SEATED ASSYRIAN DEITIES. DAT 
worship, once before and once behind the seven deities. Of the seven, two are 
goddesses: the second, seated in a high-backed chair, and the seventh, who stands 
on a lion. The first two, the god and the goddess, seem distinguished from the 
others by the fact that their square hats are ornamented with a knob at the top and 
not a star, such as the other five hats carry. We may assume that these are the two 
principal deities, apparently the chief god and his consort. The first would seem 
to be related to Marduk, judging from the animal 
on which he stands, with its lifted tail. The chair oe way, TG 
of the second rests on a lion. It will be remembered YM Q BY 
that the animal connected with the seat of Bau-Gula g 
on the kudurrus is a dog. Here the chair of the S€Pe ES m 
goddess is ornamented with stars behind, with two Bato | Ds 4 7 re | 
Ea) 
e ION d 
WAS Ne 


scorpion-men and with other supporting, composite @ UY i iim same) 
figures, such as we see in various compositions, as in _'// Yj{ =e ae 
the Hittite procession of Boghaz-keui. Their mean- ae 
ing we do not know, but they seem to be upholding the sky. Of the other deities 
the sixth is designated by the thunderbolt in his hand as Adad-Ramman, while the 
seventh appears to be Ishtar on her lion. 
It is seductive to consider these as representing the Sun and Moon, with the 
five planets, the latter designated by the stars on their hats, and so they have been 
treated by Puchstein (“ Pseudohethitische Kunst,” p. 17); but it is not easy to see 
the moon in the second deity, as we know that Sin was not a goddess, and no cres- 
cent is attached; and equally the first is indicated by his animal to be Marduk, 
who is the planet Jupiter. With the figure of the seated goddess are to be compared 
the gods carried on the shoulders of soldiers in Layard’s “ Monuments of Nineveh,”’ 
1, plate 65, perhaps captured gods, possibly carried in a religious procession. But 
the fact that of the four deities three are goddesses, two of them alike, makes it 
probable that we have here the spoil of conquered temples. One is Adad, holding 
both his thunderbolt and an ax. Another is a goddess standing in a chair, which 1s 
inclosed like a square bath-chair. The two others are seated, one with face in 
front-view, the other in profile. 
We shall probably be not far from right if we connect these various forms of 
the seated goddess with the great Goddess Mother, Ma, Cybele, under her various 
names, whose worship prevailed in Asia Minor and the East. But this northern 
goddess was equally identified with the Babylonian Belit and also with Gula. 
Gula was properly a seated deity, and so naturally identified with the seated god- 
dess of the north. But also she was Belit, or Ninkharshag, for in Assyria Bel and 
Belit came to be, as Dr. Jastrow has shown, mere general terms, and she was the 
Lady par excellence, the Belit, the wife of Ashur, or of Bel Marduk, whichever was 
thought of as the chief god. But Jastrow seems to be wrong in thinking that she 
is to be confounded with Ishtar. Such would naturally be thought to be the fact 
if we were making comparisons only with Babylonian gods; but we have here an 
entirely different element to deal with, a goddess from the north and west, a really 
new goddess, for whom the priest theologians had to make a place in the Babylonian 
pantheon; and so they called her Belit, wife sometimes of Bel, sometimes of Adad, 
and sometimes of Ashur. 
