CHAPTER LI. 
THE BULL-ALTAR. 
An altar in the form of a bull is hardly to be expected, and yet what else can 
we call the object on the cylinders to be described in this chapter? They are also 
peculiar in the style of the engraving and seem to suggest that they do not belong 
strictly to the region of Babylonia, although their art is allied to it. We have so 
seldom any definite information as to the place where seals were found that we are 
at times left to conjecture on uncertain data as to their origin; such is the case 
with these cylinders. It is my impression that they come from the region outside 
of Assyria proper. I purchased one from the neighborhood of Arbela, the modern 
Erbil, perhaps the only city in the East which is still built on the top of a mound, 
surrounded by walls, and entered by a long ascent through the gate; and I purchased 
one or two others near Mardin, and one was from Antarados in Phenicia. The 
fact that this class of cylinders is rare in the museums and not figured in the pub- 
lished catalogues is evidence that it,is not of true Babylonian or Assyrian origin. 
The Metropolitan Museum has a dozen specimens. 






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965 967 
An example is seen in fig. 965. We see, as usual, a very square-bodied bull. 
the body ornamented with three series of close slanting lines, the legs set with no 
sense of anatomical position, and, arising from the back of the bull, a triangular 
object which one may conjecture to represent a flame. Apparently this design 1s 
not meant to represent a real bull, but the image of a bull for worship and probably 
for the offering of sacrifice. We might imagine a cuplike depression on the square 
back of the bull, into which oil was poured and burned. Before the bull-altar, 
if such it be, stand two worshipers, and Gilgamesh lifts a lion and rests his foot 
on its head. Under the bull-altar is a scorpion. All the figured objects are covered 
with the same slanting lines, showing a peculiar school of art which is not Babylonian; 
and yet the basis of the design is mostly Babylonian, apart from the bull-altar. 
A second illustration is from the Collection of the Louvre (fig. 966). Again 
we haye the two worshipers before the bull-altar, but in place of the lion vanquished 
by Gilgamesh we have the rampant and victorious lion of Nergal, as in Chapter 
XXIX, and under the bull is a small human figure, perhaps of a child. This can not 
but raise the question whether we have here a case of human sacrifice, the bronze 
bull being possibly prepared for the immolation of the human victim. We know 
that human sacrifices were practised in Syria and on the western coasts, although 
there is no evidence of such practice prevailing in Babylonia, so that we need not be 
surprised at the possible representation of human sacrifice, perhaps child sacrifice, 
in the region from which these cylinders seem to have come. That we have a case 
307 
