The Watchtower Society and John and Morton Edgar - A2Z.org

io have been imported from Assyria direct, for sonlesculptures excavated in Nineveh show a god bearing.a spotted fawn in his arm, in such a way as to indicatethat the animal is to be regarded as a symbol (Vaux'sNincveh and Persepolis, chap. viii, p. 233). Leopardswere employed to draw the car of Bacchus; and hehimself was represented clothed with a leopard's skin.as were also his priests, although sometimes the skinof the fawn was substituted.Tile Greek Bacchus and his priesthood, therefore,were in this respect similar to the Egyptian Osiris andpriesthood. Herodotus, the father of history, alwaysspeaks of Osiris as being Bacchus (lib. ii, cap. 42), andso also does Didorus, who ays: " Orpheus introducedfrom Egypt the greatest part of the mystical ceremonies,the orgies that celebrate the wanderings ofCeres, and the whole fable of the shades below. Therites of Osiris and Bacchus are the same ; those of Isisand Ceres exactly resemble each other, except inrmme " ! Bibliotheca, lib. i, b. 9). This is an additionalproof that Bacchus and Nimrod are the same, for wehave already seen that Osiris was Nimrod.The ivy, so conspicuous in all Bacchanalian ccleb~a.tions,was an express symbol of Nimrod. Th,eGreek word for ivy is " Kissos"; and Kissos was one ofthe titles of Bacchus (Pausanias,. Attica, cap. 31, p. 78).Now, the name of the desc~ndants of Cush was pronouncedin Greece " Kissioi (Strabo, lib. xv, p. 691).The ivy branch carried by the v,otaries of Bacchus,therefore, signified to the initiated that B;acchus wasthe "branch of Cush "-i.e., Nimrod, the son of Cush.This also accounts for one of the titles of the Greekgod Apollo- Kisseus Apollon." It serves to identifypol lo with Nimrod (among ~lher proofs), meaningliterally "The Cushite ApOllO.