As Loret and Schweinfurth have pointed out, the mandrake is not found in Egypt, nor in fact in any part of the Nile Valley.[370]
But what is more significant, the Greeks translated the Hebrew dūdā'im by μανδράγορας and the Copts did not use the word ϫιϫι in their translations, but either the Greek word or a term referring to its sedative and soporific properties. Steindorff has shown (Zeitsch. f. Ægypt. Sprache, Bd. XXVII, 1890, p. 60) that the word in dispute would be more correctly transliterated "didi" instead of "doudou".
Finally, in a letter Mr. Griffith tells me the identification of didi with the Coptic ϫιϫι, "apple (?)" is philologically impossible.
Although this red colouring matter is thus definitely proved not to be the fruit of a plant, there are reasons to suggest that when the story of the Destruction of Mankind spread abroad—and the whole argument of this book establishes the fact that it did spread abroad—the substance didi was actually confused in the Levant with the mandrake. We have already seen that in the Delta a prototype of Artemis was already identified with certain plants.
In all probability didi was originally brought into the Egyptian legend merely as a surrogate of the life-blood, and the mixture of which it was an ingredient was simply a restorer of youth to the king. But the determinative (in the tomb of Seti I)—a little yellow disc with a red border, which misled Naville into believing the substance to be yellow berries—may also have created confusion in the minds of ancient Levantine visitors to Egypt, and led them to believe that reference was being made to their own yellow-berried drug, the mandrake. Such an incident might have had a two-fold effect. It would explain the introduction into the Egyptian story of the sedative effects of didi, which would easily be rationalized as a means of soothing the maniacal goddess; and in the Levant it would have added to the real properties of mandrake[371] the magical virtues which originally belonged to didi (and blood, the cowry, and water).
In my lecture on "Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II) I explained that the Egyptian story of the Destruction of Mankind is merely one version of a saga of almost world-wide currency. In many of the non-Egyptian versions[372] the rôle of didi in the Egyptian story is taken by some vegetable product of a red colour; and many of these versions reveal a definite confusion between the red fruit and the red clay, thus proving that the confusion of didi with the mandrake is no mere hypothetical device to evade a difficulty on my part, but did actually occur.
In the course of the development of the Egyptian story the red clay from Elephantine became the colouring matter of the Nile flood, and this in turn was rationalized as the blood or red clay into which the bodies of the slaughtered enemies of Re were transformed,[373] and the material out of which the new race of mankind was created.[374] In other words, the new race was formed of didi. There is a widespread legend that the mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies[375] often represented as innocent or chaste men wrongly killed, just as the red clay was the substance of mankind killed to appease Re's wrath, "the blood of the slaughtered saints".[376]
But the original belief is found in a more definite form in the ancient story that "the mandrake was fashioned out of the same earth whereof God formed Adam".[377] In other words the mandrake was part of the same substance as the earth didi.[378]
Further corroboration of this confusion is afforded by a story from Little Russia, quoted by de Gubernatis.[379] If bryony (a widely recognized surrogate of mandrake) be suspended from the girdle all the dead Cossacks (who, like the enemies of Re in the Egyptian story, had been killed and broken to pieces in the earth) will come to life again. Thus we have positive evidence of the homology of the mandrake with red clay or hæmatite.
The transference to the mandrake of the properties of the cowry (and the goddesses who were personifications of the shell) and blood (and its surrogates) was facilitated by the manifold homologies of the Great Mother with plants. We have already seen that the goddess was identified with: (a) incense-trees and other trees, such as the sycamore, which played some definite part in the burial ceremonies, either by providing the divine incense, the materials for preserving the body, or for making coffins to ensure the protection of the dead, and so make it possible for them to continue their existence; and (b) the lotus, the lily, the iris, and other marsh plants,[380] for reasons that I have already mentioned (p. 184).