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Then he hurled him to the ground, where the poor king lay a mere shattered pulp that had been human. Now the priestess was standing in front of the beast-god, apparently quite without fear, though her two attendants had fallen back.
+252+. In the course of religious growth the beast-god may be replaced or succeeded by an anthropomorphic god, and then the former is regarded as sacred to the latter the recollection of the beast form still remains after the more refined conception has been reached, and the two, closely connected in popular feeling, can be brought into harmony only by making one subordinate to the other.
The same reasoning would explain the custom probably an older one of putting the beast-god to death annually, as was done with the ram of Thebes. One point in the Theban ritual the application of the skin to the image of the god deserves particular attention. If the god was at first the living ram, his representation by an image must have originated later. But how did it originate?
So far as I could see, it had not altered in any way; but looked as though it were only yesterday that I had seen it. Around, the grim, dark mountains frowned down upon me from their lofty silences. Far to my right, away up among inaccessible peaks, loomed the enormous bulk of the great Beast-god.
Then they mourned over the ram and buried it in a sacred tomb. The custom was explained by a story that Zeus had once exhibited himself to Hercules clad in the fleece and wearing the head of a ram. Of course the ram in this case was simply the beast-god of Thebes, as the wolf was the beast-god of Lycopolis, and the goat was the beast-god of Mendes. In other words, the ram was Ammon himself.
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