The Evolution of the Dragon

by Grafton Elliot Smith

(g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenæ (after Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenæan Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10).

(h) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in g.

(i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate" (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the Goddess of the Portal.

(k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the form suggestive of the mountains of dawn (compare Fig. 26, c).

(l) An Assyrian Tree of Life and Winged Disk crudely conventionalized (Ward, Fig. 695).

(m) Assyrian Tree of Life and "Winged Disk" in which the god is riding in a crescent replacing the Disk (Ward, Fig. 695).

This significance of gates was no doubt suggested by the idea that they represented the means of communication between the living and the dead, and, symbolically, the portal by which the dead acquired a rebirth into a new form of existence. It was presumably for this reason that the winged disk as a symbol of life-giving, was placed above the lintels of these doors, not merely in Egypt, Phœnicia, the Mediterranean Area, and Western Asia, but also in America,[345] and in modified forms in India, Indonesia, Melanesia, Cambodia, China, and Japan.

The discussion (Chapter II) of the means by which the winged disk came to acquire the power of life-giving, "the healing in its wings," will have made it clear that the sun became accredited with these virtues only when it assumed the place of the other "Eye of Re," the Great Mother. In fact, it was a not uncommon practice in Egypt to represent the eyes of Re or of Horus himself in place of the more usual winged disk. In the Ægean area the original practice of representing the Great Mother was retained long after it was superseded in Egypt by the use of the winged disk (the sun-god).

Over the lintel of the famous "Lion Gate" at Mycenæ, instead of the winged disk, we find a vertical pillar to represent the Mother Goddess, flanked by two lions which are nothing more than other representatives of herself (Fig. 26).