A history of art in Chaldæa & Assyria, Vol. 2 (of 2)Perrot, Georges
History
A history of art in Chaldæa & Assyria, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Perrot, Georges
Art -- Assyria -- History; Art -- Iraq -- Babylonia; Assyria -- Antiquities; Babylonia -- Antiquities
Personal jewelry and the apparatus of the toilet seem to have been no
less elaborate in the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar than in the Nineveh
of Sennacherib, but we possess very few objects that can be surely
referred to that period. To the very last years of the Chaldæan
empire, if not to a still later date, must be ascribed two golden
earrings now in the British Museum (Figs. 251 and 252). They represent
a naked child, with long hair and a head much too large for its body.
We are told that they were found in a tomb at Niffer, with other
objects whose Chaldæan character was very strongly marked. Without this
assurance we should be tempted to think their date no more remote than
that of the Seleucidæ.
Among the knobs, or buttons, used so largely by joiners, tailors, and
saddlers, some have been found of ivory and of mother-of-pearl. The
jewellers, too, must have used these substances, which would give them
an opportunity for effective colour harmonies. Thus Layard mentions an
ear-pendent that he found at Kouyundjik, which had two pearls let into
a roll of gold.[445]
[Illustration: FIGS. 251, 252.--Ear-pendents. British
Museum.]
On the other hand no amber has been found in Mesopotamia. That
substance was widely used by the Mediterranean nations as early as
the tenth century before our era, but it does not seem to have been
carried into the interior of Asia. It has been asserted that one of the
cuneiform texts mentions it;[446] that assertion we cannot dispute, but
it is certain that neither in the British Museum nor in the Louvre,
among the countless objects that have been brought from the Chaldæan
and Assyrian ruins to those great store-houses of ancient art, has
the smallest fragment of amber been discovered. If it ever entered
Mesopotamia, how could it have been more fitly used than in necklaces,
to the making of which glass, enamelled earthenware, and every
attractive stone within reach, contributed?[447]
§ 7. _Textiles._
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