Speaking of Hea, Lenormant says that it was he “that animated matter and rendered it fertile, that penetrated the universe and directed and inspired it with life.”[217] As water was believed to be the vehicle of all life and the source of generation, he sprung from the ocean and was regarded as amphibious. Oannes[218] was the name by which he was known by the Greeks. Like Dagon, of the Philistines, whose prototype he was, it was usual to give him the combined form of a fish and a man. One of the symbols of him, according to Rawlinson,[219] was a serpent, an illustration of which is reproduced here. He was the god of life, and, significantly enough, the literal meaning of his name is serpent as well as life. Here, then, we have the serpent signifying life. This is a very noteworthy fact. In an interesting paper read in 1872 before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, by Mr. C. S. Wake, it is very properly said: “It is probable that the association with the serpent of the idea of healing arose from the still earlier recognition of that animal as a symbol of life.”[220] It is not amiss to remark, in this connection, that it is curious fact that the American Indians associated a serpent with the great sun-god, or, rather, the god of light, Manabozho,[221] a healing divinity, the one that instituted the sacred Medicine-Feast. It is observed by Miss Emerson that “Apollo, as a god of medicine, was originally worshipped under the form of a serpent,[222] and men worshipped him as a helper; and we trace a similar idea among the Indians relative to Manabozho. And a further association of ideas suggests the mystic god, Unk-ta-he, the god of waters, pictured as a serpent, who was believed to have power over diseases.”[223] To this I may add that Hea sprang from the Persian Gulf, and was regarded as the god of waters as well as of life. [Illustration: FIG. 8.—MANABOZHO.] A great deal has been written on serpent-worship, “the first variation,” says Bryant, “from the purer Sabaism;”[224] and the number of suggested explanations of the curious cultus is almost legion. I hesitate about touching on the subject; but some statements on it are called for, to render the treatment of the matter on hand reasonably complete. In a recent able work, Mr. C. F. Keary, of the British Museum, presents some interesting facts and inferences on the origin of the worship. He maintains that the tree, mountain, and river were the three great primitive fetich-gods, and forcibly argues that a serpent was the symbol of the last, which, it may be noted, is nearly always a life-giving power, an early and substantial type of the _fontaine de jouvence_. Without pretending to account for their original worship, he “takes it for certain that, at a very early time, rivers became through symbolism confounded with serpents.”[225]