Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/364

342 A HISTORY OF ART IN CIIALD^EA AND ASSYRIA. is that of a man we find at his side the cylinder which served him as seal, his arms, arrow heads of flint or bronze, and the remains of the staff he carried in his hand. 1 In a woman's tomb the body has jewels on its neck, its wrists and ankles ; jewels are strewn about the tomb and placed on the lid of the coffin. Among other toilet matters have been found small glass bottles, fragments of a bouquet, and cakes of the black pigment which the women of the East still employ to lengthen their eyebrows and enhance their blackness. 2 The vases which are always present in well-preserved tombs, show the ideas of the Mesopotamians on death more clearly than anything else. Upon the palm of one hand or behind the head is placed a cup, sometimes of bronze, oftener of terra-cotta. From it the dead man can help himself to the water or fermented liquors with which the great clay jars that are spread over the FIGS. 159, 160. Vases; from Warka. British Museum. floor of his grave are filled (Figs. 159 and 160). Near these also we find shallow bowls or saucers, used no doubt as plates for holding food. Date-stones, chicken and fish bones are also present in great numbers. In one tomb the snout of a swordfish has been found, in another a wild boar's skull. It would seem too that the idea of adding imitation viands to real ones occurred to the Chaldaeans as well as to the Egyptians. 3 From one grave opened by Taylor four ducks carved in stone were taken. The sepulchres in which the objects we have been mentioning were found, are the most ancient in Chaldsea on this all the explorers are agreed. Their situation in the lowest part of the 1 "Each of the Babylonians," says HERODOTUS (i. 195), "carries a seal and a walking-stick carved at the top into the form of an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle, or something similar, for it is not their habit to use a stick without an ornament." 2 LOFTUS, Travels, p. 212. 3 See Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. p. 145, note 3.