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)
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?”)