tenacity that should make them
easily recognizable. Those of immediately preceding reigns show the
bitumen far more clearly, and the bricks are usually not as finely
made as Nebuchadnezzar's; at Babylon the latter's work is thus at
once distinguishable from that of Nabopolassar. A typical brick-
inscription of Nebuchadnezzar is illustrated above, XV, Fig. 11. It
is in the revived archaic script, always used for this purpose by the
late Babylonian kings. Use of coloured glazed brick is characteristic
of period; often relief figures of animals are made up of glazed
bricks each specially moulded for its proper position and numbered
(Ishtar Gate, Babylon). Royal palaces were often decorated with
reliefs depicting conquests, &c., carved on slabs of alabastrine
marble placed along the brick walls, with great statues of human-
headed bulls (_Cherubim_), &c. (Nimrud [CALAH], Kuyunjik [NINEVEH],
Khorsabad. _Brit. Mus._ and _Louvre_.) Burials usually in drab clay
pot-coffins (larnakes) with covers; bodies still contracted; funerary
furniture scanty, consisting chiefly of pins, beads, an occasional
cylinder-seal, and a few pots (XIV, Figs. 9 a b c d). Ribbed pots
with blue (weathered green) glaze, often pitched both within and
without, were also employed towards the end of the period, inverted
over the bodies. Also anthropoid pottery sarcophagi, an idea imported
from Egypt. Child burials in bowls. Iron objects sometimes buried
with the dead; often found in palace-ruins (weapons, horse-furniture,
&c.). Bronze commonly used for gates, door, bolts, &c. (Gates of
Shalmaneser's palace; _Brit. Mus._).

2. Persian (Achaemenian) period: c. 540-330 B.C.

This period is distinguished from the former by the less frequent use
of bronze, the introduction of coinage, and the development of the
simplified Persian cuneiform writing (never on tablets, only on stone
monuments; see XV, Fig. 18). Bitumen ceased to be used as mortar in
buildings. Persian walls (e. g. the Apadana at Babylon) are easily
distinguished by the use of clay mortar, and the unusual thickness of
the mortar-courses between the bricks. Burials in shallow trough-like
pottery coffins, with the bodies at full length, but with the knees
slightly flexed (these continued during the next period).

VI. MIDDLE IRON AGE:
1. Greek and Parthian periods; c. 330 B.C.-220 A.D.

Characteristics. Sudden degeneration and disappearance of the ancient
native civilization and art; imitation o