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

364 The Ram and the Sun in Egypt

carried off from Thebes by Phoenicians, that one of them—so they had heard—
was sold into Libye, the other into Hellas, and that these women were the
original founders of the oracles among the aforesaid peoples. When I asked
them of the evidence on which this definite statement was based, they said in
reply that a great hue and cry had been made by them for these women, and
that they had been unable to find them, but that they had subsequently learnt
about them just what they told me. The foregoing account, then, I heard from
the priests at Thebes. The following is the statement made by the prophetesses
at Dodona. Two black doves started to fly from Thebes in Egypt. One came
to Libye, the other to Dodona, where it settled on an oak and announced with
human voice that on that very spot must be established an oracle of Zeus.
Deeming this a divine injunction, they had acted accordingly. They say that
the dove which went to Libye bade the Libyans make an oracle of Ammon ;
and that too belongs to Zeus. This was the tale told by the priestesses of
Dodona, the eldest of whom was named Promeneia, the next Timarete, the
youngest Nikandra ; and the other Dodonaeans dwelling about the sanctuary
agreed with them1.'

Herodotos, who—if any man—was acquainted with the facts,
clearly believed that the cult of the Oasis and the cult of Dodona
were akin. Two priestesses according to the Egyptian version,
two doves according to the Greek version, had simultaneously
founded the twin oracles of Zeus. This testimony on the part of
one who had himself visited both Thebes and Dodona is not lightly
to be set aside or explained away as a case of Aigypto-mania.

The same story with some interesting differences of detail
occurs in later writers. Thus Silius Italicus in the first century of
our era relates that Hannibal after the capture of Saguntum sent
Bostar to enquire of Ammon what the issue of the war would be,
and that Bostar on reaching the Oasis was welcomed by the
Libyan Arisbas :

' These shady woods and tree-tops heaven-high,
Groves trodden by the foot of Iupiter,
Worship with prayer, friend Bostar. All the world
Knows of his bounty, how he sent twin doves
To settle in mid Thebes. Whereof the one
That winged her way to the Chaonian coasts
Fills with her fateful coo Dodona's oak.
The other, wafted o'er Carpathian waves,
With the same snowy pinions crossed to Libye
And founded this our fane—Cythereia's bird.
Here, where ye see an altar and dense groves,
She chose a ram (I tell the miracle)
And perched betwixt the horns of his fleecy head
Chanted her answers to Marmaric tribes.
Then on a sudden sprang to sight a wood,

1 Hdt. 2. 54—55.