refused to comply with this custom. When he realized that his virility
was failing he consulted the Great Mother, as the source and giver of
life, to obtain an elixir which would rejuvenate him and obviate the
necessity of being killed. The only medicine in the pharmacopoeia of
those times that was believed to be useful in minimizing danger to life
was human blood. Wounds that gave rise to severe haemorrhage were known
to produce unconsciousness and death. If the escape of the blood of
life could produce these results it was not altogether illogical to
assume that the exhibition of human blood could also add to the vitality
of living men and so "turn back the years from their old age," as the
Pyramid Texts express it.

Thus the Great Mother, the giver of life to all mankind, was faced with
the dilemma that, to provide the king with the elixir to restore his
youth, she had to slay mankind, to take the life she herself had given
to her own children. Thus she acquired an evil reputation which was to
stick to her throughout her career. She was not only the beneficent
creator of all things and the bestower of all blessings: but she was
also a demon of destruction who did not hesitate to slaughter even her
own children.

In course of time the practice of human sacrifice was abandoned and
substitutes were adopted in place of the blood of mankind. Either the
blood of cattle,[194] who by means of appropriate ceremonies could be
transformed into human beings (for the Great Mother herself was the
Divine Cow and her offspring cattle), was employed in its stead; or red
ochre was used to colour a liquid which was used ritually to replace the
blood of sacrifice. When this phase of culture was reached the goddess
provided for the king an elixir of life consisting of beer stained red
by means of red ochre, so as to simulate human blood.

But such a mixture was doubly potent, for the barley from which the beer
was made and the drink itself was supposed to be imbued with the
life-giving powers of Osiris, and the blood-colour reinforced its
therapeutic usefulness. The legend now begins to become involved and
confused. For the goddess is making the rejuvenator for the king, who in
the meantime has died and become deified as Osiris; and the beer, which
is the vehicle of the life-giving powers of Osiris, is now being used to
rejuvenate his son and successor, the living king Horus, who in the
version that has come down to us is replaced by t