Nimrod, the powerful horned bull was also symbolised bearing wings. This designation arose from a synonym for Gheber, ‘Abir’, Mighty One. A similar word, Aber, meant wing and, as head of his troops, Nimrod became known not only as Baal-aberin, Lord of the mighty ones, but as Baal-abirin, The Winged One.
Successive Babylonian and Assyrian kings adopted this symbolism, and when the prophet Isaiah speaks of the coming Assyrian attack, he says that the “stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel,” (Isa 8:8)
The poet Aristophanes declared that in the beginning of the world, the birds were created first, and then the “blessed immortal gods”. Alexander Hislop, in The Two Babylons, suggests that if one bears in mind that the “winged ones” symbolised the “Lords of the mighty ones” then the meaning is clarified. Men first began to be mighty upon the earth, then they were deified. [Read more…] about Nimrod and the Winged Sun Disc