While searching for one article about Egypt, I noticed a photo of an Egyptian fresco that depicted a snake with wings. For the sake of curiosity, I decided to look for more similar photos. And I found it. But with information about these snakes, it turned out to be tight
One source writes that these snakes are a symbolic representation of the god Osiris. Another calls these creatures real creatures, which later became the prototype of dragons in the legends of all the peoples of the world and cites as an example an excerpt from the "History" of Herodotus:
“There is a region in Arabia located approximately near the city of Butoh. I went there to find out about winged snakes. Arriving at the place, I saw a myriad of bones and ridges. Whole heaps of [serpentine] ridges lay there - large, smaller, and very small; there were a lot of them. The terrain where the piles of bones lie looks like this: it is a narrow passage leading from mountain gorges into a vast plain. This plain adjoins the Egyptian plain. There is a legend that with the onset of spring winged kites fly from Arabia to Egypt. The ibises fly to meet them up to this gorge and, not letting in the snakes, kill them. That is why, according to the Arabs, the Egyptians give such great honors to the ibis. And the Egyptians themselves agree that this is why they worship these birds."
Personally, when I use the phrase "Winged Serpent", the first thing that comes to mind is the name "Quetzalcoatl" - (the name of the deity of ancient America, one of the main gods of the Aztec pantheon and the pantheons of other civilizations of Central America, as well as the name of a historical person, as Wikipedia writes).
This name is composed of two words. Quetzal (quetzal, quetzal, quetzal) is a small bird with bright emerald plumage, which was highly prized in the traditional cultures of America and - coatl - snake. That is, it is quite possible to call this god the Winged Serpent. Interestingly, this god was never displayed in the form of that very snake, but was anthropomorphic, similar to a person, at least in well-known images.
Image of Quetzalcoatl from the Codex Magliabechiano, 16th century.
Promotional video:
In Daniken's book "Twilight of the Gods" you can stumble upon a short mention of an interesting Mayan stone stele. I did not find any articles about her. Just a photo.
In 1860, near the village of Santa Lucia Cozumalguapa in Guatemala, several magnificent stelae were found during cleaning work. The news reached the Austrian researchers Dr. Habel, who arrived in Mexico in 1862 for excavations. Dr. Habel made some sketches and showed them to the director of the Royal Ethnological Museum Berlin, Dr. Adolf Bastian. Four years later, he himself traveled to Guatemala and acquired fragments of ancient stones from the owner of the estate, where the steles were found. Transporting this incredibly heavy load to Europe has become a complex logistical challenge. After much deliberation, it was decided to cut the stone statues in half and send them to the harbor of San Jose, 80 km away. To make the blocks lighter, they were hollowed out from the inside. During loading, one of the steles broke and sank in the waters of the harbor - where it rests to this day. The remaining statues of that forgotten era can be admired in the Ethnological Museum in the west of Berlin. Since archaeologists always have to rename and categorize everything - otherwise they will not be able to exhibit artifacts - the steles have received a rather apt name: Ode to the Sun God.
Notice the two heads in the circles on the left. What is it? It reminds me of the heads of snakes or lizards. Nowhere else in the images of steles or stone sculptures of the Maya I have not seen such drawings and images. Are the images of the Maya and the Egyptians connected with what Herodotus observed? Maybe. Or maybe these are just delusions. What do you think about this?