We are particularly interested in the curious and elaborately engraved cylinders and seals of the Assyrians, Persians, the Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Hittites, which not only give us their costumes, but are laden with cuneiform inscriptions. In my collection there is a gem of the same style of work as the stone slab in the University Museum procured by Professor H. V. Hilprecht from the ancient palace of Ashurna Sirbal, King of Assyria 884 to 860 B. C.

This glyptic specimen is in miniature, engraved on a rich wine-colored dark sard bearing a portrait of King Sapor I.; he was the second of the Sassanians, who reigned in the third century. He was crowned in the year 242 A. D. It is surrounded by an inscription in Sassanian. Sapor’s invasion of Palmyra and his contests with the forces of Zenobia are interesting incidents of that romantic episode in Oriental history.

Cylinders are evidently the oldest form of seals, though it is believed that the art originated on sections of wooden reeds. We find Chaldean cylinders now more than 4000 years old.

The signets of kings in the cylindric form were incised in the harder and more precious materials, such as chalcedony in several hues, the fairest those tinged with a sapphire tint (though not the most ancient), sards, carnelians, and occasionally beautiful red jasper; hematite in abundance; serpentine and many softer stones, alabaster, steatite, etc.

It remains a question on what materials the impressions were made, though scientists have learned that the figures in relief on patties of pipe-clay found so plentifully in Babylon are the imprints of these cylinders.

Though a large proportion of cylinders are rudely designed and more coarsely executed, many of them are freely, vigorously, and well drawn, evincing a high degree of talent.

Remark the anatomical drawings of man and beast; they are unsurpassed in any age, especially the contest between men and lions, where naturally the muscles are strongly developed and show prominently.

As bearers of messages from that remote period, they come more welcome to us than the fairest Greek or Roman intaglios.

With an interesting pictured and lettered cylinder in hand one may have before him one of the keys to the most ancient fountain-heads in which history is locked up. My taste has grown and perhaps been influenced by long association with such gems, until I now often find more pleasure in regarding a rude fragment of Assyrian work than I did thirty years ago when I sought only the beautiful.

The place of these Babylonian cylinders in the history of art cannot be classed as decorative, for as they were originally used only as seals, and mostly business or official signets, they were not at that time used to decorate the person, though they were worn on necklaces and bracelets by the ancient Greeks.

No. 499 in my collection is one of the most interesting because the great and lamented FranÇois Lenormant examined it with me, wrote his opinion, and expressed his admiration of it.

It is a Babylonian cylinder, 29 millimetres broad by 3 millimetres in length. On it is represented a seated god with a two-horned head-dress in a long flounced dress; before him an altar with four spreading legs, an antelope, a small walking figure, a scorpion, two birds facing one another; other human figures.

Lenormant wrote while attending a seance of l’Institut de France.

SOMMERVILLE COLLECTION.

IMPRESSIONS OF BABYLONIAN CYLINDERS.

SOMMERVILLE COLLECTION.

IMPRESSIONS OF ASSYRIAN, PERSIAN, HITTITE, PHŒNICIAN, AND CYPRIAN CYLINDERS.

“This cylinder which appears to be of serpentine belongs incontestably to the most antique epoch of Chaldean art of the first years of the ancient empire. It is at least contemporaneous with those cylinders bearing the names of the oldest kings of d’Ous and like those of the Dungi.”

Persia and Assyria furnish us also a beautiful series of seals; the earlier conical, then a series of spherical seals, with one side flattened, on which is the design and inscription, and then the later Sassanian, also spherical, yet more flattened on the sides, which are pierced, and whose circumferences are beautifully ornamented.

There exist a large series of subjects adopted by their owners on account of their superstitious belief in their talismanic virtues; and quite a series of rudely-drawn animals emblematic of vigilance, fidelity, courage, strength, etc. Sometimes on seals as well as on cylinders a full-length figure is given in whose costume there is a marked peculiarity of drapery, the folds crossing the form diagonally, like a Burmese Sarong.

They are on a great variety of chalcedonies, sards, jaspers, and other beautiful stones of color.

Those of the Assyrians, dating as far back as 1110 B. C., resemble in form the bells herdsmen hang upon their grazing cattle that they may hear them when they have strayed.

The location of the ancient Persians in proximity to India, whose river-beds were rich in varieties of hard water-worn pebbles, enabled them to procure from thence suitable stones for decoration and for inscriptions. Thousands of these decorated and inscribed stones have been unearthed and are to-day in our possession; glyptologists can and have read them. Many examples of these cylinders, seals, and their imprints are before you.

It is proven that the Assyrians knew of and practiced the art of engraving on stone; we are not fully convinced that they were the first to practice the art.

We are frequently able to corroborate glyptic inscriptions by statements in Holy Writ, though we certainly find on ancient cylinders, incisions many centuries anterior to the records to which we have here alluded.

We know little of the Assyrian divinities through ancient manuscripts, yet we have volumes about their deities written on the cylinders of Babylon and Nineveh. They were seldom in metallic mountings, but, being pierced with holes, were strung on cords and worn on the wrist and neck.

There is a host of occupants of the Assyrian heaven, with Asshur the supreme god, Beltis Mylitta the great mother, etc.; and on the seals in sard and chalcedony we have sacred doves, lions, horses, etc., and a winged bull, Nin, the god of hunting, etc.

These intaglio seals were often used as locks; the doors of wine-cellars were secured by placing a seal upon them. Cylinders have also been made by several races of South American Indians, and are still to be seen in Brazil.

We have a most interesting and instructive illustration of the value of modern research among the relics of antiquity in the fact that in 1854, Sir Henry Rawlinson, in deciphering the inscriptions on some cylinders found in the ruins of Um-Kir (the ancient Ur of the Chaldees), made historical discoveries in regard to the last King of Babylon that confirmed the truth of the book of Daniel, and harmonized discrepancies between Holy Scripture and profane history which up to that time had been hopelessly irreconcilable.

Among the bequests from Persia many gems are engraved on the hardest and most precious stones; they present us with portraits of their monarchs, deities, legends, religious creeds, and seals of office. Though rude, they are exceedingly interesting from their antiquity and as being the achievements of a people so remote from the European centre of civilization.