and Philosophical Society_.]

[170: Wilfrid Jackson, "Shells as Evidence of the Migrations of Early
Culture," p. 106.]

[171: I shall discuss this more fully in "The Birth of Aphrodite".]

[172: "Religions of India," p. 197.]

[173: "Mythe der Kei-Insulaner und Verwandtes," _Zeitsch. f.
Ethnologie_, vol. xxv., 1893, pp. 533 _et seq._]

[174: See Fig. 14.]

The Evolution of the Dragon.

The American and Indonesian dragons can be referred back primarily to
India, the Chinese and Japanese varieties to India and Babylonia. The
dragons of Europe can be traced through Greek channels to the same
ultimate source. But the cruder dragons of Africa are derived either
from Egypt, from the AEgean, or from India. All dragons that strictly
conform to the conventional idea of what such a wonder-beast should be
can be shown to be sprung from the fertile imagination of ancient Sumer,
the "great breeding place of monsters" (Minns).

But the history of the dragon's evolution and transmission to other
countries is full of complexities; and the dragon-myth is made up of
many episodes, some of which were not derived from Babylonia.

In Egypt we do not find the characteristic dragon and dragon-story. Yet
all of the ingredients out of which both the monster and the legends are
compounded have been preserved in Egypt, and in perhaps a more primitive
and less altered form than elsewhere. Hence, if Egypt does not provide
dragons for us to dissect, it does supply us with the evidence without
which the dragon's evolution would be quite unintelligible.

Egyptian literature affords a clearer insight into the development of
the Great Mother, the Water God, and the Warrior Sun God than we can
obtain from any other writings of the origin of this fundamental stratum
of deities. And in the three legends: The Destruction of Mankind, The
Story of the Winged Disk, and The Conflict between Horus and Set, it has
preserved the germs of the great Dragon Saga. Babylonian literature has
shown us how this raw material was worked up into the definite and
familiar story, as well as how the features of a variety of animals were
blended to form the composite monster. India and Greece, as well as more
distant parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia, and even America have
preserved many details that have been lost in the real home of the
monster.

In the earliest literature that has come down to us from antiquity a
clear account is given of the original attribute