Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

206 The Solar Wheel in Greece

means of the following myth1. Heru-behutet2, the Horos of Edfu,
when he fought the enemies of his father Ra, changed himself into
a winged disk of many colours. As such he flew up to the sun,
sighted his foes, and started in pursuit. He took with him Nekhebet
the goddess of the South and Uatchit the goddess of the North in
the form of two snakes that they might destroy the adversaries.
Having gained the day, Heru-behutet was thenceforward called
' the Darter of Rays who emergeth from the horizon'; and Ra
ordained that the winged solar disk should be set over every sacred
spot for the banishing of evil.

Fig. 150.

The winged disk is found also, with slight modifications, in
Phoinike, where it was similarly used to consecrate the lintels of
temple-buildings3. An interesting example, discovered by E. Renan4

1 The text was published by E. Naville Textes relatifs au viythe d'Horus dans le
temple d''Edfou Geneve 1870 pis. 12—19. It is translated into German by H. Brugsch in
the Abh. d. gott. Akad. i86g Phil.-hist. Classe xiv. 173—236, and into English by
A. Wiedemann op. cit. p. 69 ff. Cp. also E. A. Wallis Budge The Gods of the Egyptians
London 1904 i. 483, A. Erman A Handbook of Egyptian Religion trans. A. S. Griffith
London 1907 p. 10 fig. 8.

2 The precise form and significance of the name borne by the solar disk is disputed :
see A. Erman in the Zeitschrift fur agyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 1882 xx. 8,
Le Page Renouf in the Proceedings oj7 the Society of Biblical Archeology 1886 viii. 143,
A. Wiedemann ib. 1895 xvii. 196 ff.

3 Count Goblet d Alviella op. cit. p. 5 ff.

4 E. Renan Mission de Phinicie Paris 1864 p. 68 ff. Atlas pi. 9, V. Berard De
Forigine des cultes arcadiens (Bibliotheqile des e~coles francaises d'Athenes et de Rome Paris
1894 lxvii) p. 89, Miss J. E. Harrison in the Transactions of the Third International
Congress for the History of Religions Oxford 1908 ii. 159 fig. n.