VIRGIN AND CHILD AT IDALIUM IN CYPRUS
After Rawlinson
(“Herodotus”)
ISIS AND HORUS
THE EGYPTIAN VIRGIN AND SAVIOUR-GOD
From Rawlinson’s “Herodotus”.
EVOLUTION OF THE GOD IDEA.
“Knowing his adopted land well, the Eastern does not require recondite volumes to explain ‘Dionysiak myths’ or ‘solar theories,’ as the old faiths are now called in the West. He sees these pervading the tales and epiks of East and West alike, just as Yahvism or Yahu-ism pervades the Scriptures of Jews or Yahus—that ever-familiar and expressive faith-term by which alone Asia knows the ‘Yahudean’ race.” While fully admitting the true character of the old faith as here expressed, yet, with all due deference to one of such acknowledged repute in the literary world as Major-General Forlong, whose splendid work, entitled “Rivers of Faith” (Preface, p. xxi.) contains the above paragraph, it may be fairly urged that the educated few only, both among Easterns and Westerns, have hitherto been capable of discerning the vein of solar myth which pervades all systems of religion; while the vast multitude of ignorant and credulous people even yet perceive, or think they perceive, the Divine handiwork in the particular sacred oracle to which they firmly pin their faith. The Hindu supreme deity is known as Brahm, the Persian as Ormuzd, the Mohammedan as Allah, and the Jewish and Christian as El, Elohim, Yahouh (or Jehovah), God, etc. Probably few among the many millions who worship these various deities know much or anything about their origin, innocently imagining that the Deity they bow allegiance to once manifested itself to some chosen individual, to whom it gave a revelation, the facts of which were handed down to posterity. They little dream of the vast cycles of time that have rolled past since the brain of man attained such a state of perfection as to enable it to evolve the idea of Deity. It is utterly impossible for the human mind to grasp the enormous interval of time that has elapsed since primeval man emerged from the condition of unreasoning existence to enter upon the bright dawn of intellectual activity, which has developed into such mighty proportions as we behold to-day. Let us carry the mind back far beyond the Dark Ages, through the classic era, as far even as the very commencement of Egyptian history; and even then we find ourselves but little nearer that remote period in which the first spark of intelligence made its debût upon the platform of life. In imagination we may go still further back, and view the wonders of that ancient Asian civilisation which preceded that of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and which was probably derived very gradually from the earliest social conceptions of the Caucasian branch of the Polynesian primitive man. Still we are ages away from the period we desire to arrive at; and even were we able to trace the human family back to that remote time when man could not be said to partake more of the character of the human than the ape species, still we should even then be unable to point to the precise moment when intellect shed its glorious rays upon the race, making bright, clear, and beautiful what before was dark, misty, and unmeaning. The ancient Prosimiæ gradually became Catarrhine apes, which, in their turn, as slowly assumed the characters of the Anthropoidæ, and afterwards of ape-like men; but the time required for this imperceptibly gradual process of evolution was probably many hundred thousands of years, during which period, or perhaps even at a prior time the first intellectual spark became manifest: how, when, or for what ultimate purpose it is apparently beyond our power to devise.
How soon after the dawn of intellect the conception of Deity was evolved in the human brain it is equally impossible to say; but the probability is that the date was a very early one, for it seems highly probable that such a conception would be among the very first efforts of the mind, the materials necessary for the stimulation of such an effort being at hand at any moment. We can imagine our early fathers groping in the darkness of ignorance, with mental powers on a par with those of the awakening minds of our own children, seeing bogies in every natural phenomenon, and tremblingly glowering at the spectra of their own imaginations. Having no experience of the past or knowledge of the future, they would indeed be in a most helpless condition, relying entirely upon the instinctive capabilities they had inherited from their ancestors. By degrees, however, their various faculties would be further awakened by impressions received from external objects; their wants would be multiplied in proportion to their intellectual development, causing them to manifest a desire for industry; and their self-consciousness would arouse within them a feeling of dignity and importance to which they had hitherto been strangers. Thus gradually would the race cast off its animal and put on its human clothes. The old plan of hand-to-mouth existence would be abolished by the newly-developed reason of man; the innumerable dangers which confronted him would undoubtedly stimulate him to approach his fellows with the object of establishing mutual aid and of co-operating for their common welfare; and a feeling of confident superiority over others of the animal kingdom would become apparent among them. Not only would man’s attention be arrested by the impending dangers of each day, the necessity of procuring sustenance for himself and family, and the obvious advantages accruing from co-operation, but also by the constantly-recurring natural phenomena, such as the rising and setting of the sun, moon and stars, the never-ending succession of day and night, etc., as well as by the no less wonderful, and certainly more awful, occasional natural occurrences, such as lightning, thunder, and earthquake. He would be as much struck with wonder and amazement at the one set of phenomena as with awe at the other. The returning sun-light would each morning produce joy in his heart equally as much as the inevitable recurrence each night of darkness would produce a feeling of sadness, dread, and despair. We can easily imagine the long hours of horror our first fathers must have passed through each night among the yells and howls of the savage monsters by which they were surrounded, and how they anxiously looked forward to the return of that glorious orb which would bring back to them daylight, sunshine, warmth, and happiness. What a boon it must have been to them! Can we wonder that they should have regarded the sun with particular affection? It would have been remarkable, indeed, had they not done so; and it is more than probable that this daily re-appearance of the sun on the eastern horizon was actually what prompted the first conception of deity. The very oldest mythology with which we are acquainted appears strongly to bear out this theory, and, indeed, in every other mythological system we find the re-appearing sun to be one of the principal objects of devotion and affection. If we turn our gaze to that part of Asia, along the banks of the Oxus, over which our Aryan ancestors wandered thousands of years before the time of the earliest Egyptian dynasty, we find there a clue to the origin of the original conception of deity. Among these early people were composed the hymns of the Rig-Veda, which are probably the earliest records of any race, and in which we find personified the phenomena of the heavens and earth, the storm, the wind, the rain, the stars, etc. The earth is represented as a flat, indefinite surface, existing passively, and forming the foundation of the whole universe; while above it the luminous vault of heaven forms a dwelling place for the fertile and life-giving light and a covering for the earth below. To the earth the Aryans gave the name of Prihovi, “the wide expanse;” the vault of heaven they called Varuna, “the vault;” while the light between the two, in the cloud region, they named Dyaus, “the luminous air,” “the dawn.” Varuna and Prihovi, in space, together begat Agni, the fire-god, the sun in heaven and life-giver of the universe; and Soma, the ambrosial deity of earth, god of immortality, fertiliser of the waters, nourisher of plants, and quickener of the semen of men and animals. In these hymns frequent mention is made of the joy experienced at the return of dawn, and of the saddening effect produced upon the mind by the ever-recurring twilight which ushered in the dark and dreary night. We meet with incantations expressive of the wildest excitement at the welcome appearance of the dawn-god, Dyaus, which heralded the approach of the sun-god, Agni, who is led up to the summit of his ascension, or bosom of Varuna, by the conquering god of battle, Indra, the defeater of the evil powers of darkness; and we find the most pathetical appeals both to Agni and Indra to remain longer over the earth, and co-operate with Soma in replenishing nature, instead of sinking into the twilight, or shades of evening, to be slain by Vritra, “the coverer,” and tormented in the darkness of night by Ahi, the dragon, and other cruel monsters. This is precisely the drama we should expect to find depicted in the earliest writings of man; is the root of all future religious ideas; and is still to be found pervading almost every modern religious faith. It is a beautiful representation of the earliest yearnings and fears of our forefathers; and, though the picture is now and then almost effaced by numerous subsequent additions of mythological lore, yet the original conception remains indelibly depicted in the religions of the present day, furnishing us with the key to the study of comparative mythology.
It will be necessary, in order to compare, with any degree of accuracy, the mythological systems which subsequently developed from this primitive conception of a ruling power, to glance at the mode of distribution of the various branches of the earliest human family; and in doing so we must ever keep in mind the more than probable fact that that portion of the earth’s surface which is now covered by the Indian Ocean once formed a large equatorial continent, uniting the east coast of Africa with Arabia, India, Ceylon, and the Malay Peninsula. Instead of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates emptying their waters into the Persian Gulf, and the Indus into the Arabian Sea, it is highly probable that these rivers united to form one large estuary, which emptied itself into the ocean on the south of the now submerged continent of Lemuria. It is equally probable that the large rivers, Ganges and Brahmapootra, likewise found an outlet south of a line drawn from Point de Gall to Singapore. On this submerged continent, and on the shores of these long-lost streams, it is supposed man evolved from the anthropoid apes, in the early Pleiocene, or perhaps even in the later Meiocene, geological period of the world’s history. The transition stage in the pedigree of man between the Anthropoidæ and true men—that is to say, between man-like Catarrhine apes and beings possessing a larger proportion of the characteristics of the human than of the ape species—is known to Anthropologists by the name of Alali, or ape-like men. These wild and ill-formed savages wandered about in bands along the banks of these monster rivers, passing their time in hunting their less fortunate brethren of the animal kind. In course of time they multiplied and spread over the entire continent, killing all such monsters as interfered with their safety or comfort, and gradually dividing and sub-dividing into families and races, each acquiring, under the influence of the two laws of selection and adaptation, peculiarities and characteristics not common to the remainder. One branch wandered away to the west and south, becoming the progenitors of the South African races; another found its way to the east and south, to people Australasia; while a third struck out towards the north, overrunning Malaya, Burmah, and Southern India. This last branch, which we term the Malay, or Polynesian, subdivided into two distinct families—the Mongolian, or Turanian, the progenitors of the ancient Chinese, Ural Turks, Akkadians, and Finns; and the Caucasian, or Iranian, the first human inhabitants of South-Western Asia. Of these Iranians one stream, it is supposed, found its way to the banks of the Nile, and became, in course of time, a distinct and powerful Egyptian race; another, the Semitic, followed the direction of the Persian Gulf, and settled in Arabia and along the banks of the Euphrates; while a third, which we call the Aryan or Indo-Germanic, covered India, Afghanistan, and Northern Persia, gradually extending along the northern shores of the Black Sea into Europe.
Now, as already stated, the earliest known records of any race are the hymns of the Rig-Veda, composed among the Aryans of Northern Persia, probably from earlier traditions handed down to them from the older Iranian stock, or even from the still earlier Polynesians; and it is remarkable that in all ancient mythological records, as well as on monumental inscriptions, the same vein of solar myth as is found in the Rig-Veda is clearly traceable beneath the accumulated mythological lore of future ages. The main idea in all mythologies seems to have been that of a saviour-deity conquering the evil genius of night, or winter, and bringing back the day, or summer, to replenish the earth. As already stated, Indra was to the Aryans of the early Vedic period the saviour-god who, with his companions, Vishnu and Rudra, leads forth Agni, the god of celestial and terrestrial fire, to the bosom of Varuna, where his influence operates upon Soma, the fertilizer of earth. A conqueror from early morn to mid-day, Indra’s power grows weaker as the evening approaches, until at last the twilight yields him up to Vritra, who slays him, after which he is tormented by Ahi, the dragon, for the remainder of the night. This drama was probably derived from the original Iranian stock, and as probably underwent considerable modification before being finally committed to writing as a cultus by the Aryans; and, therefore, we should expect to find some resemblance between the Aryan, Semitic, and Egyptian mythological systems. This is precisely what we do find on carefully comparing these three oldest of all known mythologies, though, as will be seen further on, each accumulates such a vast quantity of fresh mythological matter that the original conception is considerably obscured, and in each the original deities become in course of time so mixed up with one another that it is almost impossible to separate their individual characteristics.
Although Agni was said to have been begotten by the conjunction in the air of Varuna and Prihovi (Prithivi), all the principal gods, or Devas, originally conceived as the phenomena and power of heaven, were called the children of Dyaus and Prihovi, Agni and Indra being considered the two chief of the twelve Devas. Dyaus, Prihovi, and their progeny afterwards became endowed with moral qualities, and were looked upon as creators and governors of the world; and as time wore on the original Vedic deities gradually gave place to purely solar deities: the sun was called Surya, and differed from Agni, who was god of terrestrial and celestial fire—sun, lightning, and altar fire in one, the soul of universe, and mediator between the gods and men; Surya was also Savitri, the quickener, who in the early morn rouses the sleepers, and in the evening twilight buries them again in sleep; he is also Vishnu, the companion of Indra, who traverses the celestial space in three long strides; he is Pushan, the nourisher and faithful guide of men and animals; and he is Yama, who traverses the steep road to death and the shades. Thus the gods multiplied—the original supreme deity, Varuna, who was one with Indra, though different from him, giving place to a multitude of solar deities, children of Dyaus, the great dawn-god or day-father.