THE EXPEDITION SCENE. 141 
or rather a pick, with a short handle and with a long, sharp tooth at the end, per- 
haps tied to it; for there are three projections on the other side which may possibly 
represent the cord. ‘The next figure, the fourth, if male, is completely shaven, 
without hair or beard. His garment is simply fringed at the edges; his arms are 
folded and he carries no weapon. ‘The last of the five larger figures is bareheaded 
and is dressed like the second, and he carries an ax, as does the third, resting on 
his arm. Under the inscription are two short figures, in simple garments reach- 
ing half-way down to the knees. ‘The first one, beardless and with short hair, 
probably a man or boy, carries a piece of furniture on his head. ‘The second, 
which is more probably female, has the hair tied up in a loop behind and carries 
suspended from a stick over her shoulder a bundle, which looks like a bag in which 
one can conceive that household belongings are packed. It may be a bunch of 
dates or, possibly, a receptacle in which an infant rests. The unusually fine draw- 
ing of the whole scene appears particularly in the delineation of the muscles as well 
as of the features. 
This scene has been described and fully discussed by Heuzey, as a tribe in 
migration, and such it may be. But another interpretation is not impossible, 
according to which the single unarmed figure with shaved head is a prisoner, as 
are also the two reduced figures carrying burdens, very likely of spoil, who are to be 
captive slaves. Scenes representing prisoners taken in war are, it is true, extremely 
rare. But we have one such in fig. 97, an extremely archaic cylinder, considerably 
older than the present one, where the hands of the prisoners are tied and one of 
the captives carries an ax. I am inclined to take this to be the meaning of the 
present scene. 
As has been said, this is a cylinder of much antiquity, apparently belonging 
to the period not long after that of Sargon I. and his son, when art was at its highest 
development, the date of Bilgurakhi, King of Erech. We can not but wonder 
that, having progressed so far, it sank so soon into dull conventionalism. 
