[45] “Troy and its Remains,” plate ix. See also excellent essay on the same subject by S. Reinach, which appeared in the Revue Archéologique in 1885. Later investigations by Dr. Schliemann also brought to light a remarkable resemblance between the buildings at Hissarlik and those of Tiryns.
[46] The British Museum contains a manuscript of the fourteenth century, in which is a letter from Julian, written when he was emperor, between 361 and 363 A.D., and relating to his visit to Ilium.
[47] The potter’s wheel was, however, in use at a very remote antiquity. In China its invention is attributed to the legendary Emperor Hwang-Ti, who is supposed to have lived about 2697 B.C. The wheel was also known from the very earliest times in Egypt, and Homer (Iliad, c. xviii., v. 599) compares the light motions of the dancers represented on the shield of Achilles to the rapid rotation of the potter’s wheel.
[48] Rivett-Carnac: “Memorandum on Clay Discs Called Spindle Whorls and Votive Seals Found at Sankisa” (Behar), Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xlix., p. 1.
[49] “De Sacris Ædificiis,” ch. ix., p. 128.
[50] It is interesting to note the discovery of urns closely resembling those of Troy, and containing human remains, in Persia (Sir W. Ouseley: “Travels in Persia”), and at Travancore, in the south of Malabar, where, according to tradition, they were intended to receive the remains of young virgins sacrificed in honor of the gods.—“Some Vestiges of Girl Sacrifices,” Journ. Anth. Inst., May, 1882.
[51] The vulva was sometimes represented by a large triangle. The same peculiarity occurs on some black marble statuettes, found in the tombs of the Cyclades and Attica. Three such statuettes from the island of Paros are in the Louvre, and the British Museum owns a rich collection. Dr. Schliemann also mentions a female idol made in lead of very coarse workmanship, in which the sexual organs are represented by a double cross.
[52] The phallus was, as we have already stated, the symbol of generative force. Its worship extended throughout India and Syria; a gigantic Phallus adorned the temple of the mother of the gods at Hierapolis, and it was carried in triumph in processions through Egypt and Greece. It is still worshipped in some places at the present day. Near Niombo, in Africa, there is a temple containing several phallic statues; at Stanley-Pool the fête of the phallus is celebrated with obscene rites. The Kroomen observe similar ceremonies at the time of the new moon, and in Japan on certain fête clays young girls flourish gigantic phalli at the end of long poles. The phallus is also often represented on the monuments of Central America—on the stones of the temples of Izamal and the island of Zapatero, for instance. Possibly the worship of the productive and generative forces of nature was the earliest religion of many primitive peoples, but all that is said on the subject must be sifted with considerable care.
[53] Similar hatchets of pure copper ([a]Fig. 2]) have been found in Hungary, and Butler (“Prehistoric Wisconsin”) speaks of them also as being found in North America.
[54] The tin used is making bronze probably came from Spain or Cornwall, perhaps also from the Caucasus, where small quantities of it are still found. It was doubtless imported by the Phœnicians, the great navigators of antiquity. See Rudolf Virchow’s “Das Grüberfeld Von Koban im Laude der Osseten,” Berlin, 1883.