CROSS. The cross in one form or another has been found to have been a wide-spread religious symbol in pre-Christian times. It was used, for instance, in ancient Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, Crete, and Greece. In the palace of Knossos in Crete Sir Arthur Evans dis covered an equilateral cross in marble, which he calls a " fetish This, he thinks, occupied a central position in the Cretan shrine of the Mother Goddess. " A cross of orthodox Greek shape was not only a religious symbol of Minoan cult, but seems to be trace able in later off-shoots of the Minoan religion from Gaza to Eryx " (quoted by Donald A. Mackenzie, Crete). It it found on Babylonian cylinders, and as an amulet on Assyrian necklaces. Mackenzie notes that the Maltese cross first appears on Elamite pottery of the Neolithic age. The " swastika," another form of cross, also known as the gammadion or crux gammata has been found at Knossos in Crete, at Troy, and at Cyprus; and appears on Greek pottery about the year SIX). In the Christian era it reappears in the catacombs of Rome and elsewhere. It is found frequently, as Reivach says (0.) in the Buddhist art of India and China. Houssay
and Elliot Smith think that the figure may have been derived from conventionalized representations of the octopus. The latter points out that a remarkable picture of a swastika-like emblem has been found in America. " The elephant-headed god sits in the centre and four pairs of arms radiate from him, each of them equipped with definite suckers " (Dr., p. 175). Camden M. Cobern notes that among the early Christians a magic power came to be ascribed to the cross and other symbols for Christ. In a Christian tomb discovered in Palestine in 1913 " the most prominent features of the decoration were a garland of flowers surrounded by a cross and a cock." Here " the cross was probably merely an orna ment, but the cock as ' herald of the dawn' almost cer tainly symbolized the hope of a future life." See Maurice A. Cauney in the Eneyel. s.r.: O. Zoeckler, The Cross of Christ, 1877: M. Brock. The Cross: Ilea-Men and Christian. ISSO.