192 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
are Ramman and the Great Goddess. Whether the swastika was derived from this 
cross we can not say; but in the simple forms of the Kassite cross in which the envel- 
oping cross is omitted, it is much like the swastika.* ‘That the rhomb represents the 
xveis, or female emblem, is hardly probable. It is quite as likely to have replaced 
the crescent of the moon, especially as the crescent is no more represented on 
these seals than the sun in its old form. Equally likely, as already suggested, is it 
that it comes from the eye, so often figured in Egyptian art. ‘These are the two 
principal emblems, and may have been the sun and moon. It is possible that 
when in its western passage the emblem reached the region where the moon was 
regarded as a female divinity, the emblem itself became feminine, but the extreme 
modesty of both Babylonian and Persian art (the Kassite dynasty being from Elam) 
hardly allows us to think that the rhomb had originally a sexual meaning. 

543 
Of the remaining emblems, such as the bird with wings closed or flying, and 
the dog, it is not easy to discover any definite meaning. We shall, however, find 
the dog of Bau-Gula on the kudurrus, and shall have to consider it in the study of 
the emblems of the gods. One naturally thinks of the large réle played by the dog 
in the later Persian religion, for which see “Sacred Books of the East, Zend-Avesta,” 
p. Lxxtv. The dog was the protector against the death-spirit. The dog appears 
freely on the later cylinders of the Second Babylonian Empire; and the transition 
from the style of the Kassite period to the Neo-Babylonian may have been gradual, 
and some of those we have here considered may belong to the time of Nebuchad- 
nezzar II., or not much earlier. he separation is not always easy. For another 
cylinder apparently of this class see fig. 545. 


* Since this chapter was written I find that de Morgan, ‘‘ Délégation en Perse,” vol. vi, p. 110, suggests the same 
origin of the swastika, which he found on pottery associated with the cross. 
