ALTARS AND SACRIFICES. 361 
worshiper led by the hand to the goddess and presenting a goat as an offering. 
The goddess here appears to be one of the forms of Ishtar, and not Gula-Bau, as I 
called her in my paper previously referred to. 
In comparing these five cases of a stepped altar we gather that it was probably 
a light construction, of reeds or palm-leaf stems, and so not suitable for the burn- 
ing of a victim. ‘The offering was of 
cakes and oil, the oil burned in a vessel, 
to protect the inflammable altar. Por- 
tions of the animal offered to the god 
were placed on the altar, with the cakes 
and oil, but could not have been burnt 
there. The goat was brought as an 
offering to the deity, doubtless to be 
eaten by the priests. 
The second form of altar, which ee 
also goes back to the earliest antiquity, 1235 
is that of the hourglass; that is, a round altar more or less contracted in the middle. 
A very archaic example of this is seen in fig. 1234. The faces of the figures are 
almost bird-shaped. Out of the altar arise two objects which look like branches, 
but are more probably flames, but which yet must be compared with the altar shown 
in fig. 1235 of a bas-relief from Susa. ‘This looks even more like a plant being 
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1236 1237 
watered in a pot. But for a discussion of the plant of life see the discussion of fig. 
419, and the concluding pages of Chapter XxXxVIII. 
We may consider that we have two flames, or possibly branches of the plant 
of life, from the top of the altar in fig. 1236, an altar of precisely the same shape 
and which has the ridge near the middle that we see in other cases, as in the 
bas-relief from Susa. For an excellent, if genuine, example, 
see fig. 387. We have a quite archaic cylinder shown in 
fig. 1237, where there seem to be objects on the altar. The 
interesting thing about this cylinder is that it represents the 
seated Ishtar with alternate clubs and scimitars, precisely as 
m8 in fig. 1233, and that this gives evidence that the two kinds 
of altars were used nearly or quite contemporaneously. In fig. 1238 there seems 
to be a flame, or possibly cakes, above the altar. The seated goddess is Bau-Gula. 
In fig. 1239 there are two such altars, but slenderer, and the worshiper is pouring 
oil upon them. In this case it is clear that there is no plant that is being watered. 
We have again the single slender altar in fig. 1240, where I think we see the flames 

