20

Chapter XX

  1. Mbh. 3.104-105 (Roy trans., vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 230f.); see also H. J. Jacobi, ERE, vol. 1, p. 181A; S. Sorenson, Mahabharata Index (1963), p.18A.

  2. Besides Greece and India, the motif of the dropped seed occurs in Caucasian myths, particularly those which deal with the hero Soszryko. The “Earth” is replaced by a stone, Hephaistos by a shepherd, and Athena by the “beautiful Satana,” who watches carefully the pregnant stone and who, when the time comes, calls in the blacksmith who serves as midwife to the “stone-born” hero whose body is blue shining steel from head to foot, except the knees (or the hips) which are damaged by the pliers of the smith. The same Soszryko seduces a hostile giant to measure the depth of the sea in the same manner as Michael or Elias causes the devil to dive, making the sea freeze in the meantime.

  3. RV 7.33.13-14; Brihad-Devata 5.152ff.; Sörenson, p. 18B. Let us mention that the Egyptian Canopus is himself a jar-god; actually, he is represented by a Greek hydria (see RE s.v. Kanopos).

  4. Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt (1910), pp. 175f.

  5. See H. Lüders, Varuna, vol.2, Varuna und das Rita (1959), pp. 396-401 (RV 4.21.3; 8.6.39; 8.65.2f.;9.70.6). Soma is addressed as “lord of the poles,” and to Agni is given the epithet svarnaram thrice (RV2.2.1; 6.15.4; 8.19.1; cf. Lüders, p. 400). But we did hear before about “Agni, like the felly the spokes, so you surround all the gods,” and Soma and Agni supplement each other, as will come out eventually, but not in this essay; the proportions Mitra: Varuna, Agni: Soma, Ambrosia: Nectar are not as easily computed as wishful thinking might expect.

  6. No. 43 (Robert ed., pp. 194f.) E.g., Hyginus II 42, dealing with the planets, beginning with Jupiter: “Secunda stella dicitur Solis, quam alii Saturni dixerunt; hanc Eratosthenes a Solis filio Phaetonta adpellatam dicit, de quo complures dixerunt, ut patris inscienter curru vectus incenderit terras; quo facto ab Iove fulmine percussus in Eridanum deciderit et a Sole inter sidera sit perlatus.”

  7. s.v. Eretria (Eretrios, “Son of Phaethon, and this was one of the Titans”). See M. Mayer, Giganten und Titanen (1887), pp. 70, 124.

  8. Hieronymi et Hellanici theogonia (Athenagoras), see Kern frg. 18, p.138; cf. also R. Eisler, Weltenmantel und Himmelszelt; (1910), p. 338.

  9. Cf. Boll, Sphaera, pp. 108ff. (Teukros and Valens).

  10. Tod und Leben nach den Vorstellungen der Babylonier (1931), pp: 29, 33f.

  11. Gössmann, p. 89; Schaumberger, 3. Erg., p. 327; E. F. Weidner, In RLA 3, p.77.

  12. D. O. Edzard, “Die Mythologie der Sumerer und Akkader,” Wb. Myth., vol. 1, p. 62; P. Michatz, Die Götterliste der Serie Anu ilu A-nu-um (Phil. Diss.; 1909). p. 12; K. Tallqvist, Sumerische Namen der Totenwelt (1934), p. 62. and Akkadische Gotterepitheta (1938), pp. 304, 437.

  13. See also Lucian who makes Kronos say: “No, there was no fighting, nor does Zeus rule his empire by force; I handed it to him and abdicated quite voluntarily.”

  14. Edzard, p. 62

  15. See R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky, and R. Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy (1964), pp. 154f. Cf. pp. 333f., with quotations from the Latin translation of Abū Ma’shar, where Saturn “significat . . . quantitates sive mensuras rerum,” and where “eius est . . . rerum dimensio et pondus.”

  16. We have neither time nor space to deal sufficiently with the relevant and copious information on the “joyful” South Pole (see L. Ideler, Sternnamen, pp. 265f.), the “Kotb Suhayl” of the Arabians, called thus after Canopus, which is recognized in Fezzan as “l’étoile primordiale Sahel, identifié au premier ciel contenant les constellations à venir” (V. Pâques, L’arbre cosmique [1964], p. 36) — the primordial star, “presented under the form of an egg that contained all the things that were to be born” (Pâques, p. 47). To begin discussing the static South Pole, one might well start with the “Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,” who were thought to be on board the Argo — even if this is explicitly stated only in very late Turkish tradition (16th century) — particularly from Louis Massignon’s article, “Notes sur les Nuages de Magellan et leur utilisation par les pilotes arabes dans l’Océan Indien: sous le signe des VII Dormants” (Revue des Études lslamiques [1961]," pp. 1-18 = part VII of Massignon’s series of articles on the Seven Sleepers in Islamic and Christian tradition; part I appeared in the same review in 1955, part VIII in 1963), and in the very substantial review article by T. Monad, “Le ciel austral et l’orientation (autour d’un article de Louis Massignon)”, (Bulletin de l’lnstitut Français d’Afrique Noire [1963], vol. 25, ser. B, pp. 415-26). In both articles one finds, besides the surprising notion of the happy South, noteworthy information about human migrations directed toward the South in several continents. Massignon derived the “lucky” significance of the Kotb Suhayl and the Magellanic Clouds from historical events; i.e., from the expectations of exiled and deprived peoples escaping from the perpetual wars and raids in the northern countries: “Nomades ou marins, ces primitifs expatriés n’eurent pour guides, dans leur migrations et leur regards désespérés, que les ‘étoiles nouvelles du ciel austral” (1961, p. 12). Monod (p. 422), however, pointed to the crucial key word as given by Ragnar Numelin (Les Migrations Humaines [1939], p. 270n.), who remarked: “Il est possible que beaucoup de ces mystérieuses pérégrinations se proposaient comme but de trouver ‘l’étoile immobile’ dont parle la tradition. Le culte de l’Étoile Polaire peut avoir provoqué de tels voyages,” annihilating thus with the second sentence the treasure which he had detected in the first. But Massignon and Monod also missed the decisive factor, namely, that the South Pole of the ecliptic is marked by the Great Cloud, and that Canopus is rather near to this south ecliptic pole, whereas the immovable center in the North of the universe is not distinguished by any star, as has been said previously.

For the fun of it, a note of Monod’s should be quoted here (p. 4,21): “Quand Voltaire nous dit que Zadig ‘dirigeait sa route sur les étoiles’ et que ’la constellation d’Orion, et le brillant astre de Sirius le guidaient vers le pôle de Canope’, nous retrouvons dans cette dernière expression un témoignage du rôle joué par Canopus dans l’orientation astronomique. II n’y a pas lieu, bien entendu, de vouloir la corriger en ‘port de Canope’; cf. Voltaire, Romans et contes, éd. Garnier 1960, note 49, p. 621. “Where shall we ever find security from the “improvements” of philologists?

  1. Sooner or later, one more object will have to be admitted to the assembly of imperial measuring oars, or gubernacula: the enigmatical Egyptian hpt, the so-called “ship’s device” (Schiffsgerät) of obscure literal meaning, which the Pharaoh brought running to a deity in the ritual of the “oar-race.” There was also a “jar-race” and a “bird-race,” the Pharaoh carrying a water jar or a bird, respectively. In several Pyramid Texts the soul of the dead ruler takes this ship’s device and brings it to another celestial department, while the actual rowing of the boat is done by the stars (Pyr. 2173A, D; see also 284A, 873D, 1346B). See Aeg. Wb., vol. 3, pp. 67-71; A. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (1957), p. 581; M. Riemschneider, Augengott und Heilige Hochzeit (1953), pp. 255f. For the different imperial races, see the (unsatisfying) investigation by H. Kees, Der Opfertanz des Aegyptischen Königs (1912), pp. 74-90, the “oar-race.”

  2. Deutsche Mythologie (1953), pp. 420/373. The English translation (TM, p. 451) makes it “pointer” instead of “stylus”; Grimm has “Griffel.” Cf. K. Simrock, Handbuch der Deutschen Mythologie (1869), § 125, p. 415.

  3. “Suhail al wazn.” The epithet “wazn” has been given also to other stars of the southern sky. For ample discussions of this name, see Ideler, pp. 149-51, 163; Allen, pp. 68f.; J. N. Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy (1964), p.194; W. T. Olcott, Star Lore of All Ages (1911), p. 133.

  4. The strange “beacon” in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, which announced the Fall of Troy, must have been something of this kind; the context excludes absolutely any possible devices of the signal corps.

  5. To avoid misunderstanding, we do not wish to insist upon the absolute identity of the fall of Phaethon and the account of the fall as told by Hephaistos in the first book of the Iliad. We suspect that the verbal image “Jupiter-hurls-down Saturn” describes the shaping of the Trigon of great conjunctions, not, however, of the Trigon generally but of that new Trigon whose first angle is established by a conjunction of the Big Two at the beginning of a new world-age. On the other hand, this picturesque formula might cover the shifting of the Trigon of conjunctions from one Triplicity to the next (cf. appendix #23); these highly technical problems cannot be solved yet.

  6. That is not what Homer says, it is kunōpis, dog-eyed; Hera seems to have been near Sirius at that time.

  7. It is to the credit of Hans Joachim Mette and his work, Sphairopoiia, Untersuchungen zur Kosmologie des Krates van Pergamon (1936), that we find collected every relevant testimonial and fragment concerned with Krates and his topics.

  8. See Mette, pp. 30-42, and his introduction.

  9. We cannot discuss here the Homeric wording of the topos from which Zeus threw down Hephaistos: “magic threshold” means nothing, anyhow (apo bēlou thespesioio); there were ancient scholars who claimed that Krates connected this “bēlos” with the Chaldean “Bel”/Baal = Marduk. We leave it at Auriga’s chariot, Babylonian narkabtu, the more so, as Marduk, too, used it when tipping over Tiamat. The “Babylonian Genesis” does not tell that Marduk hurled people around, but there is a cuneiform text (VAT 9947) called by Ebeling (Tod und Leben, 37f.) “a kind of a calendar of festivals,” where it says: “the 17th is called (day) of moving in, when Bel has vanquished his enemies. The 18th is called (day) of lamentation, at which one throws from the roof Kingu and his 40 sons.” Kingu had the epithet “Enmesharra,” i.e., “Lord of norms and measures”; he was the husband of Tiamat — as Geb was husband of Nūt — who gave him the “tablets of fate,” which Marduk was going to take away from him after his victory, and 40 is the number of Enki-Ea (see below, p. 288). The rest is easy to calculate. We are hampered by our inappropriate ideas about “names,” and by the misleading labels settled upon celestial characters by the translators who make Tiamat, Kingu and their clan into “monsters.”

  10. The Republic of Plato, p. 350.

  11. Themis, p. 453f. Cf. for a similar sort of mistrusting one’s own evidence, M. Mayer, Giganten und Titanen, p. 97.