Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

354 The holed vessel in Greece

a similar shower of pitch1 seven years before the date (c. 6ll B.C.2)
of Kyrene's foundation3.

ii. The holed vessel in Greece.

The custom of pouring water into a holed ptthos or hydHa by
way of a rain-charm has left traces of itself, not only in the rites and
myths of northern Egypt, but also in those of Greece. Nor is this
to be wondered at, if—as I incline to surmise—the said custom
belonged to a race, which at an early date occupied both regions,
the Graeco-Libyans or Libyo-Greeks postulated by Sir W.
Flinders Petrie4. It is even permissible to use less general terms and
to refer the practice to a particular tribe, the Daanau or Danauna>
who along with other maritime allies are known to have attacked
the kingdom of Rameses iii at a date shortly after 1200 B.C.5 F01
there can be little or no doubt that this tribe has been correctly
identified with the Danaoi6 of Homer; and they in turn cannot be
separated from their eponym Danaos7, or his daughters the Danai'des,
whose water-carrying furnishes the best parallel to the alleged ritual
of Akanthos in Lower Egypt8.

1 Theophr. hist. pi. 3. 1. 5!., de cans. pi. 1. 5. 1, Plin. nat. hist. 16. 143, 22. I00'

2 L. Malten Kyrene Berlin 1911 p. 190 ff., H. C. Broholm in Pauly—Wissowa Rea
Enc. xii. 158 f.

3 Theophr. hist. pi. 6. 3. 3, Plin. nat. hist. 19. 41. The schdl. Aristoph. J
states that Aristaios, son of Apollon and Kyrene, was the first who discovered h°vV
cultivate silphion and to produce honey.

4 W. M. Flinders Petrie in the Journ. Hell. Stud. 1890 xi. 276 f. „ y

5 Supra i. 362 f. To the authorities there cited add H. R. Hall in the Ann. '
Sch. Ath. 1901—1902 viii. 184, id. The Ancient History of the Near East Lond°n^yace
p. 380 ft"., id. in The Cambridge Ancient History Cambridge 1924 ii. 283 f., A. J- ^- g
ii. 1923 i. 177, F. Horamel Ethnologie und Geographie des alten Orients Munchen V
pp. 28 {., 1001. The Egyptian texts are collected and translated in H. T. Bossert AU
Berlin 1921 pp. 50, 54 ft". «r

0 D. D. Luckenbill 'Jadanan and Javan (Danaans and Ionians)' in the ZeitscnrtJJ' ^
Assyriologie 1913 xxviii. 92—99, L. B. Holland 'The Danaoi' in Harvard StudK
Classical Philology 1928 xxxix. 81 ff. jeaSt,

The latter loc. cit. p. 83 n. r is tempted 'to see some connection, in name at ^
between the Danuna and Dan. ...Perhaps Danite sea-farers [Judges 5. r 7.1 wereJ breiv
service of the Philistines and migrated with them,—the tribe disappears from later i e(j
history,—or possibly one section of the Philistines occupied territory that had be ^
to Dan, and so were called Danuna.' Such speculations are rash, though far less so thaVatell
of the Abbe E. Fourriere concerning 'the emigrant tribe of Dan' (discreetly abbre^^^
in the Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Relig10113
1908 ii. 183, cp. the same writer in the Revue d'extfgese mythologique vii no. 39 PP'

3l8)- , r»r»anai'den

7 Bernhard in Koscher Lex. Myth. i. 952—954, O. Waser 'Danaosund die " ^0gS-

in the Archiv f. Rel. 1899 ii. 47—63, id. in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. iv. 2094

8 Supra p. 338 f.