when he sets he is swallowed by a mighty fish, waiting for him at the bottom of the sea. Then when he appears again on the horizon, he is spit out on the shore by the sea-monster.[1]
Accordingly, when Chrysôr is said to have been the first navigator, this must have the same meaning that it has when applied to Apollo, viz. that the Sun, sinking and going down into the ocean, is taking a journey by sea; or when applied to the Tyrian Herakles, the builder of the city (building of cities we shall see to be a specially solar characteristic), called the inventor of navigation;[2] or when used of Prometheus, recounting before the descendants of Okeanos his benefits conferred on mankind, and saying:—
Βραχεῖ δὲ μύθῳ πάντα συλλήβδην μάθε,
πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως
Learn, in a word, the sense of all I mean:
Prometheus gave all arts to mortal men;
without forgetting to allude to the ships:—
θαλασσόπλαγκτα δ' οὔτις ἄλλος ἀντ' ἐμοῦ
λινόπτερ' εὗρε ναυτίλων ὀχήματα.
The seaman's chariot roaming o'er the sea
With flaxen wings none other found—'twas I.[3]
Now if this trait raises the solar character of Chrysôr to a certainty, then it cannot be doubted that his epithet the 'Opener,' which is identical with the Hebrew name
- ↑ It is well known that the story of Jonah was long ago connected with the myth of Herakles and Hesione, or that of Perseus and Andromeda (Bleek, Einleitung ins A. T., Berlin 1870, p. 577). Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 306, should also be consulted. What Emil Burnouf says in his La Science des Religions, Paris 1872, p. 263, is quite untenable; he finds in the myth 'un image de la naissance du feu divin et de la vie dont il est le principe.'
- ↑ Nonnus, Dionysiaca, XL. 443; Movers, Religion der Phönizier, p. 394.
- ↑ Aesch., Prom., vv. 505, 467, Dind. I must also refer to Tangaloa, the chief figure in the Polynesian mythology, who is described as the first navigator. This characteristic, and the fact that Tangaloa is regarded as the originator of every handicraft (see the chapter on the Myth of Civilisation), with other features on which Schirren lays stress in determining his nature, seem to claim for him a solar character. Gerland (Anthropologie der Naturvölker, VI. 242) disputes this interpretation.
