When the use of the seal became general, efforts were made to add to its convenience. In order to get a good impression it was necessary that the design should be cut on a fairly even and regular surface. The river pebbles were mostly ovoid in form and could easily be made cylindrical by friction, and the latter shape at last became so universal that these little objects are always known as cylinders. These cylinders were long neglected, but within the last few years they have been the subject of some curious researches.[296] They may be studied from two different points of view. We may either give our attention to the inscriptions cut upon them and to their general historical significance, or we may endeavour to learn what they may have to teach as to the religious myths and beliefs of Chaldæa. As for us we are interested in them chiefly as works of art. It will be our duty to give some idea of the artistic value of the figures they bear, and to describe the process by which the engraving was carried out.
The cylinders are, as a rule, from two to three-fifths of an inch in diameter, and from three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half in length. Some are as much as an inch and three quarters, or even two inches long, but they are quite exceptional.[297] The two ends are always quite plain—the engraving is confined to the convex surface. As a rule the latter is parallel to the axis, but in some cases it is hollowed in such a fashion that the diameter of the cylinder is greater at the ends than in the middle (Fig. 131).
Nearly every cylinder is pierced lengthwise, a narrow hole going right through it. Those that have been found without this hole are so very few in number that we may look upon them as unfinished. In some cases the hole has been commenced at both ends, but the drill has stopped short of the centre, which still remains solid.
Fig. 131.—Concave-faced cylinder; from Soldi.
Fig. 132.—Cylinder with modern mount; from Rawlinson.
The cylinders were suspended by these holes, but how? In casting about for an answer to this question, the idea that the Babylonian attached the greatest importance to the clear reproduction, in the clay, of every detail of the design engraved upon his seal, has been taken as a starting point, and a system of mounting invented for him which would leave nothing to be desired in that respect (see Fig. 132). It is a reproduction, in small, of a garden roller; as a restoration, however, it can hardly be justified by the evidence of the monuments. Examine the terra-cotta tablets on which these seals were used, and you will see that their ancient possessors did not, as a rule, attempt to impress the whole of the scenes cut in them upon the soft clay. It is rare to find an impression as sharp and complete as that on the tablet from Kouyundjik, which we borrow from Layard (Fig. 133). In the great majority of cases signatories were content with using only one side of their seals, usually the side on which their names were engraved. Sometimes when they wished to transfer the whole of their cylinder to the clay, they did so by several partial and successive pressures.[298]
The imperfect stamp with which the Chaldæans were satisfied could easily be produced without the help of such a complicated contrivance as that shown in our Fig. 132. Nothing more was necessary than to lay the cylinder upon the soft clay and press it with the thumb and fore-finger. The hole through its centre was used not to receive an armature upon which it might turn, but merely for suspending it to some part of the dress or person. In most cases it must have been hung by a simple cord passed round the neck. Now and then, however, the remains of a metal mount have been found in place, but this is never shaped like that shown above. It is a bronze stem solidly attached to the cylinder, and with a ring at its upper extremity (Fig. 134).[299] Cylinders are also found with a kind of ring at one end cut in the material itself (Fig. 135).
How were these cylinders carried? They must have been attached to the person or dress, both for the sake of the protecting the image with which most of them were engraved, and for convenience and readiness in use as seals. In Chaldæa the fashion seems to have been, at one time, to fasten them to the wrist. In those tombs at Warka and Mugheir that we have described, the cylinders were found on the floors of the tomb-chambers, close to the wrist-bones of the skeletons; and the latter had not been moved since the bodies to which they had belonged were laid in the grave.[300] This fashion was apparently abandoned by the Assyrians, for in those reliefs which reproduce the smallest details of dress and ornament with such elaboration, we can never find any trace of the seal beside the bracelets. It is probable that it was hung round the neck and put inside the dress, in front, for greater security. It never occurs among the emblematic objects of which the necklace that spreads over the chest outside the robe, is made up. To this day traders in the East keep their seals in a little bag which they carry in an inside pocket.