them—temples with stones as large as hay-wagons. The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, evangelists, haruspices, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels: villages were burned, women and children were butchered, cattle were driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and today there is none so poor to do them reverence. Worse, the very tombs in which they lie are lost, and so even a respectful stranger is debarred from paying them the slightest and politest homage.
What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile valley? What has become of:
Resheph — Baal
Anath — Astarte
Ashtoreth — Hadad
El — Addu
Nergal — Nebo
Ninib — Shalem
Dagon — Sharrab
Melek — Yau
Ahijah — Isis
Amon-Re — Osiris
Ptah — Sebek
Anubis — Molech
All these were once gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, five or six thousand years ago, with Jahveh himself; the worst of them stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute, and with them the following:
Bile — Gwydion
Ler — Manawyddan
Arianrod — Nuada Argetlam
Morrigu — Tagd
Govannon — Goibniu
Gunfled — Odin
Sokk-mimi — Llaw Gyffes
Memetona — Lleu
Dagda — Ogma
Kerridwen — Mider
Pwyll — Rigantona
Ogyrvan — Marzin
Dea Dia — Mars
Ceros — Jupiter
Vaticanus — Cunina
Edulia — Potina
Adeona — Statilinus
Iuno Lucina — Diana of Ephesus
Saturn — Robigus
Furrina — Pluto
Vediovis — Ops
Consus — editrina
Cronos — Vesta
Enki — Tilmun
Engurra — Zer-panitu
Belus — Merodach
Dimmer — U-ki
Mu-ul-lil — Dauke
Ubargisi — Gasan-abzu
Ubilulu — Elum
Gasan-lil — U-Tin-dir ki
U-dimmer-an-kia — Marduk
Enurestu — Nin-lil-la
U-sab-sib — Nin
U-Mersi — Persephone
Tammuz — Istar
Venus — Lagas
Bau — U-urugal
Mulu-hursang — Sirtumu
Anu — Ea
Beltis — Nirig
Nusku — Nebo
Ni-zu — Samas
Sahi — Ma-banba-anna
Aa — En-Mersi
Allatu — Amurru
Sin — Assur
AbilAddu — Aku
Apsu — Beltu
Dagan — Dumu-zi-abzu
Elali — Kuski-banda
Isum — Kaawanu
Mami — Nin-azu
Nin-man — Lugal-Amarada
Zaraqu — Qarradu
Suqamunu — Ura-gala
Zagaga — Ueras
You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: you will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and dignity—gods of civilized peoples—worshipped and believed in by millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient, and immortal. And all are dead.
SIGMUND FREUD
From
Richard Wollheim once described Sigmund Freud’s work as an essay “in the deafness of the mind” and, whatever we may now think about the father of modern psychology, it is impossible not to regard his insights into the unconscious as seminal and revolutionary. Fascinated by totem and taboo and by the manacles that the mind
