_Navigation_ is the explanation of this daily phenomenon which prevails in the myth. It became so general that later among the Egyptians it was divested of its original associations and brought into connexion with the sun of day. In the Egyptian view the Sun’s bark sails over the ocean of heaven:[279] Ἥλιον δὲ καὶ σελήνεν οὐχ ἅρμασιν ἁλλὰ πλοίοις ὀχήμασι χρωμένους περιπλεῖν ἀεί, says Plutarch of the Egyptian view,[280] and adduces Homeric parallels.[281] The Jewish Midrâsh compares the course of the sun to that of a ship—and curiously enough to a ship coming from Britain,[282] which has 365 ropes (the number of the days of the solar year), and to a ship coming from Alexandria, which has 354 ropes (the number of the days of the lunar year).[283] The solar figures, then, are everywhere brought into connexion with the invention and employment of navigation. The sinking Apollo is with the Greeks the founder of navigation. Herakles receives from Helios the present of a golden bowl, which he used to employ as a bark when he sailed across the Okeanos. The voyage of the shining (φαί-νω) Phaeacians and Argonauts originally signified only the same sea-passage, which the sun makes every evening. Of Charon himself, the subterranean ferryman (whose name, Schwartz thinks, indicates his solar significance, χαραπός) it has also been proved that his subterranean navigation is only an eschatological development of the solar myth.[284] Indeed, eschatology and conceptions of the things after death and resurrection have their essential origin in the Sun’s voyage under the sea and reappearance on the other side.[285] The Roman Sun-god Janus is also brought into connexion with navigation; this idea is unmistakably expressed on coins which bear the image of the two-headed god,[286] and is especially important here because Janus himself, as the etymology of his name declares, likewise belongs to the series of ‘Openers.’ ‘This name was given him,’ says Hartung, ‘because the door represents in space exactly what formed the basis of his essence with regard to the relations of time and force. For every beginning resembles an entrance.’[287] The most prominent figure of the lately discovered Babylonian epos, Izdubar, and Ûr-Bêl (the Light of Bêl, _i.e._ the Sun), both of them purely solar figures, are provided with ships.[288] We cannot justly doubt, it is true, the historical character of the Biblical prophet Jonah. But, from what was discussed in the Second Chapter, this does not exclude the possibility that various mythical features may have been fastened on this undoubtedly historical personage, as is the case with many other persons of Hebrew history, for example, most strikingly with David. The most prominent mythical characteristic of the story of Jonah is his celebrated abode in the sea in the belly of the whale. This trait is eminently solar and belongs to the group on which we are now engaged. As on occasion of the storm the