In Indonesia also petrifaction, thunder-stones, rain, floods, lightning, and an arrow shot to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning were the punishments traditionally assigned for certain offences, such as incest and laughing at animals.
The same people who introduced into the Malay Archipelago these characteristic fragments of the dragon-myth also believed that certain animals were impersonations of their gods: they also brought stories of incestuous unions on the part of their deities and rulers. To laugh at their sacred animals, or to imitate privileged customs permitted to their deities, but not to ordinary mortals, merited the same sort of punishments as were meted out to those other rebels against the ruling class and the gods in the home of these beliefs.[446]
To laugh at the divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a divine prerogative, was analogous to "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost," which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable offence, and in pagan legend was punished by the divine wrath, thunder, lightning, rain, floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instruments. Œdipus put out his own eyes to forestall the traditional wrath of the gods.
[441] Blinkenberg, op. cit., p. 70 et seq.
[442] Quoted by Layard, "Nineveh and its Remains," Vol. II, p. 457.
[443] Cook, "Zeus," I, p. 760.
[444] Striking examples of these stories about birth from split stones have been given by Perry, "Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Chapter X, and de Groot's "Religious System of China". It is possible that the double meaning of the Egyptian word set, as "stone" and "mountain" played a part in originating these stories. I have already quoted from the Pyramid Texts the account of the daily birth of the sun-god by a splitting of the "mountain" of the dawn. By a pun on this word the god's origin might have been interpreted as having taken place from a split "stone". The fact that the Great Mother was identified with a "mountain" (set) may also have facilitated the homology with the other meaning of set, i.e. "a stone".
[445] "Incense and Libations".
[446] As the character and attributes of the early goddesses became more complex, and contradictory traits were more sharply contrasted, the inevitable tendency developed to differentiate the goddesses themselves, and provide distinctive names for the new personalities thus split off from the common parent. We see this in Egypt in the case of Hathor and Sekhet, and in Babylonia in Ishtar and Tiamat. But the process of specialization and differentiation might even involve a change of sex. There can be no doubt that the god Horus was originally a differentiation of certain of the aspects of the sky-goddess Hathor, at first as a brother "Eye". But as the king Horus was the son of Osiris (as the dead king), when the confusion of the attributes of Osiris and Hathor—the actual father and the divine mother of Horus—made their marriage inevitable, the maternal relationship of the goddess to her "brother" was emphasized. But as the Great Mother, Hathor was the parent of the universe, and the mother not only of Horus but also of his father Osiris. This complicated rationalization made Hathor the sister, mother, and grandmother of Horus, and was responsible for originating the belief in the incestuous practices of the divine family. When the royal family assumed the rôle of gods and goddesses they were bound by these traditions (which had their origin purely in theological sophistry) and were driven to indulge in actual incest, as we know from the records of the Egyptian royal family and their imitators in other countries. But incest became a royal and divine prerogative which was sternly forbidden to mere mortals and regarded as a peculiarly detestable sin.