The Phœnician origin of Britons, Scots & Anglo-Saxons : discovered by Phœnician & Sumerian inscriptions in Britain, by preroman Briton coins & a mass of new history : with over one hundred illustrations and maps, стр. 341

GOTHIC ORIGIN OF ST. GEORGE’S CROSS 305

of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry and of the garter.”* And a recent authority, in his account of this saint, concludes that the traditional “ Acts’”’ of St. George “are simply an adaptation of a heathen myth of a solar god to a Christian saint.’* But neither Gibbon nor anyone else hitherto appears to have found any evidence for the origin of St. George and his Red Cross with the Dragon legend, nor as to how St. George and his Red Cross came to be connected with England.

The name ‘‘George”’ is usually derived from the Greek Georgos, ‘a husbandman,” from Georgia, “fields.” The latter is now seen to be obviously derived from the Sumerian Kur or Kawuyr-ki, “ Land,’ which was the title applied by the Sumerians to Cappadocia-Cilicia, as “ The Land” of the Hittites or Goths. This Kur is the source of “ Suria,” the name recorded by Herodotus for Cappadocia,* the inhabitants of which he calls ‘‘ Suvi-o7,” 7.e., the ‘‘ White Syrians,” or Hittites, of Strabo, the people who, we have seen, were the founders of Agriculture. ‘‘ George ’’ or “‘ Georgos ” thus appears originally to have designated a Hittite of Aw/ki or Cappadocia—K, G, and S being dialectically interchangeable. ‘“‘Guuy’’ or “Geur’’ is also the ideograph value of a word-sign for The Father-god Bel, which has the meaning of ‘‘ The Father Protector”’ ;* and in the Sumerain seals it is Father Bel or Geur who slays the Dragon (see Fig, 55), though in the later Babylonian legend this achievement is credited to his son, the so-called “ Younger Bel” (Mar-duk or Tasia). Thus Bel as Geuy, the Dragon-slayer and protector of the Hittite Cappadocia, is the original of St. George.

In the early Sumerian, Hittite and Babylonian seals and sculptures, the figure of the Sun-god Bel slaying the winged Dragon is very frequent,* and we have seen that the Sun Cross was a recognized Devil-banishing weapon and talis-

% Herodotus 1, 6, and 72, etc. 4 Br. 1140-1, 1146. Meissner 647.

5 See W.S.C., Figs. 127-135, etc. The rayed Sun is usually figured near the god, or over the dragon, and in 129 and 132 the god appears to wield a Cross. The scene of Bel overcoming the Winged Dragon is ever more common in Assyrian sacred seals, ¢.g., W.S.C., Figs. 563-646.