disk with eagle's wings,
which became regarded as a symbol of life. The god brought life and
light to the world; he caused the crops to grow; he gave increase; he
sustained his worshippers. But he was also the god who slew the demons
of darkness and storm. The Hittite winged disk was Sandes or Sandon,
the god of lightning, who stood on the back of a bull. As the
lightning god was a war god, it was in keeping with his character to
find him represented in Assyria as "Ashur the archer" with the bow and
lightning arrow. On the disk of the Assyrian standard the lion and the
bull appear with "the archer" as symbols of the war god Ashur, but
they were also symbols of Ashur the god of fertility.

The life or spirit of the god was in the ring or wheel, as the life of
the Egyptian and Indian gods, and of the giants of folk tales, was in
"the egg". The "dot within the circle", a widespread symbol, may have
represented the seed within "the egg" of more than one mythology, or
the thorn within the egg of more than one legendary story. It may be
that in Assyria, as in India, the crude beliefs and symbols of the
masses were spiritualized by the speculative thinkers in the
priesthood, but no literary evidence has survived to justify us in
placing the Assyrian teachers on the same level as the Brahmans who
composed the Upanishads.

Temples were erected to Ashur, but he might be worshipped anywhere,
like the Queen of Heaven, who received offerings in the streets of
Jerusalem, for "he needed no temple", as Professor Pinches says.
Whether this was because he was a highly developed deity or a product
of folk religion it is difficult to decide. One important fact is that
the ruling king of Assyria was more closely connected with the worship
of Ashur than the king of Babylonia was with the worship of Merodach.
This may be because the Assyrian king was regarded as an incarnation
of his god, like the Egyptian Pharaoh. Ashur accompanied the monarch
on his campaigns: he was their conquering war god. Where the king was,
there was Ashur also. No images were made of him, but his symbols were
carried aloft, as were the symbols of Indian gods in the great war of
the _Mahabharata_ epic.

It would appear that Ashur was sometimes worshipped in the temples of
other gods. In an interesting inscription he is associated with the
moon god Nannar (Sin) of Haran. Esarhaddon, the Assyrian king, is
believed to have been crowned in that city. "The writer", says