154 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
garment. Unfortunately, the cylinder, of black serpentine, is considerably worn. 
As in figs. 403 and 404 there is an offering of the contents of a vase, but in this 
case the vase is in front of the goddess and we observe that the child’s face is not 
turned towards her. We have also the standing Shamash, with his foot lifted high 
on a mountain and holding his notched sword. The inscription 1s filiary: “ Ikrub- 
ilu, son of Lani.” 
Now, what is the meaning of this scene on these four cylinders? We may 
dismiss the Egyptian Isis and Horus, the Younger Horus, as he is called, inasmuch 
as we have in Babylonian mythology no parallel to the story of the wife and son of 
Osiris; and the connection of Asari, another name for Marduk, with Osiris, as 
suggested by Sayce, is not easily confirmed. Nor is there any more basis for the 
suggestion that the child may represent Dumuzi, or Tammuz, whom we do not 
know as an infant but as a lover of Ishtar, or a god of fertility, perhaps to be identi- 
fied with Ninib. Any son of any goddess might as well be suggested. This remains 
at present one of the problems of the mythologic art of early Babylonia to be settled 
by some further fortunate discovery. 
Yet we may make a plausible conjecture. The design of the mother and 
child is not quite unknown in early Chaldean sculpture. It appears in several 
statuettes described by Heuzey (fig. 406), but they really add nothing 
to our knowledge of the scene in question. ‘They represent * a simpler 
type, which gives us only the mother with a nursing child. This prob- 
ably represents a goddess, but even that is not quite certain. 
Perhaps, after all, the more likely supposition is that we have in 
these scenes a naive representation of the protection which the goddess 
gives to her worshiper. ‘This would account for the presence of the 
supposed beard and for the garment in which the personage in the 
lap is clothed in fig. 405. In the Hittite art the affection of the deity 
for the king is figured in a way not unlike. ‘The king, represented as 
a child, in comparison with the size of the god, is embraced by the 
deity who stands by him and puts his arm about him (fig. 777). The 
Babylonian or Assyrian thought is of the king conceived of as a child 
dandled and nursed by his goddess mother. ‘Thus Assurbanipal says: 
“A babe art thou, Assurbanipal, unto whom the Queen of Nineveh (Ishtar of 
Nineveh) hath bestowed thy kingdom. A meek babe art thou, Assurbanipal, whose 
seat is on the lap of the Queen of Nineveh. The abundance of the teat which 
is in thy mouth thou suckest, there thou hidest thy face” (Stephen Langdon, in 
“American Journal of Semitic Languages,” xx, p. 259). It is then the more prob- 
able conjecture that we have in these four seals the owner of the seal conceived 
of as a child, resting on the lap of his goddess-mother, just as Gudea addresses 
Bau-Gula as “the mother who produced him” (Jastrow, “Religion,” p. 60). 
interesting parallel to the protection given by a deity to his worshiper is seen in the 
Bowl of Palestrina (Perrot and Chipiez, “History of Art in Phenicia,” 11, fig. 267, 
Clermont-Ganneau, “La Coupe Phénicienne de Palestrina’), where a hunter in 
his chariot, attacked by a savage troglodyte, is enveloped, chariot, horses, and all, 
in the ates wings of the divine emblem. 



* See Heuzey, “Origines Orientales,” p. 5, fig. 3; “Catalogue des figurines de terre cuite du Musée du Louvre,” Nos. 
30, 31; “ Découvertes,” p. 254. 
