As we have already seen, the cylinder-seals frequently present us with the pictorial aspect of a legend already known from the literature. One of the most famous legends of the Babylonians was that which told of Etana’s courageous but bootless attempt to ascend to heaven on the wings of an eagle. Higher and higher soared the eagle, till at last heaven’s portals were in sight, but the goal, for some reason not indicated, was never reached, and both Etana and his living aeroplane were dashed to the ground. We have an illustration of this bold flight on some of the seal-cylinders in the British Museum, an impression of one of which is given in Fig. [62]. Etana is seated on the eagle, who is bearing his burden aloft in the sight of an admiring and upward-gazing dog. On the right a shepherd clad in a long garment—his right shoulder being exposed as usual—is driving a horned sheep and two goats towards a primitive looking fence: both Etana and the shepherd wear beards and long hair, while the latter carries a staff in his left hand. In the background is a naked but likewise bearded individual, who is seated beside a large amphora with the contents of which he appears to be entirely preoccupied; he is presumably performing culinary operations of some kind.
The scene on other Babylonian seals is that of a god attacking a humanly conceived enemy; this class comprises cylinder-seals belonging to the archaic period as
Fig. 62. well as those of later date. The impression of one such archaic seal is reproduced in Fig. [63]. In the centre we have the god, mounted on a bull, his left hand raised, his right hand grasping a weapon or a whip; he is trampling on a prostrate and suppliant foe, whose figure is sketched in the roughest and crudest conceivable manner. As Ward says, this seal must date from the time when the horse was unknown, or at all events not used in battle. On the right side of the impression, the god is engaged on foot with an enemy who appears to be armed with a weapon shaped like a boomerang, such as that with which the
Fig. 63. god Nin-girsu is armed on the Vulture Stele. The god holds in his right hand a weapon of uncertain character, while between the two and facing the god is a diminutive worshipper whose hand is raised—doubtless in token of submission—towards his divine lord. On the left the god is stabbing a human-headed bull with a dagger, while from the god’s back, rays, or what appear to be rays, are emitted.
By the time of Gudea, patesi of Lagash, and Ur-Engur and Dungi, kings of Ur, we find a marked change in the artistic merits of the seal-engraver’s products. Speaking generally, they are executed with far greater care, and with a wealth of precision entirely absent in most of the earlier intaglios, but what they gain in care and detailed attention, they lose in the conventionalism to which that care and attention have given birth. We have here no rough sketch of a born artist, but the elaborated painting of a copyist. In Fig. [64] we have an impression of one of Gudea’s cylinder-seals. The god, who is probably Nin-girsu or Ea,[134] is seated on a box-like throne: he holds a vase in either hand, from each of which issue two streams which pour their contents into three vases resting on the ground, these in turn becoming themselves the generators of living springs of water.
Fig. 64. Facing the god is an intermediary deity who is supporting one of the vases with his left hand, and leading the worshipper, probably Gudea himself, with his right. From the shoulders of the intermediary emanate two serpents, the head of the near one exactly resembling the strange reptiles on the vase of the same patesi (cf. Fig. [90]). The identification of the intermediary deity with Ningish-zida is rendered highly probable by Gudea’s allusion to this god in one of his inscriptions, where in his description of the manner in which he was introduced to his supreme god, Nin-girsu, he expressly states that “Nin-gish-zi-da, his god, held him by the hand.”