The Two BabylonsAlexander Hislop Chapter IISection IISub-Section

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The Two BabylonsAlexander Hislop
Chapter IISection IISub-Section IIIThe Child in Greece
Thus much for Egypt. Coming into Greece, not only do we find evidence there to the same effect, but increase of that evidence. The god worshipped as a child in the arms of the great Mother in Greece, under the names of Dionysus, or Bacchus, or Iacchus, is, by ancient inquirers, expressly identified with the Egyptian Osiris. This is the case with Herodotus, who had prosecuted his inquiries in Egypt itself, who ever speaks of Osiris as Bacchus. To the same purpose is the testimony of Diodorus Siculus. ”Orpheus,” says he, ”introduced from Egypt the greatest part of the mystical ceremonies, the orgies that celebrate the wanderings of Ceres, and the whole fable of the shades below. The rites of Osiris and Bacchus are the same; those of Isis and Ceres exactly resemble each other, except in name.” Now, as if to identify Bacchus with Nimrod, ”the Leopard-tamer,” leopards were employed to draw his car; he himself was represented as clothed with a leopard’s skin; his priests were attired in the same manner, or when a leopard’s skin was dispensed with, the spotted skin of a fawn was used as a priestly robe in its stead. This very custom of wearing the spotted fawn-skin seems to have been imported into Greece originally from Assyria, where a spotted fawn was a sacred emblem, as we learn from the Nineveh sculptures; for there we find a divinity bearing a spotted fawn or spotted fallow-deer, in his arm, as a symbol of some mysterious import. The origin of the importance attached to the spotted fawn and its skin had evidently come thus: When Nimrod, as ”the Leopard-tamer,” began to be clothed in the leopard-skin, as the trophy of his skill, his spotted dress and appearance must have impressed the imaginations of those who saw him; and he came to be called not only the ”Subduer of the Spotted one” (for such is the precise meaning of Nimr–the name of the leopard), but t ... Läs mer...

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