Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/262

 244 ^ History of Art in Sardinia and Jud.^a. § e.— Glyptic Art, The elaborate system of writing possessed by the Hittites induces the beHef, amounting almost to certainty, that they borrowed at a remote age the use of seals from the Assyrians and Egyptians, their nearest civilized neighbours. Consequently there is an inclination to credit the Hittites with the fabrication of not a few intaglios which have been recovered within recent years in the peninsula and Assyria. But no matter where such monuments are found, considerable difficulty is experienced in tracing their true origin. The surest criterion is the presence in the field of ' ' the intaglio of characters such as we see in Fig. 371. Bntish Mus^eum.' It is a Small calcareous grey stone, ovoid in shape, S/Zr^' pfat^ which was picked up by Sir H. Layard in the palace ^^' 4- of Sennacherib, at Nineveh, and placed in the British Museum, where it lay forgotten, until the advent of the Hittite theory. The emblems, circle, lozenge,^ and bird, are duplicates of those at Hamath and Carchemish,'^ except that here they are more distinct and sharply defined, and that the bird has assumed a cursive, abridged form.^ As will have been observed in the course of this work, as well as by reference to some typical specimens in the Appendix, all such intaglios have their field wholly taken up by the inscription, composed of characters repeated twice over, as in the seal of Tarkondemos. That exiguity of space was not the reason which obliged the engraver to limit himself to mere signs may be inferred from the annexed illustration, the largest example of the series (Fig. 372).* The impression is the base of a cone, with two outer concentric zones occupied by forms of a seem- ingly ornamental nature ; which consist, for the border, of a tau ^ This sign, of less frequent usage than the other two, will be found in the first line of Plate J. III. (Wright, The Empire). ^ With regard to these seals, see section on the Glyptic art of the Hittites in this volume (Figs 287, 288, 289) ; and the whole series may be seen in Plate XIII. Wright's Empire, ^ Hist, of Arty tom. iv. p. 493, note i. ^ Out of the eighteen seals published by M. E. Schlumberger and myself in the Revue Archeo.,2ir Q, two (Figs. 3 and 4 in plate) where the signs, being equal in number to those of the annexed example, must represent the same text. Nevertheless there are differences of arrangement and design sufficiently distinct to permit us to affirm that each of the three impressions was obtained from a different block or matrix.