36

THE ANCIENT ASSYRIAN CROSS.

Fig. 13.-A Maltese cross, on a life size image of SAMSIVUL, son of Shalmanesar, king of Assyria (to be seen in the

13

British Museum), was worn

by him at least 800 years B.C. Also worn by AssurNazir Pal and Tiglath, Pilesar, Assyrian kings.

Maltese crosses were found by M. Rassam at Kalakh, on the east bank of the Tigris (vide Times, 24th August 1878).

Fig. 14.-Combination of the Greek letters Chi (X) and Rho (P), was Constantine's adoption of the heathen cross as his sign on the banners of his army.

Fig. 15.-Pagan cross of the Mexicans, as the symbol of their Messiah, Tamu (Tammuz ?).

Prescott thus informs us of the conversion of the Mexicans by the Spaniards from the worship of their rain-god, whose emblem was a cross: "Their conversion went no further than the transfer of their homage from one cross to another-from the cross of their rain-god to the same cross as the emblem of Christ's salvation" (History of Mexico, p. 1292).

Fig. 16.-A cross in gold, lately discovered by Dr. Schliemann at Mycena in Greece, in the supposed tomb of Agamemnon, the leader of the expedition against Troy; and represented as being worn by one of the heroes engaged against Thebes about 1000 years B.C.

Fig. 17 is the head of the goddess Diana, with a cross as the emblem of the sun over her head; a star and a crescent being on either side of her in the original, though not shown here.

17

The Eastern Aspect.

There is no doubt, but, that the custom of erecting churches and cathedrals, so that the chancel with the communion table shall be placed in the east end of the sacred edifice, is borrowed from heathen sources; and with the custom of turning towards the East when repeating the Creed, may be traced back to the remotest times in connection with the worship of the sun under the primitive Magian system of idolatry in use amongst the ancient Babylonians

and Assyrians, from whom the Greeks and Romans evidently borrowed their systems. In Potter's Antiquities, vol. i. p. 223, we are informed, “Wherever they (the heathen temples of Greece) stood, if the situation of the place would permit, it was contrived that, the windows being open, they might receive the rays of the rising sun. The frontispiece (i.e., front entrance) was placed towards the West; because it was an ancient custom amongst the heathen to worship with their faces towards the East."

If we turn now to Ezekiel viii. 14, 16, we shall see that the “turning of the face towards the East, and worshipping the sun towards the East," is spoken of as a "greater abomination" than that of "the women weeping for Tammuz at the door of the gate of the Lord's house." This abomination, it is true, was done by Judah, but Israel was no better (see Jer. iii.), and was exiled for her idolatrous worship of the sun.

Wodin.

Odin or Wodin, the Scandinavian war-god, after whom one of the days of the week, viz., Wednesday (Wodnes-däg), was called; as also several places in England, such as Wanborough (formerly Wodnesbrorh) in Surrey; Wednesbury in Staffordshire; Woodnes borough in Kent, &c., had two sons Balder and Thor (Thors-däg, Thursday).

Balder is Chaldaic for Baal Zer, "the seed of Baal." Now Baal and Adon both mean lord," the seed of Baal," therefore, signifies "the seed of Adon." Now Nimrod, the great war-god of Babylon, is known as Adon (which is synonymous with Odin) who also had a son called Thouros. Again, "Nimrod, in the character of Bacchus, was regarded as the god of wine; Odin is represented as taking no food but wine" (Two Babylons, App. L.) We thus observe the identity of the Scandinavian god Odin and Adon of Babylon.

It is, moreover, interesting to notice that Agnes Strickland, in vol. i. of her "Queens of England," says that "the pedigree of Matilda, of the Saxon line of Edgar Atheling, was traced through Woden to the patriarch" (Our Scythian Ancestors, p. 8). And also Kemble, in his "Saxons in England" (vol. i., p. 441), says :— "The royal family of every Anglo-Saxon kingdom, without exception, traces its descent from Woden. ... Woden is, like Ulysses, pre-eminently, the Wanderer;" "And they shall be wanderers among the nations" (Hosea ix. 17). The Woden here referred to was very probably the name of some renowned ancestor, called after the Scandinavian war-god; a custom very prevalent among idolatrous

38

ST. SWITHIN AND SEITHAN.

nations, and not the deity Odin, who has been identified with the Babylonian Adon.

"Odin's capital, Asgard (about thirty miles north of Lake Van, vide Col. Gawler's Dan, p. 31), was supposed to be between the Euxine and Caspian Seas. . . . The chronicles of the Swedish kings commences with an account of a people on the east of the river Tana-quisl (the Danastrom, or Danube). The people were governed by a Pontiff, King Odin. These people introduced the worship of Odin into Denmark and Sweden" (Moore's Pillar Stones, p. 149).

St. Swithin's Day.

"St.

An ancient superstition still current, and often referred to if not actually believed in now, is, that if it rains on St. Swithin's day it will rain uninterruptedly for forty days afterwards. Swithin was no Christian saint." "The patron saint of the forty days' rain was just Tammuz or Odin, who was worshipped among our ancestors as the incarnation of Noah, in whose time it rained forty days and forty nights without intermission. Tammuz and St. Swithin then must have been one and the same.

Tammuz was recognised as an incarnation of the devil, "who was' known in the east by the name Sytan (Satan)." It had evidently been known to the Druids, and that in connection with the flood; for they say that it was the son of Seithan that, under the influence of drink, let in the sea over the country, so as to overwhelm a large and populous district (Davies' Druids, p. 198). Now the Anglo-Saxons, when they received that name, in the very same way as they made Odin into Woden, would naturally change Seithan into Swithin; and thus in St. Swithin's day and the superstition therewith connected we have at once a striking proof of the wide extent of devil-worship in the heathen world, and of the thorough acquaintance of our Pagan ancestors with the great Scriptural fact of the forty days' incessant rain at the Deluge (Hislop's Two Babylons, p. 459).

St. John's Day.

St. John's day is set down in the Papal Calendar for the 24th June, or Midsummer day, which day was fixed by the Chaldeans as the first of their month Tammuz. The Pagan ceremonies in connection with the worship of Tammuz were celebrated at this period; hence when the Gregorian policy of incorporating heathen festivals into the Roman Calendar (Bower's Lives of the Popes, vol. ii., p. 523) was adopted, the festival of Tammuz, who was called

ST. JOHN'S FIRES.

39 also Oannes, was converted into the festival of the Nativity of St. John (alias Joannes), as it was found that six months exactly intervened between the 24th June and the 25th December (the Yule festival), corresponding exactly with the difference in time between the birth of Christ and that of John the Baptist. The Chaldeans reckoned their day as did the Hebrews, from evening to evening; consequently the midsummer fires of St. John's eve are lit on the evening of the 23d June at the very hour that ushered in the festival of Tammuz (ibid. p. 183).

"On that great festival of the Irish peasantry, St. John's eve, it is the custom, at sunset on that evening, to kindle immense fires throughout, the country, built, like our bonfires, to a great height, the pile being composed of turf, bog-wood, and such other combustible substances as they can gather. . . . The fire being kindled, a splendid blaze shot up; and for a while they (the peasants) stood contemplating it with faces strangely disfigured by the peculiar light emitted when the bog-wood was thrown on it. . . . When the fire burned for some hours and got low, an indispensable part of the ceremony commenced. Every one present of the peasantry passed through it, and several children were thrown across the sparkling embers; while a wooden frame of some eight feet long with a horse's head fixed to one end, and a large white sheet thrown over it, concealing the wood, and the man on whose head it was carried, made its appearance. This was greeted with loud shouts as the 'white horse,' and having been safely carried, by the skill of its bearer, several times through the fire with a bold leap, it pursued the people, who ran screaming in every direction. I asked what the horse was meant for, and was told it represented 'all cattle.' Here," adds the authoress, "was the old Pagan worship of Baal, if not of Moloch too, carried on openly and universally in the heart of a nominally Christian country, and by millions professing the Christian name. I was confounded, for I did not then know that Popery is only a crafty adaptation of Pagan idolatries to its own scheme" (Personal Recollections, pp. 112–115).

"Those Midsummer fires and sacrifices were to obtain a blessing on the fruits of the earth, now becoming ready for gathering. . . . Thus I have seen the people running and leaping through the St. John's fires in Ireland; and not only proud of passing unsinged, but as if it were some kind of lustration, thinking themselves in an especial manner blest by the ceremony, of whose original, nevertheless, they were wholly ignorant in their imperfect imitation of it" (Toland's Druids, pp. 107-112).

40

THE SEED OF THE PROPHET CUSH.

Zer-Nebo-Gus:

"The meaning of this name 'Kronos,' 'The Horned One,' as applied to Nimrod, fully explains the origin of the remarkable symbol, so frequently occurring among the Nineveh inscriptions,the gigantic HORNED man-bull as representing the great divinities in Assyria. The same word that signified a bull, signified also a 'ruler' or 'prince.' Hebrew Shur and Chaldee Tur means bull or ruler, whence comes the Latin Taurus, Turannus.-This also in a remarkable way accounts for the origin of one of the divinities worshipped by our Pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors under the name of Zernebogus. This Zernebogus was 'the black, malevolent, illomened divinity (Sharon Turner's Anglo-Saxons, vol. i., p. 217); in other words, the exact counterpart of the popular idea

Jasper Cylinder. Babylonian, 2000 B.C.

of the devil as supposed to be black and equipped with horns and hoofs. This name analysed and compared with the accompanying woodcut from Layard (Nineveh, p. 605), casts a very singular light on the source from whence has come the popular superstition in regard to the grand adversary. The name ZerNebo-Gus is almost pure Chaldee, and seems to unfold itself as denoting 'The seed of the prophet Cush. Zer-Nebo-Gus, the great seed of the prophet Cush,' was of course Nimrod; for Cush was Nimrod's father (Gen. x. 8). Turn now to Layard, and see how this land of ours and Assyria are thus brought into intimate connection. In the woodcut referred to, first we find the 'Assyrian Hercules,' that is, Nimrod the giant as he is called in the Septuagint version of Genesis, without club or spear, or weapons of any kind, attacking a bull. Having overcome it, he sets the bull's horns on his head, as a trophy of victory and a symbol of power; and then ce