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useful preponderates over the ornamental. The pottery of Assyria bears a
general resemblance in shape, form, and use to that of Egypt; but still
it has certain specific differences. According to Mr. Birch, it is,
generally speaking, "finer in its paste, brighter in its color, employed
in thinner masses, and for purposes not known in Egypt." Abundant and
excellent clay is furnished by the valley of the Tigris, more especially
by those parts of it which are subject to the annual inundation. The
chief employment of this material by the Assyrians was for bricks, which
were either simply dried in the sun, or exposed to the action of fire in
a kiln. In this latter case they seem to have been uniformly
slack-baked; they are light for their size, and are of a pale-red color.
The clay of which the bricks were composed was mixed with stubble or
vegetable fibre, for the purpose of holding it together--a practice
common to the Assyrians with the Egyptians and the Babylonians. This
fibre still appears in the sun-dried bricks, but has been destroyed by
the heat of the kiln in the case of the baked bricks, leaving behind it,
however, in the clay traces of the stalks or stems. The size and shape
of the bricks vary. They are most commonly square, or nearly so; but
occasionally the shape more resembles that of the ancient Egyptian and
modern English brick, the width being about half the length, and the
thickness half or two-thirds of the width. The greatest size to which
the square bricks attain is a length and width of about two feet. From
this maximum they descend by manifold gradations to a minimum of one
foot. The oblong bricks are smaller; they seldom much exceed a foot in
length, and in width vary from six to seven and a half inches. Whatever
the shape and size of the bricks, their thickness is nearly uniform, the
thinnest being as much as three inches in thickness, and the thickest
not more than four inches or four and a half. Each brick was made in a
wooden frame or mould. Most of the baked bricks were inscribed, not
however like the Chaldaean, the Egyptian, and the Babylonian, with an
inscription in a small square or oval depression near the centre of one
of the broad faces, but with one which either covered the whole of one
such face, or else ran along the edge. It is uncertain whether the
inscription was stamped upon the bricks by a single impression, or
whether it was inscribed by the potter with a triangular style. Mr.
Birc