Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/515

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Isis as his horned maiden. There was nothing here which might not have grown up independently in Egypt and in Greece: nor is any hypothesis of borrowing needed to account for the similarity of myths suggested by the horns of the new moon. The mischief began with the notion that the whole Greek mythology not merely exhibited certain points of likeness or contact with that of Semitic or other alien tribes, but was directly borrowed from it; and when for this portentous fact no evidence was demanded or furnished beyond the impudent assertions of Egyptian priests, there was obviously no limit and no difficulty in making any one Greek god the counterpart of a deity in the mythology of Egypt. Hence, speaking generally, we are fully justified in sweeping away all such statements as groundless fabrications. Nay more, when Herodotos tells us that Danaos and Lynkeus were natives of Chemmis, and that the Egyptians trace from them the genealogy of Perseus, the periodical appearance of whose gigantic slipper caused infinite joy in Egypt, we cannot be sure that his informers even knew the names which the historian puts into their mouths. In all probability, the points of likeness were supplied by Herodotos himself, although doubtless the Egyptians said all that they could to strengthen his fixed idea that Egypt was the source of the mythology and religion, the art and science of Greece; nor does the appearance of a solitary sandal lead us necessarily to suppose that the being who wore it was in any way akin to the Argive hero who receives two sandals from the Ocean nymphs.

Hence it is possible or likely that the names Belos and Aigyptos may have been late importations into a purely native myth, while the wanderings of Danaos and Aigyptos with their sons and daughters have just as much and as little value as the pilgrimage of Iô. In the form thus assigned to it, the legend runs that Libya, the daughter of Epaphos the calf-child of Iô, became the bride of Poseid6n and the mother of Agenor and Belos. Of these the former is placed in Phoinikia, and takes his place in the purely solar myth of Tèlephassa, Kadmos, and Eurôpè: the latter remains in Libya, and marrying Anchirrhoe (the mighty stream), a daughter of the Nile, becomes the father of the twins Danaos and Aigyptos, whose lives exhibit not much more harmony and concord than those of many other pairs of twins in Aryan story These sons of Belos marry many wives, and while Aig'ptos has fifty sons, Danaos has fifty daughters, numbers which must be compared with the fifty daughters of Nereus or the fifty children of Endymion and Asterodia. The action of the story begins with the tyranny of Aigyptos and his sons over Danaos and his daughters. By the aid of Athene, Danaos builds a fifty-oared