ORIGIN OF BABYLONIAN CIVILIZATION, FROM ARCHAEOLOGY. 427 
most archaic Babylonian cylinders, which antedate the time of Sargon. The water- 
buffalo is never found. Illustrations are to be seen in figs. 114, 116, 119, 120, 141d, 
VASTIIAA VHS 2 eld 55 ad 0) 100) 817 Inn 1102.0 LS os) 50,)100,107,.201, lt .would 
then seem that to those who first produced this art the bison was more familiar 
than the buffalo. ‘That is, this art had its origin, apparently, in the hill region of 
Elam, and not in the valley system of the Euphrates and Tigris, and equally not in 
the dry and barren and treeless regions of Arabia. 
Another very important point is that the composite man-bull Eabani, the 
friend of Gilgamesh, has the body of a bison and not of a buffalo, as shown some- 
times by the hair and especially by the horns, which are short and round and are 
not those of the water-buffalo. Illustrations are seen in figs. 125, 142, 144, 150, 
176-187. ‘These horns rise from the top of the human head of Eabani. Equally 
the human-headed bull—more bull-like than Eabani, not having, like Eabani, 
human arms, with which Gilgamesh also fights—always has these same short bison 
horns, as shown in figs. 1104, 144, 147, 148, 188-197. This fact as to these two 
mythological beings is even more important than the representations of the bull 
itself, for here the shape of the horns persists even to the latest period of the rep- 
resentation of Eabani and the human-headed bull, although the bison, when 
attacked by Gilgamesh, has given place to the buffalo. Now it is to be considered 
that these composite beings (Eabani, mostly human, and the human-headed bull, 
mostly bull) are of the very greatest antiquity. These forms must have been created 
in the land where the bison was the familiar animal, and therefore in the mountain 
region and not in the river-bottoms; and this carries with it the origin of the 
Babylonian civilization and mythology. 
The bison is not the only animal characteristic equally of the very earliest 
art and of the mountain region of Elam or Persia. Over and over again the lion, 
or Gilgamesh, or Eabani, is represented as attacking the ibex or the oryx, with 
hill and forest animals, and occasionally the deer with branching horns. None of 
these animals, except the lion, was to be found in Babylonia, but in Elam. Figures 
of these animals occur repeatedly on the most archaic cylinders and show the evi- 
dent source of the art. Examples are shown in figs. 56-59, 62-69, 80-82, 89, 94, 
and in Chapters vil and Xx passim. In fig. 151 we thus see lions attacking a bison 
and a deer with branching horns. 
We have then a combination of evidence from different directions, but all 
converging to the same conclusion, that the origin of the art and mythology of 
Babylonia was not in Babylonia, but in Elam. This evidence includes the moun- 
tains themselves, the trees upon them, and the animals that wandered in the forests, 
and we must further consider that the very materials of which the cylinders are made 
point to the same conclusion. Only the shell is found on the coasts of both Chaldea 
and Elam; the serpentine, black and green, the marble, the aragonite, the jasper, 
the lapis-lazuli, all must have been found in a region of hills, such as that where we 
know the lapis-lazuli was obtained. In such a country the art would seem to have 
arisen, where its material was at hand. Elam is more probable than Arabia; the 
ostrich and camel never appear in the older art. 
Nor is this conclusion at all contradicted, so far as I can see, by the written 
monuments. If the earliest civilized race was the Sumerian it may well have come 
from Elam, where there was in later times a Turanian population. Further the 
