The lines "יה & his two Sons Satan & Adam as they were copied from the Cherubim / of Solomons Temple and applied to Natural Fact. or History of Ilium" are often treated as the title of Blake's Laocoön engraving. However, it is unlikely that it was the first inscription to appear on the plate. Figure 1a shows how the plate would have looked with just the central image and those two lines. Stopping abruptly at the edges of the sculpture's plinth, the inscription forms a rectangular block of text that is at odds with the curves of the statue. The sentence also upsets the visual balance (making the arrangement bottom heavy) and seems to be placed too close to the statue to have been conceived of on its own.
Figure 1a. An awkward arrangement
More probably, the first inscription was the Hebrew phrase "מל[א]ך יהוה" ("King Jehovah"). As figure 1b shows, it sits comfortably above the head of Laocoön, roughly in line with the uppermost point of the statue, Laocoön's raised right arm.
Figure 1b. A more comfortable start
In the engraving's final form the inscriptions "מל[א]ך יהוה" and "The Angel of the Divine Presence" seem to be a pair. The positioning of the two inscriptions, however, tells a different story. Whereas "מל[א]ך יהוה" is parallel to the base of the sculpture, the script of "The Angel of the Divine Presence" runs upwards slightly to the right, to avoid the top of the "ל of "מל[א]ך יהוה" (fig 1c). That the inscriptions are engraved close enough to each other for this to be an issue suggests that the words "The Angel of the Divine Presence" may have been added significantly later than "מל[א]ך יהוה", when Blake was beginning to run out of space. Certainly this detail confirms that "The Angel of the Divine Presence" was engraved after "מל[א]ך יהוה" and therefore that the two inscriptions were not originally conceived of together.
Figure 1c
Adding the inscription "יה & his two Sons Satan & Adam [. . .]" next makes sense, since it sits in balance with "מל[א]ך יהוה" and keeps to the limits prescribed by the left and right sides of the statue's plinth. (See figure 1d.)
Figure 1d. A more comfortable arrangement
It then makes sense for the next inscription added to have been "ΟΦΙουΧος" (a transliterated from the Greek as "Ophiuchus" or "Ophiucus"), which sits midway between "מל[א]ך יהוה" and Laocoön's head. The corresponding positioning of the inscriptions "Good" and "Evil" tells us that they are to be taken as a group: each consists of a single word and sits above a head (that of Laocoön and those of the two serpents respectively). "Good" and "Evil", therefore, were likely inscribed at the same time as, or shortly after, "ΟΦΙουΧος". (See figure 1e.)
Figure 1e
The inscriptions "ליליח" (Hebrew for "Lilith") and "Satans Wife The Goddess Nature is War & Misery & Heroism a Miser" were likely added soon afterwards. They, too, follow the contours of particular elements of the statue, this time the form of the serpents (figure 1f). They also echo each other thematically, since one refers to "Satans Wife" and the other names Lilith, who according to legend was Adam's first wife, before Eve.
As with "ΟΦΙουΧος", there is a good space between the outline of this son and the words "Satans Wife The Goddess Nature is War & Misery". However, the words "& Heroism a Miser" fall much closer to the figure of the son and seem to have been added later: where they fall in the sequence of composition is dealt with in Part 3.
