FABLE AND FOLKLORE 29 



represented on many seals and decorations] was derived 

 the two-headed eagle, in the effort to complete the 

 bilateral symmetry. This double-headed eagle appears 

 in Hittite art, and is continued down through Turkish and 

 modern European symbolism." 



Among the host of rock-carvings in the Eyuk section 

 of the mountains of Cappadocia (Pteria of the Greeks) 

 that are attributed to the Hittites, Perrot and Chipiez 

 found carvings of a double-headed eagle which they 

 illustrate; 112 and they speak of them as often occurring. 

 "Its position is always a conspicuous one — about a great 

 sanctuary, the principal doorway to a palace, a castle 

 wall, and so forth; rendering the suggestion that the 

 Pterians used the symbol as a coat of arms." 



Dr. Ward thought the Assyrian two-headed figure of 

 their national bird resulted from an artistic effort at 

 symmetry, balancing the wings and feet outstretched on 

 each side, but I cannot help feeling that here among the 

 Hittites it had its origin in a deeper sentiment than that. 

 It seems to me that it was a way of expressing the dual 

 sex of their godhead, presupposed, in the crudeness of 

 primitive nature-worship, to account for the condition 

 of earthly things, male and female uniting for productive- 

 ness — the old story of sky and earth as co-generators of 

 all life. Many other symbols, particularly those of a 

 phallic character, were used in Asiatic religions to typify 

 the same idea; or perhaps the conception was of that 

 divine duality, in the sense of co-equal power of Good 

 and Evil, God and Satan, that later became so conspicuous 

 in the doctrine of the ancient Persians. Could it have 

 been a purified modification of this significance that made 

 the eagle during the Mosaic period — if Bayley 24 is right 

 — an emblem of the Holy Spirit? And Bayley adds 



