Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/338

 316 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD.KA AND ASSYRIA. found. In the middle of the great mass of ruins whose plan we are still awaiting, " I found," says M. de Sarzec, "at a depth of hardly 30 centimetres (one foot English) below the original level of the soil four cubical masses consisting of large bricks cemented with bitumen, and measuring about 80 centimetres across each face. In the centre of each cube there was a cavity 27 centimetres long by 12 wide and 35 deep. In each case this hollow contained a small bronze statuette packed, as it were, in an impalpable dust. In one cavity the statuette was that of a kneeling man (Fig. 146), in another of a standing woman (Fig. 147), in another of a bull FIG. 146. Bronze statuette. 81 inches high. Louvre. (Fig. 148). At the feet of each statue there were two stone tablets, set in most cases in the bitumen with which the cavity was lined. One of these tablets was black, the other white. It was upon the black as a rule that a cuneiform inscription similar, or nearly so, to the inscriptions on the statuettes was found." 1 Abridgments of the same commemorative and devotional form of words are found upon those cones of terra-cotta that were 1 Les fouilles de Chaldce, communication d' it tie Lett re de M. de Sarzec, by M. Leon HEUZEY (Revue archeologique, November, 1881).