We have no means of assigning even an approximate date to the vases found in other parts of Chaldæa. A curious vase from Hillah may be ascribed to a much later period, however, on the evidence of its shape alone (Fig. 169). It has the general form of a bucket. The body is decorated with indented triangles cut in its thickness and detached from the background. In all this there is a striving after effect that suggests the decadence. Nothing like it has been found in Assyria dating from the ninth, eighth, or seventh centuries. Sir H. Layard brought from Nimroud a certain number of vases showing a real progress even when compared with the remains from the second period of Chaldæan ceramics. Among these were some quaintly shaped pieces, such as the hexagonal vase with slightly concave sides reproduced in Fig. 170. To the same class belongs the very common form, with a pointed base, that could be thrust into the sand (Fig. 171), and the large bottles shown in Figs. 172 and 173. By the side of these not very graceful pieces we find some with shapes at once simple and happy, and comparable, in more than one instance, to those that the Greeks were to adopt in later years. Goblets with feet and without (Figs. 174–176), a well-shaped ewer (Fig. 177) and some variously contoured amphoræ, should be noticed. One of the latter has a long neck and two very small handles (Fig. 178), the handles of the other two are larger and more boldly salient, while in one they are twisted to look like ropes.
The vase last figured, like many others from the same place, is glazed, and glazed in two colours, a bluish-green round the neck and a decided yellow upon the body. At the line where they meet the two colours run one into the other, producing a far from disagreeable effect.
Figs. 170–173.—Assyrian vases; from Layard.
It will be noticed that the decoration upon all these objects is very slight. We can point to little beyond the double row of chevrons on one of the amphoræ (Fig. 178), and the collar of reversed leaves round a kind of alabastron found at the same place (Fig. 181).
Figs. 174–176.—Goblets; from Layard.
Fig. 177.—Ewer; from Layard.
