Clavis Mythologiarum

BOOK IV. OF THE WATERS. HEAD III. OF OANNES AND XISUTHRUS.

○It will be convenient to state at the outset what the present head is designed to accomplish, and what it is not. The Chaldaean relation of Oannes, which is preserved to us in the fragments of Berosus, and which has been brought, by Selden and by those who have followed him, to the illustration of the Philistine Dagon, is the first of the two testimonies to which, in the preceding head, I referred the collection of the instances in which the fish and the grain are found together among peoples other than the Phenicians; and it is accordingly the business of the following pages to set down what Berosus affirms, to distinguish it from what has been affirmed upon his authority, and to consider such objections to the view there sketched as the Chaldaean testimony immediately suggests. I do not propose to do more, the view itself, being a view of the whole conjunction, and depending upon the testimonies of more than one people taken together, cannot with propriety be pronounced upon until they have all been heard; and I shall be content, in the present head, to leave it where the Chaldaean relation leaves it.1 NB-37-011 NB-41-014

○The relation is as follows (Beros. ap. Syncell.). In the first year, it is said, there appeared out of that part of the Erythraean sea which borders upon Babylonia a creature, by name Oannes, not endowed, as the account has it, with reason; the whole of whose body, according to Apollodorus, was that of a fish, but who had under the head of the fish another head, which was a man's, and below, subjoined to the tail of the fish, feet like those of a man.2 His voice and speech, it is added, were articulate and human; a representation of him was preserved in the writer's own time; and he was accustomed to pass the day among men, taking no food, and to impart to them a knowledge of letters, of the sciences and of every art, to teach them to build cities, to found temples and to compile laws, and to explain to them the principles of geometry. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and shewed them how to gather the fruits; and, when the sun had set, he returned into the sea, and passed the night in the deep, being amphibious.3 Of the whole of this account, that which most concerns the present inquiry is, as it seems to me, the sentence in which the creature is said to have caused men to distinguish the seeds and to gather the fruits; since it is here, in a relation which is not that of the Phenicians, and which does not derive its matter from Philo of Byblos, that a being who is in form a fish is found concerned with the grain.4 The instruction in letters and in laws is to be separated, as belonging to another mode, and is not to be pressed.5 NB-37-011

○Two interpreters have used this relation, and it is necessary to say exactly what each has done with it. Selden, whom I have already had occasion to cite, brings the place of Berosus, together with the Annedotus and the Odacon of the same fragments, to the illustration of Dagon, and inquires why the several figures should share a single form (Selden, de Dis Syris, synt. ii. cap. 3).6 Mr. Faber, after him, takes the Odacon of the Chaldaean fragments to be "a manifest corruption of Dagon, arising, as it seems, from the inadvertence of some careless Greek transcriber" (Faber, Cabiri, vol. i. ch. ii.), and from this concludes that the Babylonian and the Philistine deities are one. I neither adopt nor reject the conjecture, which rests upon a supposed error of transcription, and of such errors it is not a safe rule either to affirm or to deny the existence without the manuscripts; and I observe only that the conjunction of the fish and the grain in the relation of Berosus does not depend upon it, and would remain, if the two names were wholly unconnected, exactly where it stands.7 The conjunction cannot well be laid to the account of a single etymology, since it is found in a relation which has not passed through that of the Phenicians at all.8 NB-37-011

○The same author, in the same fragments, gives an account of the Deluge, and the record of it is of the utmost importance to the proper understanding of the other (Beros. ap. Syncell. Chron.; Euseb. Chron.). He relates that after the death of Ardates his son Xisuthrus reigned eighteen sari, and that in his time a great Deluge happened; that the deity Cronus appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that upon the fifteenth day of the month Daesius there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed; that he enjoined him to write a history of the beginning, the procedure and the conclusion of all things, and to bury it in the city of the Sun at Sippara; and to build a vessel, and to take with him into it his friends and relations, and all that was necessary to sustain life, together with the several animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and to trust himself without fear to the deep.9 Here is a king, the son of a king, with his vessel and his company; and the creature of the sea is given elsewhere, in the first year, and has no place in the narrative of the waters.10 NB-41-014 NB-37-011

○It is at this point that the commentators have been found to proceed with less than their usual caution. Mr. Bryant holds that the patriarch was "the principal person in these histories," that he was represented with two heads, with which "he doubtless looked both forward and backward, in reference to the antediluvian, and postdiluvian world," that he was described "as an animal of the sea, but endowed with reason," and that "He was also depicted as a fish" (Bryant, Analysis, vol. ii. Jonah, Put, Chaldaeorum); and Mr. Faber says that the four Babylonian Oans, who at different times emerged from the Erythraean sea, are reduced to two, Adam and Noah (Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. i. bk. i. ch. iv.).11 I find in the relation two persons, and not one; and the identification of the king who is saved with the creature who comes up is made by the commentator, and is not in the text. I do not say that it cannot be made; I say only that it is a premise to be proved before it can be used as a ground, and that neither of these writers has proved it, but has supposed it, in order that the two parts of the fragment might be read as one history.12 NB-41-014 NB-37-011

○The view which I have sketched differs, in respect of this testimony, from that of both these writers, and the difference is such as may be stated shortly. They unite the Oannes and the Xisuthrus in a single person, and then find the fish and the Deluge in him; I find them in one author, and in two relations which are by that author set down in succession, and I do not unite them in a person.13 If the fish be the vessel, and the corn the seed which it preserved, as I have at present conceived, then the creature who comes up in the first year, and who teaches the distinguishing of the seeds, and the vessel of Xisuthrus, in which the remnant of mankind, with the animals, was preserved, are not two notions, but one; and it is to the proof of this that the whole of the testimonies is directed.14 NB-37-011 NB-41-014

○It may be objected, in the first place, that the creature of Berosus comes out of the sea and goes back into it, and that a vessel does neither; to which I answer that the objection supposes the form of the creature to be the whole of the relation, whereas the relation contains also the seed, and that of a vessel the coming and the going are precisely what, upon a figure, is to be expected; for it is not said of the creature that he was without the waters, but that he was amphibious. It may be objected, in the second place, that the creature teaches the distinguishing of the seeds, and does not preserve them; to which I answer that a teaching which is delivered by a being who is in form a fish is, so far as the argument is concerned, no less a conjunction of the fish and the grain than a preservation would be, and that it is probable that the manner in which the relation was set down has altered the manner in which the thing was remembered. It may be objected, in the third place, that the Oannes of the first year and the Xisuthrus of the Deluge are separated in the fragment by the succession of the kings, and the reckoning of the sari, and cannot therefore be brought together; to which I answer that the interval is a reckoning, and that a reckoning is a form in which a relation is arranged, and not a ground upon which two parts of it are to be separated. It may be objected, lastly, that Berosus is a late witness, and that what we possess of him has passed through the hands of Alexander Polyhistor and of Syncellus; to which I answer, as in the case of Philo, that the lateness of a testimony diminishes its authority as to the form in which a tradition is delivered, and does not diminish its value as evidence that the tradition was still remembered.15 NB-37-011 NB-41-014

○These are the objections which the Chaldaean relation immediately suggests; others, which the testimony of the Syrian goddess will suggest, will be better considered when that testimony has been collected. The proof of the view, which the relation of Berosus does not by itself complete, will appear in its proper place, namely, at the conclusion of the present Book, when the testimonies which are here set down in succession shall be brought together and compared; and I shall be content, in the meantime, with having shewn that, in the writer through whom the Chaldaean relations are preserved, the fish and the grain are found in a single relation, and the Deluge in the next.16 NB-37-011 NB-41-014

Footnotes

  1. The place referred to is the last paragraph of the preceding head, where it is said that the proof of the view belongs to the heads of Oannes and of Atargatis. I mention it here only to show that I am not unmindful of the order of the Book. ↩

  2. Beros. ap. Syncell. Berosus is cited by Syncellus from Alexander Polyhistor, and the particular of the form is given on the authority of Apollodorus. I report the fragment in substance, and in the order in which it stands, without rendering any part of it as a quotation. ↩

  3. The word translated 'amphibious' is that of the fragment. I have given it as the translators render it; I do not know that anything in the argument depends upon the choice of a word. ↩

  4. It is to be observed in my collections that the matter of the seeds and of the fruits occupies but a single sentence of the account, in which letters, cities, temples and laws are named at greater length; I put this as an observation, and draw no inference from it. ↩

  5. What is meant by another mode is the mode of the deified patriarchs, to which the teaching of letters and of laws properly belongs, and which is the subject of the third Book; I do not enter into it here, lest the two should be confused. ↩

  6. Selden, de Dis Syris, synt. ii. cap. 3. The chapter treats of Dagon, and brings in Berosus, Apollodorus and Polyhistor on Oannes, with Annedotus and Odacon; the question which Selden asks is not answered by him in the place I have read. ↩

  7. Faber, Cabiri, vol. i. ch. ii. The conjecture of Mr. Faber, if it were established, would unite the two names; it would not, so far as I can perceive, add anything to the testimony of Berosus concerning the seeds, which is complete without it. I mention this only that the reader may not suppose the conjunction to wait upon a question of manuscripts. ↩

  8. Faber, Cabiri, vol. i. ch. ii. Mr. Faber makes the same conjecture in the chapter on the Phenician history of Sanchoniatho, where he refers Dagon's corn and plough to the husbandman Noah; so that in his work the fish-shape and the corn meet in the person of the patriarch, as I have shown in the preceding head. ↩

  9. Beros. ap. Syncell. Chron.; Euseb. Chron. The words 'in the city of the Sun' are those of the fragment, which names the place Sippara. The 'sari' are the Chaldaean periods of reckoning, of which I do not undertake to give the length. ↩

  10. Beros. ap. Syncell. Chron.; Euseb. Chron. The Deity who warns Xisuthrus is Cronus, and the warning is given in a vision; the creature of the first year is not said to have any part in it, and is not named again in the passage which I have copied. I note the absence, and I draw nothing from it. ↩

  11. Bryant, Analysis, vol. ii. Jonah, Put, Chaldaeorum. The histories to which Mr. Bryant refers in the passage are those of Sanchoniathon, Berosus, Abydenus and Apollodorus. He cites Berosus, in the following sentences, for the figure of Oan with the head of a fish and of a man, said to have been shown at Babylon. Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. i. bk. i. ch. iv.; the last of the four Oans, Mr. Faber says, is the great diluvian patriarch. ↩

  12. A premise which is not proved is not therefore false; and I have therefore forborne to pronounce upon the identification, and desire only that it should not be treated as a ground until it has been shewn to be a conclusion. ↩

  13. Bryant, Analysis, vol. ii. Jonah, Put, Chaldaeorum. I do not say that Mr. Bryant has not reasons for his opinion, but only that, in the place which I have read, they are not set out; the passage is a continuation of the gentile history of the Deluge, and the proof may well lie in an earlier chapter. Until it is produced the identification cannot be employed as a premise in the present argument. ↩

  14. I do not here state the proof, which, as I have said, depends upon the testimonies of more than one people; and it would be improper to give a part of it in a place where the remainder is not before the reader. ↩

  15. Beros. ap. Syncell. The Greek of Syncellus, which I have in the edition of Goar, cites Alexander Polyhistor, and Polyhistor cites Berosus; the chain of the authorities is thus of three links. ↩

  16. Of the objections which may be urged with less force, the principal is that which concerns the relation of the story of Derceto to that of Oannes, and it will be considered under the head which follows. ↩

← BOOK IV. OF THE WATERS. HEAD II. OF DAGON.BOOK IV. OF THE WATERS. HEAD IV. OF ATARGATIS AND DERCETO. →