PEEFACE. XXXIII
in heaven, and, in short, the traditions of Saint George
“we made him to usurp all the power possessed by man
and beast upon earth, and the omniscience and omnipotence of God in heaven. Moreover, round about him have gathered the myths of the most ancient nations of the world, and I doubt much if the whole story of Saint George is anything more than one of the many versions of the old-world story of the conflict between Light and Darkness, or Ra and Apepi,1 and Marduk and Tiamat, woven upon a few slender threads of historical fact.
Tiamat2 the scaly, winged, foul dragon, and Apepi the powerful enemy of the glorious Sun god, were both destroyed and made to perish in the fire which he sent against them and their friends: and Dadianus, also called the ‘dragon’, with his friends the sixty-nine governors, was also destroyed by fire called down from heaven by the prayer of Saint George.3
1 See » paper by M. Clermont Ganneau, Horus ef Saini George, in the Revue Archéologique for Sept. and Dee. 1866. La légende de aint Georges, tuaut le dragon, est inconnue aux Coptes, et c’est & tort won w profité de cette légende pour écrire que les Coptes avaient ientifié Horus et Saint Georges: e’est Saint Michel qui avait été identifé avev Horns, vengeur de son pére: clest Saint Michel qui tnait le dragon rnai et ceux qui survenaient sur terre, Amélineau, Contes et sae de L’ Eyypte Chrétienne, p. LIV.
2 ‘The Babylonian text of the fight between Marduk and Tee Yom a fragment of the 4th tablet of the ‘Creation’ series is published nthe Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology for December J $37.
3 For the identification of Saint George with Mithra see Gutschmid, Uber die Sage vom hl. Georg, als Beitrag zur iravischen Mythen- jeschichte, pp. 185—202. (In Berichte aber die Verhandluagen der Kénig- uch Stichsischen Gesclischaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, 1861. Philologisch-historische Olasse.)
