Reza Moradi Ghiasabadi
Translator: Saam Sheykh- ol Eslami

Everybody knows the ancient Winged Globe (Winged Disk). In it’s common kind there is a globe with two wings at it’s both sides and a god in the middle of that which sometime has a ring or flower in her hand and a star figure on top of her head .

Winged Globe chart had been seen from ninth century BC at all western parts of Persian lands. But her different main parts like Globe, Wing, god had their own usage at more ancient times.

Globe’s figure or medial tassel gets vision from sun which the origin of many of the ancient believes and we can see its effect on today’s praying. We can see symbol of sun without globe/ disk or anything else is so many charts which the most typical one is chart of quintet Lulluian at Sar-e Pol-e Zahab.

Figure of wing and tail around the globe is taken from eagle famous and dear ancient peoples Bird. Eagle’s figure was found on Middle East arts before it came to its final relief .Ancient people believed that eagle and sun are from a same origin and also thought they are dependent to each other .form one point during sunrise and sunset it looks like a bird with two wings and at the other point eagle flies at the highest point that a bird can fly is the nearest world’s creature to sun. After a while figure of sun and Eagle merged and made Winged Globe at Egypt’s ancient art “Horus” figure Sun god has shown with a head like eagle.

But the other part of this figure god before its final figure had been seen individually at eastern art. At these figures we see a man which had a crown or a hat with stars on it and has a ring or flower at his hand and his other hand is up and giving salute at all lands that this figure has been founded obviously it has been stressed on it’s similarity with Jupiter or god and we know that at ancient believes Jupiter was God. This powerful god which is symbolized at Jupiter was same between different races but had different names. Persian called him “Ahuramazda/ Ourmazd/ Hormazd”. Babylonian called him “Marduk”. They have some similarity with Avestan`s phrase “Ameretat”, Pahlavi`s “Amordad” and Persian “Mordad”. In Greek “Zeus”, Ourartou “Khaldi”, Kas- si/ Kasit “Ashuryash- Mazutash”, Assur “Assur”, which is another form of “Ahuramazda”. Plenty of times at Pahlavi`s and Persian writing  we see Ourmazd or Hormazd has been used instead of  Jupiter.

Some times Winged Globe has a companionship which is star with eight angles. From far past eight angle star was used by eastern artists. They used planet “Anahid/ Nahid” (=Venus) at their art works. For the first time this name introduced to Mesopotamia by Kassitian. Except this at Winged Globe there are another symbols some of them is cross that is originated from Pole Star and constellations around polar and is old symbol of Mithra.

It seems confection of all symbols of ancient eastern and finding figures that had symbols of different races was an endeavor for solidarity. Especially that at different copies of this figure we see flower or unity ring in the hands of Ahuramazda.

During Achaemenid period Winged Globe gets its final form and we see a lot of it’s figures at Behistun during kingdom of great Darius and we see a lot o f them at Persepolis and we can say it was somehow national symbol of Achaemenid. But after Achaemenid period no one used this symbol and the last ancient symbol of is the one on third Daryush`s grave which is not even completed.

Source : http://ghiasabadi.com