s' Book of the Dead, the
foremost of the gods of the four quarters, represented in mummy form,
exhibited a cross on his right shoulder. During a recent visit to the
Berlin Museum, my attention was arrested by seeing a swastika painted in
precisely the same position, on the right shoulder of the stucco mummy
case of a man, from Hermopolis, dated from the second century after Christ
(Catalogue No. 11649). This remarkable coincidence seems to furnish
conclusive evidence that, long before the introduction of Greek culture
and Christian influence, the plain cross was employed by the ancient
Egyptians in precisely the same way as, subsequently, the swastika by the
Copts. To some of my readers the question will perhaps suggest itself
whether some early Christian sects and, amongst them, communities of Greek
Copts, did not interpret the mission of Christ literally, as an attempt to
reestablish an earthly "kingdom of heaven" on the ancient plan, the
knowledge of which had been preserved at Heliopolis, by the sages and
philosophers of Egypt and the large Hebrew colony established there.

Returning to the swastika: From the account given by Prof. Thomas Wilson
(_op. cit._, 810) of Schliemann's observations on the swastikas he
discovered, during his excavations on the site of Troy, we learn that,
whereas the swastika occurs on thousands of whorls found in the third,
fourth and fifth cities, but few whorls were found in the first and second
cities, which were the deepest and oldest and _none of these bore the
swastika mark_. These observations, added to the appearance of the
swastika in Egypt at a comparatively late period, appear to prove that,
whereas the cross-symbol was known in remotest antiquity in Asia Minor and
Egypt and expressed the same meaning as the swastika, _i. e._ Polaris and
circumpolar rotation and the quadruplicate organization of the Cosmos
suggested by these natural phenomena, it was only the form or shape of the
cross which underwent a change at a certain period. The earliest-dated
specimens of this new form, given to a more ancient symbol, occur on the
pottery fragments found in Egypt by Prof. Flinders Petrie. The presence of
the swastika, on the whorls found in the ruins of the third city built on
the site of Troy, also indicates that its adoption occurred at a fixed
date and marked a new departure.

Referring back to page 21, where I show that the observations which led to
the adoption of the swastika as a s