The Non-Christian Cross / An Enquiry into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion

by John Denham Parsons

and the

occur upon the famous footprints of Buddha carved upon the Amarâvati Tope, and Dr. Schliemann remarks that we find the Svastika or Sauvastika cross
"In Ezekiel ix. 4, 6, where—in the form of the old Hebrew letter Tau—it is written as the sign of life on the forehead, like the corresponding Indian symbol. We find it twice on a large piece of ornamental leather contained in the celebrated Corneto treasure preserved in the Royal Museum at Berlin; also on ancient pottery found at Konigsberg in the Neumark and preserved in

the Märkisches Museum in Berlin; and on a Bowl from Yucatan in the Berlin Ethnological Museum. We also see it on coins of Gaza, as well as on an Imperial coin of Asido; also on the drums of the Lapland priests."

It is noteworthy that in the neighbourhood of Troy, as in Cyprus and other places, a cross of four equal arms, like our sign of addition, in days of old shared with the Svastika crosses the veneration of the people and was evidently more or less akin to those crosses in signification. Dr. Schliemann tells us that this cross of four equal arms "occurs innumerable times on the whorls of the three upper pre-historic cities of Hissarlik," and that if, as Burnouf and others suggest, the

and

represented primitive fire machines, this other cross "might also claim the honour of representing the two pieces of wood for producing the holy fire by friction."