202 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
the story was current in which Tiamat, whether female or whether the masculine 
Tamtu, assumed the form of the serpent. ‘That is, it took the form which was incor- 
porated into the Genesis story of the temptation of man; for the biblical story of 
the temptation, although adapted to a pure monotheism, must have been a part 
of a cycle of which the Tiamat story is another episode. We may conjecture that 
these are not purely Assyrian cylinders, but that they originated in some region to 
the north or west of Assyria, whether that of the Mitani or the Hittites, and that 
it was directly from them that the Israelites got the story of the serpent tempter, 
and not directly from the Babylonians or Assyrians. 
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There are many other variants of this scene of conflict in which the artists 
delighted, especially in the later Assyrian period, while they seem sometimes to 
have almost lost the original story. In fig. 580 the head of the monster is still that 
of a lion, but the attitude is more nearly that of a horse. Besides the star, the fish, 
and the rhomb, we observe also a bird, such as we shall later see the god fighting 







oe 
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with. But more frequently the monster took the head as well as the wings and hind 
legs of an eagle. Thus in fig. 581 we find that the god, who has necessarily lost 
his scimitar, seizes two monsters arranged symmetrically, each with the bird’s 
beak. We have the same design in fig. 582, where the god has four wings. In this 
case there is a Phenician or, more likely, early Aramaic inscription, but the design 
is pure Assyrian. A good example of this design appears in fig. 583, unusually 
well engraved and showing the several garments of the god as well as the care 
in decorating his enemies. Yet another is seen in fig. 584. Here we observe 
that the god wields an ax instead of a scimitar, which indicates a foreign influ- 
