[663] The careless confusion of Svastika, the worshipper-sect, with Svasti, the symbol, was made by me in my Commentary on Camoens (chap. iv. ‘Geographical’). Burnouf (Emile), in La Science des Religions, made the Svasti the feminine principle; and the Pramantha, or perpendicular fire-stick, the male. If used on sacrificial altars to produce the holy fire (Agni), the practice was peculiar, and not derived from every-day-life: as Pliny knew (xvi. 77), the savage uses two, never three, fire-sticks. The Svasti is apparently the simplest form of the guilloche. According to Wilkinson (II. chap. ix.), the most complicated form of the guilloche covered an Egyptian ceiling upwards of a thousand years older than the objects found at Nineveh. The Svasti spread far and wide, everywhere assuming some fresh mythological and mysterious significance. In the north of Europe it became the Fylfot or crutched cross.
[664] Assyria, like Egypt, cultivated geometry and algebra, which have been supposed to originate from revenue surveys and altar measurements. She used the Astrolabe and popularised square roots and fractions, with a denominator of 60, the sole representative of the decimal and duodecimal systems. With her fall (b.c. 555) coincides the birth of literature in Greece, where writing became general about b.c. 500. The Assyrians were great in magic and in divination, such as birth-portents, dog-omens, &c. &c.
[665] Again Egyptian. Wilkinson, II. chap. vii.
[666] The nearest site would be the Caucasus, which in early ages yielded a small supply. Layard (p. 191) supposes the tin to have been obtained from Phœnicia; and, ‘consequently, that used in the (Assyrian) bronzes of the British Museum may actually have been exported, nearly three thousand years ago, from the British Isles.’
[667] A ‘copper instrument from Koyunjik’ (Layard, p. 596) is shaped exactly like the so-called Etruscan razors. See chap. ix.
[668] Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 163.
[669] See chap. vi. He figures one of the latter (Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, p. 195): it measured 3 feet 8 inches long by 4⅝ inches in breadth.
[670] ‘Assyrians placing a human-headed bull on a car,’ with levers and ropes (Layard, p. 112), reminds us of the statue of Ramses II., and shows that the people could move enormous weights. Both societies had ‘unbounded command of naked human strength.’
[671] Demmin, pp. 293–94.
[672] We have still to explain ‘Kakku’ (weapon?) and ‘Gizzin’ (scymitar?).