CHAPTER XxX. 
DEITIES GATHERING FRUIT: THE “TEMPTATION” SCENE. 
No design upon the cylinders has created so much discussion or attracted so 
much popular interest as that shown in fig. 388 and which has been popularly 
supposed to represent the temptation of Adam and Eve by a serpent. The design 
is a very simple one. We have a palm-tree, with a bunch of dates hanging down 
on each side of the trunk. On one side sits a deity—probably masculine, although 
the beard does not show—in a two-horned headdress and a long, sive garment. 
His hand is stretched out toward the tree. Facing him on the other side of the 
tree is a seated female figure, not having on her head the two-horned headdress of 
the god; she also is in a long, simple garment and holds her hand toward the tree. 
Between the backs of the two figures is an upright serpent with its head nearly 
over the woman’s head. 


388 
It is not strange that any one familiar with the Bible story of the Temptation 
should regard this design as a proof that the early Babylonians had a similar story, 
although no remnant of it seems to have been preserved. Indeed, we may fairly 
expect that some such story. may be found, just as we have Babylonian stories of 
the Creation and the Flood. ‘This cylinder seems to belong to quite an early period. 
But it must not be forgotten that the upright serpent occurs quite often on cylinders, 
especially of the middle Babylonian period, and its presence here is not a certain 
evidence that it had any definite relation with the thought of the two figures seated 
about the palm-tree. 
George Smith, in his “Chaldean Genesis,” p. gi, interpreted this without 
question as a representation of the Temptation, but Ménant (“Glyptique Orientale,”’ 
I, pp. 189-191) has strongly combated this view and has brought forward a strong 
argument against it in comparing with it a marble cylinder in the Museum of The 
Hague (fig. 389). It is a beautiful cylinder, which deserves careful study. We 
have again the palm-tree with its hanging bunches of dates. On each side stands 
a female figure with her hand on the hanging bunch of dates, while she holds 
another bunch in her hand. One of the figures is handing the bunch she holds to 
a third female figure which is reaching forward her hand to receive it, while still 
holding another bunch in her other hand. There is, in the field, a second short 
palm-tree with dates, and two other low trees or shrubs, and also two birds like 
geese or ducks, also a crescent and a brief inscription with the owner’s name. 
Here is no temptation scene like that of Genesis. We seem to have a garden, it 
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