[Illustration: 31.--EBONY COMB. (Perrot and Chipiez.)] [Illustration: 32.--BRONZE FORK AND SPOON. (Perrot and Chipiez.)] 23. Perhaps the queerest coffin shape of all is that composed of two earthen jars (_a_ and _b_), which accurately fit together, or one slightly fits into the other, the juncture being made air-tight by a coating of bitumen (_d_, _d_). The body can be placed in such a coffin only with slightly bent knees. At one end (_c_) there is an air-hole, left for the escape of the gases which form during the decomposition of the body and which might otherwise burst the jars--a precaution probably suggested by experience (fig. 36). Sometimes there is only one jar of much larger size, but of the same shape, with a similar cover, also made fast with bitumen, or else the mouth is closed with bricks. This is an essentially national mode of burial, perhaps the most ancient of all, yet it remained in use to a very late period. It is to be noted that this is the exact shape of the water jars now carried about the streets of Baghdad and familiar to every traveller. [Illustration: 33.--ARMENIAN LOUVRE. (Botta.)] 24. Not much less original is the so-called "dish-cover coffin," also very ancient and national. The illustrations sufficiently show its shape and arrangement.[Q] In these coffins two skeletons are sometimes found, showing that when a widow or widower died, it was opened, to lay the newly dead by the side of the one who had gone before. The cover is all of one piece--a very respectable achievement of the potter's art. In Mugheir (ancient Ur), a mound was found, entirely filled with this kind of coffins. [Illustration: 34.--VAULTED DRAINS. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)] [Illustration: 35.--VAULTED DRAIN. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]