DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.8755#0100
Knossos Excavations, 1903.
89
which on the Greco-Roman coins of Minoan Gaza symbolises the cult of
Zeus Kretagenes and his Consort and which sometimes forms the principal
type,1 is not rather a simplified Crux gammata than an abnormal form of
the Semitic mem? If we now turn from the Easternmost to the Western-
most traditional arena of Minoan enterprise, a parallel phenomenon of
great interest meets our view. In Western Sicily, where Minos himself
met with his legendary fate, his tomb was significantly marked by a shrine
of that Aphrodite3 whose chief sanctuary at Eryx represented to a much
later time the essential features of the worship of the Knossian Goddess in
her character of Lady of the Dove. It must therefore be regarded as a
highly suggestive fact that on the coins of the Cities of Elymian Sicily the
Swastika is set beside the head of the Goddess or above her sacred hound
as a special symbol of the cult.4 In Paphos it is the Cruxansata.
At Eryx the Swastika symbol alternates in the same position with a
star, that very universal mark of divinity. But the star-sign in the picto-
graphic systems of primitive peoples is very generally a plain cross/' of
which the Crux gammata itself is only a slight development. The simple
' Greek ' cross as a star symbol of religious import is found in Egypt as a
mark of Hathor.6 At times also we see it replacing the stars above the heads
of the Dioskuri.7 With a longer foot it is seen as a symbol of Astarte on
coins of Sidon, Berytus, and various Phoenician towns ; and in connexion
with Tanit throughout Punic Africa where the sacred significance of this
type was afterwards to be perpetuated by Latin Christianity,
On a series of seal impressions from the present Repository a cruciform
design appears as the sole type (Fig. 61). It seems natural to regard this
1 Stark, Gaza, Plate, Fig. I.
- Interpreted as an allusion to the Semitic epithet of the Goil : Mama, or the Lord.
:1 Diod. iv. 79, 3.
* On the obols of Eryx dating from about 450 B.C. above the dog. On the didrachms of
Motyaand Panormosof about the same date, beside the Goddess's head, and, again, beside the head,
on the coins inscribed Ziz, belonging to one or other of the Elymian cities. The hound, which here
is the sacred animal, appears from certain Minoan seal-types to have been early connected with the
cull. Another frequently recurring religious emblem associated with the Aphrodite of Eryx is the
Triton shell (wrongly described as a ' Murex') so significant in the Minoan ritual.
5 See, for instance, Garrick Mallery, ' Pictographs of the North American Indians' (Annual
Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 18S2-3, pp. 238, 239).
* Thus the body of Hathor, as the Xight Sky, is at times seen covered with crosses in place of
stars (Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, i. 430).
7 On coins of the Syrian Tripolis. On the cruciform types of the star symbol, see especially
L. Miiller, Religiose Syniboler af St/erne-, Kors-, og Cirkel-forin hos Oldtidcns Kulturfolk,
p. 7 sea,/.
89
which on the Greco-Roman coins of Minoan Gaza symbolises the cult of
Zeus Kretagenes and his Consort and which sometimes forms the principal
type,1 is not rather a simplified Crux gammata than an abnormal form of
the Semitic mem? If we now turn from the Easternmost to the Western-
most traditional arena of Minoan enterprise, a parallel phenomenon of
great interest meets our view. In Western Sicily, where Minos himself
met with his legendary fate, his tomb was significantly marked by a shrine
of that Aphrodite3 whose chief sanctuary at Eryx represented to a much
later time the essential features of the worship of the Knossian Goddess in
her character of Lady of the Dove. It must therefore be regarded as a
highly suggestive fact that on the coins of the Cities of Elymian Sicily the
Swastika is set beside the head of the Goddess or above her sacred hound
as a special symbol of the cult.4 In Paphos it is the Cruxansata.
At Eryx the Swastika symbol alternates in the same position with a
star, that very universal mark of divinity. But the star-sign in the picto-
graphic systems of primitive peoples is very generally a plain cross/' of
which the Crux gammata itself is only a slight development. The simple
' Greek ' cross as a star symbol of religious import is found in Egypt as a
mark of Hathor.6 At times also we see it replacing the stars above the heads
of the Dioskuri.7 With a longer foot it is seen as a symbol of Astarte on
coins of Sidon, Berytus, and various Phoenician towns ; and in connexion
with Tanit throughout Punic Africa where the sacred significance of this
type was afterwards to be perpetuated by Latin Christianity,
On a series of seal impressions from the present Repository a cruciform
design appears as the sole type (Fig. 61). It seems natural to regard this
1 Stark, Gaza, Plate, Fig. I.
- Interpreted as an allusion to the Semitic epithet of the Goil : Mama, or the Lord.
:1 Diod. iv. 79, 3.
* On the obols of Eryx dating from about 450 B.C. above the dog. On the didrachms of
Motyaand Panormosof about the same date, beside the Goddess's head, and, again, beside the head,
on the coins inscribed Ziz, belonging to one or other of the Elymian cities. The hound, which here
is the sacred animal, appears from certain Minoan seal-types to have been early connected with the
cull. Another frequently recurring religious emblem associated with the Aphrodite of Eryx is the
Triton shell (wrongly described as a ' Murex') so significant in the Minoan ritual.
5 See, for instance, Garrick Mallery, ' Pictographs of the North American Indians' (Annual
Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 18S2-3, pp. 238, 239).
* Thus the body of Hathor, as the Xight Sky, is at times seen covered with crosses in place of
stars (Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, i. 430).
7 On coins of the Syrian Tripolis. On the cruciform types of the star symbol, see especially
L. Miiller, Religiose Syniboler af St/erne-, Kors-, og Cirkel-forin hos Oldtidcns Kulturfolk,
p. 7 sea,/.