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In Hebrew it would appear as Shemesh-Edom, and an Egyptian papyrus, now at Leyden, informs us that Atum or Edom was the wife of Resheph the Canaanitish god of fire and lightning. In Shemesh-Atum or Shemesh-Edom we therefore have a compound name signifying that the Shemesh or Sun-god denoted by it was not the male divinity of the customary worship, but the Sun-goddess Edom.
Thus a circle, plain or crossed, designates the Sun-god, San or Shamas; a six-rayed or eight-rayed star the Sun-goddess, Gula or Anunit; a double or triple thunderbolt the Atmospheric god, Vul; a serpent probably Hoa; a naked female form Nana or Ishtar; a fish Bar or Nin-ip. But besides these assignable symbols, there are a vast number with regard to which we are still wholly in the dark.
For it represents the straw rope which the deity Futo-tama-no-mikoto stretched behind the Sun-goddess, Ama-terasu-oho-mi-Kami, after Ame-no-ta-jikara- wo-no-Kami, the Heavenly-hand-strength-god, had pulled her out, as is told in that ancient myth of Shinto which Professor Chamberlain has translated.
In the prayers offered to the sun-goddess for harvest, and in thanksgiving to her for bestowing dominion over land and sea upon her descendant the Mikado, occurs the following passage: I declare in the great presence of the From-Heaven-Shining-Great-DEITY who sits in Isé.
She was literally cuirassee in diamonds, and glittered like a sun-goddess. Her skirt of black velvet over a robe of scarlet satin was caught up by clusters of diamond brooches. The Prince Imperial was allowed to be present; he was dressed in a black-velvet costume and knee breeches; his little, thin legs black-stockinged, and a manteau Venitien over his shoulders.
Many other things produced by more or less skilled mechanics, the origin of which is poetically recounted in the story of the dancing of Uzumé before the cave in which the Sun-goddess had hid herself, were of continental origin.
Shinto is the ancient Japanese system of ancestor-worship, with its doctrine of the divine descent of the Mikado from the Sun-goddess and its requirement that every faithful adherent make daily offerings to the spirits of the family's ancestors. With the future life or with moral precepts for this life it does not concern itself.
The origin of this dance is to be found in the Kojiki legend of the dance of Ame-nouzume-no-mikoto she by whose mirth and song the Sun-goddess was lured from the cavern into which she had retired, and brought back to illuminate the world.
We propose to illustrate the dogmas by quoting from the rituals in Mr. Satow's masterly translation. This word and all the others printed in capitals are so rendered in order to express in English the force of "an untranslatable honorific syllable, supposed to be originally identical with a root meaning 'true, but no longer possessing that signification." Ritual in Praise of the Sun-goddess.
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