THE WINGED GLOBE, THE CADUCEUS, AND THE TRISULA.
I. The Winged Globe outside Egypt.—The Winged Globe of the Egyptians; a combination of the Disk, the sparrow-hawk, the goat, and the serpent.—Meaning of this symbol.—Its migration into Phœnicia, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia.—Modification of its forms.—Its later combinations with the human image, the Sacred Bird, the Sacred Tree, and the conical bethel.—Its influence upon some symbolic figures of Greece and of India, the Aureole, the Thunderbolt, the chakra, etc.—Winged Globes of the New World.
II. The antecedents of the Caduceus.—Homeric description of the Caduceus.—Transformations of the Greek Caduceus.—The Caduceus of the Phœnicians and the Hittites.—Assyrian ensigns, prototypes of the labarum.—The Caduceus in its relations with the Winged Globe and the ashêrah.—Hindu Caducei.
III. The transformations of the trisula.—Definition, antiquity, and different interpretations of the trisula.—Its connection with the Trident and the Wheel.—Its blending with the Caduceus.—Its interchanges with the Winged Globe, the Scarab, the Lotus, the lingam, the idol of Jaganath, and the Tree of Buddha.—The trisula in the bas-reliefs of Boro-Budur.—The trisula in Europe.—Summing up.
I. The Winged Globe Outside Egypt.
There are certainly not many features common to the different representations which the ancient Egyptians made of the sun when they depicted it, according to the locality, in the form of a radiating disk, of a goat, of a ram, of a sparrow-hawk, or of a scarab. Notwithstanding, they hit upon a means of contracting all these figures into one.
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Round the Disk, now a Globe, they twisted symmetrically two uræus snakes, with heads erect and sometimes wearing the crown. Behind the uræi this Globe received the outstretched wings of the sparrow-hawk, on its top the undulating
Fig. 111. Winged Globe of Egypt.
(Lepsius. Denkmäler, vol. iii., pl. 3 b.)
horns of the goat spread out; and from this fantastic mixture came those Winged Globes, which, while attaining their highest perfection under the eighteenth dynasty, formed, during the whole period of Egyptian art, so original and graceful a subject of ornamentation upon the pylons and the lintels of the temples."
It has been said, with good reason, that the Winged Globe is the Egyptian symbol par excellence. 1 According to an inscription at Edfu it was Toth himself who caused it to be placed above the entrances to all the temples in order to commemorate the victory won by Horus over Set, i.e., by the principle of light and good over that of darkness and evil. 2
Did the Egyptians imagine that the sun—or the soul of the sun—really assumed the form of a globe flanked by serpents, furnished with wings and surmounted by horns? Or, after having depicted the orb under its natural form, did they add uræi to symbolize its sovereignty, horns to
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recall its strength, and wings to indicate its faculty of translation through space?
Perhaps it is here unnecessary to choose between the two systems which divide the opinions of Egyptologists. A third interpretation, which to me seems to better account for the formation of the Winged Globe, makes it the result of a conscious and intentional combination of various personifications of the sun. M. Maspero, who is one of the most competent and persuasive defenders of the theory that the Egyptians began by believing the beast-like or fantastic creatures depicted upon their monuments to be real, admits himself that the priests may have invented composite figures with the fixed intention of expressing the union of distinct symbols and ideas. 1
When the founding of a national monarchy in Egypt brought about the establishment of a common Pantheon, the gods, whose attributes or signification offered the greatest similarity, were related to each other, either as members of the same family, or as different forms of the same being. Is it unreasonable to assume that this movement of unification between local personifications of the same divinity found its expression in the blending of the images by which they were represented?
It is only necessary to turn over the leaves of the handsome volumes published by MM. Perrot and Chipiez on the Histoire de l’art clans l’antiquité, or to cast a glance upon the first few of the plates appended by Lajard to his Introduction d l’étude du culte de Mithra, to be convinced that the Winged Globe was also one of the most widely spread and most venerated symbols in the whole of Western Asia.
Phœnicia exhibits it frequently on stelai, bas-reliefs,
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cylinders, gems, pateræ, and bowls. Frequently too, in that country, as in Egypt, the Winged Globe adorns the lintels of the temples. One of the most curious instances, quoted by M. Renan in his Mission de Phénicie, is furnished by the lintel of a Christian church built at Edde, near Gebal, from the materials of an ancient temple. The Globe and the uræi have been cut into for the reception of a red cross; below are inscriptions which the learned Academician attributes to the worship of Adonis. 1
The Winged Globe of the Phœnicians is found wherever their art was introduced, in Carthage, Cyprus, Sardinia, Sicily, and among different peoples of Palestine. It has even been pointed out on Israelitish seals of the oldest epoch, 2 and nothing prevents us from supposing that—like the serpent, the golden bull or calf, and the idolatrous images denounced by the prophets—it served, perhaps, to furnish a figured representation of Yahveh.
M. Renan, in his Histoire du peuple d’Israël, goes still further when he thinks he discovers the two uræus masses of the Egyptian symbol in the urim-tummin, or the two urim, described in Exodus, rather obscurely, as a mechanical means of consulting the divine will. "Perhaps the uræi of the Winged Globes," he suggests, "one meaning yes and the other no, were moved by a spring hidden behind the Disk." 3 Of course I leave to the eminent writer the whole responsibility of this theory, which is difficult to verify unless one be both an Egyptologist and a Hebraist. At all events nothing proves that the Israelites brought
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directly from Egypt the type of their Winged Globe; the latter rather reproduces the forms of Phœnician art, as is admitted, moreover, by M. Renan.
To be sure, the Winged Globes of Phœnicia often strive to reproduce the classic type of Egypt, always, however, with variations which enable us to easily distinguish them. Sometimes the uræi seem to come out from the lower part of the Globe, so that the superior appendages may as
Fig. 112. Winged Globe of Phoenicia.
(Renan. Mission de Phénicie, pl. xxxii.)
well depict serpents’ tails as goats’ horns, like those of Egypt.
Sometimes these appendages are replaced by a tuft of feathers which, perhaps, represents a sheaf
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