ve drug had become
blended with and incorporated in the highly complex and composite
Egyptian legend the narrative would be more intelligible. The mandrake
is such a sedative as might have been employed to calm the murderous
frenzy of a maniacal woman. In fact it is closely allied to hyoscyamus,
whose active principle, hyoscin, is used in modern medicine precisely
for such purposes. I venture to suggest that a folk-tale describing the
effect of opium or some other "drowsy syrup" has been absorbed into the
legend of the Destruction of Mankind, and has provided the starting
point of all those incidents in the dragon-story in which poison or
some sleep-producing drug plays a part. For when Hathor defies Re and
continues the destruction, she is playing the part of her Babylonian
representative Tiamat, and is a dragon who has to be vanquished by the
drink which the god provides.

The red earth which was pounded in the mortar to make the elixir of life
and the fertilizer of the soil also came to be regarded as the material
out of which the new race of men was made to replace those who were
destroyed.

The god fashioned mankind of this earth and, instead of the red ochre
being merely the material to give the blood-colour to the draught of
immortality, the story became confused: actual blood was presented to
the clay images to give them life and consciousness.

In a later elaboration the remains of the former race of mankind were
ground up to provide the material out of which their successors were
created. This version is a favourite story in Northern Europe, and has
obviously been influenced by an intermediate variant which finds
expression in the Indian legend of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.
Instead of the material for the elixir of the gods being pounded by the
Sekti of Heliopolis and incidentally becoming a sedative for Hathor, it
is the milk of the Divine Cow herself which is churned to provide the
_amrita_.

[178: G. Maspero, "The Dawn of Civilization," p. 164.]

[179: H. Brugsch, "Die Alraune als altaegyptische Zauberpflanze," _Zeit.
f. AEgypt. Sprache_, Bd. 29, 1891, pp. 31-3; and Henri Gauthier, "Le nom
hieroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Elephantine," _Revue Egyptologique_,
t. xi^e, Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]

[180: These legends will be found in the works by Maspero, Erman and
Budge, to which I have already referred. A very useful digest will be
found in Donald A. Mackenzie's "Egyptian Myth and Legend".