140 On the Ge?n and Coins described in Nos. 7 and 8. [No. 122. 



in the Ebermayer cabinet, with the difference, that the head of Abraxas 

 in ours is turned to the right instead of the left. Bayer, and other 

 annotators, most justly see in this extraordinary symbol another solar 

 allusion, as if the Basilideans laboured to crowd every possible Mithraic 

 emblem into their type of Abraxas. " Ramos cervi appositos Chifletius 

 non male censet, ut solis symbola omnia in unum cogerent Basilidiani. 

 Cervus enim vivacissimum in primis animal; obid soli, vitse principia 

 excitanti, sacrum." (Gem. Thes. p. 220.) 



IAQ were with the Basilideans the letters expressing the Supreme 

 Being,* resident in the highest heaven. The indistinct head in the coin 

 leaves us in doubt, as to the exact character of this part of the figure ; 

 it is enough to know that the hawk, the cock, and the lion are equally 

 employed as Mithraic emblems in the compound form of Abraxas, the 

 lord of the Solar Cycle, as shewn in instances already noted, and that it 

 is immaterial as to the general meaning of the figure, which of these be 

 employed to complete the mystical shape. Now this alternative use of 

 common symbols being ascertained, and the figures on the reverse of 

 the coin having a directly Mithraic character, I should be inclined to con- 

 sider the form on the obverse as not the less Basilidean, because of the 

 (apparently) human head which surmounts it. Bayer applies the term 

 " Abraxea Mithriaca," to one of the Abraxead gems, (No. 438), which 

 he describes, and such I conceive to be the symbolic effigy on the coin. 

 The " snaky legs" are the constant attribute of Abraxas; the human 

 head would not be inappropriate to the lord of the Cycle of 365 

 years in his directly Solar, or Mithraic character. The shield and 

 scourge are not less emblematical of the solarf disk, (the " clypeum 

 solis" of Ovid) and of Apollo Auriga, than of the minatory and protec- 

 tive power of Abraxas, a Mithraic form of the Deity ; while the 

 serpent is as observed in the above extract, directly referable to the 

 generative power of the great luminary. Nothing is more natural than 

 that the latter Grecian potentates of Western Asia, surrounded by 

 the professors of a Mithraic belief, should have in part admitted the 



* " Deum Mosis appellatum IAQ unde vox Jovis." Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. 

 Hist. lib. i. 



f " Corpus Solare seu discus solis in Libro PharkGj. vocatur s [^ Aaw i. e. Pelta 

 Nigra, sen Clypeus niger ; idque propter rotundam formam." (Hyde's Hist. Reli- 

 gionis Veterum Persarum, cap. iv.) This invests still more closely Abraxas with 

 a Mithraic character. |"j"| 



