the Creator was upon the top of Mount Cabunian.[1] 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 passes between mountains.[2] The grave of Zeus, the great god of Greece, was shown to visiters in Crete as late as about the beginning of our era.[3] 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.”[4] 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.[5] Cronus was buried in Sicily,[6] and the graves of Hermes, Aphrodite, and Ares were shown in HermopoHs, Cyprus, and Thrace.[7]
If the great invisible gods are thus supposed to die, it is not to be expected that a god who dwells in the flesh and blood of a man should escape the same fate. Now primitive peoples, as we have seen, sometimes believe that their safety and even that of the world is bound up with the life of one of these god-men or human incarnations of the divinity. Naturally, therefore, they take the utmost care of his life, out of a regard for their own. But no amount of care and precaution will prevent the man-god from growing old and feeble and at last dying. His worshippers have
- ↑ Blumentritt, “Der Ahnencultus und die relig. Anschauungen der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,” in Mittheilungen d. Wiener Geogr. Gesellschaft, 1882, p. 198.
- ↑ Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi, pp. 56, 69.
- ↑ Diodorus, iii. 61; Pomponius Mela, ii. 7, 112; Minucius Felix, Octavius, 21.
- ↑ Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, 35; Philochorus, Fragm. 22, in Müller’s Fragm. Hist. Graec, i. p. 387.
- ↑ Porphyny, Vit. Pythag. 16.
- ↑ Philochorus, Fr. 184, in Fragm. Hist. Graec. ii. p. 414.
- ↑ Lobeck, Aglaophannis, p. 574 sq.
