The Winged Symbol (the figure in the winged ring)

Above the king at Behistun, on the great reliefs and doorways of Persepolis, and on the tomb façades at Naqsh-e Rostam, floats a ring or disc with outspread wings, frequently with a robed, bearded male figure rising from it, one hand raised. It is the most conspicuous religious image of Achaemenid kingship, and the plainest statement that the king rules by divine favour.

Where it comes from

The motif is not a Persian invention. The winged sun-disc is old in Egypt, and the Assyrians set a figure — sometimes drawing a bow — within a winged ring above their kings, often read as the god Aššur. The Achaemenids took this shared Near-Eastern royal sign and made it their own, placing it over the Great King as the mark of heaven's sanction.

What it represents

Its identity is one of the durable debates of the field. The old and still popular reading is that the figure is Ahura Mazdā himself. Against this, others argue that a king shown praying can hardly be praying to a figure that looks like a mirror of himself, and identify it instead as the khvarnah (Middle Persian farr), the divine glory or royal fortune that lights upon the legitimate king — a case put influentially by A. Sh. Shahbazi; still others read it as the king's fravashi (guardian spirit) or simply as a non-specific emblem of god-given rule. No reading commands agreement. The safe and honest statement is the one this compendium makes: it signifies that the king holds his office by divine favour, under the eye of the Wise Lord and the order of arta.

A note on the 'Faravahar'

The same image, adopted as the emblem of modern Zoroastrianism and of Iranian national identity, is now widely called the Faravahar. In form the modern emblem is faithfully Achaemenid; but the name is modern, and the settled meaning it is given today is exactly what the ancient evidence leaves open. The shape is authentic; the label and the certainty are not.