But the carpenter’s trade was not confined to inartistic work. From the earliest age of Babylonian history he was skilled in making household furniture, which was often of a highly artistic description. On a seal-cylinder, now in the British Museum, the King is represented as seated on a chair which, like those of ancient Egypt, rested on the feet of oxen, and similarly artistic couches and chests, inlaid with ivory or gold, were often to be met with in the houses of the rich. The Assyrian sculptures show to what perfection the art of the joiner had attained at the time when Nineveh was the mistress of the civilized world. The art of the stone-cutter had attained an even higher perfection at a very remote date. Indeed, the seal-cylinders of the time of Sargon of Akkad display a degree of excellence and finish which was never surpassed at any subsequent time. The same may be said of the bas-relief of Naram-Sin discovered at Diarbekr. The combination of realism and artistic finish displayed in it was never equalled even by the bas-reliefs of Assyria, admirable as they are from many points of view. The early stone-cutters of Chaldea tried their skill upon the hardest materials, and engraved upon them the minutest and most delicate designs. Hæmatite was a favorite material for the seal-cylinder; the statues of Tello are carved out of diorite, which was brought from the Sinaitic Peninsula, and stones of similar hardness were manufactured into vases. That such work should have been attempted in an age when iron and steel were as yet unknown seems to us astonishing. Even bronze was scarce, and the majority of the tools employed by the workmen were made of copper, which was artificially hardened when in use. Emery powder or sand was also used, and the lathe had long been known. When iron was first introduced into the workshops of Babylonia is doubtful. That the metal had been recognized at a very early period is clear from the fact that in the primitive picture-writing of the country, out of which the cuneiform syllabary developed, it was denoted by two characters, representing respectively “heaven” and “metal.” It would seem, therefore, that the first iron with which the inhabitants of the Babylonian plain were acquainted was of meteoric origin. In the age of the Egyptian empire in Asia, at the beginning of the seventeenth century B.C., iron was passing into general use. Objects of iron are referred to in the inscriptions, and a couple of centuries later we hear of iron chariots among the Canaanites, and of ironsmiths in Palestine, who repair the shattered vehicles of Egyptian travellers in that country. It must have been at this time that the bronzesmith in Babylonia became transformed into an ironsmith.