In the British Museum are several bricks which have been found on the site of ancient Babylon. They are larger than our bricks, and somewhat different in form, being about twelve inches square and three inches thick. They appear to have been made of a kind of muddy clay with which portions of chopped straw have been mixed to cause it to bind; and their general appearance and colour, which is like that of a common brick before it is burnt, plainly enough indicate that they have not been hardened by fire, but by exposure to the sun. About the middle of their broadest surface, they are impressed with certain characters which have evidently been indented when the brick was in a soft state. The characters are indented,--that is, they are such as would be produced by pressing a wood-block with raised lines upon a mass of soft clay; and were such a block printed on paper in the usual manner of wood-cuts, the impression would be similar to the preceding one, which has been copied, on a reduced scale, from one of the bricks above noticed. The characters have been variously described as cuneiform or wedge-shaped, arrow-headed, javelin-headed, or nail-headed; but their meaning has not hitherto been deciphered. Amphoræ, lamps, tiles, and various domestic utensils, formed of clay, and of Roman workmanship, are found impressed with letters, which in some cases are supposed to denote the potter’s name, and in others the contents of the vessel, or the name of the owner. On the tiles,--of which there are specimens in the British Museum,--the letters are commonly inscribed in a circle, and appear raised; thus showing that the stamp had been hollowed, or engraved in intaglio, in a manner similar to a wooden butter-print. In a book entitled “Ælia Lælia Crispis non nata resurgens,” by C. C. Malvasia, 4to. Bologna, 1683, are several engravings on wood of such tiles, found in the neighbourhood of Rome, and communicated to the author by Fabretti, who, in the seventh chapter of his own work,[I-7] has given some account of the “figlinarum signa,”--the stamps of the ancient potters and tile-makers. [Footnote I-7: Inscriptionum Explicatio, fol. Romæ, 1699.] The stamp from which the following cut has been copied is preserved in the British Museum. It is of brass, and the letters are in relief and reversed; so that if it were inked from a printer’s ball and stamped on paper, an impression would be produced precisely the same as that which is here given. [Illustration: LAR]