Ophiolatreia

work of the "Great Serpent" on Bush Creek-The "Alligator," Ohio-The "Cross," Pickaway County-Structures of Wisconsin-Mr. Pigeons Drawings-Significance of the Earth-mounds-The Egg and

enquiries-The Orphic Theogony

tone, erected with great labour and manifest design. In connection with these, more or less intimate, are found various m

York, along the shores of Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence river. They penetrated into the interior, eastward, as far as the county of Onondaga, where some slight vestiges of their work still exist. These seem to have been their limits at the north-east. We have no record of their occurrence above the great lakes. Carner mentions some on the shores of Lake Pepin, and some are said to occur near Lake Travers, under the 46th parallel of latitude. Lewis and Clarke saw them on the Missouri river, one thousand miles above its junction with the Mississippi; and they have been observed on the Kanzas and Platte and on other remote western rivers. They are found all over the intermediate

presenting but slight analogy to any others of which we have in any portion of the globe. The larger proportion of these are structures of earth bearing the forms of beasts, birds, reptiles, and even of men; they are frequently of gigantic dimensions, constituting huge basso-relievos upon the face of the country. They are very numerous and in most cases occur in long and apparently dependent ranges. In connection with them are found many conical mounds and occasional short lines of embankment, in rare instances forming enclosures. These animal effigies are m

n some instances, but never erected by man. Of course no such suggestion was ever made by individuals who had enjoyed the opportunity of seeing and investigating them. Single structures of earth could not possibly bear more palpable e

d, that they were not intended for defence. Thus, when we find an enclosure containing a number of mounds, all of which it is capable of demonstration were religious in their purposes or in some way connected with the superstitions of the people who built them, the conclusion is irresistible that the enclosure itself was also deemed sacred and thus set apart as "tabooed" or consecrated ground-especially where it is obvious at the first glance that it possesses none of the requisites of a military work. But it is not to be concluded that those enclosures alone, which contain mounds of the description here named, were designed for sacred purposes. We have reason to believe that the religious system of the mound builders, like that of the Aztecs, exercised among them a great if not controlling influence. Their government may ha

long, measuring from its extremity to the point where it connects with the table land. Conforming to the curve of the hill and occupying its very summit is the serpent, its head resting near the point and its body winding back for seven hundred feet in graceful undulations, terminating in a triple coil at the tail. The entire length, if extended, would be not less than one thousand feet. The neck of the serpent is stretched out and slightly curved, and its mouth is opened wide as if in the act of swallowing or ejecting an oval figure which rests partially within the distended jaws. This oval is formed by an embankment of earth, without any perceptib

s ten or twelve feet over. They are not high, and although too distinct to b

ced transversly to the point of land on which it occurs, the head pointing to the south-west. The total length from the point of the nose following the curve of the tail to the tip is about two hundred and fifty feet, the breadth of the body forty feet, and the length of the feet or paws each thirty-six feet. The ends of the paws are a little broader than the remaining portions of the same, as if the spread of the toes had been original

was perhaps the high place where sacrifices were made on stated or extraordinary occasions, and where the ancient people gathered to

premises, we are certainly justified in concluding that these several effigies had probably a cognate design, possessed a symbolical signific

variety of combinations with each other, and with conical mounds and lines of embankments, which are also abundant. They are usually found on the low, level, or undulating prairies, and seldom in such conspicuous p

imal effigies of Wisconsin, structures in the

hundred and ninety-five feet; 3rd, in the same vicinity, a large conical mound, three hundred feet in diameter at the base, and thirty feet in height, its summit covered with charcoal. This mound was surrounded by one hundred and twenty smaller mounds, disposed in the form of a circle. Twelve miles to the westward of these, and within sight of them, was a large conical truncated mound, sixty feet in diameter at the bottom, and eighteen feet high, built upon a raised platform or bottom. It was surrounded by a cir

y River, where the range was two and a half miles long, the mounds occurring at regular intervals. Twenty miles to the westward of this locality was the effigy of a great serpent with that of a

est of Prairie Du Chien, he found a circle enclosing a pentagon, which in its turn enclosed another circle, within which was a conical truncated mound. The outer circle was twelve hundred feet in circumference, the embankment twelve feet broad and from th

e base, and three feet high. The points extended outwards about nine feet. Surrounding this mound were five crescent-shaped mounds so arranged as to constitute a circle. Many analagous structures were disco

defence, for there is nothing to defend; on the contrary, it is clearly and unmistakably, in form and attitude, the representation of a serpent, with jaws distended, in the act of swallowing or ejecting an oval figure, which may be distinguished, from the suggestions of analogy, as an egg. Assuming for the entire structure a religious origin, it can be regarded only as the recognised symbol of some grand mythological idea. What abstract conce

their vitalization and activity-the inanimate chaos, before life began, when "the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." It was thus receive

ed into the cosmogonies of nearly all nations, and there are few persons even among those who have not made mythology their study, to whom t

n from his own essence, he first created the waters, and inspired them with power of motion; by that power was produced a golden egg, blazing like a thousand stars, in which was born Brahma, the great parent of national beings, that which is the invisible cause, self-existent, but unperceived. T

is own divine substance, first, with a thought created the waters, and placed in them a productive seed. That seed became an egg, bright as gold

arus first existed: there was neither earth, nor air, nor heaven; but in the bosom of Erebus black-winged Night produced an Aerial Egg, from which was born golde

Orphic fragments, the Hymn to Protogones, who is equi

ones, two-fold, great, wa

icing in thy

erator of the bless

Light, the far cel

, impetuous all-g

wilight cloud of dar

the world upon the

and all-pure light; wherefo

g, and as the dark

full of Metis (wisdom) a

, ever-varyin

he generative or creative influence, designated among the Greeks as "Phanes," "Golden-pinioned Love," "The Universal Father," "Egg-born Protogones" (the latter

the origin of things. They set forth that Chaos, before the creation, existed in the form of a vast egg, in whic

the temple of Daibod, in Japan, by a nest egg, which is shown floating in an expanse of waters against whic

thirty feet in circumference. Upon one side, in a semi-circular niche, is sculptured a bull, the emblem of productive energy. This figure is understood to signify the Tauric

d. They not only supported the propriety of the allegory, says Maurice, from the perfection of its external form, but fancifully extended the allusion to its interior comp

the Sandwich Islanders is that a bird (with them it is an emblem of Deity)

ternal, above all, and comprehending all. And as Brahm, "the Self-existent Incorruptible" Unity of the Hindus, by direction of His energetic will upon the expanse of chaos, "with a thought" (say Menu) produced a "golden egg blazing like a thousand stars" from which sp

ained by the various authors who have hitherto written on the Cosmogony and Mythology of the primitive nations of the East. With the view of ascertaining what new light has been thrown upon the subject by the investigations of the indefatigable Champollion and his followers-whose researches among the monument

s and if they occur what significance seem to have been assigned them? Was the serpent i

by Champollion le-Jeune and his followers since 1827 to the hieroglyphics of Egypt, has recognised so many exotic fables and so much real ignorance of Egyptology in the accounts concerning that mystified country, handed down to us from the schools of Alexandria and Byzantium, that at the present hour science treads doubtingly, where but a few years ago it was fashionable to make the most sweeping assertions; and we now hesitate before qualifying, as Egyptian

whatever, amid the myriads of inscribed or sculptured documents extant, does the symbol of the Serpent and the Egg occur, militates against the assumption of this, perhaps Ph?nician myth, as originally Egyptian. "The worship of the Serpent," observes Ampêre, "by the Ophites may certainly have a real connection with the choice of the Egyptian symbol by which Divinity is designated in the paintings and hieroglyphics, and which is the Serpent Uraeus (Basilisk royal, of the Greeks, the seraph set up by Moses. Se Ra Ph is the singular of sera

with the Cosmogonical Serpent. The egg, under certain conditions, seems to denote the idea of a human body. It is also used as a phonetic sign S, and when c

ook of the Dead," according to a MS. translation favoured me by the erudite Egyptologist, Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, allusion is made to the "great mundane egg" addressed by the d

on to the duplex emblem of the egg combined

ies. One point alone is what I would venture to suggest to your philosophical acumen, in respect to ancient 'parallelisms' between the metaphysical conceptions of radically distinct nations (if you please 'species' of mankind, at geographically different centres of origins, compelled of necessity in ages anterior to alphabetical record to express their ideas by pictures, figurative or symbolical). It is that man's mind has always conceived, everywhere in the same method, everything that relates to him; because the inability, in which his intelligence is circumscribed, to figure to his mind's eye existence distinct from his own, constrains him to devolve, in the pictorial or sculptural delineation of his tho

Sesostris at Metraheni, in a paper read before the Royal Society of Literature, London, June, 1845, he observes, 'There is one more consideration connected with the hieroglyphics of the great oval of the belt, though not affecting the preceding argument; it is the oval or egg which occurs between the figure of Ptha and the staff of which the usual signification is Son or Child, but which by a kind of two-fold meaning, common in the details of sculpture of this period (the 18th or 19th Dynasty, say B.C. 1500 or 1200), I am inclined to believe refers also to the myth or doctrine preserved in the writings of the Greek authors

hics to connect, directly, Phallic Worship with the solar emblem of the Serpent. In Semitic to

so proceeds from the pre-eminent Unity, the Serpent God, the "Incomparable Cronus," or Hercules. (Bryant, quoting Athenagoras, observes-"Hercules was esteemed the chief god, the same

ew El and, according to St. Jerome, one of the ten names of God. Damascius, in the life of Isidorus, mentions distinctly tha

ll, the primitive nations recognised this Supreme Unity, although they did not all assign him a name. He was the Creator of God

apable. He is spoken of in the sacred book of the Hindus as the "Almighty, infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, self-existent Being; he who see everything, though never seen; he who is not to be

m to most minds, it is nevertheless true, that the fundamental principles of the Hindu religion were those of pure Monotheism, the worship of one supreme and only God. Brahm was regarded as to

ghted by his own boundless intelligence, not limited by space or time; without feet, moving swiftly; without hands, grasping all worlds; without ears, all-hearing, und

He is described in the ancient Hermetic books as the "first God, immovable in the solitude of his Unity, the fountain of all thing

s, the incorporeal origin of all things." And as the Supreme Brahm of the Hindus, "whose name was unutterable," was worshipped under no external form and had neither temples nor altars erected to him, so the Supreme Teotl and the corresponding Varicocha a

the world and all visible things." Under the form of the emblematic bull the generative energy was represented breaking the quiescent egg. Encircled by the folds of the agatho-demon, a type of the active principle, it was suspended aloft at the temples of Tyre. For the serpent, like the bull, was an emblem of the sun or of the attributes

ally allusive to the general creation, as an illustration of the doctrine of the reciprocal principles wh

Unity and the doctrine of the reciprocal principles existe

in both continents. That these were not usually arbitrary, but resulted