SYRO-HITTITE CYLINDERS: GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 261 
Hittites borrowed their representation of their couple of divinities from the Assyrian 
gods; indeed the simpler style of the Hittite gods suggests the contrary. It may 
quite as well be that the Assyrians, who in their earlier history suffered reverses 
from the Hittites, even to the capture of Nineveh, made the identification of two 
of their deities, which they had brought from Babylonia, with these Hittite gods, 
if these were not, indeed, the local deities of the native races antedating the Semitic 
conquest. In Babylonian art Ishtar, who is fully armed, does not stand above a 
lion, but usually has one foot on a lion (figs. 415-417), and would be naturally 
assimilated with a Hittite goddess who stood on a lion; and the combination of 
the two would give the usual Assyrian goddess, full-armed, adorned with her star 
and standing over her lion. A similar process of identification and assimilation 
seems to have taken place with the male deity. We must remember that the Assyrian 
mythologic art has several other very important elements, such as the winged disk, 
the sacred tree, the asheras, the goddess in a high-backed chair, the fight between 
Bel and the dragon (usually a bird or a sphinx rather than a dragon), which it did 
not draw from Babylonia, but from some other source, either the mythology of the 
native races, of whom we know nothing, or of the neighboring races, of whom we 
know nothing until they emerge to sight with the Hittites in the time of the eighteenth 
Egyptian dynasty. 
In fig. 777 we might not have recognized the same god who follows the leading 
goddess in fig. 776 but for his symbol, the nude man with his head replaced by a 
bisected and flattened circle. In fig. 777, which gives us the god with his protecting 
arm about the king, the latter is designated by a winged disk above his head, but 
much more elaborate than that which designates the king in the procession. ‘The 
disk is developed and stands on four pillars, and is, perhaps, to be compared with 
Shamash (also Anu), or Ashur, the god of the heavens, resting on the four pillars 
of the earth. Between the pillars the god himself, Ashur-Shamash, if we may 
venture this identification, is seen above the king alone in fig. 778, where we also 
find the stars or rather the sun, in and above the design, and a figure like the Greek 
Q rounded at the bottom, known to us in the Hittite inscriptions, taking the place 
of the usual central disk. This we have already recognized as the symbol of the 
goddess Ninkharshag, or Belit, so that it would seem as if the chief god and goddess 
were combined. 
The interpretation of these elaborate temple processions is by no means easy. 
The interpretation I would give to them differs from that given by other writers, 
but, like most of them, I make it a religious ceremony. The king (or queen) belongs 
to the left-hand procession. He is not so apparently important and commanding 
a figure as might be expected, standing in advance of the middle of his procession 
and recognized by his winged disk. Both king and disk are, as we have seen, made 
prominent and fully developed when apart from the procession, as in figs. 777 and 
778. We may be sure, then, that the king is the controlling human figure. He is 
followed, in the rear, by his soldiers running, and nearer are his attendants and 
attendant spirits, the latter recognized by their wings; and he is preceded by several 
of his gods, of whom the front one stands on the heads of his conquered enemies. 
Although this front figure carries no distinctive emblems, I yet agree that it must 
represent a principal god. We then have, it appears to me, the victorious king of 
a people allied in race, entering with all his gods into the sanctuary of the native 
