56 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
personage with a long-pointed beard and wearing a feather headdress, with one 
hand on the head of a smaller figure and with the other holding what may be a 
shield or a rude club, is attacked with a dagger by a nude combatant. This cylinder 
appears to belong to the very oldest period of Chaldean art. 
A triple scene is shown in fig. 138). The figures are all nude, except for the 
girdle and perhaps a short garment worn by the victorious god, who, in one of the 
scenes, seizes his foe by the beard and pushes his head backward, stabbing him 
with a poniard. The space where we might expect a mountain is taken up by the 
inscription. A cylinder better preserved is seen in fig. 138c. Here we have two 
distinct scenes. In one a worshiper stands before the Sun-god Shamash. The god 

138¢ 
has his foot lifted on a mountain and holds in one hand his usual notched weapon, 
and in the other a war-club, which second weapon is unusual. Behind him is an 
altar with two flames. ‘The other scene, which here concerns us, shows the god, 
duplicated for symmetry, clothed in a long garment such as Shamash wears, evi- 
dently of sheep skin, attacking his kneeling victim, while a vulture is ready to 
pounce on the slain body. There is a gazelle in the field before the god. 
We see a triple scene in fig. 138d. In the first scene, to the left, the god attacks 
with a club his enemy who crouches with bent knees and whose club is bent as if 
broken. This may suggest that in some other case what looks like a boomerang 
may be a broken club. In the next scene the enemy, turned as if to flee, but with 

his two hands and his face turned in supplication to the god, is seized by the 
god. In the third scene the enemy is on his knee, and the god with a club seizes 
him by the headdress. In fig. 139 we have a single scene of the conflict, the god 
with his foot on the enemy who has sunk to the ground. On one side the god appears 
again with his club, while before him is a club and a beast with a long erect tail, 
such as later accompanies Marduk, which seems to accompany and aid the god; 
and on the other side is a figure with hands extended, perhaps in worship, although 
it appears as if the prostrate victim were appealing to him. A simpler case is also 
fig. 139a, where the god with a club seizes his enemy by the arm. It is curious that 
a serpent should stand each side of the god. A second design shows the goddess 
Bau with a worshiper, as seen in Chapter XII. 
