SHAMASH, THE RISING SUN. 91 
Like nearly all the early vigorous designs representing the gods, this degen- 
erated, in the Middle Babylonian period, into a conventional form, the meaning 
of which could not be discovered except from the earlier more pictorial represen- 
tation. The transition appears in fig. 38, where the god’s foot is lifted high and 
some attempt is made to preserve the suggestion of the mountain, but the space 
belonging to the gates and porters is given to an inscription and the procession of 
figures approaching the god. This inscription is peculiarly important, as it gives the 
date of the cylinder, about 2400 B.C. It reads: “Gudea, Patesi of Lagash, .. . 
his servant.” It was at the time of Gudea that the older types had fairly passed 
into the more conventional types of the smaller hematite cylinders. In fig. 260 
the worshiper with a goat, or antelope, is brought before the Sun-god, who has 
rays and carries his notched weapon, and lifts his foot high. ‘The peculiar thing 
about this cylinder is the form of the object before the Sun-god, not easily recognized. 
Other illustrations of this type are seen in figs. 261, 268, where the god carries a 
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war-club or ax, and the usual procession approaches. 
The final and usual form, fully conventionalized, is seen 
in figs. 263, 264, where the mountain has been reduced to 
a mere footstool, and where we find the frequent inscrip- 
tion with the names of the god Shamash and his wife Aa, 
both of whom appear, with the worshiper, on the cylinder. 
We have a multitude of cylinders in which Shamash is 
thus represented, often with Aa. It is unusual, however, that the standing Shamash 
has his foot, as in fig. 265, on a human-headed bull, although we see, in figs. 320, 
322, 323, the seated Shamash thus figured. We have also a god, like Nergal, with up- 
lifted weapons, and his foot on a prostrate foe, as shown in Chapter xxvil. This 
cylinder probably is not from Babylonia proper, but from a more northern region. 
Occasionally a god whom we must identify with Shamash carries an entirely 
different weapon in his hand. In fig. 266 Shamash has his foot on an elevation, 
but instead of a notched sword he carries what perhaps we may regard not as a 
floral branch, but as a club with five knobs, or perhaps as a degraded form of the 
Egyptian emblem of stability. But it appears in a bas-relief of the time of Gudea 

