Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/283

Gems. 251 5 8. — Gems. " Every Babylonian had a seal," says Herodotus ; 1 this fact seems to have struck him directly he began to explore the streets and bazaars of the great oriental city. These seals, which appear to have attracted the eye of the historian by the open manner in which they were carried and the continual use made of them in every transaction of life, public or private, are now in our museums. They are to be found in hundreds in all the galleries and private collections of Europe. 2 When Chaldaean civilization became sufficiently advanced for writing to be in widespread use and for every man to provide himself with his own personal seal, no great search for convenient materials was necessary. The rounded pebbles of the river beds gave all that was wanted. The instinct for personal adornment is one of the earliest felt by mankind, and just as the children of to-day search in the shingle of a beach for stones more attractive than the rest, either by their bright colours, or vivid markings or transparency of paste, so also did the fathers of civilization. And when they had found such stones they drilled holes through them and made them into earrings, necklaces and bracelets. More than one set of pebble ornaments has been preserved for us in the Chaldaean tombs. In many instances forms sketched out by the accidents of nature have been carried to completion by the hand of man (Fig. 129). They were not long contented with thus turning a pebble into a jewel. The fancy took them to engrave designs or figures upon them so as to give a peculiar value to the single stone or to sets strung into a necklace, which thus became a kind of amulet (Fig. 130). 1 Herodotus, i. 195. Strabo says the same thing, but in a passage (xvi. i. 20), in which he borrows from Herodotus without acknowledgment. ; 2 There are fine series of these seals, or cylinders, both in the Louvre and in the Cabinet des Antiques of the French National Library. But the collection of the British Museum is the richest of all. It possesses about 660 examples, against the 500 of the Cabinet des Antiques, and the 300 of the Louvre. The cabinet at the Hague has 150. A single French collector, M. de Clercq, possesses more than 400, most of them in very fine condition and of great interest. He is preparing to publish a descriptive catalogue of his treasures, accompanied by photogravure fac- similes of every cylinder. According to M. Menant, the total number of these cylinders now in European galleries can fall very little short of three thousand.