So many traces of the cross, as used in ancient times in all parts of the world, meet us on every hand that we find it difficult within the limited space at our command even to enumerate them; we have already traversed in our account a greater part of the known world, and still vast numbers of instances remain unnoticed. Almost as varied as its principal forms are the explanations offered respecting its origin and significance. We are told by some that for its origin we must go to the Buddhists and to the Lama of Thibet, who is said to take his name from the cross, called in his language Lamh. Higgins quotes Vallence as saying that the Tartars call the cross Lama, from the Scythian Lamh, a hand, synonymous to the Yod of the Chaldeans; and that it thus became the name of a cross, and of the high priest with the Tartars; and with the Irish, Luarn, signifying the head of the church, an abbot, &c.
The last form of cross to which we shall here allude is that known as the Crux Ansata, or Handled Cross. Whatever may be the signification of that instrument, or ornament, it is certain that no other has ever been so variously explained, or has been so successful in puzzling those who have sought to give it a meaning. Some have said it was a Nilometer, or measure of the rise of the Nile; one--a bishop--thought it was a setting stick for planting roots; another said it represented the Law of Gravitation. Don Martin said it was a winnowing fan; Herwart said it was a compass; Pococke said it represented the four elements. Others, again, suggest that it may be only a key. "It opened," says Borwick, "the door of the sacred chest. It revealed hidden things. It was the hope of life to come." And he continues, "However well the cross fit the mathematical lock, the phallic lock, the gnostic lock, the philosophical lock, the religious lock, it is quite likely that this very ancient and almost universal symbol was at first a secret in esoteric holding, to the meaning of which, with all our guessing, we have no certain clue."
This cross has certainly a most remarkable connection with the ancient history of Egypt, being found universally represented on the monuments, the tombs, the walls, and the wrapping cloths of the dead; hence, evidently, the idea that it is peculiarly Egyptian and its ascription of "Key of the Nile." From Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Ruffinus, we learn that it was known to the Egyptian Christians at the close of the fourth century as the symbol of eternal life. Later on, Dr. Max Uhlman wrote, "that the handle cross means _life_, is manifest from the Rosetta inscription and other texts." Zöckler, another German author, notices the opinion of Macrobius that it was the hieroglyphic sign of Osiris, or the sun, it being a fact that when the ancient Egyptians wished to symbolise Osiris, they set up a staff with an eye upon it, because in antiquity the sun was known as the eye of God, and then claims that the round portion represented the orb of the sun, the perpendicular bar signifying the rays of the high mid-day sun, and the shorter horizontal bar symbolising the rays of the rising or setting sun. The discovery of this emblem by M. Mariette in a niche of the holy of holies in the ancient temple of Denderah, points significantly to its importance and peculiar sacredness, and it has been thought probable that it was the central object of interest in the inner precincts of the temple.