Or with taper light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish.
King John, IV. 2.
All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
King Richard II. 1. 3.
When the searching eye of heaven is hid
Behind the globe and lights the lower world,
Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen.
King Richard II. III. 2.
Hence also the Dawn is spoken of as looking about:—
Who is this that looketh forth as the morning?
Song of Songs, VI. 10.
At the theological stage the mythical view was subjected to several alterations. The holy book of the Parsees[1] calls the sun the Eye of Ahuramazda. Many regard the name 'Anamelekh, who from 2 Kings XVII. 3 was a deity of the inhabitants of Sepharvaim (the Babylonian Sipar of the cuneiform Inscriptions), expressly designated in the national documents a solar town,[2] as contracted for 'Ên ham-melekh, i.e. Eye of the Sun-god Melekh, and so probably the sun itself.[3] Even in the speech of a late Hebrew prophet (Zech. IV. 10) we find the same view, somewhat modified: 'These seven are the eyes of Jahveh, that run over the whole earth.' Here Jahveh's eyes are undoubtedly to be referred to the sun, and the number seven allows us to think of the seven days of the week.[4] Similarly, it is said in the Atharvaveda IV. 16. 4 of the messengers of Varuṇa; 'descending from heaven they traverse the whole world, and inspect the whole earth with a thousand eyes.'[5] To the same tendency we must attribute
- ↑ Yaçna, I. 35, III. 49.
- ↑ Eberh. Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, p. 165.
- ↑ Haneberg, Religiöse Alterthümer der Bibel, Münich 1869, p. 49; Movers, Die Phönizier, I. 411, where other combinations are given.
- ↑ The seven days of the week are imagined to have a connexion with the sun. According to Diodorus, I. 272, the inhabitants of Rhodes at the time of Cadmus worshipped the Sun-god, who had begotten seven sons on that island.
- ↑ Muir, Sanskrit Texts, V. 64.
