O Sun (god)! thou coverest the earth with the majestic brightness of heaven."
Marduk, then, the son of Ea, or Ía, was finally as definite a spring equinox sun-god as Amen-Rā in Egyptian mythology was a summer solstice sun-god.
We have, then, the undoubted facts that in Southern Babylonia, to start with, the sun-worship had to do with the winter half of the year. As the Babylonian culture advanced northward from Eridu and met the Semitic culture, the winter season was changed for the spring equinox—that is, a worship identical with that of the pyramid builders who intruded into Northern Egypt.
The Myths of Horus and Marduk.
In my references to the myth of Horus in Chapter XIV. I have shown that in all probability an astronomical meaning is that the rising sun puts out the northern stars. It was also indicated that the myth was one of great antiquity, as it was formulated when Draco was circumpolar; was not simple in its nature, and probably had reference to a sun-worshipping race abolishing the cult of Set representing the northern stars.
The facts brought together in subsequent chapters show that if there were not such a myth, there should have been; for the temple evidence alone showing the antithesis between Osiris-worship and the worship of Set is overwhelming.
I have also indicated that temples built to northern stars are geographically separated from those built to southern ones, and that the former have had their axes blocked to prevent the worship.
The Horus of Edfû, who is represented as leading the victorious hosts who revenge the killing of Osiris by Set, is the ally of the southern-star worshippers whom we have traced from Thebes, possibly to Central Africa (see page [350]); and if we associate the myth with the records on the walls of the temple of Edfû, and agree to the possibility of that temple having been founded in 6400 B.C. (see page [311]), then there must have been an invasion of the southern peoples about that date—an invasion which reached Northern Egypt, where eventually they were conquered by the Set-worshipping race, who came, as I think I have proved, from a country to the N.E. of the Delta. The question is: Did this first colony represent the original Hor-Shesu, so-called specially because perhaps as a novelty they had added the worship of the sun to the worship of the moon? and was the moon the first Osiris brought in by moon-worshippers with a year of 360 days?
In Accad and Sumer, where also, according to Hommel and others, the word Osiris (Asari) has been traced, the sun-god was the daughter of the moon-god. An eye forms part both of the hieroglyphic and of the cuneiform name, and the eye was one of the symbols in the name of Osiris in Egypt. Be this as it may, we have temple evidence to show that in Egypt the worship of Set was the worship of a northern race, and that it was finally abolished by a southern one.
Now in Babylonia exactly the opposite happened. The proto-Chaldæan south-star and winter-sun cult of Eridu was ultimately changed, absorbed, and buried in the Semitic cult of the northern stars Anu and Bīl and the spring sun, first Marduk and afterwards Šamaš.