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

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14695#0341

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Temple Wheels 267

elucidation of ritual wheels, inclines to accept that view1. Count
Goblet d'Alviella suggests the following lines of transmission2:

10th cent. Chaldaea
7th cent.

India

3rd cent.

Egypt

1st cent. Greece
Rome

Gaul Tibet

Japan

None of these authors call in question Plutarch's statement that the
Greeks derived their temple-wheels from Egypt. J. Capart, how-
ever, thinks that the current may have set the other way, the
custom being introduced into Egypt by the Greeks3. Decisive
considerations, are not as yet to hand. But, whatever the precise
lineage of these Graeco-Egyptian temple-wheels may have been, it
can hardly be doubted that they were akin to the 'wheel of Fortune'
—a common sight in mediaeval churches, where it was made of
wood, hung up to the roof, worked with a rope, and regarded as an
infallible oracle4. Indeed, it seems probable that the automatic
gypsy-wheel of our railway platforms is a degenerate descendant
of the same respectable stock.

1 W. Simpson 'The Buddhist Praying Wheel'in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1898 pp. 873—875.

2 Goblet d'Alviella 'Un curieux probleme de transmission symbolique.—Les roues
liturgiques de l'ancienne Egypte' in the Bulletins de P Acade'mie Royale des Sciences, des
Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique iii Serie 1898 xxvi. 439—462 and in his Croyances,
Rites, Institutions Paris 1911 i. 25—40.

3 J. Capart in the Zeitschrift fur agyptische Sprache tmd Altertumskunde 1901
xxxix. 145 f.

4 H. Gaidoz in the Rev. Arch. 1884 ii. 142 ff. Such wheels are still, or at least were
recently, to be found in some continental churches (W. Simpson The Buddhist Praying-
Wheel London 1896 p. 229 n. 1).
 
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