Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/381

Rh a flock of inoffensive doves, certainly a strange and incongruous association of figures.

Maunder claims that it was intense irony for the Hebrews to designate as "a fool" the constellation that the Babylonians had deified, and made their supreme god, and styled "the Mighty Hunter."

Orion has been identified with Merodach, probably the first King of Babylonia, and with the Nimrod of the Scriptures, "the mighty hunter before the Lord," known also as "the mighty one in the earth," a variant of Merodach.

Several Assyriologists consider that the constellations Orion and Cetus represent the struggle between Merodach and Tiamat. In support of this view, it may be said that Tiamat is expressly identified on a Babylonian tablet with a constellation near the ecliptic.

Maunder thinks that the view that has come down to us through the Greeks concerning Orion agrees much better with the associations of the constellations as held among the Hebrews rather than amongst the Babylonians. According to the Greek legend, Orion pursued the Pleiades, which were considered doves or virgins, and was confronted by the Bull. Cetus was not involved in the struggle, but was engaged in a combat with Perseus.

There is in the threatening attitude of the Mighty Hunter as he stands facing the advancing Bull, carrying

to ward off an attack, and his club raised to strike a blow, every indication of an attempt on the part of the inventor of the constellation to indicate a conflict to the death between Orion and the Bull.

The figure of the Hare crouching beneath the Hunter's foot is also significant. The hare has always been associated in folk-lore with the moon, and as Brown points out, Orion as "the light of heaven" is clearly identified with the sun. Here we have, many think, a figure symbolical of