Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

926

Akmon

an inference now accepted by all philologists1. Further it may be
contended that the weapon of the sky-god—whether the thunder-
bolt of Zeus, the vajra of Indra, or the hammer of Thor2—was at
first just a fragment of the stony vault broken off and hurled down-
wards. As such it would be essentially akin to a meteorite.

When the Stone Age passed into the Bronze Age, and the Bronze
Age into the Iron Age, the thunderbolt—originally a stone missile3—

b

Fig- 774-

.-{•

1 E.g. G. Curtius Grundziige der griechischen Etymologic* Leipzig 1873 p- &
H. Reichelt 'Der steinerne Himmel' in the Indogemianische Forschungen 1913

23—57 (criticised by Gruppe Myth. Lit. 1921 p. 39), Schrader Realtex? i. 499bf>

2 Schrader Realtex? i. 433a_b- Supra ii. 64 n. o with fig. 26, 547 n. o, 620. ^

3 The double axe of bronze, so frequent in Cretan cult (supra ii. 513 ff.), was Pre.°
by the double axe in stone. The Tyszkiewicz axe-head with a Sumeiian inscr'P „
(supra ii. 510 with fig. 389, E. Unger in Ebert Reallex. ii. 449 pi. 213, a—c) is sU ^)
an axe-hammer rather than a double axe. But the British Museum possesses (no. 54 .jj
a small votive double axe in brown flint, acquired at Luxor and certainly of Vxi^-^f\tf
date (H. R. Hall in S. Casson Essays in Aegean Archaeology Presented to Sir A ^ ^
Evans in honour of his 7Jtk birthday Oxford 1927 p. 42 pi. 5 ( = my fig. 774> a_a