154 Primitive Theories of the Origin of Man 



(adam)\ From various allusions in Babylonian literature it would 

 seem that the Babylonians also conceived man to have been moulded 

 out of clay 2 . According to Berosus, the Babylonian priest whose 

 account of creation has been preserved in a Greek version, the god 

 Bel cut off his own head, and the other gods caught the flowing blood, 

 mixed it with earth, and fashioned men out of the bloody paste ; and 

 that, they said, is why men are so wise, because their mortal clay is 

 tempered with divine blood 3 . In Egyptian mythology Khnoumou, 

 the Father of the gods, is said to have moulded men out of clay 4 . 

 We cannot doubt that such crude conceptions of the origin of our 

 race were handed down to the civilised peoples of antiquity by their 

 savage or barbarous forefathers. Certainly stories of the same sort 

 are known to be current among savages and barbarians. 



Thus the Australian blacks in the neighbourhood of Melbourne 

 said that Pund-jel, the creator, cut three large sheets of bark with his 

 big knife. On one of these he placed some clay and worked it up 

 with his knife into a proper consistence. He then laid a portion 

 of the clay on one of the other pieces of bark and shaped it into 

 a human form ; first he made the feet, then the legs, then the trunk, 

 the arms, and the head. Thus he made a clay man on each of the 

 two pieces of bark ; and being well pleased with them he danced 

 round them for joy. Next he took stringy bark from the Eucalyptus 

 tree, made hair of it, and stuck it on the heads of his clay men. Then 

 he looked at them again, was pleased with his work, and again danced 

 round them for joy. He then lay down on them, blew his breath 

 hard into their mouths, their noses, and their navels ; and presently 

 they stirred, spoke, and rose up as full-grown men 5 . The Maoris 

 of New Zealand say that Tiki made man after his own image. He 

 took red clay, kneaded it, like the Babylonian Bel, with his own blood, 

 fashioned it in human form, and gave the image breath. As he had 

 made man in his own likeness he called him Tiki-ahua or Tiki's like- 

 ness 6 . A very generally received tradition in Tahiti was that the 

 first human pair was made by Taaroa, the chief god. They say that 



1 S. R. Driver and W. H. Bennett, in their commentaries on Genesis ii. 7. 



2 H. Zimmern, in E. Schrader's Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament 3 (Berlin, 

 1902), p. 506. 



3 Eusebius, Chronicon, ed. A. Schoene, Vol. i. (Berlin, 1875), col. 16. 



4 G. Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de V Orient Classique, i. (Paris, 1895), 

 p. 128. 



6 R. Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria (Melbourne, 1878), i. 424. This and 

 many of the following legends of creation have been already cited by me in a note on 

 Pausanias, x. 4. 4 [Pausanias's Description of Greece, translated with a Commentary 

 (London, 1898), Vol. v. pp. 220 sq.]. 



6 R. Taylor, Te Ika A Matii, or New Zealand and its Dihabitants, Second Edition 

 (London, 1870), p. 117. Compare E. Shortland, Maori Religion and Mythology (London, 

 1882), pp. 21 sq. 



