ndant
that the fields were flooded by the life-giving elixir. By the sacrifice
of men the soil was renewed and refertilized. When the blood-coloured
beer was substituted for the actual blood the conception was brought
into still closer harmony with Egyptian ideas, because the beer was
animated with the life-giving powers of Osiris. But Osiris was the Nile.
The blood-coloured fertilizing fluid was then identified with the annual
inundation of the red-coloured waters of the Nile. Now the Nile waters
were supposed to come from the First Cataract at Elephantine. Hence by a
familiar psychological process the previous phase of the legend was
recast, and by confusion the red ochre (which was used to colour the
beer red) was said to have come from Elephantine.[199]

Thus we have arrived at the stage where, by a distortion of a series of
phases, the new incident emerges that by means of a human sacrifice the
Nile flood can be produced. By a further confusion the goddess, who
originally did the slaughter, becomes the victim. Hence the story
assumed the form that by means of the sacrifice of a beautiful and
attractive maiden the annual inundation can be produced. As the most
potent symbol of life-giving it is essential that the victim should be
sexually attractive, i.e. that she should be a virgin and the most
beautiful and desirable in the land. When the practice of human
sacrifice was abandoned a figure or an animal was substituted for the
maiden in ritual practice, and in legends the hero rescued the maiden,
as Andromeda was saved from the dragon.[200] The dragon is the
personification of the monsters that dwell in the waters as well as the
destructive forces of the flood itself. But the monsters were no other
than the followers of Set; they were the victims of the slaughter who
became identified with the god's other traditional enemies, the
followers of Set. Thus the monster from whom Andromeda is rescued is
merely another representative of herself!

But the destructive forces of the flood now enter into the programme.
In the phases we have so far discussed it was the slaughter of
mankind which caused the inundation: but in the next phase it is
the flood itself which causes the destruction, as in the later Egyptian
and the borrowed Sumerian, Babylonian, Hebrew--and in fact the
world-wide--versions. Re's boat becomes the ark; the winged disk which
was despatched by Re from the boat becomes the dove and the other birds
sent ou