Swinburne has utilized the legend in his _Erechtheus_. The scene of the opening of the chest is represented on a Greek vase in the British Museum. The name Erichthonius is connected with [Greek: chthon] ("earth") and the representation of him as half-snake, like Cecrops, indicates that he was regarded as one of the autochthones, the ancestors of the Athenians who sprung from the soil. See Apollodorus iii. 14. 15; Euripides, _Ion_; Ovid, _Metam._ ii. 553; Hyginus, _Poet. astron._ ii. 13; Pausanias i. 2. 5. 8; E. Ermatinger, _Die attische Autochthonensage_ (1897); article by J.A. Hild in Daremberg and Saglio's _Dictionnaire des antiquites_; B. Powell in _Cornell Studies_, xvii. (1906), who identifies Erechtheus, Erichthonius, Poseidon and Cecrops, all denoting the sacred serpent of Athena, whose cult she first contested, but then amalgamated with her own. The birth of Erichthonius (as a corn-spirit) is interpreted by Mannhardt as a mythical way of describing the growth of the corn, and by J.E. Harrison (_Myths and Monuments of Ancient Athens_, xxvii.-xxxvi.) as a fiction to explain the ceremony performed by the two maidens called Arrephori. See also Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, i. 270; and Frazer's _Pausanias_, ii. 169. ERESHKIGAL, also known as ALLATU, the name of the chief Babylonian goddess of the nether-world where the dead are gathered. Her name signifies "lady of the nether-world." She is known to us chiefly through two myths, both symbolizing the change of seasons, but intended also to illustrate certain doctrines developed in the temple-schools of Babylonia. One of these myths is the famous story of Ishtar's descent to Irkalla or Aralu, as the lower world was called, and her reception by her sister who presides over it; the other is the story of Nergal's offence against Ereshkigal, his banishment to the kingdom controlled by the goddess and the reconciliation between Nergal and Ereshkigal through the latter's offer to have Nergal share the honours of the rule over Irkalla. The story of Ishtar's descent is told to illustrate the possibility of an escape from Irkalla, while the other myth is intended to reconcile the existence of two rulers of Irkalla--a goddess and a god.