100 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
approaches from behind with the worshiper and his offering, and the attendant with 
the mace looks back to see them. ‘The scene in fig. 290 is peculiar in that opposite 
the seated god with streams sits the goddess Ishtar with clubs from her shoulders, 
a very rare figure, to be discussed in the chapter “Ishtar.”’ ‘The two attendant 
figures, one with a pail, both pay their respects to the goddess. 
We have two undoubted figures of the seated Sun-god Shamash, both from 
Sippara, and they may therefore be said to represent certainly the Sun-god of 
Sippara. Whether the sun-god of Larsa was a seated or a standing Shamash is not 
yet certain. Perhaps both forms were familiar all over Chaldea and Babylonia. 
The Shamash of Hammurabi’s law code (fig. 1271) agrees completely with the 
Shamash with rays of the cylinders we have been considering. He sits on a throne, 
and wears a horned turban, or tiara, a special emblem of a god and one often 
seen on the kudurrus or “boundary stones”’ representing Anu, Bel, and Ea. From 
his shoulders on each side arise solar rays, very different in character from the 
diverging lines that rise from the shoulders of Ishtar, and which are weapons. 
The god wears a four-horned turban and a long flounced garment and has a long 
beard. His feet rest on a series of imbrications, such as are usually made to repre- 
sent mountains. In his hand are the rod and ring, apparently separated, the mean- 





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ing of which it is not easy to divine, and which are carried by Ishtar as well as by 
Shamash. In front of the god stands the king, not “receiving the law,”’ as it has 
generally been described, in. memory of the way Moses received the tablets of the 
law from Jehovah on Mount Sinai, but in the ordinary attitude of worship. He 
wears a long simple garment, not flounced, and on his head is the close cap with a 
broad thick band, familiar in the Gudea sculptures, which we here see was still in 
use in the time of Hammurabi, perhaps five or six centuries later. Here the special 
attributes of the Sun-god are the rays, the rod and ring, and the hills under his feet. 
The other unquestionable figure of the seated Shamash is that in the famous 
stele of Nabu-abal-iddin, found at Abu-habba, the old Sippara of Shamash (fig. 
310). The god, in his five-horned turban, his long beard, and his waving, rather 
than full-flounced, garment, sits on his throne which is ornamented with two 
figures of Eabani, such as frequently carry a large mace. Here their hands are 
lifted in a position to hold a mace or to operate the gates of the sun, which are 
possibly represented. The god holds in one hand his rod and ring, evidently 
separate. He sits under a canopy formed by the body of a serpent, whose head 
rests on the top of a column consisting of the trunk of a palm-tree, the fronded 
volutes of which indicate the origin of the Ionic capital, and similar fronds grow, 
as is usual with date-palms, from the bottom of the column. The emblem of the 
sun, with unmistakable streams alternating with rays, stands on the table before 
the god, and is held, or moved, by cords guided by two figures above. When this 
