in the Indian myths, more particularly in the beautiful
story of the _Astika-parva_ of the Mahabharata, it is Garuda who
reconquers the ambrosia _Amritam_--that is, the sacred juice of the
Soma, used for libations, that had been stolen by demons, and who
restores it to the celestial god, himself remaining its guardian. The
part played by him and by the eagle-headed genii of Assyrian monuments,
with regard to the tree of life, is consequently the same as that which
we find in Genesis assigned to _Kerubin_, armed with flaming swords,
who were placed by God at the gate of Eden, after the expulsion of the
first human pair, to prevent the entrance into Paradise, and to guard
its tree of life.

In one part at least of Chaldea properly so called, to the south of
Babylon, it appears as though it were no longer the type we have just
been considering that was employed to represent the tree of life. It was
the palm, the tree that furnished the majority of the inhabitants of the
district with food, and with fruit from which they distilled a fermented
and intoxicating liquor, a kind of wine; the tree to which they were
wont to attribute in a popular song as many benefits as there are days
in the year--this palm it was that was there considered the sacred, the
paradisiacal tree. We have the proof of this in cylinders that show us
the palm surmounted by the emblem of the Supreme God, and guarded by two
eagle-headed genii. Moreover, the essential character of the tree of
life lies in its fruits affording an intoxicating juice, the beverage of
immortality; and accordingly the books of the Sabians or Mendaites
associate it with the tree Setarvan, "the perfumed vine," Sam Gufro,
above which hovers "the Supreme Life" in the same way as does the
emblematic image of divinity in its highest and most abstract form above
the plant of life in the monumental representations of Babylon and
Assyria.

And, further, the fact that in the cosmogonic traditions of the
Chaldeans and Babylonians respecting the tree of life and paradisiacal
fruit, there was contained a dramatic myth, closely resembling in form
the Biblical narrative of the Temptation, appears to be as positively
established as may be in the absence of written texts, by a cylinder of
hard stone preserved in the British Museum.[67] There we actually see a
man and woman, the former wearing on his head the kind of turban
peculiar to Babylonians,[68] seated opposite each other on either side