Cylinders and Other Ancient Oriental Seals in the Library of J. Pierpont Morgan (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1909 Excerpt: ... ism which we have mentioned as usual in the later Persian period, but which in Assyria showed much more freedom and variety. This design seems to be a composite of that so frequent in early Babylonian art, of Gilgamesh fighting wild beasts, and of the conquest of Marduk over Tiamat. But the battle between Marduk. and Tiamat is never represented in the early Babylonian art. Marduk was the god of cosmic order, as Tiamat was the promoter of confusion and chaos. They thus anticipated the later Persian Ahuramazda and Ahriman. It was this idea of cosmic conflict which was figured in the Assyrian designs, but with some confusion with the fights of Gilgamesh against wild beasts. The god often takes on two or four wings, and usually carries as his weapon the curved scimitar of Marduk. His antagonist is often the original composite dragon or griffin, but may be anything else from a bull to a serpent. One of them in this collection (fig. 156) was long the only one known and has often been figured as showing that the representation of Satan as a serpent, which we find in the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve, was not unknown to the people of the East. Winckler figures this seal on the cover of one of his later brochures, but credits it to the British Museum. Among the emblems that began to appear in this period the most important is the winged disk, representing the Assyrian supreme deity, Ashur, the name the same as that of Assyria itself. Yet it reached Assyria from the West, being a modification of the Egyptian representation of the Sun-god Ra. But the Egyptian asps were dropped and other modifications were made, especially in the streamers which hang down from under each wing, and toward which the worshipper lifted his hand. They seem to represent the connect...