Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/308

 276 A History of Art in Chald^a and Assyria. in the valley of the Euphrates all through the Achœmenid supremacy. No inscriptions were used. Names and dates were engraved by hand on the clay after the seal had been placed upon it. We can see clearly from the monotony of the images, which are repeated almost unchanged on hundreds of tablets, that the art of gem-engraving was in full decadence. The people were enslaved, they lived upon the memory of their past, creating neither new forms nor new ideas. They no longer attempted to make their seals works of art ; they looked upon them as mere utensils. Cylinders are sometimes found in this region inscribed with Aramaic characters, like the weights from Nimroud. Such, for instance, is one representing a dismounted hunter meeting the charge of a lion, 1 while his horse stands behind him and awaits the issue of the struggle (Fig. 156). The costume of the hunter is Fig. 156. — Cylinder with Aramaic characters. Vienna Museum. neither Assyrian nor Chaldsean. He has been supposed to repre- sent a Scythian. The Scythian figured at Bisitun has the same pointed bonnet or cowl. Cylinders of this kind will long be a difficulty for the classifier. 2 The cylindrical form was not the only one used by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia for their seals. Small objects in pietra dura of a different shape are now often found in the country, and are beginning to hold their own in our museums ; 1 The charging animal seems rather to be a wild boar. The shape of its head and body, the ridge of hair along the spine, the shape of the legs and feet, and its action in charging, all suggest a boar, a suggestion confirmed by the action of the hunter, who receives the rush of the animal on a kind of scarf or cloak, while he buries his boar-spear in its back. — Ed. 2 The cylinder published by Lajard, Introduction à I' Etude du Culte public et des Mystères de Mithra, plate xxv. No. 4. See on the subject of the inscription upon it, Levy, Siegel und Gemmen, plate 1, No. 15. A certain number of intaglios with Aramaic characters, which belong to the same class, have been studied and described by M. de Vogué, in his Mélanges d Archéologie orientale, pp. 120-130.