freely in its metallic mounting.  The tools used in engraving were similar to those employed at the present day, but of a rougher kind.  The burin, which was often nothing more than a flint point, marked out the area of the design, and sketched out the figures; the saw was largely employed to cut away the depressions when these required no detailed handling; and lastly, the drill, either worked with the hand or in a kind of lathe, was made to indicate the joints and muscles of the individual by a series of round holes.  The object thus summarily dealt with might be regarded as sufficiently worked for ordinary clients; but those who were willing to pay for them could obtain cylinders from which every mark of the tool had been adroitly removed, and where the beauty of the workmanship vied with the costliness of the material.

[Illustration:  315.jpg CHALDAEAN CYLINDER EXHIBITING TRACES OF THE DIFFERENT TOOLS USED BY THE ENGRAVER]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Menant’s
     Catalogue de la collection de M. de Clercq

The seal of Shargani, King of Agade, that of Bingani-shar-ali, and many others which have been picked up by chance in the excavations, are true bas-reliefs, reduced and condensed, so to speak, to the space of something like a square inch of surface, but conceived with an artistic ingenuity and executed with a boldness which modern engravers have rarely equalled and never surpassed.  There are traces on them, it is true, of some of the defects which disfigured the latter work of the Assyrians—­heaviness of form, exaggerated prominence of muscles and hardness of outline—­but there are also all the qualities which distinguish an original and forcible art.

The countries of the Euphrates were renowned in classic times for the beauty of the embroidered and painted stuffs which they manufactured.* Nothing has come down to us of these Babylonian tissues of which the Greek and Latin writers extolled the magnificence, but we may form some idea, from the statues and the figures engraved on cylinders, of what the weavers and embroiderers of this ancient time were capable.  The loom which they made use of differed but slightly from the horizontal loom commonly employed in the Nile Valley, and everything tends to show that their plain linen cloths were of the kind represented in the swathings and fragments of clothing still to be found in the sepulchral chambers of Memphis and Thebes.  The manufacture of fleecy woollen garments so much affected by men and women alike indicates a great dexterity.  When once the threads of the woof had been stretched, those of the warp were attached to them by knots in as many parallel lines—­at regular intervals—­as there were rows of fringe to be displayed on the surface of the cloth, the loops thus formed being allowed to hang down in their respective places:  sometimes these loops were retained just as they stood, sometimes they were cut and the ends frayed out so as to give the appearance of a shaggy texture.