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

Ritual Horns

5°7

conventionalised article of ritual furniture derived from the actual
horns of the sacrificial oxen' and strictly comparable with the
Semitic 'horns of the altar1.'

During the last decade other archaeologists have accepted and
extended this comparison. R. Paribeni, for instance, has proved
(1904) that the ' Minoan' horns present a striking analogy to the
terra-cotta or stone crescents {Mondsichel, Mondbilder, croissants) of
the late bronze age and early iron age found in the pile-dwellings
of Switzerland, Savoy, Lower Austria, Hungary, and Italy2. These
vary in shape according to their antiquity. At first they have
a heavy altar-like base ; but in process of time they develope four
feet and then tend to become theriomorphic, the tips of the horns

being themselves decorated with the heads of horned beasts—bulls,
rams, and stags (figs. 370, a—d)z.

Recently (1910) Monsieur J. Dechelette has further compared

1 Id. ib. 1901 xxi. 137 f.

2 R. Paribeni 'Corni di consecrazione nella prima eta del ferro europea' in the
Bullettino dipaletnologia italiana Third Series 1904 xxx. 304—310 figs. 1—7.

3 M. Hoernes Urgeschichte der bildenden Kunst in Euro pa Wien 1898 p. 503 ff.
pi. 16, 1—6, id. Natur- und Urgeschichte des Menschen Wien und Leipzig 1909 ii. 564,
568 fig. 252, Forrer Reallex. p. 488 s.w. 'Mond und Mondbilder' figs. 405—408,
J. Schlemm W'drterbuch zur Vorgeschichte Berlin 1908 pp. 354—-357 figs, a—h,
J. Dechelette Manuel cCarcheologie prehistorique Paris 1910 ii. 1. 472—479 fig. 199, 1—3,
A. Mosso The Datvn of Mediterranean civilisation London 1910 pp. 343—345 .

Fig- 37°' a is a crescent of red sandstone (in part restored) from a station on the
Ebersberg, now in the Zurich Museum; fig. 370, b, from the lake-dwelling at Le Saut in
Savoy; fig. 370, c, from the nekropolis of Golasecca in north Italy; fig. 370, d, a terra-cotta
from a tumulus of the early iron age at Oedenburg in Hungary. W. M. Flinders Petrie—
G. A. Wainwright—E. Mackay The Labyrinth Gerzeh and Mazghuneh London 1912
p. 23 pi. 7, 13 publish a black pottery cow's horn tipped with a cow's head from a pre-
dynastic grave at El Gerzeh.

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a

Fig. 372.

b