In attempting to define the characteristics of the Assyrian cylinders, and to distinguish them from those of Chaldæa, we may take as points of departure and as types of the new class, a few seals bearing legends that enable us to give them a positive date. Thus we may learn from a signet that once belonged to the governor of Calah what the execution of the artists employed by the princes of Elassar and Nimroud was like (Fig. 150). We need not hesitate to assign this cylinder to the first Assyrian monarchy. The workmanship, at once careful and awkward, belongs to a time when all the difficulties of gem engraving had not yet been overcome. In the wings of the genius and the legs of the personage who follows him the management of the instrument used is that of an art still in its infancy. In this seal then we have a valuable example of what we may call THE ARCHAIC ASSYRIAN CYLINDER. We have already figured several in which the same characteristics appear (Figs. 124, 139, and 140). In the same class we may put a number of cylinders on which scenes of worship are represented with slight variations (Figs. 151 and 152).[323] The figure of the king standing before the altar with his right hand upon his bow resembles the Assurnazirpal in several of the Nimroud reliefs (see above, Fig. 140). The Balawat gates and other remains from the same time have already made us acquainted with the accessories of the act of worship figured in the last of these two cylinders, especially with the short column surmounted by a cone (Plate XII). [Illustration: FIG. 151.--Assyrian cylinder. Serpentine. National Library, Paris.] [Illustration: FIG. 152.--Assyrian cylinder. Serpentine. National Library, Paris.] [Illustration: FIG. 153.--Assyrian cylinder. British Museum. Drawn by Wallet.] We now come to the epoch of the Sargonids with its still more refined and skilful art, of which an exquisite cylinder in the British Museum may be taken as an example (Fig. 153). The name of a personage called Musesinip has been read upon it, and it is believed to be a reduction from a contemporary bas-relief. In the centre appears the holy tree with the supreme deity floating over it in the winged disk. On each side of the tree is the figure of a king with a winged eagle-headed genius behind him. These last-named creatures have their right hands raised, while in their left they hold the bronze buckets we have already encountered at Nimroud (Vol. I., Fig. 8). There is one detail which is not to be found, so far as I know, in the bas-reliefs, namely, the double cord that descends from the winged disk into the hands of the king. The artist, no doubt, meant to symbolize by this the communication established by prayer between the prince and his divine protector.