LITMIR.BIZ

      Published by Good Press, 2020

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664641304

Table of Contents

       PREFACE.

       ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT.

       Chapter I.

       The Beginning of Stone-Working.

       The Origin of Embalming.

       Early Mummies.

       The Significance of Libations.

       Early Biological Theories.

       Incense.

       The Breath of Life.

       The Power of the Eye.

       The Moon and the Sky-World.

       The Worship of the Cow.

       The Diffusion of Culture.

       Summary.

       APPENDIX A.

       APPENDIX B.

       APPENDIX C.

       Chapter II.

       DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS. [130]

       The Dragon in America and Eastern Asia.

       The Evolution of the Dragon.

       The Dragon Myth.

       The Thunder-Weapon. [203]

       The Deer.

       The Ram.

       The Pig.

       Certain Incidents in the Dragon Myth.

       The Ethical Aspect.

       Chapter III.

       THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE. [235]

       The Search for the Elixir of Life. Blood as Life.

       The Cowry as a Giver of Life.

       The Origin of Clothing.

       Pearls.

       Sharks and Dragons.

       The Octopus.

       The Swastika.

       The Mother Pot

       Artemis and the Guardian of the Portal.

       The Mandrake.

       The Measurement of Time.

       The Seven-headed Dragon.

       The Pig.

       Gold and the Golden Aphrodite.

       Aphrodite as the Thunder-stone.

       The Serpent and the Lioness.

PREFACE.

       Table of Contents

      Some explanation is due to the reader of the form and scope of these elaborations of the lectures which I have given at the John Rylands Library during the last three winters.

      They deal with a wide range of topics, and the thread which binds them more or less intimately into one connected story is only imperfectly expressed in the title "The Evolution of the Dragon".

The book has been written in rare moments of leisure snatched from a variety of arduous war-time occupations; and it reveals only too plainly the traces of this disjointed process of composition. On 23 February, 1915, I presented to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society an essay on the spread of certain customs and beliefs in ancient times under the title "On the Significance of the Geographical Distribution of the Practice of Mummification," and in my Rylands Lecture two weeks later I summed up the general conclusions.[1] In view of the lively controversies that followed the publication of the former of these addresses, I devoted my next Rylands Lecture (9 February, 1916) to the discussion of "The Relationship of the Egyptian Practice of Mummification to the Development of Civilization". In preparing this address for publication in the Bulletin some months later so much stress was laid upon the problems of "Incense and Libations" that I adopted this more concise title for the elaboration of the lecture which forms the first chapter of this book. This will explain why so many matters are discussed in that chapter which have little

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