File:Barye - life and works of Antoine Louis Barye in memory of an exhibition of his bronzes, paintings, and water-colors, held at New York, in aid of the fund for his monument at Paris (1889) (14580096368).jpg

Identifier: baryelifeworksof00deka (find matches)
Title: Barye : life and works of Antoine Louis Barye ... in memory of an exhibition of his bronzes, paintings, and water-colors, held at New York, in aid of the fund for his monument at Paris
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: De Kay, Charles, 1848-1935
Subjects: Barye, Antoine-Louis, 1796-1875
Publisher: New York : The Barye Monument Association
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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Text Appearing Before Image:
It has puzzled archaeologists to
assign to Minos and Pasiphae, the father and mother of Minotaur, their proper
place as symbols of heavenly bodies, because their respective sexes do
not agree with the ordinary view of sun and moon. But if we remem-
ber that the Germans retain the ancient idea of the sun as a woman
which we find among the Lapps and Japanese we have the clew.
Minosis the moon in its male form. Pasiphae (all-shiner) is the sun in its
female form. Minotaur is their offspring and has like its father the
ideas of night, demoniac powers and the labyrinths of the under
world and the starry sky connected with it. Phoenician in origin, the
sacrifices of children to the horned moon-god come to an end when
Theseus, the male sun-god of a higher race represented by the Greeks
proper, makes his way through the labyrinth of night and destroys the
demon of darkness. As the Greek influence predominated the gods
which could be identified with another race were forced into repulsive
and degraded forms.
The Minotaur occurs on coins of Cnossus, once a flourishing com-
84
Text Appearing After Image:
NO. 67

PANTHER SEIZING STAG
Height 16 inches

THESEUS AND MINOTAUR ON COINS
mercial city on the northern coast of Crete. He has a hnman form, but a
bull's head, the horns recalling the moon when at the crescent, exactly
as in the case of Diana, the female moon, according to ideas more purely
Greek. He is shown running or kneeling and holds in each hand a
large globe, for which reason Minotaur has been mistaken hitherto for
a sun-god, together with the fact that on the same coin but on the oppo-
site face the picture of the labyrinth is completed by a swastika or four-
leg, which is generally a sign of the sun. The globes in the hands of the
running Minotaur however may be considered to mean the stealing of
the world of light by the demon of the dark; the sun-emblem on the
labyrinth merely represents Theseus. On later coins we have a naked
youth seated on a labyrinth and carrying in one hand a Victory, who
must be Theseus. Thus we get the chain of evidence complete that
Theseus is a variant on the sun-god, male as to sex, while Minotaur is a
variant on the moon-god, and also male like his father Minos.

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