American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent by Daniel Garrison Brinton
page 50 of 249 (20%)
page 50 of 249 (20%)
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is the intermediate light that separates the earth from the sky. Shu was
also god of the winds; in a passage of the Book of the Dead, he is made to say: "I am Shu, who drives the winds onward to the confines of heaven, to the confines of the earth, even to the confines of space." Again, like Ioskeha, Shu is said to have begotten himself in the womb of his mother, Nu or Nun, who was, like Ataensic, the goddess of water, the heavenly ocean, the primal sea. Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, pp. 84-86.] The signification of the conflict with his twin brother is also clearly seen in the two names which the latter likewise bears in the legends. One of these is that which I have given, _Tawiscara_, which, there is little doubt, is allied to the root, _tiokaras_, it grows dark. The other is _Tehotennhiaron_, the root word of which is _kannhia_, the flint stone. This name he received because, in his battle with his brother, the drops of blood which fell from his wounds were changed into flints.[1] Here the flint had the same meaning which I have already pointed out in Algonkin myth, and we find, therefore, an absolute identity of mythological conception and symbolism between the two nations. [Footnote 1: Cuoq, _Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise_, p. 180, who gives a full analysis of the name.] Could these myths have been historically identical? It is hard to disbelieve it. Yet the nations were bitter enemies. Their languages are totally unlike. These same similarities present themselves over such wide areas and between nations so remote and of such different culture, that the theory of a parallelism of development is after all the more credible explanation. |
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