Examples of Ancients Identifying Female Figures as Male Deities

 

Commenting on deities having “wings” in the ANE, Othmar Keel wrote the following about one carving where the Phoenicians identified female-looking figures as (male) gods, not (female) goddesses:

 

Even at the outset of Egyptian history, wings were disassociated from the bird-figure as a kind of hieroglyph for “protection.” They can represent the feminine-motherly aspect of the sky in its protective function . . . In the same way, wings serve to represent the protection afforded by two goddesses (misunderstood as gods on the Phoenician ivory in Fig. 261) . . . (Othmar Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms [New York: The Seabury Press, 1978], 192)

 

Here is the figure in question:

Per Keel (p. 399), "Figure 261: Ivory carving, h. 8.4 cm., w. 9.8 cm.: Arslan Tash (ca. 40 km. east of Carchemish), whence it was brought to Damascus as booty: 8th c. B.C.; Louvre. F. Thureau-Dangin et al., Arslan Tash, vol. 1, p. 93; vol. 2, p. 19, fig. 1. Cf. H. Frankfort, Art and Architecture, pp. 318f."

There are other examples like this in antiquity. Note the following inscription from the time of Ramses II (died 1213) (located at the Brooklyn Museum):

 

What is depicted in the middle of the inscription fragment is the Canaanite goddess, ‘Anat. She is depicted as Osiris but is clearly named in the middle inscription as “‘Anat, Lady (of) heaven (and) of Ramesessu Meri-Amun.”

This should put the lie to the following "argument" against Joseph Smith's interpretations of figures 2 and 4 of Facsimile 3:

 

But Egyptian writing is now well understood, and all of Smith’s identifications are wrong. In fact, two of the figures he identified as males are females." (Jimmy Akin, “Are the Mormon Scriptures Reliable?”)