s to admit any stray moisture;
and besides this, for the space of a foot every way, the shafts are
surrounded with broken pottery, so that the real diameter of each drain
is as much as four feet. By these arrangements the piles have been kept
perfectly dry; and the consequence is the preservation, to the present
day, not only of the utensils and ornaments placed in the tombs, but of
the very skeletons themselves, which are seen perfect on opening a tomb,
though they generally crumble to dust at the first touch.

The skill of the Chaldaeans as potters has received considerable
illustration in the foregoing pages. No ordinary ingenuity was needed to
model and bake the large vases, and still larger covers, which were the
ordinary receptacles of the Chaldaean dead. The rings and top-pieces of
the drainage-shafts also exhibit much skill and knowledge of principles.
Hitherto, however, the reader has not been brought into contact with any
specimens of Chaldaean fictile art which can be regarded as exhibiting
elegance of form, or, indeed, any sense of beauty as distinguished from
utility. Such specimens are, in fact, somewhat scarce, but they are not
wholly wanting. Among the vases and drinking vessels with which the
Chaldaean tombs abound, while the majority are characterized by a certain
rudeness both of shape and material, we occasionally meet with specimens
of a higher character, which would not shrink from a comparison with the
ordinary productions of Greek fictile art. A number of these are
represented in the second figure [PLATE XIII., Fig 2], which exhibits
several forms not hitherto published-some taken from drawings by Mr.
Churchill, the artist who accompanied Mr. Loftus on his first journey;
others drawn for the present work from vases now in the British Museum.

[Illustration: PLATE 13]

It is evident that, while the vases of the first group are roughly
moulded by the hand, the vases and lamps of the second have been
carefully shaped by the aid of the potter's wheel. These last are formed
of a far finer clay than the early specimens, and have sometimes a slight
glaze upon them, which adds much to their beauty.

In a few instances the works of the Chaldaeans in this material belong to
mimetic art, of which they are rude but interesting specimens. Some of
the primitive graves at Senkareh yielded tablets of baked clay, on which
were represented, in low relief, sometimes single figures of men,
sometimes grou