Note 70.2 — Chapter IV · Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean.

The question depends wholly on the true interpretation of the monuments; as regards the Phaistos sarcophagus, the exact significance of the ritual is still a matter of controversy, to which I may return later, when I compare the ritual of east and west; this much is clear, that a holy service of blood-oblation is being performed before two sacred trees, into the top of which two axes are inserted and on the axes are two birds painted black. Is it immediately clear that “the birds are objects of a definite cult,” as Miss Harrison maintains?70.2 This may be strongly disputed; otherwise we must say that the axe and the tree are equally direct objects of cult. But the illuminative scene on the signet-ring described above70.3 suggests that the function of the pillar was to serve as a powerful magnet to attract a personal divinity. And Sir Arthur Evans has well shown that the tree and the pillar were of equal value as sacred objects in Minoan-Mycenaean religion. A sacrifice doubtless of mystic and magical power is being performed before them here: the worshippers may well believe that the combined influence of blood-offering, sacred tree, and sacred axe will draw down the divinity of the skies. In what form visible to the eye would he descend? The carver of that signet-ring dared to show him above the pillar in human form, as the mind’s eye though not the sense-organ of the worshipper discerned him. But the artist of the Phaistos sarcophagus is more reserved. As the Holy Ghost descended in the form of a dove, so the unseen celestial divinity of Crete might use any bird of the air as his messenger, perhaps by preference the woodpecker or dove. And this natural idea would be supported by the fact that occasionally birds did alight on the top of sacred columns, and they would then instantly be charged with the sanctity of that object and would be regarded as a sign of the deity’s presence and as an auspicious answer to prayer and sacrifice. Thus many birds in Greece became sacred by haunting temples; and Dr. Frazer has suggested that the swallows and sparrows that nested on the temple or on the altar at Jerusalem acquired sanctity by the same simple religious logic.71.1 But it is futile to argue that therefore the Hellenes and Hebrews once worshipped either the whole species of swallows and sparrows or any single one. And Sir Arthur Evans’ own interpretation of the doves on the triple group of columns, as being merely “the image of the divine descent, and of the consequent possession of the bactylic column by a spiritual being,” is sane and convincing.71.2 This does not prove or necessarily lead to “bird-worship.” Further, he suggests71.3 that as the dove was originally posed on the top of the column as a gracious sign of the divine presence, so when the human form was beginning to take the place of the column the dove would then be seen on the human head, as in the case of the statuettes of goddesses mentioned above, and as it appeared on the head of the golden image at Bambyke, which some called Semiramis.72.1 The close association of the Mediterranean goddess and of the goddess of Askalon, Phoenicia, and Bambyke with doves may have been caused by several independent reasons; one may well have been the habitual frequenting of her temple by the birds. This would easily grow into a belief that the goddess when she wished to reveal something of her presence and power to the external eye would manifest herself in the bird. This we may call theriomorphic imagination that goes pari passu easily with the anthropomorphic. But none of these monuments come near to proving that this Mediterranean race directly worshipped birds, nor do they suggest any such theory as that the human divinity emerged from the bird. We shall, in fact, find that evidence of this kind that I have been examining, used recklessly in similar cases, leads to absurd results.72.2