mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php The Solar Wheel in GreeceFrom Arthur B. Cook (1914)"In this connection we must take account of a unique silver drachma, orquarter-shekel, which has been for many years in the British Museum'(pl. xxi (47K) and fig. 17l a, b (17K)). It is struck on thePhoenician standard. The obverse shows a bearded head in three-quarterposition (not double-struck) facing towards the right and wearing acrested Corinthian helmet with a bay-wreath upon it. The reverse has asquare incuse surrounded by a spiral border, within which we see abearded divinity enthroned. He wears a long garment, which covers hisright arm and extends to his feet. He is seated on a winged andwheeled seat: the wing is archaic in type and rises high behind hisback; the wheel has six spokes and an inner ring round its axle. Thegod has an eagle (or hawk ?) on his out-stretched left hand. Beforehim in the lower right hand corner of the square is an ugly beardedhead. In the field above the seated deity are the Phoenician letters(see above), that is, YHW.The credit of being the first to decipher and to interpret aright theinscription belongs to Monsieur C. Clermont-Ganneau. As far back as1880 he suggested to Prof. P. Gardner and Dr B. V. Head that it wasthe triliteral form of the divine name Jehovah; and in l892, whenlecturing at the College de France he treated it as such. DrGinsburg's rival attempt to read it as the name of Jehu, king ofIsrael makes shipwreck--as A. Neubauer was prompt to point out-- onthe chronology, the coin being nearly five centuries later than Jehu'sreign. There can, in fact, be little doubt that we have here a gentilerepresentation of the Hebrew Godhead.Now a bearded god enthroned with an eagle on his hand is a commonart-type of Zeus. And it will be remembered that in 168 B.C. Antiochusiv Epiphanes transformed the temple at Jerusalem into a temple of ZeusOlympios and the temple on Mount Gerizim into a temple of Zeus Xeniosor Hellenios. Further, the winged wheel is, as we have seen, solar inits origin. It follows that the coin represents Jehovah under theguise of a solar Zeus.This conclusion is confirmed by the fact that Iao--the form usuallytaken by Jehovah's name in magical texts of the Hellenistic age--wasequated sometimes with Zeus, sometimes with Helios. A papyrus atBerlin, acquired by Lepsius at Thebes in Egypt and published byParthey in 1866, records an incantation, which begins by summoningApollon in company with Paian to quit Parnassos and Pytho, and thencontinues in a quasi-Semitic strain:Come, foremost angel of great Zeus Iao,And thou too, Michael, who holdest heaven,And, Gabriel, thou the archangel, from Olympos.The Anastasy papyrus of the British Museum, published by Wessely in1888, includes among other magical formulae the following proseinvocation: ' I summon thee the, ruler of the gods--Zeus, Zeus, thatthunderest on high, king Adonai, lord Iaoouee.' Apollon Klarios, whoseancient oracle near Kolophon in Asia Minor enjoyed a new lease of lifein Roman times, was once questioned concerning the nature of the dreadmysterious Iao. His answer has--thanks to Macrobius--been preserved:They that know mysteries should conceal the same.But, if thy sense be small and weak thy wit,Mark as the greatest of all gods Iao--In winter Hades, Zeus when spring begins,Helios o' the summer, autumn's soft Iao.Iao is here expressly identified with both Zeus and Helios. Theseidentifications might be illustrated by some of the bizarre devices tobe seen on Gnostic amulets. For example, an onyx published by Spon(fig. 172) represents a youthful, beardless Zeus enthroned withsceptre, thunderbolt, and eagle, the legend on the back being IaoSabao(th)The Phoenician quarter-shekel--to judge from its weight, style, andfabric--was struck about 350 B.C., and therefore furnishes ourearliest evidence of Jehovah conceived by the gentiles as Zeus.Unfortunately we do not know where the coin was issued. The eminentnumismatist J. P. Six ascribed it, along with a series of somewhatsimilar pieces, to Gaza Minoa in southern Palestine. If thisattribution is sound--and it has been widely accepted,--I wouldsuggest that the helmeted head with a bay-wreath on the obverse isthat of Minos the eponymous founder, who figures as helmeted warriorholding the branch of a sacred bay-tree on later coins of the town(fig. 174). The grotesque face or mask on the reverse is probably, asE. Babelon surmised, that of Bes; and the bust of Bes too is a knowntype on autonomous silver coins of Gaza. Further, there was at Gaza animage of Io the moon- goddess with a cow beside it. And Iao, thesupposed sun-god, was early represented as a golden calf'. Is it notpermissible to think that the inhabitants of Gaza imported the cult ofthe Jewish deity as a pendant to that of their own Io ? Certainlytheir Cretan ancestors had worshipped the sun and the moon as a bulland a cow respectively. Nor need we be surprised at their borrowingthe type of Triptolemos' throne, wheeled and winged. Triptolemos,according to Argive tradition, was the son of Trochilos, the'Wheel'-man; and Trochilos in turn was the son of Kallithea, anothername of Io. Moreover, Triptolemos is said to have gone eastwards inquest of lo, taking with him a company of Argives, who founded Tarsosin Kilikia, Ione or Iopolis on Mount Silpion in Syria--better known asAntiocheia on the Orontesa--, and even settled in Gordyene beyond theTigris. If Triptolemos followed Io thus far afield, he may well havepursued her to Gaza."HOMEReferences3. http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/bobk.html
