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

Ritual Horns

515

or offered sacrifice1 and prayer2 holding it as by a handle. He was
thereby himself filled with the life of the divine beast. Moreover,
the frequent practice of affixing a bucranium to the altar or carving
bucrania upon it3 is seen to be highly appropriate, if not actually
reminiscent of its origin.

The foregoing method of
procuring bees from a bull
was believed by the ancients
to have come from Egypt or
Libye. We may therefore
venture to compare with it a
remarkable scene depicted in
the Egyptian Book of the Dead
(fig. 388)4. According to Dr
Budge, Hathor the cow-god-
dess of the Underworld looks
out through a clump of
papyrus-plants from the fune-
ral mountain, at the foot of
which is the tomb. Now it
is highly probable that such
vignettes were originally in-
spired by actual custom. And
Mr F. W. Green kindly in-
forms me that at Deir el
Bahri the relative positions of
Hathor-shrine, mountain, and
tombs agree well with those
here represented5. The divine cow buried in the earth, but yet
looking forth upon the world and by her own peculiar virtue causing
fresh vegetation to spring up, thus furnishes an exalted parallel
to the humbler rite of the buried bull and its resultant swarms.

1 Varr. ap. Macrob. Sat. 3. 2. 8 inde Varro Divinarum libro quinto dicit aras primum
asas dictas, quod esset necessarium a sacrificantibus eas teneri : ansis autem teneri solere
vasa quis dubitet? Cp. interp. Serv. in Verg. Aen. 4. 219. Varro's etymology is of
course faulty, but his facts are sound.

2 Verg. Aen. 6. 124 talibus orabat dictis arasque tenebat (cp. 4. 219, 12. 201) with
Serv. ad loc. rogabant enim deos ararum ansas tenentes. For other examples see the
Thes. Ling. Lat. ii. 386, 7 ff. 3 E. Saglio in Daremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. i. 351.

4 E. A. Wallis Budge Facsimile of the Papyrus of Ani2 London 1894 pi. 37, id. The
Gods of the Egyptians London 1904 i. 430 pi. 18, cp. Lanzone Dizion. di Mitol. Egiz.
pp. 896, 898 f. pis. 321, 1, 323.

5 Mr H. R. Hall points out to me that Mr Somers Clarke {Proceedings of the Society
of Biblical Archceology 1905 xxvii. 179) has explained the pyramidal tomb-chapel in the
vignette as copied from a pyramid at Deir el Bahri, which was especially connected
with Hathor-worship, and the hills as being the cliffs of the same locality.

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