The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its...

Leaden idol of Hissarlik.—Dr. Schliemann, in his explorations on the hill of Hissarlik, at a depth of 23 feet, in the third, the burnt city, found a metal idol (fig. 125), which was determined on an analysis to be lead.[150] It was submitted to Professor Sayce who made the following report:[151]

It is the Artemis Nana of Chaldea, who became the chief deity of Carchemish, the Hittite capital, and passed through Asia Minor to the shores and islands of the Ægean Sea. Characteristic figures of the goddess have been discovered at Mycenæ as well as in Cyprus.

Precisely the same figure, with ringlets on either side of the head, but with a different ornament (dots instead of Swastika) sculptured on a piece of serpentine was recently found in Mæonia, and published by M. Salmon Reinach in Revue Archæologique. By the side of the goddess stands the Babylonian Bel, and among the Babylonian symbols that surround them is the representation of one of the terra-cotta whorls, of which Dr. Schliemann found such multitudes at Troy.

The vulva is represented by a large triangle, in the upper side of which we see three globular dots; we also see two lines of dots to the right and left of the vulva. The most curious ornament of the figure is a Swastika, which we see in the middle of the vulva. * * * So far as we know, the only figures to which the idol before us has any resemblance are the female figures of white marble found in tombs in Attica and in the Cyclades. Six of them, which are in the museum at Athens, * * * represent naked women. * * * The vulva is represented on the six figures by a large triangle. * * * Similar white Parian marble figures, found in the Cyclades, whereon the vulva is represented by a decorated triangle, are preserved in the British Museum. Lenorment, in “Les Antiquités de la Troade” (p. 46), says: “The statuettes of the Cyclades, in the form of a naked woman, appear to be rude copies made by the natives, at the dawn of their civilization, from the images of the Asiatic goddess which had been brought by Phœnician merchants. They were found in the most ancient sepulchers of the Cyclades, in company with stone weapons, principally arrowheads of obsidian from Milo, and with polished pottery without paintings. We recognize in them the figures of the Asiatic Venus found in such large numbers from the banks of the Tigris to the island of Cyprus, through the whole extent of the Chaldeo-Assyrian, Aramæan, and Phœnician world.

An added interest centers in these specimens from the fact that terra-cotta shields of similar triangular form, fitted to the curvature of the body, were worn in the same way in prehistoric times by the aboriginal women of Brazil. These pieces have small holes at the angles, apparently for suspension by cords. The U. S. National Museum has some of these, and they will be figured in the chapter relating to Brazil. The similarity between these distant objects is remarkable, whether they were related or not, and whether the knowledge or custom came over by migration or not.

Owl-shaped vases.—It is also remarkable to note in this connection the series of owl-shaped terra-cotta vases of the ruined cities of Hissarlik and their relation to the Swastika as a possible symbol of the generative power. These vases have rounded bottoms, wide bellies, high shoulders (the height of which is emphasized by the form and position of the handles), the mouth narrow and somewhat bottle-shaped, but not entirely so. What would be the neck is much larger than usual for a bottle, and more like the neck of a human figure, which the object in its entirety represents in a rude, but, nevertheless, definite, manner. At the top of the vase are the eyes, eyebrows, and the nose. It is true that the round eyes, the arched eyebrows, and the pointed nose give it somewhat an owlish face, but if we look at fig. 127, the human appearance of which is emphasized by the cover of the vase, which serves as a cap for the head and has the effect of enlarging it to respectable dimensions, we will see how nearly it represents a human being. The U. S. National Museum possesses one of these vases in the Schliemann collection (fig. 126). It has the face as described, while the other human organs are only indicated by small knobs. It and the three figures, 127, 128, and 129, form a series of which the one in the Museum would be the first, the others following in the order named. No. 2 in the series has the female attributes indefinitely and rudely indicated, the lower organ being represented by a concentric ring.

In No. 3 the mammæ are well shown, while the other organ has the concentric ring, the center of which is filled with a Greek cross with four dots, one in each angle, the Croix swasticale of Zmigrodzki (fig. 12). No. 4 of the series is more perfect as a human, for the mouth is represented by a circle, the mammæ are present, while in the other locality appears a well-defined Swastika. The first three of these were found in the fourth city at 20 to 22 feet depth, respectively; the last was found in the fifth city at a depth of 10 feet. The leaden idol (fig. 125), with its Swastika mark on the triangle covering the private parts, may properly be considered as part of the series. When to this series is added the folium vitus of Brazil (pl. 18), the similarity becomes significant, if not mysterious. But, with all this significance and mystery, it appears to the author that this sign, in its peculiar position, has an equal claim as a symbol of blessing, happiness, good fortune, as that it represents the generative power.

From the earliest time of which we have knowledge of the thoughts or desires of man we know that the raising up “heirs of his body” constituted his greatest blessing and happiness, and their failure his greatest misery. The first and greatest command of God to man, as set forth in the Holy Bible, is to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”[154] This was repeated after the Deluge,[155] and when He pronounced the curse in the Garden, that upon the woman[156] was, “In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” God’s greatest blessing to Abraham, when He gave to him and his seed the land as far as he could see, was that his seed should be as the dust of the earth, “so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.”[157] “Tell the stars, if thou be able to number them * * * so shall thy seed be. * * * As the father of many nations,” etc. We all know the story of Sarai, how, when she and Abraham had all riches and power on earth, it was as naught while they were childless, and how their greatest blessing was the Divine promise of an heir, and that their greatest happiness was over the birth of Isaac. This may be no proof of the symbolism of the Swastika, but it shows how, in high antiquity, man’s happiness in his children was such as makes the Swastika mark, in the position indicated, equally a symbol of good fortune and blessing as it was when put on the spindle-whorls of Hissarlik, the vases of Greece, or the fibulæ of Etruria.

Other scholars have been inclined to ascribe the oldest cities of Hissarlik to the Neolithic age, because remarkable weapons and utensils of polished stone are found in them. * * * This conception is unjustified and inadmissible. To the third century A. D. belongs the surface of the fortress hill of Hissarlik, which still lies above the Macedonian wall; and the oldest “cities”—although not only polished stones but also chipped flakes of chalcedony and obsidian occur in them—nevertheless fall within the age of metals, for even in the first city utensils of copper, gold, and even silver were dug up. No stone people, properly so called, dwelt upon the fortress hill of Hissarlik, so far as it has been uncovered.

Virchow’s opinion that none of the cities of Hissarlik were in the stone age may be correct, but the reason he gave is certainly doubtful. He says they come within the age of metals, for, or because, “utensils of copper, gold, and even silver were dug up among the ruins of the first city.” That the metals, gold, silver, or copper, were used by the aborigines, is no evidence that they were in a metal age, as it has been assigned and understood by prehistoric archæologists. The great principle upon which the names of the respective prehistoric ages—stone, bronze, and iron—were given, was that these materials were used for cutting and similar implements. The use of gold and silver or any metal for ornamental purposes has never been considered by archæologists as synchronous with a metal age. Indeed, in the United States there are great numbers of aboriginal cutting implements of copper, of which the U. S. National Museum possesses a collection of five or six hundred; yet they were not in sufficient number to, and they did not, supersede the use of stone as the principal material for cutting implements, and so do not establish a copper age in America. In Paleolithic times bone was largely used as material for utensils and ornaments. Bone was habitually in use for one purpose or another, yet no one ever pretended that this establishes a bone age.

In countries and localities where stone is scarce and shell abundant, cutting implements were, in prehistoric times, made of shell; and chisels or hatchets of shell, corresponding to the polished stone hatchet, were prevalent wherever the conditions were favorable, yet nobody ever called it an age of shell. So, in the ruined cities of Hissarlik, the first five of them abounded in stone implements peculiar to the Neolithic age, and while there may have been large numbers of implements and utensils of other materials, yet this did not change it from the polished stone age. In any event, the reason given by Virchow—i. e., that the use, undisputed, of copper, gold, and silver by the inhabitants of these cities—is not evidence to change their culture status from that denominated as the polished stone age or period.

Professor Virchow subsequently does sufficient justice to the antiquity of Schliemann’s discoveries and says[159] while “it is impossible to assign these strata to the stone age, yet they are indications of what is the oldest known settlement in Asia Minor of a people of prehistoric times of some advance in civilization,” and[160] that “no place in Europe is known which could be put in direct connection with any one of the six lower cities of Hissarlik.”

The earliest dated Swastikas are of the third millenium B. C., and occur on the foreign Cyprian and Carian (?) pottery fragments of the time of the twelfth dynasty (in Egypt), discovered by Mr. Flinders Petrie in 1889. (Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara, pl. 27, Nos. 162 and 173.)