The arched ceiling before the lunette displays a confusion of pagan beliefs and symbols, combined with startling originality. Above and behind, dimly discernible, but dominating them all, appears the Vault of Heaven goddess, Nut, as suggested in certain of the Egyptian temples, a colossal blue-black figure, curved along the firmament with hands and feet stretching downward to the earth. The signs of the zodiac in a golden circle surround her breastplate of the stars. In the higher foreground, Tammuz, the Phoenician Apollo, attacks the python, figuring both as the slayer and the slain in their deadly conflict, according to a myth of the recurrent seasons; lower down, on the right, rises the jewelled presence of Astarte, the moon-goddess, attended by her votaries and enveloped in her pale-blue web of Death. She stands upon a crescent, with a cobra coiled at her feet. Upon the left sits the idol Moloch, the Sun-god and Devourer, in a blazing glory, the rays of which are tipped with golden hands. His gigantic human shape has a bull's head, triple-eyed; and his attendants are rampant lions. Lower still, between two solemn Egyptian deities, the soul escapes, phoenix-like, from its mummy case in the guise of a bird fluttering over the winged sun-disk that typifies resurrection.