Page:Mythology Among the Hebrews.djvu/141

Rh When in ancient times men dwelling by the sea-shore saw the heavenly fire-ball in the evening dip into the sea, and the next morning issue shining at the opposite point of the sea-line, what other idea could he conceive of this but that down in the sea the sun was swallowed by a monster which spat out its prey again on the shore (see p. 28)?—or else that the sun undertook a voyage, starting over night?—or, as is so beautifully expressed in the Hellenic myth, that he took a bath, so as to shine on the sea-shore in the morning with new brightness and purified from all dinginess?

Navigation is the explanation of this daily phenomenon which prevails in the myth. It became so general that later among the Egyptians it was divested of its original associations and brought into connexion with the sun of day. In the Egyptian view the Sun's bark sails over the ocean of heaven:, says Plutarch of the Egyptian view, and adduces Homeric parallels. The Jewish Midrâsh compares the course of the sun to that of a ship—and curiously enough to a ship coming from Britain, which has 365 ropes (the number of the days of the solar year), and to a ship coming from Alexandria, which has 354 ropes (the number of the days of the lunar year). The solar figures, then, are everywhere brought into connexion with the invention and employment of navigation. The sinking Apollo is with the Greeks the founder of navigation. Herakles receives from Helios the present of a golden bowl, which he used to employ as a bark when he sailed across the Okeanos. The voyage of the shining Phaeacians and Argonauts originally