126 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
Another very unusual cylinder must be included, although its meaning is far 
from clear (fig. 361). It is archaic and very complex, and unfortunately the shell 
is much worn. On a long-legged quadruped there is what may be a winged gate, 
and over it a second, narrower gate, and above it what appears to be a heraldic 
eagle with figures each side with hands uplifted. There is a boat among the reeds, 
a number of men and animals and two processions of men, one above the other. 
There must be in this a story representing an unknown myth, just as the cylinders 
show the myth of Etana on the eagle, Chapter xx1I. 
And what is the meaning of the “streams”? Are they cords? One can not 
but compare them with the cords, sometimes with tassels at the end, which fall 
from under the wings of the ered disk ghia: the se deity, Ashur, 
Ni ee 





Ih Col Te oe 
sa SORE 
Vs 
<n ares : 
in a considerable class of Assyrian seals of a much later Sct These Py are 
grasped by the worshiper and seem to represent the connection between the god 
and his petitioning servant. It is not impossible that the winged gate of sunrise 
corresponds to the winged disk of the Assyrian supreme god Ashur, which also is 
identified with the disk of the sun and sometimes in art represents the Sun-god 
Shamash (fig. 1279). In that case the later Assyrian design of the cords from the 
wings of the disk would be borrowed from this much earlier design of the cords from 
the wings of the gate, but they would be connected with a much higher emblem 
of supreme deity. ‘The difficulty about considering them as streams lies in the fact 
that in no case is any vase seen from which or into which the water flows, such as 
might from analogy be expected. 
It may be added that in one or two cases the material of which these cylinders 
are made is of an unusual kind of serpentine, which might suggest a peculiar local 
origin. 


360 
