CHAPTER XXVII. 
MARDUK WITH THE SCIMITAR. 
The god with the scimitar I have been accustomed to identify with Marduk. 
The reason is very plain. It is a god of a form specially characteristic of the second 
empire, seldom found in the earlier art, and so belonging to the period when Marduk 
emerged, with the rise of Babylon and Hammurabi. His fight with the dragon 
Tiamat is considered with the Assyrian designs in Chapter xxxvi. He wears a 
long garment, like the standing Shamash, with one leg exposed in part through 
the opening of the garment in front, but the foot not lifted, as with Shamash, on a 
mountain or on the low stool which stands as a convention for a mountain; and he 
wears the high turban with several folds or horns. But his characteristic mark is 
his scimitar, occasionally resting on his shoulder, but usually held downward, so 
that the curved end nearly reaches the ground. It is held in the right hand, as 
impressed on the clay, the upper part being a straight shaft, which at the lower end 
makes a full curve, with the sickle shape with which we are familiar in the Greek 
art as carried by Perseus (fig. 434), and called the apa. This weapon appears 

435 
in somewhat varying forms, but was originally a serpent. In the older cylinders 
on which it appears carried by Marduk the form of the serpent is perfectly distinct. 
The swollen asp neck is exaggerated even more than in the Egyptian art. From 
that it degenerates into the mere sickle or scimitar in which we see it in the Assyr- 
ian art, where Marduk is fighting the dragon (figs. 564, 585, 588, 592). A similar 
Assyrian figure of the god with the deeply curved scimitar is seen in a standing 
statue of a god who may well be Marduk (fig. 435). In these cases the sense of the 
original serpent is quite lost. In the later Babylonian art it 1s also often forgotten, 
but there the curve is usually much less, just as the old art makes the crescent 
moon much less concave than it appears later. In Assyrian art we meet the same 
god also fighting an ostrich (figs. 587-595), or other fantastic creature which 
represents Tiamat or the spirit of disorder. It is the same form of serpent-weapon 
which we see doubled in the Babylonian caduceus; and the frequent cases in which 
we see a single vertical serpent in the middle period may very well represent this 
same weapon of Marduk, even as we so frequently see the thunderbolt of Adad. 
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