“There was a time,” says Berosus, “when all was water and darkness, in which monstrous animals were spontaneously engendered: men with two wings, and some with four; with two faces, and two heads, the one male and the other female, and with the other features of both sexes united in their single bodies; men with the legs and horns of a goat and the feet of a horse; others with the hind quarters of a horse and the upper part of a man, like the hippocentaurs. There were also bulls with human heads, dogs with four bodies and fishes’ tails, and other quadrupeds in which various animal forms were blended, fishes, reptiles, serpents, and all kinds of monsters with the greatest variety in their forms, monsters whose images we see in the paintings of the temple of Bel at Babylon.”[321] Of all these fantastic creatures there are hardly any but may be found on some cylinder, and if there be one or two still missing, it is very probable that future discoveries will fill up the gap. [Illustration: FIG. 149.--Chaldæan cylinder of veined agate. Louvre.] Before quitting these remains from the earliest school of gem engraving, we must draw attention for a moment to the way in which it treats costume. In most cases the folds of the stuff are imitated by very fine parallel strokes. Sometimes, as, for instance, in the figure on the right of Ourkam’s seal (Vol. I., Fig. 3), these close and slightly sinuous lines extend without interruption from the top to the bottom of the dress, but in most cases they are crossed by several transverse bands, probably coloured, either woven into the material or sewn upon it (see Vol. I., Figs. 3, 17, and 20, and above, Figs. 39 and 41). We have already encountered this method of treating drapery in certain statuettes from the same place and time (Figs. 99 and 100), but we never find it in Assyria or in Chaldæa after the fall of Nineveh, either in statues or on engraved stones. There is another characteristic detail that should not be forgotten, namely, the caps turned up at the side in the shape of horns (Vol. I., Fig. 17 and above, Fig. 143). By this head-dress and the plaited robes a Chaldæan cylinder may be at once recognised as dating from these remote ages. Fashions and methods of execution changed as soon as the preponderance of Assyrian royalty was assured. Artists of merit must then have migrated northwards and opened workshops in the cities of the Tigris; but production was never so great as in the south. Every traveller in those regions notices that there are far more cylinders to be purchased in the bazaars of Bagdad and Bassorah than in those of Mossoul.[322] The glyptic art of Assyria was an exotic, like her sculpture and her architecture. [Illustration: FIG. 150.--Archaic Assyrian cylinder. In the Uffizi, Florence.]