THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 677 



and Egyptians should both have adopted as the symbol of the sun 

 the lotus-flower, which opens its petals to the dawn and infolds 

 them on the approach of night, and which seems to be born of 

 itself on the surface of the still waters. But the hypothesis of a 

 borrowing becomes much more probable when, in the iconography 

 of both peoples, we see the flower at once serving as a support to 

 the solar gods — as Horus or Vishnu — and figuring in the hands of 

 the goddesses associated with those gods — Hathor or Lakshmi, the 

 Venuses of Egypt and India. The probability at last changes 

 into a half-certainty when we find the lotus employed on both 

 sides to render the same shade of thought in the rather indirect 

 applications of solar symbolism. With either, the plant represents 

 less the sun itself than the solar matrix, the mysterious sanctuary 

 to which the sun retires every night to draw from it a new life. 



We do not know and shall probably never know how the first 

 communications of ideas were made between Egypt and India, 

 But we can, by comparing monuments, discover some of the inter- 

 mediate steps of the route which the symbolism of the lotus fol- 

 lowed toward the East. Thus, in the sculptures of Phoenicia we 

 find goddesses holding lotus-cups in their hands, and in the Per- 

 sian bas-relief of Tak-i-Bustan the solar god Mithra is seated on 

 the opened flower of the plant. Among the Mesopotamians and 

 the Persians it is not rare to see this flower adorning tall trees, in 

 which it is easy to recognize the sacred tree of the Semites or the 

 Iranian tree that secretes the liquor of immortality. On a patera 

 of Phoenician workmanship, found at Anathontis, the flowers of 

 the lotus, borne by these conventional trees, are gathered in one 

 hand by persons clothed in the Assyrian style, holding a key of 

 life in the other hand. While the rosy lotus of the Egyptian 

 monuments does not now grow wild anywhere in the valley of 

 the Nile, it is, by a curious coincidence, preserved in the flora as 

 well as in the symbolism of India. 



One of the most frequent forms of the cross is called the gam- 

 ma cross, because its four arms are bent at a right angle so as to 

 form a figure like that of four Greek gammas turned in the same 

 direction and joined at the base. We meet it among all the 

 peoples of the Old World, from Japan to Iceland, and it is found 

 in the two Americas. There is nothing to prevent us from suppos- 

 ing that in the first instance it was spontaneously conceived every- 

 where, like the equilateral crosses, circles, triangles, chevrons, and 

 other geometrical ornaments so frequent in primitive decoration. 

 But when we see it, at least among the peoples of the Old Conti- 

 nent, invariably passing for a talisman, appearing in the funeral 

 scenes or on the tombstones of Greece, Scandinavia, Numidia, and 

 Thibet, and adorning the breasts of divine personages — of Apollo 

 and Buddha — without forgetting certain representations of the 



