The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

IV. Symbolism of the Prophetic Beasts of Daniel 7

1. COMPOSITE BEASTS WERE COMMON PORTRAYALS

Daniel’s prophetic vision, in the first year of Belshazzar, likewise harmonizes with Babylonian symbolism. Like the four metals of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the four beasts rising out of the sea represent the sequence of kingdoms. Daniel’s symbolic beasts—the lion with eagle’s wings, the bear holding three ribs in his mouth and raising himself up on one side, the four—headed leopard with four wings, and the strange and terrible beast with ten horns—may all seem fantastic to us. Yet the idea of picturing nations as animals should, after all, be familiar to moderns who cartoon Great Britain as a lion, Russia as a burr, the United States as all eagle, and the like. And the strange and composite forms of Daniel’s animals were not at all fantastic to the prophet and his contemporaries in Babylon, but were familiar figures. PFF1 47.3

Picture 3: NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S BABYLON: ARTIST’S RECONSTRUCTION BASED ON ACTUAL REMAINS
Procession street, flanked by walls decorated with glazed-brick lions (lower right), leading through ishtar gate (center), resplendent with colored glazed bricks and decorated with alternate reliefs of dragons and bulls. In background is seen fabled “Hanging Gardens” and in the distance great temple-tower of Babylon.
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We are familiar today not only with the man—headed winged bulls and lions, dating from Assyrian times, but also with Nebuchadnezzar’s glazed—brick reliefs of animals, including the composite sirrush or mushussu, ³³ on the famous Ishtar Gate, and those of the lions along the walls of the approach to Nebuchadnezzar’s palace quarter, flanking the sacred Procession Street, which entered this towered gate. PFF1 49.1

2. LION WITH EAGLE’S WINGS SYMBOLIC OF BABYLON

Daniel’s first beast, a lion with eagle’s wings, was peculiarly appropriate for representing Babylon. Not only were lions symbols of both Marduk and Ishtar, ³⁴ but also composite lioneagle creatures were common, in representations of Bel and the dragon, as alternatives for the serpent monster,—and as symbols, therefore, of their conqueror. ³⁵ PFF1 49.2

Thus it can be seen that Daniel’s lion with eagle’s wings represented to the contemporary mind the supreme god of Babylon, and was a familiar decorative figure in Nebuchadnezzar’s day. PFF1 49.3

3. LION THE ROYAL BEAST OF BABYLONIA

“The lion figures in art throughout the whole course of Mesopotamian history,” ³⁶ not merely in the Neo—Babylonian Empire of the Chaldean dynasty, but from early Babylonian times and the succeeding dominance of the Assyrian Empire, down to the magnificent art of the rejuvenated Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors. Van Buren states that the lion is “endlessly repeated,” and “represented to satiety on cylinder seals,” and even on the shell inlay of gaming boards. The heads, and possibly the foreparts, of four lions were found in front of an early temple facade. Van Buren suggests that they were possibly “the precursors of the colossi which flanked the entrances to Assyrian temples and palaces.” ³⁷ Moreover, a lion guarded the entrance of the sanctuary of Gatumdug, back in the time of Gudea, and on Gudea’s stele a lion sat beside the god’s throne. From Assyrian times comes a series of weights of the standard “of the king” in the form of lions. So, Van Buren declares, “A lion was then regarded as a royal beast,” and adds “Nebukadnezzar stamped a lion as his device on the clay bricks for his buildings.” ³⁸ PFF1 49.4

Picture 4: EXAMPLES OF COMPOSITE BEASTS FAMILIAR TO THE BABYLONIANS
Winged, man-headed bull of Assyria, considered a guardian spirit; There were similar lion figures (upper left); goat-fish symbol of Ea, supporting Ram’s head (upper right); early Babylonian vase, adorned with dragons combining serpent, leopard, and eagle characteristics (lower left); lion-headed eagles in combination (lower right).
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At Assur in Assyria, which borrowed the culture of Babylon, a “couchant lion of gypsum” was discovered in the stone foundations. In Assyrian times lions guarding an entrance were always represented as “standing, or striding towards the enemy,” and the symbolic “lion colossi with wings” were likewise not uncommon. Layard discovered a pair of stone lions guarding the entrance to the temple of Belit—mati at Kalah. Within the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, in the principal fortress at Babylon, numerous fragments of basalt lions were discovered. ³⁹ A bronze lion was found firmly planted in the ground at the doorway of the palace at Khorsabad. And the lion was “frequently represented in the glazed and coloured bricks which adorned the walls of temples and palaces.” Also, “lions of glazed brick walk to right and left of the entrance of the temple of Ningal at Khorsabad.” Finally some sixty lions were represented as pacing forward on both sides of the Processional Way, ⁴⁰ leading through the famous Ishtar Gate in Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. PFF1 51.1

The reason, then, for choosing the lion as a prophetic symbol of Babylonia must be apparent to all. No similitude could be more appropriate or more easily discerned contemporarily. ⁴¹ PFF1 51.2

Picture 5: THE LION AND ITS ADAPTATION IN BABYLONIAN ART
Lion in glazed brick on wall of Nebuchadnezzar’s procession street (upper), cylinder seal impression showing Marduk’s combat with lions having wings and faces of eagles (center).
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