Fig. 1.—Egyptian Standards.
We find representations of standards on the oldest bas-reliefs of Egypt. Indeed, the invention of standards is, by ancient writers, attributed to the Egyptians. According to Diodorus, the Egyptian standards consisted generally of the figures of their sacred animals borne on the end of a staff or spear, and in the paintings at Thebes we find on them such objects as a king's name and a sacred boat. One prominent and much used form was a figure resembling an expanded semicircular fan, and another example shows this form reversed and surmounted by the head of the goddess Athor, crowned with her symbolic disk and cow's horns. Another figure also used as a standard resembles a round-headed table-knife. Examples of these, and of the sacred ibis and dog, are shown in Fig. 1.[1] But on the Egyptian standards—those which were no doubt used in Pharaoh's army—there were various other figures, including reptiles such as lizards and beetles, with birds crowned with the fan-like ornament already referred to. A group of these is given in Fig. 2; but they had many other forms. Those represented in Fig. 3, and which show some curious symbolic forms, are taken from the works of Champollion, Wilkinson, and Rosellini.
[1] For this, and figures 6, 14, and 15, I am indebted to the courtesy of Messrs. A. and C. Black. They appear in the Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. ix. p. 276.
Fig. 2.—Egyptian Standards.
