Note 983 — Chapter XXXVI · FISH IN OFFERINGS, AUGURIES, ETC.

Cf. with those of Moses and Sargon the stories of Gilgamesh King of Babylon (Ælian, XII. 22), of Semiramis Queen of Assyria (Diodorus Siculus, ii. 4), and of Karna in the Indian Epic of Mahabharata (Cheyne’s Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel London, 1907), p. 519. “It has been conjectured,” writes Frazer (op. cit.), II. p. 454 ff, “that in stories like that of the exposure of Moses in the water (in this case, unlike most others, all supernatural elements are absent) we have a reminiscence of the old custom as practised by the Celtæ on the Rhine, and according to Speke by some Central African tribes in the last century, of testing the legitimacy of children by throwing them into the water to sink or swim; the infants which sank were rejected as bastards. In the light of this conjecture it may be significant that in several of these stories the birth of the child is represented as supernatural, which in this connection cynics are apt to regard as a delicate synonym for illegitimate.” On p. 454 he touches on the question whether Moses, the son of Amram by his (Amram’s) paternal aunt, was thus the offspring of an incestuous marriage, and therefore exposed on the Nile.