l8o ROMAN PAVEMENTS AND INTRECCI. 



Europe to the North, strongly reinforced this legendary art, and 

 helped to carry it, with a hardly changed significance, into 

 Christian symbolism. 



5. The next intreccio to be examined is connected with an 

 animal engaged either in seizing other animals, or in biting its 

 own body, and generally its own tail. A common representation 

 is of a serpent with tail in mouth. We may see it in a Saxon ear- 

 ring from Norfolk, which closely resembles what has been found 

 in Egypt of the Rameside period ; in a Saxon gold ring, from 

 Sussex ; and in a carving on a Saxon tomb at Bedale Church, 

 Yorkshire. This has been described as " two serpents interwoven 

 biting their tails," but it would be more correct to say that each 

 is biting its own tail. In Illustration XIX., is represented a 

 sculpture described by Boutell* as " Knotwork and monsters 

 half animal, half vegetable." A carving of the same class 

 appears on the Durham Cross, Illustration XV., and another on 

 a tympanum at Penmon Priory, Anglesey. How are these and 

 all others like them to be explained ? 



It will be said, at once, that the coiled serpent of Egyptian type, 

 tail in mouth, represents Eternity. For the following reasons, 

 however, this cannot be \(a.) A mere symbol of Eternity, of 

 endless time, is the last thing a man in those days, or in any days, 

 would carve on a tomb. What he chiefly desired was to escape 

 as soon as possible from the underworld, and to obtain an 

 ultimate restoration of life, (b.) The interlacement often 

 consists of two or three serpents ; or the tail-biting animal is a 

 quadruped ; or, instead of the tail, it is biting its own or another's 

 body. fc.J Horapollo relates that when the ancient Egyptians 

 would represent past Eternity they delineate a serpent with its 

 tail covered by the rest of its body, which they call ovpaiov, the 

 Greeks 0ewiAjW>v, and its image in gold is placed on the head of 

 the gods.f (d.) The Egyptians had two ways of writing eternity, 



* Christian Monuments, pp. 11, 12. 



t Corey's trans., p. 6. Horapollo's work on hieroglyphics is of the V. cent. 

 A.D. Paul Pierret says : Le sens cles hieroglypes y est generalemeut bien saisi. 



