MALLERY. | THE CROSS. 733 
being from the vase, and that on the left the recognized monogram of 
Christ: 
There can no longer be any doubt as to the use of 
the cross as a religious symbol long betore the advent 
of Christianity. The worship of the cross, extensive 
throughout Gaul before the conquest, already existed 
during the bronze age, more than a thousand years 
before Christ. 
It is especially in the sepulehres of Golasecca that 
lic. 1238.—Cross. Golasecca. 
this worship is revealed in the most complete manner, and there, strange to say, has 
been found a vessel bearing the ancient monogram of Christ, designed perhaps 1,000 
years before the coming of Jesus Christ. Is the isolated presence of this monogram 
of Christ in the midst of numerous crosses, an entirely accidental coincidence ? 
Another curious fact, very interesting to prove, is that this great development of 
the worship of the cross before the coming of Christ seems to coincide with the 
absence of idols and indeed of any representation of living objects. Whenever such 
objects appear, if may be said that the crosses become more rare and finally disap- 
pear altogether. The cross has then been, in remote antiquity, long before Christ, 
the sacred emblem of a religious sect which repudiated idolatry. 
The author, with considerable naiveté, has evidently determined that: 
the form of the cross was significant of a high state of religious culture, 
and that its being succeeded by effigies, which he calls idols, showed a 
lapse into idolatry. The fact is simply that, next after one straight 
line, the combination of two straight lines forming across is the easiest 
figure to draw, and its use before art could attain to the drawing of 
animal forms, or their representation in plastic material, is merely an 
evidence of crudeness or imperfection in designing. It is worthy of re- 
mark that Dr. Schliemann, in his ‘Troja,” page 107, presents as his 
Fig. 38 a much more distinct cross than that given by M. de Mortillet, 
with the simple remark that it is “a geometrical ornamentation.” 
Probably no cause has more frequently produced archeologic and 
ethnologic blunders than the determination of Christian explorers and , 
missionaries to find monograms of Christ in every monument or inserip- 
tion where the cross figure appears. The early missionaries to America 
were obliged to explain the presence of this figure there by a miracu- 
lous visit of an apostle, St. Thomas being their favorite. Other genera- 
tions of the same good people were worried in the same manner by the 
cross pattée or Thor hammer of the Scandinavians, and by the conven- 
tionalized clover leaf of the Druids. This figure often has been a sym- 
bol and as often an emblem or a mere sign, but it is so Common in 
every variety of application that actual evidence is necessary to show 
in any special case what is its real significance. 
Gen. G. P. Thruston («) gives the following account of Pl. Lr, which 
suggests several points of comparison with figures under other head- 
ings in this paper: 
There has been discovered in Sumner county, Tennessee, near the stone graves and 
mounds of Castalian springs, a valuable pictograph, the ancient engraved stone 
which we have taken the liberty to entitle a Group of Tennessee Mound Builders. 
