There was, however, another idolized snake of the great destroyer Pj'thon tribe, which devour even each other; it is represented on Egyptian monuments bear- ing a mummy figure on its tail, and gliding over a seated divinity with an egg on the head, while human sacrifice by decapitation is performed before it. This serpent is so carefully drawn that we recognise the Thaibanne, Ophites Thebanus, which grows to twelve or more feet in length, is still found in Upper Egypt, and is a congener, if not the same as Python tigris al- bicans, the great snake even at present worshipped in Ciitch : it may be the Aphophis of the Egyptians. To descant further on this subject would lead us too far from our jnirpose ; but the Egyptian Python here no- ticed, changing its character from being a type of the deluge to that of an emblem of the ark carrving the spirit of human life within or upon it, was not without its counterpart in England, where lately, in digging out the deep, black mud of a ditch, a boat-shaped Python, carrying the eight Eones (?) or NoachidiC, has been discovered, with emblems that denote them to be the solar regenerators of mankind. Thus, as is ever the case in polytheistical legends, the tj'pe disappears through multiplied transitions and the number of other symbols and personifications characterized by the same emblem. It was so in this instance, when the sndke form was conferred also on abstractions bearing the names of divinities, such as Ranuo, Hoph, Bai, lloh or Hih, and others.
The asserted longevity of the serpent tribe may have suggested the representation of the harmless house- snake biting its tail as typical of eternity ; and this same (piality was, no doubt, the cause why this animal, entwined round a staff, was tlie symbol of health and the distinctive attribute of the classical jEsculapius and Hygeia. . There are species of this genus common to Palestine and the southern parts of continental Eu- rope. They were domesticated in Druidical and other pagan sanctuaries, and were employed for omens and other impostures; but the mysterious Ag or Hagstone
SERPENT
582
SERPENT
was asserted to be produced by the venomous viper species. With such powers of destroying animal life, and with an aspect at once terrible and resplendent, it may easily be imagined how soon fear and superstition would combine, at periods anterior to historical data, to raise these monsters into divinities, and endeavor to deprecate their wrath by the blandishments of worship; and how design and cupidity would teach these very votaries the manner of subduing their ferocity, of ex- tracting their instruments of mischief, and making them subservient to the wonder and amusement of the vidgar by using certain cadences of sound which af- fect their hearing, and exciting in them a desire to perform a liind of pleasurable movement that may be compared to dancing. Hence the Nagas of the East, the Hagworms of the West, and the Ilaje have all been deified, styled agathodcemon, or good spirit ; and figures of them occur wherever the superstition of pagan an- tiquity has been accompanied by the arts of civiliza- tion.
"Almost throughout the East," writes Kalisch {Hist, and Crit. Comment. Gen. Hi, 1), "the serpent was used as an emblem of the evil principle, of the spirit of dis- obedience and contumacy. A few exceptions only can be discovered. The Phoenicians adored that animal as a beneficent genius; and the Chinese consider it as a symbol of superior wisdom and power, and ascribe to the kings of heaven {tien-hoangs) bodies of serpents. Some other nations fluct- uated in their concep- tions regarding the ser- pent. The Egyptians represented the eternal spirit Kneph, the author of all good, under the mythic form of that rep- tile; thej' understood the art of taming it, and em- balmed it after death ; but they applied the same symbol for the god of revenge and punish- ment (Tithrambo), and for Typhon, the author of all moral and physical
„ , . , , . evil; and in the Egyptian
Kneph AjrathoQoemon, denotnig , ■• , i i, "i I ^i luunortaHty (seeHorapollo.i,!^ symbolical alphabet the serpent represents subtle- ty and cunning, lust and sensual pleasure. In Greek mythology it is certainly, on the one hand, the attribute of Ceres, of Mercury, and of ^Esculapius, in their most beneficent qualities; but it forms, on the other hand, a part of the terrible Furies, or Eumenides : it appears in tlie form of a Python as a fearful monster, which the arrows of a god only were able to destroy; and it is the most hideous and most formidable part of the im- pious giants who despise and blaspheme the power of Heaven. The Indians, like the savage tribes of Africa and America, suffer and nourish, indeed, serpents in their temples, and even in their houses. They believe that they bring happiness to the places which they in-
A^athodsemon. (From E2y|)tian monnments.)
Sacred symbol of the winged tjlobe and eerppnt. h. Head of hawk sur- mounted by globe and aerpent.
habit ; they worship them as the sj'mbols of eternity; but they regard them also as evil genii, or as the in- imical powers of nature, which is graduall}' depraved by them, and as the enemies of the gods, who either tear them to pieces or tread their venomous head un- der their all-contpiering feet. So contradictory is all animal-worship. Its principle is, in some instances, gratitude, and in others fear; but if a noxious animal is very dangerous, the fear may manifest itself in two ways — either by the resolute desire of extirpating the beast, or by the wish of averting the conflict with its superior power: thus the same fear may, on the one hand, cause fierce enmity, and, on the other, submission and worship." See, on the subject of serpent-worship, Vossius, De Orig. Idol, i, 5; Bryant, Mythology, i, 420- 490 : it is well illustrated in the apocryphal story of " Bel and the Dragon ;" comp. Steindorf, De '0<pioXa- rptia ; Winer, Bib. Reulwort. ii, 488.