310 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
be doubted that there was some basis for the report of these child sacrifices at 
Carthage, and in that case also, very likely, in Phenicia or Syria. We must also 
keep in mind, in this comparison, the bull of Phalaris, first mentioned by Pindar 
(“Pyth.” 1, 185), which was a bronze bull, with an opening by which the tyrant’s 
victim was put within and a fire kindled underneath. This may well have had 
its origin in a bronze image in which sacrifices of human victims were offered to a 
god. It is by no means to be positively claimed that we have in these seals a repre- 
sentation of a bronze bull in which, either within its body or on its arms, children 
were sacrificed by fire, as to Moloch (properly Melekh, the King), and yet the rep- 
resentations suggest it. It is somewhat probable that these cylinders were in use 
in northern Syria and that they represent a cultus not Assyrian, but belonging to 
the Aramaic people. Almost certainly fig. 978 is Syrian, with its goddess in the 
four-wheeled chariot, while fig. g70 came from Phenicia. We do not know how 
far what we may call Syrian, or Syro-Hittite, may have extended to the east, perhaps 
even across the Tigris. 
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