ASSYRIAN CYLINDERS: BEL AND THE DRAGON. 205 
ground is savagely attacking the god’s foot. We are reminded of the battle of 
Hercules Melkarth with the three birds, olor, aquila, and vultur, related to the 
constellation Lyra, according to Robert Brown, Jr., in “Academy,” July 20, 1895. 
Very much like this is fig. 598. (Compare fig. 526.) But we have an interesting 
variation in fig. 599 where the god, holding in one hand what may be a net or 
lasso, puts his foot on the bird, while a scorpion-man looks on, whether in support 
of the god or the bird is not very clear. There is also what looks like a goat. 
We may judge that the scorpion-man is the foe of the god from the cases in 
which a god attacks a scorpion-man, or even two such monsters. Such a case we 
have in fig. 600. But in a very rude, and doubtless late, cylinder (fig. 601) we find 
the scorpion-man, the Sagittarius of the Zodiac, pursuing a dragon, which seems 
to have the head of a bird. 


It was doubtless the Egyptian influence that led to the later frequent represen- 
tation of the Tiamat-dragon foe of the demiurge Marduk as a sphinx. The sphinx 
came, however, so late into Assyrian art that we are not to regard it as an immediate 
result of the Egyptian conquests of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties; nor 
yet does it seem to have been as early as the Hittite and Syrian seals, which were 
immediately influenced by that conquest. In the reign of Assurbanipal this was 
a very favorite design, and we can hardly be mistaken in seeing here the influence 
of the later Assyrian conquest of Egypt, although we can not be certain but that 
in some cases the seals are earlier. An unusual illustration, which combines both 
conventions, that of the bird-headed dragon (or griffin) and the sphinx, is shown 
in fig. 602. It was not to be expected that the artist would venture thus to break the 
rule of complete symmetry, yet we have such cases in fig. 603 and fig. 604. In fg. 
603 the presence of the nude winged goddess shows the Western, Syrian, or Hittite 
influence. 
While the composite scorpion-man, in the form of a Sagittarius, is bearded, 
the sphinx is usually beardless. It would hardly be safe to conclude that this is 
