1 "The Homeric Hymns to Athena" (transl. Evelyn-White) in Hesiod's volume in the Loeb Classical Library.
2 The correct translation requires "purple waves"; see "The Homeric Hymn to Minerva" (transl.
A. Buckley) in The Odyssey of Homer with the Hymns (1878).
3 L. R. Famell, The Cults of the Greek States (1896), I, 281. * Ibid.
5 "Minerva ... is reported to have appeared in virgin age in the times of Ogyges at the lake called Triton, from which she is also styled Tritonia."
Augustine, The City of God, Bk. XVIII, Chap. 8.
« Diodorus of Sicily iii. 55 (transl. C. H. Oldfather). * Iliad iv. 75 f.
8 "A Prayer ... to Ishtar" in Seven Tablets of Creation (transl. King); Famell, The Cults of the Greek States, I, 258 ff.
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said Homer.8 Pallas Athene is identified with Astarte (Ishtar) or the planet Venus of the Babylonians.10 Anaitis of the Iranians, too, is identified as Pallas Athene and as the planet Venus.11
Plutarch identified Minerva of the Romans or Athene of the Greeks with Isis of the Egyptians, and Pliny identified the planet Venus with Isis.12
It is necessary to recall this here because it is generally supposed that the Greeks had no deity of importance who personified the planet Venus13 and that, on the other hand, they "did not find even a star in which to place" Athene.14 Modern books on the mythology of the Greeks repeat today what Cicero wrote: "Venus, called in Greek Phosphorus and in Latin Lucifer when it preceded the sun, but when it follows it Hesperos." 15 Phosphorus does not play any role on Olympus. But following Cicero in his description of the planets, we read also of "the planet called Saturn's, the Greek name of which is Phaenon," though we know a more common name, robin-bobin
Cronus, by which the Greeks called the planet Saturn. Cicero gives the Greek names of other planets which are not the common ones. It is therefore entirely wrong to think that Phosphorus and Hesperos are the chief or only names of the planet Venus in Greek. Athene, in whose honor the city of Athens was named, was the planet Venus. Next to Zeus she was the most honored deity of the Greeks. The name Athene in Greek, according to Manetho, "is indication of self-originated move-
»Iliad v. 735. W s. Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar (1914), p. 97.
11 F. Cumont, Les Mysteres de Mithra (3rd ed., 1913), p. 111.
12 Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, Chap. 62: "They often call Isis by the name of Athena." See G.
Rawlinson, The History of Herodotus, II, 542; Pliny, Natural History, ii, 37.
13 The name Venus or Aphrodite belonged to the moon.
i* Augustine, The City of God, Bk. VII, Chap. 16. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, I, 263, discusses the various hypotheses of the physical nature of Athene and, unable to agree with any, asks: "Is there any proof that Athene, as a goddess of the Hellenic religion, ever was a personification of some part of the physical world?"
Cicero De natura deorum i. 41, referred to a treatise by the Stoic Diogenes Babylonius, De Minerva, in which its author gave a natural explanation of the birth of Athene. The work is not extant.
15 Cicero De natura deorum ii. 53.
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ment." He wrote of the name Athene as meaning, "I came from myself." 18 Cicero, speaking of Venus, explained the origin of the name thus: "Venus was so named by our countrymen as the goddess who 'comes' [venire] to all things." 1T The name Vishnu signifies "per-vader," from the Sanskrit vish, to "enter" or "pervade."
The birth of Athene was assigned to the middle of the second millennium. Augustine wrote:
"Minerva [Athene] is reported to have appeared ... in the times of Ogyges." This statement is found in The City of God,18 the book containing the quotation from Varro that the planet Venus changed its course and form in the time of Ogyges. Augustine also synchronized Joshua with the time of Minerva's activities.19
The cover of carbonigenous clouds in which the earth was enveloped by the comet is the "robe ambrosial" wrought by Athene for Hera (Earth) .20 The source of ambrosia was closely connected with Athene.21 The origin of Athene as a comet is implied in her epithet Pallas which, as is commonly known, is synonymous with Typhon; Typhon, as Pliny said, was a comet.
The bull and the cow, the goat and the serpent, were animals dedicated to Athene. "The goat being usually tabooed but chosen as an exceptional victim for her," the animal was annually sacrificed on the Acropolis of Athens.22 With the Israelites the goat was the victim for Azazel, or Lucifer.
18 "The usage of the Egyptians is also similar: they often call Isis by the name of Athena, which expresses some such meaning as 'I came from myself,' and is indication of self-originated movement." Manetho, cited by Plutarch, Isis and Osiris (transl. Waddell), Chap. 62. But cf.
Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, I, 258: "The meaning of the name remains unknown."
17 Cicero De nature deorum ii. 69. « The City of God, Bk. XVIII, Chap. 8.
19 Ibid., Bk. XVIII, Chap. 12.
20 Iliad xiv. 170 ff. In the Babylonian mythology Marduk cuts Tiamat in two and makes from one part a cover or veil for the sky.
21 T. Bergk, "Die Geburt der Athene" in Fleckeisen's lahrbiicher fur classische Philologie (1860), Chap. VI, refers to the relation of Athene to the "Quellen der Ambrosia" ("the sources of ambrosia"). Apollodorus (The Library) says that Athene "slayed Pallas and used his skin," which appears to refer to the envelope of Venus that previously formed the tail of the comet.
22 Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, I, 290.
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robin-bobin
In the Babylonian calendar "the nineteenth day of all months is marked 'day of wrath' of goddess Gula (Ishtar). No work was done. Weeping and lamentation filled the land. . . . Any explanation of dies irae of Babylonia must be sought in some myth concerning the nineteenth of the first month. Why should the nineteenth day after the moon of the spring equinox be a day of wrath?
... It corresponds to the quinquatrus of the Boman farmer's calendar, the nineteenth of March, five days after the full moon. Ovid says that Minerva was born on that day, she being the Pallas Athene of the Greeks." 23 The nineteenth of March was Minerva's day. -.„ The first appearance of Athene-Minerva took place on the day the Israelites crossed the Bed Sea. The night between the thirteenth and the fourteenth days of the first month after the vernal equinox was the night of the great earthshock; six days later, on the last day of Passover week, according to the Hebrew tradition, the waters were heaped up like mountains and the fugitives crossed on the dry bed of the sea.
The birth of Pallas Athene or her first visit to earth was the cause of a cosmic disturbance, and the memory of that catastrophe was "a day of wrath in all the calendars of ancient Chaldea."
Zeus and Athene
If there was a problem in this research which caused prolonged deliberation on the part of the author, it was the question: Was it the planet Jupiter or Venus that caused the catastrophe of the time of Exodus? Some ancient mythological sources point to Venus, other sources point to Jupiter. In one group of legends Jupiter (Zeus) is the protagonist of the drama: he leaves his place in the sky, rushes to battle Typhon, and strikes him with thunderbolts. But other legends and historical sources, too, which I have quoted on previous pages indicate that it was the planet Venus, or Pallas Athene of the Greeks. Athene killed her father, Typhon-Pallas, the celestial mon-23 Langdon, Babylonian Menologies and the Semitic Calendars (1935), pp. 86-87.
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ster, and the description of this battle is not different from that of the battle in which Zeus killed Typhon.
Under the weight of many arguments, I came to the conclusion— about which I no longer have any doubt—that it was the planet Venus, at the time still a comet, that caused the catastrophe of the days of Exodus. Then why do a part of the legends tie up this event with Jupiter?