jyo ROMAN PAVEMENTS AND INTRECCL 



Another of the shell gorgets of Tennessee demands consider- 

 ation.* It represents a solar cross upon a solar disc within an 

 eight-rayed solar glory and surrounded by the solar path 

 which indicates the four points of the sun's rising and setting 

 at the summer and winter solstices, Illustration V., fig. 2. 

 And outside all, arranged so as to form a fylfot, but a sign 

 according to some writers f of the Four Winds of Heaven, are 

 four heads of a bird that in Mr. Holmes' opinion resembles 

 the ivory-billed woodpecker. In other lands, other birds 

 were sacred to the Sun. The hawk, for example, and the 

 goose. In Asia Minor the cock, as herald of the dawn, is 

 often placed beside the triskele, and was made sacred to 

 Helios, by the Greeks. J On the Brading pavement is repre- 

 sented a man with a cock's head and feet. 



The solar simplex formed of a single oval, turned upon itself 

 so as to resemble the figure 8, occurs at Pompeii, and on many 

 European mosaics, as well as on early Christian crosses in this 

 country. It is the simplest indication of the sun's diurno- 

 nocturnal path. 



A solar cross, constructed of an ordinary cable pattern, is 

 a common device. There is one on the Lincoln mosaic, 

 Illustration I., fig. 6, and in each of the angles formed by its 

 limbs, is placed a solar duplex. Even this conjunction passed 

 into Christian art. In the church of San Pietro, at Villanova, 

 of the VIII. cent, is a precisely similar Latin cross, and at 

 either end of its lateral limbs is a double interlacement, 

 Illustration VIIT. 



The solar duplex fills, as we have seen, an important panel of 

 the Dorchester pavement, Illustration VI., fig. i ; and it may 

 be noticed now, that it is surrounded by a solar glory of 

 lotus elements that are a little conventionalised. The Egyptian 

 hieroglyph for this "glory" is a semi-circular figure formed of 



* Holmes, op. cit., PL lix., p. 248. 



t Pictographs of Algouquins, cited by Stolpe, Amcrikansk ornamcntik, p. 28. 

 J D'Alviella, op, cit., p. 180. 



