Part 32 (2/2)
Her Aphrodite G.o.ds and mortals name, The foam-born G.o.ddess; and her name is known As Cytherea with the blooming wreath, For that she touched Cythera's flowery coast; And Cypris, for that on the Cyprian sh.o.r.e She rose, amid the mult.i.tude of waves. _Elton's translation_.
The animals sacred to Aphrodite included the sparrow, the dove, the swan, the swallow, and the wryneck.[477] She presided over the month of April, and the myrtle, rose, poppy, and apple were sacred to her.
Some writers connect Semiramis, in her character as a dove G.o.ddess, with Media and the old Persian mother G.o.ddess Anaitis, and regard as arbitrary her identification with the fish G.o.ddess Derceto or Atargatis. The dove was certainly not a popular bird in the religious art of Babylonia and a.s.syria, but in one of the hymns translated by Professor Pinches Ishtar says, ”Like a lonely dove I rest”. In another the wors.h.i.+pper tries to touch Ishtar's heart by crying, ”Like the dove I moan”. A Sumerian psalmist makes a G.o.ddess (Gula, who presided over Larak, a part of Isin) lament over the city after it was captured by the enemy:
My temple E-aste, temple of Larak, Larak the city which Bel Enlil gave, Beneath are turned to strangeness, above are turned to strangeness, With wailings on the lyre my dwelling-place is surrendered to the stranger, _The dove cots they wickedly seized, the doves they entrapped_....
The ravens he (Enlil) caused to fly.[478]
Apparently there were temple and household doves in Babylonia. The Egyptians had their household dovecots in ancient as in modern times.
Lane makes reference to the large pigeon houses in many villages. They are of archaic pattern, ”with the walls slightly inclining inwards (like many of the ancient Egyptian buildings)”, and are ”constructed upon the roofs of the huts with crude brick, pottery, and mud.... Each pair of pigeons occupies a separate (earthen) pot.”[479] It may be that the dove bulked more prominently in domestic than in official religion, and had a special seasonal significance. Ishtar appears to have had a dove form. In the Gilgamesh epic she is said to have loved the ”brilliant Allalu bird” (the ”bright-coloured wood pigeon”, according to Sayce), and to have afterwards wounded it by breaking its wings.[480] She also loved the lion and the horse, and must therefore have a.s.sumed the forms of these animals. The G.o.ddess Bau, ”she whose city is destroyed”, laments in a Sumerian psalm:
Like a dove to its dwelling-place, how long to my dwelling-place will they pursue me, To my sanctuary ... the sacred place they pursue me....
My resting place, the brick walls of my city Isin, thou art destroyed; My sanctuary, shrine of my temple Galmah, thou art destroyed.
_Langdon's translation._
Here the G.o.ddess appears to be identified with the doves which rest on the walls and make their nests in the shrine. The Sumerian poets did not adorn their poems with meaningless picturesque imagery; their images were stern facts; they had a magical or religious significance like the imagery of magical incantations; the wors.h.i.+pper invoked the deity by naming his or her various attributes, forms, &c.
Of special interest are the references in Sumerian psalms to the ravens as well as the doves of G.o.ddesses. Throughout Asia and Europe ravens are birds of ill omen. In Scotland there still linger curious folk beliefs regarding the appearance of ravens and doves after death.
Michael Scott, the great magician, when on his deathbed told his friends to place his body on a hillock. ”Three ravens and three doves would be seen flying towards it. If the ravens were first the body was to be burned, but if the doves were first it was to receive Christian burial. The ravens were foremost, but in their hurry flew beyond their mark. So the devil, who had long been preparing a bed for Michael, was disappointed.”[481]
In Indian mythology Purusha, the chaos giant, first divided himself.
”Hence were husband and wife produced.” This couple then a.s.sumed various animal forms and thus ”created every living pair whatsoever down to the ants”.[482] G.o.ddesses and fairies in the folk tales of many countries sometimes a.s.sume bird forms. The ”Fates” appear to Damayanti in the Nala story as swans which carry love messages.[483]
According to Aryo-Indian belief, birds were ”blessed with fecundity”.
The Babylonian Etana eagle and the Egyptian vulture, as has been indicated, were deities of fertility. Throughout Europe birds, which were ”Fates”, mated, according to popular belief, on St. Valentine's Day in February, when lots were drawn for wives by rural folks.
Another form of the old custom is referred to by the poet Gay:--
Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind Their paramours with mutual chirpings find, I early rose....
Thee first I spied, and the first swain we see, In spite of fortune, shall our true love be.
The dove appears to have been a sacred bird in various areas occupied by tribes of the Mediterranean race. Models of a shrine found in two royal graves at Mycenae are surmounted by a pair of doves, suggesting twin G.o.ddesses like Isis and Nepthys of Egypt and Ishtar and Belitsheri of Babylonia. Doves and snakes were a.s.sociated with the mother G.o.ddess of Crete, ”typifying”, according to one view, ”her connection with air and earth. Although her character was distinctly beneficent and pacific, yet as Lady of the Wild Creatures she had a more fearful aspect, one that was often depicted on carved gems, where lions are her companions.”[484] Discussing the attributes and symbols of this mother G.o.ddess, Professor Burrows says: ”As the serpent, coming from the crevices of the earth, shows the possession of the tree or pillar from the underworld, so the dove, with which this G.o.ddess is also a.s.sociated, shows its possession from the world of the sky”.[485] Professor Robertson Smith has demonstrated that the dove was of great sanct.i.ty among the Semites.[486] It figures in Hitt.i.te sculptures and was probably connected with the G.o.ddess cult in Asia Minor. Although Egypt had no dove G.o.ddess, the bird was addressed by lovers--
I hear thy voice, O turtle dove-- The dawn is all aglow-- Weary am I with love, with love, Oh, whither shall I go?[487]
Pigeons, as indicated, are in Egypt still regarded as sacred birds, and a few years ago British soldiers created a riot by shooting them.
Doves were connected with the ancient Greek oracle at Dodona. In many countries the dove is closely a.s.sociated with love, and also symbolizes innocence, gentleness, and holiness.
The pigeon was anciently, it would appear, a sacred bird in these islands, and Brand has recorded curious folk beliefs connected with it. In some districts the idea prevailed that no person could die on a bed which contained pigeon feathers: ”If anybody be sick and lye a dying, if they lye upon pigeon feathers they will be languis.h.i.+ng and never die, but be in pain and torment,” wrote a correspondent. A similar superst.i.tion about the feathers of different varieties of wild fowl[488] obtained in other districts. Brand traced this interesting traditional belief in Yorks.h.i.+re, Lancas.h.i.+re, Derbys.h.i.+re, and some of the Welsh and Irish counties.[489] It still lingers in parts of the Scottish Highlands. In the old ballad of ”The b.l.o.o.d.y Gardener” the white dove appears to a young man as the soul of his lady love who was murdered by his mother. He first saw the bird perched on his breast and then ”sitting on a myrtle tree”.[490]
The dove was not only a symbol of Semiramis, but also of her mother Derceto, the Phoenician fish G.o.ddess. The connection between bird and fish may have been given an astral significance. In ”Poor Robin's Almanack” for 1757 a St. Valentine rhyme begins:--
This month bright Phoebus enters Pisces, The maids will have good store of kisses, For always when the sun comes there, Valentine's day is drawing near, And both the men and maids incline To choose them each a Valentine.
As we have seen, the example was set by the mating birds. The ”Almanack” poet no doubt versified an old astrological belief: when the spring sun entered the sign of the Fishes, the love G.o.ddess in bird form returned to earth.
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