Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/439

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. VOL I. P. 155. — It was not only as mortar that bitumen was used. Mr. RASSAM tells us that he found at Abou-Abba (Sippara), in Chaldasa, a chamber paved with asphalte much in the same fashion as a modern street in London or Paris {Proceedings of the Society of Biblical ArcJiœology), P. 200. — From a late communication to the Society of Biblical ArcJiœology we learn that Mr. RASSAM found the Sippara tablet in the corner of a room, under the floor ; it was inclosed in an inscribed earthenware box. P. 242, line 12 ; for Shalmaneser III. read Shalmaneser II. P. 266, line 8 from foot : for Plate X. read Plate IX. P. 305. — Intercourse between the valley of the Nile and that of the Tigris and Euphrates seems to have begun not sooner than the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. To this conclusion we are led both by Egyptian texts and by the tablets in the library of Assurbanipal. Most of the tablets are reprints — if we may say so — of texts dating originally from Ur, and from the time of the ancient Chaldsean monarchy. Now these texts seem to have been written by a people who knew not Egypt ; no mention of that country is to be found in them. They contain a division of the world into four regions, in none of which Egypt has a place (SAYCE, The Early Relations of Egypt and Babylonia, in Lepsius's Zeitschrift, p. 150). P. 349. — We may here draw attention to an object which may be com- pared to that described by M. Clermont Ganneau, both for its intrinsic character and its probable destination. It is a tablet in brown limestone, portable, and surmounted by a ring or staple cut in the material. On one face there is a bas-relief in which the goddess who occupies the lower register in Péretié's bronze again appears. She has the head of a lioness, a snake dangles from each hand, the arms are outstretched, and two animals, in which Lajard recognises a lioness and a sow, hang to her breasts. This goddess stands before an animal which has a bull's head in the engraving given by Lajard. But its feet are those of a horse, and no doubt we should find that the animal in question was a horse if we could examine the original; but we do not know what has become of it. If, as there seems reason to believe, this goddess is an infernal deity, it is easy to VOL. IT. 7 f