Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
Preller illustrates the mutilation of Uranus by the Maori tale of
Tutenganahau. The child-swallowing he connects with Punic and Phoenician
influence, and Semitic sacrifices of men and children. Porphyry {61b}
speaks of human sacrifices to Cronus in Rhodes, and the Greeks recognised
Cronus in the Carthaginian god to whom children were offered up.
Hartung {61c} takes Cronus, when he mutilates Uranus, to be the fire of
the sun, scorching the sky of spring. This, again, is somewhat out of
accord with Schwartz's idea, that Cronus is the storm-god, the
cloud-swallowing deity, his sickle the rainbow, and the blood of Uranus
the lightning. {61d} According to Prof. Sayce, again, {62a} the blood-
drops of Uranus are rain-drops. Cronus is the sun-god, piercing the dark
cloud, which is just the reverse of Schwartz's idea. Prof. Sayce sees
points in common between the legend of Moloch, or of Baal under the name
of Moloch, and the myth of Cronus. But Moloch, he thinks, is not a god
of Phoenician origin, but a deity borrowed from 'the primitive Accadian
population of Babylonia.' Mr. Isaac Taylor, again, explains Cronus as
the sky which swallows and reproduces the stars. The story of the sickle
may be derived from the crescent moon, the 'silver sickle,' or from a
crescent-shaped piece of meteoric iron--for, in this theory, the fetich-
stone of Delphi is a piece of that substance.
* * * * *
It will be observed that any one of these theories, if accepted, is much
more 'minute in detail' than our humble suggestion. He who adopts any
one of them, knows all about it. He knows that Cronus is a purely Greek
god, or that he is connected with the Sanskrit Krana, which Tiele, {62b}
unhappily, says is 'a very dubious word.' Or the mythologist may be
quite confident that Cronus is neither Greek nor, in any sense, Sanskrit,
but Phoenician. A not less adequate interpretation assigns him
ultimately to Accadia. While the inquirer who can choose a system and
stick to it knows the exact nationality of Cronus, he is also well
acquainted with his character as a nature-god. He may be Time, or
perhaps he is the Summer Heat, and a horned god; or he is the harvest-
god, or the god of storm and darkness, or the midnight sky,--the choice
is wide; or he is the lord of dark and light, and his children are the
stars, the clouds, the summer months, the light-powers, or what you will.
The mythologist has only to make his selection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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