Some archæological details may next be summarised. An altar at Taanach, with protuberances suggestive of horns, bore in bold relief winged animals with human faces, lions, a tree with a goat on either side, and a small human figure clutching a serpent. Though it may belong to the eighth or seventh century, similar scenes recur upon seals and other objects of all dates. Animals (especially of the deer or gazelle kind) are common, either alone or in conjunction with trees or men. Man-headed bulls with wings, sphinxes, and scenes of combat also appear. The ubiquitous myth of the dragon-slayer finds a parallel in the Egyptian scene of a foreign god (Sutekh) piercing the serpent with his spear, or in the later grandiose representations of the sturdy boy at Petra who grips the dragon.[3] One {109} seal shows a seven-branched tree grasped by two men with the sun and moon on one side and two stags on the other. In a second, a human figure stands before a kind of pillar which is surmounted by an eight-rayed star. A third had been impressed upon a tablet from Gezer which bore nineteen distinct objects, including sun, moon, star, serpent, fish, crab, animals, etc. Some of the signs were at once recognised as zodiacal, and less elaborate specimens from Gezer and Megiddo furnish parallels. But inscribed Babylonian boundary-stones of our period bear analogous symbols; they are the emblems of the deities whose powers are thus invoked by the inscription should the land-mark be damaged or removed. The more gods, the more powerful the charm. [3] The former is given by F. L. Griffith, _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, xvi. p. 87, the latter by A. Jeremias, _Alte Test._, etc., p. 456 _sqq._, fig. 151. Such objects with all their Babylonian associations may in certain cases have been imported or copied from foreign originals; the scenes could have been absolutely meaningless or even subject to a new interpretation. But it is as difficult to treat every apparently foreign object as contrary to Palestinian ideas, as it is to determine how sacrificial and other scenes would otherwise have been depicted. Religion found its expression in art; art was the ally of idolatry, and the later uncompromising attitude of Judaism towards {110} display of artistic meaning implies that the current symbolism, etc., reflected intelligible religious conceptions. But it does not follow that these conceptions were everywhere identical.