Fig. 155.—Impression of a cylinder on a contract; from Ménant.[2]
The use of the cylinder persisted after the fall of Nineveh and throughout the second Chaldæan monarchy, but the types from this late epoch display very little invention or variety. The most common of all shows a personage standing bare-headed before two altars, one bearing the disk of the sun, the other that of the moon (Fig. 154).[325] This individual is sometimes bearded, sometimes shaven. His costume is neither that of early Chaldæa nor the twisted robe of Assyria. Sometimes one of the altars or the field is occupied by a monster with a goat’s head and a fish’s body and tail, as in the impression left by a cylinder on a contract dated “the twelfth year of Darius, king of Babylon, king of the nations” (Fig. 155).[326] The use of these types lasted in the valley of the Euphrates all through the Achæmenid supremacy. No inscriptions were used. Names and dates were engraved by hand on the clay after the seal had been placed upon it. We can see clearly from the monotony of the images, which are repeated almost unchanged on hundreds of tablets, that the art of gem-engraving was in full decadence. The people were enslaved, they lived upon the memory of their past, creating neither new forms nor new ideas. They no longer attempted to make their seals works of art; they looked upon them as mere utensils.
Fig. 156.—Cylinder with Aramaic characters. Vienna Museum.
Cylinders are sometimes found in this region inscribed with Aramaic characters, like the weights from Nimroud. Such, for instance, is one representing a dismounted hunter meeting the charge of a lion,[327] while his horse stands behind him and awaits the issue of the struggle (Fig. 156). The costume of the hunter is neither Assyrian nor Chaldæan. He has been supposed to represent a Scythian. The Scythian figured at Bisitun has the same pointed bonnet or cowl. Cylinders of this kind will long be a difficulty for the classifier.[328]
The cylindrical form was not the only one used by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia for their seals. Small objects in pietra dura of a different shape are now often found in the country, and are beginning to hold their own in our museums; these are pyramids, spheroids, and especially cones. Every cone, except one or two which may never, perhaps, have been finished, is pierced near its summit with a hole for suspension. There has never been any doubt from the first that they were signets. Their bases, which are generally flat, but sometimes convex or concave, are always engraved in intaglio. The impression was thus obtained at one stroke, at one pressure of the hand, and it was in all probability the greater ease with which that operation could be carried out that in time led to the supercession of the cylinder by the cone. The use of the latter became almost universal in the time of the Seleucidæ and Parthians.
Fig. 157.—Cone. Sapphirine chalcedony.[329]
