ASSYRIAN CYLINDERS: THE TREE OF LIFE. MAN 
Doubtless, as in all cases where a myth originating in one religion passes into 
the sphere of another, the Assyrian sacred tree was much changed in entering the 
Zoroastrian realm. We have a multitude of such cases in the Greek religion. 
Hercules is like, and yet much unlike, Gilgamesh. In this later Persian story, 
growing up on the very ground where the Assyrian sacred tree flourished, with 
which the Persians were perfectly familiar, there had come to be two trees. We have 
no evidence of two differentiated trees in the Assyrian art, and it is not unlikely 
that in the Persian mythology there was originally but a single tree, whose func- 
tions, of immortality and productiveness, came to be separated. it is a tree of life, 
and a plant of life is not unknown in Babylonian literature from an early period. 
From it is made the white haoma. It is not impossible that such a brewage was in 
the mind of the Assyrian artists, and that the pail carried by the attendant figure 
was meant to suggest a similar elixir of life to be carried in it. We may also suppose 
it to be intended to carry the fruit plucked off by the attendants. While sometimes 
plaited, it is, as has been already mentioned, a pail rather than a basket, as often 
the design of it implies that it is of metal. 
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The protecting spirits of the Avestan story seem to be directly taken from the 
Assyrian prototype. ‘Phey are both fravashis and kar-fish, and we have both of these 
on the seals. Sometimes the genii are simply winged human figures or winged 
composite figures of various sorts. But the fish form is especially frequent and 
difficult to explain. We can, of course, connect it indefinitely with Nina, a fish- 
goddess, or with Nineveh, as a fish-city, although the design is older, probably, 
than the preéminence of Nineveh: but the relation is not at all clear. All we can 
say is that in some way the idea of a protecting fish-spirit was accepted, and under 
two forms. Sometimes it was a human figure swathed in the skin of a fish, as in 
figs. 678, 687-689, and sometimes it was a human figure ending in a fish’s body, as in 
fig. 690. It is quite likely that this protecting fish-like figure, whatever its meaning, 
was developed into the kar-fish of the Zoroastrian story. We see the lizard seldom 
on the Babylonian or Assyrian cylinders, but the frog is more common. On one 
cylinder there are two symmetric lizards under the tree. We may add fg. 710, 
where a monstrous serpent seems to come out from the tree, while behind are a seated 
goddess and a bull. ‘The inscription may be sophisticated. 
The tree of all fruits has a special Avestan development, with its two birds. 
May we not suppose that the winged disk, often developed into a human figure of 
Ashur with wings, was the origin of the Simurgh bird on the tree of all fruits? But 
if this seems too venturesome, at least we must remember that the griffin—and the 
Simurgh was sometimes a grifin—is to be found by the tree of life, as in figs. 697, 
700. It is perhaps a mere chance that in fig. 7o1 there is a bird, duplicated for 
symmetry, on the top of the tree. In fig. 711 we have a single bird over the sacred 
tree, flanked on one side by a sphinx and on the other by a griffin, while lower 
