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Viii. Ino And Melikertes

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"The Unicorn, a Mythological Investigation", by Robert Brown, [1881],

p. 59

Section Viii.

In And Melikertes.

In
the myth of In and Melikertes we see no longer opposition between Day and Night, Sun and Moon, but kosmic harmony, the crescent-moon-goddess with the young sun in her arms. In, the daughter of Kadmos the 'Easterner,' 1 is married to Athamas, 'in Ionic Tammas,' 2 the Phoenician Tammuz, 3 the Akkadian Dumuzi, 'the Only-son,' "i.e.", the solitary Sun-god, Melqarth, who goes forth to hunt alone. 4 By him she becomes the mother of Melikertes, the Phoenician Melqarth, or 'City-king;' his reduplication--the sun of the next day; and when the raging Athamas--Herakles Mainomenos--in madness slays his eldest child by In, the latter with the infant Melikertes, leaps into the sea, and is subsequently known as Leukothe, 'the White-goddess.' The obscure name In is probably a variant of Iuno, Juno, and from being a phase of Hr, 'the Gleaming-heaven,' she becomes the Queen-of-heaven, Lebhn, 'the Pale-shiner,'

p. 60

the White-moon-goddess, the horned Astart, and as such she assists the storm-tossed Odysseus with her headband ("Kredemnon"), a moon-scarf of the lunar rays. 1 Such is 'In with-beautiful-ankle, the moon walking in brightness,' whose kindly unicorn-horn drives away noxious things; the fostering mother who, like a Juno Matuta, nurtures the young Sun-god Dionysos, who is identical with Melqarth (Melek, Molekh), after the death of his own mother Semel, 2 he being the chief of 'the precious things put forth by the moon.' Not far from the Phoenician settlement in Kythera 3 was 'a temple and oracle of In. They prophesy when asleep, since the goddess answers those who consult her by dreams. Water, pleasant to drink, flows from a sacred fount, and they call it the Fount of the Moon.' 4 According to an MS. Neo-Platonik Commentary of Olympiodoros on the "Phaidn", 'In is water, being marine.' Here is a preservation of a faint shadow of the truth, for the connexion between the moon and water is obvious; but the theory of Olympiodoros that the four daughters of Kadmos represent the four (so-called) elements, may be paralleled with the modern view of

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[paragraph continues] Rolle, 1 that they represent the four stages of intoxication. 2 The leap of In with the child into the sea was localised at the rock Molyris near Megara, 3 whence Melikertes was said to have been carried on a dolphin, like Apolln Delphinios, the Fish-sun, to Korinth, here he had a curious labyrinthine shrine. 4

Footnotes

59:1
Semitic Kedem, 'the East.'

59:2 K. O.
Mller, "Orchomenos and dier Minyer", 156.

59:3
'Athamas is the god Tammuz.' (Sir G. W. Cox, "Introd". 67, Note 2.)

59:4
Vide "G.D.M." ii. 293. M. Lenormant and Prof. Sayce have pointed out the correct reading of Jeremiah, xxii. 18: 'Ah me, my brother, and ah me, my sister! Ah me, Adonis, and ah me, his lady!'

60:1
\"Od". v. 333-56. I have fully treated of these various personages in the "G.D.M." i. 246 "et seq."; ii. 286 "et seq.", and shall therefore only notice them briefly here.

60:2
\"Apollod". iii. 4.

60:3
At Athens was 'a shrine of Aphrodite Ourani. Ourani was revered first amongst the Assyrians; and after the Assyrians by the Kyprian Paphians, and by those of the Phoenicians who dwell at Askaln in Palestine; and the Kythereans learnt from the Phoenicians to revere her' (Paus. I. xiv. 6).

60:4
\"Ibid". III. xxvi. 1.

61:1
\"Culte de Bacchus", iii. 318.

61:2
Sir G. W. Cox strangely remarks of Leukothe that her 'name proclaims her as the open and glaring day' ("Introd". 217). But the Glaring-day does not fly from the Raging-sun, or hold the Infant-sun in her arms; and is no more a nursing, nurturing mother than Athamas is such a sire.

61:3
Paus. I. xliv. 11.

61:4 \"Ibid". II, ii. 1.

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