Note 38 — PART I
Reading edition
Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 604.
[39] In this connexion the following passage from Sayce’s Hibbert Lectures, p. 261, is interesting:—
A text copied for Assur-banipal, from a tablet originally written at Babylon, contains part of a hymn which had to be recited “in the presence of Bel-Merodach ... in the beginning of Nisan,”—
“... O Zamama, Why dost thou not take thy seat? Bahu, the Queen of Kis, has not cried to thee.”
He adds in a note that Zamama was the Sun-god of Kis, and was consequently identified with Adar by the mythologists. On a contract-stone he is symbolized by an eagle, which is said to be “the image of the southern sun of Kis.”
It was claimed in a former paper (Feb. 1896) that “the Southern sun” was “the sun of the winter solstice,” and that Gula (= Bahu) was the name of the constellation, or of some stars in the constellation Aquarius (V. p. 50). In these lines Bahu, as I have supposed, Aquarius, and Zamama, symbolised by the Eagle, the image of the Southern sun or winter solstice, are closely associated.