CHAPTER XXXVII. 
ASSYRIAN CYLINDERS: THE SPOUTING VASE. 
One of the most remarkable and imaginative of the motives of the early Baby- 
lonian art is that of the gift of water to man. ‘The gods were the source of water. 
It was from the gods that water must be supplied to their world, whether in the 
form of rain or by the successive risings of the Tigris and Euphrates. We have 
an admirable illustration of this in fig. 129. One of the gods, Ea, was particularly 
the god of waters and wisdom. His charge was the lower waters, the waters of the 
ocean and the earth, of rivers and fountains; all the waters that are under the 
heavens and those that have subterranean sources. The waters that are above 
the heavens were controlled by Shamash. His emblem is easy to recognize. It is 
the solar disk, with four triangular rays, which later develop into a Greek cross. 
These rays point outward from the center and, alternating with them, there are 
four streams of water represented by two or three undulating lines, as frequently seen, 
particularly in the bas-relief of the Sun-god from Abu-habba (fig. 310). Shamash 
sails through the upper waters in a boat, as seen in fig. 293. I have identified the 
numerous figures, from the art of the older Chaldean Empire, of a seated god hold- 
ing a vase from which streams of water gush, as the Sun-god Shamash, and I so 
designated him in my “Handbook” Catalogue of the cylinders in the Metropolitan 
Museum. M. Léon Heuzey, however, the most profound scholar who has studied 
the origins of Babylonian art, has brought evidence to show that in some cases the 
god with the spouting vase is Ea. In his luminous paper “Sceau de Goudéa” 
(Revue d’Assyriologie, v, 4, 1902) and in a previous chapter “Le Symbole du 
Vase Jaillissant” in his “Les Origines Orientales ” M. Heuzey has gathered the 
evidence which assigns to Ea these and other representations of gushing or spouting 
vases, and on his study much of the discussion of this chapter must rest. 
The earliest representation of this vase to which we can assign an approxi- 
mate date is that on the famous seal of the Elder Sargon (fig. 26). A kneeling 
figure de face, exactly that of the Gilgamesh who fights lions and buffaloes, holds 
a vase, shaped like an aryballos, one hand on its neck and the other supporting 
its bowl. From the mouth of the vase spout up two streams which fall to the ground, 
and from one of which a buffalo drinks, lifting his head to the water. ‘The water- 
buffalo is the Bubalus, which had not then been domesticated, but roamed wild in 
the swamps of the lower Euphrates. The design is evidently mythological, and 
represents the gift of water to a water animal, and so to the world. But it is not 
easy to decide whether the personage who supplies the water is Gilgamesh or some 
other god. One would look for Ea, if the figure were not so characteristically that 
of Gilgamesh. But we have no literary evidence that this role belonged to Gil- 
gamesh. If it did belong to him it must have been after his death. We shall find, 
however, that Gilgamesh, or a figure like him, is related to superior gods, and we 
may have here an attendant of the great Water-god Ia. It must also be considered 
that the facial types which the Chaldean artist could draw upon were very few, 
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