458 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 9 



there are boats, trees, and standards which some explain as totemic 

 crests. Few predynastic Egyptian references to the sun or to the 

 stars are found ; nevertheless, the earliest godheads of dynastic times 

 are connected with the sky. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt half- 

 animal, half-human gods walk through the gloaming as civilization 

 dawns. 



In arranging Mesopotamian seals in chronological order, Legrain 

 really gives data on the evolution of gods. The first predynastic 

 seals are flat stones with the backs carved to represent the lion, the 

 bull, and the eagle, the fronts having geometric patterns, simple 

 scenes with mountains, animals, hunters, huts, nets, suns, stars, 

 crescents, double-headed eagles, and bull-men. In the next group, 

 early Sumerian and shortly before dynastic times, which began about 

 3000 B. C., there are designs which portray the prototypes of Gilga- 

 mesh and Eabani, commonly explained as solar heros who are 

 humanized bison and bos and who fight wild animals. Later still 

 comes Shamash the sun god, described as: "Shamash, the young 

 hero of light, opening the gates of dawn, rising at morn over the 

 Persian hills armed with his golden saw, the divine archer who 

 pierces with his golden arrows the powers of darkness, the mists 

 and the stormy cloud brooding over the mountain, who breaks the 

 backs of his enemies and their clubs, pulls off their crowns and their 

 beards, the triumphant warrior who passes at noon the tops of the 

 stage towers, the great divider between day and night, the supreme 

 judge from whom nothing is hidden." 



SUN WORSHIP IN MESOPOTAMIA AND EGYPT 



But when gods such as that are represented in human form, an 

 essential process of change has been completed; for gods in kingly 

 guise are a reciprocity for kings in godly guise. After the opening 

 of the dynastic period the kings of Mesopotamian states were not 

 only the representatives of gods but effectively they were themselves 

 gods. The Sumerian word patesi which means "vice regent of a 

 deity" continued to be used by Assyrian rulers. To be sure the record 

 of identification of the king with the god is not as complete in 

 Mesopotamia as in Egypt. Hammur-abi appears before the sun god 

 and calls himself the sun god. On early sculptures the blazing 

 sun star protects the king, and on later ones the winged disk of 

 the sun, imported from Egypt, serves the same purpose. Sun wor- 

 ship is pictured on splendid monuments where the sun god seated 

 on a throne has libations poured in his honor (see pi. 1). 



One main difference between sun worship in Mesopotamia and 

 Egypt is that in Mesopotamia Shamash and other gods with solar 

 attributes are in human form, whereas in Egypt we have original ani- 



