Chapter II

. The earliest form assumed by the power of evil was the serpent or the lion, because these death-dealing creatures were adopted as symbols of the Great Mother in her role as the Destroyer of Mankind. When Horus was differentiated from the Great Mother and became her _locum tenens_, his falcon (or eagle) was blended with Hathor's lioness to make the composite monster which is represented on Elamite and Babylonian monuments (see p. 79). But when the role of water as the instrument of destruction became prominent, Ea's antelope and fish were blended to make a monster, usually known as the "goat-fish," which in India and elsewhere assumed a great variety of forms. Some of the varieties of _makara_ were sufficiently like a crocodile to be confused or identified with this representative of the followers of Set.

The real dragon was created when all three larval types--serpent, eagle-lion, and antelope-fish--were blended to form a monster with bird's feet and wings, a lion's forelimbs and head, the fish's scales, the antelope's horns, and a more or less serpentine form of trunk and tail, and sometimes also of head. Repeated substitution of parts of other animals, such as the spiral horn of Amen's ram, a deer's antlers, and the elephant's head, led to endless variation in the dragon's traits.

The essential unity of the motives and incidents of the myths of all peoples and of every age is a token, not of independent origin or the result of "the similarity of the working of the human mind," but of their derivation from the same ultimate source.

The question naturally arises: what is a myth? The dragon-myth of the West is the religion of China. The literature of every religion is saturated with the influence of the myth. In what respect does religion differ from myth? In