Triple-headed eagle in the context of Chechens

The double-headed eagle is an iconographic symbol originating in the Bronze Age. The earliest predecessors of the symbol can be found in the Ancient Near East (i.e., Mesopotamia and Hittite iconography) and Mycenaean Greece. Most modern uses of the emblem are directly or indirectly associated with its use by the Palaiologos dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, a use possibly derived from the Roman Imperial Aquila. High medieval iterations of the motif can be found in Islamic Spain, France, the Bulgarian Empire and the Serbian principality of Raška. From the 13th century onward, it appeared within the Islamic world in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum and the Mamluk Sultanate, and within the Christian world in Albania, the Holy Roman Empire, Russia, and Serbia. In a few places, among them the Holy Roman Empire and Russia, the motif was further augmented to create the less prominent triple-headed eagle.

2 Esdras, also called 4 Esdras, Latin Esdras, or Latin Ezra, is an apocalyptic book in some English versions of the Bible. Tradition ascribes it to Ezra, a scribe and priest of the fifth century BC, whom the book identifies with the sixth-century figure Shealtiel.

2 Esdras forms a part of the canon of Scripture in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (an Oriental Orthodoxy body), though it is reckoned among the apocrypha by Roman Catholics and Protestants. Within Eastern Orthodoxy it forms a part of the canon although its usage varies by different traditions. 2 Esdras was translated by Jerome as part of the Vulgate, though he placed it in an appendix.