Serpent-Worship, and Other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism. C. Staniland Wake
is somewhat remarkable that, according to a statement of Diodorus, when Antiochus Epiphanes entered the temple at Jerusalem, he found in the Holy of Holies a stone figure of Moses, represented as a man with a long beard, mounted on an ass, and having a book in his hand.130 The Egyptian Mythus of Typhon actually said that Set fled from Egypt riding on a grey ass.131 It is strange, to say the least, that Moses should not have been allowed to enter the promised land, and that he should be so seldom referred to by later writers until long after the reign of David,132 and above all that the name given to his successor was Joshua—i.e., Saviour. It is worthy of notice that “Nun,” the name of the father of Joshua, is the Semitic word for fish, the Phallic character of the fish in Chaldean mythology being undoubted. Nin, the planet Saturn, was the fish-god of Berosus, and, as may possibly be shown, he is really the same as the Assyrian national deity Asshur, whose name and office have a curious resemblance to those of the Hebrew leader, Joshua.
But what was the character of the primitive Semitic deity? Bunsen seems to think that Plutarch in one passage alludes to the identity of Typhon (Seth) and Osiris.133 This is a remarkable idea, and yet curiously enough Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that Typhon-Seth may have been derived from the pigmy Pthath-Sokari-Osiris,134 who was clearly only another form of Osiris himself. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Horus, the son of Osiris, is declared to be at the same time Set, “by the distinction made between them by Thoth.”135 However that may be, the Phallic origin of Seth can be shown from other data. Thus it appears that the word Set means, in Hebrew as in Egyptian, pillar, and, in a general sense, the erect, elevated, high.136 Moreover, in a passage of the Book of the Dead, Set, according to Bunsen, is called Tet, a fact which intimates that Thoth inherited many of the attributes of Set.137 They were, however, in some sense the same deities, it being through Thoth that Set was identified with Horus. We have here an explanation of the statement that Tet, the Phœnician Taaut, was the snake-god, Esmun-Esculapius, the serpent being the symbol of Tet, as we have seen it to have been that of Seth also. In this we have a means of identifying the Semitic deity Seth with the Saturn of related deities of other peoples. Ewald says that “the common name for God, Eloah, among the Hebrews, as among all the Semites, goes back into the earliest times.”138 Bryant goes further, and declares that El was originally the name of the supreme deity among all the nations of the East.139 This idea is confirmed, so far as Chaldea is concerned, by later researches, which show that Il or El was at the head of the Babylonian Pantheon. With this deity must be identified the Il or Ilus of the Phœnicians, who was born the same as Cronus, who, again, was none other than the primeval Saturn, whose worship appears to have been at one period almost universal among European and Asiatic peoples. Saturn and El were thus the same deity, the latter, like the Semitic Seth, being, as is well known, symbolised by the serpent.140 A direct point of contact between Seth and Saturn is found in the Hebrew idol Kiyun mentioned by Amos, the planet Saturn being still called Kevan by Eastern peoples. This idol was represented in the form of a pillar, the primeval symbol of deity, which was common undoubtedly to all the gods here mentioned.141 These symbolical pillars were called betyli or betulia. Sometimes also the column was called Abaddir, which, strangely enough, Bryant identifies with the serpent-god.142 There can be no doubt that both the pillar and the serpent were associated with many of the sun-gods of antiquity.
Notwithstanding what has been said it is undoubtedly true, however, that all these deities, including the Semitic Seth, became at an early date recognised as sun-gods, although in so doing they lost nothing of their primitive character. What this was is sufficiently shown by the significant names and titles they bore. Thus, as we have seen, Set (Seth) itself meant the erect, elevated, high, his name on the Egyptian monuments being nearly always accompanied by a stone.143 The name, Kiyun or Kevan, of this deity, said by Amos to have been worshipped in the wilderness, signifies “god of the pillar.” The idea expressed by the title is shown by the name Baal Tamar, which means “Baal as a pillar,” or “Phallus,” consequently “the fructifying god.” The title “erect,” when given to a deity, seems always to imply a Phallic idea, and hence we have the explanation of the S. mou used frequently in the “Book of the Dead” in relation to Thoth or to Set.144 There is doubtless a reference of the same kind in the Phœnician myth, that “Melekh taught men the special art of creating solid walls and buildings;” although Bunsen finds in this myth “the symbolical mode of expressing the value of the use of fire in building houses.”145 That these myths embody a Phallic notion may be confirmed by reference to the Phœnician Kabiri. According to Bunsen, “the Kabiri and the divinities identified with them are explained by the Greeks and Romans as ‘the strong,’ ‘the great;’ ” while in the book of Job, Kabbîr, the strong, is used as an epithet of God. Again, Sydyk, the father of the Kabiri, is “the Just,” or, in a more original sense, the Upright; and this deity, with his sons, correspond to Ptah, the father of the Phœnician Pataikoi. Ptah, however, seems to be derived from a root which signifies in Hebrew “to open,” and Sydyk himself, therefore, may, says Bunsen, be described as “the Opener” of the Cosmic Egg.146 The Phallic meaning of this title is evident from its application to Esmun-Esculapius, the son of Sydyk, who, as the snake-god, was identical with Tet, the Egyptian Thoth-Hermes.
The peculiar titles given to these deities, and their association with the sun, led to their original Phallic character being somewhat overlooked, and instead of being the Father-Gods of human-kind, they became Powerful Gods, Lords of Heaven. This was not the special attribute taken by other sun-gods. As was before stated, Hermes and his related deities were “gods of the country,” personifying the idea of general natural fecundity. Among the chief gods of this description were the Phœnician Sabazius, the Greek Bacchus-Dionysos, the Roman Priapus, and the Egyptian Khem. All these deities agree also in being sun-gods, and as such they were symbolised by animals which were noted either for their fecundity or for their salaciousness. The chief animals thus chosen were the bull and the goat (with which the ram147 was afterwards confounded), doubtless because they were already sacred. The Sun appears to have been preceded by the Moon as an object of worship, but the moon-god was probably only representative of the primeval Saturn,148 who finally became the sun-god El or Il of the Syrian and Semites and the Ra of the Babylonians. The latter was the title also of the sun-god of Egypt, who was symbolised by the obelisk, and who, although his name was added to that of other Egyptian gods, is said to have been the tutelary deity of the stranger kings of the eighteenth dynasty,149 whom Pleyte, however, declares to have been Set (Sutech).150 We are reminded here of the opposition of Seth and Osiris, which has already been explained as arising from the fact that these deities originally represented two different ideas, human fecundity and the fruitfulness of nature. When, however, both of these principles became associated with the solar body, they were expressed by the same symbols, and the distinction between them was in great measure lost sight of. A certain difference was, nevertheless, still observable in the attributes of the deities, depending on the peculiar properties and associations of their solar representatives. Thus the powerful deity of Phœnicia was naturally associated with the strong, scorching, summer sun, whose heat was the most prominent attribute. In countries such as Egypt, where the sun, acting on the moist soil left by inundations, caused the earth to spring into renewed life, the mild but energetic early sun was the chief deity.
When, considering the sacred bull of antiquity, the symbol of the fecundating force in nature, Osiris, the national sun-god of the Egyptians, was referred to as distinguished from the Semitic Seth (Set), who was identified with the detested shepherd race. The association of Osiris with Khem shows his Phallic character,151 and, in fact, Plutarch asserts that he was everywhere represented with the phallus exposed.152 The Phallic idea enters, moreover, into the character of all the chief Egyptian deities. Bunsen says: “The mythological system obviously proceeded from ‘the concealed god’ Ammon to the creating god. The latter appears first of all as the generative power of nature in the Phallic god Khem, who is afterwards merged in Ammon-ra. Then sprung up the idea of the creative power in Kneph. He forms the divine limbs of Osiris (the primeval soul) in contradiction to Ptah, who as the strictly demiurgic principle, forms the visible world. Neith is the creative principle, as nature represented under a feminine form. Finally, her son Ra, Helios, appears as the last of the series, in the character