Angels-MESOPOTAMIA

Mesopotamia was the ancient civilization that occupied the Tigris and
Euphrates river valley up until the fourth century B.C. After Alexander
the Great’s conquest, the area became part of the Greek cultural
sphere. Later, the area passed into Islamic control.
Mesopotamians, like many of the other traditional peoples of the
world, imagined the universe as a three-tiered cosmos of heaven,
earth, and underworld, with heaven reserved for deities. Because the
Mesopotamian religious tradition placed its gods in the sky, it was natural
that the divinities should come to be depicted with wings, the
means by which birds and other creatures lift themselves above the
earth. In Greek and Roman mythology, winged demigods were frequently
messengers between the gods and humanity. The Greeks
appear to have taken this iconographic convention directly from the
Mesopotamians. Western representations of angels with wings were
derived, in turn, from Greek and Roman traditions.