232, SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
fruit; that is the function of his protecting spirit, the good fairy of Western story. 
The fortunes must be stored or produced somewhere—where more naturally than on 
a tree, and what tree so fruitful as the date-palm? The Latin Fortuna (the word 
being feminine) was a goddess, and she carried the fortunes already plucked. 
Her horn of plenty, full of fruits or flowers, represents the pail, or basket, in the hand 
of the Assyrian Fortunus. Under her various names the Latin Fortuna was much 
honored, with such titles as Fors Fortuna, Fortuna Panthea, Fortuna Felix, or 
Isis Fortuna, but regularly with her gathered fruit, usually in a horn, but sometimes 
in a modius carried on her head. She might also carry ears of wheat in her hand, 
or a poppy head. It is observed that the Assyrian king, or god, in the bas-reliefs 
also may carry a three-parted or five-parted branch with fruit or flowers (figs. 669— 
675); and there are many cases in which the fruit on the sacred tree might as well 
be a poppy-head as an acorn. Fortuna is often represented with wings, like our 
Assyrian Fortunus, if we may so call the attendant spirit. 
For this attendant figure, under whatever winged shape, human or composite, 
is clearly not a chief god, but subordinate and beneficent. It is the earliest form 
we have of the “guardian angel” of later Jewish and Christian religions. It is not 
feasible to attempt to differentiate these figures standing by the tree; they are all 
of a lower grade than the gods, and protective, like the winged bulls and lions which 
the Assyrian kings put at the gates of their palaces. Similar protecting spirits are 
seen on Hittite seals, as in figs. 956, 960. 
We need not detain ourselves with the tree found by Gilgamesh, when he had 
passed through the darkness for twelve hours and come to this wonderful tree: 
It bore precious stones for fruits: 
Its branches were glorious to the sight: 
The twigs were crystals: 
It bore fruit costly to the sight. 
No more need we connect especially with the Assyrian tree of life the medicinal 
plant sought by Gilgamesh for the restoration of youth, growing by a fountain and 
which a serpent snatched trom him as soon as he had grasped it. They are not 
closely enough connected with the later tree to give us much light on the subject. 
But we can hardly hesitate to see in this tree of life the “plant of life” read 
shammu balati by Zimmern (‘ Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament,” p. 523) 
which King Adad-nirari II]. mentions when he says that his god Ashur has “ made 
his rule over the people of Assyria like the plant of life.” Asarhaddon uses this 
same formula; and in a hymn to Marduk, quoted by Zimmern, the god is praised 
as the dispenser of the plant of life. 
We know very little of what was the worship by the Hebrews of their god or 
gods of Fortune, Gad and Meni, mentioned in the Bible (Isaiah 65:11). They were 
evidently not prime deities, like Baal or Ashtoreth. We may imagine that they 
represent these subordinate gods which are attendants on the tree of fortune and 
on which the worshiper depends for his kindly fates. But in the orthodox religion 
of Judea the attendant winged spirits became cherubim. 
It is impossible not to raise the question, what was the relation between the 
sacred tree or, if one may call it so, tree of fortune, on the one side, and the tree of 
life, or that of the knowledge of good and evil, in the Genesis story of the tempta- 
tion. In the Genesis story there are thus two trees, as in the Avestan myth, and they 
