Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

VI] The Bird and the Axe and the Tree 161
surrounded by it, is an unmistakable olive-tree. On a step in
front of the shrine is a slender obelisk, and on, or rather hafted
into, the obelisk, to our delight and amazement, a sacred object
now thrice familiar, a double axe, and, perched on the double
axe, a great black mottled bird. The conjunction rather takes
our breath away. Sacred obelisks we know, of double axes as
thunder-symbols we have lately heard perhaps enough 1
;
birds are
the familiar 'attributes' of many an Olympian; but an obelisk
and a battle-axe and a bird with a sacrificial bull and a
' Mycenaean '
Fig. 31.
tree-shrine—who would have dared to forecast it,
and what does it all mean ?
Before this question can be answered we must turn to the
other side of the sarcophagos in Fig. 31 and learn what is the
1 The most illuminating study on the double-axe, its cult and significance, is
a paper by Mr A. B. Cook, The Cretan Axe-Cult outside Crete, published in the
Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions.
Oxford, 1908, n. p. 184. A further discussion by Mr Cook may be looked for
in his forthcoming book Zeus, chapter n., section 3, paragraph (c), division i, 'The
double axe in Minoan cult.' For the bird and the axe see also A Bird Cult of the
Old Kingdom by P. E. Newbery in the Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and
Anthropology, n. p. 49, and Tioo Cults of the Old Kingdom, op. cit. i. p. 24, and
0. Montelius, The Sun-God's Axe and Thor's Hammer, in Folk-Lore, 1910, p. 60.
H. 11