Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/440

402 Additions and Corrections. understand why serpents were placed in her hands. These reptiles are the symbols of resurrection ; every year they quit their old skins for new ones. The object in question is described in detail in the Recherches sur le Culte de Vénus t p. 130, and figured in Plate XVI, Fig. 1. Upon one of the larger faces of the tablet and upon its edges there are inscriptions, magic formulae according to M. Fr. Lenormant. This tablet was formerly in the cabinet of M. Rousseau, at one time French consul at Bagdad. It was found in the ruins of Babylon. Size, 24 inches high by 24 inches wide, and 3§ inches thick. P. 384. — In speaking of the excavations made by Sir H. RAWLINSON at Borsippa, we forgot to mention his paper entitled On the Birs Nimroud ; or, The Great Temple of Borsippa {Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xviii. p. 1-32). Paragraphs 1 and 2 give an account of the excavations, and we regret that we wrote of the religious architecture of Chaldaea before having read them. Not that they contain anything to cause us to change our conceptions of the staged towers. The excavations seem to have been carried on with great care, but they hardly gave results as complete as they might have done had they been directed by a thoroughly-trained architect. VOL. II. P. 48. — Upon Arvil, the ancient Arbela, and the likelihood of great discoveries in the mound which there rises 150 feet above the plain, see a contribution from Sir H. RAWLINSON to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i. new series, 1865, pp. 190-197. The mound is at present crowned by a Turkish fort. P. 176. — Herr FRITZ HOMMEL, one of the few non-French students of the remains from Tello, is no more inclined than we are to allow that the igneous rocks from which they are cut were brought from Egypt. He believes they were won from much nearer quarries, viz., on the borders of the Arabian plateau [Die Vorsemitische Kulturen in Egyptenund Babylonien, pp. 211-223). Pp. 188-190. — In enumerating the few monuments of Chaldsean sculpture that we possess over and above those brought home by M. de Sarzec, we forgot to mention a small Babylonian head in hard alabaster, now in the Louvre (Fig. 262). Its workmanship resembles that of the two heads from Tello (Plate VII.), and some of the small heads from the same place. It is conspicuous for the same frank and decided modelling, but it belongs to the period when long beards were worn. P. 202. — To the list of Chaldsean sculptures we should, perhaps, add the rock-cut relief found by Sir H. RAWLINSON in the district of Zohab, about fifty leagues from the left bank of the Tigris, and to the north-west of