Babylonian and Greek
In this unusual story the maternal cave and hiding place is the bark of a tree. Trees play important roles in the lives of several heroes, including Buddha, Jesus, Attis, Osiris, and Odin.
The story of the lord and loved one of the great Goddess of Love was connected—amongst us, and presumably also in the eastern countries where it was adopted, in Syria, Cyprus and Asia Minor—with the story of a tree, of that Arabian shrub whose strongly fragrant gum the peoples of antiquity prized. The gum was called “myrrh” or “smyrna.”
The tale goes that Myrrha (or Smyrna) was a king’s daughter; a daughter of King Theias of Lebanon, or of King Kinyras of Cyprus, founder of Paphos—or variously a daughter of other kings whom I need not mention. Myrrha fell mortally in love with her father. (Various reasons were given for this: the wrath of the sun-god, or the wrath of Aphrodite. Myrrha was supposed to have thought her hair lovelier than that of the goddess; and there are other similar stories.) The daughter succeeded in deceiving her father, or in making him drunk—an occurrence also found in a Biblical tale. She slept with him as an unknown wench for twelve nights, or for less. At last her father discovered, by the light of a hidden lamp, who his bed-mate was, and pursued her with a drawn sword. Myrrha had already conceived a child of this forbidden love, and was full of shame. She prayed to the gods that she might be nowhere, neither amongst the living nor amongst the dead. Some deity, possibly Zeus or Aphrodite, took pity on her, and she was turned into the tree that weeps its fruit in spicy gum, the fruit of the wood: Adonis. For he, the future lover of Aphrodite, was born from the riven bark of the myrrh-tree.
World History
