354 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
material at hand that the use of the Sabean alphabet (to employ a general term 
which represents minor varieties of writing from the Lihyanian to the early Aramaic) 
covered the entire Arabian peninsula and extended far into the desert regions to 
the north inhabited by nomads, to the south and east of Palestine, and across the 
waste region to the fringe of the lower and middle Euphrates. Perhaps only fig. 
1208, or perhaps also fig. 1212, gives us any fair suggestion as to their peculiar art 
or religion. ‘The early cylinders from the Hauran may have borrowed from their 
ideas, and I have been inclined to suspect that to Arabs was due the origin of the 
prevalent winged figures that came into use in Assyria and the Syro-Hittite region, 
but which were unfamiliar to the Babylonians of the early and middle empires, 
whose artistic conventions and mythology came much more from the East than 
from the West. 
For dubious inscriptions the student is referred to figs. 761 and 1138. 
