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H.^M. Westeopp, Esq., read the following paper :— - 

 Oii THE Pke-Cheistian Ceoss. 



The wide dissemination of the cross through many countries, and at a 

 period anterior to the Christian era, has been a subject of wonder, and 

 has elicited various theories from many. Mysterious meanings have been 

 given to these crosses ; but, like all mysterious solutions, have had fruit- 

 less results. If there is any mystery anywhere, it is not in the thing or 

 object itself, but in the nature of man, which is endowed with an univer- 

 sal instinctive principle, peculiar to man's common nature, by which 

 almost similar objects in the various stages of man's development, in 

 countries the most widely apart, are worked out and suggested to his 

 mind, according as the necessities of his nature require, and according as 

 the suggestive principle is awakened and developed in man to supply his 

 wants. In the early stages of man's development, when written lan- 

 guage was unknown, and there was no reading public," emblems or 

 symbols were used as the outward and visible sign of the thing signified : 

 thus in India a cross was the symbol of resignation, in Egypt, the sym- 

 bol of life, the meaning being derived from the root or germ from which 

 the symbol took its origin. After a careful examination of the several 

 crosses I have collected from countries the most widely apart, and uncon- 

 nected with each other, I have come to this conclusion — that the various 

 forms of crosses have a separate and independent origin in the different 

 countries in which they are used, the germ or root of the cross being 

 frequently found in the country where it took its origin : for example, 

 in Egypt the crux ansata, which is the hieroglyphic sign of divine life 

 and regeneration, is derived from the phallus, which is the symbol of 

 life and prolific energy. In Indi a, the cross or Swastika of the Budd- 

 hists is composed of two letters — ^'ff, su. and "pfT ti, or suti — which is 

 the Pali form of the Sanscrit swasti, which means, it is well;" or, as 

 Wilson expresses it "so be it ;" it is a symbol of resignation. In Greece 

 the form of the cross frequently found on Athenian vases was suggested 

 by the impression of the punch mark on the reverse of the early Greek 

 coins. 



In ornamentation the cross is one of the simplest forms, and is one 

 naturally suggested to the barbarous Indian, and to the intellectual 

 Greek ; for it is merely the intersection of two lines. Numberless ex- 

 amples of the cross used in ornamentation are to be found on the Greek 

 painted vases. The crosses, squares, and other patterns, on the tomb of 

 Midas in Phrygia, were, according to Mr. Stewart, intended as imitations 

 of carpet work, for which Lydia and Phryia were anciently celebrated. 

 There is a cross on the lintel of a subterraneous gate in the Pelasgic walls 

 of Alatrium, in Latium ; it is a combination of three phalli ; the phallus 

 ebing held in reverence by the early Greek colonists, as a symbol of the 

 prolific powers of nature.^' According to Miiller (''Ancient Art," p. 627), 



* Vide Dodwell's " Pelasgic Remaius in Greece and Italy." 



