nly guarantors of his hopes for immortal life.[1]

[Footnote 1: Such epithets were common, in the Egyptian religion, to most
of the gods of fertility. Amun, called in some of the inscriptions "the
soul of Osiris," derives his name from the root _men_, to impregnate, to
beget. In the Karnak inscriptions he is also termed "the husband of his
mother." This, too, was the favorite appellation of Chem, who was a form
of Horos. See Dr. C.P. Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, pp. 124,
146. 149, 150, etc.]

Let us look at the names in the myth before us, for confirmation of this.
_Ioskeha_ is in the Oneida dialect of the Iroquois an impersonal verbal
form of the third person singular, and means literally, "it is about to
grow white," that is, to become light, to dawn. _Ataensic_ is from the
root _aouen_, water, and means literally, "she who is in the water."[1]
Plainly expressed, the sense of the story is that the orb of light rises
daily out of the boundless waters which are supposed to surround the land,
preceded by the dawn, which fades away as soon as the sun has risen. Each
day the sun disappears in these waters, to rise again from them the
succeeding morning. As the approach of the sun causes the dawn, it was
merely a gross way of stating this to say that the solar god was the
father of his own mother, the husband of his grandmother.

[Footnote 1: I have analyzed these words in a note to another work, and
need not repeat the matter here, the less so, as I am not aware that the
etymology has been questioned. See _Myths of the New World_, 2d Ed., p.
183, note.]

The position of Ioskeha in mythology is also shown by the other name under
which he was, perhaps, even more familiar to most of the Iroquois. This is
_Tharonhiawakon_, which is also a verbal form of the third person, with
the dual sign, and literally means, "He holds (or holds up) the sky with
his two arms."[1] In other words, he is nearly allied to the ancient Aryan
Dyaus, the Sky, the Heavens, especially the Sky in the daytime.

[Footnote 1: A careful analysis of this name is given by Father J.A. Cuoq,
probably the best living authority on the Iroquois, in his _Lexique de la
Langue Iroquoise_, p. 180 (Montreal, 1882). Here also the Iroquois
followed precisely the line of thought of the ancient Egyptians. Shu, in
the religion of Heliopolis, represented the cosmic light and warmth, the
quickening, creative principle. It is he who, as it is stated in the
i