A second and still more curious group of monuments is composed of eight statues of different sizes with inscriptions of Gudea, and of a ninth on which occurs a name read _Ourbaou_ by some and _Likbagas_ by others.[206] It is the smallest of all those exhibited at the Louvre. All these figures are broken at the junction of the neck with the body.[207] We may put beside them two heads whose proportions are about the same as theirs, which were found, one among the mutilated statues, the other in the ruins of a neighbouring building. The material is similar, a very hard and dark igneous rock. The execution corresponds exactly with that of the torsos, to one of which the first named head may perhaps have belonged. M. de Sarzec tells us that these statues were found in the great edifice at Tello, almost all on the soil of the central court.[208] Some are standing, others seated;[209] we give an example of each type (Plate VI., Figs. 96 and 98). In these effigies we may notice an arrangement that we have more than once encountered in Assyrian reliefs, but which has never, so far as we know, been employed in the arts of any other people. “All these statues, without exception, have their hands folded within each other and placed against their chests, an attitude still used in the East to mark the respectful attention of the servant awaiting his master’s orders. If, as we have every reason to believe, these figures were placed in a sacred inclosure, in front of the images of the gods or of the symbols that recalled their power, this attitude of submission and respect became one of religious veneration (Fig. 97).”[210] At Nimroud and Khorsabad this expressive gesture is sometimes given to eunuchs in the presence of their masters, sometimes to kings when standing before the effigies of their gods. It is thoroughly well-fitted for those votive statues that proclaim themselves in their inscriptions to be offerings to the deity. In consecrating an image of himself on the threshold of the sanctuary, the king assured the perpetuity of his prayers and acts of homage; he remained for ever in an attitude of worship before his god--in an attitude whose calm gravity was well calculated to suggest the idea of a divine repose to which death was the passport. [Illustration: FIG. 96.--Statue; from Tello. Height 37 inches. Louvre. Drawn by Bourgoin.]