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

314 The Kyklops of the East and West

corresponds fairly well with a difference indicated in Hesiod's
Theogony. The poet, enumerating the children of Earth (Gaza)
and Sky (Ourands), writes :

She brought forth too Kyklopes proud of heart,
Brontes and Steropes and strong-souled Arges,
Who gave the thunder and wrought the bolt of Zeus.
They verily in all else were like the gods,
But had one eye amid their forehead set.
[Kyklopes were they named by reason of
A round eye, one, upon their forehead set.]
Power, violence, and guile were in their deeds. '

Others again from Earth and Sky were sprung,
Three sons of size and strength, not to be named,
Kottos, Briareos, Gyes, prideful brood.
A hundred arms were waving from their shoulders,
All unapproachable, and fifty heads
Grew from the shoulders on each stalwart neck.
Monstrous their power, strong to match their size1.

The one-eyed Kyklopes are here mentioned side by side with
certain many-armed giants of the self-same parentage. If we may
regard these Hekatoncheires'2' as analogous to the Cheirogdstores,
Hesiod's division is just that between the Kyklopes of west and
east.

Nor need we be surprised to find the sun conceived in two
forms so widely different by people residing within the same area
of civilisation. A useful parallel is afforded by the religion of
ancient Egypt. The oldest group of Egyptian deities was headed
by a divine pair named Nu and Nut, god and goddess respectively
of the watery mass of the sky. The pyramid text of Pepi i
addresses 'Nut, in whose head appear two eyes3'—presumably the
sun and moon. Similarly a late papyrus in the British Museum4
makes Nu speak of his Eye in terms which can only refer to the
sun5. Again, when the attributes of Nu were transferred to the
god Ra6, the Eye of Ra was identified with a variety of solar

1 Hes. theog. 139 ff.

2 'E/caro7xeves Apollod. 1. 1. 1, Palaiph. 19 (20), Eudok. viol. 221, et. mag. p. 213,
14 f., id. p. 327, 41, Plout. de amic. mult. 1. cp. v. Marcell. 17. Briareos is eKardyxet-pos
in 77. 1. 402, Eustath. in II. p. 123, 42. Gyas is centimanus in Hor. od. 2. 17. 14, 3. 4.
69, Ov. am. 2. 1. 12, trist. 4. 7. 18, as is Typhoeus in Ov. met. 3. 303: cp. Boeth. de
inst. arithmet. 1. 19 p. 40, 26 Friedlein, and Pompon, digest. 1. 2. 2. 36 (Centemmanus as
nick-name of Appius Claudius Caecus).

3 Pap. 10, 188, written for Nes-Amsu, or Nes-Min, priest of Panopolis, c. 312 B.C.

4 E. A. Wallis Budge Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection London 1911 i. 156.

5 E. A. Wallis Budge The Gods of the Egyptians London 1904 i. 298 f., 306.

6 E. A. Wallis Budge The Gods of the Egyptians i. 135. According to G. Maspero
The Daivn of Civilization* London 1901 p. 88 n. 1 the name Rd 'means the sun, and
nothing more.'