[184] Hopkins, "Religions of India".
[185] De Groot, "The Religious System of China".
[186] Perry, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Manchester, 1918.
[187] H. Beuchat, "Manuel d' Archéologie Américaine," Paris, 1912; T. A. Joyce, "Mexican Archæology," and especially the memoir by Seler on the "Codex Vaticanus" and his articles in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie and elsewhere.
[188] I.e. the offspring of the Great Mother of gods and men, Hathor, the "Eye of Re".
[189] That is, Hathor, who as the moon is the "Eye of Re".
[190] Elsewhere in these pages I have used the more generally adopted spelling "Sekhet".
[191] Mr. F. Ll. Griffith tells me that the translation "flooding the land" is erroneous and misleading. Comparison of the whole series of stories, however, suggests that the amount of blood shed rapidly increased in the development of the narrative: at first the blood of a single victim; then the blood of mankind; then 7000 jars of a substitute for blood; then the red inundation of the Nile.
[192] This version I have quoted mainly from Erman, op. cit., pp. 267-9, but with certain alterations which I shall mention later. In another version of the legend wine replaces the beer and is made out of "the blood of those who formerly fought against the gods," cf. Plutarch, De Iside (ed. Parthey) 6.
[193] It is still the custom in many places, and among them especially the regions near the headwaters of the Nile itself, to regard the king or rain-maker as the impersonation of the life-giving properties of water and the source of all fertility. When his own vitality shows signs of failing he is killed, so as not to endanger the fruitfulness of the community by allowing one who is weak in life-giving powers to control its destinies. Much of the evidence relating to these matters has been collected by Sir James Frazer in "The Dying God," 1911, who quotes from Dr. Seligman the following account of the Dinka "Osiris":