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

266 The Solar Wheel in Greece

'by the door-posts are bronze wheels that can be made to revolve,
so that those who enter may turn them about, because bronze is
believed to exercise a purificatory influence. There are sprinklers
too so that those who enter may sprinkle themselves.' Heron
proposes to make a wheel, which, if turned round, shall emit water
for the sprinkling1. Again, another of his problems is the 'con-
struction of a treasury provided with a revolving wheel of bronze,
termed a purifier; for this those who come into the sanctuaries are
accustomed to turn round.' Heron's idea is to decorate the treasury
with a bird, which, as often as the wheel is turned, shall turn itself
about and whistle'2. The first of these passages is accompanied by

a diagram of the wheel, or rather disk,
p which is thin, solid, and vertical. In
the second the wheel is thin and ver-
tical, with six spokes.

In 1900 Prof. A. Erman drew the
attention of Egyptologists to these
alleged Egyptian wheels3, and with
excellent result; for the next year
Prof. F. W. von Bissing published a
wheel of the sort that he had procured
at Thebes (fig. 191 )4. It is a copper
disk revolving on an iron pin in such
a way as to project from a copper box
once sunk in a wall or gate-post. The
box bears an inscription hard to de-
cipher, but apparently referring to the

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wheel as a 'golden ring (or disk)':
hence the discoverer infers that the
wheel was formerly gilded.

Whether these wheels were Egypt-
ian in origin or imported into Egypt
from some foreign religious system, is
Fig. 191. afurtherquestion. Prof. W. M. Flinders

Petrie surmised that Buddhist mission-
aries in the time of Asoka must have found their way to the valley
of the Nile; and Mr W. Simpson, who has done so much for the

1 Heron Al. pneumatica i. 32 p. 148 Schmidt. On the purificatory powers of bronze
see the Journ. Hell. Stud. 1902 xxii. i4ff.

2 Id. ib. 2. 32 p. 298 Schmidt.

3 A. Erman ' Kupferringe an Tempelthoren' in the Zeitschrift fur dgyptische SpracAe
und Alter turn skunde 1900 xxxviii. 53 f.

4 F. W. v. Bissing 'Zu Ermans Aufsatz "Kupferringe an Tempelthoren"' ib. 1901
xxxix. 144 f. with fig.