THE GODDESS WITH WINGED GATE AND BULL. 125 
Above them two figures run rapidly towards each other, apparently in fight. Here 
is no description of worship, and the cylinder may be unrelated to the others. 
Now, how is this scene to be interpreted? Why should the gate have wings? 
and who is the goddess? for a goddess it appears to be in every case except doubt- 
fully in fig. 357. In King’s “Assyrian Deeds and Documents,” 111, pp. 119, 120, 
a number of proper names are collected beginning with Jshtar-bab, meaning Ishtar- 
gate or Ishtar of the gate; and he suggests that Ishtar-bab may be a special desig- 
nation of Bau, for whose name we have a by-form, Babu or Gate. Until other 
evidence is presented we may presume that we have in this goddess seated before 
a gate, a representative of Bau, who, as we shall see, was regularly represented as 
a seated deity. ‘This also recalls the fact that the beardless deity whom we have 
seen seated on the archaic cylinders (Chapter v), at times accompanied by a gate, 
and in one case by a winged gate (fig. 349), is very likely Bau, who is one of the 
oldest of the Chaldean deities. z 

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359 
But why is the gate winged? As to this only a conjecture can be hazarded. 
We know that the gate which accompanies the standing Shamash represents the 
approach of morning; it is the gate of the East, which is often referred to in the 
hymns as well as pictured on the cylinders which give us the standing Shamash. 
Here the gate may have a similar meaning, but connected with Ishtar of the Gate, 
that is, the morning star. In that case the wings may be compared with “the wings 
of the morning” in Ps. 139:9, and may represent the spreading of the morning light 
in the clouds that lie in level lines about the eastern horizon and are colored by the 
early light. 
But what of the bull? Bau has the by-name of the “Heifer of Isin”’ (Sayce’s 
“Religion of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia”). ‘The animal before the goddess 
is a bull, not a heifer. I do not recall that the cow is ever delineated on the Baby- 
lonian cylinders unless rarely with a calf. Perhaps the bull might properly accom- 
pany the heifer goddess. A bull alone is occasionally seen before a seated deity, 
perhaps generally a male god, the bull appearing almost to be climbing into the 
god’s lap (figs. 317, 318). Such an extremely archaic shell cylinder is seen in fig. 
360, which is considerably decayed, but we distinctly see an unusual and peculiar 
branch overshadowing the bull. But it is not clear that such a cylinder has any 
relation to the scene under consideration. 
