EMBLEMS OF DEITIES. 397 
deity, as is so often expressed in Hebrew hymn and story. Thus protected the 
hunter discovers his enemy and turns back and kills him and returns safely to his 
castle. ‘The depressed protecting wings are much in the style of the bird so often 
seen in Egyptian art. It seems almost indifferent in Egyptian art whether it should 
be this bird (vulture or hawk) or the solar disk with its ural, but with the wings 
omitted, that should protect the king. It would perhaps be safer to say that the 
two emblems, the disk with asp, and the vulture-goddess, were combined in the 
winged solar disk of the Assyrians. 
That the disk represented the sun would hardly need argument. Its shape 
proves it almost certainly, and it is recognized as solar by Egyptian scholars. 
Among the Assyrians the disk with wings certainly designates the supreme deity 
Ashur; but we have at least several cases (figs. 1279, 1280, 1281) in which it stands 
in the place of the Sun-god, with the crescent of Sin and the star of Ishtar. See also 










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the stele of Bel-Harran-Beluzur, in Maspero’s “ Passing of the Nations,” p. 208; 
Scheil, “ Recueil de Travaux,” vol. xvi, p. 106. Doubtless Ashur himself was iden- 
tified with the Sun-god Shamash as the supreme deity. When in later Assyrian and 
Persian periods a single human figure took the place of the disk between the wings, 
it was then Ashur, and when two additional human figures were represented as 
rising one from each wing, we may suppose that the chief trinity of gods, Anu, Bel, 
and Ea, was intended, but that Anu was identified with Ashur, and equally with 
the Sun-god. Inz, from a seal probably of one of the outlying districts of Assyria, 
the wings are omitted, but the sun is distinctly represented. But in all cases it was 
still the sun that was in mind, as supreme emblem of the chief deity, a thought which 
was familiar enough in Hebrew worship, as where we are told in Malachi 4:2, that 
“the sun of righteousness shall arise, with healing in his wings.” Indeed the 
Hebrew Scriptures are full of references to Jehovah as protecting his followers who 
rest under his wings, in all which cases it is not the figure of a hen protecting her 
