rd Nisr signifying, in all Semitic languages, an eagle
".[382] This deity is referred to in the Bible: "Sennacherib, king of
Assyria, ... was worshipping in the house of Nisroch, his god".[383]
Professor Pinches is certain that Nisroch is Ashur, but considers that
the "ni" was attached to "Ashur" (Ashuraku or Ashurachu), as it was to
"Marad" (Merodach) to give the reading Ni-Marad = Nimrod. The names of
heathen deities were thus made "unrecognizable, and in all probability
ridiculous as well.... Pious and orthodox lips could pronounce them
without fear of defilement."[384] At the same time the "Nisr" theory
is probable: it may represent another phase of this process. The names
of heathen gods were not all treated in like manner by the Hebrew
teachers. Abed-_nebo_, for instance, became Abed-_nego_, _Daniel_, i,
7), as Professor Pinches shows.

Seeing that the eagle received prominence in the mythologies of
Sumeria and Assyria, as a deity of fertility with solar and
atmospheric attributes, it is highly probable that the Ashur symbol,
like the Egyptian Horus solar disk, is a winged symbol of life,
fertility, and destruction. The idea that it represents the sun in
eclipse, with protruding rays, seems rather far-fetched, because
eclipses were disasters and indications of divine wrath;[385] it
certainly does not explain why the "rays" should only stretch out
sideways, like wings, and downward like a tail, why the "rays" should
be double, like the double wings of cherubs, bulls, &c, and divided
into sections suggesting feathers, or why the disk is surmounted by
conventionalized horns, tipped with star-like ring symbols, identical
with those depicted in the holy tree. What particular connection the
five small rings within the disk were supposed to have with the
eclipse of the sun is difficult to discover.

In one of the other symbols in which appears a feather-robed archer,
it is significant to find that the arrow he is about to discharge has
a head shaped like a trident; it is evidently a lightning symbol.

When Ezekiel prophesied to the Israelitish captives at Tel-abib, "by
the river of Chebar" in Chaldea (Kheber, near Nippur), he appears to
have utilized Assyrian symbolism. Probably he came into contact in
Babylonia with fugitive priests from Assyrian cities.

This great prophet makes interesting references to "four living
creatures", with "four faces "--the face of a man, the face of a lion,
the face of an ox, and the f