[201] In the version I have quoted from Erman he refers to "the god Sektet".
[202] Op. cit. supra.
The Thunder-Weapon.[203]
In the development of the dragon-story we have seen that the instruments of destruction were of a most varied kind. Each of the three primary deities, Hathor, Osiris and Horus can be a destructive power as well as a giver of life and of all kinds of boons. Every homologue or surrogate of these three deities can become a weapon for dragon-destroying, such as the moon or the lotus of Hathor, the water or the beer of Osiris, the sun or the falcon of Horus. Originally Hathor used a flint knife or axe: then she did the execution as "the Eye of Re," the moon, the fiery bolt from heaven: Osiris sent the destroying flood and the intoxicating beer, each of which, like the knife, axe and moon of Hathor, were animated by the deity. Then Horus came as the winged disk, the falcon, the sun, the lightning and the thunderbolt. As the dragon-story was spread abroad in the world any one of these "weapons" was confused with any of (or all) the rest. The Eye of Re was the fire-spitting uræus-serpent; and foreign people, like the Greeks, Indians and others, gave the Egyptian verbal simile literal expression and converted it into an actual Cyclopean eye planted in the forehead, which shot out the destroying fire.
The warrior god of Babylonia is called the bright one,[204] the sword or lightning of Ishtar, who was herself called both the sword or lightning of heaven.
In the Ægean area also the sons of Zeus and the progeny of heaven may be axes, stone implements, meteoric stones and thunderbolts. In a Swahili tale the hero's weapon is "a sword like a flash of lightning".
According to Bergaigne,[205] the myth of the celestial drink soma, brought down from heaven by a bird ordinarily called cyena, "eagle," is parallel to that of Agni, the celestial fire brought by Mâtariçvan. This parallelism is even expressly stated in the Rig Veda, verse 6 of hymn 1 to Agni and Soma. Mâtariçvan brought the one from heaven, the eagle brought the other from the celestial mountain.
Kuhn admits that the eagle represents Indra; and Lehmann regards the eagle who takes the fire as Agni himself. It is patent that both Indra and Agni are in fact merely specialized forms of Horus of the Winged Disk Saga, in one of which the warrior sun-god is represented, in the other the living fire. The elixir of life of the Egyptian story is represented by the soma, which by confusion is associated with the eagle: in other words, the god Soma is the homologue not only of Osiris, but also of Horus.
Other incidents in the same original version are confused in the Greek story of Prometheus. He stole the fire from heaven and brought it to earth: but, in place of the episode of the elixir, which is adopted in the Indian story just mentioned, the creation of men from clay is accredited by the Greeks to the "flaming one," the "fire eagle" Prometheus.