must denote the same thing. Accordingly we shall find that, on
the one hand, Venus is immediately connected with the symbolical
egg; and, on the other hand, that she is identical with Derceto
and Isis, and is declared to be that general receptacle out of
which all the hero-gods were produced. Now there can be little
doubt in what sense we are to understand this expression, when we
are told that the peculiar symbol of Isis was a ship; and when we
learn that the form assumed at the period of the deluge, by the
Indian Isi or Bhavani, who is clearly the same as the Egyptian
Isis, was the ship Argha, in which her consort Siva floated
securely on the surface of the ocean. Venus, therefore, or the
Great Mother, the parent of Cupid from whom all mankind
descended, must be the Ark: consequently, the egg, with which she
is connected, must be the Ark also. Aristophanes informs us that
the egg out of which Love was born, was produced by Night in the
bosom of Erebus. But the Goddess Night, as we learn from the
Orphic poet, was the very same person as Venus; and he celebrates
her as the parent of the Universe, and as the general mother both
of the hero-gods and of man. The egg therefore produced by Night
was produced by Venus: but Venus and the egg meant the same
thing: even that vast floating machine, which was esteemed an
epitome of the world, and from which was born that Deity who is
also literally said to have been set afloat in an ark. Sometimes
the order of production was inverted; and, instead of the egg
being produced by Night or Venus, Venus herself was fabled to
have been produced from the egg. There is a remarkable legend of
this sort which ascribes Venus and her egg to the age of Typhon
and Osiris, in other words, to the age in which Noah was
compelled by the deluge to enter into the ark."[46]
[46] Origin of Pagan Idolatry, book i., ch. iv.
The Preserver of the Persians, who is seated on a rainbow in
front of their rock temples, is Mithras, who is identical with
Noah. Sometimes this ancient mariner is represented as riding on
the back of a fish, and again as floating in a boat. The God of
Hindostan, like the classical Dionysos, was enclosed in an ark
