ch Re despatched Horus
as a winged disk to slay his enemies. In the Hellenic version the
sky-god is angry with the father of the centaurs for his ill-treatment
of his father-in-law and his behaviour towards Hera and her
cloud-manifestation: but though distorted all the incidents reveal their
original inspiration in the Egyptian story and its early Aryan variants.

It is remarkable that Mr. A. B. Cook, who compared the wheel of Ixion
with the Egyptian winged disk (pp. 205-10), did not look deeper for a
common origin of the two myths, especially when he got so far as to
identify Ixion with the sun-god (p. 211).

Blinkenberg sums up the development of the thunder-weapon thus: "From
the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or three
zigzag lines representing flames, a tripartite thunder-weapon was
evolved and earned east and west from the ancient seat of civilization.
Together with the axe (in Western Asia Minor the double-edged, and
towards the centre of Asia the single-edged, axe) it became a regular
attribute of the Asiatic thunder-gods.... The Indian trisula and the
Greek triaina are both its descendants" (p. 57).

Discussing the relationship of the sun-god to thunder, Dr. Rendel Harris
refers to the fact that Apollo's "arrows are said to be lightnings," and
he quotes Pausanias, Apollodorus and Mr. A. B. Cook in substantiation of
his statements.[222] Both sons of Zeus, Dionysus and Apollo, are
"concerned with the production of fire".

According to Hyginus, Typhon was the son of Tartarus and the Earth: he
made war against Jupiter for dominion, and, being struck by lightning,
was thrown flaming to the earth, where Mount AEtna was placed upon
him.[223]

In this curious variant of the story of the winged disk, the conflict of
Horus with Set is merged with the Destruction, for the son of Tartarus
[Osiris] and the Earth [Isis] here is not Horus but his hostile brother
Set. Instead of fighting for Jupiter (Re) as Horus did, he is against
him. The lightning (which is Horus in the form of the winged disk)
strikes Typhon and throws him flaming to earth. The episode of Mount
AEtna is the antithesis of the incident in the Indian legend of the
churning of the ocean: Mount Meru is placed in the sea upon the tortoise
_avatar_ of Vishnu and is used to churn the food of immortality for the
gods. In the Egyptian story the red ochre brought from Elephantine is
pounded with the barley.

The story told by Hyginus l