218 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
It was Ea who gathered the waters of the lower sea, the tiamat shapliti, which 
Shamash sent down from the tiamat eliti. The great lower waters are thus described 
in a hymn (King’s “Seven Tablets of Creation,” p. 129): 
O thou River who didst create all things, 
When the great gods dug thee out, 
They set prosperity upon thy banks. 
In the midst of thee Ea, the King of the Deep created his Peaster 
The deluge they sent not before thou wert! 
Fire and wrath and splendor and terror 
Have Ea and Marduk presented unto thee! 
Thou judgest the cause of mankind! 
O River, thou art mighty! O River, thou art 
supreme! O River, thou art righteous. 
Occasionally it is a goddess who is related to the streams. In the ancient 
design on the great basin of Shirpurla (fig. 653) it was a maiden who held the vase. 
In fig. 655 it is a female figure that rules the waters. - We recall that in the Zend- 
Avesta it was Anaitis, Ardvi Anahita, who was worshiped as the “Holy Water- 
Spring.” She says (Aban Yost, 5): 
“From this river of mine alone flow all the waters that spread all over the seven 
Karshvaris. This river of mine alone goes on bringing waters both in summer 
tae) 
and in winter. 










662a 662b 
For her “‘ Ahura-mazda made four horses—the wind, the rain, the cloud, and the 
sleet—and thus ever upon the earth it is raining, snowing, hailing, and sleeting”’ 
(7b., 119). While the Persian mythological form is late, it doubtless is derived from 
the conceptions drawn from the Babylonian and Assyrian pantheon and cosmology. 
In cases in which the water is presented to a worshiper, as in fig. 650, we may 
conclude that there is a relation with the water of life mentioned in the texts. The 
god presents the water of life to Gudea. So the streams that issue from cups held 
in the hand of Shamash or other gods are the water of life. And this leads us to 
conclude that in the numerous cases in which a god holds a cup in his hand before 
a worshiper introduced to him, he is not receiving a gift from the worshiper, but is 
benignantly offering him the symbol of life and prosperity. 
