I sent one of these objects, through a friend in England, to the British Museum, where it was considered so curious that I was asked to supply some more. Others were exhibited at a meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and were afterwards transferred to the Indian Museum in Calcutta. In his valuable Catalogue of the Archæological Collections in his charge, recently published, Dr. Anderson, the Superintendent of the Museum, quotes the following note from "Nasmyth's Autobiography," which suggests that these coniferous finials were borrowed from the Greeks:—
"In conection with the worship of the Sun and other heavenly bodies as practised in ancient times Eastern nations, it may be mentioned that their want of knowledge of the vast distances that separate them from the earth led them to the belief that these bodies were so near as to exert a direct influence upon man and his affairs. Hence the origin of Astrology, with all its accompanying mystifications; this was practised under the impression that the Sun, Moon and Planets were near to the earth. The summits of mountains and "High Places" became sacred, and were for this reason resorted to for the performance of the most important religious ceremonies.
"As the High Places could not be transported to the Temples, the cone-bearing trees, which were naturally associated with these elevated places, in a manner partook of their sacred character, and the fruit of the trees became in like manner sacred. Hence the fir-cone became a portable emblem of their sacredness; and accordingly in the Assyrian worship, so clearly represented to us in the Assyrian sculptures in our Museums, we find the fir-cone being presented by the priests towards the head of their kings as a function of beatification. So sacred was the fir-cone, as the fruit of the sacred tree, that the priest who presents it has a reticule-shaped bag, in which, no doubt, the sacred emblem was reverently deposited when not in use for the performance of these high religious ceremonies.
"The same emblem 'survived' in the Greek worship. The fir-cone was the finial to the staff of office of the Wine-god Bacchus. To this day it is employed to stir the juice of the grape previous to fermentation, and so sanctify it by contact with the fruit of the Sacred Tree. This is still practised by the Greeks in Asia Minor and in Greece, though introduced in times of remote antiquity. The fir-cone communicates to most of the Greek wines that peculiar turpentine or resinous flavour which is found in them. Although the sanctification motive has departed, the resinous flavour is all that survives of a once most sacred ceremony, as having so close a relation to the worship of the Sun and the heavenly bodies."
