Four rams' heads

One of A. E. Waite's many innovations on his Emperor card was to decorate the Emperor's throne with four rams' heads. While I am not a big fan of the forced system of astrological correspondences that motivated this addition, in this case I think Waite's choice may have been an inspired one.

I have noted in my post "The Emperor and the number 4" that the Emperor is closely associated with the god Zeus, or Jupiter -- beginning with the number of the trump. The Arabic numeral 4 suggests the astrological symbol for Jupiter. The Greek numeral Δ is the initial letter of Διεύς, "Zeus." The Roman name Jupiter (IVPITER) begins with the Roman numeral IV. In fact, the piter element simply means "father," so the divine name proper is simply the number four. In the statue of Jupiter now on display at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, we see all the essential elements of the Emperor card: a beared man seated on a throne, a scepter in one hand and an orb in the other, with an eagle on his left. (The eagle is absent on the Rider-Waite card, but most decks have it.)

Well another attribute of Zeus, in his character as Zeus Ammon, was a pair of ram's horns. This came from a syncretistic identification of Zeus with the Egyptian god Amun, whose statue at Megalopolis had the head of a ram. Alexander the Great, a prototype of the "emperor" figure, was supposed to be the son of Zeus Ammon, and ancient coins depict him with ram's horns. (The personage called the "two-horned man" in the Quran is generally believed to be Alexander.)

So a ram's head suggests Zeus and Alexander and is thus appropriate for the Emperor -- but the Emperor's throne features four rams' heads. There is an Egyptian god that is usually depicted with four rams' heads: the Ram of Mendes. This figure typically appears at the center of an Egyptian hypocephalus -- a circular amulet placed under the head of the deceased.

The most famous hypocephalus is of course the fragmentary Joseph Smith hypocephalus, restored by him and "translated" as the Second Facsimile from the Book of Abraham. The Facsimile does not show four rams' heads on the central figure because that part of the hypocephalus was missing and was (Egyptologists would say) incorrectly restored by Smith. Smith identifies this figure -- originally a god with four rams' heads -- as Kolob.

In Egyptian, the words for "soul" and "ram" are both pronounced ba (plural baw). The ba of a god was often conceived of, and personified, as being distinct from the god itself. The Ram of Mendes is said to represent Amun in his aspect as a cosmic god, and the heads of the four rams (baw) signify that he incorporates the souls (baw) of the four gods Ra, Shu, Geb, and Osiris (corresponding respectively to fire, air, earth, and water).

It is this same Amun that was later combined with Zeus into the ram-horned god Zeus Ammon and said to be the father of proto-emperor Alexander the Great.

I have said that the ba, or soul, though more often represented as a human-headed bird, can also be represented by the ram because "ram" is pronounced ba in Egyptian. A third such homophone is the Egyptian for "leopard," also ba. It is interesting to note that a four-headed leopard appears in the Bible.

After this I beheld, and lo another [beast], like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it (Daniel 7:6).

It is even more interesting to note that in the standard interpretation of this symbolic vision, the four-headed leopard represents none other than Alexander the Great -- ram-horned son of Zeus Ammon -- and his empire.