Apollo Belvedere of aesthetic perfection for Europeans and westernized parts of the world. It is now in the "Cortile del Belvedere" of the Pio-Clementine Museum of the Vatican Museums complex. The Greek god Apollo is depicted as a standing archer having just shot an arrow. Although there is no agreement as to the precise narrative detail being depicted, the conventional view has been that he has just slain the serpent Python, the chthonic serpent guarding Delphi—making the sculpture a "Pythian Apollo". Alternatively, it may be the slaying of the giant Tityos, who threatened his mother Leto, or the episode of the Niobids.
Serpent (symbolism) Babylonian national god Marduk, the scribal god Nabu, and the Assyrian national god Ashur. Snake cults were well established in Canaanite religion in the Bronze Age, for archaeologists have uncovered serpent cult objects in Bronze Age strata at several pre-Israelite cities in Canaan: two at Megiddo, one at Gezer, one in the "sanctum sanctorum" of the Area H temple at Hazor, and two at Shechem. In the surrounding region, serpent cult objects figured in other cultures. A late Bronze Age Hittite shrine in northern Syria contained a bronze statue of a god holding a serpent in one hand and a