The Evolution of the Dragon

by Grafton Elliot Smith

It is important to recognize that the legend of Hathor descending from the moon or the sky in the form of destroying fire had nothing whatever to do, in the first instance, with the phenomena of lightning and meteorites. It was the result of verbal quibbling after the destructive goddess came to be identified with the moon, the sky and the "Eye of Re". But once the evolution of the story on these lines prepared the way, it was inevitable that in later times the powers of destruction exerted by the fire from the sky should have been identified with the lightning and meteorites.

When the destructive force of the heavens was attributed to the "Eye of Re" and the god's enemies were identified with the followers of Set, it was natural that the traditional enemy of Set who was also the more potent other "Eye of Re" should assume his mother's rôle of punishing rebellious mankind. That Horus did in fact take the place at first occupied by Hathor in the story is revealed by the series of trivial episodes from the "Destruction of Mankind" that reappear in the "Saga of the Winged Disk". The king of Lower Egypt (Horus) was identified with a falcon, as Hathor was with the vulture (Mut): like her, he entered the sun-god's boat[198] and sailed up the river with him: he then mounted up to heaven as a winged disk, i.e. the sun of Re equipped with his own falcon's wings. The destructive force displayed by Hathor as the Eye of Re was symbolized by her identification with Tefnut, the fire-spitting uræus-snake. When Horus assumed the form of the winged disk he added to his insignia two fire-spitting serpents to destroy Re's enemies. The winged disk was at once the instrument of destruction and the god himself. It swooped (or flew) down from heaven like a bolt of destroying fire and killed the enemies of Re. By a confusion with Horus's other fight against the followers of Set, the enemies of Re become identified with Set's army and they are transformed into crocodiles, hippopotami and all the other kinds of creatures whose shapes the enemies of Osiris assume.

In the course of the development of these legends a multitude of other factors played a part and gave rise to transformations of the meaning of the incidents.

The goddess originally slaughtered mankind, or perhaps it would be truer to say, made a human sacrifice, to obtain blood to rejuvenate the king. But, as we have seen already, when the sacrifice was no longer a necessary part of the programme, the incident of the slaughter was not dropped out of the story, but a new explanation of it was framed. Instead of simply making a human sacrifice, mankind as a whole was destroyed for rebelling against the gods, the act of rebellion being murmuring about the king's old age and loss of virility. The elixir soon became something more than a rejuvenator: it was transformed into the food of the gods, the ambrosia that gave them their immortality, and distinguished them from mere mortals. Now when the development of the story led to the replacement of the single victim by the whole of mankind, the blood produced by the wholesale slaughter was so abundant that the fields were flooded by the life-giving elixir. By the sacrifice of men the soil was renewed and refertilized. When the blood-coloured beer was substituted for the actual blood the conception was brought into still closer harmony with Egyptian ideas, because the beer was animated with the life-giving powers of Osiris. But Osiris was the Nile. The blood-coloured fertilizing fluid was then identified with the annual inundation of the red-coloured waters of the Nile. Now the Nile waters were supposed to come from the First Cataract at Elephantine. Hence by a familiar psychological process the previous phase of the legend was recast, and by confusion the red ochre (which was used to colour the beer red) was said to have come from Elephantine. [199]

Thus we have arrived at the stage where, by a distortion of a series of phases, the new incident emerges that by means of a human sacrifice the Nile flood can be produced. By a further confusion the goddess, who originally did the slaughter, becomes the victim. Hence the story assumed the form that by means of the sacrifice of a beautiful and attractive maiden the annual inundation can be produced. As the most potent symbol of life-giving it is essential that the victim should be sexually attractive, i.e. that she should be a virgin and the most beautiful and desirable in the land. When the practice of human sacrifice was abandoned a figure or an animal was substituted for the maiden in ritual practice, and in legends the hero rescued the maiden, as Andromeda was saved from the dragon.[200] The dragon is the personification of the monsters that dwell in the waters as well as the destructive forces of the flood itself. But the monsters were no other than the followers of Set; they were the victims of the slaughter who became identified with the god's other traditional enemies, the followers of Set. Thus the monster from whom Andromeda is rescued is merely another representative of herself!

But the destructive forces of the flood now enter into the programme. In the phases we have so far discussed it was the slaughter of mankind which caused the inundation: but in the next phase it is the flood itself which causes the destruction, as in the later Egyptian and the borrowed Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew—and in fact the world-wide—versions. Re's boat becomes the ark; the winged disk which was despatched by Re from the boat becomes the dove and the other birds sent out to spy the land, as the winged Horus spied the enemies of Re.

Thus the new weapon of the gods—we have already noted Hathor's knife and Horus's winged disk, which is the fire from heaven, the lightning and the thunderbolt—is the flood. Like the others it can be either a beneficent giver of life or a force of destruction.

But the flood also becomes a weapon of another kind. One of the earlier incidents of the story represents Hathor in opposition to Re. The goddess becomes so maddened with the zest of killing that the god becomes alarmed and asks her to desist and spare some representatives of the race. But she is deaf to entreaties. Hence the god is said to have sent to Elephantine for the red ochre to make a sedative draught to overcome her destructive zeal. We have already seen that this incident had an entirely different meaning—it was merely intended to explain the obtaining of the colouring matter wherewith to redden the sacred beer so as to make it resemble blood as an elixir for the god. It was brought from Elephantine, because the red waters of inundation of the Nile were supposed by the Egyptians to come from Elephantine.

But according to the story inscribed in Seti I^st's tomb, the red ochre was an essential ingredient of the sedative mixture (prepared under the direction of Re by the Sekti[201] of Heliopolis) to calm Hathor's murderous spirit.

It has been claimed that the story simply means that the goddess became intoxicated with beer and that she became genially inoffensive solely as the effect of such inebriation. But the incident in the Egyptian story closely resembles the legends of other countries in which some herb is used specifically as a sedative. In most books on Egyptian mythology the word (d'd') for the substance put into the drink to colour it is translated "mandragora," from its resemblance to the Hebrew word dudaim in the Old Testament, which is often translated "mandrakes" or "love-apples". But Gauthier has clearly demonstrated that the Egyptian word does not refer to a vegetable but to a mineral substance, which he translates "red clay".[202] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me, however, that it is "red ochre". In any case, mandrake is not found at Elephantine (which, however, for the reasons I have already given, is a point of no importance so far as the identification of the substance is concerned), nor in fact anywhere in Egypt.