[440] Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. pp. 394–395, and figs. 257, 329–331.
[441] De Longpérier, Notice des Antiquités assyriennes du Musée du Louvre, third edition, No. 212.
[442] Many more varieties of the same type will be found in the plate on which Botta reproduced the principal jewels figured in the Khorsabad reliefs (Monument de Ninive, plate 161). See also Layard, Discoveries, p. 597.
[443] The Arab jewellers still make use of similar moulds (Layard, Discoveries, p. 595).
[444] Layard, Discoveries, pp. 177–178.
[445] Layard, Discoveries, p. 597. The oldest mention of the pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf is to be found in those fragments of Nearchus that have been preserved in the pages of Arrian (Indica, xxxviii. 7); but it is probable that the search for pearl oysters began in those waters many centuries before. The Assyrians, as we have seen, made use both of pearl and mother-of-pearl.
[446] J. Oppert, L’Ambre jaune chez les Assyriens (in the Recueil des Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie egyptiennes et assyriennes, vol. ii, pp. 34 et seq.) M. Oppert’s rendering of the paraphrase which he believes to specify amber is not accepted by all Assyriologists.
[447] In the inventory, compiled with so much care by de Longpérier, of all the little objects in the Assyrian collection of the Louvre, and especially of those necklaces found by Botta in the sand under the great threshold at Khorsabad (from No. 295 to No. 380), there is not the slightest mention of amber. MM. Birch and Pinches tell me that the oriental department of their museum contains no trace of amber, with the exception of a few beads brought from Egypt, to which they have no means of assigning a date. They have never heard that any of the Mesopotamian excavations have brought the smallest vestige of this substance to light.
[448] Arrian, Expedition d’Alexandre, vi. 29.
[449] The reputation enjoyed by Chaldæan textiles all over western Asia is shown by a curious text in the book of Joshua (vii. 21). After the taking of Jericho, Achan, one of the Israelites, disobeyed orders and secreted a part of the spoil, consisting of two hundred shekels of silver, a wedge of gold, and “a goodly Babylonish garment.”