Note 26 — Chapter X · The Mother-goddess of China and Japan

In this story may be detected a mosaic of myths. The Egyptian Horus, whose island floated down the Nile, had white sandals which enabled him to go swiftly up and down the land of Egypt. There are references in the Pyramid Texts to his youthful exploits, but the full story of them has not yet been discovered. The Babylonian Tammuz, when a child, drifted in a “sunken boat” down the River Euphrates. No doubt this myth is the one attached to the memory of Sargon of Akkad,26 the son of a vestal virgin, who was placed in an ark and set adrift on the river. He was found by a gardener, and was afterwards raised to the kingship by the goddess Ishtar. Karna, the Aryo-Indian Hector, the son of Surya, the sun-god, and the virgin-princess Pritha, was similarly set adrift in an ark, and was rescued from the Ganges by a childless woman whose husband was a charioteer. The poor couple reared the future hero as their own son.27