9th-7th century BC. A substantial amethyst cylinder seal with a female worshipper with long hairstyle wearing a long fringed robe, pointing with right hand and extending the other towards two deities, standing right on animals; the first, a bearded god, wearing a square, star-topped, horned headdress and a vertically-striated kilt, with star-tipped crossed bow-cases on his back, a sword in his belt, and raising his right hand, standing on the back of a lying horse; from its head runs a pearly string to the belt of the god; behind him stands a goddess on the back of a reclining dog, its head also connected by the same kind of string to the god's belt; wearing a tall, cylindrical, feathered and star-topped head-dress with two long tresses reaching over the shoulder, a vertically-striated kilt; she raises her right hand and holds a ring in her left; behind the goddess are: a tip-down spear with a pearl-shaped shaft, a stand holding the triangular-headed spade symbol of the god Marduk, and the wedge or stylus of the god Nabû, and above that the crescent; above and between the female worshipper and Ninurta is a star, between the deities the Pleiades; the dog on which the goddess stands points to the healing goddess Gula; thus, the god of war before her must be her husband Ninurta, but the horse as its attribute animal is not yet known; accompanied by a museum-quality impression. For the deities and their symbols on this cylinder seal see: Black, J. and Green, A. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. An Illustrated Dictionary, London, 1992; for Ninurta and Gula together on Neo-Assyrian seals see Collon, D. Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum. Cylinder Seals V: Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Periods, London, 2001, fig.232 and 233. 53.2 grams, 51mm (2"). From the family collection of a Hampstead gentleman; formerly acquired in the 1980s, accompanied by Geologic Report TL005258 by Dr Ronald Bonewitz.