ALTARS AND SACRIFICES. 367 
Persian cylinders. A very curious case of what seems a portable altar is seen in 
fig. 1265, where two scorpion-men face an altar of the hourglass shape, reduced so 
as to be almost columnar, with a conical top from which what may be a cord 
depends and is attached to the altar lower down, as if to carry it. 










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On the Syro-Hittite cylinders altars are infrequent. Examples are figs. 1266, 
1267, where the sickle-like object and the branch held in the hand of the attendant 
figures seem to have some reference to the ceremony. In fig. 1268 we have the 
shew-bread on the altar between the two deities. 
The animal brought in the arms for sacri- 
fice is regularly a goat in Assyrian as in the 
earlier Babylonian. We have, however, in fig. 
1269 a gazelle, also in fig. 1233, both on early 
Babylonian cylinders. Mention has been made 
of the rare sacrifice of a bull. Another case, 
perhaps, is a sacrifice by Shalmaneser (or to i209 
his image) in “Gates of Balawat,” D, 7. We have seen cases where cakes (shew- 
bread), birds, etc., are on the altar. 
There is no evidence in the Oriental art of human sacrifice. We see men killed 
in war, heaped in cages, torn by birds of prey, but never sacrificed to the gods. 
The literature is equally silent. The cases which have been supposed to have this 
meaning are those in which a god kills his enemy, and not where a man offers a 
human sacrifice to his god. These cases are explained in Chapter 1x. The only 
case which suggests human sacrifice is that of the arms of a brazen bull in which 
children may have been burnt. See Chapter iit. 

