bronze or iron. Agate beads, however, are not uncommon, and gold
beads have been found in a few tombs, as well as some other small
ornaments in the same material. The men seem to have carried generally
an engraved cylinder in agate or other hard stone, which was used as a
seal or signet, and was probably worn round the wrist. Sometimes rings,
and even bracelets, formed also a part of their adornment. The latter
were occasionally in gold--they consisted of bands or fillets of the pure
beaten metal, and were as much as an inch in breadth.

The food of the early Chaldaeans consisted probably of the various
esculents which have already been mentioned as products of the territory.
The chief support, however, of the mass of the population was, beyond a
doubt, the dates, which still form the main sustenance of those who
inhabit the country. It is clear that in Babylonia, as in Scythia, the
practice existed of burying with a man a quantity of the food to which he
had been accustomed during life. In the Chaldaean sepulchres a number of
dishes are always ranged round the skeleton, containing the viaticum of
the deceased person, and in these dishes are almost invariably found a
number of date-stones. They are most commonly unaccompanied by any
traces of other kinds of food; occasionally, however, besides
date-stones, the bones of fish and of chickens have been discovered, from
which we may conclude that those animals were eaten, at any rate by the
upper classes. Herodotus tells us that in his day three tribes of
Babylonians subsisted on fish alone; and the present inhabitants of Lower
Mesopotamia make it a principal article of their diet. The rivers and
the marshes produce it in great abundance, while the sea is also at hand,
if the fresh-water supply should fail. Carp and barbel are the principal
fresh-water sorts, and of these the former grows to a very great size in
the Euphrates. An early tablet, now in the British Museum, represents a
man carrying a large fish by the head, which may be a carp, though the
species can scarcely be identified. There is evidence that the wild-boar
was also eaten by the primitive people; for Mr. Loftus found a jaw of
this animal, with the tusk still remaining, lying in a shallow clay dish
in one of the tombs. Perhaps we may be justified in concluding, from the
comparative rarity of any remains of animal food in the early sepulchres,
that the primitive Chaldaeans subsisted chiefly on veg