[310] Ménant, Essai sur les Pierres gravées, Fig. 86.
[311] Ibid. p. 138.
[312] De Longpérier, Œuvres, vol. i. p. 335. Compare our Fig. 17, Vol. i., and M. Ménant’s observations upon the double-faced individual in whom the original androgynous type of the human race has been recognised by some (Essai, &c., pp. 111–120). We are inclined to agree with him in supposing the double profile to be no more than a convention, whose strangeness is diminished when we remember that it occurred upon the convex sides of a cylinder, where the eye of the spectator did not grasp it all at once, as upon the flat impression. In choosing such an arrangement, the artist seems to have desired to connect the figure both with the seated god and the figures on the other side; it is an expedient of the same nature as the five legs of the Ninevite bulls.
[313] Ménant, Essai, &c., p. 166. M. Ménant mentions some other myths, with which this scene may be connected. The true explanation cannot be decided, however, until the Chaldee mythology is better known than at present.
[314] Ibid. p. 153.
[315] Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. i. Fig. 85.
[316] Ménant, Essai, &c., pp. 61–96.
[317] Ménant, Essai, p. 94. Izdubar contends not only with monsters; he pursues, for his own pleasure, all the beasts of the desert and mountain; like the Nimrod of Genesis, he is a “mighty hunter before the Lord.” See the cylinders figured and explained by S. Haffner (La Chasse de l’Hercule assyrien, in the Gazette archéologique, 1879, p. 178–184).
[318] Ménant, Essai, p. 91.
[319] See above, page 144, and Fig. 70.