Cylinder Seal

CBS Register: Babylonian seal cylinder, serpentine

PBS XIV: The goddess with the winged gate and bull. The winged gate over the crouched bull forms the central objects of the composition. There is a seated figure on one side, and a nude assistant on the other with one knee don and one foot lifted on the back of the bull. He grasps with two hands one end of the rope which seems to secure the gate. The other end reaches the extended hand of the seated figure, swings round her head, and is held loose in the second hand resting on her lap. The figure seated on a cubic thrown, with a long fringed robe, no beard, a fillet found about her hair tied in a loop behind, is apparently a goddess, but without the divine horned mitre. She is perhaps a daughter or priestess of the Moon god represented by a flat crescent above. The nude assistant with head in profile, a beard, his hair tied in a loop behind, and his head found by a a fillet or covered with a low cap, is another Gilgamesh in a new part. He helps to keep the bull within the encloser of which the cords and wings on either side of the gate are the symbols. Was not the Moon good called the brilliant young bull of heaven? At evening when the gates of the night are opened, he will get up and wander across the heavenly pastures. The gate has two cross bars and two simple wings made of seven horizontal lines. This gate of the night is perhaps the counterpart of the gate of the East opening in the morning for Shamash.

There is on the reverse a lance supporting a star, with two lines about the middle of the shaft. Concave cyl. seal. Sepentine, 34 x 22 1/2 mm