Winged genie

What it is

The winged genie is the label art historians give a figure that returns again and again in Assyrian stone carving: a man with birds' wings, almost always bearded. These shapes cover the reliefs of temples and, above all, royal palaces, and they appear in several recognisable looks. One wears a horned helmet, one a diadem, a band-like crown in place of the helmet, and one is a muscular, bird-headed male. Dress is consistent: a knee-length tunic with short sleeves and a tasselled hem, a long fringed shawl, rosettes at the diadem or wrists. Scholars connect the figures with the apkallu, sages of Mesopotamian legend, and read them as guardians bound to the king and his court.

Where it comes from

Interpreters have generally matched these figures to beings the Akkadian language calls apkallu, the sages who lived before the great flood. In one account they belong to a generation of humanity that was godlike; when the flood came, its people were purified and went on moving through the world as spirits no eye could see. A second account calls them purified humans whom the high god Marduk dispatched to Apsû, the waters under the earth that belong to Enki, also named Ea. Both stories tie the sages closely to Enki. The carved genies of the palaces are taken as pictures of these beings.

Tools and materials

Some genies hold a small four-legged animal, taken for a fawn or a gazelle. Others carry what looks like a pine cone and a pail, a pair tied to the Tree of Life; the cone has also been named as a mu-li-la, an object read in more than one way. Rosettes adorn the diadem and the wrists. Earrings hang a single cone-tipped pendant from a crescent, an ornament the king wears too. Beards, where present, follow the human pattern of three tiers.

What it is for

Everything the figures carry points to care for the king and his realm. The animal in a genie's grip is read as showing otherworldly protection given to the ruler and his people, or as the divine source of the kingdom's plenty. The cone and pail are explained as tending and fertilising the Tree of Life, or as tools for turning evil forces away, whether those forces are natural or not. One theory links the tree, and the sun above it, with the cult of Assur: the sun stands for the sun god Shamash, and the tree for Assur himself. On that reading the guarding genies picture the powers Assyrians trusted to shield the land and, above all, the empire.

Peoples and places

The figures belong to Assyria, and stand out most in two royal houses: the palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Kalhu and that of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin. Their kin spread across Iron Age imagery in Assyria and Anatolia, alongside many other half-human, half-beast creatures. Greek artists met these designs in what scholars call the orientalising period, whose beginnings lie in ninth-century BC Crete, where bronze bowls and other objects carry bearded, winged figures clearly copied from Assyrian models. From that contact, Greek story gained hybrids of its own: the Chimera, the Griffin, Pegasus and, as a winged man, Talos.

What people believe

Behind the reliefs stands a story about the world's first ages. Humanity once had a godlike generation, the apkallu; the flood ended it, yet its people went on as purified, unseen spirits. In another telling, Marduk sent purified humans down to Enki's realm of fresh water beneath the ground. Demons, too, belong to this world: the scapegoat animal exists to house a spirit driven out by exorcism. A further layer sets heaven against earth, tree against sun, and ties the whole scheme to Shamash and to Assur, the empire's own god.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Reading these figures has never settled on one story. The apkallu identification is the common one, but the emblems attract rival explanations. The small animal is either a scapegoat for a demon or a token of abundance. The cone and pail either serve the Tree of Life as fertilising gear or act, the cone named as the mu-li-la, to push evil back. The tree and sun are either a map of heaven and earth or emblems of the Assur cult. Scholars also note that king and genie share clothes, beards and earrings, which can make the two impossible to tell apart in a relief.

Compare and confuse

The same winged-human idea surfaces elsewhere. In Ezekiel's Merkabah vision, his chariot vision, the 'winged man' stands among the Chayot, and through Revelation 4:7 it becomes the emblem of Matthew the Evangelist; the Seraphim of Isaiah carry six wings apiece. Kindred figures gathered under the same heading are the Faravahar, the winged sun, the jinn and Assyrian art as a whole.

Questions people ask about Winged genie

Good reading and sources

• Winged genie on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data