HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



above the surface. Dry land gradually followed, and the mainland 

 and islands took their present shapes." 



The Polynesians represent Tangaloa, god of heaven and the atmos- 

 phere, as a bird which hovered over the ocean waters and there 

 deposited an egg, and the two halves of the shell formed the heaven 

 and the earth, while the smaller fragments became the islands. 1 It 

 may be that in the original story used by the author of the Genesis 

 creation account, the deity was likewise represented as a bird and 

 that this trait was eliminated by the monotheistic tendency of the 

 Bible. It is well known that the Holy Spirit, as the third person of 

 the Trinity, is described (Matthew, III, 1 6) and pictured as the symbol 

 of a dove. The suggestion of a bird (dove) in this passage was already 

 pointed out by the Jews. In the Babylonian Talmud, Tract Hagigah, 

 15a, a rabbi commenting on it says, "like a dove which hovers over 

 its young without touching them." 



II. THE WORLD-EGG 



We have referred to the Polynesian idea of the formation of 

 heaven and earth from an egg. This symbolism also figures in the 

 cosmogonies of the Old World. Indeed, the egg is one of the most 

 widespread mythic symbols, as it fully and simply reveals the process 

 of birth, or coming into being, while the two halves of its shell obvi- 

 ously lend themselves as representations to the vaulted heaven and 

 the rounded earth. 



Perhaps the earliest use of the egg symbol was made in Hindu 

 cosmogony: On the primal water floated the golden cosmic egg; out 

 of this came the creator, Brahma; from the two halves of the egg he 

 created heaven and earth, and between them the atmosphere, and so 

 forth. 2 



In the Phenician cosmogony as known from the fragments of Philo 

 Byblius (ca. 100 a.d.), Mot (Tiamat?), which was the result of the 

 union of the male and female principles, was egg-shaped. Khousor 

 split the egg in twain, whereupon one of the pieces became the heavens 

 and the other the earth. 



The Orphics, similar to the Hindus, let the creator, Protogonos 

 or Phanes, be born from the world-egg. 3 



In Egypt, too, the first creative act begins with the formation of 

 an egg. Out of Nun (the primeval water chaos) emerged an egg from 



1 L. H. Gray in Hastings, op. cit., p. 174. 



2 Cf. A. E. Wollheim da Fonseca, Mythologie des alten Indien, p. 9; E. W. Hopkins, The 

 Religions of India, p. 208. 



'Arthur Fairbanks, Handbook of Greek Religion, p. 245; cf. William Sherwood Fox, The 

 Mythology of all Races, vol. I, Greek and Roman, p. 5. 



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