Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

I So Old Irish Religions.
Scriptures, it is frequently mentioned. The great serpent
on human legs was a solemn mystery. The Agathadsemon
was the Guardian of the Dead.
Flinders Petrie, in Ten Years Digging in Egypt, when
referring to the fact that the oldest pyramid, Medum, was
erected on the principle of the Mastaba or tomb, declared
that in the architecture of that very ancient structure,
" there was the cornice of uraeus serpents, which is familiar
in later times." This points to an era of, perhaps, seven
thousand years ago.
The neighbouring Assyrians paid no less devotion to it.
It is known that in the land of Canaan there was the same
Ophiolatreia, as the Hebrew Scriptures testify. Cyprus
and Rhodes, not less than all Phoenicia, abounded in it.
Christianity was early affected by it in Gnosticism. Epiphanius,
relates that the Gnostics kept '* a tame serpent in a
cista, or sacred ark, and when celebrating their mysteries
(the Eucharist), piled loaves on a table before it and then
invoked the serpent to come forth." The Ophites (serpent
worshippers) were derived from the Gnostics.
The Chinese for the lunar period represents a serpent.
The word for an hour, Sse, is the symbol of the serpent. The
dragon still presides in China. Persia, which supplanted
Assyria, copied thence much of its serpent ideas ;
so did
the Semitic conquerors of Babylonia, at an earlier period,
receive their theology and letters from the Akkadians.
The Zendavesta three-headed serpent had to yield to the
Sun god.
Ahi, the great serpent, was in opposition to the
Zoroastrian deities. Bel and the Dragon have a fixed
place in Oriental literature. Bel and the serpent may still
be discerned in excavated Pompeii. Clemens Alexandrinus
remarked, " If we pay attention to the strict sense of the
Hebrew, the name Evia (Eve) aspirated signifies a female
serpent."