Some of the very first wemics of antiquity that I found, once I started seaching, were urmahlullu of Ancient Assyria, depicted on seals and cylinder seals. Check them all out, here, here, here, here, here, and here. My most recent screed on the topic was in 2022; my oldest, 2005. So it's a good time to poke around the Interwebs for more, I figured, and, sure enough, I found a few.
The Penn Museum in Philadelphia published an article in 1923, but it is online for our enjoyment! In "Some Seals of the Babylonian Collections," by Leon Legrain, I found this handsome fellow. Legrain calls it a centaur, and a sphinx with arms, but I say it is clearly an urmahlullu. Even if it does have wings. I mean, look at that leonine tail! Also, note that this seems to be a regular seal, not a cylinder seal.
The next two are definitely cylinder seals. And they both portray very similar figures. I'm not sure what to make of that. here, take a look.
The one above is from the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. The museum says this is in the Neo-Assyrian modeled style of the late eighth and of the seventh century B.C. The artifact's web page is titled "Centaur attacking winged bull," but the text summary says, "Centaur with bow and arrow attacking winged lion." And the prey is cleary a lion not a bull -- look at the tail. And that's not all, because the lion's paws look just like the "centaur's" paws. This is not a centaur, but a lion-centaur, an urmahlullu.
I found this cylinder seal on a page by Christie's, the famous auction house. Christie's describes it this way:
A WESTERN IRANIAN RED JASPER CYLINDER SEAL
Circa 1000-800 B.C.
With a winged lion-centaur aiming his bow at a winged lion-griffin with avian hind-legs, the lion-centaur with a human head facing forward, a lion head facing back, the fore-legs bent, wearing a feather crown, three animals below including a bull with its head down, a goat, and a winged griffin, a star and crescent in the sky
But what struck me was how similar the two images are. They are clearly not the same image -- look at the quiver, the single-line bow vs the double-line bow, the legs, the lion's tail, the borders — not to mention the stone of the cylinders are very different! But also look at the similarities ... the faces, the hats, the sun in the sky, the wings, the belts, the postures ... it makes me wonder.
And also compare these two to this one. Same hat, shooting arrows, postures. Maybe the same fellow?
While searching for Assyrian liontaurs, I came across two pretty recent academic papers that discuss them. Both worth reading, but I also offer a few interesting quotes from each one.
Representations of Royal Power: Textual and Visual Discourse in Ashurbanipal's North Palace, by Gabriela Augustina Cojocaru, a Ph.D. thesis (2016) (PDF | Link)
The urmahlullu appears now for the first time as relief subject in the palatial decoration. It too is identified from ritual texts and is ascribed the function of fighting back evil and it is prescribed for burial at the gate of the bathroom, playing thus the role of a gate-keeper of a specific place.
The urmahlullu figure appears in the decoration of a niche in Room F. .... The niche .... supports the idea of this room functioning as bathroom.
The lion-man in Room F, however, is placed in the niche. Slab 11 (from which the lower part survives) provides further information in this sense, as it bore a cuneiform inscription on the reverse: "You shall bar out the supporter of the evil head." The inscription, written on the reverse of the urmahlullu, shows thus the role it played: it is a guardian creature meant to provide protection against evil. The divine nature of the figure is suggested by the horned tiara it wears.
Bathing Rooms in First-Millennium Assyria, by Ludovico Portuese (2024) (PDF | Link)
An interesting aspect that is worth being underscored is the presence of protective figures carved the walls or on the doorjambs of bathing rooms and lavatories. Their position within the interior decoration is intentional and functional .... The doorways of almost all the known bathing rooms and lavatories in the palaces of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal at Nineveh were protected by the smiting god lulal and the lion-demon ugallu .... This group is expanded with the addition of the lion-centaur urmaḥlullū in the North Palace, particularly at the doorway of the vestibule T leading into room V. The urmaḥlullū seems to have been closely associated with the protection of the niche and the drain in lavatories. This association is substantiated by its presence in the niche of room F in the North Palace. Here it stood at the side of the niche facing into the room and probably protected the drain — a favoured entrance-point of demons like Sulak — within the niche.
Similarly, lulal, ugallu, and urmaḥlullū, which populate the bathing rooms and lavatories of the palaces of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal, are all creatures of the Apsu and protect these spaces from evil. This implies that their presence was also connected with their power to bring cleanliness and purity to these spaces.
