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>In other words the lion-headed deity played exactly the same role as Zurvan - it was seen as the controller of infinite time. Furthermore, another Mithraic scholar named David Ulansey made an in depth study of this deity and came to the conclusion that it was looked upon by cult worshippers as the 'personification ofthe force responsible for the precession of the equinoxes'. This leonine form was therefore believed to regulate the movement of the stars during the 25,920-year precessional cycle, immediately linking it with the Great Sphinx, which had apparently acted in a very similar capacity on the elevated plateau at Giza
>Franz Cumont, a well-known nineteenth-century scholar of Mithraism, linked the lion-headed deity of Mithraism directly with the great god Zurvan, the genius of infinite time. This association, however, has been seriously contested by modern-day academics, and instead the leonine figure is now thought to represent Ahriman - the evil principle of Zurvanism. Should this prove to be the case, then it would conform perfectly with the Zurvanite view that Ahriman had been given dominion over the earth around 9600 BC, i.e. during the precessional age of Leo. This, of course, is also the approximate time-frame in which the apparent survivors of the Egyptian elder race had established their colony in the Near East - an event which had perhaps inspired the commencement of the first millennium in Iranian chronology
