In a number of the examples cited by Parkhurst, the serpent, or the serpent's head, appears conspicuous; and particularly in idol forms representative of the sun or Baal. In most of the images, the human form predominates; around which the serpent often appears entwined. The cherubic wings are indifferently attached to the human and the leading animal forms, and to the serpent. The combinations, especially of heads, in these representative images, strikingly suggest that the example of the cherubic faces was perverted to be the basis of the system, and that the serpent, when not exhibited as a distinct and sole object of homage, was foisted in and superadded to the figures which were familiar in the original system of revealed religion. In most of the complex forms in which different animals are combined, reference appears to have been had to the sun or Baal, _i. e._ to Satan, the supposed mediating intelligence resident in the sun. In a published account of two "sculptured images" disinterred by Mr. Layard from the ruins of ancient Nineveh, and forwarded by him to Williams College, Mass., being supposed to have "been buried in the ruins of that city not less than twenty-five hundred years," and to be samples of the earliest "idols" instituted in that capital, the date of which is supposed to be about one hundred and thirty years after the deluge, the figure of one is described as "that of _a man with wings and an eagle's head and beak_, well proportioned. The two wings, springing from the back of the shoulders, are gracefully spread." The other is a figure simply of a man, seven and a half feet in height. They are pronounced "perfect of their kind. The slabs on which they are sculptured are dark gypsum, such as are described as lining the walls of the rooms and passages of the ruin, which Layard regards as having constituted at once the temple and palace of the king. One of the slabs is seven feet, and the other seven and a half feet high, and they are each three feet and two inches wide. The figures are the whole length of the slabs."