160 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
seven gates of the lower world, and were restored to her as she returned. One 
observes that she is drawn on the cylinders as wearing a special sort of pectoral 
hanging from her neck and occupying the space on her breast that is covered in 
figures of male deities by the long beard, so that it 1s apt to be mistaken for a beard 
in the case of worn seals, or of the impressions of seals on tablets. Such has been 
the case with the impression on a tablet shown in fig. 421. This is a case in which 
M. Heuzey has been obliged to reconstruct the design from a number of broken 
tablets. He concludes that the deity is the god Ningirsu, from the inscription which 
tells us that the owner was a priest of that deity; but it is more likely that it is not 
a beard which is so drawn both in the figure of the seated god and of the flounced 
figure to the left with uplifted hands. The latter figure is always feminine, and so 
probably is the seated deity. ‘The lion belongs characteristically to Ishtar. But 
there remains the possibility that we have here not Ishtar but Bau, wife of Ningirsu, 
and that the same goddess is represented with a single lion on her seat, on fig. 229. 
Heuzey regards the object in the hand of the deity as the weapon of seven serpents. 
This cylinder is remarkable as the only case in which we find a two-headed eagle 
in Oriental art before the Hittite period. 

