Some said that babies recognized their mother's voice when they were first born because they had listened to them in the womb.
Proserpine herself was commonly known as the daughter (Core), sometimes as the first-born.
In the highest hell rules alone the grisly king Sh'dum, "the warrior"; in the storey immediately beneath is Giv, "the great"; and in the lowest is Krun or Karkum, the oldest and most powerful of all, commonly called "the great mountain of flesh" (Third rabba d'besra), but also "the first-born of darkness."
Manda d'hayye and his image Hibil Ziva with his incarnations clearly correspond to the old Babylonian Marduk, Merodach, the "first-born" son of Ea, with his incarnations, the chief divinity of the city of Babylon, the mediator and redeemer in the old religion.
The Israelites were commanded to select on the tenth of Abib (Nisan) a he-lamb of the first year, without blemish, to kill it on the eve of the fourteenth and to sprinkle with its blood the lintel and sidepost of the doors of their dwellings so that the Lord should "pass over" them when he went forth to slay the first-born of the Egyptians.
