tly recovered, and is now in the
British Museum. We are entitled to conclude from the data thus in our
possession that the art of cylinder-engraving had, even at this early
period, made considerable progress. The letters of the inscriptions,
which give the names of the kings and their titles, are indeed somewhat
rudely formed, as they are on the stamped bricks of the period; but the
figures have been as well cut, and as flowingly traced, as those of a
later date. It was thought possible that the artist employed by Sir R.
Porter had given a flattering representation of his original, but the
newly recovered relic, known as the "cylinder of Ilgi," bears upon it
figures of quite as great excellence: and we are thus led to the
conclusion that both mechanical and artistic skill had reached a very
surprising degree of excellence at the most remote period to which the
Chaldaean records carry us back.

[Illustration: PLATE 15]

It increases the surprise which we naturally feel at the discovery of
these relics to reflect upon the rudeness of the implements with which
such results would seem to have been accomplished. In the primitive
Chaldaean ruins, the implements which have been discovered are either in
stone or bronze. Iron in the early times is seemingly unknown, and when
it first appears is wrought into ornaments for the person. Knives of
flint or chert [PLATE XIV., Fig. 3], stone hatchets, hammers, adzes, and
nails, are common in the most ancient mounds, which contain also a number
of clay models, the centres, as it is thought, of moulds into which
molten bronze was run, and also occasionally the bronze instruments
themselves, as (in addition to spear heads and arrow-heads) hammers,
adzes, hatchets, knives, and sickles. It will be seen by the engraved
representations that these instruments are one and all of a rude and
coarse character. [PLATE XV.], [PLATE XVI.] The flint and stone knives,
axes, and hammers, which abound in all the true Chaldaean mounds, are
somewhat more advanced indeed than those very primitive implements which
have been found in a drift; but they are of a workmanship at least as
unskilled as that of the ordinary stone celts of Western and Northern
Europe, which till the discoveries of M. Perthes were regarded as the
most ancient human remains in our quarter of the globe. They indicate
some practical knowledge of the cleavage of silicious rocks, but they
show no power of producing even such fin