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

Triptolemos

227

Helios rising as a draped male figure standing between {i.e. on a
car drawn by) two winged horses, the solar disk being visible over
his head. The Berlin vase joins to the disk a couple of serpenti-
form appendages, thereby recalling the winged and snaky disks of
Egyptian and Assyrian art1. Indeed, a late bas-relief in black stone
brought by E. Renan from Gharfin near Gabeil, the ancient Byblos,
shows Triptolemos, who stands in a car drawn by two snakes and
scatters grain, within a natskos actually decorated with the
Egyptian disk (fig. 166)2. This, however,—as F. Lenormant was
careful to point out—may be a matter of mere decoration. The
crescent moon associated with the hero suggests rather that
Triptolemos was here identified with the Phrygian god Men3, as
elsewhere with the Egyptian Osiris4, the Lydian Tylos5, and the
Cilician Ba'al-tarz*. Finally, the corn-ears borne along on Tripto-
lemos' wheeled seat are comparable with the corn-ears attached to
the triskeles on the coins of Panormos, etc.7—a symbol which, as we
shall see, was solar in origin and, moreover, equipped with both
wings and snakes.

In the foregoing section we have traced the gradual development
of Triptolemos' snake-drawn chariot from the simple solar wheel.
This derivation is emphatically confirmed by the myth of Antheias,
as told in Pausanias' account of Patrai:

'Those who relate the earliest traditions of Patrai declare that Eumelos, a
native of the soil, was the first to dwell in the land as king over a few people.
When Triptolemos came from Attike, Eumelos received cultivated crops and,
being taught to build a city, named it Aroe after the tilling of the ground. They
say that once, when Triptolemos had fallen asleep, Antheias the son of Eumelos
was minded to yoke the snakes to the chariot of Triptolemos and to try his own
hand at sowing. But fate overtook him and he fell out of the chariot. There-
upon Triptolemos and Eumelos founded a city in common and called it Antheia
after the name of Eumelos' son8.'

Antheias falling off the car of Triptolemos is, as O. Gruppe

J Supra p. 205 ff.

2 F. Lenormant ' Triptoleme en Syrie' with fig. in the Gaz. Arch. 1878 iv. 97—
100.

3 So O. Rubensohn in the Ath. Mitth. 1899 xxiv. 61 n. 1. Lenormant had thought
of Amynos and Magos ot KareSe^av /carets /cat Troi/xvas (Philon Bybl. frag. 2. 11 (Frag,
hist. Gr. iii. 567 Mtiller)).

4 Supra p. 222 f.

5 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Lydia p. cxiii, 260 pi. 27, 4, Head Hist, num.? p. 657,
Mtiller—Wieseler Denkm. d. alt. Kunst ii. 79 pi. 10, 114, Overbeck op. cit. p. 585.

1 M. Mayer in the Verhandlungen der XL Versammlung deutscher Philologen und
Schulmdnner Gorlitz 1889 p. 338 cited by Gruppe Gr. Myth. Rel. p. 1173 n. 5.

7 Infra ch. i § 6 (d) v.

8 Paus. 7. 18. 2—3.

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