On examining the oldest Mesopotamian engravings on precious stones a skilled craftsman would see at once that nearly all the work had been done with only two instruments--one for the round hollows and another for the straight lines. In the designs cut with these tools we find curiously complete likenesses of the small lay figures with ball-and-socket joints used by painters. Some idea of the strange results produced by these first attempts at gem-engraving may be formed from our reproductions of two cylinders in the collection at the British Museum. The influence of the process, the tyranny of the implement, if we may use such a phrase, is conspicuous in both. Note, for instance, in the first design, which is, apparently, a scene of sacrifice (Fig. 139), how the head and shoulder of the figure on the left are each indicated by a circular hollow. The same primitive system has been used in the cylinder where the god Anou is separated from another deity by the winged globe (Fig. 140). The design is here more complex. The bodies of the two divinities and the wings of the globe are indicated by numerous vertical and horizontal grooves set close together; but the circular hollows appear not only in the globe and in the piece of furniture that occupies the foreground, but also in the knees, calves, ankles, and other parts of the two figures. [Illustration: FIG. 141.--Assyrian cylinder. British Museum. Drawn by Wallet.] As time went on they learnt to use their tools with more freedom and more varied skill. We shall not attempt to follow M. Soldi in tracing the art through all its successive stages.[305] As an example of the skill to which the Mesopotamian artist had attained towards the seventh century B.C. we may quote a splendid cornelian cylinder belonging to the British Museum (Fig. 141).[306] The subject is extremely simple. In its general lines it continually recurs on the bas-reliefs and gems of the Sargonid period. A winged personage, with his arms extended, stands between two fantastic winged quadrupeds and grasps each by a fore-paw. The chief actor in the scene is very like the winged genius whom we encounter so often on the walls of the palaces (see above, Fig. 36), while both in the exaggerated modelling of the legs and in the care with which the smallest details of the costume are carried out, the special features that distinguished the sculpture of the time may be recognized. The execution is firm and significant, though a little dry and hard. It is made up of short cuts, close together; the engraver did not understand how to give his work that high polish and finish that enabled the Greeks to express the subtlest contours of the living form.