The Evolution of the Dragon Part 26

(a) and (b) Two Mycenaean pots (after Schliemann).

(a) The so-called "owl-shaped" vase is really a representation of the Mother-Pot in the form of a conventionalized Octopus (Houssay).

(b) The other vase represents the Octopus Mother-Pot, with a jar upon her head and another in her hands--a three-fold representation of the Great Mother as a pot.

(c) A Cretan vase from Gournia in which the Octopus-motive is represented as a decoration upon the pot instead of in its form.

(d), (e), (f), (g), and (h) A series of coins from Central Greece (after Head) showing a series of conventionalizations of the Octopus, with its pot-like body and palm-tree-like arms (f).

(i) _Sepia officinalis_ (after Tryon).

(k) and (l) The so-called "spouting vases" in the hands of the Babylonian G.o.d Ea, from a cylinder seal of the time of Gudea, Patesi of Tello, after Ward ("Seal Cylinders, etc.," p. 215).

The "spouting vases" have been placed in conjunction with the Sepia to suggest the possibility of confusion with a conventionalized drawing of the latter in the blending of the symbolism of the water-jar and cephalopods in Western Asia and the Mediterranean.]

This idea of the Mother Pot is found not only in Babylonia, Egypt, India,[336] and the Eastern Mediterranean, but wherever the influence of these ancient civilizations made itself felt. It is widespread among the Celtic-speaking peoples. In Wales the pot's life-giving powers are enhanced by making its rim of pearls. But as the idea spread, its meaning also became extended. At first it was merely a jug of water or a basket of figs, but elsewhere it became also a witch's cauldron, the magic cup, the Holy Grail, the font in which a child is reborn into the faith, the vessel of water here being interpreted in the earliest sense as the uterus or the organ of birth. The Celtic pot, so Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me, is closely a.s.sociated with cows, serpents, frogs, dragons, birds, pearls, and "nine maidens that blow the fire under the cauldron"; and, if the nature of these relations.h.i.+ps be examined, each of them will be found to be a link between the pot and the Great Mother.

The witch's cauldron and the maidens who a.s.sist in the preparation of the witch's medicine seem to be the descendants respectively of Hathor's pots (in the story of the Destruction of Mankind) and the Sekti who churn up the _didi_ and the barley with which to make the elixir of immortality and the sedative draught for the destructive G.o.ddess herself.

Mr. Donald Mackenzie has given me a number of additional references from Celtic and Indian literature in corroboration of these widespread a.s.sociations of the pot with the Great Mother; and he reminds me that in Oceania the coco-nut has the same reputation as the pot in the Indian _Mahabharata_. It is the source of food and anything else that is wanted, and its supply can never be exhausted. [On some future occasion I hope to make use of the wonderful legends of the pot's life-giving powers, to which Mr. Mackenzie has directed my attention. At present, however, I must content myself with the statement that the pot's ident.i.ty with the Great Mother is deeply rooted in ancient belief throughout the greater part of the world.[337]]

The diverse conceptions of the Great Mother as a pot and as an octopus seem to have been blended in Mycenaean lands, where the so-called "owl-shaped" pots were clearly intended to represent the G.o.ddess in both these aspects united in one symbol. When the diffusion of these ideas into more remote parts of the world took place syntheses with other motives produced a great variety of most complex forms. In Honduras pottery vessels have been found[338] which give tangible expression to the blending of the ideas of the Mother Pot, the crocodile-like _Makara_, star-spangled like Hathor's cow, Aphrodite's pig, and Soma's deer, and provided with the deer's antlers of the Eastern Asiatic dragon (see Chapter II, p. 103).

The New Testament sets forth the ancient conception of birth and rebirth. When Nicodemus asks: "How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" he is told: "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of G.o.d. That which is born of the flesh is flesh: and that which is born of the spirit is spirit" (John iii. 4, 5, and 6).

The phrase "born of water" refers to the birth "of the flesh"; and the mother's womb is the vessel containing "the water" from which the new life emerges. Plutarch states, with reference to the birth of Isis: "[Greek: tetarte de ten Isin en panygrois genesthai]". The great waters which produced all living things, the Egyptian G.o.d Nun and the G.o.ddess Nut, were expressed in hieroglyphic as pots of water. The G.o.ddess was identified with Hathor's celestial star-spangled cow, the original mother of the sun-G.o.d; and the word "Nun" was a symbol of all that was new, young, and fresh, and the fertilizing and life-giving waters of the annual inundation of the Nile. Hathor was the daughter of these waters, as Aphrodite was sprung from the sea-foam.

[332: _Archaeol. Survey of Egypt_, 1898, p. 3.]

[333: Compare the two-fold meaning of the Latin _testa_ as "sh.e.l.l" and "bowl".]

[334: Compare the a.s.sociation of sh.e.l.ls with altars in Minoan Crete and the widespread use of large sh.e.l.ls as bowls for "holy water" in Christian churches.]

[335: Miss Winifred M. Crompton, a.s.sistant Keeper of the Egyptian Department of the Manchester Museum, has called my attention to a remarkable piece of evidence which affords additional corroboration of the view that Hathor was a development of the cowry-amulet. Upon the famous archaic palette of Narmer (Fig. 18), a sporran, composed of four representations of Hathor's head, takes the place of the original cowries that were suspended from more primitive girdles.

The cowries of the head ornament of primitive peoples of Africa and Asia (and of the Mediterranean area in early times--Schliemann's "Ilios,"

Fig. 685) are often replaced in Egypt by lotus flowers (W. D. Spanton, "Water Lilies of Egypt," _Ancient Egypt_, 1917, Part I, Figs. 19, 20, and 21). Upon the head-band of the statue of Nefert, which I have reproduced in Chapter I (Fig. 4), a conventional lotus design is found (see Spanton's Fig. 19), which is almost identical with the cla.s.sical thunder-weapon.]

[336: Among the Dravidian people at the present day the seven G.o.ddesses (corresponding to the seven Hathors) are often represented by seven pots.]

[337: The luxuriant crop of stories of the Holy Grail was not inspired originally by mere literary invention. A tradition sprung from the fountain-head of all mythology, the parent-story of the Destruction of Mankind, provided the materials which a series of writers elaborated into the varied a.s.sortment of legends of the Mother Pot. The true meaning of the Quest of the Holy Grail can be understood only by reading the fabled accounts of it in the light of the ancient search for the elixir of life and the historical development of the narrative describing that search.

A concise summary of the Grail literature will be found in Jessie L.

Weston's "The Quest of the Holy Grail" (1913). Her theory will be found, after some slight modifications, to fall into line with the general argument of this book.

Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the verb "coire c.u.m" gives frank expression to the real meaning of the symbolism of the pot as the matrix which receives the seed. The same idea provides the material for the incident of the birth of Drona (the pot-born) in the Adi Parva (Sections Cx.x.xI, Cx.x.xIX, and CLXVIII, in Roy's translation) of the Mahabharata, to which Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie has kindly called my attention. Drona was conceived in a pot from the seed of a Ris.h.i.+. A widespread variant of the same story is the conception of a child from a drop of blood in a pot (see, for example, Hartland, "Legend of Perseus," Vol. I, pp. 98 and 144). If the pot can thus create a human being, it is easy to understand how it acquired its reputation of being also able to multiply food and provide an inexhaustible supply.

Similarly, all substances, such as barley, rice, gold, pearls, and jade, to which the possession of a special vital essence or "soul substance"

was attributed, were believed to be able to reproduce themselves and so increase in quant.i.ty of their own activities. As "givers of life" they were also able to add to their own life-substance, in other words to grow like any other living being.]

[338: "An American Dragon," _Man_, November, 1918.]

Artemis and the Guardian of the Portal.

Sir Gardner Wilkinson states (see text-figure, p. 179, _b_) that "a basket of sycamore figs" was originally the hieroglyphic sign for a woman, a G.o.ddess, or a mother. Later on (p. 199) I shall refer to the possible bearing of this Egyptian idea upon the origin of the Hebrew word for mandrakes and the allusion to "a basket of figs" in the Book of Jeremiah.

The life-giving powers attributed to "love-apples" and the a.s.sociation of these ideas with the fig-tree may have facilitated the transference of these attributes of "apples" to those actually growing upon a tree.

We know that Aphrodite was intimately a.s.sociated, not only with "love-apples," but also with real apples. The sun-G.o.d Apollo's connexion with the apple-tree, which Dr. Rendel Harris, with great daring, wants to convert into an ident.i.ty of name, was probably only one of the results of that long series of confusions between the Great Mother (Hathor) and the Sun-G.o.d (Horus), to which I have referred in my discussion of the dragon-story.

But when Apollo's form emerges more clearly he is a.s.sociated not with Aphrodite but with Artemis, whom Dr. Rendel Harris has shown to be identified with the mugwort, _Artemisia_. The a.s.sociation of the G.o.ddess with this plant is probably related to the identification of Sekhet with the marsh-plants of the Egyptian Delta and of Hathor and Isis with the lotus and other water plants. Any doubt as to the reality of these a.s.sociations and Egyptian connexions is banished by the evidence of Artemis's male counterpart Apollo Hyakinthos and his relations to the sacred lily and other water plants.[339] Artemis was a gynaecological specialist: for she a.s.sisted women not only in childbirth and the expulsion of the placenta, but also in cases of amenorrha and affections of the uterus. She was regarded as the G.o.ddess of the portal, not merely of birth,[340] but also of gold and treasure, of which she possessed the key, and of the year (January).

This brings us back to the guardians.h.i.+p of gold and treasures which plays so vital a part in the evolution of the Mediterranean G.o.ddesses.

For, like the story of the dog and the mandrake, it emphasizes the conchological ancestry of these deities and their connexion with the guardians of the subterranean palaces where pearls are found. But Artemis was not only the opener of the treasure-houses, but she also possessed the secret of the philosopher's stone: she could trans.m.u.te base substances into gold,[341] for was she not the offspring of the Golden Hathor? To open the portal either of birth or wealth she used her magic wand or key. As _Nub_, the lady of gold, the Great Mother could not only change other substances into gold, but she was also the guardian of the treasure house of gold, pearls, and precious stones.

Hence she could grant riches. Elsewhere in this chapter (p. 221) I shall explain how the G.o.ddess came to be identified with gold.

Just as Hathor, the Eye of Re, descended to provide the elixir of youth for the king who was the sun-G.o.d, so Artemis is described as travelling through the air in a car drawn by two serpents[342] seeking the most pious of kings in order that she might establish her cult with him and bless him with renewed youth.[343]

Artemis was a moon-G.o.ddess closely related to Britomartis and Diktynna, the Cretan prototype of Aphrodite. These G.o.ddesses afforded help to women in childbirth and were regarded as guardians of the portal. The G.o.ddess of streams and marshes was identified with the mugwort (_Artemisia_), which was hung above the door in the place occupied at other times by the winged disk, the thunder-stone, or a crocodile (dragon). As the guardian of portals Artemis's magic plant could open locks and doors. As the giver of life she could also withhold the vital essence and so cause disease or death; but she possessed the means of curing the ills she inflicted. Artemis, in fact, like all the other G.o.ddesses, was a witch.

In former lectures[344] I have often discussed the remarkable feature of Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the symbolic gateways of China and j.a.pan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 25.

(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I.

(b) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109).

(c) a.s.syrian or Syro-Hitt.i.te design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).

(d) a.s.syrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the design upon the dress of a.s.surn.a.z.ipal (Ward, Fig. 670).

(e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig.

663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains: alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle.

(f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig.

9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe, into which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was the prototype of the Winged Disk has been added.

(g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenae (after Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10).

(h) a.s.syrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in _g_.

(i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate" (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the G.o.ddess of the Portal.

(k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the form suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, _c_).

(l) An a.s.syrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 695).