29. As to the ancient Babylonian, or rather Chaldean, art in sculpture, the last word has by no means been said on that subject. Discoveries crowd in every year, constantly leading to the most unexpected conclusions. Thus, it was long an accepted fact that Assyria had very few statues and Babylonia none at all, when a few years ago (1881), what should a French explorer, Mr. E. De Sarzec, French consul in Basra, bring home but nine magnificent statues made of a dark, nearly black stone as hard as granite, called diorite.[S] Unfortunately they are all headless; but, as though to make up for this mutilation, one head was found separate,--a shaved and turbaned head beautifully preserved and of remarkable workmanship, the very pattern of the turban being plain enough to be reproduced by any modern loom.[T] These large prizes were accompanied by a quantity of small works of art representing both men and animals, of a highly artistic design and some of them of exquisite finish of execution. This astounding find, the result of several years' indefatigable work, now gracing the Assyrian rooms of the Louvre in Paris, comes from one of the Babylonian mounds which had not been opened before, the ruins of a mighty temple at a place now called TELL-LOH, and supposed to be the site of SIR-BURLA, or SIR-GULLA, one of the most ancient cities of Chaldea. This "Sarzec-collection," as it has come to be generally called, not only entirely upsets the ideas which had been formed on Old-Chaldean art, but is of immense historical importance from the inscriptions which cover the back of every statue, (not to speak of the cylinders and other small objects,) and which, in connection with the monuments of other ruins, enable scholars to fix, at least approximately, the date at which flourished the city and rulers who have left such extraordinary memorials of their artistic gifts. Some place them at about 4500 B.C., others about 4000. However overwhelming such a valuation may be at first sight, it is not an unsupported fancy, but proofs concur from many sides to show that the builders and sculptors of Sir-gulla could in no case have lived and worked much later than 4000 B.C. It is impossible to indicate in a few lines all the points, the conjectures, the vexed questions, on which this discovery sheds light more or less directly, more or less decisively; they come up continually as the study of those remote ages proceeds, and it will be years before the materials supplied by the Sarzec-Collection are exhausted in all their bearings. [Illustration: 42.--WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA CONES, AT WARKA (ERECH). (Loftus.)] [Illustration: 43.--TERRA-COTTA CONE, NATURAL SIZE. (Loftus.)] FOOTNOTES: [G] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 46. [H] Ur of the Chaldees, from which Abraham went forth. [I] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 349. [J] Figure 10. [K] Figure 71, p. 281. [L] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 317 and 318.