308 ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Paet II. 



the angels copied directly from the winged figures on Greek 

 and Roman monuments, and having a still stronger analogy 

 with those of the Etruscan rites (where they held an im- 

 portant office in a future world), are also among the many 

 proofs of the Christians having borrowed in very early times 

 from Pagan sources. There is also a very remarkable piece 

 of sculpture on wood, of the time of Diocletian, on a frieze 

 and cornice over the door of a church at Old Cairo, where the 

 Deity, seated in the centre, within a circle, supported on either 

 side by winged angels, with a procession of the apostles, six on 

 each side, is an evident imitation of the winged globe over 

 the doorways of Egyptian temples. Again the Egyptian sign 

 of life, the sacred Tau, was taken as the earliest form of the 

 cross. It has even been found on Roman monuments in 

 Italy and France; and in the Christian tombs at the Great 

 Oasis it heads the inscriptions in lieu of the usual cross. Nor 

 can any one look on the figure of Isis and the infant Horus 

 without recalling that of the Madonna with the Child. 



It is true that one of the earliest modes of representing the 

 Virgin in Italy was without the child, with her hands uplifted, 

 as in an attitude of prayer ; but its first introduction, as Mrs. 

 Jameson says (p. 63), "may be traced to Alexandria," and 

 " the time-consecrated Egyptian myth of Isis and Horus may 

 have suggested the original type, the outward form and the 

 arrangement, of the maternal group, as the classical Grreek 

 types of the Orpheus (of Mercury), and Apollo, furnished the 

 early symbols of the Eedeemer as the Good Shepherd." The 

 nimbus, or glory, was, in like manner, borrowed from Pagan 

 times. It was originally the disk placed on the head of the 

 Egyptian god Re, the Sun, and having been transferred to 

 Apollo, or Phoebus, who answered to him in Greece, passed 

 to various gods and men, and thence to Christian saints; 

 and if in India, Greece, Etruria, and Rome, the circle was 

 sometimes broken up into rays, the idea was the same. It 



