t animals.

The same people who introduced into the Malay Archipelago these
characteristic fragments of the dragon-myth also believed that certain
animals were impersonations of their gods: they also brought stories of
incestuous unions on the part of their deities and rulers. To laugh at
their sacred animals, or to imitate privileged customs permitted to
their deities, but not to ordinary mortals, merited the same sort of
punishments as were meted out to those other rebels against the ruling
class and the gods in the home of these beliefs.[446]

To laugh at the divine animals, or to commit incest, which was a divine
prerogative, was analogous to "the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,"
which in the New Testament is proclaimed an unpardonable offence, and in
pagan legend was punished by the divine wrath, thunder, lightning, rain,
floods, or petrifaction being the avenging instruments. Oedipus put out
his own eyes to forestall the traditional wrath of the gods.

[441: Blinkenberg, _op. cit._, p. 70 _et seq._]

[442: Quoted by Layard, "Nineveh and its Remains," Vol. II, p. 457.]

[443: Cook, "Zeus," I, p. 760.]

[444: Striking examples of these stories about birth from split stones
have been given by Perry, "Megalithic Culture of Indonesia," Chapter X,
and de Groot's "Religious System of China". It is possible that the
double meaning of the Egyptian word _set_, as "stone" and "mountain"
played a part in originating these stories. I have already quoted from
the Pyramid Texts the account of the daily birth of the sun-god by a
splitting of the "mountain" of the dawn. By a pun on this word the god's
origin might have been interpreted as having taken place from a split
"stone". The fact that the Great Mother was identified with a "mountain"
(_set_) may also have facilitated the homology with the other meaning of
_set_, _i.e._ "a stone".]

[445: "Incense and Libations".]

[446: As the character and attributes of the early goddesses became more
complex, and contradictory traits were more sharply contrasted, the
inevitable tendency developed to differentiate the goddesses themselves,
and provide distinctive names for the new personalities thus split off
from the common parent. We see this in Egypt in the case of Hathor and
Sekhet, and in Babylonia in Ishtar and Tiamat. But the process of
specialization and differentiation might even involve a change of sex.
There can be no doubt that the _god_ Horus was originally a
dif