462 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 39 



The Colossus of Rhodes, a harbor statue, named as one of the seven 

 wonders of the ancient world, must have represented Helios, and we 

 may speak of New York's Liberty Enlightening the World as the 

 sun god's sister in an artistic sense. Helios in his chariot was carried 

 as an artistic motive to Dura-Europos, to India, to Turkestan, even to 

 China. Also it survives in various adaptations down to modern times. 

 This is no denial of the fact that miniature sun chariots, employed as 

 cult objects during the Bronze and Iron Ages, may have been respon- 

 sible originally for the Helios convention. 



Can any earlier god be called radiant in the same sense as Helios? 

 Did the light from the shoulders of Shamash develop into a true 

 halo ? Apparently not. The leading possibility of a source anterior 

 to the date when the artistic characteristics of Helios became fixed 

 among the Greeks would naturally be sought in representations of the 

 Iranian god Ahura-mazda under Cyrus and his successors. The sculp- 

 tures dealing with Darius exhibit the winged sun disk combined with 

 a long-robed priestly figure and are a carry-on of the Assyrian con- 

 vention derived originally from Egypt. Royal memorials and tombs 

 on the Persian plateau reflect the contemporary usage in the lowlands 

 in picturing the sun, with simple forms of the winged sun disk on 

 the tombs of early Medic kings. 



Herzfeld in The Throne of IQiosro brings together many curious 

 references concerning Helios. It seems that the first Persian sun god 

 with rays about his head was Mithra, mostly a derivative of Ahura- 

 mazda, but touched by Greek artistry and dating from the end of the 

 Greek dynasty of the Seleucidae. Even if Mithra, as some claim, 

 is ancient in Cappadocia the sun god pictured with Ardashir II 

 (d. A. D. 383) is in the Helios tradition. The Sassanian kings re- 

 stored the Zoroastrian religion and the winged sun disk adorns the 

 crown of Kliosro II (d. A. D. 628). Mithraism was an active religion, 

 and the slaying of the heavenly bull by Mithra is a vernal equinox 

 ceremony inspiring monuments in Syria and several parts of Europe. 

 The Mithraic festival of the winter solstice gives rise to our Christmas. 



When Alexander the Great became an Egyptian pharaoh, he auto- 

 matically was made a god after death. Apotheosis was regular among 

 his Ptolomaic successors and was also adopted by the Romans. Nor- 

 mally, these deified beings reached heaven in the chariot of Helios. 

 This vehicle is pictured on the Altar of Malachabel at Palmyra. 

 Another representation on a tablet of ivory in the British Museum 

 is called the Apotheosis of Romulus and may refer to a certain M. 

 Aurelius Romulus Caesar who died in A. D. 308. The ghost is swept 

 upward across the zodiac in the chariot of Helios. 



Another adaptation of the chariot of the sun god is an early mode 

 of depicting Christ's Ascension. In the Coptic church at Bawit in 

 upper Egypt, belonging to the Monastery of St. ApoUonaris, there 



