![]() Helios and crowns are associated with power and joy in Western art in ways contradictory to the reality of the tragic pandemic that we are now experiencing with a novel pathogen featuring surface projections that are likened visually to the life-saving rays of the sun. Image from Public Health Image Library, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia. In the modern era, positive artistic depictions of liberty and peace have also worn radiate crowns including the Statue of Liberty and the silver US Peace Dollar (1921–1935) that was featured on the March 2018 cover of this journal.įigure 3. Figure 2 is an example of such coinage, featuring the emperor Aurelian wearing a radiate crown on the obverse, and, on the reverse, a personification of the official sun god of the later Roman Empire, the Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun), also wearing a radiate crown. For example, a sovereign wearing a radiate crown on the front (obverse) of the coin and a personification of the sun also wearing a radiate crown and sometimes driving a quadriga on the back (reverse) was common. In ancient Rome, the linkage between the power of rulers and the power of the sun was also frequently depicted on coinage. Crowned and cuirassed bust of Aurelian facing right. Reverse: ORIENS AVG [Eastern (rising). Antoninianus (2 denarii silvered bronze coin) of the Roman emperor Aurelian, 274–275 ce. Found at the beginning of the last century in Tripoli, this bust dates from the 1st century CE and may also have been intended to serve as a portrait of Alexander himself.įigure 2. ![]() In a later depiction of Helios seen on this page, the deity is represented in a bronze bust with seven rays radiating from a head of long hair. This metope, dating from the early 4 th century BCE, depicts Helios driving a quadriga which is a chariot drawn by four horses abreast. In the 12th book of the Odyssey, Homer refers to Helios as a god "who gives joy to mortals." This month’s EID cover features a rendition of a sculpted metope, a rectangular carved marble plaque in a Doric frieze that was excavated from the Temple of Athena at Troy/Ilion by Heinrich Schliemann in 1872. Throughout ancient world references, the character of Helios is featured favorably. Representations with radiate crowns date from the 4th century BCE onward, beginning with their frequent inclusion in representations of Alexander III of Macedon (commonly referred to as Alexander the Great), who was likened to the sun deity, Helios ( Figure 1). ![]() In traditional Western art, such a solar crown is often represented as a curved band of points representing rays. In Buddhist cosmology, the bodhisattva (one who is on the path toward Buddhahood) of the sun, Sūryaprabha, and the bodhisattva of the moon, Candraprabha, are both classically represented as human figures with a background of radiate halos. In predynastic Egypt, Atum was a solar deity associated with the sun god Ra, and Horus was the god of the sky and sun. Solar deities have been integral in the development of cultures across the world. Our modern-day corona conceptualization of club-shaped spikes on the coronavirus surface comes from traditional representations of crowns as radiate headbands, worn as symbols of sovereign power, to liken that power to that of the sun. Bust of Helios, radiate (seven rays), with long hair, wearing a chlamys, a short cloak worn by men in ancient Greece. In micrographs, the club-shaped spikes that stud the surface of coronaviruses are glycoproteins that give the appearance of a radiate crown.įigure 1. a narrow stalk just in the limit of resolution of the microscope and a ‘head’ roughly 100Ǻ across”. ![]() In the 1967 initial description of an electron microscopic image of a human common cold virus, June Almeida (née Hart) and David Tyrrell described the surface of coronavirus particles as being “covered with a distinct layer of projections roughly 200Ǻ long…. Although the term corona was first used in English in the 1500s, it was borrowed directly from the Latin word for “crown.” Corona is derived from the Ancient Greek κορώνη ( korōnè), meaning “garland” or “wreath,” coming from a proto-Indo-European root, sker - or ker-, meaning “to turn” or “to bend.” Within each spike is a helical single-stranded RNA-containing structural protein. Holding institution: Pergamon-Museum, Berlin, GermanyĬoronavirus virions are spherical or variable in shape and composed of an outer layer of lipid covered with a crown of club-shaped peplomers or spikes. Relief showing Helios, sun god in the Greco-Roman mythology (detail) (c. ![]()
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