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Chapter XXIII

  1. Even a superficial study of the Chinese novel Feng Shen Yen I (i.e., Popular Account of the Promotion to Divinity) which, under the disguise of “historiography” dealing with the end of the Shang Dynasty and the beginning of the Chou, presents us with a fantastic description of a major crisis between world-ages, will reveal to the attentive reader the amount of “new deities” — responsible for old cosmic functions — who have to be appointed at a new Zero, beginning with 365 gods, 28 new lunar mansions, etc.

  2. The Symplegades cut off, however, the ornament of the ship’s stern (aphla stoio akra korymba), where the “soul” of the ship was understood to dwell. We do not know yet the precise meaning of this trait. Cf. H. Diels, “Das Aphlaston der antiken Schiffe,” in Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde (1915), pp. 61-80. It should be emphasized that, contrary to a widespread opinion, the planktai and the symplegades are not identical.

  3. Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautica 2.592-606; Pindar, Pyth. 4.210: “but that voyage of the demigods made them stand still in death.”

  4. Claudianus 26.8-11.

  5. See the First Vatican Mythographer (c. 24, ed. Bode, vol. 1, p. 9) stating about “Pelias vel Peleus” that he sent Jason to Colchis, “ut inde detulisset pellem auream, in qua Juppiter in caelum ascendit,” i.e., to fetch the Golden Fleece, in which Jupiter climbs the sky. See also A. B. Cook, “The European Sky-God,” Folk-Lore 15 (1904), pp. 271f., for comparable material.

  6. F. Boas, lndianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas (1895), pp. 80f. Cf. Frazer, Myths from the Origin of Fire (1930), pp. 164f.; also L. Frobenius, The Childhood of Man (1960), pp. 395f.

  7. Schol. Soph. O. C. 56 (Mayer, Giganten und Titanen, p. 95).

  8. Florentine Codex (trans. Anderson and Dibble), vol. 7, p. 60. See also R. Simeon, Dictionnaire de la Langue Nahuatl (1885) s.v. “mamalhuaztli: Les Geameaux, constellation,” who does not mention, though, that Sahagún identified mamalhuaztli with “astijellos,” fire sticks. Also, the Tasmanians felt indebted to Castor and Pollux for the first fire (see J. G. Frazer, Myths of the Origin of Fire [1930], pp.3f.).

  9. U. Holmberg, Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker (1938), p. 99.

  10. K. Krohn, Magische Ursprungsrunen der Finnen (1924), p. 115.

  11. W. F. Albright, “The Mouth of the Rivers,” AJSL 35 (1919), p. 165; see also K. Tallqvist, Akkadische Götterepitheta(1939), p. 313.

  12. Acatl/Reed represents, indeed, the arrow-stick, the drill stick of the fire drill and the “symbol of juridical power.” See E. Seier, Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1960-61), vol. 2, pp. 996,1102; vol. 4, p. 224.

  13. See R. Labat, Manuel d’Epigraphie Akkadienne (4th ed., 1963), nos. 296, 314; also F. Delitzch, Assyrischisches Handwörterbuch (1896), p. 420 s.y. miskannu; Tallqvist, S.Y. Gilgamesh. Albright calls Gilgamesh “torch-fecundating hero” (JAOS 40, p. 318).

EPILOGUE

*. Throughout the text the pronoun we has been used as little as possible because it is so difficult to know what it means from one usage to the next. For the next several pages, we necessarily will appear often and will refer solely to us, the authors.

**. So quickly the world doth change/Like shapes in the clouds/Only the Achieved remains/Cradled in Timeless Antiquity.

  1. Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece.

  2. Giorgio de Santillana, “Paolo Toscanelli and His Friends,” in Reflections on Men and Ideas (1968), pp. 33-47.

  3. See W. Hartner, “The Earliest History of the Constellations in the Near East and the Motif of the Lion-Bull Combat,” JNES 24 (1965), pp. 1-16, 16 plates.

  4. But we do not know. These people could compute backward as well as forward.

  5. G. de Santillana, “The Role of Art in the Scientific Renaissance,” in Reflections on Men and Ideas (1968), pp. 137-66.

CONCLUSION

  1. Translation by H. N. Fowler, LCL. The Jowett translation reads: “The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth” (oukoun mnêmês all’ hypomnêseôs pharmakon hêures; sophias de tois mathêtais doxan, ouk alêtheian porizeis).