World-tree, whose trunk is coincident in position and direction with the axis of the world a tree in whose sky-filling branchesīennu, the sun-bird, is seated a tree from whose north polar top the " North-wind" Show that under all its names the Egyptian Tree of Life is a true Transparent mist on the horizon." His own citations of texts clearly Is neither "the rain cloud," nor "the light morning cloud," nor "the Renouf in his treatment of the Tree in Egyptian mythology. In the light of comparative cosmology it is quite impossible to agree Tat-pillar, which is the axis of the world. Osiris, and out of which the king of Byblos caused the roof-pillar of Gods." 4 It is the same tree which in ancient Egyptian mythology inclosed the sarcophagus of 3Īnd what is precisely to our purpose, it stood, as we have before seen,Īt "the Centre" or Pole of the earth, where is "the holy house of the This same treeĪppears in the earliest Akkadian mythology. 1īut while most readers are familiar with this Norse myth, few areĪware how ancient and universal an idea it represents. Unmistakableness, locating it at the Arctic Pole of the Earth. Paradise-Tree with the axis of the world, or otherwise, with equal Of many ancient religions and mythologies in associating their Here finds a fresh and unexpected confirmation in the singular agreement Of nature there was to be an altar, it could only be here. That by special command He should have guarded its one particularĪdornment from desecration! (Gen. Reserved for sacred uses this one natural altar-height of the Earth, and How conceivable that that Creator should have
Looked up to that unmoving centre-point where stood the changeless Homage through its topmost branches the human worshiper would have Around it would have turned the "stars of God," as if in These, would to any one beneath have seemed the living pillar of the Shooting up as arrow-straight as the body of one of the "giant trees ofĬalifornia," far overtopping, it may be, even such gigantic growths as Which could by no possibility belong to any other. That Garden would have had a visible and obvious cosmical significance North Pole, it is plain that a goodly tree standing in the centre of Usually been proposed it could not but if the Garden of Eden was precisely at the The different mythologies of the ancient world could assist us in Itsįruit was "good for food," it was "pleasant to the eyes," "a tree to beĪt first sight it would not perhaps appear how a study of this tree in 3, there was a treeĮxceptional in position, in character, and in its relations to men. Garden of Eden, according to Genesis iii.