Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 2,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (thunder and lightning): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1925)

The Sky-Pillar in Sardinia 141

all Winds,

Thunders, and parts of the four-pillared World1.

But this conception of the sky as resting on four pillars is not in-
compatible with belief in the soul-ladder: both notions were com-
bined in Egypt2. Neither is the four-pillared sky necessarily

Fig. 83.

inconsistent with one central prop, the universalis columna*. In the
Museum at Cagliari is a bronze from Mandas representing the
whole apparatus of an early Sardinian cult (fig. 83)*. From a sub-

1 Orph. ei>xv 7rp6s ~S\ovaoXov 38 f. 'Avefiovs re wpoTravras | /ecu Bpo^ras l\6crp.ov re p.iprj
rerpaKLovos av8Q (so Portus for avXQv).

2 Supra p. 125 f. The 7I'/-pillar, with regard to which conjecture has been rife (Sir
G. Maspero The Dawn of Civilization4' London 1901 p. 130 n. 6, E. A. Wallis Budge
Egyptian Magic London 1899 p. 44 ff. 'The Amulet of the Tet'), would—I think—be
best explained as an abbreviated group of four columns representing the four supports of
the sky (cp. C. J. C. Reuvens Lettres a M. Letronne Leide 1830 i. 69 together with W. M.
Flinders Petrie Medum London 1892 p. 31).

:! Cp. the modern Greek belief in the earth as supported by one column with four other
pillars (supra p. 56 n. 2 no. 621).

4 L. A. Milani ' Sardorum sacra et sacrorum signa' etc. in the Hilprecht Anniversary
Volume Leipzig—London—Paris—Chicago 1909 p. 312 f. fig. 1, A. Taramelli 'II tempio