The preoccupation to which we have just alluded, the love for an agreeable effect, is strongly marked in several things which are now always left without ornament. A single example will be enough to show the difference. Nowadays all that we ask of a comb is to do its duty without hurting the head or pulling out the hair; that its teeth shall be conveniently spaced and neither too hard nor too pliant. These conditions fulfilled, it would not be out of place in the most luxurious dressing-room. The ancients were more exacting, as a series of ebony combs in the Louvre is sufficient to show (Figs. 227–229).[439] They have two rows of teeth, one coarse, the other fine, and each is ornamented in the middle with a figure in open-work (Figs. 228–229) or raised in relief on a flat bed (Fig. 227). Only a part of the latter comb is preserved. The frame round the figures is cut into the shape of a cable above and below, and into rosettes at the ends. On one side of the comb there is a walking lion, on the other the winged sphinx shown in our engraving. Its body is that of a lion, it is mitred and wears a pointed beard. In the second example we have a lion with lowered head within a frame with a kind of egg moulding. The forms are so heavy that at first we have some difficulty in recognizing the species. In our last specimen both design and execution are much better. A lion is carved in the round within a frame ornamented with a double row of zig-zag lines. The modelling has been carried out by a skilful artist and is not unworthy of a place beside the Ninevite reliefs. [Illustration: FIG. 227.--Comb. Actual size. Louvre.] We know of nothing among the spoils of Assyria that can be compared to those wooden spoons that the Egyptian workman carved with so light a hand;[440] but two objects found at Kouyundjik prove that the Assyrians knew how to give forms elegant and graceful enough, though less original, to objects of the same kind. One of these is a bronze fork, the other a spoon of the same material. Cables, zig-zags, and beads are used to ornament them, and the whole is a good example of Assyrian taste in little things. [Illustration: FIG. 228.--Comb. Actual size. Louvre.]