THE NATURAL GENESIS

Parents who feel the full responsibility of teaching a little child that accepts as truth whatsoever is seriously affirmed ought surely to consider it an unpardonable sin against the innocence of infancy for their children to be taught that the fables of mythology are the sacred and true 'Word of God,' if found in the Hebrew scriptures. Where this is done, simplicity and credulity are continually wedded for life in childhood, and we cannot afterwards get rid of a faith that has been founded on falsities without loss of some natural simplicity in the process of finding out how profoundly we have been deceived, how unfathomably befooled. There are persons who have retained their childlike simplicity and credulity undivorced, in whose presence we are made to feel as though acquiring knowledge were to undergo a veritable biblical 'fall.' When the late Lord Stratford de Redcliffe[1], in conversation with the present writer, once remarked, 'Well, as between Mr. Darwin and Moses, I prefer Moses,' it almost made him shrink, ashamed of knowing better. The childlike simplicity of such a man forced one to feel that 'knowing,' when compared with believing, was a sort of Zulu process of 'smelling out.'

When the news came that the legend of the deluge had also been found on the cuneiform tablets, there was great rejoicing at first over this further proof that bible history was true. There was a reaction, however, when it was understood that the deluge in this case only lasted six or seven days! Some who subscribed to certain funds for the purpose of exploration began to fear lest too much might be discovered.

The eleventh tablet of the Izdubar series contains the Assyrian form of the deluge legend. According to the version rendered by George Smith, we are told that Izdubar, the solar god, importuned Xisithrus[2] to tell him the story. Then Xisithrus said to Izdubar,

* Rameses addressing Ptah-Nun as god of the celestial water says: 'I made thy noble boat, Neb-Heh, lord of the ages, of 530 cubits, on the river of the great real cedar-trees, with a head of acacia.'[3]

The ark being stored and equipped, Shamas bids Xisithrus enter it and close the door. Then,

This is neither mythos nor history, but a romance of mythology on its way towards becoming Hebrew history. It is one of a series of twelve legends of creation connected with the twelve zodiacal signs, and this, the eleventh, corresponds to the sun in the sign of the Waterman and the Akkadian month As a-an, the name of which signifies the 'curse of rain.' This is the Egyptian month Pa-Menat (Phamenoth), the month of the wet-nurse, who is portrayed as the suckler, the many-breasted goddess, the manifold fount of source in the sign of the Waterer (Hermean Zodiaci). Menat is the zodiacal form of the genetrix the earlier goddess of the Great Bear, Rerit, the suckler, whose type was the sow, or hippopotamus.

Such a title as the 'curse of rain' was calculated to turn the archaic myth into the legend of a great deluge and destruction by water, which became historic in the Hebrew version. But the archaic myth of the deluge did not originate in Akkad nor in Babylonia. According to Al-Biruni[4], the Persians and the great mass of the Magians denied the deluge altogether; they believed that the rulership (of the world) had remained with them without any interruption ever since Gayomard, who is, according to them, the first man. In denying the deluge the Indians, Chinese, and the various nations of the East concur with them. Some, however, of the Persians admit the fact of the deluge, but account for it in another way, as it is described in the books of the prophets. 'Know,' says Ibn Chaldûn, 'the Persians and Indians know nothing of the deluge' (Tufan)[5]. That is, as an actual inundation by which the human race was nearly obliterated. It is known well enough in the ancient scriptures as the 'deluge of time.' The 'rulership of the world' that remained with the mages from the time of Gayomard (or Great Bear and Sothis in Egypt) signifies that the time-cycles had been kept from the first. There could be no deluge of destruction for those who knew. We [p.174] shall see later on, that 'the deluge' only applied to the ignorant. In this light we can read the statement that 'after the flood Titan undertook a war against Kronus,' which shows that the conflict was continued between timelessness and time, chaos and creation; and the Kronian nature of the deluge will be amply demonstrated in the following pages[6].

We are told by certain writers that there is some resemblance between the Hebrew and other versions of the deluge legend, but that the Hebrew account is so much more simple, more dignified, and noble. Which means that in the Hebrew writings the myth is made to look more like history. But there is no value in a false appearance however much it resembles truth. Celsus might well chuckle when he pointed out that the Christian's account of the deluge with its 'ridiculous ark that held everything inside of it' was 'apart of his own mythology which had been literalized and amplified by them.'[7] Such a literalization of the ancient typology proved to him what ignorant idiotes were these promulgators of the newest superstition.

The 'flood' or 'deluge' was an accepted epoch used in computations by the Babylonian chronologers, but this was not the one historical epoch of the bibliolaters, seeing that they reckoned several, like the Egyptian priests, who pointed out that the Greek reckonings only included two deluges, whereas their own chronology counted various floods. Berosus reckoned from the flood; and one of his classifications of the minor dynasties runs up to about the year 2400 BC[8]. This, as near as can be calculated, is the exact epoch at which the equinoctial colure entered the sign of Aries. Beyond these, he enumerates another series of eighty-six kings whose reigns likewise extended to the flood. Now, if we allow twenty-five years for the average duration of these reigns, 25 Í 86 = 2150 years is about the period during which the equinox was in the sign of Taurus, i.e., 2155 years. In that case the flood would denote the end of the cycle of time (2155 years) during which the equinoctial colure had remained in the sign of the Gemini, before it passed into the sign of Taurus; and so on round the backward circle of precession or recession; for M. Oppert has shown that the Babylonians dated a deluge, if not the deluge, by the year 41,697 BC[9].

According to Censorinus and Varro[10], the Jews calculated that the deluge of Noah occurred about 2360 BC, which is within some forty or fifty years of the time of the flood that took place when the equinox entered the sign of the Ram; and is quite near enough for a tradition, or for a computation short of the most exact. Again, the chronology of the Septuagint shows an interval of 2242 years between the creation and the Noachian flood. And seeing that the exact time allowed for [p.175] the equinox to remain in one sign is 2155 years, it looks as if that was the period of time they were groping after. In the language of the mythical typology the end of such a period would be described as a deluge of time. Abû-Ma'shar Albalkhi supposed that the deluge occurred at the place of conjunction of the stars in the last part of the sign of Pisces and the first of Aries[11]. Or, to reverse it according to the movement of precession, when the equinox passed out of Aries into Pisces; this was the ending of a time-cycle that may be correctly described as the deluge of 255 BC. In keeping with this reckoning the next great deluge is due in the year 1900, when the colure of the vernal equinox will pass into the sign of Aquarius; and from now till then there will probably be rumours and prophecies of great changes, which will be remotely related to the fact, the gnosis or tradition not being absolutely lost although dateless.*

* 'The late transit of Venus curiously proved the accurate calculations of the ancient makers of that famous horological curiosity, the Strasburg clock. A few days before the transit, the American Register tells us, visitors to the Cathedral inspecting the planetarium attached to the clock, noticed that one of the small gilt balls representing Venus was gradually moving towards a point between the sun and the earth, and on the day of the passage the ball stood exactly between them. Old Conrad Dasypodius, the Strasburg mathematician, superintended the manufacture of the clock and its accompanying planetarium, some time between 1571-4, the dates differing according to various authorities; and it is interesting to note that after 300 years of existence, the clock faithfully fulfils the calculations of its dead inventor.'[12]

The same identical myth of the deluge as that on the tablets may be found in the Vendidad[13] where the threatened destruction does not definitely take the shape of drowning at all. In Genesis the destruction of the world is the second act to the creation, which is the first. So is it in the Avesta. The first Fargard of the Vendidad describes the creation of the world by Ahura-Mazda. In the second a great destruction is prognosticated. 'Then spake Ahura-Mazda to Yima, saying, "Upon the corporeal world will the evil of winter come. A vehement destroying frost will arise. Snow will fall in abundance on the summits of the mountains, on the breadth of the heights."' So far as the 'deluge' is predicted, it is to be found only in the statement that 'The waters (will) flow in front' and 'behind is the melting snow.'[14] Nor are there any instructions given for building a ship, as in the Hebrew and Assyrian versions. Yet the meaning is the same in relation to the mythos or kronian allegory.

Yima is commanded to make a four-cornered circle. This is the literal sense, although the translators, thinking of earth only, have been perplexed in rendering the passage. The Gujarat version has a four-cornered square. But the four-cornered circle is celestial, containing the four cardinal points. This is to take the place of the paradise in Airyana-Vaéjo, and to become the dwelling for all mankind. Seed of all life, of human beings, cattle, birds, trees, of all that [p.176] is largest, best and most beautiful, was to be stored up in this enclosure with fire and water and all things necessary to replenish the earth. All the inhabitants were to be brought in in pairs. Then Yima created the in closure as commanded, 'the length of a riding-course to all four corners,' as a dwelling for man; and 'thither he brought the seed of cattle, beasts of burden, men, dogs, birds, and red-burning fires.' 'There he collated the water to the length of a hatra.' 'There he made the birds to dwell; in the everlasting region (golden-hued), whose food never fails. There made he dwelling-places.' 'Thither brought he the seed of all men and women, who on this earth are the tallest, best, and most beautiful. Thither brought he the seeds of all kinds of cattle, which on this earth are the largest best, and most beautiful. Thither brought he the seeds of all trees, which on this earth are the loftiest and sweetest-smelling. Thither brought he the seeds of all foods, which on the earth are most fragrant. All these he made in pairs and imperishable; even to the men who were in the circle.' 'At the top part of the region he made nine bridges; six in the middle, three at the bottom.' 'Round about this circle (he made) a lofty wall, a window that gave light within,' like the window of Noah's ark. Then the question is asked, 'Creator of the corporeal world, pure one! of what kind are the lights in the circle which Yima has made?' and the answer is, 'Self-created lights and created in order (constellations). Of a single kind (one kind) and course are seen the stars, the moon, and the sun.' The other kind appear to be those that were figured or constellated by Yima in making his circle. Then it is asked, 'Who has spread abroad the Mazdayasnian law in this circle which Yima has made?' and the reply is, 'The bird Karshipta.'[15]

Of this bird which made known the true law, it says in the Bundahish, 'The Karshipt which they call the falcon (kark) was the first of birds' that was brought to the enclosure of Yima. It was the flutterer of revelation and a form of the word. The falcon agrees with the solar hawk as the bird of fire, light, or soul, and is an equivalent for the phoenix dove or eagle, which we shall find to be the lawgiver and time-teller in other myths of the ark and deluge. In the Bundahish the deluge takes place before the creation of man on the earth. So says the translator; that is, the deluge as a condition, not an event; because the heaven was the celestial water which had to he divided and bounded by the timekeepers. It is also the inundation of Tishtar who was a primordial timekeeper as the Dog-star, and whose lapse was a form of the 'fall' in heaven[16].

There is a river or source described in the Bundahish, which ZadSparam says comes out of the middle of the earth. It is called the Daitih river that issues forth from Airyana-Vaéjo and is full of noxious creatures. Traditionally this is understood to be a subterranean [p.177] channel or drain (avaêpaêm)[17]. It is referred to in the Avesta as the bait which comes out of Airyana-Vaéjo, 'while they perform work with it,' but 'some say that it comes out in a stream unless they perform the work of the place.'[18] This bait has only been looked for geographically. It is identical with the têt or tepht (Eg.), Welsh dyfed, English depth, and Chaldean thavthe. The meaning is, that it is the good bait whilst regulated, but if neglected, the flood follows, or the water rushes out in a stream, as the opposite of the good Daitih, the organization on which Airyana-Vaéjo was founded as the perfect place.

In the later Norse mythos the roaring cauldron of Hvergelmir is the central source of twelve rivers that answer to the twelve divisions of the zodiac, or the waters which they divided into twelve parts. This corresponds to the cauldron of Ked and of Pridhain which was a type of time, it boiled for a year and a day, and when not strictly attended to, it burst in two, causing a deluge of destruction.

The Mechoacans likewise relate that mankind became neglectful of their duties and forgetful of their origin, and therefore were punished by a deluge; the human family being wholly destroyed, except Tezpi with his wife and children. Tezpi shut himself up in a chest of wood with all kinds of useful seeds. When the waters began to subside he sent forth a bird which did not return to him. He sent others, and at last the smallest one came back with a green branch in its beak, and he then knew the deluge was over and gone[19].

The true doctrine of the deluge of time is expressed in the Sûrya-Siddhânta, where it is applied to the period of seventy-one or seventytwo years, which make one day of the great year, 72 Í 360 = 25,920. 'One-and-seventy ages are styled here a Patriarchate (Manvantara) at its end is said to be a twilight, which has the number of years of a golden age and which is a deluge.'[20]

A deluge and a twilight then are interchangeable figures for the ending of a time. Zechariah, in prophesying the end of a period, uses both figures. A fountain is to burst forth. The mount is to be cloven in twain: 'And it shall come to pass in that day the light shall not be clear nor dark, but the day shall be one not day nor night.'[21] That is the typical twilight of the Hindu Manvantara.

In the supposed prophecy of Daniel, the messiah was to come, and the end of the restored city was to be with a food[22]. The typology has the same meaning in Esdras.

The Assyrian deluge ended on the seventh day, and the deluge is described by Esdras as a silence of seven days. He says, 'The world shall be turned into the old silence seven days, like as in the former judgments, so that no man shall remain. And after seven days the [p.178] world that yet awaketh not shall be raised up, and that shall die that is corrupt. And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her, and so shall the dust of those that dwell in silence; and the secret places shall deliver those souls that were committed unto them. And the Most High shall appear upon the seat of judgment, and misery shall pass away.' But this deluge or day of doom being described according to the gnosis, it is expressly declared that 'the day of doom shall be the end of this time,' and the 'beginning of the immortality for to come.'[23]*

* As the time cycles were all connected in the total combination of Egyptian chronology, and the festival of thirty years was a most important factor, it may be pointed out that there was a difference of seven days and six hours every thirty years between the Egyptian solar and civil years. These seven days were timekeepers at the end of a period. This festival, called the Sut-Heb, was connected with Sothis, the lady of the year, who may be alluded to by Esdras as 'the bride' who comes with the son, as Isis did with Horus. It will be shown that a seven days' festival preceded a festival of the seventh day.

The year in Egypt consisted of three months deluge and nine months dry. Hence the dry-time and inundation were the 'Two Truths' of the year. The end of a time was a deluge, just as it is reckoned in inner Africa by the coming of the rainy season; and its antithesis of the re-beginning is symbolized by kindling the new fire. The end of an astronomical period being typified as a deluge, the period itself was a drought. Thus we have the symbolism of drought and deluge.

In the Chinese Bamboo Books we meet with a seven years drought[24]. That means to us seven years of famine; and so it has been translated in the Chinese books. But the meaning is not literal.

For example, 'drought' was personified by the Chinese as 'one of the six honoured ones' who was worshipped in connection with the sun, moon, stars, seasons, cold, and heat[25]. But they did not pay adoration to famine. The seven years are probably the seven Patriarchates or Manvantaras (seventy-one or seventy-two years) of the Hindus, which made the phoenix-cycle of 500 years, or a week in the great year. Enoch says he was born seventh in the week, at the end of which the deluge or destruction will take place[26], and in the 500th year of Enoch's life, in the seventh month, on the fourteenth day of the month, the cataclysm occurs. In that parable we find the phoenix-cycle of 500 years, which forms the seven great years drought or dry of the mythos.

In the second book of Esdras[27], Enoch is described as being one of two living creatures who were placed in two regions, Enoch being the ruler over the dry division and Leviathan over the wet or moist division, where he was merely confined and kept to be devoured at any time; the divisions being seven in number, corresponding to the seven Manvantaras of the Puranas.

The Hindu twilight of the gods, which is equivalent to a deluge, [p.179] occurs as a mist in a Chinese myth. In the fiftieth year and the seventh month, on the day of Kang-Shin in the reign of Hwang-ti, the phoenixes arrived and the heavens for three days and three nights were wrapped in mist. When the mist removed, Hwang-ti made an excursion on the Lo and saw a great fish. To this he sacrificed five victims, whereupon torrents of rain poured down during seven days and seven nights. Then the fish floated off to sea, and Hwang-ti obtained the map-writings. The dragon-writing came forth from the Ho, the tortoise-writing from the Lo, in the red lines and seal-characters; these were given to Heen-Yuen. In this account we have the arrival of the phoenix, a twilight or mist, a deluge of seven days' duration, together with the writings that were said to be lost or buried during the flood. It may be observed incidentally that the different appearances of the fish-man with the tortoise-book called the 'Great Plan,' containing 'all about the regulating of the waters,' in the Chinese mythos, is identical with those of the merman Oannes in the Chaldean account, who came up out of the deep to teach astronomy and other arts.

In the first two instances the Chinese fish-man is spoken of as the tortoise that bore on its back an inscribed great plan or tally, the river-scheme, afterwards called the 'Tortoise Book'; but the fish-man also appears in person to Yu, coming up out of the deep to teach, and then returning, just as in the Chaldean legend[28].

The arrival of the phoenixes agrees with the end of a phoenix-cycle. Horapollo tells us the phoenix in Egypt was a sign of the end of a long cycle of time or an inundation[29].

In the Book of Enoch it is intimated that at the time of the deluge the spirit of wisdom was withdrawn from the earth[30]. In other accounts it is the book of wisdom or the time-reckonings that has to be recovered from the waters which have burst their boundaries and buried the plan or register that was originally brought from the deep by the fish-man or, still earlier, woman of the waters, who was first represented in Egypt by the hippopotamus and crocodile of Typhon, and afterwards by the fish of Hathor.

In the Masonic mysteries the book is lost, and the initiates have to seek and find the mystic word in the shape of the lost register or record of the law—a plate upon which is figured the double triangle, called the seal of Solomon; that is the figure of the sixfold heaven, framed and built by Ptah and Ma; the heaven of nine divisions, completed by the abyss in the north, through which the sun-god voyaged in his ark and out-rode the deluge every year, or bridged over the dark break in the circle of light where the book was lost and the word has to be found.

Various avatars or manifestations of Vishnu are described as being [p.180] undertaken to recover the writings and other treasures that are drowned by the deluge.

A Marquesan myth of the deluge relates that the Lord Ocean, Fatu-Moana, was about to overflow the world, but granted seven days for preparation. A house was to be built which should tower high above the waters, with storeys, chambers, and openings for light. The cattle were collected in pairs, of all kinds, and marched into a vessel called a 'long deep wood.' The family saved consisted of four men and four women, the same as in the Hebrew myth. The storm burst, and the 'Sacred Supporter' of the universe slept like Brahma during the night of dissolution, when the earth and waters were all mixed up together, and chaos had come again. After a while the waters retreated, the mountain-tops reappeared, the Lord Ocean commands the dry land to emerge. The chief of the family offers to sacrifice to the Lord seven holy and precious things and seven sucklings. Then the dark bird 'te Teetina a Tanaoa,' whose name shows its dark colour, was sent out of the vessel over the Sea of Hawaii, but returned to it again. The wind sets in from the north. A second time the dark bird goes and returns. Another bird, called te Teetina a Moepo, is sent out. It alights upon dry land, and returns with young shoots or twigs in its beak—the branch of promise and peace. Then followed the debarkation from the 'long deep wood.' This is like a replica of the Semitic version, but both are derived from the far older source. It was not the Hebrews who set the deluge typology—the river, the inundation, the argo, raven and dove (or the black and light birds), the altar, and the man offering sacrifice—in the planispherei.

In a native chant there is an allusion to the words or books which were hidden during the deluge[31].

The woman of the water-bowl is fellow to the Egyptian Nu-Pe, who carries or pours out the waters from her vase; or to Menat, the wetnurse, who had been continued from Typhon the dragon.

According to a myth of the Red Indians the deluge was let in by the black serpent, the typhonian type of the disorder and chaos that preceded creation, order, and time.

The story of Manabozho's deluge has also been told in the following pictographs: Number one is the earth; number two is Menaboju, a great brave and chief; number three is Menaboju's wigwam, in which he lived, sometimes with one squaw, sometimes with two; number four, the squaw's quarrel; number five, Menaboju caught between two trees, released by the bear, goes home and beats his wives; number six, the king of the turtles sat on the bank of a river, and when asked by Menaboju's grandson to help him over, made the river broader so that the little one was drowned; the king devoured him, but was caught in the act by Menaboju and killed; when the turtles on this declared war against Menaboju, and produced the great deluge, Menaboju first carried his grandmother on to a lofty mountain; number seven, He himself mounted to the top of the tallest pine on the tallest mountain in the world, and waited there till the deluge was over, there the loon and the musk-rat came to him; number nine shows two islands which Menaboju made, a little one which did not bear his weight, a large one which supported him and afterwards became the new world number ten, animals, which Menaboju sent forth to look for his grandmother, inform her of the new creation and lead her back to the mountain[34]. In this version the two wives, the turtles, the great tree, the lofty mountain, and the ancient grandmother are all recognizable types.

In an Arawak myth the waters had been confined to the hollow bole of an enormous tree by means of an inverted basket, the Wallamba or Warrampa, which repressed the swelling fountain within by magic power. The monkey saw this inverted basket, and thinking it must cover something good to eat lifted it up, when out burst the deluge. The monkey found he could not withstand the waters, but on seeing the duck triumphantly swimming them, he there and then acquired such a horror of the duck that his descendants have never since been able to look a duckling in the face. This story may be [p.182] said to be composed in hieroglyphics. The duckling is a sign of departure by water, equivalent to the boat, Ua. The Egyptian clepsydra, or water-clock, consists of a dog-headed monkey sitting on a basket, the neb sign; and neb, the basket, also means to float and swim. The basket that kept in the deluge was one with the basket of the Egyptian timepiece, and the monkey who let in the deluge by lifting the basket is identical with the monkey that keeps time while sitting on the basket, only the Egyptians were able to portray the same types visibly. A corrupt passage in Horapollo can be corrected by remembering that the ape kept the landing-place at the equinox which followed the crossing of the waters[35]. Sigu, the Noah of this deluge, escapes, together with his little community, by climbing up a tree, the coconut (?) palm. They were driven by the rising waters to the topmost branches. From time to time Sigu dropped some seed into the waters, judging of their nearness by the sound of the splash. At last was heard the joyful sound of the seed striking the soil of earth, and it was known that the waters had subsided and the deluge was over[36]. With this should be compared the tree in the planispherei with the dog in its branches and the virgin mother of the seed holding the corn in her hands, the time being toward the end of the inundation. It has been shown how the tree of two, four, seven, or twelve branches was a figure of the heaven that was divided on purpose to keep time. Thus the tree may be considered to contain and restrain the waters within its primitive boundary, and the deluge be represented as bursting forth from it. Also the tree of the four quarters, the tat-cross, was the pedestal of the ape of the equinox in Egypt.

As we have seen, the gourd or calabash was a figure of the first heaven that opened in the beginning. This likewise contained the waters. Hence the natives of Haiti have a tradition that the flood burst forth from a most capacious gourd. In this gourd were contained the swelling waters and fishes, likewise the bones of the only son of a cacique. The gourd was upset by some meddler who wished to spy out its contents, when out burst the deluge. The gourd or calabash was also a primitive form of the ark[37].

A myth preserved by the Pimas affirms that the only man, if, indeed, he were a man, saved from the deluge was Szeukha, the son of the creator, and he escaped from the general doom by floating on a ball of resin[38]. The ball of resin is also typified in heaven as a constellation. Resin was a substance of great mystical significance in Egypt, probably from its use in embalming the mummy. In the hieroglyphics resin (the tahn) is a type of preservation. In the Ritual the deceased or mummy is said to go 'purified in the place of birth.' 'He has been steeped in resin in the place of preservation.'

[p.183] The place of preservation is where the body and soul are united to be saved. Resin is also said to be the eye of Horus the saviour. A plate of tahn was given to the dead who crossed the waters as a type of protection and salvation. This as the eye (or eyeball) of Horus (who like Szeukha is the son of the creator) was figured at the place of the vernal equinox, where the youthful sun-god emerged from the waters. It may be seen in the zodiac of Denderahi, placed on the colure between the Ram and Fishes. This is literally an eyeball of resin (tahn) figured at the exact spot where the father was reproduced as his own son who ascended in the solar bark after the passage of the waters, otherwise called the deluge.*

* Both the eye and resin were types of preservation and salvation, and therefore are interchangeable. In the Ute language the eye and seed have the same name; the eye reproduces the likeness, so does the seed, although in a different way. Thus the eye of the potato is the shoot of the seed.

It may be worth noticing for the sake of comparison that the divine ancestor of various North American Indian tribes, the Mandans, Crows, and Minetarrees, is their Noah who was saved from the great flood in an ark. They designate him Num-Ank-Machan. They bring offerings to him because the lord of life gave him great power. Sometimes they worship Num-Ank, at others he is fused with the lord of life and of breath[39]. Now, the Egyptian Num is the lord of the inundation, who, as Net is the lord of breath. He was elevated to the sphere as Canopus, pilot of the ark or argo. Ankh (Eg.) means life, the lord of life, and the makhen is the canoe in which the dead cross the waters in death and escape from the inundation of the underworld.

A Caddoque myth relates that the master of life appeared to Sakechak and told him of the world's coming doom. Sakechah was to be saved by gathering hemlock cones, with the trunk and leaves of the tree, which he was instructed to burn, along with dry branches of the oak, kindled with wild rice straw. When these were burnt, he was to take the ashes and strew them in a circle round the hill Weeheganawan. There was no need of collecting the animals within this charmed circle, as the living creatures sought it themselves, and retreated into it for safety during the flood.

It is noticeable that the one who escapes from the deluge in the Carib myth is named Sigu; in the Pima legend his name is Szeukka; in the Caddoque version it is Sakecka; and that sekh is the Egyptian name of the flood-time or inundation of the Nile; the sekh or uskh is a boat, and the sekht is the sailor. This worldwide water-name can be traced back to the Albert Nyanza[41] and to Tanganyika, the inundating lake, which Stanley says is known by the native name of Uzige[42].

The Japanese have their land of the deluge, which was submerged in the sea in consequence of the degeneracy of its inhabitants. The king of Maurigasima, however, was a good man, the just man of the general legend, and he is warned in a dream of the coming calamity. He was told that, when the two idols which stood at the entrance of the temple should turn red in the face, the time would have come for him to embark in his vessel and escape. This injunction he obeyed and was saved[43].

In the story of Atlantis we are informed that there was once an immense island, larger than all Asia and Africa, at the entrance of the ocean beyond the pillars of Hercules. It was governed by Neptune. Here the god placed a single pair of human beings, Enenor and his wife, Leucippe, who had sprung from the dust of the earth. Neptune married their daughter Clito, who bore him ten sons. Among these ten sons Neptune divided his domain. Atlas was the eldest, and from him the island took its name. The island was a paradise of plenty and purity, and such was the content they could not be contented. Their happiness supplied no spur. They degenerated and fell. At the end of ten generations Atlantis was swallowed by an earthquake and washed down by a deluge. Whatsoever the interpretation, we find here the same reckoning of the ten generations as in the Hebrew version of the Noachian deluge; the ten that preceded the Chaldean [p.185] deluge in the account assigned to Berosus[44], and the ten races of men in the Bundahish.

Bunsen considered the Hebrew flood to be an actual event in human history; a cataclysmal catastrophe that overwhelmed the human birthplace in Northern Asia. He had no doubt that the oldest Hellenic tradition of the flood of Deucalion was derived from this historical deluge. But as the Egyptians had migrated from the primeval land before the great event occurred, they do not possess the deluge legend as we find it in the Hebrew scriptures, the Chaldean tablets, and other late forms of the legend[45]. In this way has mythology been converted into history. But the Egyptians not only knew of a deluge; they knew of various deluges where the Greeks spoke of one. They knew of all the deluges that ever were, because they knew the type of the deluge and all its applications to the various cycles of time, ranging from the deluge of five days found in Polynesia, to that of 25,868 years.

According to the report by Plato of the conversation between Solon and the Egyptian priests, neither of the two Greeks could have understood the symbolical language in which the meaning was half revealed and half concealed[46]. Yet, the moment we read the report with the knowledge that a deluge is a figure of speech quite natural to the people whose every year was an inundation, as the Indian gesture-sign for a year is a rain, and a rain is an inner African name for a year, the truth becomes apparent. 'Scarcely,' they said, 'had writing, amongst other things, been invented,' than down came the flood from heaven, at 'certain intervals, sparing only the ignorant and uneducated so that you had to start afresh from the beginning.' It was the learned alone, the reckoners of time, who were drowned in these deluges. This corresponds to the books which are lost, or were buried and preserved in safety, to be literally fished up again as they were by Vishnu in his Matsya avatar.

This loss of the 'log' in the deluge is also connected with the fall from heaven in the Book of Enoch, but it is rendered in a way that is easy to misunderstand, like the eating of the Tree of Knowledge. Because of the 'fall,' men were taught by the fallen angels 'to understand writing and the use of ink and paper.' Therefore, 'Numerous have been those who have gone astray from every period of the world even to this day. For men were not born for this—thus with pen and ink to confirm their faith!' Such language has confirmed the faith of the idiotes in their crusade against knowledge. Yet it only means in the one case that the 'fall,' in the other the deluge, was the cause of reckoning, registration, and bookkeeping, which was previously unnecessary[47].

The Egyptian priest tells Solon that the Greek genealogies are like juvenile stories. 'In the first place, you only record a single flood whereas there have been a great many.' An attempt to enlighten them [p.186] is obviously made in the words, 'and then you are ignorant of a most fair and excellent race of men that once inhabited your country.' This is typological; it belongs to the celestial quarters and reckonings of descent, whereas the vainglorious Greeks applied it to their own human history, and thought it made them out to be far older than, and superior to, the Egyptians, who looked upon them as the sheerest children, whose antiquities were puerile fables, like those of the Jews with which we have been so long beguiled. Diodorus Siculus also informs us that the Egyptians treated the Greeks as impostors who reissued the ancient mythology as their own history[48].

In reference to the invasion from Atlantis in the west, which was said to have overrun all Europe and Asia, Proclus observed that the Egyptians say the west is the place of noxious demons, and some interpreters held that the war against the Atlantidae was a war against those material demons who were adapted to the west. This was the opinion of Numenius and Porphyry[49]. Such is the true interpretation. In the course of precession the invasion and the deluge necessarily came from the south-west, as certain constellations sank in that direction and were whelmed beneath the waters.

The war, like those of Moses and Joshua, against the giants and the waters, belonged solely to the astronomical allegory, and was described in consonance with the deluge typology in diluvian language.

According to Berosus, when the Chaldean deluge was coming, the deity Kronus appeared to Xisithrus in a vision and gave him notice that upon the fifteenth of the month Daesia (the fifth month of the Macedonian year, answering to May-June, and therefore about the tune of the coming inundation of the Nile in the month Mesore, June 15) there was to be a flood by which mankind would be destroyed. He enjoined him to commit to writing a history of the beginning, progress, and final conclusions of all things down to the present term, and to bury these accounts securely in the city of the sun, at Sippara[50]. Here it is Time in person who prognosticates the deluge. Kronus in Egypt is identified as Seb, the god who appears in the ark and is called the 'Great Inundator' in the Ritual. The Osirian exclaims, 'By the blessing of Seb in the ark I have welcomed the chief dead in the service of the lord of things.'[51]

In the chapter of 'Being conducted in the boat of the sun,'[52] Seb, the father of the gods, is designated the 'Great Inundator.' It is said, 'The Osiris penetrates in the boat. They tow him along with the sun. The Osiris is towed in it by the rope-men, stopping the dissolution of the leg of the firmament' just at the perilous place. 'Seb and Nu are delighted in their hearts, repeating the name, "Growing Light"; the beauty of the sun in its light is in its being an image, as it is said, for the Great Inundator, the father of the gods.'[53] Thus we [p.187] learn that Time himself (Seb-Kronus) was the great inundator for whom the sun keeps time. This time was kept by the sun in his ark that crossed the waters as the ram-headed Num or Nef, the lord of the inundation or of breath.

The Hebrew Nuach, or Noah (חנ) is related to breath and breathing as in רחנ and םחנ and is equivalent to nef in Egyptian for breath, the element of life opposed to water and the deluge, which was represented by Nef, Num, or Nuh, the ram-headed breather during the inundation, who was designated its lord and ruler. Nuh, for rest, is also identical with nnu (Eg.) for rest and repose, which was the condition of existence in Egypt during the inundation.

Nnu or nu in Egyptian is both the flood and the time appointed. Nnu.akh (Eg.) would denote the ruler and lord of both. And as Noah was 600 years of age at the time of the deluge, he was an impersonation of the nu-akh, like Num of the Teba.

The types, however, must determine the philology. It is Time who appears to Xisithrus. Time is Seb, and one of his names is Nu (compare the name of No or Noe on the Apamean coins), whence the Hebrew חנ.

Seb in his ark, as the 'Great Inundator,' and Num in his argo are both related to the deluge of time which was annual in Egypt; and the flood of Noah is a deluge of time on the scale of one year. The account furnished by Berosus tends to show that Ubara-Tutu, the father of Ubara, the glow (compare the 'Growing Light')[54], is a form of Seb-Kronus, the father of the solar gods.

Not only was the arkite typology Egyptian, it was so ancient as such that it had passed from the natural genesis through the various phases of the astronomical allegory and become eschatological in the psychotheistic phase of mythology. The god who 'forms his own body eternally' (i.e., the eternal form of time) is denominated the one 'dwelling in his own bark.' The 'Great Ruler' is 'borne along in the river of millions and billions of moments.'[55] The 'Lords of Truth' 'who are for ever cycling for eternity,' are the voyagers of heaven[56].

The deceased prays to the conductor of heaven, 'Oh, let the Osiris prevail over the waters. Let the Osiris pass by the great one who dwells in the Place of the inundation.'[57] He exclaims, 'Hail ye good beings, lords of truth, who are living for ever! circling for ever! Passing me through the waters.'[58] 'He has made a boat for me to go by,' says the Osirified deceased, speaking of his saviour[59], and the boat of the shipwrecked is a figure of salvation[60].

In the chapter of 'Breathing air and prevailing over the waters in Hades,' the inundation actually occurs, and the deceased Osirian has to escape from its whelming flood by means of the makhen or ark made of plaited white corn, the paddles being formed of straw, perhaps [p.188] symbolising, as Dr. Birch suggests, 'the support of men by corn during the inundation.'[61]

The passage of the soul in the process of rebirth was termed 'going in the cabin.' The escaped one exclaims, 'I am not drowned in the good water. I see the repose of the meek one (Osiris) when he makes his stay under the pools—for I have come forth.'[62]

On the day of the birth of Osiris it is said, 'The valves of the door open, the gateway of the sun opens. He has unclosed the doors of the ark. He has opened the doors of the cabin. Shu has given him breath, Tefnut has created him; they serve in his service.'[63] When the deceased in the resurrection arises on the horizon as the sun, it is proclaimed that 'He has unclosed the doors of the ark; he has opened the doors of the cabin' in which he made the passage of the abyss[64]. And before there was a boat with a cabin to it, the ark of Arctos, the womb of the hippopotamus, was the cabin that carried across the abyss in the north, when observed in a latitude where the seven stars dipped below the horizon! Yet earlier the seven constellations were the sailors in the ark of the sphere.

The 'flood' should be a figure of expression in Egypt if anywhere on earth—as it was. In an inscription of the time of Amenhept III it is said they, the enemies, 'shall be overwhelmed in the great food.' In a papyrus at Turin the god claims to have been the creator of the abyss of waters whence comes the flood. 'I make the waters, and the Mehura comes into being.' But we can get beyond Egypt for the origins.

The Hebrew deluge is called mabul (לובמ) which with the interchange of m and b as in Syriac, is Mmul. Nothing is known of its origin in Hebrew; and the word is only used for the flood of Noah and for the flood which the Lord sits upon as the celestial water of the abyss[65]. But this word is an inner African type-name for water, rain, and especially the rainy season, the time of the flood.

momel, is water, in Fulup.	mbula, is rain, in Undaza.
momel, " Filham.	mbula, " Bumbete.
mmeli, " Isoama.	mbula, " Muntu.
mmeli, " Are.	mbola, " Mbamba,
mmale, " Gura.

and many more. But the most remarkable fact is that this is the express and widely-spread type-name for the season of heavy rains and foods, as

mbola, in Mbamha.	mpfula, in Ntere.	mfola, in N'gola.
mbula, in Undaza.	mfula, in Kasands.	mfula, in Lubalo.
mbulo-mobua, in Bumbete.	mpfula, in Babnmba.	mufula, in Kisama.
mbura, in N'kele.	mpfula, in Nynrnbe.	mpulan, in Matatan.
mpfula, in Musentandu.	mpfula, in Basunde.

[p.189] These languages are chiefly spoken in Kongo, N'gola, and farther inland. But the type-word ranges south, east, west, and north-west. This shows the Hebrew flood, name and all, came out of inner Africa in all directions. In the North-West Atlantic group momel is also found as mél, and this modification leads to the Egyptian mel or mer for the sea; French mer, English mere, the lake, and the maelstrom. Mbul also modifies into bul (or ber) English bul, river, Welsh bala, the going or bursting forth, ber (Eg.) to boil, well up, be ebullient, English bore, and a force; bara (Heb.) a fountain; bur, Akkadian, to swell up; bura, Fiji, to emit, discharge; bur, Australian languages, a river or torrent.

When Kolb was at the Cape in 1713 the Hottentots affirmed that they descended from a man named Noh, who had entered the world by a sort of window and taught his children the art of raising cattle. The name of his wife was Hing-Noh[66]. We now know that Noh was the Nama Khnuib or Khnub, the lord of heaven (nom, for god, in Ham). Khnub, they say, has made us, and given us this country. He gives us the rain, and he makes the grass to grow. Khnub is identical by name with the Egyptian Khnuf, Num, and Chnubis. The name of his consort in Egypt was Ank, corresponding to Hing. Further, the Hottentots, says Casalis, preserve a tradition that their ancestors arrived in Africa in a great basket. Both statements are reconcilable by means of the hieroglyphics. The basket sign is nub signifying the lord or the lady, the all. It is the seed-basket carried by Nebt (Nephthys) the great mother. Neb also means to swim and float; and the basket of wattle-work was a very primitive kind of ark or boat[67].

Stanley found a deluge legend connected by the Wajiji fishermen with the origin of Lake Tanganyika. Once there was a vast plain where the water is now, and there was a large town which was carefully enclosed and fenced round with poles strong and tall. As was the custom in those days, the people of the town surrounded their dwellings with high hedges of cane, making enclosures in which their cattle might be herded for the night. In one of these enclosures there lived a man and his wife who possessed a deep well which supplied water in a beautiful stream. The well was to be kept a sacred secret, as on the day the possessors showed it to strangers they would be ruined and destroyed. But the woman could not keep the secret. She disclosed the mystery to her lover; whereupon the earth cracked and opened, and there was the deluge, where Tanganyika is now[68].

We cannot pass into the cave dwellings of the human mind in the far-off past as high-sniffing and 'bloody-browed Pharisees.' We [p.190] shall have to crawl on hands and knees at times to enter as very lowly explorers if we penetrate at all. In each direction of his limited range of thought the primitive man perceived the solid, essential, physical fact. A slight illustration of this may be seen in the chant of the Red Indian:—

That was why he should be commiserated by the wild and warring nomad whose quiver was full of arrows!

Perhaps no better subject could be found to test the truth of the present writer's generalisation concerning a unity of origin in mythology, his thesis of that origin being Kamite, and his method of showing likeness and relationship by means of typology, than this of the deluge legend. Nothing is older than water as an element of life, and there is nothing more initial than its influence on the mind of man as an agent of destruction, of death, of an ending, the water of death being the natural antithesis to the breath of life. The Mangaians hold that during the rainy season the spirits of the dead cannot ascend to the warriors' paradise, the element of water being so opposed to the power of breath.

The Latin ex for out of, or from; and iste for this, or that, whence existence as that which is 'out of;' is expressed by enti or nuti (Eg.) (the signs read both ways) for existence. Enti passes into entity. Nuti also denotes an escape, to have escaped; and this escape is finally reducible to an escape from the water; one form of enti or nuti being the froth or foam breathing out of the water. Thus the earliest perception of existence and cognition of a discreted selfhood is traceable to the consciousness of being out of the negational element of water and in the condition of breathing being.

The doctrine of baptismal regeneration had an origin thus profoundly simple. When, according to the Roman Church, 'the Holy Ghost suffered for us in Baptism,' the dogma is founded on the antithesis of water and breath. In a text rendered by Goodwin, it is said of Osiris in his baptism, Ut mergeretur in aquis suis, literally, 'he was drowned into the water,' or 'his life was merged in the water'[70].

Baptism is a symbolical rebirth out of the water into a new life, enacted as a religious mystery; the afflatus of the new life being at one time represented by breathing.

The primary words will tell us more than the Aryanists dream of. As already shown[71], the word nti for 'out of' gives us the name of the net, and Neith who fished Horus out of the waters. Now the first [p.191] race of men that emerged or escaped were black; and the black man in Africa is named

noti, in Bulom.	notei, in Ghese.	eneidu, in Igala.
noti, in Mampa.	nedo, in Salum.

This type-name has various forms. Ntu is one of these. Ntu in Kaffir is the person, any human being, the race. Nta-nta, Kaffir, is to float and swim. The first ark or Teba was the mother's womb, and to be borne in that is 'going in the cabin.' The second was the teph of the abyss; the third, the revolving sphere; the fourth the Great Bear. The arkite typology arose from the nature of things. In the beginning was the water, the condition of negation. Heaven was the celestial water, the Nun (Eg.) which is also the deluge or inundation. Water was adopted as the universal type of an ending in time as well as of life. The helplessness of primitive man in presence of the water-flood is plainly apparent in the deluge mythos. The typology of the ark also shows how profound was his delight in the power to form a barrier and enclosure. Ark (Eg.) denotes enclosings. Arca in Greek is a dam for keeping out water; arx, a bulwark; ahuriki, Maori, a fence against a flood. Various forms of the ark and arking are found under the one name, as arach, Gaelic, a bond, a tie; ark (Eg.) a tie; ark (Eg.) to weave; luka, Kaffir, to weave and plait; luchith, Hebrew, plank-work; ruga, Kaffir, to plaister with earth; lek (Amoy), dry land; liag Irish; llech, Welsh; rock, English, for the stone; lecid, Hebrew; lauh, Arabic, rock. The rekhi (Eg.) is the stonemason or builder. This was an inner African type-name for the stone or rock itself, which is

raga, in Limba.	melak, in Nalu.	pulak, in Sarar.
oraga, in Sobo.	fulagn, in Bulanda.	pulak, in Pepel.
luku, in Meto.	pulak, in Bola.	pulag,in Kanyop.
nluku, in Matatan.

Every stone erected as a dam, and over a well or intermittent spring, was typical of this staying of the waters, and of bounding the inimical force. Hence the size of the stone was significant of the opposing force of man. The ark-stones in Britain were designated the stones of power. The Egyptian mastebahs are vast lids that shut down above the well. Without any idea of such an origin for the type, Mariette describes the pyramid built of enormous stones covering the well as with a massive lid[72]. Such was the great pyramid. The type was continued in the temples and other sanctuaries that contained the well. In some of these the conquest over the waters was celebrated yearly, and water was poured into the well called the water of the deluge. From the time that the first stone was suspended over a spring, pytte, or intermittent well, as the stone of Arthur was in Britain, it has been the custom to erect the sacred building over the water or the well by [p.192] which it was represented. As Dean Stanley has said, 'Every synagogue, if possible, was by the side of a stream or spring; every mosque still requires a fountain or basin for lustrations in its court.'[73] In the Birs-Nimrud Inscription Nebuchadnezzar says that, when he finished building the tower of the seven planets at Borsippa which former kings had begun, he found that 'the water-springs beneath it had not been kept in order.' This then had likewise been erected over the well just as were the pyramids of Egypt and the flat-stone of Arthur in Britain[74]. The Temple at Jerusalem was built over or upon the waters.

In one of the visions of Hermas, the Holy Spirit, or the 'old woman' who was the first of all creation, shows him a tower that was built upon a square by six young men, which tower stands upon the water as its foundation. Then said Hermas, 'Lady, why is the tower built upon the water?' She replies that it is because his life is and shall be saved by water. It is the same water as that of the well in the sphinx temple, and the holy wells over which the British stones were erected. Every ark or tabernacle configurated in the heavens whether as the ark of the seven stars, seven pillars, or seven horns, the ark of the four corners, the six, eight, nine, ten, or twelve divisions, had been founded on the celestial waters, and was thus a symbol of salvation. In Hermas the church takes the place of the pyramid and the rude stone monuments that were reared of old above the water-source. The water and the breath or spirit are the two truths of the tower, tabernacle, or church of Hermas just as they were of all the earlier buildings[75].

The mummy in Egypt was conveyed across the water to the mausoleum in the hill of the west. So in Fiji the king was carried over the water to the royal sepulchre[76]. In Bretagne it was the custom at Plouguel for corpses to be ferried to the churchyard by boat, over a narrow arm of the sea called passage de l'enfer, instead of their being taken the shorter route by land[77]. Here the water represented hell, the abyss of dissolution which was symbolically bridged, or the water conquered by the living on behalf of the dead. In placing the dead in the coffin they were put on board their boat; and the well represented the abyssal waters of the tepht, which they had to cross for the other world, even as the solar god made his passage in the ark through the three water-signs, the pool of Pant, the Meh or well of waters in the north.

The deluge legend had a natural genesis, and its types were set in the stars of heaven, where the imagery proves (at least) that the zodiacal phase in which all culminated at last was portrayed according to the [p.193] relations of time, place, and the three months' flood in the valley of the Nile. In the Bundahish the first conflict is waged by darkness (or the dark mind) against the light. Then it is said of the inundation ascribed to the Dog-star, 'The second conflict was waged with the water, because as the star Tistar was in Cancer the water which is in the subdivision they call Avrak (ninth lunar mansion) was pouring on the same day when the destroyer rushed in, and came again into notice for mischief in the direction of the west.'[78] This dates a deluge in strict accordance with the inundation of the Nile. The ninth lunar mansion is Sieu, δ Hydra, Chinese; Açlesha, ε, δ, σ, η, ρ, Hydrae, Hindu; and Hydra announced the inundation in Egypt. The Dog-star being in Cancer is but figurative for rising about the same time. So Porphyry[79] says, 'With the Crab comes the star Sothis.'

Seneca tells us Berosus taught that events take place according to the course of the stars, and he affirms this with such certitude that he fixes the time for the conflagration of the world and for the deluge. He maintains that all earthly things will be consumed when the planets, which are now traversing their different courses, shall all coincide in the sign of Cancer, and be so placed that a straight line could pass directly through their orbs. But the flood will occur when the same conjunction of the planets shall take place in the constellation of Capricorn[80]. The summer is in the first constellation, the winter in the latter. These are the two soli-lunar stations at the birth of the inundation; the flood of fire belongs to the sun in Cancer (as it did to Sothis or Bar, the star of fire), and the water to the full moon in Capricorn. This type is applied by Berosus to the great year.

According to the papyrus found in the monastery of Abu Hormeis, (translated into Arabic 225 AH), the deluge was to take place when the heart of the Lion entered into the first minute of the Crab's head[81], at the declining of the star; which is obviously an astronomical observation relating to the inundation of the Nile. It is rendered backwards as if applied to the ending of a cycle in precession. But that is not the point of present importance. There can be no doubting or disputing the Kamite and Egyptian origin of this deluge imagery, because the celestial types are the reflectors of certain natural facts which are to be found in Egypt, and in no other land on this earth. The month of Mesore is the month of the rebirth (mes) of the river (aur).*

* The river was reckoned to come forth from its two chasms on the 15th of Epiphi (the last day of May in the sacred year), at which date a Nile-festival was celebrated. This twin source was the Crophi and Mophi of Herodotus[82]; the Copts held that these caused the waters to rise[83].

In the sacred year, this began on the 15th of June, and it corresponds, in what we may term the Ram calendar, with the sun's passage through the sign of the Crab.

[p.194] In the oldest known Egyptian zodiacs, two beetles represent this sign instead of the crab. The beetle, Khepra landed in Egypt and swarmed on the banks of the Nile in the month Mesore, just when the river began to rise. There he prepared his little ark of future life by rolling up his eggs in a ball of cow-dung (compare the Gobar figures and góbar, Hindi, for cow-dung), and burying it in a dry place where it would be safe from the coming deluge. There the seed was hatched, and came forth on the subsidence of the waters. Khepra (the scarabaeus) was the typical arkite of Egypt. As such, the boat of the sun was assigned to Khepra-Ra, and 'Khepra in his boat is the sun himself'[84] who was represented by the beetle in his ark. On this account the scarabaeus was set as a zodiacal sign in heaven, the solar herald of the inundation, and succeeded by the Crab; the Persian Changra, whence Cancer.

One form of the beetle was solar; but there was a lunar beetle sacred to Taht, whose bird, the ibis, also figures instead of the crab (Hermean Zodi)[85]. The beetle, then, was placed in the zodiac as the harbinger of the deluge. The beetle is also the symbol of the world, and the generation or creation of the world, that is the luni-solar year, with the sun's entrance into this sign. The sign of Cancer in Layard's Culte de Mithra[86], shows two figures which may be called crab-like or beetle-like, and these also point to the double beetle of the Egyptian zodiac as their prototype. 'A beast more like a water-beetle than a crab' is also portrayed in a manuscript of the twelfth century, belonging to the library of Durham Cathedral[87]. Such chimeras show the beetle that transformed into the crab.

The Egyptians denoted the inundation by a lion, says Horapollo, because one-half of the water which flowed during three months was poured out during the time the sun was in the sign of Leo[88]. Hence the origin of the lion's head which was commonly used as a waterspout in Egyptian temples. The third sign is Virgo, who typifies corn, and water the mother of corn; the tree also appears in the decans of this sign from which the waters of heaven were fabled to well forth. Here then we have three zodiacal signs relating to the flow of the inundation.

Besides these, Hydra, in its heliacal rising, and the raven perched on its tail announced the waters as two extra-zodiacal signs. Now, whilst the sun was making its passage through these three signs, the moon was rising at full in our three water-signs; Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The moon was the governess of floods, and the three water-signs were doubled in the zodiac on account of the luni-solar combination. At the end of three months from the birth in Mesore [p.195] (Crab or Beetle sign), the rise of the waters is suspended in the sign of Libra, at the time of the autumn equinox, when and where they attained that summit by which the Egyptians represented the equinox; the autumn equinox being the summit of the waters. At this point, instead of the Scales, we find two tortoises were depicted in the oldest Egyptian zodiacs. Also, one tortoise is portrayed at the same placei, in the Mithraic monuments[89]. In the Mandan creation the four tortoises are stationed at the four corners of the earth, and these are said to spout forth the waters[90]. In other North American Indian signs, a landing after a voyage is typified by the tortoise.

According to Schoolcraft and others, the tortoise (or the turtle) was a type universally held in great respect by the red men of America, and in all cases it is believed to be a symbol of the earth, and is addressed as the mother[91]. This agrees with the Egyptian tortoise, as a type of the earth, the underground, or ground under the waters. The Raratongans have a tradition that the deluge was produced by a king named Taoiau, or peace-bearer, who was greatly incensed against his people because they did not bring the sacred turtle to him. He therefore invoked the gods to send the deluge that is known as the overwhelming of Taoiau[92]. Turtle and tortoise are interchangeable types. Again and again from various regions, the scattered myth can be recaptured and brought back to the origin in natural fact by aid of the Kamite types. One of these is the tortoise. In various myths, the tortoise is an ark of safety amid the waters, that bears up the world on its back, and in Egyptian the tortoise and ark of the dead are synonymous as the sheta.

The zodiac in the ceiling of the Rameseum at El-Kurneh shows that the year opens with Sothis beneath the first day of Taht in the sign of Leo. Then follow three different representations of Horus of the inundation, who arose from the waters in a lotus, standing in a boat with the star-symbol of time on his head. The last of the three is beneath the two tortoises or shetu, corresponding to the sign of the Scales. In this sign Horus may be said to land, or touch earth again, and his boat may be seen empty in the decans of the tortoises or Scalesi.[93]. As the earliest world was created on the back of the tortoise, so when the tortoise sank there was a deluge. A Mandan doctor told Catlin that the earth was a vast tortoise which carried dirt on its back, and that once on a time there was a tribe of people who are now all dead, but they were white-faces. They used to dig very deep in the earth to catch badgers. One day they stuck a knife through the back of the tortoise, whereupon it sank, like Milton's kraken[94], till the waters ran over it, and there ensued a deluge, in which all were drowned with the exception of one man. In the [p.196] Mandan ceremonies they commemorated this event, and carried sacks of water made up in the shape of tortoises lying on their backs. These sacks of water had the appearance of great antiquity, and the Mandans pretended the water had been contained in them ever since the deluge[95].

Egypt alone can show cause why the tortoise should have been connected with the deluge legends on the ground of natural fact. As before said, the Egyptians placed two tortoises in the sign of the Scales, the measure of the inundation. These mark the exact time of year in the fixed zodiac—and in accordance with the birth of the inundation in the month Mesore (summer solstice)—when the waters had reached their full height, and the earth began to emerge again from the deluge. These were the tortoises of the inundation, set in heaven at that point of place which furnishes an original and actual significance to the Mandan tortoise-shaped sacks, said to contain the water of the deluge ever since the event; and only in Egypt can the event be thus identified with the tortoise-type, in relation to time and tide on earth.

One name of the tortoise is abshi (Eg.); abu being the hard thing, and sh, the water (pool or well of source). In Hebrew iabshi (שׁבי) denotes the dry ground emerging from the waters of the deluge[96]. The Quiche legend describes the earth appearing from the waters at the time of creation by the image of the shellfish. This was typified by the tortoise of the zodiac, the sign of the earth emerging from the quarter of the waters, or three months inundation. A pair of scales may be comparatively modern, although the balance, makhu, bears the name of the horizon and equinox, and of the most ancient solar god of the sphinx-temple, Har-Makhu; but either way, this was not the first form of the measure, as may be seen by the man with the scales in one hand, the measuring-rod or pole in the other, and the modius or corn-measure on his headi—a triple sign of the measure of the inundation. The earlier type can be seen passing into the later. An illustrated copy of Hyginus has a representation of the scorpion holding the scales in one of its claws[97].

The claws were the sign of holding ('claw-hold') at the point (in time) where the waters were retained. The Sanskrit yüka for the scales, said to be from the Greek ξυγον (compare the Egyptian khekh for the balance, scales, or equinox, also meaning to check; and the English yoke), indicates the yoke which may be found in the Egyptian sign of the scales, as å the original of the abbreviated d symbol. According to Achilles Tatius, the sign of the scales was likewise known as the claw of the scorpion[98]; Greek chelai, the claws; also El Zubanan, the claws, consisting of the Stars α and β Libra, form the 16th Arab Manzil.

[p.197] Following this hint we turn to the various ancient Egyptian zodiacs and find that the Sagittarius, or Centaur, is portrayed with a scorpion's taili. Thus the scorpion has its claws in Libra and its tail in Sagittarius, which shows that there was once a scorpion of the western quarter extending through three of the present signs, in accordance with the four quarters of the beginning, on which the zodiac was funded.

During three months from the sign of the Crab to the Scales the inundation rose to its height and was suspended, at which time the water was distributed. To this day, when the nilometer in the island of Rhoda, opposite to Cairo, shows that the water has risen to the height of fifteen ells, the sheikh of the Nile orders the cutting of the dam, which lets in the accumulated flood that fertilises the whole cultivated land.

During the next three months the waters ebbed, exhaled, and disappeared, as is indicated by the meaning of the scorpion's name. The rest is repetition in accordance with the dual luni-solar arrangement. Here then we find two quarters—one of water, one of breath—and these, when repeated in the dual luni-solar reckoning, will be found to constitute the total zodiac.

Each of the two sets of six signs in Egyptian planispheres ends with a pair of twins. The Gemini still remain. But in the oblong zodiac of Denderahi, Shu and his sister Tefnut are depicted in both signs, she being lioness-headed in each. This form of the twins may also be seen in the Sagittarius of the Denderah zodiac[99]; these twins being the two primordial representatives of breath or wind (Shu), and moisture or dew (Tefnut). Thus the zodiac is further reducible to the two halves of the earliest division, founded on the Two Truths of Egypt, the north and south, first distinguished as the regions of water and breath, which preceded the four quarters.

The sign next to the Scales is the Scorpion, which in Egyptian is named Serk. This word has several meanings applicable to the end of the deluge, but not one to the stinger. The scorpion can only live in dry places, and could not come forth until the inundation was over or had abated. Serk (its name) signifies to disappear, be completely exhaled, or dried up. This described the waters with the sun in Scorpio, and was set in heaven as a type. Serk also means to supply breath and food, as it was the sign of the vanishing waters and also of the season for sowing seed.

The Scorpion and breath are connected in a passage of the Ritual. 'I am like the Sun in the Gates. I give the breath of life to Osiris. I have came like the Sun through the Gate of the Sun-goers, otherwise called the Scorpion.'[100]

[p.198] Manilius had learned that the scorpion was a sign of increase[101]. It was so in Egypt on account of the inundation. Serk, to supply, is equivalent to increase, and the water was the source of the increase. When this vanished the Scorpion appeared after, just as the scarabaeus appeared before, the deluge.

In New Zealand the tail of the scorpion is identified as the fish-hook with which Maui fished the submerged land up from the waters. He is reported to have been three months in hauling the land above the water[102], exactly the time assigned to the inundation, which is also measured by the three water-signs of the zodiac. This was little Maui of the three brothers, the sun that passed through the underworld, and his three months' labour coincides with the Child-Horus in the boat during the three months' deluge of the inundation.

One of the brothers of Maui has been already identified with the Egyptian Mau (or Mau-Shu), who is the god of breath, and whose name is written with the feather of light and shade, an equivalent for the dove and raven of the planisphere. Shu is the archer in the sign of the Sagittarius. The name of this sign in the Hermean zodiac is Nephte. Neft in Egyptian means the breathed, passed, or dried up.

Also in Cicero's Aratus the scorpion is called by the African name of nepa or nepas[103], that is napese in the Goali languages; and the tail of the scorpion is in Nephte.

In the ceiling of Denderahi (as in the planispherei) the raven is to be seen just above the tail of Hydra. This water-dragon announced the inundation by its heliacal rising. The raven is likewise an announcer of the waters. The black bird, whether as raven or the neh, is the type of Sut in the Sut-Horus. This, then, is the bird that tells of the waters; and in the Hebrew legend the raven is described as going to and fro during the drying up of the deluge. On the other hand, the dove is the bird that tells when the waters have dried up. We shall find the facts figured in the stars, and both birds in their places in the planisphere. The imagery is visibly founded on the actual inundation of the Nile as its natural genesis. It next enters the typological phases that require interpreting.

The raven, as a bird of the inundation in Egypt and as the keeper of the waters in the Thlinkeet myth, appears in Australia as the crow, the black bird which is at enmity with eagle-hawk, the bird of light. There the black bird causes the deluge.

Eagle-hawk was the chief ruler. Once on a time he left his son in charge of the crow, the second in authority. The young one growing thirsty asked the crow where he could get a drink. The dark one told him to go to the river, and went with him. There the crow made him drink until the young one was swollen to an immense size. [p.199] The crow then threw something at him, which caused him to burst. Then followed the letting loose of the waters in a deluge that overspread the country[104].

The child of Eagle-hawk corresponds to the Child-Horus, the sun of the waters, whose brother, the virile god, is hawk-headed.

The Chickasaw Indians relate that they obtained their first seed-corn, just after the flood, from a raven that flew over them and let fall some grains which the Great Spirit told them to plant. This they dibbled in with their fingers, and it grew[105]. Such is the language of the heavens, where the raven is portrayed; and the corn is held by the Virgin ready for sowing when the waters subsided in the land where the seed-sowing always followed the flood.

Virgo, it may be observed, is the bearer of seven ears of corni; and seven ears of corn were likewise carried by seven maidens in the processions of the Mexican goddess of corn.

The dove of the deluge is to be seen winging its flight across the decans of the Archer, the veritable sign of the dry earth. In another Egyptian planisphere at this precise spot the dove is depicted with the branch in its beak[106].

It is affirmed that Maui never would have succeeded in raising the land from the flood but for catching a dove. Into this he breathed his own spirit, and tethered the bird to the land by tying the fishing-line to its beak. Then he made the dove to fly aloft, and the land followed until it appeared above the surface of the water[107]. This imagery can likewise be read in relation to our three water-signs; for the raven is the bird of the three solar water-signs, and the dove, or the white vulture, of the three lunar water-signs.

Lucian tells us that the golden statue of Semiramis in the temple of Hierapolis marked the equinoctial point. The dove was called the equinoctial point by the Syrians themselves. Therefore, indeed, they tell us that this is the equinoctial point of Semiramis, i.e., the dove. It became the point of the vernal equinox 255 BC, but it is utterly impossible that this should have been for the first time[108].

Semiramis, Atergatis, Hathor, or Venus, combined the types of the dove and fish as the genetrix who brought forth the young sun-god in the sign of Pisces. At this point in the zodiac the genetrix is portrayed holding a dove or pigeon in her left handi, and the hieroglyphic sign of the corner in her right which represents the messianic corner-stone. The corner is apta (Eg.), the birthplace of the child. In another zodiaci, the mother holds up the child itself, the man-child with the rod of iron in his hand, as described in Revelation. Thus the dove which drew up the land at the end of three months in the [p.200] Maori myth appears in the third of the three water-signs, and, following this, the first station in the sign of Aries is assigned to the Egyptian Maui (Shu), in the form of the first of four rams, the ram of Shu; the ram being another type of breath or soul, and as such it follows the three water-signs on one side of the zodiac, as the scorpion of breath and Shu (the archer) do on the other.

Shu, the breather, was finally stationed in the breathing region, where the earth was recovered from the waters, and again in the sign of the Ram, where the sun-god once more attained the region of breath or became a soul, in keeping with the dual, i.e., luni-solar, character of the zodiacal signs.

In the most holy mysteries the dove was hailed as the restorer of the light. After the darkness or the deluge the people exclaimed 'Ιω μαχαιρα! Ααμπαδηφορος!' 'Hail to the dove! Restorer of light.' This would particularly apply at the time when the vernal equinox was in the sign of the Bull, i.e., in the doves or Pleiades.

One type of the luni-solar duality of the signs was the 'double-seated ship' or boat of the Egyptian gods. This reappears in Babylonia. It is said, 'In the month Tebet, Venus is the spark (star) of the double ship.'[109] The constellation of the Sea-goat is the zodiacal sign of the month Tebet. Now when the sun in Cancer entered the ark of Khepra, the beetle, to cross through the three northern water-signs, the moon rose at full in the Sea-goat to cross the three southern water-signs, and as they made their passage together, although on opposite sides, it was said to be made in the double ship or double-seated bark. The month of the Sea-goat or of Tebet is related to the waters, and has the name of the ark, the ark-city (Thebes), and of the ancient genetrix Teb, who was the ark of the great bear that first crossed the waters, as the pregnant hippopotamus, which brought forth from the waters at the vernal equinox. The Tongans also have the 'double canoe' of 'Tongans sailing through the skies.'[110]

In a planisphere that may be dated by the Sothiac cycle, BC 1322-2782, or earlier periods, eight persons are portrayed in the archaic egg-shaped boat, and when they issue forth they build an altar[111]. The number is in accordance with the eight great gods of Egypt, who were represented in Am-Smen by Typhon and her sevenfold progeny, and in Sesennu by Taht and the seven.

At the end of each great period of change, or the deluge, in the Chinese reckonings, the 'River Scheme,' as it is termed, is brought up out of the waters with its written programme; an altar is built to mark the spot where the fish-man emerges from the flood, and the River Scheme is laid upon the altar[112].

The first thing done by Xisithrus after landing from the ark was [p.201] to construct an altar and offer sacrifice to the gods. Noah likewise 'builded an altar to the Lord,' when the deluge was over. The boat of Horus in the third month, also the empty boat, is found in the sign of the Scales or Tortoises. This was the zodiacal sign of the seventh month in the Akkadian calendar named Tul-Ku, the 'holy altar.' The name of the eighth month is Apin-duá, which Professor Sayce renders the 'prosperous foundation,' and he adds, 'It has clearly nothing to do with Scorpio,' the sign of this month[113]. Mr. Pinches translates the name by 'the place where-one-bows-down.'[114]

The name of the Holy Altar is repeated in the Aramaic Tisri for the same month Tisri being a Tiphel form of Esritu, a sanctuary; the Egyptian serit, a holy place, an altar, or stand for offerings, also the rock or mount, which was the altar, and the natural type of the ziggurat.

Thus the seventh month is that of the 'holy altar,' the eighth that of the 'bowing down.' Following these, in the decans of the Archer, a man may be seen in the act of cutting off the head of an animal in sacrifice, close to the flying dove; the 'Man with the Offering.'

This is probably the figure that passed for Noah with those who converted the astronomical allegory into history. He may be supposed to have left the ark, as there is the empty boat behind him. In another planispherei the altar can be seen near the pole, in full fume with its incense, which was so grateful to the Hebrew deity[115].

The quarters naturally preceded the twelve signs, and these three signs connected with the altar and sacrifice are in the three divisions of the Scorpion quarter.

The quarter of re-emergence from the waters or the ark, the boat in which Horus appears during three months, and the place of the altar, the bowing-down, the sacrifice which followed the inundation, were actual in the Nile valley, where the earth began to emerge from the fifteen cubits of water in the quarter of the Scorpion which was afterwards divided. And the men who set this imagery in heaven offered sacrifices on their altars at the end of the inundation for the promise of plenty and the blessing that it brought.

Ara, the altar, likewise denotes a sanctuary, a religious refuge, which is particularly applicable on Egyptian ground. The altar was a form of the mount which was single at first (with seven steps), then dual, then fourfold. The pillar-altar or tat-cross is a form of the altar, mount, or tree of the four quarters. Building the altar of the four quarters would be the first act that followed the deluge or end of a world in which the cycle of the year had previously been divided only in two halves.

[p.202] In the decans of Scorpio stands the god Seb, who is Nu or Time in person, as well as lord of the Ark. He is portrayed in the decans next to the empty boat or ark. Seb is known by the bird on his head, a duck or goose named tef, a foreign bird; this month (Koiak) being the time marked in the calendar for the arrival of foreign birds[116], after the inundation. Seb was also the god of earth and his position is just where the earth, that was under water in the previous sign of the Tortoises (Libra), emerges from the flood of the actual inundation of Egypt! In another planisphere[117] the crocodile Sevekh comes up out of the waters and occupies this place of Sebi; and Sevekh, as before shown, was an earlier form of Kronus, also a type of earth, who was superseded in the orthodox cult by Seb as the father-god of a later creation in time.

We read in the Ritual of 'The abode of Seb at the balance of the sun (that is at the Equinox), who places the feather in it daily.'[118] The equinox (Balance) was in Scorpio, when Seb was stationed in that sign; and here the data for reckoning the year by nine dry months, or ten moons of twenty-eight days, and the inundation are visibly extant. Seb, who is designated the 'Great Inundator,' Lord of the ark, and the god of earth, is portrayed in the decans of Scorpio, the quarter assigned to earth because of its emergence from the inundation in that sign, which marked the drying up of the waters in Egypt. 'I stand at the Earth as Seb,' 'Lord of the evening,' is an exclamation of the saved osirified, in the Ritual [119]. And there in the west, the quarter of the dry ground, stands Seb or Nu (Kronus) with the arrow (or sunbeam) in one hand, and a torch in the other, as god of the re-illumined earth; guide of the time appointed for the end of the annual deluge.

The sacred year of the inundation founded on the four quarters, and the heliacal rising of Sothis, began with the sun's entrance into the Lion sign, and the heliacal rising of Hydra; so that if we reckon the Lion, Virgin, and Scales as the three water-signs, the Scorpion is the sign of dry earth; the first sign of nine months dry, or of ten moons, according to time as it was kept in Egypt. During three months Seb was the 'Great Inundator' who poured out the deluge; and during nine months he was lord of the dry earth. Now the 'ark of Seb,' or time, is of course typical, and the lord of such an ark has to make the passage continually, so that there is a period of nine months or ten moons in the Ark of Time, of Nu or Noah, distinct from the inundation, and this passage appears to be included in the Hebrew legend.

Osiris entered the ark of Typhon on the 17th of Athyr (October 5th, in the sacred year), when the sun passed into the sign of the [p.203] Scorpion. Noah entered the ark on the seventeenth of the second month, that is of Marchesvan—dating the lunar year from Tisri—which agrees with November 5th in the Egyptian sacred year, or exactly one sign later. He left it on the twenty-seventh day of the second month in the following year, after being on board one year and ten days; i.e. within ten days of the true time of Seb in Egypt. Possibly the exact year might have looked less historical. Now follows another illustration of the dual, or luni-solar foundation of the zodiacal imagery, and of the natural genesis passing into the symbolical phase.

In one form of the mythos preserved by Plutarch we are told that in the month Athyr (Hathor), when the sun went into the sign of Scorpio, on the seventeenth day of the month, Osiris entered the ark which had been prepared by Typhon and the seventy-two conspirators. In that ark he was shut up, and the ark was taken to the riverside and set afloat, when it drifted out to sea through the Tanaitick mouth of the Nile. This happened in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of Osiris. But some say the date referred to the twenty-eighth year of his life, and not of his reign. The number twenty-eight applies to Osiris in his lunar character; hence we are told that Typhon tore his body into fourteen parts, the number of days assigned to the half-lunation. The inundation was also considered to be of full height at Memphis when fourteen cubits high, or a full moon of the waters to which Typhon as the evil power was opposed.

Hathor was the cow, a form of the Teba or ark which the sun was said to enter for the passage of the waters between the west and east, to be reproduced by the genetrix at the vernal equinox. Both the cow and empty boat are portrayed in the decans of Librai.

The seventy-two show the number of duo-decans in the zodiac, and these relate to Osiris in the solar myth. In this application the entrance into the ark is that of the sun's entrance into the arc of the six lower signs ranging from equinox to equinox.

The sun-god being now defeated by the dark power called Typhon, he was said to be buried bodily when the orb of light had entered the lower signs; but his spirit lived on, his light was reflected by the moon that rose at full and held up the lamp at night in the ascending signs. The soul of Osiris was safe in the ark of the moon. The child Horus is also portrayed in this form of the ark. Two days after Osiris was entrapped by Typhon and the seventy-two conspirators, on the nineteenth (of Athyr) at night, a little golden ark was carried down to the seaside by the priests, and fresh water was poured into it. Then altogether they gave a great shout of joy that Osiris was found. They also fashioned a little crescent-shaped image as a figure of the lunar ark[120] in which Osiris rode and out-rode the deluge of the dark.

[p.204] The entrance of Osiris into the ark of Typhon about the time that the land of Egypt was re-emerging from the waters, accounts for the statement in the Ritual, 'The day of establishing the earth and completing the earth is the burial of Osiris, the soul created in Suten-Khen, giver of food, who has traversed the eternal path;'[121] thus, the sun-god, as Osiris, the elder Horus or Atum, entered the underworld, he descended and was buried to quicken the earth and send forth the corn in season, and so became a saviour of men, of those who lived from year to year by means of his burial and resurrection. This world was established when he died as it were to further found a path to the future life[122].

This passage may be reckoned as that of the inferior hemisphere including six solar or fourteen lunar signs. But the crossing of the waters was limited to the zodiacal three water-signs.

The Noachian deluge or downpour of rain is said to have lasted forty days. This is the precise time assigned to the deluge in some of the Polynesian Islands. But it was forty weeks or nine months before the earth emerged again. Here the typical number forty is of great significance. Forty weeks, equal to ten moons in the early reckoning of thirteen moons to the year, represented the nine months dry, or the period of gestation. During the other three the solar god crossed the waters.

The ancient reckoning was preserved by a symbolical forty days of suffering, of fasting, of probation, isolation, forty days of Lent, forty days in the wilderness, in the ark or the ark-island. These represented the negational or pluvial period, as the antithesis to the forty weeks, the rain of forty days being one of the figures or types of mystical meaning. The Mandans supposed that it required forty days to wash the world clean by the deluge[123]; and the Orinoko women like the Hebrew, were considered unclean for forty days after child-birth.

On coming forth out of the ark the altar was set up and the sacrifice performed. This, however, occurs twice in the constellations, in keeping with the dominant Two Truths and the double luni-solar reckoning continued all round the circle of signs. It was the real earth, in Egypt, that reappeared from the deluge of an actual inundation where the altar of the west was set up in the extra-zodiacal constellation Ara, which coincides with the Akkadian month of the Holy Altar, Tul-Ku, the seventh in the equinoctial year. But the first month, Barazigur, is also the month of the altar and the sacrifice of the Ram; the 'Altar of the Demiurge,' or the 'Upright Altar,' as it is variously rendered.

This is on the opposite side in relation to the Ram and the re-emergence of the sun from the three water-signs; his form of the deluge, where the full moon rose during the real inundation. Out of [p.205] these the sun was reborn of the fish-goddess Hathor, Atergatis, or Semiramis in Pisces; and became a soul, that is, a re-arisen body in the sign of the Ram. As Num-Ra he ascended, ram-headed, in the Argo constellation—the rising of which marked the sun's passage into Aries. The two altars and double sacrifice follow the type of the dual inundation and the double boat of the luni-solar year.

These two altars of the equinox were likewise represented by the two lofty pillars at Hierapolis, described by Lucian, which some supposed to be connected with the deluge of Deucalion. Twice in the year a man ascended one of these phalli, and stayed on the top for seven days; the same length of time that the Hebrews dwelt in the ark of green boughs. The climber had to watch without sleeping and it is said there was a scorpion ready to sting him if he appeared drowsy. Whatever was told of this scorpion was accepted as sacred tradition. Doubtless, this was on account of the sign of Scorpio, and its relation to the end of the deluge[124].

The Akkadian Elul is found to be double in the months. The second Elul is supposed to be intercalary. But in the saints' calendar it is marked as the festival of Anu and Bel, to whom the month Nisan is dedicated[125]. Here the two Elul belong to the two equinoxes, and are in perfect agreement with Al-Ul (Har-Ur) in his two characters on the two horizons as the Horus of the double equinox.*

* Etul. The identity of E1-U1 with Har-Ur, the firstborn Horus, the setting sun of autumn, may be shown by comparing Tammuz with Atum the red sun. Tammuz is addressed thus in one of the Akkadian hymns: 'O shepherd! Lord Tamnmur! the red one of Ishtar, lord of Hades, Lord of Tut-Sukhba! Understanding one, who, among the papyri the water drinks not! his brood in the desert, even the reed, he created not. Its bulrush in his can at he lifted not up, the roots of the bulrush were carried away. O God of the world, who among the papyri the water drinks not!'[126] This expresses the 'Mourning for Tammuz' during his passage through the underworld as the suffering sun; but at the same time it identifies the god Atum, who, as the setting sun, carries the red disk and is a deity of Hades. Atum is likewise god of the papyri plants, the 'sesh' of the writings, in which character he wears the Seshnin or lily-lotus for his crown[127]. Atum was the 'duplicate of Aten,' the Syrian Adon and Hebrew Adonai.

The duality explains why the twelve signs are reckoned by astrologers to be alternately diurnal and nocturnal. They were both solar and lunar at the same time, or by day and night. The Bull, marked by the great star Aldebaran, had been the earlier sign of this quarter of breath, following that of the waters, before the quarter was divided into the three signs of the final zodiac.

There are thirty-six gates to the Egyptian heaven. In the second of these the sun (or the soul) comes forth from the water-quarter (the meh) in his ark. It says in the text, 'He made the ark and its barge in his coming forth out of the quarter,' the quarter of the waters, not otherwise filled in. This is in the second gate, that of a ram- [p.206] headed god. The name of the next gate, the third, is 'Mistress of Altars! Great one of Sacrifices! Mistress of what is given to the Gods, letting the offerings pass.' Thus the actual facts of the astronomy are so ancient in Egypt that they lurk in the shades of the Ritual where they have become eschatological. This, however, identifies the point of emergence for the solar ark and the place of the eastern altar in the three first of the thirty-six Aalu, or the three first decans in the sign of the Ram[128].

The deluge was the water of life to the land of Egypt, and the descent of heaven itself in a liquid guise. In the three water-signs of the abyss through which the sun made its passage by night or in winter, the inundation became typical of the typhonian destruction and dissolution. The first altar of sacrifice was erected with a lively sense of future favours; the second with a feeling of gratitude for dangers passed.

In the Greek legend of the 'Altar,' Ara becomes the type of the victory of the gods (upper) over the earth-born giants and assailants of order and serenity, at the restoration of which 'Tunc Iuppiter Arae sidera constituit,' and 'Ara mundi templum est.'[129] A restoration at the autumn equinox would also be necessitated during the course of precession as the old guiding stars sank down south.

The submergence of the earth beneath the waters, and the passage of the solar god across the abyss, was celebrated in the mysteries as an awful event. 'After the oath had been tendered to the Mystae, we commemorated the sad necessity by which the earth was reduced to its chaotic condition. Then we celebrated Kronus through whom the world after a term of darkness enjoyed once more a pure serene sky: through whom also was produced Eros, that twofold conspicuous, and beautiful being, who had the name of Phanes because he was the first remarkable object that appeared to the eye of man in consequence of this great event.'[130]

The deluge was a break in time, a solution of continuity, during which men were all at sea. In one legend the child Horus was said to be drowned in this passage of the waters. The same death was bewailed in the mourning for Tammuz, the Akkadian Duzi. The Mexicans told the Spaniards that in their festival of the winter solstice on December 21st they celebrated the death and resurrection of that deity, through whose instrumentality the earth became visible once more after its being drowned by the waters of the deluge; they therefore kept his festival during the twenty following days in which they offered sacrifices to him[131]. This connects the deluge doctrine with the sinking and re-emerging of the annual sun during its passage through the three water signs, and also with the earth that was submerged in Egypt.

[p.207] The Chinese keep their dragon-boat festival at midsummer. This is 'something like the bewailing of Adonis, or the weeping for Tammuz mentioned in Scripture,' says an eyewitness[132]. The legend relates that long ago Wut-Yune the greatly beloved was suddenly drowned in the river at the time of midsummer, and ever since, on the same day of the mouth, the dragon-boats go out in search of him, but the lunar having been earliest. The waters his body is never found. This answers also to the seeking for Osiris, only that was about the time of the winter solstice. Both passages were celebrated, and both festivals can be correlated by the double midsummer; the solar passage is in winter. In the was restored to life again, and it was proclaimed that they had escaped from a great calamity with the Two Truths of water and air (the three nine months dry), the two horizons of going down and re-arising; the two heavens, north and south. Then followed the subdivision into the four elements of water, air, earth, and fire, and the four corners of a zodiac. These are identified as the Lion, Scorpion, Waterer, and Bull, by the typical four creatures of the iconography, and the four great stars, Cor Leonis (Leo), Antares (Scorpio), Fomalhaut (for Aquarius), and Aldebaran (Taurus). From these four stars and quarter-constellations came the twelve, and the ancient zodiacs preserve the proof. The four great