Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/337

 Ceramics. 299 Warka and Mugheir, have been burnt in the oven. Some, how- ever, do not seem to have been ' thrown ' on the wheel. The thickness of their walls and their irregular shape suggest that the potter fashioned them with the back and palm of his hand (Figs. 163 — 165). The paste is coarse ; it is mixed with chopped straw, Figs. 163 — 165. — Chaldaean vases of the first period. British Museum. which shows here and there on the surface ; there is neither ornament nor glaze, and the curves are without grace. 1 Some other vases found in the same cemeteries are ascribed to a later epoch. They give evidence of a real progress in art. We have already figured two examples in our first volume (Figs. 159 and, 160) ; three more are given in Figs. 166 — 168. The body P'iGS. 166 — 168. — Chaldaean vases of the second period. British Museum. is finer, and sometimes covered with a slight glaze ; there is still no decoration, but the forms are obviously meant, and not without 1 Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. pp. 91, 92. We borrow figs. 163-8 from Professor Rawlinson. Some of these, he tells us, are from drawings by- Mr. Churchill, the artist who accompanied Loftus into Chaldaea and Susiana ; the rest are taken from objects now in the British Museum,