The ornaments found (Figs. 185, 186) came mainly from the graves, although, with some exceptions, they are not furnished very richly. From the early times onwards the most usual ornaments are rows of beads, often of considerable length. In the earliest prehistoric times which we reached at Fara, the Babylonian appears to have been hung round with beads, somewhat like the wildest tribesmen of Polynesia. Glass, or a glassy frit, was early in use for beads, but semi-precious stones, such as agate, onyx, rock-crystal, and amethyst, were principally employed. At Fara, in the earlier times, the method of polishing them was unknown, and they were merely ground, but this art rapidly developed under the Sargonids, and specially in the Neo-Babylonian epoch, to extraordinary perfection, while the variety and beauty of form is very striking. The beads are sometimes globular, sometimes discs or slender ellipsoids; small sheets were often perforated once or several times through the flat surface, and thus formed a variety of caesurae in the threading of the separate pieces. Human heads and tiny figures, such as frogs, bulls, or tortoises, were carved with minute detail in agate and similar stones. Rings and perforated discs of oyster-shell were popular, and so were seashells, perforated for threading, ctenobranchia (cowries), dentalia, and also the siphonal cylinders of the siphoniatae—the latter more especially at a very early period—and others. Circlets of bronze, silver, and iron decorated wrists and ankles. In the graves we often found the lower end of the leg-bones decorated with as many as three or five pairs (Fig. [187]). Ear-rings were generally of gold or silver; the usual form is either a roll drawn out in narrow wires bent together into a ring or a boss soldered on to a hook-shaped wire. Elaborate patterns are rare (Fig. [188]); often on one corpse there would be not merely one or two, but many of the same form, which must surely indicate that they were deposited in the coffin with the deceased as votive offerings. The fibula (Fig. [189]) for fastening the garments together consists of a semicircular or angularly bent hoop decorated with a regular series of transverse rings. The pin fastened at one end and made elastic by various twists, fits at the other end into a haft shaped like a hand, and often actually modelled as one. The semicircular form is represented on the clothing in sculpture, and also on the kudurru, where it forms the figure of a constellation.
Fig. 188.—Gold ornaments.
Fig. 189.—Bronze fibulae.
Finger-rings are not so numerous in the early period, but they begin to come into common use during the Persian period, when they were used as seals, and superseded the ancient seal cylinders (Fig. 190).
The form of the seal face, which is also frequently impressed on tablets of Persian dating, is elliptical or bi-segmental. Animals are most frequently represented. Those rings, which are generally cast in bronze and more rarely in silver, consist usually of a small plate, which, when not engraved as a seal, is set with precious stones, on a plain hoop.
Fig. 190.—Rings and their seal impressions.
