whole argument of
this book establishes the fact that it did spread abroad--the substance
_didi_ was actually confused in the Levant with the mandrake. We have
already seen that in the Delta a prototype of Artemis was already
identified with certain plants.

In all probability _didi_ was originally brought into the Egyptian
legend merely as a surrogate of the life-blood, and the mixture of which
it was an ingredient was simply a restorer of youth to the king. But the
determinative (in the tomb of Seti I)--a little yellow disc with a red
border, which misled Naville into believing the substance to be yellow
berries--may also have created confusion in the minds of ancient
Levantine visitors to Egypt, and led them to believe that reference was
being made to their own yellow-berried drug, the mandrake. Such an
incident might have had a two-fold effect. It would explain the
introduction into the Egyptian story of the sedative effects of _didi_,
which would easily be rationalized as a means of soothing the maniacal
goddess; and in the Levant it would have added to the real properties of
mandrake[371] the magical virtues which originally belonged to _didi_
(and blood, the cowry, and water).

In my lecture on "Dragons and Rain Gods" (Chapter II) I explained that
the Egyptian story of the Destruction of Mankind is merely one version
of a saga of almost world-wide currency. In many of the non-Egyptian
versions[372] the role of _didi_ in the Egyptian story is taken by some
_vegetable_ product of a _red_ colour; and many of these versions reveal
a definite confusion between the red fruit and the red clay, thus
proving that the confusion of _didi_ with the mandrake is no mere
hypothetical device to evade a difficulty on my part, but did actually
occur.

In the course of the development of the Egyptian story the red clay from
Elephantine became the colouring matter of the Nile flood, and this in
turn was rationalized as the blood or red clay into which the bodies of
the slaughtered enemies of Re were transformed,[373] and the material
out of which the new race of mankind was created.[374] In other words,
the new race was formed of _didi_. There is a widespread legend that the
mandrake also is formed from the substance of dead bodies[375] often
represented as innocent or chaste men wrongly killed, just as the red
clay was the substance of mankind killed to appease Re's wrath, "the
blood of the slaughtered saints".[376]

But the