CHAPTER XXXIV. 
THE LATER BABYLONIAN PERIOD. 
For a complete study of the date of these cylinders we are indebted to J. Ménant, 
whose discussion of the impressions of these seals on tablets of the Egibi family 
was published first in a paper “Empreintes de Cylindres assyro-chaldéens,” 1880, 
and later in his “Les Pierres Gravées,”’ 11, pp. 129 seq. We can do no better than 
to follow, for the most part, his discussion, showing that this class of cylinders was 
in use from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II. to that of the Seleucidz. 
The cylinder shown in fig. 544 is impressed, in part, on a tablet dated in the 
second year of Nebuchadnezzar. As we find it thus, in a very characteristic form 
as early as the first year of the first king of the dynasty, we may conclude that there 
was an insensible transition from the times of the Kassite kings. The cylinders 
have the same size and shape, but quite a new set of symbolic forms has arisen and 
the use of the long precatory inscriptions has gone out of fashion. 


~ B45 eee 
And yet long inscriptions are occasionally seen which may suggest that it is 
possible that some of the supposed Kassite cylinders may belong to a later period. 
Another impression from a tablet dated in the twenty-sixth year of Nebuchadnezzar 
is seen in fig. 545. We have here the worshiper, precisely as we have seen him in 
the seals of the Kassite date, standing in adoration before what is not an altar, as 
has been supposed, but the seat of the gods, and on it two emblems, one the thunder- 
bolt of Adad and the other a dog. Ménant gives a second example, in his fig. 
122, of almost the same design, only the thunderbolt stands before the divine seat 
and there is a crescent. 

547 : , 
We can not do better than to reproduce from Ménant several other impressions 
of cylinders on tablets. That in fig. 546 1s dated in the thirteenth year of Nabonidus; 
that of fig. 547 in the reign of Cambyses; fig. 548 is on a tablet dated in the twelfth 
year of Darius. We see here a new series of motifs on the cylinders and yet not 
wholly new, for they are all found in the kudurrus. The irregular oval object rest- 
ing on the divine seats, and surmounted by a star or a crescent, is not easy to explain, 
13 193 
