DEITIES GATHERING FRUIT: THE ‘‘TEMPTATION”’ SCENE. 139 
is true, and birds. We may presume that the two similar figures plucking the 
dates represent but one personage repeated for the sake of the symmetry so much 
affected in early and later Babylonian art. The arrangement of the hair is the 
same as we have seen (Chapter x11) characteristic of the seated goddess Bau. With 
her often appears also a bird, such as is here depicted. We may preferably assume 
that here the bird is the emblem or adjunct of the goddess and is repeated merely 
because she is thus repeated. We seem to have simply the representation of a 
goddess of the garden, who is presenting its fruits to humanity represented by the 
woman receiving the bunches of dates. 

389 
I know of no other cylinder to be compared with either of these, for they are 
unique. ‘To be sure, I have received the impression of a cylinder much like the 
last, but I rejected it as a forgery. 
In comparing this cylinder with that in the British Museum, we seem to dis- 
cover in the latter no idea of temptation. More likely two deities of production 
are represented, a god and his consort, and they are enjoying the fruit over which 
they preside. Bau was a goddess who provided abundance for tillers of the soil. 
Bau, it is true, was the mother of Ea, and so one of the oldest of the deities, and 
yet she was the consort of Ningirsu, who presided over agricultural prosperity and 
was known as Shul-gur, god of the corn-heaps (Jastrow, “Religion,” pp. 58, 59), 
as we have seen in the last chapter. 
It may be, very possibly, that we have here, in the British Museum seal, Nin- 
girsu and Bau. 
