Chapter II
, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical question.]
[371: For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the _British Medical Journal_, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.]
[372: Even in Egypt itself _didi_ may be replaced by fruit in the more specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in the Saga of the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: "Thou didst put grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu". Wiedemann ("Religion of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 70) interprets this as meaning: "thou didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it". But by analogy with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation of _didi_, it should read: "thou didst make the water blood-red with grape-juice"; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two meanings.]
[373: In the Babylonian story of the Deluge "Ishtar cried aloud like a woman in travail, the Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice (saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I assented to an evil thing in the council of the gods, and agreed to a storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth" (King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 134).
The Nile god, Knum, Lord of Elephantine, was reputed to have formed the world of alluvial soil. The coming of the waters from Elephantine brought life to the earth.]
[374: In the Babylonian story, Bel "bade one of the gods cut off his head and mix the earth with the blood that flowed from him, and from the mixture he directed him to fashion men and animals" (King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 56). Bel (Marduk) represents the Egyptian Horus who assumes his mother's role as the Creator. The red earth as a surrogate of blood in the Egyptian story is here replaced by earth _and_ blood.
But Marduk created not only men and animals but heaven and earth also. To do this he split asunder the carcase of the dragon which he had slain, the Great Mother Tiamat, the evil _avatar_ of the Mother-Goddess whose mantle had fallen upon his own shoulders. In other words, he created the world out of the substance of the "giver of life" who was identified with the red earth, which was the elixir of life in the Egyptian story. This is only one more instance of the way in which the same fundamental idea was twisted and distorted in every conceivable manner in the process of rationalization. In one version of the Osirian myth Horus cut off the head of his mother Isis and the moon-god Thoth replaced it with a cow's head, just as in the Indian myth Ganesa's head was replaced by an elephant's.]
[375: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 9.]
[376: Compare with this the story of Picus the giant who fled to Kirke's isle and there was slain by Helios, the plant [Greek: moly] springing from his blood (A. B. Cook, "Zeus," p. 241, footnote 15). For a discussion of _moly_ see Andrew Lang's "Custom and Myth".]
[377: Frazer, p. 6.]
[378: In Socotra a tree (dracaena) has been identified with the dragon, and its exudation, "dragon's blood," was called cinnabar, and confused with the mineral (red sulphide of mercury), or simply with red ochre. In the Socotran dragon-myth the elephant takes the hero's role, as in the American stories of Chac and Tlaloc (see