Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/338

A History of Art in Ciiald.ea and Assyria. distinction. These objects have been thrown on the wheel, and the dexterity of their maker is further shown by the skill with which their handles are attached. We have no means of assigning even an approximate date to the vases found in other parts of Chaldaea. A curious vase from Hillah may be ascribed to a much later period, however, on the evidence of its shape alone (Fig. 169). It has the general form of a bucket. The body is decorated with indented triangles cut in its thickness and detached from the background. In all this there is a striving after effect that suggests the decadence. Nothing like it has been found in Assyria dating from the ninth, eighth, or seventh centuries. Sir H. Layard brought from Fig. 169. — Chaldœan vase, about 4 inches high. British Museum. Nimroud a certain number of vases showing a real progress even when compared with the remains from the second period of Chaldaean ceramics. Among these were some quaintly shaped pieces, such as the hexagonal vase with slightly concave sides reproduced in Fig. 170. To the same class belongs the very common form, with a pointed base, that could be thrust into the sand (Fig. 171), and the large bottles shown in Figs. 172 and 173. By the side of these not very graceful pieces we find some with shapes at once simple and happy, and comparable, in more than one instance, to those that the Greeks were to adopt in later years. Goblets with feet and without (Figs. 174 — 176), a well-shaped ewer (Fig. 177) and some variously contoured amphorae, should be noticed. One of the latter has a long neck and two very