The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations Part 38

Returning to a study of the pole and the beam of the oil-press we find that, in Essay II, Hewitt traces the Greek myths of Ixion and Koronis to the Hindu comparison of the heavens to a revolving oil-press and, in the ritual of the Vaj.a.peya sacrifice, refers the dawn of astronomy to the observation of the revolutions of the pole and the reckoning of the seven days of the week.... "Ixion, when raised to heaven, was the rain-G.o.d, who turned one wheel, to which his hands and feet were fixed by Hermes, the fire-G.o.d, continuously in the air, and this is merely a mythic way of saying that he was the fire-drill, made as the revolving pole to rotate perpetually, and by being turned to every side in his winged course, to produce life-giving heat, the generator of rain.... The Greek Ixion is the same word as the Sanscrit Aks.h.i.+van, the driver of the axle (aksha)....

Ixion is also, according to Bopp and Pott, connected with the root ik, pouring water, which appears in ichor, 'the blood of the G.o.ds,' the water of life."

"Moreover, the Sanscrit aksha is a word of which the original is found in the Gond akkha, an axle. In the summer festival of the agricultural Gonds, called Akkhadi or Akhtuj, the wors.h.i.+p of the cart axle or Akkha takes place and is a.s.sociated with Nagur, the rain snake.... In the Vaj.a.peya sacrifice ... the Soma priest consecrates two cups of the sacred drink Soma above the axle, at the same time as the Neskti priest consecrates two cups of Sura below it. In this ceremony we see a reminiscence of the days when the axle was the upright revolving pole pressing out the heavenly rain.... It also shows us how it was that the axle became the sacred part of the Soma cart ... and the revolving pole became the axle of the car of time and of the cart of the agricultural Gonds...."

It seems easy to trace from the rude one-wheeled cart, the evolution of the two-wheeled chariot, the prerogative of royalty in India and a.s.syria, employed simultaneously with the regal umbrella, which, when twirled, symbolized celestial axial rotation and suggested the idea of a protective deity. The transition from the "one-wheeled car" of the oldest Veda, to which "one horse named seven was yoked" to the chariot of Apollo="Seven,"

whose lyre, with seven chords, struck the divine heptachord of the Pythagoreans, and who drove seven horses, coincides with that of the umbrella which, in Greece, was borne at the period of the summer solstice in the Skirophoria or "festival of the umbrella," in honor of Athene.

It is particularly gratifying to me, as it so forcibly substantiates the views I have been enlarging upon in this investigation, to refer here to Hewitt's quotations (p. 7, vol. II) from the Rig-Veda, in which the wheeled chariot, closely identified with the year, is said to be drawn by the father-horse, with seven names, the seven days of the week, etc.

Hewitt likewise cites pa.s.sages of the Rig-Veda containing the conception of year wheels, the varying number of whose spokes agree with different divisions of the year. Thus one year-wheel exhibits twelve spokes, denoting months, another five spokes denoting five seasons. A chariot, with seven wheels with six spokes, is explained as meaning the seven days of the week and the six seasons of the southern year. "All living beings rest on the five-spoked wheel, ... the horses draw the never-aging wheel through s.p.a.ce, whence the eye of the sun on which all life depends, looks down. The seventh of those born together they call 'that born alone': this is the self-created thirteenth or central month; the six twinned months are said to be those begotten of the G.o.ds. They are arranged in their order, six on each side of the central month, by the leader who dwells above." A striking a.n.a.logy to the ideas I detected, as a.s.sociated with central rulers.h.i.+p, in ancient America, is set forth in Hewitt's statement that, it was to the one wheel year "that the Hindus likened their universal monarch, the Chakravarta or king, who sits, like the Kus.h.i.+te monarch, as the father of his subject tribes, in the central province of his dominions, and directs his satellites, the rulers of the seasons, who became the ruling stars of the frontier provinces-the Nakshatra stars-to turn the wheel (chakra) of time in its yearly round" (_op. cit._ p. 31, vol. II, see also p. 314.)(147)

The single wheel, without any indication of an utilitarian employment, is found directly a.s.sociated with the pole-star in j.a.pan, where, as in China, the use of the wheel has been known from earliest times. It will be for Scandinavian archaeologists to enlighten us as to the earliest traces of the use, by northern races, not only of the wheeled chariot, familiar to those who named Ursa Major, Thor's wagon, but also that of the mill-stone.

The employment of the latter in the description of the "revolving world mill-stone through which the waters of the Universe fountain flowed," is a proof that the Eddas were written by an agricultural people, possessing advanced methods of grinding or of extracting oil or juice from food stuffs. The a.s.sociation of the Norse mill-stone with the distribution of liquid, appearing to indicate that, like the oil-press of ancient India, the stone-mill of Scandinavia had been employed to extract fluids, challenges investigation as to the original home of the mill-stone and chariot of the Eddas.

Personally I am inclined to regard the term "world mill-stone" as a modernized transcription of the term "axle," and the whole as a rendering of the archaic idea that "heat was engendered by the revolution of the Great Bear" and that the axle of heaven was the distribution of vital heat and vivifying water. I shall await enlightenment as to the relations.h.i.+p of the Norse tree of the pole and Thor, with the creating fire-drill of Tur, the father-G.o.d; and the connection of the Norse "mill-stone" and fountain, to the fire-socket and celestial cistern of the Kus.h.i.+tes, said to be the "sons of the Finnic Ku, the begetter and rain-G.o.d," who, having migrated to India and united with other races, founded a mighty confederacy, the plan of which is figured in Hewitt's work (p. 220), by "the union of four triangles, representing the southeastern and northwestern races, ... with s.p.a.ces left open for the parent rivers," which flow towards the cardinal points (see figure 73, _c_).

If we now revert to the first stages of the mental evolution, the outcome of which we have been reviewing, we cannot but recognize the curious, but perfectly natural chain of reasoning which led early man to explain natural phenomena in different ways by the results of his own immediate observation and experience. He had discovered that the rotation of the fire-drill generated fire; consequently the rotation of the circ.u.mpolar constellations must generate life-giving heat. The churning or twirling of liquid in a vessel, by means of the drill, caused an overflow; consequently the action of the fire-drill also caused an external flow of life-giving waters, which, after the invention of the oil or grape press, was compared to the flow of precious oil or wine from the receptacle.

High mountains attracted lightning-clouds and when these collected around their summits whence rivers constantly flowed, life-giving rain descended; consequently the tops of cloud-capped mountains must reach to the axle of the heaven where fire, heat and rain were being generated and distributed by the rotation of celestial bodies. As Polaris the axle, pivot or fire socket, was immovable it could most appropriately be figured by a wooden or stone socket, from which fire and water flowed towards the four quarters. Such an image would also figure a year, and, by extension, time, since it marked the four annual positions of circ.u.mpolar star-groups. The adoption of a stone socket as an image of the "revolving heaven" could thus have long antedated, but have suggested the invention of the wheel, which was at first a religious and then became a royal symbol.

I venture to express the view that the archaic image of Shamash (fig. 73, _a_), the h.o.m.onym of Heaven and the North, which was "an ancient model" at the time of Nabupaliddin (879-855 B.C.), could only have been invented by a race of pole-star wors.h.i.+ppers who had long been acquainted with the uses of the fire drill and the oil-press. At the same time I point out how remarkably the combination of four rays and four streams in the image of Shamash (Shame=heaven) coincides with the explanation given by Hewitt (p.

9, vol. II) of the Akkadian eight-rayed star of Anu (heaven), which, he a.s.serts, is formed by the superposition of the fire-cross and rain cross.

It is a most remarkable and undeniable fact that there is a striking a.n.a.logy between the Anu sign as explained by Hewitt and the Shamash image.

The eight-rayed or "spoked wheel" of Ishtar, which figures on the same tablet, also gains significance for the same reason, and particularly when collated with the hymn cited in note 1, p. 448, in which she is clearly designated as the "axis of the heavens," _i. e._ the female Polaris.

Having indicated how the origin of the image of Shamash can be traced to conceptions arising from the use of the fire-drill and some primitive mode of extracting oil or of preparing a highly valued drink from seeds and plants, by centrifugal action, invented by a primitive agricultural people, I advance the suggestion that the celestial tree of the Nors.e.m.e.n and Semites, a.s.sociated with the fountain and the four rivers of life, appears as a closely related symbol which, however, mainly expressed the idea of stability. In the Eddas the tree occurs as a complement to the world axle, the first as the emblem of stability and of a central power which dispensed shade and life-giving fruits in all directions; the second as the image of centrifugal power which caused the star-groups to a.s.sume opposite positions and which impartially distributed heat and water. It is curious to note how readily from the fire-drill and beam of the oil press as a starting point, not only all forms of tree and pole wors.h.i.+p and the Chinese a.s.signment of element wood to the Middle, but also all symbols of centrifugal motion, such as the axle, the pivot and the wheel, could have evolved on closely parallel lines.

Let us now transport ourselves to a land where, to this day, the Indian women grind maize on a flat stone, by means of a pestle, where the oil-press and the mill-stone, the pole of the thres.h.i.+ng-floor, the potter's wheel and the cart wheel were unknown before the date of the Spanish Conquest and rotatory motion was a.s.sociated with the fire-drill and spinning whorl only.

NEW WORLD.

The ancient Mexican name for the fire-drill = mamalhuaztli, and that for spinning-wheel=malacatl, are both derived from the verb malacachoa=to whirl, turn or drill. At the time of the Spanish invasion (A.D. 1519) the Mexican priesthood lit the sacred fire of the altar by an extremely primitive method of employing the fire-drill: by holding it tightly between the palms of both hands and rapidly rubbing them alternately forward and backward.

The Codices contain numberless pictures representing a priest, in the act of kindling fire by inserting the drill in a simple wooden beam, usually exhibiting several small holes or sockets. On the other hand the Borgian Codex, which has recently been placed within general reach by the generosity of the Duc de Loubat, shows us two elaborate representations of the great ceremony of kindling the holy fire in a large circular socket, on the body of a woman which, in all cases is combined with the image of an alligator (see p. 91). In another Codex the alligator alone supports the socket. The smaller of these representations is reproduced in fig. 29, and on pp. 93-97 this image is discussed as well as the remarkable stone fire altars in human form, of which one has been unearthed near the city of Mexico, while no less than six were found at Chichen-Itza. My informant on this point is Mr. Alfred P. Maudslay, who added that they seem to have been invariably placed at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the temple, the facade of which is always supported by two great columns, each sculptured in the form of a great serpent with open jaws, the symbol which, in the bas-reliefs at Chichen-Itza and on the Central American stelae, recurs on the head-dresses of the rulers termed "Divine serpents,"

or "divine four in One."

Postponing comment upon the curious a.n.a.logy between the stone fire altars in human form, of the Mayas and Mexicans, with those of the Maghadas of Northern India, who called themselves the Sons of Magha = the socket-block whence fire was generated by the fire-drill, or the mother Maga, the sacred alligator, let us examine the fire-drill G.o.d of ancient Mexico.

Reference to fig. 1 reveals that it is impossible to see these Mexican representations, which I could supplement by others, and not be struck by their agreement with the descriptions of the Hindu pole-star G.o.d Dhruva, who stands on one foot, of the lame Hephaistos of Greek mythology, to which I would add that Hewitt also mentions in his preface to vol. II the Norse Volunde, the maimed, one-legged turner of the pole; the G.o.d called in the Rig-Veda the Aja ekapad, or one-footed goat, who watched the revolutions of the solar disk, and the one-legged bird of Russian mythology, a.s.sociated with a revolving house and fire-drill. In the Mexican Codices the Mexican Tezcatlipoca, held by one foot to the centre of the north, describes a circle around this. His foot evidently const.i.tutes the fire-drill, which, inserted in the socket, causes smoke, also rain and a serpent to issue from it (see 5 and 6). One figure, representing one leg only in the fire-socket, and a head, exhibiting a small, smoking fire-socket, appears, in the light of comparative research, as a cursive method of representing the fire-drill G.o.d, universally a.s.sociated with Ursa Major.

It is remarkable that, in one case water and in another smoke, indicating fire, issues from the socket of Tezcatlipoca's fire-drill, and that, opposite to the picture in the Borgian Codex, representing the kindling of fire on the fire-altar, we have the image of a pool of water from which four figures spring toward the cardinal points (see fig. 29).

It is only after recognizing that, like the people of the Old World, the Mexicans a.s.sociated with the fire-drill and socket not only the distribution of fire and heat, but also of water, that we also fully grasp the symbolism of the symbol of the "Black or Night Sun," from the "Life of the Indians," which is but one of many simple forms exhibiting main features which recur on the highly elaborated Mexican stone of the Great Plan (fig. 73_b_). When placed in juxtaposition the undoubted resemblance between the Babylonian image of Shamash and the Mexican image, as well as the deep-seated ident.i.ty of these two quadruplicate symbols stands out clearly: in the Babylonian, wavy lines emanating from the centre convey the idea of some fluid essence. In the Mexican, instead of the wavy lines, the conventional representation of a drop of water is depicted-the idea in both cases being obviously identical and agreeing with the primeval universal conception of heat or fire, and water emanating from a common source, and flowing to the cardinal points. In both cases an axle or socket is represented, and it is instructive to study the different ways in which the symbol recurs in the Mexican Codices.

[Ill.u.s.tration.]

Figure 73.

Referring back to fig. 1, 1, reproduced from the Codex Borgia, we see the axle with rays issuing from a circular band of water. A receptacle filled with water occupies the centre and contains a tecpatl, the symbol of the north, the same a.s.sociated with the fire-drill G.o.d in the next figure. In fig. 1, 4, the central fountain is surrounded, as in many instances, by stars which connect it with the nocturnal heaven, and it contains a rabbit=tochtli, the rebus figure employed to express the word octli, by which the rain was designated as "earth wine" (see pp. 95 and 185).

As I write, I have before me a whole series of painted representations from the Codices of what has heretofore been misinterpreted as images of the diurnal sun. In some of these the open centre is painted blue or green, in others it is filled by a heart from which flows, in some cases, a stream of blood, the essence of life. In several instances a tree with four main branches grows from the centre.(148) In one case the tree grows from a pool and holds in its branches the image of the axle, in the centre of which, as in the Humboldt Tablet preserved at the Berlin Museum, a figure is seated. The centres of others exhibit the head of a divinity painted red, a single eye, or the ollin. All examples establish the fact that the Mexican "axle of the North" represented fire and water emanating from a single source. In notable examples, where the axle is carved in stone, the identical features are conventionally reproduced. Some exhibit a depression or deep hole in the centre. This is the case in the remarkable example at the museum in New Haven, Conn., where the axle is carved on the top of a square altar, the corners of which exhibit symbols of the four elements, each accompanied by the numeral 4. The centre of the figure exhibits a carved ollin, in the middle of which a deep hole is situated. An a.n.a.logous but shallow depression occurs in the great circular monument, the Conquest Stone of Mexico (see p. 259), around which Tezcatlipoca, the one-footed fire-drill G.o.d, is represented sixteen times, each time in the act of receiving the enforced homage of the chief or chieftainess of a different locality.

The above monuments, as well as a rudely-carved representation of the "sun" recently discovered and unearthed by Dr. Ed. Seler, lying on a substructure of stones in the centre of an open s.p.a.ce, presumably a market place, definitely proves that the design was intended to be placed in a horizontal position. This intention has already been noted in the case of the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico (fig. 56), on which the rays and intermediate water drops recur, and are represented as emanating from the central Nahui Ollin, the Four in One, which encloses the masked face of the divine Twain.

A question naturally suggests itself at this juncture: How did the ancient Mexicans, who utilized the fire-drill in its most elementary form and as far as is known, employed no means of extracting oil or juice or of grinding food-stuff by a centrifugal process,(149) come to employ as a sacred symbol, the axle or "mill-stone" which, in India, had been adopted as an image of central rotation, by people who constantly used the fire-drill and the oil-press?

The strongest proof that the idea of a circular disk was a.s.sociated in Mexico with terra-cotta spinning whorls only, is the fact that, in the native description of the Great Temple recorded by Sahagun, a circular stone monument, employed in religious festivals, which the Spaniards described as a "stone wheel," is termed in the Nahuatl text as a "te-malacatl" _i. e._ a "stone whorl." Further evidence of the close a.s.sociation of such "stone whorls" with thread or cord, the product of spinning, is furnished by the way in the ritual, that the victim was attached by one foot to the open centre of the "stone whorl" and circulated around the stone which lay motionless. On the other hand, the sculptured zone on the Great Cosmical stone, enclosing the day signs placed in their fixed order of rotation, and the sculptured frieze on the Tribute Stone, furnish direct evidence that circular movement was a.s.sociated with the cosmical axle, or disk.

It is obvious that the distribution of water combined with fire from a common central source, represented as a mill-stone, could not have been suggested to the native mind by the use of the fire-drill and socket and the spinning whorl only. Therefore we are obliged to face the question whether the cosmical figure may not have been introduced, as a religious symbol only, by a race of civilizers who, though acquainted not only with the oil press and chariot but also with the Akkadian star of Anu, the combination of the rain and fire crosses, and with the a.s.syrian-Babylonian image of Shamash (an elaboration of the same idea), but in the absence of beasts of burden and sesame seeds in Mexico, had no opportunity, or did not consider it feasible or necessary, to teach the use of the chariot, oil-press or circular mill stone to the natives. Before forming any conclusions or conjectures on this point, however, a number of other questions must be investigated. One fact, however, stands out quite clearly: Whereas in figure 73, _b_, we have the rudimentary form of the quadruplicate symbol, closely resembling that which was already ancient and almost obsolete in Babylonia in the ninth century B.C. and pertained to a cult of Shamash, the North and Heaven, which had flourished in that country about 1850 B.C., the Great Cosmical Stone of Mexico represents the highly advanced development and elaboration of the identical cult, as actually established there until the year 1519 of our era.

Pausing here and looking back upon the foregoing summary of the universal spread of identical forms of social organization and of rituals suggested by the use of the fire-drill, in a.s.sociation with a primitive pole-star cult, there are a few distinct and unrelated points which claim special attention: First of all, the ident.i.ty in the form of the fire-altar and the cult of the fire-socket, among the Maghas and Nahushas of India and the Mayas and Nahuas of Yucatan and Mexico. Secondly, the striking resemblance of plan and numerical scheme which unquestionably existed between the ideal "divine polities," recorded by Plato, and the states which actually existed, of ancient Peru and Mexico. It is impossible to read Plato's scheme of an all-pervading division into 12, and his plan for the laying out of the capital and state and not to recognize the fact that, in Peru, as set forth on pp. 133-149 of the present work, these identical principles were actually carried out by the alien Incas who, in comparatively modern times, collected the natives together and organized them into a settled community. Thirdly, the undeniable fact that the numerical scheme of the Maya and Mexican Calendar and state-organization is identical with that adopted by Constantine, in establis.h.i.+ng New Rome.

Postponing a closer examination of these points until further on, let us now continue our comparative review.

The universal spread of the identical scheme of organization, vouched for by doc.u.mentary evidence, is further demonstrated by the results of archaeological and historical research and a comparative study of ancient symbolism. Thus it is impossible not to admit the striking and deep-seated a.n.a.logy between the a.s.syrian four-fold division of city and state, the t.i.tle "lord of the four regions" and the image of Shamash, the "four-spoked wheel;" the Indian, Egyptian and Grecian philosophical conceptions of four elements, culminating in Plato's Cosmos and Theos (an ent.i.ty, spherical in shape, incorporating four elements) and, for instance, the quadruplicate symbol carved in the centre of the Mexican Cosmical Tablet, which exhibits the symbols of the same four elements embodied in a single symbol, representing the supreme power, who is thus proven to have been conceived by the Mexicans, as well as by the Peruvians, as "the Air, Earth, Fire and Water in One," or the source of the four elements.(150)

When it is likewise considered that the Mexicans employed the divine t.i.tle, "four times lord," that the Maya t.i.tle "Kukulcan," signifies the "Divine Four," that the ancient map of Mayapan proves that, like the Kus.h.i.+te confederacy, and the kingdoms of a.s.syria, Egypt and Peru, it was a "Four provinces in One" or a "four-fold state," the ident.i.ty of the principles underlying the archaic civilizations of the Old and New World becomes more and more apparent. It likewise becomes evident that in each of these countries the significance and symbolism of the archaic cross-symbol and swastika must have been identical, and that, like the pyramid (the form of which, in the ancient Greek alphabet, is given to the letter delta which expresses, numerically, four, a quatuor, or 4,000) and the square stone altar or column, it figured the Four in One, the mystic Five or the Four and all-embracing One. The following array of facts demonstrates further the universal a.s.sociation of archaic cross-symbolism with the conception of an all-embracing, stable, central power.

A striking demonstration of this is furnished by the diagonal cross, employed as a Chinese character, to express the word wu=five, just as it is used, in Egyptian hieratic script, to express the syllables uu, un or ur (see fig. 60). Sometimes, in Chinese, a horizontal line is drawn above the cross and another beneath it, and John Chalmers informs us that, according to the Shoh Wan, this "full form means the five elements between heaven and earth, the upper line being heaven and the lower earth." The sign thus obviously const.i.tuted an image of the Cosmos, the 5+2=heaven and earth, thus furnis.h.i.+ng the familiar seven directions in s.p.a.ce, the chief and synopsis of which is the sacred Centre.

The a.s.sociation, in ancient America, of the cross-shape with central stable power, has already been discussed in the case of the Copan swastika, p. 222. At the time when I wrote about this and carved stelae found at Quirigua and Copan, I had not yet learned of the remarkable discovery made there, by Mr. George Byron Gordon of the Peabody Museum Honduras Expedition, which furnishes me with the most striking confirmation of the conclusion I expressed on p. 220, namely, that the personages, whose portraits are sculptured on the stelae, were high-priest rulers, who bore the t.i.tle "Divine Four," and were "rulers of the four regions."

Referring the reader to Mr. Gordon's report, published in vol. I, no. I, of the Peabody Museum Memoirs, I merely note his verification that, beneath several stelae examined for this purpose, there exist subterraneous vaults, in the form of the so-called Greek cross, above the exact centre of which the stela stands, its base being inserted in the stones forming the ceiling of the chamber. In one case the length of the cruciform vault is over nine feet from eastern to western extremity, the width of the branches being one foot and their depth two feet. Over thirty vessels of pottery were found in this, amongst them large urns with covers. It would appear from this that, like the Egyptians, the ancient builders of Copan performed certain ceremonial rites in connection with the construction of these artificially cosmical centres.

What seems quite clear is that the subterraneous vault const.i.tuted a sacred cosmical chamber and that the stelae were memorial stones, which probably represented the image of a lord, and the record of his fixed term of office which formed a period or era of the native calendar (see p.

221). The stela which formed the stable, visible centre of the hidden substructure may also have been employed as a gnomon during some period of time, and in the monument the initiated must undoubtedly have recognized the underlying cosmical conceptions, and regarded it as a highly developed form or variant of the archaic cross, the primitive record of a year. It is remarkable how closely a.n.a.logous are the Central American stelae with their hidden cruciform vaults, to the conception of the Egyptian "star of Horus" explained by Hewitt as the meridian pole raised in the centre of a cross denoting the four quarters.

The most striking evidence of a close affinity between the ancient Central American ah-men, or master-masons, who built cruciform windows in the walls of temples and designed the cruciform vaults under the stelae at Copan and Quirigua, and the amanteca or tolteca, the master-architects and builders of Mitla, Mexico, is furnished by Mr. M. H. Saville's recent excavation of three remarkable subterraneous, cruciform chambers, the largest of which is situated on the summit of a high hill near Mitla. The interior of the latter is elaborately decorated with geometrical designs, like those on the exterior of the Mitla palace. The extreme length from east to west is 9m. 71cm., from north to south 8m. 18cm., and its roof was composed of large flat stones. The entrance to this and the other cruciform vaults is situated at the extremity of the western arm, which in the case described was longer than the other arms.

The most remarkable example of such a cruciform crypt is, however, that situated beneath the palace of Mitla, which has been figured by Dupaix in Lord Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. IX. This vault is also built of the shape of a so-called "Greek" cross, but in its centre stands a large circular stone column reaching from floor to ceiling. It is impossible not to recognize the symbolism of this pillar situated in the centre of a structure, the form of which symbolizes the Four Quarters and the fundamental ident.i.ty of the column occupying the centre of the Mitla chamber and the Copan stelae standing above the centre of the hidden cruciform vault. Details a.s.sociated with the pillar which stood in the Great Temple of Mexico (p. 53), and the "pedestal" erected on the hill of justice at Guatemala (p. 79) definitely show that, in ancient America, the column was also a.s.sociated with star-cult, with the administration of justice and central celestial and terrestrial government. Investigation has shown that precisely the same ideas were a.s.sociated with the circular, square or octagonal columns of Egypt, Greece, Rome and j.a.pan, where they either const.i.tuted the images of the central supreme divinity, formed the support for the statues of earthly "divine" rulers, or marked the centres of the cosmos or state, bearing inscriptions of the sacred laws as in Athens, or of the distances to all points of the empire, viz. the Roman Milliarum Aureum.

It is remarkable to find that, whereas in ancient Byzantium the centre of the city had been marked by a column surmounted by a colossal statue of Apollo, a pillar or pole G.o.d, Constantine erected a "s.p.a.cious edifice, from the centre of which all roads of the empire were measured."

Considering that, at the time when this edifice was built, the ancient quadruplicate plan had been revised and the empire of New Rome had been divided into four parts by Constantine, it seems reasonable to infer that the form of the great edifice which marked the territorial centre of the new empire bore the impress of the cruciform plan, and that the shape of the cross should have been adopted throughout the empire, in edifices marking central consecrated places. How much of the true spirit of the Christian ideal of universal brotherhood entered into the const.i.tution of Constantine's New Rome it is impossible to conjecture. Niebuhr denies that Constantine was a Christian, records that he was only baptized shortly before his death, and states that the religion of Constantine "must have been a strange compound indeed, something like the amulet recently discovered at Rome, which is an example of that curious mixture of Judaism, Christianity and Paganism which we so frequently meet with from about the beginning of the third century."(151)

In an extremely interesting monograph "On the origin of the cruciform plan of the mediaeval Cathedral," by the distinguished architect, Mr. E. M.

Wheelwright, published in the "Transactions of the Boston Society of Architects, 1891," I find the significant fact that what is now the little church of S. Tiburce, Rome, in the form of a Greek cross, was built at the time of Constantine.

The same monograph teaches that "de Rossi discovered in the catacombs of Rome two scholia of a plan called specifically triclinium, of a date previous to Diocletian and probably of the third century. In such were celebrated, by the presbyters, the memorial feasts of martyrs, the congregation a.s.sembling outside. Tombs of a positive cruciform plan are also found in the catacombs. In the fifth or sixth century cruciform buildings became in the East, and _wherever Byzantine influence was potent, the recognized form for tombs, mortuary chapels and buildings commemorative of holy places_. These types seem to have been given, by Byzantine architects, special recognition of the purpose of their construction and to have appeared to them _as monuments requiring a symbolical expression of plan_, while they evidently _did not consider such symbolical expressions requisite in buildings planned for general congregations_, which, although of types without distinct a.s.sociation with the Christian faith, were held, for several centuries, to be sufficiently well adapted to purposes of Christian wors.h.i.+p without material change from their ancient form [that of the Roman Basilica]."

Referring the reader to Mr. Wheelwright's monograph for interesting data concerning the Byzantine influence discernible in the early types of Christian churches of cruciform plan erected in northern Italy and Europe, I merely note here that in St. Sophia, founded by Constantine, and completed by Justinian, "the load of the dome is thrown on four great piers disposed at either corner of a square. These great piers, with the corresponding b.u.t.tresses of the outer wall, suggest a possible symbolical intent in the arrangement ... otherwise the cruciform plan here suggested is expressed neither externally nor internally." I venture to suggest that in St. Sophia, "Holy Eternal Wisdom," as in the case of the Pantheon, the dominant idea may have been the all-embracing unity, but that, as the number four was identified with "wisdom and justice" by the widespread Pythagorean philosophy, that number must have seemed, to the initiated, to pervade the entire structure. In the case of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, where it was Justinian's intention to mark a sacred locality, we find the cruciform plan clearly carried out. "The church of St. Simeon Stylite at Kelat Seman Syria, built about A.D. 500, is a most interesting example of a cruciform church, marking a sacred spot [and a.s.sociated with a sacred column]."

"The church of the seventh century built at Sichem, over the well of the Samaritan, shows a distribution of plan similar to that of S. Simeon Stylite, the holy object being at the crossing.... There are existing at St. Wandrille and at Querqueville in Normandy, two (cruciform) triapsidal churches of a date prior to the Norman conquest ... a well preserved four-apsed tomb chapel exists at Montmajour near Arles, built in 1019; the detail and plan of which point to a Syrian prototype and resembles two buildings of an early date now existing in Dalmatia." The use of the cruciform type of church, anterior to the great revival of purely Christian religious architecture in the thirteenth century, was confined to Picardy and the Rhenish provinces, fine churches of this type being at Cologne, Bonn, Marburg, etc.

It is interesting to recall that the building of sacred structures is attributed to "secret organizations of free or enfranchised operative masons which existed during the middle ages, and possessed grades of officers and secret signs by which, on coming to a strange place, they could be recognized as real craftsmen and not impostors." To this day, in some parts of Germany and Bohemia, the swastika is the sign or mark of the stone-mason's guild which has survived from the mediaeval times. In the organized bands of masons whose mark was the swastika and who introduced Eastern cosmical symbolism into Europe and gradually developed, upon this basis, a purely Christian form of architecture, we may perhaps see the descendants of those ancient builders who, filled with the conception of the sacred Central power, the Four Quarters, the Above and Below, planned the square, seven-stoned zikkurats of Babylonia-a.s.syria, the pyramids, obelisks and sphinxes of Egypt, the columns and cruciform tombs and sanctuaries of Greece, Asia Minor and Rome, the cruciform temples and the topes of India and the domes of the Pantheon and St. Sophia.(152)

It would appear that these ancient builders were also the designers and founders of cities and states. It is, for instance, known that Hippodamus, the son of Euryphon, a Milesian, and by profession an architect, gained celebrity in his own art by constructing the Piraeus at Athens and by improving the method of distributing streets and planning cities ... and also wrote a treatise concerning the best form of government.

A kins.h.i.+p of thought undoubtedly exists between the trained builders of cosmical structures in the Old World and the ah-men, the amantecas and toltecas of Central America and Mexico, who also reared pyramids, cruciform vaults, circular temples, with openings to the four quarters (see fig. 30, p. 97), altars and pillars, and in their temples wrought, in stone, endless variations of the great human theme: the sacred central, stable power, the four quarters and elements, and the heaven and earth with the dualities of Nature, and likewise inst.i.tuted an artificial scheme of social organization, a calendar and religious rites based on these same fundamental principles, which can be traced back to primitive pole-star wors.h.i.+p. It has been of utmost interest to me, as I was approaching the end of the present investigation, to become acquainted with Hewitt's work and his view that it was the seafaring Turanians, originally a northern race, the wors.h.i.+ppers of Tur=the pole, who claimed descent from the seven stars of Nagash, the serpent=Ursa Major, and, from India, extended their trade and carried their form of social organization and religious cult first to the Euphratean kingdoms and afterwards to Egypt and Syria, where they were known by the Greeks as the Phnicians.