ALLATU UNDER THE BENT TREE. 151 
It is not unusual to see black serpentine cylinders, or even shell cylinders, thus recut 
and so sophisticated as to ruin them, and the same might be done with the green 
serpentine of the cylinders of lower Babylonia. These two, however, have not 
been recut. 
This second example might seem to put in doubt the natural interpretation 
of the first one, from which it seemed that the attacking personage was trying to 
cut down the tree so as to reach the goddess protected by it; it would seem more 
likely that the purpose was to crush and kill the goddess. We also may judge 
from the rays from the god’s shoulders that he is some form of the Sun-god. Sha- 
mash, as we have seen, is very frequently so represented, as also with his foot thus 
lifted, on a mountain. But the Sun-god is usually represented in a long garment, 
which falls to his ankles and opens in front to expose the lifted leg. In neither of 
these cylinders is the god thus clothed. 
Inasmuch as this represents a Sun-god, it is more likely to be Nergal, and if 
so we can make a very plausible conjecture as to the meaning of the design, at 
least in part. We know from one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets * of a mythologic 
story according to which there arose a conflict between the gods of the upper air 
and those of Hades. Nergal had shown disrespect to Allatu, or Eres-ki-gal, queen 
of the lower world, who ordered him sent down for punishment. He attacked 
her in her covert, cut off her khuduba, then seized the goddess and was about 
to drag her from her throne and kill her, when she begged for mercy and offered to 
be his wife. From her he received the tablets of destiny and became supreme 
god of the region of the dead. It is possible that in these two seals we have the 
goddess in the lower world and the god bursting through the earth to reach her. 
In the first and more elaborate of the two we may have a second scene of the story 
also, the goddess delivering to her conqueror the scepter of her authority and 
kneeling before him as he enters her domain. We have a scepter much like it 
held by the goddess in fig. 215. This appears to me a more probable interpreta- 
tion than that which would have been drawn from the mere inspection of that 
cylinder alone. It is an important item of evidence which we draw from the second 
cylinder, that the attacking deity is a Sun-god, as shown by the rays, and that the 
difference in the headdresses of the two figures of a god has no significance. Until 
other light shall appear we may regard this scene as the conquest of Allatu and the 
lower world by Nergal. If this interpretation is correct the age of the story of the 
conquest of Allatu by Nergal is carried back to a considerably earlier period than 
was conjectured by Jastrow. 

* Jastrow, “Religion of Babylonia,” pp. 584-85; Winckler and Abel, “ Der Thontafelfund von El-Amarna,” nm, 164, 
165; Pinches, Proceedings Society of Biblical Archeology, xxv, pp. 215-218. 
