322 
vered * and of the fondness and reverence exhibited by the 
priestesses of Pythons, to the good offices of which deities they 
assumed they were entitled, that, in the absence of a know- 
ledge of danger, fear and repulsion are not necessarily felt, it 
becomes a question, then, at the outset, whether or not a great 
part of the worship devoted to serpents has arisen direct y 
from fear of their destructive powers ; and this is a teature 
we cannot altogether discard. . . . . 
4. But this which might appear, prima facie, as a sufficie 
cause, must be very much modified when we look a little more 
closely into the matter. Thus we find in Egypt a good and a 
bad serpent,— the goddess Ranno (fig. 35), the god A P°P bls 
361 the one considered worthy of adoration, the othei stjled 
“the great enemy of the human race,”t which was to be oppose 
or else propitiated. The latter is gravely reported to have been 
once captured and brought to Alexandria in triumph ;| and the 
question naturally arises, How did the other serpent become 
invested with good attributes ? _ . ■, . , 
5 I can not only easily imagine, but it seems impossible to 
conclude otherwise, that man, simply as man, by which 1 do 
not mean a creature in a condition of development, from the 
lower animals, but a wanderer from the home or original hive; 
a voluntary apostate, seeking forgetfulness of the past m new 
scenes and^ distant localities, and dreading Ins god, from whom, 
as well as his own race, he was .fleeing m dismay; having, 
moreover, a passion implanted in his breast that of wors ip 
which neither time nor distance could obliterate ; that ® an > ^ 
Lh, and in such condition, and having still before him the 
recollection of attributes recognized by others as those belonging 
to his late god, but which he refused to acknowledge, and which 
combinedgrandeur,beneficence,andcreative power, must perforce 
have elected to worship the only representative he c ° u ^ ? 
possessed of any such qualities ; namely, Nature, 
in short, these very powers of his offended god had so fai been 
visibly manifested, and that the first direction of his new worship 
would be terrestrial ; § the second, which he would willmgly have 
shunned, but neither dared nor could dispense with celestial 
At such a period of his experience, — and I am assuming th 
earliest, the Ocean would have presented a dreary and unknown 
* A curious illustration of fondness for serpents exists at Chelsea at the 
present time, which has led to alarm in the neighbourhood. 
t Samuel Sharpe’s Hist, of Egypt, vol. i. p. 5b. 
I So°st?ong was'tUs feeling, that Berosus ; described Xisuthrus, i.e. No ah, 
on coming out of the ark after the Flood, as first paying his adomittm to the 
Earth, and then sacrificing to the gods. (Dr. George Smith.) 
