The journey of Moses with his servant is a life-journey (eighty years). They grow old and lose their life force (libido), that is, they lose the fish which “pursues its course in a marvellous manner to the sea,” which means the setting of the sun. When the two notice their loss, they discover at the place where the “source of life” is found (where the dead fish revived and sprang into the sea) Chidher wrapped in his mantle,[391] sitting on the ground. According to another version, he sat on an island in the sea, or “in the wettest place on earth,” that is, he was just _born from the maternal depths_. Where the fish vanished Chidher, “the verdant one,” was born as a “son of the deep waters,” his head veiled, a Cabir, a proclaimer of divine wisdom; the old Babylonian Oannes-Ea, who was represented in the form of a fish, and daily came from the sea as a fish to teach the people wisdom.[392] His name was brought into connection with John’s. With the rising of the renewed sun all that lived in darkness, as water-animal or fish, surrounded by all terrors of night and death,[393] became as the shining fiery firmament of the day. Thus the words of John the Baptist[394] gain especial meaning: “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” With Vollers we may also compare Chidher and Elias (Moses and his servant Joshua) with Gilgamesh and his brother Eabani. Gilgamesh wandered through the world, driven by anxiety and longing, to find immortality. His path led him across the seas to the wise Utnapishtim (Noah), who knew how to cross the waters of death. There Gilgamesh had to dive down to the bottom of the sea for the magical herb which was to lead him back to the land of men. When he had come again to his native land a serpent stole the magic plant from him (the fish again slid into the sea). But on the return from the land of the blessed an immortal mariner accompanied him, who, banished by a curse of Utnapishtim, was forbidden to return to the land of the blessed. Gilgamesh’s journey had lost its purpose on account of the loss of the magic herb; instead he is accompanied by an immortal, whose fate, indeed, we cannot learn from the fragments of the epic. This banished immortal is the model for Ahasver, as Jensen[395] aptly remarked. Again we encounter the motive of the Dioscuri, mortal and immortal, setting and rising sun. This _motive is also represented as if projected from the hero_.