In the later variants the original significance of the Destruction of Mankind seems to have been lost sight of. The life-giving Great Mother tends to drop out of the story and her son Horus takes her place. He becomes the warrior-god, but he not only assumes his mother's rôle but he also adopts her tactics. Just as she attacked Re's enemies in the capacity of the sky-god's "Eye," so Horus as the other "Eye," the sun, to which he gave his own falcon's wings, attacked in the form of the winged disk. The winged disk, like the other "Eye of Re," was not merely the sky weapon which shot down to destroy mankind, but also was the god Horus himself. This early conception involved the belief that the thunderbolt and lightning represented not merely the fiery weapon but the actual god.
The winged disk thus exhibits the same confusion of attributes as we have already noticed in Osiris and Hathor. It is the commonest symbol of life-giving and beneficent protective power: yet it is the weapon used to slaughter mankind. It is in fact the healing caduceus as well as the baneful thunder-weapon.
[203] The history of the thunder-weapon cannot wholly be ignored in discussing the dragon-myth because it forms an integral part of the story. It was animated both by the dragon and the dragon-slayer. But an adequate account of the weapon would be so highly involved and complex as to be unintelligible without a very large series of illustrations. Hence I am referring here only to certain aspects of the subject. Pending the preparation of a monograph upon the thunder-weapon, I may refer the reader to the works of Blinkenberg, d'Alviella, Ward, Evans and A. B. Cook (to which frequent reference is made in these pages) for material, especially in the form of illustrations, to supplement my brief and unavoidably involved summary.
[204] As in Egypt Osiris is described as "a ray of light" which issued from the moon (Hathor), i.e. was born of the Great Mother.
[205] "Religion védique," i., p. 173, quoted by S. Reinach, "Ætos Prometheus," Revue archéologique, 4ie série, tome x., 1917, p. 72.
[206] Evans, op. cit., Fig. 4, p. 10.
[207] William Hayes Ward, "The Seal Cylinders of Western Asia," chapter xxxviii.
[208] Seler, "Codex Vaticanus, No. 3773," vol. i., p. 77 et seq.
[209] Evans, op. cit., p. 8.
[210] "The Pagan Tribes of Borneo," 1912, vol. ii., p. 137.