The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration / With Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times

by Thomas Wilson

Fig. 177.
DETAIL OF CYPRIAN VASE.
Swastikas with palm tree, sacred to
Apollo. Citium, Cyprus.
Ohnefalsch-Richter, Bull. Soc.
d’Anthrop., Paris, 1888, p. 673, fig. 3.

Dr. Ohnefalsch-Richter adds:

On the vases of Dipylon the Swastikas are generally transformed into other ornaments, mostly meanders. But this is not the rule in Cyprus. The Swastika disappeared from there as it came, in its sacred form, with the Phenician influence, with the Phenician inscriptions on the vases, with the concentric circles without central points or tangents.

He says[185] that the Swastika as well as the “Croix cantonnée” (with points or dots), while possibly not always the equivalent of the solar disk, zigzag lightning, or the double hatchet, yet are employed together and are given the same signification, and frequently replace each other. It is his opinion[186] that the Swastika in Cyprus had nearly always a signification more or less religious, although it may have been used as an ornament to fill empty spaces. His interpretation of the Swastika in Cyprus is that it will signify tour à tour the storm, the lightning, the sun, the light, the seasons—sometimes one, sometimes another of these significations—and that its form lends itself easily (facilement) to the solar disk, to the fire wheel, and to the sun chariot. In support of this, he cites a figure ([fig. 179]) taken from Cesnola,[187] in which the wheels of the chariot are decorated with four Swastikas displayed in each of the four quarters. The chief personage on the car he identifies as the god of Apollo-Resef, and the decoration on his shield represents the solar disk. He is at once the god of war and also the god of light, which identifies him with Helios. The other personage is Herakles-Mecquars, the right hand of Apollo, both of them heroes of the sun.

Fig. 178.
CYPRIAN VASE WITH FIGURES OF
BIRDS AND SWASTIKA IN PANEL.
Musée St. Germain. Ohnefalsch-Richter, Bull.
Soc. d’Anthrop., Paris, 1888, p. 674, fig. 6.

Fig. 179.
CHARIOT OF APOLLO-RESEF.
Sun symbol(?) on shield and four Swastikas (two
right and two left) on quadrants of chariot wheels.
Cesnola, “Salaminia,” p. 240, fig. 226, and
Ohnefalsch-Richter, Bull. Soc. d’Anthrop., Paris,
1888, p. 675, fig. 7.