The Unicorn: VIII. Inô and Melikertes

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SECTION VIII.

INÔ AND MELIKERTES.

IN the myth of Inô 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. Inô, 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 Inô, the latter with the infant Melikertes, leaps into the sea, and is subsequently known as Leukotheê, 'the White-goddess.' The obscure name Inô is probably a variant of Iuno, Juno, and from being a phase of Hêrê, 'the Gleaming-heaven,' she becomes the Queen-of-heaven, Lebhânâ, 'the Pale-shiner,'

1 Such is 'Inô 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 Semelê, 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 Inô. 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 Phaidôn, 'Inô 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

1 that they represent the four stages of intoxication. 2 The leap of Inô 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 Apollôn Delphinios, the Fish-sun, to Korinth, here he had a curious labyrinthine shrine. 4

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Footnotes

59:1 Semitic Kedem, 'the East.'

59:2 K. O. Müller, 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 Ouraniê. Ouraniê was revered first amongst the Assyrians; and after the Assyrians by the Kyprian Paphians, and by those of the Phoenicians who dwell at Askalôn 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 Leukotheê 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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Next: IX. The Three-Legged Ass of the Bundahis