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182 effect. The attitude of the figures is that common on the Chaldean cylinders ;the owner stands in front of the deity, of diminutive size, and in the act of adoration, while the priests are placed behind him. The latter wear the flounced dresses peculiar to the early Babylonian priests; and what has been supposed to represent female breasts, is really a copy of the way in which the breast of a man is frequently portrayed on the cylinders. The palm-tree, with its single fruit hanging on the left side, is characteristically Babylonian; so also are the symbols that encircle the engraving, the sun and moon and lions' heads. The chaton of another gold ring, found on the same spot, is covered with similar animal heads. This, again, is a copy of early Babylonian art, in which such designs were not unfrequent, though, as they were afterwards imitated by both Assyrian and Cyprian engravers, too much stress must not be laid on the agreement. The artistic position and age of the other ring, however, admits of little doubt. The archaic period of Babylonian art may be said to close with the rise of Assyria in the fourteenth century B.C. ; and though archaic Babylonian intaglios continued to be imported into the West down to the time of the Romans, it is not likely that they were imitated by Western artists after the latter had become acquainted with better and more attractive models. I think, therefore, that the two rings may be assigned to the period of archaic Babylonian power in western Asia, a period that begins with the victories of Naram-Sin in Palestine in the seventeenth century B.C. or earlier, and ends with the conquest of Babylon by the Assyrians and the establishment of Assyrian supremacy. This is also the period to which I am inclined to refer the introduction among the Phœnicians and Greeks of the column and of certain geometrical patterns, which had their first home in Babylonia. The lentoid gems with their rude intaglios, found in the islands, on the site of Heræum, in the tombs of Mykenæ and elsewhere, belong to the same age, and point back to the loamy plain of Babylonia where stone was rare and precious, and whence, consequently, the art of gem-cutting was spread through the ancient world. We can thus understand the existence of artistic designs and other evidences of civilizing influence among a people who were not yet acquainted with the use of iron. The early Chaldean empire, in spite of the culture to which it had attained, was still in the bronze age; iron was almost unknown, and its tools and weapons were fashioned of stone, bone, and bronze. Had the Greeks and the Phœnicians before them received their first lessons in culture from Egypt or from Asia Minor, where the Khalybes and other allied tribes had worked in iron from time immemorial, they would probably have received this metal at the same time. But neither at Hissarlik nor at Mykenæ is there any trace of an iron age.

The second period of Western art and civilization is represented by some of the objects found at Mykenæ in the tombs themselves. The intaglios have ceased to be Babylonian, and have become markedly Assyrian. First of all we have a hunting-scene, a favorite subject with Assyrian artists, but quite unknown to genuine Hellenic art. The disposition of the figures is that usual in Assyrian sculpture, and, like the Assyrian king, the huntsman is represented as riding in a chariot. A comparison of this hunting-scene with the bas-reliefs on the tombstones which stood over the graves shows that they belong to the same age, while the spiral ornamentation of the stones is essentially Assyrian. Equally Assyrian, though better engraved, is a lion on one of the gold prisms, which might have been cut by an Assyrian workman, so true is it to its Oriental model, and after this I would place the representation of a struggle between a man (perhaps Herakles) and a lion, in which, though the lion and attitude of the combatants are Assyrian, the man is no longer the Assyrian hero Gisdhubar, but a figure of more Western type. In another intaglio, representing a fight between armed warriors, the art has ceased to be Assyrian, and is struggling to become native. We seem to be approaching the period when Greece gave over walking in Eastern leading-strings, and began to step forward firmly without help. As I believe, however, that the tombs within the enceinte are of older date than the treasuries outside