Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/410

 406 Rudwin femininity and fertility, long before she was crowned Regina Phari and was surnamed Pelagia in Alexandria; Athena was presented with a ship by the men of Athens, although she was not the patroness of their sea-power, but their earth- goddess. 17 The ship has no relation to water whatsoever. The view held by Mannhardt that the ship-procession was a rain-charm 18 can no longer be seriously entertained. The ship was the symbol of femininity in creation among all the primitive races. 19 However, although it was first sacred to the fertility goddess only, it later became the emblem of the fertility god as well. The ship of Ea was after awhile extended to all the great gods of Babylonia. The ship of Isis in the course of time accomodated all other gods of Egypt, and these gods, according to Porphyry 20 were also represented in boats. The ship notably became the vehicle of the sun gods in analogy to the "lunar boat" of the moon goddesses, as the cresecent was called by the ancients. Ra, the sun-god of the Egyptians, was represented as sailing across the heavens in a ship. 21 The planeteary gods of Greece were always represented in boats. Helios sails in a golden boat as much as he races in a four-horse chariot. The ark or the cup was a modified form of the ship. 22 The ark of Jahveh was originally a ship, the ship of Ea. The Israelites adopted it from the Assyrians, who in turn took it from the Babylonians. If the religion of Israel was related to the solar monotheism of Egypt, 23 the ark of Jahveh may have been modelled after the ship of Ra. The appellation "Ark of the Covenant" is a later substitution for the earlier name of the "Ark of Jahveh." That the ark was virtually 17 Cf. H. Usener, op. tit., p. 130. 18 Cf. W. Mannhardt, Wald=u. Feldkulte d. Germanen i. (1875) 593; Frazer, op. cit., i. 251n3. 19 Cf. G. W. Cox, The Mythology of the Aryan Nations (1870) ii. 127; C. Howard, Sex Worship: An exposition of the Phallic Origin of Religion* (1910), pp. 1415?.; 0. A. Wall, Sex and Sex Worship (Phallic Worship} (1919), pp. 257, 464. 20 de antro Mympharum., p. 234, ed. Micyllus. 21 Cf. H. Usener, op cit., p. 130. 22 Ibid., p. 115; Wall, op. cit., p. 171. 23 Cf. P. Haupt, "Semites, Hebrews, Israelites, Jews," Open Court xxxii (1918), p. 759.