dge, sometimes of one
tree only combining both attributes, and standing in the midst of the
garden; the Indian tradition, which supposes four plants on the four
counterforts of Mount Meru; and, lastly, that of the Iranians, which
sometimes treats of a single tree springing from the very middle of the
holy spring of water, Ardvi-cura, in Airyana-Vaedja, and sometimes of
two, corresponding exactly to those of the Biblical Eden. This
similarity is so much the more natural, that we find the Sabians or
Mendaites, an almost pagan sect, dwelling in the environs of Bussorah,
who retain a great number of Babylonian religious traditions, to be also
conversant with the tree of life, which they designate in their
Scriptures as _Setarvan_, "that which shades." The most ancient name of
Babylon in the idiom of the Ante-Semitic population, _Tin-tir-ki_,
signifies "the place of the tree of life." Finally, the representation
of the sacred plant which we assimilate with that of the Edenic
traditions, appears as a symbol of life eternal on those curious
sarcophagi, in enamelled clay, belonging to the latest period of
Chaldean civilization, after Alexander the Great, which have been
discovered at Warkah, the ancient Uruk.

The manner of representing this sacred plant varies in Assyrian
bas-reliefs and exhibits different degrees of complexity.[64] It is,
however, invariably a plant of moderate size, of pyramidal form, having
a straight stem from which spring numerous branches, and a cluster of
large leaves at its base. In one example only[65] is the plant
represented with sufficient accuracy to enable us to classify it as the
_Asclepias acida_ or _Sarcostemma vinimalis_, the plant known as the
Soma to the Aryans of India, the Haoma to the Iranians, the crushed
branches of which afford the intoxicating liquor offered as a libation
to the gods, and identified with the celestial beverage of life and
immortality. More generally, however, the plant has a conventional and
decorative aspect, not answering exactly to any natural type, and it is
this purely conventional form which the Persians have borrowed from
Assyro-Babylonian art, and which represents the Haoma on gems, cylinders
or cones of Persian workmanship in the era of the Achemenides.[66]
Such an adoption of the most usual shape of the sacred plant of the
Chaldeans and Assyrians by the Persians, in order to represent their own
Haoma--although the conventional bore no similarity to the real