to this, and these birds in connection with phallic
worship are interesting as emblems, signifying incubation.
Let us now consult Lucian, who in his work
£ De Syria Dea 5 describes a temple at Hierapolis, near
the Euphrates, which, as we have seen, has much in.
common with these temples at Zimbabwe. In § 33,
p. 479, he mentions a curious pediment, of no distinctive
shape, called by the Assyrians I the symbol,5 on
the top of which is perched a bird.
Amongst some of Dr. Schliemann’s
discoveries at Mycene, there are also
images surmounted by birds which
v. -y * differ from the £oavov in the ‘De
Syria Dea5 solely in the fact that
I they are not shapeless, but represent
/ a nude female figure. The goddess
I of this shrine was evidently Astarte,
\ J and wore a cestus, ‘ with which none
but Urania is adorned.’1 On a
b i r d o n p e d e s t a l Phoenician coin found in Cvnrus
FR OM T H E ZODIAC , C z y p r U S
O F d e n d e r a h we have the dove on the betyle or
pedestal as the central object.2 Tn
Egyptian archaeology we also come across the bird
on the pedestal, more particularly in the curious
zodiac of Denderah, where a bird perched on a pillar,
and with the crown of Upper Egypt on its head, is,
as Mr. Norman Lockyer tells me, used to indicate
the commencement of the year; also from the Soudan
we have a bird on a pedestal carved on some rude
1 Lucian, De Syria, Dea, p, 477.
2 Perrot and Ghipiez’s Phoenicia, p. 281.
stone fragments now in the Ashmolean Museum. It
is just possible that the birds at Zimbabwe had some
solstitial meaning, but as their exact position on the
temple walls is lost, it is impossible to speak on this
point with anything like certainty. Also in the difficult
question of early Arabian cult, which was closely
bound up with that of Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia,
we find the vulture as the totem of a Southern Arabian
tribe at the time of the Himyaritic supremacy, and it
was worshipped there as the god Nasr, and is mysteriously
alluded to in Himyaritic inscriptions as ‘ the
vulture of the East and the vulture of the West,5
which also would seem to point to a solstitial use of
the emblem.1
The religious symbolism of these birds is further
attested by our finding two tiny representations of
the larger emblems ; they, too, represented birds on
pillars, the longest of which is only three and a half
inches, and it is perched on the pillar more as the
bird is represented in the zodiac of Denderah.
Evidently these things were used as amulets or
votive offerings in the temple. Lucian alludes to the
phalli used as amulets by the Greeks with a human
figure on the end, and he connects them with the
tower thirty cubits in height.
In the centre of the temple on the hill stood an
altar, into the stones of which were inserted and also
scattered around a large number of soapstone objects
representing the phallus either realistically or conventionally,
but always with anatomical accuracy which
1 Kremer, Ahademie der Wissenschaft. Wien.