other casualty has wrought any perceptible difference in their several
forms or delineations; they have passed from one hemisphere to the other
intact; have survived dynasties, empires, and races; have been borne on
the crest of each successive wave of Aryan population in its course
toward the West; and, having been reconsecrated in later times by their
lineal descendants, are still recognized as military and national badges
of distinction. . . .

Among the earliest known types is the crux ansata, vulgarly called 'the
key of the Nile,' because of its being found sculptured or otherwise
represented so frequently upon Egyptian and Coptic monuments. It has,
however, a very much older and more sacred signification than this. It
was the symbol of symbols, the mystical Tau, 'the bidden wisdom,' not
only of the ancient Egyptians but also of the Chaldeans, Phoenicians,
Mexicans, Peruvians, and of every other ancient people commemorated in
history, in either hemisphere, and is formed very similarly to our
letter T, with a roundlet, or oval, placed immediately above it. Thus it
was figured on the gigantic emerald or glass statue of Serapis, which
was transported (293 B.C.) by order of Ptolemy Soter from Sinope, on the
southern shores of the Black Sea, re-erected within that famous
labyrinth which encompassed the banks of Lake Moeris, and destroyed by
the victorious army of Theodosius (A.D. 389), despite the earnest
entreaties of the Egyptian priesthood to spare it, because it was the
emblem of their god and of 'the life to come.' Sometimes, as may be seen
on the breast of an Egyptian mummy in the museum of the London
University, the simple T only is planted on the frustum of a cone; and
sometimes it is represented as springing from a heart; in the first
instance signifying goodness; in the second, hope or expectation of
reward. As in the oldest temples and catacombs of Egypt, so this type
likewise abounds in the ruined cities of Mexico and Central America,