Tobias Had a Dog

 

I found another ancient calendar story. It has the same basic symbols of a blinded man, a monster corpse with healing powers, the number seven connected to an underground demon among others, but what really tipped me off is a symbol I have never been able to understand.

What does a dog have to do with calendars and the yearly journey taken by the solar hero? Americans love our dogs so it is tempting to use attributes like loyalty and obedience to explain why they are always at a hero's knee. Except they aren't always at his knee. Sometimes the companion dog bites the hero's knee or thigh.Sometimes the dog has a name like Odyseus' dog, Argus. Since the attacks of 9/11 I have noticed that people in the Middle East do not like dogs. Sometimes I get the feeling they despise dogs. Although I couldn't prove it. But as I predicted when I first saw it, a dog in the picture with archangels led me to Tobias.

Tobias is essentially the same story as Perseus, only this story takes place in Persia. (Which is the same place where modern Muslims dislike dogs.)

Tobias travels around, kills a monster that has some healing properties, and banishes the demon king that killed Sarah's seven husbands.

Typically I would say that the seven husbands represent the seven days of the week, but according to Robert Graves, after seven years a new king would replace the old. Graves thinks the old king was sacrificed, but that is unprovable.

So that was my excitement for the morning. I've noticed that time passes just as nicely with a paper calendar page to mark, but it is still fun to see how non-literate cultures managed to keep track.

Nancy Sherer

 

 


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