indifferently said to have been produced from an egg at
a time when the whole world was in disorder, and from the womb of the
marine goddess Venus, the egg and the womb of that goddess must denote
the same thing. Accordingly we shall find that, on the one hand, Venus
is immediately connected with the symbolical egg; and, on the other
hand, that she is identical with Derceto and Isis, and is declared to
be that general receptacle out of which all the hero-gods were produced.
Now there can be little doubt in what sense we are to understand this
expression, when we are told that the peculiar symbol of Isis was a
ship; and when we learn that the form assumed at the period of the
deluge, by the Indian Isi or Bhavani, who is clearly the same as the
Egyptian Isis, was the ship Argha, in which her consort Siva floated
securely on the surface of the ocean. Venus, therefore, or the Great
Mother, the parent of Cupid from whom all mankind descended, must be the
Ark: consequently, the egg, with which she is connected, must be the Ark
also. Aristophanes informs us that the egg out of which Love was born,
was produced by Night in the bosom of Erebus. But the Goddess Night, as
we learn from the Orphic poet, was the very same person as Venus; and he
celebrates her as the parent of the Universe, and as the general mother
both of the hero-gods and of man. The egg therefore produced by Night
was produced by Venus: but Venus and the egg meant the same thing: even
that vast floating machine, which was esteemed an epitome of the world,
and from which was born that Deity who is also literally said to
have been set afloat in an ark. Sometimes the order of production was
inverted; and, instead of the egg being produced by Night or Venus,
Venus herself was fabled to have been produced from the egg. There is a
remarkable legend of this sort which ascribes Venus and her egg to the
age of Typhon and Osiris, in other words, to the age in which Noah was
compelled by the deluge to enter into the ark."(46)

46) Origin of Pagan Idolatry, book i., ch. iv.

The Preserver of the Persians, who is seated on a rainbow in front of
their rock temples, is Mithras, who is identical with Noah. Sometimes
this ancient mariner is represented as riding on the back of a fish, and
again as floating in a boat. The God of Hindostan, like the classical
Dionysos, was enclosed in an ark and driven into the sea. According to
the Gothic traditions as recorded in the Ed