Section 1. The Mortality of the Gods.
MAN has created gods in his own likeness and being himself
mortal he has naturally supposed his creatures to be in the same
sad predicament. Thus the Greenlanders believed that a wind could
kill their most powerful god, and that he would certainly die if he
touched a dog. When they heard of the Christian God, they kept
asking if he never died, and being informed that he did not, they
were much surprised, and said that he must be a very great god
indeed. In answer to the enquiries of Colonel Dodge, a North
American Indian stated that the world was made by the Great Spirit.
Being asked which Great Spirit he meant, the good one or the bad
one, "Oh, neither of them," replied he, "the Great Spirit that made
the world is dead long ago. He could not possibly have lived as
long as this." A tribe in the Philippine Islands told the Spanish
conquerors that the grave of the Creator was upon the top of Mount
Cabunian. Heitsi-eibib, a god or divine hero of the Hottentots, died
several times and came to life again. His graves are generally to be
met with in narrow defiles between mountains. When the Hottentots
pass one of them, they throw a stone on it for good luck, sometimes
muttering, "Give us plenty of cattle." The grave of Zeus, the great
god of Greece, was shown to visitors in Crete as late as about the
beginning of our era. The body of Dionysus was buried at Delphi
beside the golden statue of Apollo, and his tomb bore the
inscription, "Here lies Dionysus dead, the son of Semele."
According to one account, Apollo himself was buried at Delphi; for
Pythagoras is said to have carved an inscription on his tomb,
setting forth how the god had been killed by the python and buried
under the tripod. 1
The great gods of Egypt themselves were not exempt from the
common lot. They too grew old and died. But when at a later time
the discovery of the art of embalming gave a new lease of life to
the souls of the dead by preserving their bodies for an indefinite
time from corruption, the deities were permitted to share the benefit
of an invention which held out to gods as well as to men a
reasonable hope of immortality. Every province then had the tomb
and mummy of its dead god. The mummy of Osiris was to be seen
at Mendes; Thinis boasted of the mummy of Anhouri; and Heliopolis
rejoiced in the possession of that of Toumou. The high gods of
Babylon also, though they appeared to their worshippers only in
dreams and visions, were conceived to be human in their bodily
shape, human in their passions, and human in their fate; for like
men they were born into the world, and like men they loved and
fought and died. 2