The taste for decorating their works seems to have spread among the Assyrian potters between the ninth and seventh centuries B.C. At least many traces of it have been found among the remains at Kouyundjik. The date is fixed for us by a fragment on which the name of Esarhaddon occurs, the letters of which it is composed standing out in light against a dull black background. There is no further ornament than a line of zig-zags traced with some brown pigment. The fragment we reproduce (Fig. 182) formed part of another vase decorated in the same way. We cannot point to a single complete specimen of this work, but by comparing many pieces all from the same place, we may gain some idea of the taste in pottery that prevailed under the Sargonids. A vase upon which certain Aramaic characters were traced with the brush was decorated with bands of a reddish-brown pigment turning round the neck and body at irregular intervals (Fig. 183).[362] Elsewhere we find a more complicated form of the same ornament. The horizontal bands are separated by a kind of trellis-work, in which the lines cross each other, sometimes at right angles and sometimes obliquely, while in the blank spaces we find a motive often repeated, which might be taken at first sight for a Greek _sigma_. The resemblance, we need hardly say, is purely accidental (Fig. 184). We may also mention a fragment where the surface is sprinkled with reddish-brown spots on a light yellow ground (Fig. 185). So far as we know the only complete example of this decoration is the fine goblet dug up by Place in the Jigan mound (Fig. 186).[363] [Illustration: FIG. 183.--Fragment of a vase. British Museum.] [Illustration: FIGS. 184, 185.--Fragments of vases. British Museum.] [Illustration: FIG. 186.--Goblet. Height, 5 inches. Louvre.] [Illustration: FIG. 187.--Fragment of a vase. Actual size. British Museum.] In all these fragments the decoration is purely geometrical; it is composed of lines, spots, and other motives having no relation to the organic world. A step in advance of this seems, however, to have been taken. On some other fragments from the same districts, files of roughly-suggested birds appear upon the bands and between opposed triangles (Figs. 187 and 188). We shall find the same motive in Cyprus, at Mycenæ, and at Athens, in the pottery forming the transition between the purely geometrical period and that in which imitation of life begins. In a fragment which is tantalizingly small we catch a glimpse of three lion’s paws playing with a chess-board ornament. A row of cuneiform characters runs along the lower part (Fig. 189). [Illustration: FIGS. 188, 189.--Fragments of vases. Actual sizes. British Museum.]