422 SEAL CYLINDERS OF WESTERN ASIA. 
more probably the former, especially as it occurs with figures of the sun rising in 
the east and in connection with mountains. For examples see figs. 46, 177, 200. 
(See also Chapter Lxx1.) The shape of the cone is not fully given to the fruit, which, 
indeed, the dimensions of the cylinder would hardly allow. In the later art the 
cypress quite disappears. 
The Date-palm is generally quite conventionally represented, so as sometimes 
to be hardly recognized except from its fruit. The branches are usually placed 
one above another, as if growing successively out of the prolonged trunk, instead 
of forming their annual growth in a clump from the apex of the stem. But the fruit 
leaves no manner of doubt. ‘This is drawn in two masses of indistinguishable 
dates hanging one on each side of the trunk, below the leaves. An example, not of 
the earliest period, is to be seen in the famous “Temptation Cylinder” (fig. 388); 
and a better one on the cylinder in The Hague (fig. 389), which must always be com- 
pared with it. Probably many rude representations of trees, but without fruit, must 
be referred to palms. Ina certain number of cases, and apparently the older ones, 
the Tree of Life is evidently a palm (figs. 665, 680), but it soon lost the likeness of 
any sort of tree that ever grew out of the ground. In the chapter on “The Tree of 
Life,’’ it is shown that the theory which supposes the flowers of the date-palm to be 
fertilized by the attendant figures holding up what looks like a cone, is an error. 
The date is supposed to have originated in Africa, but it must have reached Baby- 
lonia at an early period, quite as early as Sargon, although it is not found on the 
cylinders of the archaic period. See figs. 1104, I120. 
The Fig: It was not till a very late period, perhaps five or six hundred years 
before our era, that a tree appears which may be regarded as the fig. For examples 
see figures 1066, 1089. In connection with the fig tree, we find sometimes a peculiar 
aster-like flower. 
The Reed of the swamps appears occasionally in a fairly early period, but not 
the very earliest. The reed belongs to the swamps and would hardly appear in the 
earlier art of mountainous Elam. We see it in a fine cylinder in the Louvre, which 
represents two oxen in a swamp. Here we see how the lower thick leaves are dis- 
tinguished from the tall flowering spikes (fig. 370). See also fig. 181. We may 
conclude that where we find figured a single strict spike it represents a reed. 
Wheat or Barley: It would be impossible to distinguish these grains in the 
art of the cylinders. They are seen in the worship of deities, as in the figures in 
Chapter x1x, on the “Agricultural Gods.”’ There the god is adorned with heads 
of grain, as also the worshipers. 
The Millet, sometimes called Egyptian wheat or doura, is to be seen occasion- 
ally on older seals. It has a heavier head of grain and at present is considered a 
coarser food. It is to be seen in fig. 381. 
The Lotus does not properly belong to Babylonian or Assyrian glyptic art; 
but being so familiar in Egyptian art it could hardly escape being introduced into 
the Syrian region with other Egyptian elements, and extending farther east. It 
appears, however, only as held in the hand of a god; and even so it is not so dis- 
tinctly drawn as to be easily or even surely identified. When we see, as in fig. 904, 
a god holding in his or her hand a bent rod, with the upper end enlarged and held 
to the nose, we may probably take it to indicate the lotus. The papyrus does not 
certainly appear. 
