Throughout ancient world references, the character of Helios is featured favorably. Holding institution: Louvre Museum, Paris, France. Representations with radiate crowns date from the 4th century BCE onward, beginning with their frequent inclusion in representations of Alexander III of Macedon (commonly referred to as Alexander the Great), who was likened to the sun deity, Helios ( Figure 1).īust of Helios, radiate (seven rays), with long hair, wearing a chlamys, a short cloak worn by men in ancient Greece. In traditional Western art, such a solar crown is often represented as a curved band of points representing rays. In Buddhist cosmology, the bodhisattva (one who is on the path toward Buddhahood) of the sun, Sūryaprabha, and the bodhisattva of the moon, Candraprabha, are both classically represented as human figures with a background of radiate halos.

In predynastic Egypt, Atum was a solar deity associated with the sun god Ra, and Horus was the god of the sky and sun. Solar deities have been integral in the development of cultures across the world. Our modern-day corona conceptualization of club-shaped spikes on the coronavirus surface comes from traditional representations of crowns as radiate headbands, worn as symbols of sovereign power, to liken that power to that of the sun. In micrographs, the club-shaped spikes that stud the surface of coronaviruses are glycoproteins that give the appearance of a radiate crown.

a narrow stalk just in the limit of resolution of the microscope and a ‘head’ roughly 100Ǻ across”. In the 1967 initial description of an electron microscopic image of a human common cold virus, June Almeida (née Hart) and David Tyrrell described the surface of coronavirus particles as being “covered with a distinct layer of projections roughly 200Ǻ long…. Although the term corona was first used in English in the 1500s, it was borrowed directly from the Latin word for “crown.” Corona is derived from the Ancient Greek κορώνη ( korōnè), meaning “garland” or “wreath,” coming from a proto-Indo-European root, sker - or ker-, meaning “to turn” or “to bend.” Within each spike is a helical single-stranded RNA-containing structural protein. Holding institution: Pergamon-Museum, Berlin, GermanyĬoronavirus virions are spherical or variable in shape and composed of an outer layer of lipid covered with a crown of club-shaped peplomers or spikes. Relief showing Helios, sun god in the Greco-Roman mythology (c.

Helios symbol