*

“And what have we here?” says Wen in that provocative way of hers which means she is up to something.

“Anzu and Ninurta.”

“Nope, not doing it for me.”

“Anzu, Guardian of the Threshold, who stole the Tablets of Destiny from the Gods, and Ninurta, the God of agricultural and pastoral fertility,  who was sent to slay Anzu and retrieve the tablets.”

“Hmmm… This is a late interpretation of the iconography I take it?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Oh, let’s see now, ‘Anzu’ was a Thunder-Bird, was possibly the Thunder-Bird and ‘Ninurta’ is carrying Lightning-Bolts.”

“That’s very good. A straight forward depiction of the thunder-storm.”

“Well, hardly straight forward but, essentially, yes…”

“No, those figures could hardly be described as straight forward…”

“Legs going one way…”

“…Body going the other.”

“Didn’t we have that, monster ‘looking-back-over-its-shoulder’ thing as symbolic of time at one point?”

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