CHAPTER XL. 
ADAD AND ISHTAR. 
There is hardly a more beautiful and elaborate Assyrian cylinder than one in 
the British Museum which represents the armed Ishtar, fig. 751. Of the identity 
of this armed goddess there can be no doubt. Whether the Ishtar of Nineveh 
differed from the Ishtar of Arbela we do not know, but either one was the great 
goddess of battles, who directed the king by dreams and protected him in war. 
She stands on the lion of the Babylonian Ishtar (figs. 414-417) and carries the bow 
and arrows, a scimitar, and a quiver on each shoulder. Her square headdress, 
such as is usually worn by a Hittite goddess, is surmounted by a star. There is 
a star at the upper and lower end of each quiver and one below the scimitar. Her 
garment is richly embroidered and fringed and one leg is advanced. The animal 
on which she stands is rather a lioness than a lion. A female worshiper, wearing 
a similar garment and with a javelin in her belt, stands before her. Behind the 
goddess is a palm-tree, and next to it are two rampant ibexes crossed. Above is 
an emblem which we may take to be an unusual combination of the sun and 
crescent, but only three of the sun’s four crossing lines can be given. This repre- 
sentation of Ishtar will guide us in less elaborate and more careless cases. 
v = awl - 353 
AN Ray DMN AES 
\N N! PAL NNT eee, 
a, Damas Se é rs qi 
NF WPL Ae 
HR 
INN 
LP 
fi 
2 

We recognize the same goddess in a somewhat variant form in fig. 752, a 
cylinder remarkable for its profuse symbols of gods. Ishtar now stands, as is much 
more unusual, on a platform; and her body is surrounded by a circle of dots, 
from which radiate angles ending in stars. It is possible that the circle suggests 
a shield and the radiating angles are the development of her quivers. She has the 
square hat surmounted by her star. Before her is a worshiper. There is a multi- 
tude of other emblems. Below are a fish, an uncertain object, possibly a vase, a 
crescent perhaps of Sin on an ashera, a rhomb, and the two asheras of Marduk and 
Nebo on their characteristic animal. Above are the thunderbolt of Adad, the 
crescent of Sin, the seven dots of the Igigi, the winged disk of Ashur, with the pecu- 
liar, human-headed monster that sometimes supports it, the star of Ishtar, the ram’s 
head of Ea, and an indeterminate column. In fig. 753 we have a single other inter- 
esting variation. Before the goddess is an altar, apparently, although rudely drawn, 
of the shape of which we have an existing specimen from the time of Sargon; on 
248 
