The Non-Christian Cross Part 11

Particulars of these articles can be found recorded in the literary and scientific journals of France. And the conclusion arrived at by the authorities upon such matters cannot be better put than in the revised edition in book form of an article in the _Revue Archeologque_ by Monsieur G. de Mortillet.

After referring to the relics of so much of ancient Gaul as is comprised in modern France, a subject he takes leave of in the words--

"But the pre-Christian cult of the cross was not confined to Savoy and the environs of Lyons. A glance at the coins of ancient Gaul is sufficient to show that it existed in nearly every part"--

M. de Mortillet, crossing the frontier and dealing with the said tombs of Gola-Secca near Milan in Italy, sums up as follows

"One sees that there can be no doubt whatever concerning the use of the cross as a religious sign for a very long time before Christianity. The cult of the cross was well spread over Gaul before its conquest and already existed in Emilia in the Bronze Age, more than a thousand years before Jesus Christ."

Let us pa.s.s on to yet another country, Switzerland. Here also we find unexceptional evidence of the general recognition of the cross before our era as a symbol which should above all others be venerated.

The Lake Dwellings of Switzerland may be said to have been brought to light by the extraordinary drought experienced in the years A.C.

1853-4; for though piles and ancient remains were found upon the sh.o.r.es of various lakes before that date, no great heed was paid to them till the drought in question lowered the waters of the lake of Zurich and of other lakes to an unprecedented extent, and certain discoveries due thereto led to the matter being thoroughly investigated by antiquarians.

The result was that many relics of the Lake Dwellers were found. And, placed upon those relics by this forgotten race of h.o.a.ry antiquity as the sign they venerated, was the symbol of the cross.

These relics, preserved for us by the sediment carried into the lakes by various rivers, cannot be less than 3,000 years old, are not improbably 4,000 years old, and may quite possibly be 5,000 years old; some authorities--Monsieur Morlot for instance--estimating their age at from 6,000 to 7,000 years. Suffice it to record the fact that these relics are admittedly pre-Christian.

Upon the articles in question, as on those discovered in the pre-Christian tombs of Gola-Secca, the cross is stamped as a symbol of life, of good omen, and of salvation. Even dies for stamping articles with the cross have been discovered among the remains of the Lake Dwellers. And the crosses are of three kinds; (1) the right-angled cross of four equal arms, of which so many variations, some enclosed in circles and some with the extremities widened and rounded, are used as Christian symbols; (2) the other cross of four equal arms, known as the St. Andrew's cross or _Chi_ cross; and (3) the Fylfot or Svastika cross.

The last named cross is a peculiar one of quite unmistakeable design; and there are two varieties, {image "svastika1.gif"}, and {image "svastika2.gif"}, of which one is obviously an impression or reverse view of the other.

The names _Fylfot_ and _Svastika_ are very generally applied to both these symbols. The term _Svastika_, an Indian one, is however applied by the inhabitants of Hindostan to one only; they calling the other _Sauvastika_. And it is curious to note that the meanings attached to these names, though, like the symbols allied in nature, are, also like them, the reverse or negative or complement of each other.

For instance we are told by Sir G. Birdwood that the right handed Svastika signifies the Male Principle, the Sun on its daily journey from East to West, Light and Life; and that the left-handed Svastika signifies the Female Principle, the Sun in Hades or the Underworld on its journey from West to East, Darkness and Death.[64]

This more or less official p.r.o.nouncement may be taken as a fairly accurate one, although it is obvious that the annual as well as the diurnal movement of the Sun should have been referred to; the half year between the Vernal Equinox and Autumnal Equinox representing Light and Life, and that between the Autumnal Equinox and Vernal Equinox Darkness and Death, just as clearly as do the half days between sunrise and sunset, sunset and sunrise. But it is to be feared that even those who remember how often Death and Darkness are referred to as periods of Gestation, will have some difficulty in seeing how a sign or symbol of the Female Power of Generation can have signified Death.

The fact of course is that the symbol in question represented both Life and Death, and represented the latter only in a minor sense and owing to the fact that the Female Principle of Life was regarded as the necessary reverse, negative, or complement of the Male Principle; which latter, having of the two the better claim to be considered the starter of life, was the one more particularly identified with Life and therefore with the vernal Sun-G.o.d.

It would also appear that the two symbols in question to some extent signified Fire and Water; Fire being of course the Male Principle, Day, Summer, Light, and Life; and Water the Female Principle. This still further ill.u.s.trates the point dealt with above; for though Water is the negative of Fire, yet Fire cannot produce Life without the aid of Water.

Returning however to our consideration of the cross as a symbol of Life of pre-Christian date and origin, and having already dealt with the lands now known as Britain, France, Italy, and Switzerland, let us now consider the evidence of Greece.

At Mycenae and elsewhere Dr. Schliemann discovered, among other relics of a bygone age, not only articles marked with the Svastika cross and the cross of four equal arms, but even seals and dies giving impressions of such crosses; thus demonstrating how large and prominent a part the symbol of the cross played in pre-Christian times among those in whose cla.s.sic tongue the earliest known copies of the Christian Scriptures were written centuries later.

It is also remarkable that Dr. Schliemann found golden crosses in the previously unopened tombs he discovered and explored at Mycenae; as many as five such crosses having in some instances been placed with a single body by those who sealed up the vaults in question thousands of years ago and many centuries before the commencement of our era.

As few if any unrifled tombs of so ancient a date have been discovered in Greece and first explored by a trustworthy investigator, and as, moreover, it would only have been with the bodies of important personages that crosses of so valuable a material as gold would have been buried, these discoveries, coupled with the self-evident fact that crosses of more perishable material may have been buried with the bodies of less distinguished people, and by this time, like both the bodies and the tombs which enclosed them, have gone to dust, are most remarkable. And they entirely corroborate the testimony borne by the coins of ancient Gaul, the contents of the tombs of Gola-Secca, and the remains of the Lake Dwellers of Switzerland, to the veneration paid long before our era by the inhabitants of Europe to the cross as the recognised symbol of Life. Nor as the symbol only of the life which ends in the grave, but also of the glorious hope that as the Sun, from whom we derive that life, whether considered from a daily or yearly point of view sinks but to rise again, even so we who owe our brief lives to the Sun-G.o.d, may, like the Giver of Life and only Saviour, rise from one life to another.

For whether the ancients were or were not unphilosophic enough to believe in the resurrection of bodies whose const.i.tuent atoms are continually changing and in time form part of other bodies, it is absurd to a.s.sume that they did not at times like ourselves conceive and dwell upon a hoped-for, if unexpected and improbable, Life-to-come.

Moreover it is with us, as it was with them, a _hope_; and it is disingenuous to label as Christian what was pre-Christian, and to claim as ours what has been common to the reasoning minds of suffering men and women of all eras.

It is equally disingenuous on the part of us Christians to keep in the background the noteworthy fact that even in pre-Christian ages the symbol of that hope was--the cross.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE PRE-CHRISTIAN CROSS IN ASIA.

If, leaving Europe, we pa.s.s on into Asia, we find that not only have the two varieties of Svastika crosses for thousands of years played a prominent part as a religious symbol in Hindostan, Thibet, and China, but that other kinds of crosses also were in bygone ages venerated by their inhabitants.

For instance our Eastern Empire is strewn with the remains of ancient temples built, like those of Christendom in later days, in the shape of a cross; and we are told that the oldest of its rock-hewn caves were planned after the same figure. It is also well-known that isolated stone crosses of pre-historic date are to be seen in various parts of India.

The evidence of Hindostan is however outweighed by that obtainable from the antiquities of Western Asia, concerning some of which Sir A. H.

Layard wrote:

"The crux ansata, the tau or sign of life, is found in the sculptures of Khorsabad, on the ivories of Nimroud--which as I have shown are of the same age--carried too by an a.s.syrian King."[65]

We have also to note the equally significant facts that the recognised symbol of the Phoenician G.o.ddess of Love--Astarte, Ashtoreth, or Ishtar, the Bride of the Sun-G.o.d--was a cross; that a cross was also a.s.sociated with the Phoenician Baal or Sun-G.o.d; and that the circle and cross, now the symbol of the planet held sacred to the G.o.ddess of Love, frequently occurs upon the ancient coins of Western Asia and was not improbably more or less akin in signification to the crux ansata of Egypt. The fact that upon very ancient remains still existing the Baal is represented as crowned with a wheel-like nimbus of rays should also be mentioned.

The cross more especially connected with the Phoenician "Bride of the Sun-G.o.d" in ancient days, was, as can easily be seen upon reference to ancient coins, where it occurs in the hand of the G.o.ddess in question, a long handled cross such as is frequently to be seen in our pictorial representations of John the Baptist.

As John the Baptist was an Asiatic and to some extent a pre-Christian Asiatic, we can here, without wandering very far from the matter in hand, pause to consider the question why we Christians represent John the Baptist, who had nothing to do with a cross, as holding a cross; if it be not that while Jesus was supposed to represent the Sun in its annual ascension, John was supposed to represent the Sun in its annual declension? What other rational explanation have we of the facts, (1) that John is represented as saying that he baptised with water but that Jesus would baptise with _fire_ (where the rains of winter and the heat of summer may be referred to); and (2) that the Christian Church in framing its calendar fixed upon what we call Midsummer day as the birthday of John the Baptist, and upon the clay which bears the same relation to the other solstice as the birthday of Christ, as if wis.h.i.+ng to ill.u.s.trate that other remarkable p.r.o.nouncement of John, thus placed at the point where the days begin to shorten, concerning Jesus, thus placed where the days begin to lengthen, "He must increase but I must decrease"?

The probability that to its original signification of Life, that of Salvation was added to the cross as a recognition of the fact that the salvation of Earth-Life in general and of Mankind in particular is due to the fact that at the Vernal Equinox the Sun-G.o.d "crosses" to save, summer and the fruits of the earth and therefore salvation and increase being due to the fact that the Sun then crosses the Equator, is supported by evidence from all quarters. And if we refuse to admit that Christianity is permeated with the ideas of Sun-G.o.d wors.h.i.+p, we not only have no rational explanation to offer of the prophecies put by the Evangelists in the mouth of John the Baptist to the effect that Jesus would baptise with _fire_ and would _increase_, but also none to offer of many another prominent feature of our religion; such as, for instance, the fact that while pretending to reverence all the Ten Commandments we deliberately make a point of breaking one of them in order to keep as a day of rest not the seventh day but the first, the day which from time immemorial was held sacred throughout the Roman Empire as _Dies Solis_, the Day of the Sun. For to aver as we do that Jesus was not made the subject of a Sun-G.o.d allegory, but purposely rose from the underworld on the Day of the Sun, at the time of the Vernal Equinox, in order to annul a commandment previously laid down by G.o.d and subst.i.tute a new one in silence, is only to make ourselves ridiculous.

Returning however to the matter more particularly in hand, it should be pointed out that the crux ansata mentioned by Layard is not the only kind of cross to be found upon the relics of ancient Babylonia and a.s.syria. For the cross of four equal arms and the solar wheel are also to be met with.

Moreover, as all visitors to our museums should be aware, the monarchs are represented as wearing in the place of honour round their neck and on their breast, a Maltese cross. And this cross, worn by the kings centuries before our era as the symbol which should above all others be venerated, or as best signifying their power over the lives of their subjects and their position as vice-gerents of the Sun-G.o.d, is admitted by all the best authorities to have been the sign and symbol of the Sun-G.o.d.[66]

CHAPTER XVII.

THE PRE-CHRISTIAN CROSS IN AFRICA.

Pa.s.sing on to Africa and a consideration of the _crux ansata_ or so-called 'Key of the Nile,' we find that this variety of cross had much the same significance attached to it by the ancients as had the more widely accepted varieties.

As a matter of fact no one acquainted with Egyptian antiquities who enquires into the matter in thorough going fas.h.i.+on, can in the end fail to be convinced that the Egyptian cross was a phallic symbol having reference to the s.e.xual powers of generation and to the Sun, and being therefore a symbol both of Life and of the Giver of Life.

The connection between the crux ansata and the Sun-G.o.d in the minds of the inhabitants of the Land of the Nile in pre-Christian days, is very clearly set forth by an ill.u.s.tration of Khuenaten in the act of distributing gifts to his courtiers which faces page 40, volume I., of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's "_Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_." For this monarch--also known as Amenophis IV.--and his wife are both represented as receiving the crux ansata from the Sun-G.o.d, and the Sun is marked with the crux ansata as its peculiar symbol.

Upon Plate IV. facing page 43 of the same famous work, we see Seti I.

surmounted by the Sun; two crosses adorning the latter. The crosses are, moreover, attached to two serpents issuing from the sun; and these were in ancient days phallic signs representing the s.e.xual powers.

On page 405 is a representation of the Egyptian G.o.d Khem, or Amen-Ra Generator; the Egyptian Priapus, or G.o.d of Generation. The names of this phallic deity show his connection with the Sun.

It is noteworthy that this particular conception of the Sun-G.o.d is accompanied by emblems of the s.e.xual organs of reproduction, and that he bears a St. Andrew's cross upon his breast.

Upon page 24 of volume III. of the same work is another representation of Khem, or Amen-Ra Generator. In this case also he is accompanied by phallic and solar emblems and wears a St. Andrew's cross upon his breast.

On page 26 Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson tells us that

"Khem was considered the generating influence of the sun, whence perhaps the reason of his being connected with Amen-Ra: and in one of the hieroglyphic legends accompanying his name he is styled the sun; that is the pro-creating power of the only source of warmth, which a.s.sists in the continuation of the various created species."

Upon Plate XXII., facing page 44 of volume III., are three different instances of the crux ansata being attached to the sun as the symbol of the Sun-G.o.d.