figures are believed to be those of women, on account of the way in which the hair is arranged. It is clubbed with ribbons at the back of the neck. The artist seems also to have tried to suggest the amplitude of the female bosom. On the whole we may believe the scene to represent a goddess--Istar perhaps--surrounded by worshippers of her own sex. In the Louvre there is a cylinder with a scene of the same kind, but more complex and, for us, more obscure (Fig. 145). A seated figure, apparently female from the long hair flowing over the shoulders, sits upon a low stool and holds a child upon her knees. In front of the group thus formed stands a man who seems to be offering some beverage in a horn-shaped cup. Behind him there are three not inelegant vases upon a bracket, and a man kneeling beside a large jar upon a tripod. The latter holds in his hand the spoon with which he has filled the goblet presented by his companion. We may, perhaps, take the whole scene as a preparation for a feast offered to one of those goddesses of maternity whom we find on the terra-cottas (see above Fig. 107). We shall not here go into the question whether we may see in all this an episode in the legend of the ancient Sargon, the royal infant whom his mother exposed upon the water after his clandestine birth; after commencing like Moses, the hero of this adventure was found and brought up by a boatman, and became the founder of an empire when he grew to manhood, like Cyrus and Romulus.[313] [Illustration: FIG. 146.--Chaldæan cylinder. Montigny collection.]