258 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
by the Egyptian scribe in the translation from the text of the Hittite treaty, and 
that really it was the goddess who protected the princess. But we are told, as the 
last point in the description of the pictorial engraving of the silver text, that “in- 
mitten der Umfassung des Skulptur” (W. Max Miller’s translation) was the “seal” 
or “ratification’’—whatever the doubtful Egyptian word may mean—of the “Sun- 
god of Arenena, Lord of all lands.” We can conclude with much probability that 
this was the wide-winged solar disk which formed the upper central border of the 
entire design. It would seem as if the Sun-god were 
considered much in the light of the Assyrian Ashur, 
also represented as the Sun-disk; and, very likely, 
the Semitic Assyrians, when they conquered the 
country, took on the supreme local deity. That he 
was considered as in a way superior to the localized 
w\ forms of the Thunder-god is seen from the fact that 
— ™ he is referred to no city except Arenena; and we ob- 
serve that in the expression (line 7) “May God excite no hostility between them”’ 
the deity is spoken of as single and supreme, and apparently the Sun-god is meant. 
There is then mentioned a second god, who takes on local forms, “the Thunder- 
god, lord of heaven, the Thunder-god of the Hittites, the Thunder-god of the city 
Arenena”; and then follow the designations of the Thunder-gods of other cities. 
A figure of the Thunder-god, we are told, was engraved with the silver treaty and 
was represented as embracing the figure of the great king of the Hittites, with an 
inscription stating that this is the seal (or ratification) of the Thunder-god; and with 
this was the seal of the great king Khetasira. The meaning of the embrace is clear 
from fig. 777. 
There is also a goddess whose name is translated into Egyptian as Astarte, 
but who is also given as ’A-sa-kh-ira, or Esakhira, evidently the Ishkara whose 
name we find on the Ashmolean Museum cylinder of fig. 797 and whom we also 
know from the cuneiform inscriptions. Unfortunately, the confusion of the text 
makes us doubtful as to whether one or more goddesses are men- 
tioned; and W. Max Miller suggests doubtfully that a goddess 4% 
of the lower world is added. She is called “the Lady of the S 
bottom of the earth, the Lady of oaths, the mistress of the floods 
and hills of the Hittite lands.” 
It is likely that it was this goddess who was represented as 
embracing the Hittite princess, and not the Sun-god. We should 
expect it to be her “seal” and not that of the Sun-god that was 
afhxed. It may be mentioned here, after W. Max Miller and D4 
Jensen, that the scorpion-star Girtab is “the Ishkara of the Sea,” ae raemaaTTE 
and we recall that the scorpion is one of the most frequent emblems on the Hittite 
seals. Other Egyptian inscriptions give us a Hittite Reshpu or Resheph (figs. 
773, 774) who is also Phenician and Aramean; and also a goddess Kadesh (fig. 775) 
who as figured seems a form of Astarte. ‘The Assyrian inscriptions seem to give 
us the Hittite gods Sandon, whom we know as the Cilician deity Sandes, and 
Tarkhu, whose symbol, Sayce says, is the goat’s head. These names appear also 
in Hittite proper names, but so they do, at least Tarkhu, the biblical Terah, perhaps, 
among the Nairi and the Vannai or Proto-Armenians. We also seem to find in 




