As showing the antiquity, as well as the universality, of the symbolism
of the two sexes as the source of life, in connection with reverent
worship, an illustration of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead is
noteworthy. In a vignette on Chapter CXXV, in the Papyrus Ani, a
worshiper, is represented before the throne of Osiris, in the Hall of
Righteousness, with uplifted hands, in token of covenant worship, while
his offering is a lotus flower, the symbol of fecundity, laid on the
conventional phallus, the symbol of virility.[680] This vignette is
reproduced on the cover of this volume. The lotus flower has the same
signification in Assyria and India as in Egypt.[681]
The pine cone, which, as the symbol of virility and vitalizing force,
was prominent in the ancient Assyrian sculptures, as also in the
Phenician and Grecian cults,[682] was likewise to be found in ancient
Rome. An enormous bronze pine cone, eleven feet high, probably older
than the Christian era, still ornaments a fountain in the gardens of the
Vatican. Lanciani says: “Pope Symmachus, who did so much toward the
embellishment of sacred edifices in Rome (between 498 and 514), removed
the pine cone from its ancient place, most probably from Agrippa’s
artificial lake in the Campus Martius, and used it for adorning the
magnificent fountain which he had built in the center of the so-called
‘Paradise’ of S. Peter’s, viz., in the center of the square portico in
front of the basilica.”[683]
Among the Pompeian relics in the Royal Museum at Naples is a
representation of a woman making an offering to Priapus in order to be
cured of sterility. She brings a pine cone, while her husband is near
her.[684]
Evidences of the fact that boundary posts, landmarks, and milestones
were intended to represent the phallus at the threshold in the Roman
empire, as in the far East, abound among the same relics in the
Neapolitan Museum.[685]
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Footnote 680:
Le Page Renouf’s Book of the Dead in _Proceedings of the Society of
Biblical Archaeology_, for November, 1895. Plate xxxi.
Footnote 681:
See pp. 199, 234, _supra_.
Footnote 682:
See Barker’s _Lares and Penates; Or, Cilicia and its Governors_, p.
217 f.; also see p. 231 f., _supra_.
Footnote 683:
Lanciani’s _Ancient Rome_, p. 286 f.
Footnote 684:
Ainé’s _Herculaneum et Pompéi_, Tome VIII, Planche 56, facing p. 221.
Footnote 685:
_Ibid._, Pl. 24, 25, 27, 30, 39, 41, 44, 48, 54, 55, 56, 59.
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