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

316 The Kyklops of the East and West

of Aten are made to terminate in human hands (fig. 250)1,
which sometimes hold emblems of life and sovereignty in their
grasp2.

Such solar symbols are, indeed, deep-seated in human nature,
and, like many other natural phenomena, contrive to coexist in
spite of obvious inconsistencies. A Greek of the classical period
at least might speak of the sun as a revolving wheel and yet credit
tales of the Kyklopes and the Ckeirogdstores, though logically the
former should have forced him to identify the disk with the eye of
a giant and the latter should have called up the image of a
monster's circling hands. Of course, the further we are removed

Fig. 250.

from the exclusiveness of primitive religion, the easier it is to hold
simultaneously ideas that in their origin were incompatible. For,
as belief wanes, convictions become views, and views pass into a

1 E. A. Wallis Budge A History of Egypt iv. 133 Khut-en-Aten on a portable throne,
fanned by attendants, beneath the rays of Aten, The Gods of the Egyptians ii. 74.

2 E. A. Wallis Budge A History of Egypt iv. 121, 123, The Gods of the Egyptians ii.
81, A. Erman A Handbook of Egyptian Religion trans. A. S. Griffith p. 63, G. Maspero
The Struggle of the Nations London 1896 pp. 322, 328.

An Assyrian obelisk shows two hands issuing from a solar disk, the right hand open,
the left holding a bow (Count Goblet d'Alviella The Migration of Symbols London 1894
p. 26, after G. Rawlinson The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World*
London 1879 233)-