DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.807#0556
5H
THE PALACE OF MINOS, ETC.
Cross
Primitive
Picto-
graph of
Star.
as in the case of the great painted figure of XVIIIth Dynasty date found
in the Hathor Shrine at Deir el-Bahari (Fig. 370 c).1 It is a remarkable
fact that both the plain cross and the derivative quatrefoil are taken over,
as religious marks, in substitution for the natural spots in Minoan repre-
sentations.2 On a late Cypro-Minoan vase we
see the body, in this case of a bull, with four
simple cruciform marks and a series of trefoils,
a simplification of the quatrefoil seen on the
Egyptian Cow of Hathor (Fig. 370 b). In the
quatrefoil shape the same marks appear on
Minoan bull's-head rhytons as is well illustrated
by the inlays on a ritual vessel of that kind found
in the Tomb of the Double Axes, near Knossos
(Fig. 370 d). In the hunting scene of the Tiryns
fresco the cruciform spots are transferred to
deer.3
It does not need the star-markines of the
Hathoric Cow to explain the early significance of the cruciform figure. Not
only among the primitive population of the Old World—till quite recently
even in the pictography of the Lapp troll-drums—but among widely remote
peoples, such as the North American Indian tribes, an equal-limbed cross
has a currency as the simplest form of the star sign. In a derivative sense,
as is well known, it thus came to be, as in Babylonia and elsewhere, a general
indication of divinity.4 Sometimes, as the day-star, it coalesces with the rayed
disk of the sun, as in the case of the symbol, already referred to above, from
the Siteia mould Fig. 371."' A smaller disk on the same
mould held up by a little figure, apparently a votary, shows
this star-sign in its simple cruciform shape within a dotted circle
above the lunar crescentG. On the fellow mould the Minoan
Goddess holds aloft two Double Axes. The smaller symbolic
disk, as contrasted with that of the rayed solar emblem, must
be taken as symbolic of the Goddess as Queen of the Under-
Fig. 371. Rayed Solar Symbol
with Spokes from Siteia Mould.
1 Naville, op. cit., Pt. I, Frontispiece.
2 Most of these figures were probably of bulls
rather than cows, but the bovine heads of the
rhytons may have belonged to either sex.
s Tiryns, ii, PI. XV. They also appear on
the lions of a Mycenae dagger-blade.
4 For the cross as a sign of divinity see
L. Miiller, Rehgi0se Symbokr af Stierne-, Kors-,
og Cirkel-Form, &c, p. 7 seqq. As specifically
a ' star sign', a cross appears above the heads
of the Dioscuri, e. g. on a bronze coin of
Caracalla, struck at Tripoli's in Syria (op. cit.,
p. 8, a; B. M. Cat. : Phoenicia (G. F. Hill),
PI. XXVII, 18, and p 218.
B See above, p. 479.
0 'Ec£. 'A/3^., 1900, PI. 3, above.
THE PALACE OF MINOS, ETC.
Cross
Primitive
Picto-
graph of
Star.
as in the case of the great painted figure of XVIIIth Dynasty date found
in the Hathor Shrine at Deir el-Bahari (Fig. 370 c).1 It is a remarkable
fact that both the plain cross and the derivative quatrefoil are taken over,
as religious marks, in substitution for the natural spots in Minoan repre-
sentations.2 On a late Cypro-Minoan vase we
see the body, in this case of a bull, with four
simple cruciform marks and a series of trefoils,
a simplification of the quatrefoil seen on the
Egyptian Cow of Hathor (Fig. 370 b). In the
quatrefoil shape the same marks appear on
Minoan bull's-head rhytons as is well illustrated
by the inlays on a ritual vessel of that kind found
in the Tomb of the Double Axes, near Knossos
(Fig. 370 d). In the hunting scene of the Tiryns
fresco the cruciform spots are transferred to
deer.3
It does not need the star-markines of the
Hathoric Cow to explain the early significance of the cruciform figure. Not
only among the primitive population of the Old World—till quite recently
even in the pictography of the Lapp troll-drums—but among widely remote
peoples, such as the North American Indian tribes, an equal-limbed cross
has a currency as the simplest form of the star sign. In a derivative sense,
as is well known, it thus came to be, as in Babylonia and elsewhere, a general
indication of divinity.4 Sometimes, as the day-star, it coalesces with the rayed
disk of the sun, as in the case of the symbol, already referred to above, from
the Siteia mould Fig. 371."' A smaller disk on the same
mould held up by a little figure, apparently a votary, shows
this star-sign in its simple cruciform shape within a dotted circle
above the lunar crescentG. On the fellow mould the Minoan
Goddess holds aloft two Double Axes. The smaller symbolic
disk, as contrasted with that of the rayed solar emblem, must
be taken as symbolic of the Goddess as Queen of the Under-
Fig. 371. Rayed Solar Symbol
with Spokes from Siteia Mould.
1 Naville, op. cit., Pt. I, Frontispiece.
2 Most of these figures were probably of bulls
rather than cows, but the bovine heads of the
rhytons may have belonged to either sex.
s Tiryns, ii, PI. XV. They also appear on
the lions of a Mycenae dagger-blade.
4 For the cross as a sign of divinity see
L. Miiller, Rehgi0se Symbokr af Stierne-, Kors-,
og Cirkel-Form, &c, p. 7 seqq. As specifically
a ' star sign', a cross appears above the heads
of the Dioscuri, e. g. on a bronze coin of
Caracalla, struck at Tripoli's in Syria (op. cit.,
p. 8, a; B. M. Cat. : Phoenicia (G. F. Hill),
PI. XXVII, 18, and p 218.
B See above, p. 479.
0 'Ec£. 'A/3^., 1900, PI. 3, above.