268 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
the lower end is a winged disk over three Hittite characters, the same that are 
repeated on the surface of the cylinder. Here is a rudely engraved sacred tree, on 
each side of which is a composite, winged figure, with the head, feet, and tail of an 
animal, an erect body, and a branch in its hand. There are a star, a crescent, and 
a low tree, and three or four characters, purely hieroglyphic and presumably 
Hittite. The exaggerated prominence of the Egyptian shent: worn by the two 
monsters is observable. 

Yet a fourth extremely interesting cylinder, with a definitely characteristic 
Hittite inscription, is shown in fig. 796. It gives us an unusual case of ophiolatry. 
A serpent adorned with a profusion of horns is supported on a short column. It 
must be considered as a brazen serpent on a column, such as we are told that Moses 
set up in the wilderness, and which was worshiped by the Jews later and destroyed 
by Hezekiah in his reformation. Behind the serpent stands a worshiper, and behind 
him is a column surmounted by a crescent, as if it were the ashera of Sin. The 
inscription consists of ten clear characters, arranged in three columns after the 
style first made familiar by my publication of the four inscribed steles from Hamath 
AY in the Second Statement of the American Pales- 
tine Exploration Society, 1873, from which 
Prof. A. H. Sayce drew the material for his 
first investigation of the Hittite inscriptions. 
Another cylinder with a Hittite inscription 
belongs to the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford 
(fig. 797), and it has the extraordinary merit 
of being a bilingual, as besides its column of four Hittite characters it carries 
three lines of cuneiform inscriptions which indicate that it belonged to “‘Indilimma, 
son of Sin-irdama, Worshiper of the deity Ishkhara.”’ 
While these five cylinders exhaust the list of those known to carry a Hittite 
inscription, it is well to include here one other cylinder which, if not Hittite, is yet 
Asianic and shows abundant Hittite influence, and contains an inscription which 
is, most probably, from an alphabet allied to the Hittite. It is seen in fig. 798. It 
is a very elaborate cylinder, crowded with animals, lions, deer, and ibexes, a heraldic 
bird, and, most noticeable, a cuttle-fish under two crossed ibexes. ‘The eyes are 
carefully drawn, so that it is impossible to imagine this to be a sacred tree. But 
the inscription gives this cylinder unique value. ‘There are three characters, over 
the ibex suckling her kid. Two of the characters suggest derivation from the Hittite, 
but, what with Cypriote, Cretan, and Lycian scripts, all perhaps derived from the 
Hittite, it is not easy to place it exactly. The presence of the cuttle-fish fixes this 
as from a sea-coast region, but we know that the Hittite type of art appears on rock 
bas-reliefs as far to the west as Smyrna. The cuttle-fish is not frequent on cylinders, 

