[326] The cuneiform texts mention the "two bulls at the door of the temple E-schakil," the famous staged tower of Babylon. Fr. Lenormant, Les Origines de l'Histoire, vol. i. p. 114 (2nd edition, 1880).
[327] Rich, Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811, and a Memoir on the Ruins, p. 64. Layard, Discoveries, p. 507. According to Rich, this lion was of grey granite; according to Layard, of black basalt.
[328] Loftus says nothing of this lion in those Travels and Researches which we have so often quoted. It was, perhaps, on a later occasion that he found it. We came upon it in a collection of original sketches and manuscript notes (Drawings in Babylonia by W. K. Loftus and H. Churchill) in the custody of the keeper of Oriental antiquities at the British Museum. We have to express our acknowledgments to Dr. Birch for permission to make use of this valuable collection.
[329] Perrot, Guillaume et Delbet, Exploration archéologique de la Galatie, vol. ii. pl. 32.
[330] Exploration archéologique, vol. ii. pl. 11.
[331] Layard, Discoveries, p. 508.
[332] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. pp. 68-70.
[333] This character of a tutelary divinity that we attribute to the winged bull is indicated in the clearest manner in the cuneiform texts: "In this palace," says Esarhaddon, "the sedi and lamassi (the Assyrian names for these colossi) are propitious, are the guardians of my royal promenade and the rejoicers of my heart, may they ever watch over the palace and never quit its walls." And again: "I caused doors to be made in cypress, which has a good smell, and I had them adorned with gold and silver and fixed in the doorways. Right and left of those doorways I caused sedi and lamassi of stone to be set up, they are placed there to repulse the wicked." (St. Guyard, Bulletin de la Religion assyrienne, in the Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, vol. i. p. 43, note.)
[334] Place, Ninive, vol. iii, plate 21.
[335] Those in the Louvre are fourteen feet high; the tallest pair in the British Museum are about the same.