Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/291

Gems. 259 of all, those that are attributed to the first Chaldsean monarchy, are mostly of these stubborn materials ; their execution was easy enough to the men who produced the statues of Gudea. 1 All that such men required to pass from the carving of life-size figures to the cutting of gems was good eyesight and smaller tools. It was only towards the end of this period that more unkindly stones began to be used, such as jasper and the different kinds of agate, onyx, chalcedony, rock-crystal, garnets, &c. The employ- ment of such materials implies that of the characteristic processes of gem-cutting, whose peculiarity consists in the substitution of friction for cutting, in the supercession of a pointed or edged tool by a powder taken from a substance harder, or at least as hard, as the one to be operated upon. " The modern engraver upon precious stones," says M. Soldi, " sets about his work in this fashion. He begins by building up a wax model of his proposed design upon slate. He then takes the stone to be engraved, and fixes it in the end of a small wooden staff. This 1 A few cylinders of fine stone dating apparently from the early monarchy, are exceptions to this rule. M. Menant quotes a cylinder of sapphirine chalcedony, which he ascribes to the reign of Dungi, the son of Ourkam, (Es^ai sur les Pierres gravées, pp. 141-143); elsewhere he mentions an onyx cylinder in the Cabinet des Antiques (No. 870), which bears an inscription proving it to have been the seal of the scribe or secretary who served the son of Karigalzu, whom he places at the end of the fifteenth century b.c. We also find jasper cylinders that appear, so far as their execution and the costume of the figures engraved on them may show, to have come from the same workshops (ibid. p. 123) as those of the softer material?. This, we acknowledge, is a difficulty. But in the first place they may have now and then succeeded, even in the early years of the art, in fashioning materials harder than those with which they were familiar, by redoubling the patience and time spent upon the work; and, secondly, several kings separated from each other by centuries must have borne the same name, and it is perhaps a little bold to determine the age of a monument from the fact that it is engraved with this or that royal name. Who can say that none of these little monuments were reworked in the time of Nebu- chadnezzar ? Archaism was then in fashion. The writing of the early monarchy was imitated in official documents. Is it not probable enough that, while they were in the vein, they copied the seals of the old and almost legendary kings ? They would reproduce them in their entirety, both images and texts, but in obedience to the taste of the day, they would execute the copies in those harder and more precious materials which his increased skill permitted the workman to attack. In spite of a few doubtful instances, we may repeat the general rule we have laid down : That the great majority of those cylinders that bear incontestable marks of a high antiquity, are cut from materials inferior in hardness to the precious stones, or even to the quartzes.