The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

IV NO STAGS IN AFRICA 133
Hence every symbol must be interpreted as Egyptian
from a Greek point of view. Now ds we know,
and as Pliny^^^ long ago related that there are no stags
in Africa, it is clear that the designer of this amulet
must have denoted by the stag a deity of the Graeco-
Roman mythology ;
and we must therefore look for
one whose prototype is to be found in Egypt, and
whose attributes were the same as the Ephesian
Diana whom undoubtedly the stag represented in
his idea. This could be no other than Hathor, whom
we must look upon like Diana, as distinctly a moon
goddess.^^^ So the thunderbolt, in like manner,
would represent Serapis, the great Sun-god.
Thus considered, every one of the symbols on
Ithis week-day amulet ultimately resolves itself into
one or other of the great Gnostic gods, the Sun and
Moon.
The use of the eye as the central object in amulets
mvolving sympathetic magic, may be taken to be
universal, '^rab amulets at the present day bear
the figure of the thing against which they exert their
virtue, and all oriental practices in this line come
down from immemorial antiquit)^)'^^"
The Maltese, partly Arab and partly Italian, hold-
ing the beliefs and customs of both parent stocks,
2i» Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 51 (vol. ii. p. 302, Bohn). Diana is often
represented as accompanied by a dog, the most sagacious and watchful of
animals. The dog was a symbol of Diana, Thoth, Hermes, Mercury, Anubis
(Payne Knight, Syjiib. Lang. p. 113). "The dog as a symbol of destruction
was sacred to Mars as well as to Mercury " (Phurnutus, Nature of the Gods,
xxi) ; hence "the dogs of war."
-1^ See the story of Osiris and Isis-Athor in Wilkinson,
iii. T^ et seq. ; also of Isis and her connection with the
Dog-star, //;. p. 106.
"I'' Cesnola, Cyprus, 1877. Appendix by C. W. King
(author of Gnostics, etc.), p. 385. Fig. 20 is from Pig-
norius (Vetustissimce Tabula, Venice, 1605), p. 16 in
dorso, and is by him called a phallic engraved amulet. Fig. 20.