Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/297

 Gems. 265 they have, in fact, far less originality than might at first be thought. Compare the impressions from different cabinets and attempt to classify them in order of subject ; you will find the same types and scenes repeated, with but slight changes, on a great number of specimens, and you will soon discover that hundreds of cylinders may be divided into a very small number of groups. In each group, too, many individual specimens will only be dis- tinguishable from each other by their inscriptions. All this is to be easily accounted for. The finest cylinders, whether in design or material, must have been commissioned by kings, nobles, and priests, while the common people bought theirs ready-made. When any one of the latter wished to buy a seal he went to the merchant and chose it from his stock, which was composed of the patron gods and religious scenes which happened to be most in fashion at the time. As soon as the purchaser had made his selection he caused his own name to be engraved in the space left for the purpose, and it was this inscription, rather than the scene beside it, that gave its personal character to the seal. The production of these objects was a real industry, carried on all over the country and for many centuries, and continually reproducing the same traditional and consecrated types. M. Menant believes himself able to determine where most if not all the cylinders of the early monarchy were produced. He talks of the schools of Ur, of Erech, of Arade, and in many cases the signs on which he relies appear to have a serious value. But we shall not attempt even to give a résumé of the arguments he uses to justify the classification he was the first to sketch out ; we could not do so without multiplying our illustrations and extending our letterpress to an extravagant degree. Judging from the examples quoted by M. Menant himself in support of his own theory, the workshops of different towns in the course of a single period were distinguished rather by their predilection for particular themes than by anything peculiar in their styles of execution ; the same processes and the same way of looking at living forms may be recognised in all. We may, then, treat all these early works of the Chaldaean gem-engravers as the productions of a single school ; and in this history we only propose to note and discuss the general direction of the great art currents. We cannot follow all the arms and side streams into which the main river is subdivided. VOL. II. M M