Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

Ixion

Sisyphos raises the stone above his head. Tantalos lifts the water
towards his mouth. And between them Ixion revolves on a strong;
seven-spoked wheel, his attitude recalling the earlier representation
of him on the Etruscan mirror (pi. xvii).

Fig. 148.

It remains to enquire how far the foregoing figures bear out the
suggestion that Ixion's wheel was solar. A wheel, a winged wheel
a wheel darting rays outward, a wheel flaming inwards and bound
about with snakes—all these are beyond question conceivable ways

Fig. 149.

of depicting the sun. For example, the Egyptians used to place a
winged solar disk flanked by two uraeus-snakes over the gateway
of every temple-court (fig. 149)1. This custom was explained by

1 On the origin of the winged disk see S. Reinach ' Aetos Prometheus' in the Rev.
Arch. 1907 ii. 59—-81 = id. Cultes, Mythes et Religions Paris 1908 iii. 68—91, infra
ch. i § 6 (d) i (e) ; and on its development Count Goblet d'Alviella Recherches sur Vhistoire
du globe aile hors de I'Egypte Bruxelles 1888 (extr. from the Bulletins de VAcade'mie
Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique iii Serie 1888 xvi. 623 ff.
no. 12). Cp. also Stevenson 'The Feather and the Wing in Mythology' in Oriental
Studies (Oriental Club of Philadelphia) Boston 1894 pp. 236—239. In Egypt the winged
disk is found as early as the sixth dynasty, e.g. on a triumphal sUle of Pepi i in Wadi-
Maghara (Sinai) published by J. de Morgan Recherches sur les origines de VEgypte Paris
1896 i. 235 fig. 596. I figure a fine eighteenth-dynasty example from the door to the
chapel of Thothmes i at Deir el Bahri, drawn by R. E. F. Paget for A. Wiedemann
Religion of the Ancient Egyptians London 1897 p. 75 fig. 14. The wings are probably
those of the falcon (falco peregrtnus), not the sparrow-hawk : see G. Benedite in the
Mon. Plot 1909 xvii. 5 ff.