Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/298

200 A History of Art in Ciiald.ea and Assyria. One of the favourite subjects at this time was the scene of worship we have already encountered on the Sippara tablet (Vol. I., Fig. 71.) ; in the cylinders as well as on the larger tablet the worshipper is led by a priest into the presence of an enthroned divinity. The temple, indicated in the tablet, is suppressed in the seals, where the space is so much less, but otherwise the composi- tion is the same. It would be difficult to imagine anything better fitted for objects of a talismanic character, which were also to be used for the special purpose of these cylinders. Whenever the Chaldaean put his seal upon clay he renewed the act of prayer and faith which the engraver had figured upon it ; he took all men to witness his faith in the protection of Anou, of Samas, or of some other god. We need therefore feel no surprise at encountering this subject upon the cylinders of Ourkam, (Vol. I., Fig. 3) and his Fig. 143. — Chaldaean cylinder. Green serpentine. Louvre. Drawn by Wallet. son Dungi, 1 princes in whom the oldest Chaldœan royalty was embodied. Both of these seals seem to have been engraved in Ur, the home of that dynasty. We have given several other variants of the same theme (Vol. I., Figs. 17 — 20, and above, Figs. 40 and 124) ; 2 here are two more found by M. de Sarzec at Tello (Figs. 143, 144). In the first of these two streams seem to flow from the shoulders of the seated deity ; they may have some connection with that worship of the two great rivers whose traces appear elsewhere." In the second example, which is not a little 1 MÉ m ant, Essai sur les Pierres gravées. Fig. 86. 2 Ibid. p. 138. 3 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