Blinkenberg, Christian: The thunderweapon in religion and folklore: a study in comparative archaeology (London , Edinburgh: Cambridge University Press, 1911)

ANCIENT GREECE

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information must be sought in the original publication with its
excellent reproductions of Stefani’s watercolours.
The double-axes, to which sacrifice is being made to the
accompaniment of the lyre, are placed on pillars encircled with
foliage, probably a ritual representation of the trees struck by
lightning [98, 124], the trees, that is, upon which the lightning
god descended. On the axes are birds, and the surmise that
they also may have some connection with the lightning can hardly


Fig. 9.

be rejected (cf. p. 61); but a zoological definition of the birds,
which have already been declared by different authorities to be
eagles, pigeons, woodpeckers or ravens (see PARIBENI, p. 31 ;
V. DUHN, p. 166), can hardly be given with certainty, and cannot
therefore be used as a starting-point for further conjectures.
The axes have a doubled edge on both sides, a characteristic
which they have in common with many other representations
of sacred axes (cf. fig. 8), but which is of course never found on
axes that have been in actual use. Paribeni (p. 31) regards
these axes as a kind of perspective rendering of axe-blades set