Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

790
The thunderbolt of Zeus
In 191 1 C. Blinkenbergi devoted a chapter to the subject and concluded
that Poseidon's trident 'is an adaptation of the Hittite and
Babylonian thunderweapon^' which entered Greece shortly after
the Mycenaean age, that it was soon supplanted by the double form
Fig. 753.
brought in from Assyria, and that it was therefore interpreted
afresh as a fishing spear. He further draws attention to the iron
tridents worshipped along with stone axes ('thunderstones') by the
pariahs of southern India (fig. 753)^ and compares them with the
trisula or trident of Civa, the post-Vedic successor of the Vedic
triigt er {sc. Zeus Osogo) den Dreizack, vielleicbt erst uiiter griechischem Einfluss—oder ist
etwa der Dreizack des Poseidon als sein Attribut nur aus dem Blitz umgedeutet? ').
1 C. Blinkenberg The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore Cambridge 191
PP- 50—57-
2 Id. ib. p. 55, cp. ib. p. 57 :
' Briefly, then, the development was as follows :—from
the old Babylonian representation of the lightning, i.e. two or three zigzag lines repre-
senting flames, a tripartite thunderweapon was evolved and was carried east and west from
that ancient seat of civilization. Together with the axe (in western Asia Minor the double-
edged and towards the centre of Asia the single-edged axe) it became a regular attribute
of the Asiatic thundergods. The extreme limits of its extension are India in the east and
Greece in the west. The Indian trisula and the Greek triaina are both its descendants.'
^ Id. ib. p. 8 ff. figs. I, 2 ( = my fig. 753), 3, p. 55 f. The figure here reproduced shows
an ' earth-temple ' in a pariah quarter belonging to the village of Agravaram near Vellore.
Dr Blinkenberg says :
' The actual altar is 2| feet high, its surface 75 x 9^ feet. On the
altar are seen seven thunderstones... The trisula owes its white colour to the remains of