns represent the lunar ark, and who, without doubt, was a more primitive deity than the moon-goddess herself.174 The most primitive type of all, however, is that of the Argha or Yoni of the Indian Iswara, which from its name was supposed to have been turned into a dove.175 Thus, in Noah and the ark, as in Osiris and the moon, we see simply the combination of the male and female elements as they are still represented in the Hindu lingam. The introduction of the dove into the myth is a curious confirmation of this view. For this bird, which, as “the emblem of love and fruitfulness,” was “consecrated to Venus, under all her different names, at Babylon, in Syria, Palestine, and Greece;176 which was the national banner-sign of the Assyrians, as of the earlier Sythic empire, whose founders, according to Hindu tradition, took the name of Jonim or Yoniyas, and which attended on Janus, a diluvian ‘god of opening and shutting;’ was simply a type of ‘the Yoni’ or Jonah, or Navicular feminine principle,” which was said to have assumed the form of a ship and a dove.177
In bringing this essay to a close, some mention should be made of what may be called the modern religions, Brahminism, Buddhism, and Christianity, seeing that these still exist as the faiths of great peoples. As to the first of these, it may be thought that its real character cannot be ascertained from the present condition of Hindu belief. It is said that the religion of the Vedas is very different from that of the Puranas, which have taken their place. It should be remembered, however, that these books profess to reproduce old doctrine, the word “Purana” itself meaning old, and that Puranas are referred to in one of the Upanishads, while the Tantras, which contain the principles of the Sacti Puja, and which are as yet almost unknown to Europeans, are considered by the Brahmins to be more ancient than the Puranas themselves.178 The origin of the ideas contained in these books is a difficult question. The germs of both Vishnu-worship and Siva-worship appear to be found in the Vedas,179 and the worship of the linga is undoubtedly referred to the Mahabharata.180 It is more probable, as thought by Mr. Fergusson and other late writers, that they are only indirectly sprung from the primitive Hinduism. The similarity between Siva-ism and the Santal-worship of the Great Mountain pointed out by Dr. Hunter is very remarkable, and this analogy is strengthened by intermixture in both cases with river-worship.181 There is no doubt that the Great Mountain is simply a name for the Phallic