decussation, after the form of an Andrean or Burgundian cross, which answereth this description.
Where by the way we shall decline the old theme, so traced by antiquity, of crosses and crucifixion; whereof some being right, and of one single piece without transversion or transom, do little advantage our subject. Nor shall we take in the mystical Tau, or the cross of our blessed Saviour, which having in some descriptions an Empedon or crossing footstay, made not one single transversion. And since the learned Lipsius hath made some doubt even of the cross of St. Andrew, since some martyrological histories deliver his death by the general name of a cross, and Hippolytus will have him suffer by the sword, we shall have enough to make out the received cross of that martyr. Nor shall we urge the Labarum, and famous standard of Constantine, or make further use thereof, than as the first letters in the name of our Saviour Christ, in use among Christians, before the days of Constantine, to be observed in sepulchral monuments[A 1] of martyrs, in the reign of Adrian, and Antoninus; and to be found in the antiquities of the Gentiles, before the advent of Christ, as in the medal of King Ptolemy, signed with the same characters, and might be the beginning of some word or name, which antiquaries have not hit on.
We will not revive the mysterious crosses of Egypt, with circles on their heads,[B 1] in the breast of Serapis, and the hands
- ↑ Of Marius, Alexander. Roma Sotterranea.
- ↑ mysterious crosses of Egypt, with circles on their heads.] Our author here alludes to the crux ansata, or handled cross, vulgarly termed the Key of the Nile, which is so often sculptured or otherwise represented upon Egyptian monuments. Nearly all his remarks upon it are illustrated by the following passage from Dr. Young's article on Egypt, in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. "The crux ansata, sometimes called the Key of the Nile, is usually employed as a symbol of divinity; but its correct meaning is LIFE, as Lacroze rightly conjectured, although his opinion respecting the origin of the character is inconsistent with the form of its oldest and most accurate delineations; and there is no one instance in which it is so represented as to stand in any relation to a sluice or a watercock. According to Socrates and Rufinus, the Egyptian priests declared to their Christian conquerors under Theodosius, who were going to destroy the Serapeum at Alexandria, that the cross, so often sculptured on their temples, was an emblem of the life to come. This passage has been understood by some authors as relating rather to the cross without a handle, which is observable in some rare instances, and indeed twice on the stone of Rosetta; but this symbol appears rather to denote a protecting power, than an immortal existence. It happens, perhaps altogether accidentally, that one of the contractions for the word God, which are commonly used in Coptic,
