I must here again refer to the round terra-cotta mentioned in my report of the 18th of November, 1871,[142] and to my regret I must now express my firm conviction that there are no letters upon it, but only symbolical signs; that for instance the upper sign (which is almost exactly the same as that upon the terra-cotta lately cited)[143] must positively represent a man in an attitude of prayer, and that the three signs to the left can in no case be anything but the fire-machine of our Aryan ancestors, the 卐 little or not at all changed. The sign which then follows, and which is connected with the fourth and sixth signs, I also find, at least very similar ones, on the other, cited in the same report, but I will not venture to express an opinion as to what it may mean.[144] The sixth sign (the fifth from the figure in prayer) is very like the Phœnician letter “Nun,” but in my opinion cannot be a letter, for how would it be possible to find a single Semitic letter, between Aryan religious symbols? Its great resemblance to the zigzag sign of other examples,[145] which I recognise to be lightning, leads me to suppose that it likewise can only represent lightning.
All the primitive symbols of the Aryan race, which I find upon the Trojan terra-cottas, must be symbols of good men, for surely only such would have been engraved upon the thousands of terra-cottas met with here. Yet these symbols remind one forcibly of the “σήματα λυγρά” and “θυμοφθόρα,” which King Prœtus of Tiryns gave to Bellerophon to take to his father-in-law in Lycia.[146] Had he scratched a symbol of good fortune, for instance a 卐, upon the folded tablet, it would assuredly have sufficed to secure him a good reception, and protection. But he gave him the symbol of death, that he might be killed.