Fig. 30.—Chaldæan head in steatite (Louvre).
As for ornaments of precious metal, none have yet been found in Chaldæa, though we know that from the most distant ages gold and silver flowed into Babylon and the towns of Chaldæa as well as into Egypt. The goldsmith’s art must have been on a par with that of the seal-engraver, the monuments of which are so numerous, as we shall now see. To these branches of art belongs a small head in steatite, carved in the round and forming the gem of the Tello collection; better than anything else, this head, treated in so realistic and, at the same time, so highly finished a manner, brings us into contact, so to speak, with the brilliant superiority of the Chaldæan artist when he devotes himself to these secondary forms of art, which at the present day require the use of the magnifying-glass, and in which we are at a loss whether to admire most the patience of the artist, the steadiness of his hand, or the delicacy of his talent.
IV. Chaldæan Seal-engraving.[27]
Though we do not yet possess more than a limited number of pieces of sculpture and statues, those imposing witnesses of Chaldæan art in the time of Gudea or Hammurabi, we can at least supply this want by the numerous and varied productions of the seal-engraver’s art. The Chaldæans invented the carving of precious stones, and no people ever made a more constant use of those cylinders, cones and seals of every form, on which are seen, engraved in lines fine and deep, the same images which monumental sculpture drew upon the walls of temples and palaces. These stones carved in intaglio, whether hæmatite, porphyry, chalcedony, marbles or onyx of every variety, were worn round the neck, on the finger, on the wrist, or fastened to the garment; they were at the same time prophylactic amulets against sickness or witchcraft, and seals with which impressions were made at the end of public or private documents.
The most ancient of the Chaldæan cylinders reveals to our eyes the very origin of seal-engraving, the first attempts to carve the round, ovoid, or cylindrical gems of the necklaces of the stone age. The burin and the puncheon, handled for the first time, do not yet trace out more than zigzags, lozenges, straight and semicircular lines crossing one another. Soon attempts are made to trace buildings, figures of animals, antelopes feeding ([fig. 31]), or fish. The joints and swells of the quadrupeds’ bodies are represented by round holes, the limbs by simple strokes.