782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



chrisme or monogram of Christ (X and P interlaced) by the sim- 

 ple addition of a loop.* In a similar way the chrisme becomes 

 the ansated cross or key of life, through a series of transforma- 

 tions which are found among the inscriptions of the island of 

 PhilEe. 



It is not even necessary that the symbols thus combined shall 

 originally have possessed the slightest analogy of forms. There 

 are certainly not many traits common to the different images of 

 the sun in the valley of the Nile, where it is represented, accord- 

 ing to the districts, as a radiating disk, a hawk, a goat, etc. But 

 the Egyptians not only succeeded in condensing all these figures 

 into the winged globe of their pylons and their cornices, but they 

 also contrived to give the strange amalgamation the features of 

 another solar animal, the flying scarabseus. When the winged 

 globe passed from Egypt into Asia, the Assyrians in turn inclosed 

 in the Egyptian disk the figure of their god Assur, which they 

 represented as a winged genius, and till then the ancient sacred 

 bird of Chaldea, which, according to M. Menant, contributed with 

 the Mesopotamians to form the definite type of their winged disk, 

 was not. Some of the coins of Asia Minor help us to comprehend 

 the different processes by the aid of which the two symbols could 

 thus be combined, if not also the principal stages of the operation 

 by which they produced a third. The sun was often symbolized 

 in Asia Minor by a triscele — that is, a disk around which radiated 

 three legs joined at the thigh ; at other times it was represented 

 there, as in Egypt, by animals like the lion, the boar, the eagle, the 

 dragon, and the cock. A coin of Aspendus in Pamphylia shows 

 the cock in the field, by the side of the triscele ; other pieces of 

 the same origin show the triscele placed over or joined to the body 

 of the animal without its losing its natural appearance. Finally, 

 in a Lycian coinage, in the British Museum, the two symbols, at 

 first placed together, then joined, are literally fused into one an- 

 other ; the three legs of the triscele are metamorphosed into three 

 cocks' heads, which are grouped in the same way around a center. 



Most frequently the symbolical syncretism is conscious and 

 premeditated, whether the matter be one of the union for greater 

 efficacy of the attributes of several divinities into a single talis- 

 man, or one of affirming, by the fusion of symbols, the unity of 

 the gods and the identity of cults. Of such character were the 

 talismans called panthei, with which the Gnostics endeavored to 

 condense the divine symbols supplied by the principal religions 



* M. Gaidoz, in his book on the Gallic God of the Sun and the Symbolism of the Wheel 

 (Le Dieu Gaulois du Sohil et la Syrnbolisme de la Roue), defines the chrisme as " a wheel 

 with six rays without the circumference, and with a loop on the top of the staff in the mid- 

 dle." It should be added that even in the catacombs the chrisme is sometimes drawn within 

 a circle. 



