of Danaus, and Minos. The name of the last, indeed, is Deucalion, of which one probable explanation has been already given; but Vallancey says, "that, in Irish, it bears the same (sort of) signification as Ogyges, which is compounded of Og, or Oig, a leader or hero, and Uige a ship. Deucalion, he thinks, is from Deuc, the floater, and Lion, of the sea; and hence the name may refer to Noah."1 Whatever may be thought of this learned author's conjectures in general, yet certainly in this case there can be no objection to an Irish etymology from those who object to look for it in the east; for it is acknowledged, that Deucalion was a Scythian, or Celt, and Lucian gives evidence, in addition to that which has been already stated, that neither his name nor his deluge were confined to Greece. In his account of Phoenicia, having mentioned a temple of Astarte, or the moon, and another, which came to them from the city of the sun, very ancient, he adds, that the greatest was in Hierapolis, which most said was sacred to Deucalion the Scythian, or Celt, in whose time the deluge happened, which other names were Orpheus, Polyphemus, Admetus, Theseus, Pirithous, Oileus, Peleus, Telamon, Tiphys, Hercules, Castor, and Pollux; Asclepius, i. e. Esculapius, and Philoctetes. - Hygin. Fab. 1 Vallancey's Ancient Hist. of Ireland, p. 27. Collect. v. 4. He also derives Neptunus from the Egyptian Nebi, natatio, or Noph nauta, and Tonn, the ocean. Cecrops from Cia Cairb, or Crab, which was a name of Noah, the man of the ships. Canopus, from Cia Naiob, also the man of the ship. From the latter name of a ship comes Niobe. destroyed the former generation of men, because they were full of violence, and committed wickedness.' They were perjured, inhospitable, and unmerciful wherefore the earth threw up much water, and great rains descended, and the rivers swelled, and the sea rose, till the deluge covered every thing, and all men perished. Only Deucalion, on account of his piety, was saved, with his family, in an ark, where all sorts of animals were shut up by pairs, till the waters subsided, and lived there most harmoniously. Twice every year the inhabitants of Syria, and Arabia, and beyond Euphrates, bring water from the sea in memory of this catastrophe, and pour it into the temple, from whence it runs into a cavity, where the deluge is supposed to have been absorbed. This is the oldest account of the temple. The Greeks said it was the work of Dionusus, i. e. Noah. Be it observed, that all the votaries who frequented this temple came from the east, and not from the west. They had no interest in a Grecian deluge, and cared little for Grecian mythology; neither was it a Hebrew sanctuary, though the history accords so well with that of Moses: for it contained abundance of idolatry. There were two golden statues, which the Greeks would fain have assimilated to their idols; one was like their Jupiter, but had a different name; 1 Υβρισται κάρτα— ἀθέμιστα ἔργα ἔπρασσον. — De Ded Syria. 2 The same absorption, as we have seen above, is carried by the Greeks to their own Olympus. There are some other stories about Semiramis, Derceto, and Attes: but Bryant has shown that all these relate to the Ark. the other had some resemblance to half a dozen goddesses, but most to Juno: in other words, it differed from them all. There was also a golden shrine, which had no proper name, but the Assyrians called it a Sign'; and it contained statues of the other gods, probably the Ogdoad, shut up in their Ark. On its top was seated a golden dove, and it went down twice a year to the sea to bring back water. Some referred it to Dionusus, and others to Deucalion. Within the temple so many sacred animals were kept, as to present a lively image of the Ark, - cattle, and horses, and eagles, and lions, and bears. Behind the throne of the sun his image stood; but it was not the Grecian Apollo, for it had a beard. There were also figures of Atlas, the mountain deity, of Mercury, the Ophite deity, and of Eileithyia, the prolific deity. The priests, like the Druids, were clothed in white, and they were Galli2, or priests of the magna mater, which was in truth the Ark. Of the Ophite worship I shall have another occasion to speak more at large; at present it is enough to remark, that it was derived from the person already noticed under the name of Erichthonius, the father of Butes or Phut, and the inventor of idolatry. One of the fables by which this is intimated is told by Euripides. When he had recently sprung 1 Σημηΐον. 2 Lucian commits a vile pun, when he says, that the sealed vessels of water brought back from the sea were opened by a sacred Alectryon, meaning a Gallus, who was perhaps a Celtic Druid. At all events they were Corybantes, the meaning of which has been shown. from the ground, i. e. soon after he had appeared upon the face of the renovated earth, two dragons or serpents were coiled round him by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, or cunning, for his protection; and so it became the practice of the Erechtheidæ, in imitation of the ancient Erichthonius, to wrap goldenheaded serpents round their infants', like those which adorn the caduceus of Mercury. Another tradition actually incorporates him with the animal, and gives him the nether parts of a dragon; and to hide that defect, he was supposed to have invented chariots. His form, therefore, was that of Dagon or Derceto, as the former is described by Kimchi, and the latter by Diodorus and Lucian. Desinit in piscem; for the Draco is an animal of the sea as well as of the land. Whales and serpents have the same name in Hebrew. Thannin 3 is used for both in that language, and in Chaldee, and in Syriac, and in Arabic. And Taautus, or Mercury, who 1 Δράκοντες ἀρχαῖόν τι παγχρύσω γένω Ion. 1448. The story is told at the beginning of the play, v. 20. and it is remarkable, that Creusa exposed her son in an ark, ἐν ἀντίπηγος κύκλῳ - ί. ε. κίστη, says Hesychius, or κιβωτός. 2 Inde natus est puer draconis pedibus, qui appellatus est Erichthonius hic ad tegendam pedum fœditatem junctis equis usus est curru. Servius in Virgil. Georg. l.iii. : 3, Thannin ut Hebraicè, ita etiam Chaldaicè, Syriacè, et Arabicè, tam pro Ceto, quam pro dracone sumitur. - Bochart. Hironzoicon, l. i. 48. 4 Taautus, the Phoenician God, the discoverer of letters, was the Thoyth of the Egyptians, the Thoth of the Alexandrines, and the Hermes of the Greeks.. Euseb. Præp. Evan. 1. i. 32. first ascribed some sort of divinity to the nature of the dragon, and of serpents, was also supposed by Sanchoniatho to have given to the image of Dagon the form under which he was worshipped.' Hence, both these forms occur among the Hindoo idols. A figure of Buddha given by Moor 2 terminates in the folds of a huge serpent; while Vishnu, in the Matsya Avatar3, has the tail of a fish, and at another time he is enveloped in serpent folds, or stands between two, which are twined together at the bottom, and rise on either side of him, like those on the rod of Mercury. So familiar to the ancients was this impression of the dragons' equivocal character, that the prophet Isaiah blends both the forms in one description, as if they were but one animal. "In that day, the Lord with his sore, and great, and strong sword shall punish leviathan, the piercing serpent, even leviathan, that crooked serpent, and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea."4 By the guidance of this light, the history of Cecrops becomes somewhat more intelligible. There seems to have been an Athenian prince, the brother of Erectheus, who was named after one of the Noachidæ, and his partizans being anxious to confer upon him a similar rank among 1 Τὴν μὲν οὖν τοῦ Δράκοντος φύσιν καὶ τῶν ὀφέων αὐτός ἐξεθείασεν ὁ · Euseb. Præp. Evan. 1. i. 40. Τααυτος. Τῶν θέων ὄψεις Κρόνου τα καὶ Δαγῶνος · διετύπωσεν. - p. 39. 2 Pl. 76. from a ruined temple at Siva Samudra in an island in the Caveri, and Pl. 48. from images in the Museum of the India house. 3 Pl. 62. and 75. 4 Isaiah, xxvii. 1. |