452 ANNUAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



still cover several acres of ground in the neighborhood. On the 

 analogy of other sacred names of cities the primitive cult-object here 

 was the ntr-pole. This was not an axe as has so often been sup- 

 posed, but a pole that was wrapped around with a band of colored 

 cloth, tied with cord lialfAvay up the stem, with the upper part of the 

 band projecting as a flap at top. Dr. Griffith conjectured that it was 

 a fetish, e. g., a bone carefully wound round with cloth, but he noted 

 that "this idea is not as yet supported by any ascertained facts." 

 As a hieroglyph this wraj^ped-up pole expresses nfr, " god," '' divine," 

 in which sense it is very common from the earliest times ; gradually 

 it became determinative of divinity and of the divine names and 

 ideograiDhic of divinity. Another common ideograph of " god " in 

 the Old Kingdom was the Falcon (Horus) upon a perch, and this 

 sign was also employed as a determinative of divinity and of the 

 names of individual gods ; it even sometimes occurs as a determinative 

 sign of the ntr-po\c, e. g. Pyramid Texts, 482. This use of the Fal- 

 con indicates that in the early dynasties the influence of the Upper 

 Egyptian Falcon god (Horus) was paramount. But there is reason 

 for believing that the ntr--pole cult had at an earlier period been the 

 predominant one among the writing people of the Delta; this, I 

 think, is shown by the invariable use of the ntr-pole sign in the 

 words for priest {hm-ntr, "god's servant"), and temple {ht-ntr, 

 " god's house "). Now, on a label of King Aha of the First Dynasty 

 there is a representation of the temple of Neith of Sais. Here two 

 poles with triangular flags at top are shown on either side of the 

 entrance. Later figures of the same temple show these poles with 

 the rectangular flags precisely as we find in the ntr-sigR. A figure 

 of the temple of Hershef on the Palermo Stone shows two poles with 

 triangular flags, while a Fourth Dynasty drawing of the same temple 

 shows the same poles with rectangular flags. We see, therefore, that 

 the triangular-flagged pole equals the rectangular-flagged one, and 

 that the ntr is really a pole or mast Avith flag. Poles of this kind 

 were probably planted before the entrances to most early Egyptian 

 temples, and the great flag masts set up before the p3dons of the great 

 temples of the Eighteenth and later dynasties are obviously sur- 

 vivals of the earlier poles. The height and straightness of these 

 poles prove that they can not have been produced by any native 

 Egyptian tree; in the Empire flag staves were regularly imported 

 from Syria; it is probable therefore that in the earlier times they 

 were introduced from the same source. A well-known name for 

 Syria and the east coast of the Red Sea, as well as of Punt, was 

 Ta-ntr, " the land of the wi^r-pole." This was the region in which the 

 primitive Semitic goddess Astarte was worshipped. In Canaan 

 there was a goddess Ashera whose idol or symbol was the ashera 

 pole. The names of Baal and Ashera are sometimes coupled pre- 



