The ornaments were very numerous, the wealthy wearing bead-necklaces of agate and lapis-lazuli, the poorer contenting themselves with paste or shell, while silver finger-rings and copper arm-rings were not uncommon. A very typical class of grave-furniture consisted of palettes or colour-dishes, made of alabaster, often of graceful shape, and sometimes standing on four feet. There is no doubt as to their use, for colour still remains in many of them, generally black and yellow, but sometimes a light rose and a light green. Since all other objects in the graves were placed there for the personal use of the dead man, we may infer that colour was employed at that period for painting the body. No difference in age appears to have separated the two classes of burial, for the offerings are alike in each, and the arrangement of the bodies is the same. Why there should have been a difference in custom it is difficult to say. It might be inferred that the sarcophagus was a mark of wealth, were it not that the offerings they contain are generally more scanty than in the mat-burials. Whatever may be the explanation there is little doubt that they belong to the same race and period. Moreover, we may definitely connect the graves with the buildings under which they are found, for in some of them were seal-cylinders precisely similar to others found in the _débris_ covering the houses, and the designs upon them resemble those on sealings from the strata of ashes in the upper surface of the mounds. The seals are generally of shell or limestone, rarely of harder stone, and the designs represent heroes and mythological beings in conflict with animals. The presence of the sealings and seal-cylinders, resembling in form and design those of the early period at Tello, in itself suggests that Fâra marks the site of an early Sumerian town. This was put beyond a doubt by the discovery of clay tablets in six of the houses,[19] where they lay on the clay floor beneath masses of charred _débris_ which had fallen from the roof; beside them were objects of household use, and in one room the remains of a charred reed-mat were under them. The tablets were of unbaked clay, similar in shape to early contracts from Tello, and the texts upon them, written in extremely archaic characters, referred to deeds of sale.