elf, are taken from an Egyptian solar cycle, and the inference
has been drawn that the aniconic pillars among the Mycenaeans of Cyprus
were identified with divinities having some points in common with the
sun-gods Ra, or Horus, and Hathor, the Great Mother" (_op. cit._, pp. 63
and 64).

In attempting to find some explanation of how the tree or pillar of the
goddess came to be replaced in the Indian legend by Mount Meru, the
possibility suggests itself whether the aniconic form of the Great
Mother placed between two relatively diminutive hills may not have
helped, by confusion, to convert the cone itself into a yet bigger hill,
which was identified with Mount Meru, the summit of which in other
legends produced the _amrita_ of the gods, either in the form of the
soma plant that grew upon its heights, or the rain clouds which
collected there. But, as the subsequent argument will make clear, the
real reason for the identification of the Great Mother with a mountain
was the belief that the sun was born from the splitting of the eastern
mountain, which thus assumed the function of the sun-god's mother.
Possibly the association of the tops of mountains with cloud- and
rain-phenomena and the gods that controlled them played some part in
the development of the symbolism of mountains. [When I referred (in
Chapter II, p. 98) to the fact that what Sir Arthur Evans calls "the
horns of consecration" was primarily the split mountain of the dawn, I
was not aware that Professor Newberry ("Two Cults of the Old Kingdom,"
_Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology_, Liverpool, Vol. I, 1908, p. 28)
had already suggested this identification.]

In the Egyptian story the god Re instructed the Sekti of Heliopolis to
pound the materials for the food of immortality. In the Indian version,
the gods, aware of their mortality, desired to discover some elixir
which would make them immortal. To this end, Mount Meru [the Great
Mother] was cast into the sea [of milk]. Vishnu, in his second avatar as
a tortoise[351] supported the mountain on his back; and the Naga serpent
Vasuki was then twisted around the mountain, the gods seizing its head
and the demons his tail twirled the mountain until they had churned the
amrita or water of life. Wilfrid Jackson has called attention to the
fact that this scene has been depicted, not only in India and Japan, but
also in the Precolumbian _Codex Cortes_ drawn by some Maya artist in
Central America.[352]

The horizon