Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 175, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1915 — Austria’s Double-Headed Eagle. [ARTICLE]

Austria’s Double-Headed Eagle.

Historians vary greatly in their accounts of the origin of the double-head-ed eagle, which is the principal figure upon the coat-of-arms of Austria-Hun-gary and Russia. According to most heraldic explorers the Holy Roman emperors borrowed the symbol of the double-headed eagle from the Byzantine emperors. When the empire of the East declined it is said that Sigismund joined the eagles together and used them with one body and two heads as a symbol of his sovereignty over the two empires. But other historians declare that the Byzantine emperors had taken the symbol from the Turkish dynasty of the Seljuks. Prof. William Ramsay of Aberdeen, finds that the Seljuk emperors took the symbol, very probably, from the rains of Eyuk, in northern Cappadocia, where it appeared as one of the most important relics of an early civilization. The double-headed eagle descended to Austria-Hungary naturally through the Holy Roman empire.