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261 ground. And he said, If it please my lords, do turn unto thy servant's house for the night, and wash your feet; and in the morning, arising early, continue on your way." As the two stayed in Lot's house, "the people of the city, the people of Sodom, young and old, closed in on the house; and they called out unto Lot: 'Where are the men who had come to thee tonight? Bring them out to us so that we may know them.' "And when the people persisted, even attempting to break down the door to Lot's house, the angels "smote the people at the door, young and old, with a blindness, and they gave up finding the door." Did the angels use some magical wand, a beam emitter, with whose powerful ray the people who were trying to break down the door were smitten with blindness? In the answer to this question lies the answer to a greater puzzle. In describ- ing the arrival of the visitors to Abraham and then to Lot, the visitors are called Anashim—"people" (not necessarily "men" as the term is often translated). Yet in both instances the hosts at once recognize something that made them look different, something "divine" about them. The hosts call them right away "lords," bow to them. If, as it is described, the visitors were fully anthropomorphic, what was neverthe- less so different and distinguishing about them? The answer that comes instantly to mind will no doubt be, Why—of course—their wings! But that, as we shall show, is not necessarily so. The popular notion of angels, an image sustained and_bol- stered by centuries of religious art, is that of fully anthropo- morphic, humanlike beings who, unlike people, are equipped with wings. Indeed, were they to be stripped of their wings, they would be indistinguishable from humans. Brought over to Western iconography by early Christianity, the undoubted origin of such a representation of angels was the ancient Near East. We found them in Sumerian art—the winged emissary who led Enkidu away, the guardians with the deadly beams. We find them in the religious art of Assyria and Egypt, Ca- naan and Phoenicia (Fig. 87). Similar Hittite representations (Fig. 88a) were even duplicated in South America, on the Angels and Other Emissaries