rodite. These goddesses afforded help to
women in childbirth and were regarded as guardians of the portal. The
goddess of streams and marshes was identified with the mugwort
(_Artemisia_), which was hung above the door in the place occupied at
other times by the winged disk, the thunder-stone, or a crocodile
(dragon). As the guardian of portals Artemis's magic plant could open
locks and doors. As the giver of life she could also withhold the vital
essence and so cause disease or death; but she possessed the means of
curing the ills she inflicted. Artemis, in fact, like all the other
goddesses, was a witch.

In former lectures[344] I have often discussed the remarkable feature of
Egyptian architecture, which is displayed in the tendency to exaggerate
the door-posts and lintels, until in the New Empire the great temples
become transformed into little more than monstrously overgrown doorways
or pylons. I need not emphasize again the profound influence exerted by
this line of development upon the Dravidian temples of India and the
symbolic gateways of China and Japan.

[Illustration: Fig. 25.

(a) Winged Disk from the Temple of Thothmes I.

(b) Persian design of Winged Disk above the Tree of Life (Ward, "Seal
Cylinders of Western Asia," Fig. 1109).

(c) Assyrian or Syro-Hittite design of the Winged Disk and Tree of Life
in an extremely conventionalized form (Ward, Fig. 1310).

(d) Assyrian conventionalized Winged Disk and Tree of Life, from the
design upon the dress of Assurnazipal (Ward, Fig. 670).

(e) Part of the design from a tablet of the time of Dungi (Ward, Fig.
663). The Tree of Life (or the Great Mother) between the two mountains:
alongside the tree is the heraldic eagle.

(f) Design on a Cretan sarcophagus from Hagia Triada (Blinkenberg, Fig.
9). The Tree of Life has now become the handle of the Double Axe, into
which the Winged Disk has been transformed. But the bird which was the
prototype of the Winged Disk has been added.

(g) Double axe from a gold signet from Acropolis Treasure, Mycenae (after
Sir Arthur Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult," p. 10).

(h) Assyrian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 608) showing reduplication of the
wing-pattern, possibly suggesting the doubling of each axe-blade in _g_.

(i) "Primitive Chaldean Winged Gate" (Ward, Fig. 349). The Gate as the
Goddess of the Portal.

(k) Persian Winged Disk (Ward, Fig. 1144) above a fire-altar in the form
suggestive of the mountains of daw