The Fall in Egyptian Religion: the Serpent (2)

Lanzone, Ridolfo V., Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, Torino: Litografia Fratelli Doyen, 1881, vol. 1, pl. civ (bet. pp. 432-433), img. 3.

The Fall in Egyptian Religion: the Serpent

Lanzone, Ridolfo V., Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia, Torino: Litografia Fratelli Doyen, 1881, vol. 1, pl. civ (bet. pp. 432-433), img. 1.

The Fall's Curse Upon the Serpent Recorded in Egypt

Across the river from Thebes, in the Valley of the Kings, frescoes in the tomb of Sethos I (Seti) tell a strange story. Snakes on the wall have been painted with legs and scaly feet. They grin menacingly, and the accompanying hieroglyphs indicate an ancient knowledge that snakes were not always without legs. According to the Sethos I inscriptions, "the serpent's forebears possessed feet." [...]

The Sethos I inscriptions connect the snake's ancestors with an evil curse, which was cast upon them for one offense or another when the world was still very young. The nature of the offense is not described, but the punishment is clear: Their legs were taken away, and henceforth they were obliged to crawl upon their bellies.

Pellegrino, Charles, Return to Sodom and Gomorrah: Bible Stories from Archaeologists, New York: Random House, 1994, pp. 51-53.

The Suebi (Germanic tribe), a Grove where the Race Arose and their god Dwells, and Withing Like a Snake?

They describe the Semnones as the most ancient and best-born tribe of the Suebi: this credibility of their antiquity is confirmed by religion: at fixed seasons all tribes of the same name and blood gather through their delegations at a certain forest—

“Haunted by visions beheld by their sires and the awe of the ages”

—and after publicly offering up a human life, they celebrate the grim “initiation” of their barbarous worship. There is a further tribute which they pay to the grove: no one enters it until he has been bound with a cord: he puts off equality and advertises in his person the might of the deity: if he chance to fall, he must not be lifted up or rise—he must writhe along the ground until he is out again: the whole superstition cames to this, that it was here where the race arose, here where dwells the god who is lord of all things; everything else is subject
to him and vassal. The prosperity of the Semnones enforces the idea: they occupy one hundred cantons, and from their large number it results that they consider themselves the head of the Suebi. 

Tacitus, Cornelius,  Germania, 39.

(Agricola, trans. M. Hutton, rev. by R. M. Ogilvie, Germania, trans. by M. Hutton, rev. by E. H. Warmington, Dialogus, trans. by W. Peterson, rev. by M. Winterbottom, London: W. Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980, p. 194, 195).

The First Man and Woman: Sioux (Upper Mssouri)

Tradition of the Sioux.—“Before the creation of man, the Great Spirit (whose tracks are yet to be seen on the stones, at the Red Pipe, in form of the tracks of a large bird) used to slay the buffaloes and eat them on the ledge of the Red necks, on the top of the Côteau des Prairies, and their blood running on to the rocks, turned them red. One day when a large snake had crawled into the nest of the bird to eat his eggs, one of the eggs hatched out in a clap of thunder and the Great Spirit catching hold of a piece of the pipe stone
to throw at the snake, moulded it into a man. This man’s feet grew fast in the ground where he stood for many ages, like a great tree, and therefore he grew very old; he was older than an hundred men at the present day; and at last another tree grew up by the side of him, when a large snake ate them both off at the roots, and they wandered off together; from these have sprung all the people that now inhabit the earth.” 

The above tradition I found amongst the Upper Missouri Sioux, but which, when I related to that part of the great tribe of Sioux who inhabit the Upper Mississippi, they seemed to know nothing about it. The reason for this may have been, perhaps, as is often the case, owing to the fraud or excessive ignorance of the interpreter, on whom we are often entirely dependent in this country; or it is more probably owing to the very vague and numerous fables which may often be found, cherished and told by different bands or families in the same tribe, and relative to the same event.

Catlin, George, 1796-1872, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians; Written During Eight Years’ Travel (1832-1839) Amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America, 2 vols, intro. Marjorie Halpin, 250 photographic reproductions of paintings in the Catlin collection of the United States National Museum, New York: Dover Publications, 1973, letter 54, vol. 2, pp. 168-169.

Catlin, George, 1796-1872, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians; Written During Eight Years’ Travel (1832-1839) Amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America, 2 vols, London: published by the author, at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, 1841, letter 54, vol. 2, pp. 168-169.