[320] Ménant, Essai, pp. 55–62.
[321] Berosus, fragment 1, § 4, in vol. ii. of the Fragmenta historicorum Græcorum of Ch. Müller.
[322] Botta, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 2. Layard, Discoveries, p. 605.
[323] These two cylinders are respectively numbered 937 and 942 in the Cabinet des Antiques.
[324] Ménant, Catalogue des Cylindres orientaux du Cabinet royal des Médailles de La Haye (The Hague, 4to.), No. 135.
[325] Upon these types see Ménant, Archives des Missions, 1879, pp. 128–9. The signet figured above belonged to a member of the tribe called Egibi, a group of merchants and bankers who seem to have held the highest rank upon the market of Babylon, both under the last national kings, and under the Achæmenidæ.
[326] Archives des Missions, 1879, p. 115.
[327] The charging animal seems rather to be a wild boar. The shape of its head and body, the ridge of hair along the spine, the shape of the legs and feet, and its action in charging, all suggest a boar, a suggestion confirmed by the action of the hunter, who receives the rush of the animal on a kind of scarf or cloak, while he buries his boar-spear in its back.—Ed.
[328] The cylinder published by Layard, Introduction à l’Étude du Culte public et des Mystères de Mithra, plate xxv. No. 4. See on the subject of the inscription upon it, Levy, Siegel und Gemmen, plate 1, No. 15. A certain number of intaglios with Aramaic characters, which belong to the same class, have been studied and described by M. de Vogué, in his Mélanges d’Archéologie orientale, pp. 120–130.
[329] National Library, Paris; No. 1086.