As the chariots of Solomon were made in Egypt, and the artists employed on the Temple came from Tyre, it is not unreasonable to suppose that furniture was either made by foreign workmen, or that the Hebrews borrowed freely the forms and decorations of surrounding Asiatic nations. Though specially and purposely jealous of any innovation or interference with religious rites and observances, we have no cause to think that they objected to the use of furniture or utensils such as they found first during the long sojourn in Egypt, and afterwards in other countries. They are said in earlier times to have spoiled the Egyptians with reference to the ornaments and jewels carried away at the migration. We know that Moses was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians;" and two particular artists, and two only, are named in the book of Exodus as qualified to execute the sacred vessels and utensils. Whatever their technical qualifications were, these had been acquired in Egypt. In any attempt to picture to ourselves the kind of furniture and objects of daily use apart from chariots, arms, &c., that surrounded the Greeks in early ages, it will be necessary to bear in mind the close connection which that people must have had with the Asiatic races, and the splendour and refinement that surrounded the wealthy civilisation of the oriental monarchies. They were so continually the allies or the rivals of the various states in Asia Minor, and pushed out into that fertile region so many vigorous colonies, that it cannot be doubted that the splendid stuffs, beds, couches, thrones, chariots, &c., used by Greeks on the Asiatic continent or in Europe, had much of eastern character in form and method of execution; perhaps, at first, in decoration also. This woodcut represents a chair of Assyrian character on a bas-relief from Xanthus, in the British museum. [Illustration] Much that is oriental figures in poetic accounts of the arms, furniture, and equipments of the Greek heroic ages. The chiefs take the field in chariots. These could have been used but in small numbers on ground so uneven as the rocky territories of the Morea. The beds described by Homer, the coverlids of dyed wool, tapestries, or carpets, and other instances of coloured and showy furniture, were genuine descriptions of objects known and seen, though not common. Generally the furniture of the heroic age was simple. Two beds of bronze of Tartessus, one Dorian and one Ionian, the smallest weighing fifty talents, of uncertain date, were kept in the treasury at Altis, and seen there by Pausanias towards the end of the second century. The chariots differed little except in the ornamental carving, modelling, or chasing, from those of Egypt.