Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/79

 Rh used as an architectural ornament in Asia Minor as well as in Crete.

We find a god with a double axe not only in Labranda, but also in other towns of Asia Minor and Syria, as, for instance, in Tarsos. Coins from that town (Fig. 4) show us the god holding in his hand an axe of this description. Like many other Syrian gods (e.g. Fig. 2) he is represented as standing on an animal, in this case a lion. A Greek author alludes to a curious ceremony in which this god played the principal part. The image of the god was burnt on a huge pyre, in view of an immense crowd of spectators. In the first century of our era, when this author was living, the ceremony took place only every five years. Judging from what is known about similar ceremonies in other places, we may presume that in earlier times the god was burnt every year, and that, when the fire had burnt down, the birth of a new god was celebrated. It is the god of the sun that is thus celebrated. He it is that dies every year in order yearly to rise again. The season of the festival in Tarsos is not known, but it was probably at the vernal equinox, that critical time in the yearly life of the sun when the power of the sun is again manifesting itself on the earth. At that time the Christian Church still celebrates the festival of the Resurrection.

In Roman times there was a well-known Syrian god with a double axe, whom the Romans called Jupiter Dolichenus, after the town of Doliche, the present Doluc in Commagene, that part of Syria which lies between the ordinary crossing-place of the Euphrates and Mount Amanus. The god was probably called Baal by the town's own inhabitants. Like the god in Tarsos he is represented as standing on an animal, in this case a bull. In his right hand he holds a double axe, and in his left the lightning (Fig. 5).

About the middle of the second century after Christ, Syrian gods, and amongst others Jupiter Dolichenus, became known and worshipped in different parts of the