The star Sothis rose heliacally on the first day of the Egyptian New Year.[409] Hence it became "the second sun in heaven," and was identified with the goddess of the New Year's Day. The identification of Hathor with this "second sun"[410] may explain why the goddess is said to have entered Re's boat. She took her place as a crown upon his forehead, which afterwards was assumed by her surrogate, the fire-spitting uræus-serpent. When Horus took his mother's place in the myth, he also entered the sun-god's boat, and became the prototype of Noah seeking refuge from the Flood in the ship the Almighty instructed him to make.
In memory of the beer-drinking episode in the Destruction of Mankind, New Year's Day was celebrated by Hathor's priestesses in wild orgies of beer drinking.
This event was necessarily the earliest celebration of an anniversary, and the prototype of all the incidents associated with some special day in the year which have been so many milestones in the historical progress of civilization.
The first measurement of the year also naturally forms the starting-point in the framing of a calendar.
Similar celebrations took place to inaugurate the commencement of the year in all countries which came, either directly or indirectly, under Egyptian influence.
The month Ἀφροδίσια (so-called from the festival of the goddess) began the calendar of Bithynia, Cyprus, and Iasos, just as Hathor's feast was a New Year's celebration in Egypt.
In the celebration of these anniversaries the priestesses of Aphrodite worked themselves up in a wild state of frenzy; and the term ὑστήρια[411] became identified with the state of emotional derangement associated with such orgies. The common belief that the term "hysteria" is derived directly from the Greek word for uterus is certainly erroneous. The word ὑστήρια was used in the same sense as Ἀφροδίσια, that is as a synonym for the festivals of the goddess. The "hysteria" was the name for the orgy in celebration of the goddess on New Year's day: then it was applied to the condition produced by these excesses; and ultimately it was adopted in medicine to apply to similar emotional disturbances. Thus both the terms "hysteria" and "lunacy"[412] are intimately associated with the earliest phases in the moon-goddess's history; and their survival in modern medicine is a striking tribute to the strong hold of effete superstition in this branch of the diagnosis and treatment of disease.[413]
I have already referred to the association of Artemis with the portal of birth and rebirth. As the guardian of the door her Roman representative Diana and her masculine avatar Dianus or Janus gave the name to the commencement of the year. The Great Mother not only initiated the measurement of the year, but she (or her representative) lent her name to the opening of the year in various countries.
But the story of the Destruction of Mankind has preserved the record not only of the circumstances which were responsible for originating the measurement of the year and the making of a calendar, but also of the materials out of which were formed the mythical epochs preserved in the legends of Greece and India and many other countries further removed from the original centre of civilization. When the elaboration of the early story involved the destruction of mankind, it became necessary to provide some explanation of the continued existence of man upon the earth. This difficulty was got rid of by creating a new race of men from the fragments of the old or from the clay into which they had been transformed (supra, p. 196). In course of time this secondary creation became the basis of the familiar story of the original creation of mankind. But the story also became transformed in other ways. Different versions of the process of destruction were blended into one narrative, and made into a series of catastrophes and a succession of acts of creation. I shall quote (from Mr. T. A. Joyce's "Mexican Archæology," p. 50) one example of these series of mythical epochs or world ages to illustrate the method of synthesis:—
When all was dark Tezcatlipoca transformed himself into the sun to give light to men.