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

368 The Ram and the Sun in Egypt

of Alexander the Great, in his treatise On the gods of Egypt
observed1:

'When Dionysos ruled over Egypt and all its borders and was said to have
been the original inventor of everything, a certain Hammon came from Africa
and brought him a vast flock of sheep, partly to secure his favour and partly to
win the credit of having invented something himself. In return for thispresent
Dionysos is said to have granted him a domain over against the Egyptian
Thebes; and those who make effigies of Hammon furnish him with a horned
head in order that men may remember how he was the first to discover sheep.'
Etc.

It was probably this Hellenistic romance which led Pausanias to
remark : 'Amnion derived his name from the shepherd who founded
the sanctuary2.' Nor must we forget the tradition noticed above
which makes the foundress dove settle on the head of a ram3.
Both sites possessed a miraculous spring. Pliny observes :

'At Dodona the spring of Zeus is cold and puts out torches that are plunged
in it, but kindles such as are put out and brought near to it. It always fails at
midday, wherefore they call it the Resting Water; but it soon increases till it
is full at midnight, from which time onwards it again gradually fails4....The
pool of Zeus Hammon, cold by day, is hot by night5:;

Many other writers from Herodotos to Eustathios describe this
pool as ' the Fountain of the Sun' and assert that throughout the
morning it grows cooler and cooler till at midday it is quite cold,
but that as the day declines it gains in warmth becoming tepid at
sundown and fairly bubbling with heat at midnight6. The current
explanation of the phenomenon was that by night the sun went
below the earth and there boiled the water—a view which Lucretius
is at pains to disprove7. ■

1 Leon irepi t&v /car' Myvirrov de&v frag. 6 {Frag. hist. Gr. ii. 332 Muller) ap. Hyg.
poet. astr. 2. 20. The sequel is quoted infra p. 373 n. 9.

2 Paus. 4. 23. 10. So in Byzantine times Eudok. viol. 75, Eustath. in Dionys.
per. 2ix.

3 Gerhard Gr. Myth. p. 166 f. suggested rather vaguely that the ram-symbolism
properly belonging to some old Greek cult led to the confusion of a Greek with an
Egyptian ram-god. It is by no means unlikely that the ram was sacred to a Graeco-Libyan
Zeus before this god came to be identified with Amen-Ra. But the indications recorded
in the text do not suffice to prove it.

4 So Mela 2. 43, Solin. 7. 2, Aug. de civ. Dei 21. 5, Methodios ap. et. mag. p. 98,
22 ff. Cp. Ov. met. 15. 311 f. The interp. Serv. in Verg. Aen. 3. 466 states that the
spring flowed from the roots of a huge oak and itself gave oracles by means of its
murmuring sound.

5 Plin. nat. hist. 2. 228, cp. 5. 31.

6 Hdt. 4. 181, Lucr. 6. 848 ff., Ov. met. 15. 308 ff., Diod. 17. 50, Val. Max. 8.
15. 3 ext., Curt. 4. 7. 22, Mela 1. 39, Sil. It. 3. 669 ff., Arrian. 3. 4. 2, Solin. 27. 45,
Aug. de civ. Dei 21. 5, Eustath. in Dionys. per. 211. Cp. Serv. in Verg. Aen. 4. 196
locum quendam in quo aries terram pede suo scalpsit, e quo loco fons manavit.

7 Lucr. loc. cit.