Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

DURING 10TU CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 271
regarded as instructions and explanations for the artist 1
who
in davs to come mav be called upon to make another image.
Two terra- cotta moulds, 2 showing all the details of our
bas-relief, were found in the box with the stone tablet. The
ed., New York, 1876, p. 4.11, seqq. Comp., also, Bezold, "Catalogue of the
Cuneiform Tablets in the Kouvunjik Collection of the British Museum," vol.
v (London, 1899), pp. xix and xxvii, 5.
1
The upper inscription reads : Sin, Shamash, Ishtar ina pu-ut apsi ina
bi-rit Siri ti-mi innadu (-#), /. e., Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar (whose
symbols are engraved below this inscription ) have been placed ( on the golden
image, or are to be placed on a new image that may be made ; the verbal
form can be regarded as pteterite or present tense) opposite the ocean (indicated
at the lower end of the bas-relief by wavy lines ; comp., also, v R.
63, col. ii,
5) between the snake (in the year 1887, when at the request of
Dr. Hayes Ward I gave him my interpretation of this bas-relief at his house
in Newark, I called his attention to the important fact generally overlooked,
that the back and top of the shrine represents an immense snake, whose head
can be clearly recognized over the column in front of the god) and the rope
( = timmi, by which the altar and disk of the sun are suspended. But it is
perhaps better to interpret ti-mi as a dialectical or inexact writing for di-mi,
intended for dim mi, "column," which we see immediately before the god
supporting the roof of his house).
The lower inscription, which stands as a label near the head-dress of the
god, reads : agu Shamash, mushshi agu Shamash, which I interpret, tiara
of Shamash, make the tiara of Shamash bright (^mashu = namaru, ii R.
47, 58, and 59 e, f, here imperat. ii. 1 This special order must be interpreted
in the light of the difficult passage, v R. 63, col. i,
43 to col. ii, 40,
especially col. ii, 36—39, "I made the golden tiara [of Shamash] anew
and made it bright as the day"). The Sun-god was the bringer of light ;
rays of light therefore were supposed to go forth from his head and tiara, as
they did from the head of Apollo on the coins of Rhodes. Even if mushshi
be interpreted as a noun, it cannot refer to the wand and rod in the right
hand of Shamash, as has been supposed, but it must refer to the tiara, of
which then it possibly denotes a part, — a view supported by the fact that
the two lines form but one label, and by the circumstance that in v R. 63,
col. i,
43, seqq., Nabonidos gives a detailed description as to how a correct
tiara of the Sun-god has to look.
2
One of them, together with a cylinder of Nabonidos, is in the Ottoman
Museum at
20
Constantinople.