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The Myth of the Birth of the Hero

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Achilles
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« Reply #30 on: December 29, 2009, 05:03:51 am »

5:2 Some of the important writings by Winckler will be mentioned in the course of this article.

5:3 Zeitschrift für der Oesterr. Gymnasium (1891), pp. 161 ff. Schubert's reply is also found here, pp. 594 ff.

5:4 "Object and Aim of Mythological Research," Mytholog. Bibliot. (Leipzig), Vol. I, No. 4.

6:1 Wundt, op. cit., Part III.

6:2 "Die babylonische Geisteskultur in ihren Beziehungen zur Kulturentwicklung der Menschheit," Wissenschaft and Bildung, Vol. XV (1907), p. 47.
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« Reply #31 on: December 29, 2009, 05:04:02 am »

6:3 Of course no time will be wasted here on the futile question as to what the first legend may have been; in all probability this never existed, any more than "the first human couple."

7:1 Brodbeck: Zoroaster (Leipzig, 1893), p. 138.

7:2 As an especially discouraging example of this mode of procedure may be mentioned a contribution by the well-known natural mythologist Schwartz, which touches on this circle of myths, and is entitled: Der Ursprung der Stamm and Gründungssage Roms unter dem Reflex indogermanischer Mythen (Jena, 1898).

7:3 Leo Frobenius: Das Zeitalter des Sonnengotten (Berlin, 1904).

7:4 G. Hüsing: Contributions to the Kyros Myth (Berlin, 1906). Siecke, "Hermes als Mondgott," Mytholog. Bibliot., Vol. II, No. 1 (1908), P. 48. Compare, for example, Paul Koch: Sagen der Bibel and ihre Ubereinstimmung mit der Mythologie der Indogermanen (Berlin, 1907). Compare also the partly lunar, partly solar, but at any rate entirely one-sided conception of the hero myth in Gustav Friedrich: Grundlage, Entstehung and genaue Einzeldeutung der bekanntesten germanischen Märchen, Mythen and Sagen (Leipzig, 1909), p. 118.
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« Reply #32 on: December 29, 2009, 05:04:17 am »

9:1 The fable of Shakespeare's Hamlet also permits of a similar interpretation, according to Freud. It will be seen later on how mythological investigators bring the Hamlet legend from entirely different viewpoints into the correlation of the circle of myths.

9:2 Laistner: The Riddle of the Sphinx (1889). Compare Lessmann, "Object and Aim . . . ," loc. cit. Ehrenreich alone (General Psychology, p. 149) admits the extraordinary significance of dream-life for the myth-fiction of all times. Wundt does so likewise, for individual mythological motifs.

10:1 Stucken (op. cit., p. 432) says in this sense: The myth transmitted by the ancestors was transferred to natural processes and interpreted in a naturalistic way, not vice versa. "Interpretation of nature is a motive in itself" (p. 636 n.). In a very similar way, Eduard Meyer (Geschichte des Altertums, 1884-1902, Vol. V. p. 48) has written: "In many cases, the natural symbolism, sought in the myths, is only apparently present or has been secondarily introduced, as often in the Vedas and in the Egyptian myths; it is a primary attempt at interpretation, like the myth-interpretations that arose among the Greeks as early as the fifth century."
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« Reply #33 on: December 29, 2009, 05:04:56 am »

10:2 Op. cit., p. 104.

10:3 Op. cit., p. 282.

10:4 For fairy tales, in this as well as in other essential features, Thimme advocates the same point of view as is here claimed for the myths. Compare Adolf Thimme: Das Märchen, Vol. II of Handbücher zur Volkskunde (Leipzig, 1909).

11:1 Of this myth interpretation, Wundt (op. cit., p. 352) has well said that it really should have accompanied the original myth formation.

11:2 Vol. II, p. 143, in the German translation (Leipzig, 1869).

12:1 See Ignaz Goldhizer: Der Mythus bei den Hebräern and seine geschichtliche Entwickelung (Leipzig, 1876), p. 125. According to the writings of Siecke (loc. cit., p. 39), the incest myths lose all unusual features through being referred to the moon and its relation to the sun. His explanation is quite simple: the daughter (the new moon) is the repetition of the mother (the old moon); with her the father (the sun) (also the brother, the son) becomes reunited.

12:2 Is it to be believed? In an article entitled "Urreligion der Indogermanen" (Berlin, 1897), where Siecke points out that the incest myths are descriptive narrations of the seen but inconceivable process of nature, he objects to the assumption by Oldenburg (Religion der Veda, p. 5) of a primeval tendency of myths to the incest motif, with the remark that in the days of yore the theme was thrust upon the narrator, without an inclination of his own, through the forcefulness of the witnessed facts.
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« Reply #34 on: December 29, 2009, 05:10:24 am »

p. 14
II. The Circle of Myths

FROM the mass of chiefly biographic hero myths, we have selected those that are best known and some that are especially characteristic. 1 These myths will be given in abbreviated form, as far as relevant for this investigation, with statements concerning the sources. Attention will be called to the most important and constantly recurring motifs by the use of italic type.
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« Reply #35 on: December 29, 2009, 05:10:44 am »

SARGON

Probably the oldest transmitted hero myth in our possession is derived from the period of the foundation of Babylonia (about 2800 B.C.) and concerns the birth history of its founder, Sargon the First. 2 The literal translation

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of the report--according to the mode of rendering, it appears to be an original inscription by King Sargon himself--is as follows:

Sargon, the mighty king, King of Agade, am I. My mother was a vestal, my father I knew not, while my father's brother dwelt in the mountains. In my city Azuripani, which is situated on the bank of the Euphrates, my mother, the vestal, bore me. In a hidden place she brought me forth. She laid me in a vessel made of reeds, closed my door with pitch, and dropped me down into the river, which did not drown me. The river carried me to Akki, the water carrier. Akki the water carrier lifted me up in the kindness of his heart, Akki the water carrier raised me as his own son, Akki the water carrier made of me his gardener. In my work as a gardener I was beloved by Ishtar, I became the king, and for forty-five years I held kingly sway. 1

Footnotes

14:1 Attention has been drawn to the great variability and wide distribution of the birth myths of the hero by the writings of Bauer, Schubert, and others referred to in the preceding pages. The comprehensive contents of the myths and their fine ramifications have been especially discussed by Hüsing, Lessmann, and other representatives of the modern trend.

14:2 Innumerable fairy tales, stories, and poems of all times, up to the most recent dramatic and novelistic literature, show very distinct individual main motifs of this myth. The exposure-romance appears in the late Greek pastorals--Heliodorus' Aethiopica, Eustathius' Ismenias and Ismene, and Longus' story of the two exposed children, Daphnis and Chloe. The more recent Italian pastorals are likewise very frequently based upon the exposure of children, who are raised as shepherds by p. 15 their foster parents, but are later recognized by the true parents, through identifying marks received at the time of their exposure. To the same set belong the family history in Grimmelshausen's Limplizissimus (1665), in Jean Paul's Titan (1800), as well as certain forms of the Robinson stories and Cavalier romances (compare Würzbach's Introduction to Hesse's edition of Don Quixote).
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« Reply #36 on: December 29, 2009, 05:11:09 am »

MOSES

The biblical birth history of Moses, which is told in the second chapter of Exodus, presents the greatest similarity to the Sargon legend, even an almost literal correspondence of individual traits. 2 Already the first chapter (22) relates that Pharaoh commanded his people to throw into

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the river all sons that were born to Hebrews, while the daughters were permitted to live; the reason for this order is given as fear of the overfertility of the Israelites. The second chapter continues as follows:

And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. 1 And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him and said, this is one of the Hebrews' children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: 2 and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

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« Reply #37 on: December 29, 2009, 05:11:20 am »

This account is ornamented by rabbinical mythology with an account of the events preceding Moses' birth. In the sixtieth year after Joseph's death, the reigning Pharaoh saw in a dream an old man who held a pair of scales; all the inhabitants of Egypt lay on one side, with only a suckling Iamb on the other, but nevertheless this outweighed all the Egyptians. The startled king at once consulted the wise men and astrologers, who declared the dream to mean that a son would be born to the Israelites who would destroy all Egypt. The king was frightened, and at once ordered the death of all newborn children of the Israelites in the entire country. On account of this tyrannical order, the Levite Amram, who lived in Goshen, decided to separate from his wife Jochebed, so as not to foredoom to certain death the children conceived through him. But this resolution was opposed later on by his daughter Miriam, who foretold with prophetic assurance that precisely the child suggested in the king's dream would come forth from her mother's womb, and would become the liberator of his people. 1

Amram therefore rejoined his wife, from whom he had been separated for three years. At the end of three months, she conceived, and later on bore a boy at whose birth the entire house was illuminated by an extraordinary luminous radiance, suggesting the truth of the prophecy. 2
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« Reply #38 on: December 29, 2009, 05:11:39 am »

Similar accounts are given of the birth of the ancestor of the Hebrew nation, Abraham. He was a son of Terah--Nimrod's captain--and Amtelai. Prior to his birth, it was revealed to King Nimrod from the stars that the coming child would overthrow the thrones of powerful princes and take possession of their lands. King Nimrod planned to have the child killed immediately after its birth. But when the boy was requested from Terah, he said, "Truly a son was born to me, but he has died." He then delivered a strange child, concealing his own son in a cave underneath the ground, where God permitted him to suck milk from a finger of the right hand. In this cave, Abraham is

p. 18

said to have remained until the third (according to others the tenth) year of his life. 1
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« Reply #39 on: December 29, 2009, 05:11:51 am »

In the next generation, in the story of Isaac, the same mythological motifs appear. Prior to his birth, King Abimelech is warned by a dream not to touch Sarah, as this would cause woe to betide him. After a long period of barrenness, she finally bears her son, who (in later life, in this report) after having been destined to be sacrificed by his own father, Abraham, is ultimately rescued by God. But Abraham casts out his elder son Ishmael, with Hagar, the boy's mother. 2
Footnotes

15:1 The various translations of the partly mutilated text differ only in unessential details. Compare Hommel: History of Babylonia and Assyria (Berlin, 1885), p. 302, where the sources of the tradition are likewise found; and A. Jeremias: The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient Orient, ad ed. (Leipzig, 1906), p. 410.

15:2 On account of these resemblances, a dependence of the Exodus tale from the Sargon legend has often been assumed, but apparently not enough attention has been paid to certain fundamental distinctions, which will be taken up in detail in the interpretation.

16:1 The parents of Moses were originally nameless, as were all persons in this, the oldest account. Their names were only conferred upon them by the priesthood. Chapter 6.20, says: "And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses"; Numbers 26.58 adds: ". . . and Miriam their sister." Also compare Winckler: History of Israel, Vol. II; and Jeremias, op. cit., p. 408.

16:2 The name, according to Winckler ("Die babylonische Geisteskultur . . ." loc. cit., p. 119), means "The Water-Drawer" (see also Winckler: Ancient Oriental Studies, Vol. III, pp. 468 ff.)--which would still further approach the Moses legend to the Sargon legend, for the name Akki signifies "I have drawn water."

17:1 Schemot Rabba 2.4 says concerning Exodus 1.22 that Pharaoh was told by the astrologers of a woman who was pregnant with the Redeemer of Israel.

17:2 After Bergel: Mythology of the Hebrews (Leipzig, 1882).
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« Reply #40 on: December 29, 2009, 05:12:15 am »

KARNA

A close relationship with the Sargon legend is also shown in certain features of the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata, in its account of the birth of the hero Karna. 3 The contents of the legend are briefly rendered by Lassen. 4

The princess Pritha, also known as Kunti, bore as a virgin the boy Karna, whose father was the sun-god Surya. The young Karna was born with the golden ear ornaments of his father and with an unbreakable coat of mail. The mother in her distress concealed and exposed the boy. In the adaptation of the myth by A. Holtzmann, verse 1458 reads: "Then my nurse and I made a large basket of rushes, placed a lid thereon, and lined it with wax; into this basket I laid the boy and carried him down to the river Acva." Floating on the waves, the basket reaches the river

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« Reply #41 on: December 29, 2009, 05:12:27 am »

 Ganges and travels as far as the city of Campa. "There was passing along the bank of the river, the charioteer, the noble friend of Dhritarashtra, and with him was Radha, his beautiful and pious spouse. She was wrapt in deep sorrow, because no son had been given to her. On the river she saw the basket, which the waves carried close to her on the shore; she showed it to Azirath, who went and drew it forth from the waves." The two take care of the boy and raise him as their own child.

Kunti later on marries King Pandu, who is forced to refrain from conjugal intercourse by the curse that he is to die in the arms of his spouse. But Kunti bears three sons, again through divine conception, one of the children being born in the cave of a wolf. One day Pandu dies in the embrace of his second wife. The sons grow up, and at a tournament which they arrange, Karna appears to measure his strength against the best fighter, Arjuna, the son of Kunti. Arjuna scoffingly refuses to fight the charioteer's son. In order to make him a worthy opponent, one of those present anoints him as king. Meanwhile Kunti has recognized Karna as her son, by the divine mark, and prays him to desist from the contest with his brother, revealing to him the secret of his birth. But he considers her revelation as a fantastic tale, and insists implacably upon satisfaction. He falls in the combat, struck by Arjuna's arrow. 1
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« Reply #42 on: December 29, 2009, 05:12:40 am »

A striking resemblance to the entire structure of the Karna legend is presented by the birth history of Ion, the ancestor of the Ionians. The following account is based on a relatively late tradition. 2

Apollo, in the grotto of the rock of the Athenian Acropolis, procreated a son with Creusa, the daughter of Erechtheus. In this grotto the boy was also born, and exposed; the mother leaves the child behind in a woven basket, in the hope that Apollo will not leave his son to

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perish. At Apollo's request, Hermes carries the child the same night to Delphi, where the priestess finds him on the threshold of the temple in the morning. She brings the boy up, and when he has grown into a youth makes him a servant of the temple. Erechtheus later gave his daughter Creusa in marriage to Xuthus. As the marriage long remained childless, they addressed the Delphian oracle, praying to be blessed with progeny. The god reveals to Xuthus that the first to meet him on leaving the sanctuary is his son. He hastens outside and meets the youth, whom he joyfully greets as his own son, giving him the name Ion, which means "walker." Creusa refuses to accept the youth as her son; her attempt to poison him fails, and the infuriated people turn against her. Ion is about to attack her, but Apollo, who does not wish the son to kill his own mother, enlightens the mind of the priestess so that she understands the connection. By means of the basket in which the newborn child had lain, Creusa recognizes him as her son, and reveals to him the secret of his birth.
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« Reply #43 on: December 29, 2009, 05:12:53 am »

Footnotes

18:1 Compare Beer: The Life of Abraham (Leipzig, 1859), according to the interpretation of Jewish traditions; also August Wünsche: From Israel's Temples of Learning (Leipzig, 1907).

18:2 See chapters 20 and 21 of Genesis, and also Bergel, op. cit.

18:3 The Hindu birth legend of the mythical king Vikramaditya must also be mentioned in this connection. Here again occur the barren marriage of the parents, the miraculous conception, ill-omened warnings, the exposure of the boy in the forest, his nourishment with honey, finally the acknowledgment by the father. See Jülg: Mongolische Märche (Innsbruck, 1868), PP. 73 ff.

18:4 Indische Alterumskunde (Karlsruhe, 1846).

19:1 Compare the detailed account in Lefmann: History of Ancient India (Berlin, 1890), pp. 181 ff.

19:2 See Röscher, concerning the Ion of Euripides. Where no other source is stated, all Greek and Roman myths are taken from the Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen and römischen Mythologie, edited by W. H. Röscher, which also contains a list of all sources.
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« Reply #44 on: December 29, 2009, 05:13:17 am »

OEDIPUS

The parents of Oedipus, King Laius and his queen, Jocasta, lived for a long time in childless wedlock. Laius, who longs for an heir, asks the Delphic Apollo for advice. The oracle answers that he may have a son if he so desires; but fate has ordained that his own son will kill him. Fearing the fulfillment of the oracle, Laius refrains from conjugal relations, but being intoxicated one day he nevertheless procreates a son, whom he causes to be exposed in the river Cithaeron, barely three days after his birth. In order to be quite sure that the child will perish, Laius orders his ankles to be pierced. According to the account of Sophocles, which is not the oldest, however, the shepherd who has been intrusted with the exposure, surrenders the boy to a shepherd of King Polybus, of Corinth, at whose court he is brought up, according to the universal statement. Others say that the boy was exposed in a box on the sea, and was

p. 21

taken from the water by Periböa, the wife of King Polybus, as she was rinsing her clothes by the shore. 1 Polybus brought him up as his own son.
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