364. SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
longer added. Often an attendant, who seems to have been a slave, as he fre- 
quently appears scantily clad, carries a pail or basket. On some fine old cylinders 
an attendant appears with several amphorz on a tripod or a shelf, or on the 
ground. Such cases have been shown in figs. 214, 403, 404. [he shape of the 
vase with a spout, out of which oil was poured over the altars, is well shown in 
the bas-relief of fig. 1251. 
I have said that the goat (or possibly also the gazelle) is the only animal that 
appears to be regularly brought in sacrifice to the gods, yet we have observed what 
appeared to be the head of a ram on fig. 1233. There is one case, however, of a 
cylinder in the Louvre (MNB 1324) which may represent the sacrifice of a bull, but 
I have mislaid the cast of it. According to my notes it is a large cylinder of black 
serpentine, perhaps 3000 B. C., which shows a seated god with vase held to his breast, 
from which flow two slender streams, by which are eight fishes. Before him stands 
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a bifrons figure, behind whom was probably a figure which has been erased. A 
bull lies on its back on the ground, with legs in the air, and is held by two men, one 
of whom holds a poniard at its neck. Over the bull is the eagle of Lagash. The 
slaying of the bull in the presence of the god suggests that it is offered in sacrifice. 
One of the bas-reliefs found by de Sarzec at Tello also suggests the offering of a 
bull. There are three fragments (two of them in Heuzey’s “Cat. Ant. Chald.,”’ 
p. 105) from which we gather the elaborate scene which represents the burial in 
a mound of the dead in battle and the carrying of earth in baskets to cover them. 
Near by is a bull on its back, with its legs tied close to the body and the animal 
tied fast with ropes to two posts. By the bull we see the feet and lower edge of the 
garment of a man whom we may take to be the sacrificing priest or king, and above 
the bull, on a third fragment, a part of a large vase, or perhaps an altar with a flar- 
ing top, from which seems to fall on one side a branch with leaves. It is a great 
pity that we have not the whole of this splendid bas-relief, the fragments of which 
are so interesting. (See fig. 1252.) 
