CHAPTER VII. 
ARCHAIC CYLINDERS: CONTESTS WITH WILD BEASTS. 
A considerable number of these very archaic cylinders of the primitive period 
show us contests with wild beasts and form a connecting link with the fights of 
Gilgamesh and Eabani with lions, bulls, and buffaloes, which we meet in the next 
and more advanced period. Such, for example, is fig. 111, where the human figures 
are thoroughly archaic in the bird-like head and the short, fringed garment, and 
the inscription is in the most primitive style, as in figs. 54, 73; and we have here 
a case of ha eae Serge 2a bilateral ia) BOE Se ma In the little = -lazuli seal (fig. 113) 
0) My) % os 7 
MINI AEST / I) 
Sa aS pa pee = EES 








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i; mauta cis 

we have an ibex PG: LY 1 attacked by two lions, while a hunter attacks one of 
the lions with a knife or javelin. On rather thick, marble cylinders from southern 
Chaldea we somewhat frequently have this reversed ibex thus attacked. An example 
is seen in fig. 112, although this is not as thick as usual. Here two lions attack 
the ibex, and there is a scorpion. It is evidently bulls that are attacked by lions in 
fig. 114, one of the lions being in turn attacked by a hunter with a knife. Here 
the inscription, if there was one, over the head of what might be Eabani, is erased. 
It is an ibex with which the hunter contends in fig. 115. It is reversed between two 
lions, one of which the huntsman attacks with one weapon, while he holds another 
in his other hand. We have also the heraldic ee of Lagash with legs extended 


114 
toward the lion on one side and, in lack of the corresponding lion on the other 
side, toward the huntsman. In fig. 116 a fine archaic lapis-lazuli cylinder gives us 
two human figures, with a bull, two lions, and two ibexes. ‘The ibexes and lions 
are crossed, after an early convention, and one of the lions is attacking the bull. 
It is to be noticed that in none of the cylinders of this period do we find a representa- 
tion of the buffalo of the lower Babylonian swamps, but only of the bull of the 
forests and mountains. 
These three cylinders show but a single register, but the double register also 
appears. The material of the larger cylinders, however, mostly shell or aragonite, 
44 
