CHAPTER LXVIII. 
FIGURES OF DEITIES. 
A chief difficulty in identifying the figures of deities found in the earlier art 
of the East comes from the paucity of types represented. ‘Thus there was but a 
Babylonian type of the seated god. He was always the same bearded figure, in 
the same position, whatever god he might represent. He may be Bel or Sin or Nin- 
girsu, and we know not how many other gods, this being the dignified attitude of a 
king or a god. Similarly, a common type for a standing goddess attached to her 
consort, with hands raised, may represent the wife either of Shamash or Ramman. 
EARLY BABYLONIAN PERIOD. 
The following figures of gods belong to the early Babylonian pantheon: 
. [he God in a Chariot drawn by a Dragon or standing on a Dragon: This 
god 1s 5 likely to be Enlil, the Elder Bel of tase inasmuch as it was Enlil who was . 
the hero of this myth Bere Marduk } 
took his role. He appears only in 
the earlier art, and not frequently 
then. For these figures see Chapter 
vit. It may well be Enlil who ap- 
pears in certain old cylinders bearing 
a serpent as weapon, seeing that the 
serpent scimitar, developed out of a serpent, was the characteristic weapon of 
his successor, Bel Marduk, of Babylon (see fig. 30). 

2. The Goddess with the Dragon, Belit: If the god driving the dragon is Bel, 
then the goddess with him, standing on the dragon and ete thunderbolts, is 
Belit. She appears in this ia ‘fh 
Ki 
became confused with Ishtar fa, 1 ally a 
on the lions. With Bel on 
form only on the early seals, 
and there is nothing which 
the dragon she may take the form i, with a apparently ake same goddess of 
the rain (see Chapter xxv). 

corresponds to her in the 
middle period, unless she 

3. Tiamat: the Dragon: The so-called dragon, a composite monster, eagle 
and lion, is feminine in the Babylonian epic, but it is by no means clear that such 
was the original sex. In the famous Assyrian bas-relief the dragon is masculine, 
the phallus taking the form of a serpent. It represented the principle of disorder, 
372 
