Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/359

Furniture. what not. We thus get at some reason for the difference in style between the tablets in relief and those engraved by the point. The latter represent native art ; in the former, where we so often see the characteristic gods, sphinxes, costumes, head-dresses, and even cartouches of the Egyptian monuments, we may recognize Fig. 2oi. — Ivory panel. Actual size. British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier. the product of the Nile delta, or even of Tyre and Sidon. The inscriptions on several fragments seem to confirm this hypothesis. I have seen no ivory tablets with cuneiform characters, but plenty with those of the Phoenician alphabet. 1 1 Among the ivories in case C of the Nimroud Gallery there is a kind of blackish ivory egg, which may have served as the knob of a sceptre. In art oval crowned VOL. II. T T