168 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
the attendant is placed on an eminence is probably because it was desired both 
to keep the upper line even and to represent the servant as smaller and thus of a 
lower dignity. Much like this, with the god’s foot on his victim’s body, is fig. 447. 
The god holds the serpent-scimitar, and in the other hand the circle of weapons, 
which here have a semicircular end, as if they might be the heads of arrows. 
‘There are a crescent and three lines of inscription of an early period. 
Another example is seen in fig. 448. The god is precisely the same, only the 
turban is better drawn and the sheaf of weapons look more like arrows, but the 
attitude of the victim is different. The god Marduk before him has on his usual 
long robe and his horned hat and carries his scimitar. Also the Sun-god Shamash 
stands in his usual attitude, and before him are a worshiper in respectful attitude 
and also the sun in the crescent. Another cylinder very much like the preceding 
is seen in fig. 449, where, instead of Marduk with his scimitar, we have a god in 
a short garment and with a bow over his shoulder, who lays his hand on the head 
of the crouching figure, possibly for protection. The remainder of the design is in 
two registers, and in each two lions attack two ibexes. Yet another is fig. 450, where 
the second design gives us the seated Shamash with a worshiper and the goddess 
Aa. Cylinders of this type, although not very numerous, could yet be multiplied. 
We have some variations. One such is in fig. 451 where, instead of holding in one 
hand the sheaf of weapons, the god grasps the victim by the arm. The remainder 
of the design is the same, the god with the bow and the lions attacking the ibexes 
(only one ibex above), but in the space not occupied by the weapons is a sheep. 
Somewhat similar is the design in fig. 452. Here the god and his victim are smaller 
subordinate figures, and the victim seems to be in front view, like Gilgamesh. 
The larger figures give us the usual Ramman and his wife Shala, also Zirbanit; 
and the subordinate emblems that fill up the remaining spaces give us figures of 
the goat-fish and the man-fish, the head of Ninkharshag-Belit, a fly, an ibex seated, 
and the sun in a crescent. _ 
If the god whom we have seen in Chapter 1x pushing his cloud-enemy against 
the mountains and in deadly conflict with him is Nergal, god of the hot and 
destructive sun, we may see in this god of the Middle Empire the conventional 
form replacing an archaic form of the god. This is a purely Babylonian figure of 
a god, not taken from the west like the figures of Ramman and Adad, and, we may 
probably add, Marduk and Zirbanit, and is therefore to be considered the normal 
succession, simply conventionalized, of the older and freer form of Nergal, just as 
we have the Shamash rising over the mountains conventionalized into the Shamash 
of the middle period with his foot on a low stool. 

