Symbolism of the Two Sexes
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