60 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
intended. In this very early seal we also observe the requirement of symmetry in 
the arrangement of figures. We are not to suppose that all these figures represent 
different mythological beings. Very likely the two nude figures attacking the stag 
may both represent Gilgamesh, and the two other clothed figures may represent 
a single personage, and that one possibly also Gilgamesh. Apparently it was the 
same Gilgamesh and Eabani that we saw in fig. 111, and there it was Gilgamesh 
that wore the skirt. 


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Another cylinder of lapis-lazuli, of not much later date if we can judge from 
its art, belongs to the Metropolitan Museum (fig. 141a). It represents a nude 
Gilgamesh attacking a rampant lion from behind. In one hand he holds what 
may be a bow or a shield, while with the other he stabs the lion in the neck with a 
dirk. Another nude profile hero attacks two rampant animals, one a stag and the 
other an oryx, or ibex, the latter also attacked by a lion. The hero in profile has 
the bird-like face made up mostly of an eye, characteristic of the archaic art, which 
also appears in the two curls of Gilgamesh, the peculiar drawing of his hair, and 
in the straight lines with which the lion’s mane is drawn. ‘There are two lines of 
archaic inscription. ‘The inscription is not easy to 
read, but seems to contain the name of a king of 
Erech me seemio 4297) 
; Of a similar style and of the same primitive 
period are figs. 1415, 141d, 142, all of lapis-lazuli 
and all belonging to the rich collection of M. de 
Clercq, a large portion of which he obtained directly 
from his agent in Baghdad. No. 141), which bears 
the name of an early patesi, shows the more usual 
three curls each side of Gilgamesh’s head and the 
broad face both of the hero and of the lions, as also 
of the two smaller mythological creatures; and we 
have the straight, scraggly mane of the lions. We have here an early form of 
the human-headed bull, which very possibly had its origin in a badly drawn 
bull’s head of an earlier period. Various considerations suggest that the develop- 
ment as well as the persistence of myths depends much on representations in art. 
What looks like a human-headed scorpion standing on the human-headed bull is 
said by Heuzey (“Les Armoires Chaldéennes de Sipourla,” p. 14) to be really 
meant for a human-headed eagle. This is not fully clear, as we would expect 
rather the lion’s head, as in the emblem of Lagash on the vase of Entemena 
(fig. 56) and on the cylinders shown in that chapter. The human-headed scorpion 
is familiar on the later seals, and we have already seen the human-headed serpent, 

