of events happening a second time and producing
the same result elsewhere. Thus when we find in India the Naga rajas
identified with the cobra, and credited with the ability to control the
waters, we can confidently assume that in some way the influence of
these early Egyptian events made itself felt in India. As we compare the
details of the Naga worship in India[450] with early Egyptian beliefs,
all doubt as to their common origin disappears.

The Naga rulers were closely associated with springs, streams, and
lakes. "To this day the rulers of the Hindu Kush states, Hunza and
Nagar, though now Mohammedans, are believed, by their subjects, to be
able to command the elements."

Oldham adds: "This power is still ascribed to the serpent-gods of the
sun-worshipping countries of China, Manchuria, and Korea, and was so,
until the introduction of Christianity, in Mexico and Peru". This is put
forward in support of his argument that the Naga kings' "supposed
ability to control the elements, and especially the waters," arose "from
their connexion with the sun". But this is not so.[451] The belief in
the Egyptian king's power over water was certainly older than
sun-worship, which did not begin until Osirian beliefs and the
personification of the moon as the Great Mother brought the sky-deities
and the control of water into correlation the one with the other. The
association of the sun and the serpent in the royal insignia was a later
development.

The early Egyptian goddess was identified with the uraeus-serpent in that
vitally important nodal point of primitive civilization, Buto, in Lower
Egypt. The earliest deity in Crete and the Eastern Mediterranean seems
to have been a goddess who was also closely associated with the serpent.
According to Langdon "the ophidian nature of the earliest Sumerian
mother-goddess _Innini_ is unmistakable.... She carries the caduceus in
her hand, two serpents twining about a staff."[452]

The earliest Indian deities also were goddesses, and the first rulers of
whom any record has been preserved were regarded as divine cobras, to
whom was attributed the power of controlling water. These Nagas, whether
kings or queens, gods or goddesses, were the prototypes of the Eastern
Asiatic dragon, whose origin is discussed in Chapter II.

In Japan the earliest sun-deity was a goddess who was identified with a
snake. Elsewhere in this volume (Chapter II) I have referred to the
completeness of the transfer