Fig. 58.
In Fig. [57] we have the impression of another seal in which Gilgamesh and Ea-bani are the prominent actors. Ea-bani is engaged with a lion, but his comrade is fighting with a massive horned-buffalo. This seal belongs to the time of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin, kings of Agade, its date being fixed alike by the style of art and the purport of the brief inscription, which contains the name of the owner, Bingani-Sharali, king of Agade and the son of Narâm-Sin. This seal, now in the British Museum, was discovered at Cyprus.[132] The movements of Gilgamesh and Ea-bani are portrayed in a life-like manner, though the action of Ea-bani’s left arm is somewhat awkward and ungraceful. The same may be said of the overpowered and ill-designed buffalo, and also of the antelope beneath the inscription, but the lion is decidedly conventional, a fact possibly due to the ubiquity of his presence on the cylinder-seals and monuments of the earliest Sumerian times, from which one may perhaps infer that the perpetual reproduction of the same animal, has in time worn off the freshness with which the artist at first approached his subject. But the Gilgamesh seals probably reach their climax in that reproduced in Fig. [58]. The hero is engaged in mortal combat with a lion, whom he is endeavouring to throw. Gilgamesh is represented full-face and with the various peculiarities which appear to have been proper to his unique person—the long, curly beard, the equally long hair parted in the centre with the three characteristic ringlets on either side, and the body entirely naked but for a narrow girdle. The action is concentrated and focussed into a point—there are no conflicting persons, animals, or even objects in the scene to draw away or divide the attention of the spectator, and the animation with which the subject is treated is ample justification for the isolated and exclusive position that it here holds.
Fig. 59.
Another group of Babylonian seals belonging to different periods show the dramatic conquest of the deity over the winged dragon. One of the earliest, best preserved, and most instructive examples of these, is a shell cylinder preserved in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, also published by Ward[133] (cf. Fig. [59]). The dragon has the wings and hind part of an eagle, while his fore-legs and head are those of a lion; between the wings upon his back stands a nude goddess brandishing lightning in either hand. The dragon is harnessed to a four-wheeled chariot, the front part of which is higher than the back, while a god of disproportionate size is driving the chariot and flourishing a whip in his left hand. The lion-headed dragon is apparently vomiting, and his action recalls that of one of the expiring lions on the bas-reliefs of Ashur-bani-pal. It may, however, be meant to represent the ejection of venom, though if this is the case it has not been very happily rendered. Before this group of supernaturals, stands the worshipper who is in the act of presenting an offering of uncertain character upon an altar.
But sometimes gods and heroes are found side by side on the same seal, as is the case on the seal reproduced in Fig. [60]. The horn-capped and seated deity is Shamash, the Sun-god, from whose shoulders rays of light proceed, while from his lap issue streams of living water.
