Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/307

Gems. 275 means of distinguishing between a native of Assyria and one of Chaldsea. The use of the cylinder persisted after the fall of Nineveh and throughout the second Chaldaean monarchy, but the types from this late epoch display very little invention or variety. The Fig. 154. — Chaldaean cylinder dating from [the second monarchy. Black jasper. British Museum. most common of all shows a personage standing bare-headed before two altars, one bearing the disk of the sun, the other that of the moon (Fig. 154). 1 This individual is sometimes bearded, sometimes shaven. His costume is neither that of early Chaldaea nor the twisted robe of Assyria. Sometimes one of the altars or the field is occupied by a monster with a goat's head Fig. 155. — Impression of a cylinder on a contract ; from Menant.' and a fish's body and tail, as in the impression left by a cylinder on a contract dated " the twelfth year of Darius, king of Babylon, king of the nations" (Fig. 155). The use of these types lasted 1 Upon these types see Menant, Archives des Missions, 1879, pp. 128-9. The signet figured above belonged to a member of the tribe called Egibi, a group of merchants and bankers who seem to have held the highest rank upon the market of Babylon, both under the last national kings, and under the Achaemenidse. 2 Archives des Missions, 1879, p. 115.