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The water-bound serpent/fish teacher who takes nothing and leaves everything: both figures deliver a complete civilizational curriculum (writing, law, temple, calendar/geometry), consume nothing while doing it (Oannes 'took no food'; Quetzalcoatl's treasures are left behind), and then exit across or into the sea · one nightly, one finally · with the record explicitly closed at their departure: 'nothing material has been added' since Oannes; 'no one knows how' Quetzalcoatl arrived where he was going. In both, the sea is where the teacher is native and where the account is permitted to end.
Oannes, body of a fish with a man's head and feet, rises daily from the Erythraean sea; he 'was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food'; he teaches letters, sciences, city-building, temples, laws, geometry · and 'when the sun had set... retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep; for he was amphibious. From that time, nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions.'
set against Quetzalcoatl departure legend
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