September 28, 1893J 



NA TURE 



5'9 



pventually an unknown sea was reached which bathed 

 the land of Punt. Was this one of the great lakes ?' 

 ! Brugsch- is of opinion that Punt occupied the south 

 and west coasts of Arabia Felix, but Maspero and Mar- 

 ette do not agree with him. The two latter authorities 

 identify it with that part of the Somali land which 

 Dorders on the Gulf of Aden. It is the Cinnamonifera 

 ■egio or Aromatifera regio of the ancients.^ 



The inscriptions at Der el-Bahari make it quite certain 

 hat Punt is in Africa. Hottentot Venuses and elephants, 

 o say nothing of the general products of the country 

 •eferred to as among the freight of the ships on their 

 lomeward voyage, distinctly point to .Africa, and I think 

 \ southern part of it. 



The first organised expedition to Punt of which we 

 if anything is that organised by Se-finx-ka-Ra, the last 

 ,' of the I ith Tliehan dynasty. This was a new traffic 

 way of the Red Sea. There was then no canal joining 

 fiie sea with the Nile in existence ; the expedition went 

 :y land to Coptos.'' 



They further indicate, as Maspero suggests, that the 

 :-xpedition of Hatshepset anchored up a rivev, and not on 

 he sea-shore, especially since the native huts are shown 

 (IS built on piles. This again makes Africa much more 

 probable than Arabia. 



I If we agree that Punt is really in Africa south of 

 Somali-land, there is a great probability that the tradi- 

 (ion referred to by Maspero is a true one. 

 ' There is distinct evidence that Horns, Hathor, and 

 Amen-Rii are worships coming from the south and dealing 

 |vith southern stars exclusively. With regard to Horus, 

 t is necessary to discriminate, since there were two 

 Hstmct gods — Horus in iN . and S. Egypt, and Horus 

 ■f the south was the elder of the two. The Hawk God 

 f Edfii, Harhouditi, the southern Horus, had for servants 

 ii number of individuals called Masniou or Masnitiou = 

 [alacksmiths. The Hawk God of the Delta, the northern 

 lorus, Harsiisit,has for his entourage the Shosou Horou. 

 Now Maspero has recently pointed out'' that the 

 ■uuthern Horus may have been imported, not from 

 Arabia Felix or Somali-land, but from Central Africa ! 



Among all early peoples the most important times of 

 he year must necessarily have been those connected 

 yith seed time and harvest at each locality. Now 

 jhe spring equinox and summer solstice south of the 

 fquator are represented by the autumnal equinox and 

 jhe winter solstice to the north of it. If the colonists 

 jvho came to Eridu came from a region south of the 

 quator, they would naturally have brought not only their 

 outhern stars, but their southern seasons witli them ; but 

 heir springtime was the northern autumn, their summer 

 olstice the northern winter. This could have gone on for a 

 ,(■• and we see that their great sun-god was the god of 



winter solstice. Tammuz= Nergal. 

 j'Ut it could only have gone on for a time, the climatic 

 lets were against such an unnatural system, and the 

 'Id condition could have been brought back by calling the 

 'lew winter summer, or in other words making the winter 

 od into the summer sun-god, in short, changing Nergal 

 ' a midsummer sun-god. This it seems they did. 

 ;;ut why the further change from Nergal to Marduk? 

 pecause the northern races were always tending south- 

 |/ards, being pushed from behind, whde the supply of 

 iridu culture was not being replenished. The religion 

 .nd astronomy of the north were continually being 

 trengthened, and among this astronomy was the cult of 

 he sun at the vernal equinox, the springtime of the 

 lorthern hemisphere, sacred to Marduk. Nergal, there- 

 ore, makes another stage onward and is changed into 

 darduk ! 



Maspero, " Histoirc Anc," p. 5. 



llrugsch. '* History of Egypt," i8gi, p, 54. 



Mariette, " Dcr el-Bahari," p. 31. 



iwiwliiison, ii. 131. j> *'L'Antropologie," iTq- 



NO. 1248. VOL. 48] 



No. 4. 



It is also interesting to find that in Ninib, another sun 

 god, -we have almost the exact counterpart of the Egyp- 

 tian Horus. He is the eastern morning sun, the son of 

 Isara (? Osiris), and the god of agriculture.' 



I append one out of many published hymns to the Sun 

 God:— 



O Sun (god) ! on the horizon of heaven thou dawnest, 

 The bolt of the pure heaven thou openest. 

 The door of heaven ihou openest. 

 O Sun (god) ! thou liftest up thy head to the world ; 

 U Sun (god) ! thou coverest the earth with the majestic 

 brightness of heaven. 



Marduk then, the son of Ea, was finally as definite 

 a spring equinox sun-god as Amen Ra in Egyptian 

 mythology was a summer solstice sun-god. 



Marduk was more than this, he represented the con- 

 stellation of the Bull. Here I quote Jensen (p. 315). 



" It has already been suggested that the Bull is a symbol 

 of the Spring-Sun Marduk ; that he was originally 

 complete ; that he at one time extended as far as the 

 Fish of la, i.e. the western Fish ; that the Fish of ia, 

 out of which the sun emerged at the end of the year in 

 ancient times to enter Taurus, is to represent ta, the 

 God of the Ocean, out of which his son Marduk, the 

 early sun, rises daily ; finally, that a series of constella- 

 tions west of the Fish(es) is intended to represent 

 symbolically this same ocean. Marduk is on the one 

 hand, as early sun of the day (and the year), the son of 

 la, the god of the world-water." 



As to the sun-god Marduk, then, he represents the 

 sun at the vernal equinox, when the sunrise was heralded 

 by the stars in the Bull. 



But what, then, are the fish of la and the other con- 

 stellations referred to ? They are all revealed to us by 

 the myth. They are the southern ecliptic constellations. 

 We gather this from Jensen's account of the fight that 

 Marduk— this Egyptian Horus -has with certain mon- 

 sters inhabiting the world-ocean. The monsters being 

 called generically Tiumat. 



Tidmat. 



Tirimat,according to Jensen, means initially the Eastern 

 Sea (p. 307). This was expanded to mean the " Welt- 

 wasser" (p. 315), which may be taken to mean, I suppose, 

 the origin of the Greek fflVeni/of, and possibly the over- 

 lying firmament of waters. 



These firmamental waters contain the southerly ecliptic 

 constellations, the winter and bad-weather signs — the 

 Scorpion, the Goat-fish, and the Fish among them. 



It must be pointed out that these southerly constella- 

 tions were associated with the winter solstice Sun-God of 

 Eridu in his first stage. 



The .Myth of .Marduk and Tiumat. 



But this Horus no longer smites the hippopotamus, 

 that is the northern stars, his quarry is elsewhere ; he 

 does battle against this world-ocean in the form of 

 Tifimat and among the allies of Tiumat we find a Scorpion- 

 Man (p. 277), a Goat-Fish, and a Fish-Man, and to the 

 west of the vernal equinox, z>_. in the 'water-region' of 

 the Heavens, a Fish (Fish of la), a goat-fish and a scor- 

 pion. 



Weare evidently dealinghere with Scorpio, Capricornus 

 and Pisces, the ecliptic constellation of the winter 

 months. Marduk against Tiamat was the never-ending 

 battle of May against December. 



Imprimis then we have the later developed northern 

 spring sun destroying the evil gods or spirits of winter, 

 and chief among them, of course, the goat-fish, which, 

 from its central position, would represent the winter 

 solstice. 



But this goat-fish was la of Iridu. The primal god of 



1 Jensen, p. 135, 19?. 



