Again, when a scimitar from a tomb at Gezer resembles that which a priest holds in a sacrificial scene upon a Gezer seal, we may suppose that the seal represents a familiar Palestinian ceremony. But the same type of weapon is found in Assyria and Egypt in the age of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and it is therefore impossible to treat it or the scene as _distinctively_ Palestinian. The ubiquity of the dragon-conflict, too, warns us that the same underlying motive will present itself in a great variety of external shapes, and it is interesting to find that the idea of the slayer as a _child_ actually points away from Babylonia. Features which find their only parallel in the accumulation of Babylonian evidence are not inevitably of Babylonian origin. Our land was exposed to diverse influences, an illustration of which is afforded by certain seals with cuneiform characters. The owner of one is styled a servant of Nergal (see p. 93); it bears Egyptian symbols (those of life and beauty), and a scene of adoration, partly Egyptian and partly Babylonian in treatment. It has been ascribed to the First Dynasty of Babylon. Later {111} come the seals of the Sidonian Addumu 'beloved of the gods (?)' and his son; on one is an Egyptianised representation of Set, Horus, and Resheph. Yet another combines two conventional scenes, the priest leading a worshipper before a deity (Babylonian), a king slaying a kneeling enemy (Egyptian).[4] In the presence of such fusion the problem becomes more complex. If, in the Greek age, it is found that Adonis and Osiris or Astarte of Byblos and Isis resembled each other so closely that it was sometimes difficult to determine which deity was being celebrated, the relation between the Baalath of Byblos and Hathor, or between Shamash and Amon-Re could have been equally embarrassing in our period. In fact, as Palestine continues to be brought into line with other lands the task of determining _specific_ external influences becomes more intricate. [4] See (_a_), Sellin, _Tell Ta'annek_, fig. 22, _pp._ 27 _sq._, 105 (Vincent, _Canaan_, fig. 117, p. 170 _sq._); (_b_) Winckler, _Altorient. Forschungen_, iii. p. 177 _sq._; and (_c_) E. J. Pilcher, _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._, xxiii. p. 362.