The details of this embroidery design (Fig. 162A) are well drawn, and the design is full of rich variety without heaviness or too much crowding. The king is seen twice represented in the circle doing homage to the sacred tree and to the winged disk; and in other places he is between two genii or deities; combats of lions and bulls, palmate borders, fir-cones, and spirals, with bands that divide the work in varied spaces, complete these rich designs in embroidery, which are among the very finest efforts of Assyrian decorative art. [Illustration: Fig. 162A.—Embroidery upon a Royal Mantle; from Layard. (P. & C.)] [Illustration: Fig. 163A.—Embroidery on the upper part of a Royal Mantle; from Layard. (P. & C.)] Details of embroidery patterns are shown at Figs. 164, 165. The sills or thresholds of the doors of the palaces were sometimes sculptured in low relief on large slabs of alabaster stone. The design is evidently copied from an embroidered carpet; perhaps the central part of the one given (Fig. 166) is a copy from a fabric woven in the loom, and the border, enlarged at Fig. 167, would have its original in embroidery. [Illustration: Fig. 164.—Detail of Embroidery; from Layard. (P. & C.)] [Illustration: Fig. 165.—Detail of Embroidery; from Layard. (P. & C.)] The figure of the plan and elevation of part of a Chaldean façade in enamelled bricks, from Warka, is decorated with patterns that, no doubt, had their origin in weaving and matting (Fig. 168). The surface of this façade is composed of terra-cotta cones, with their bases turned outwards. These bases were previously dipped in enamelled colours before they were inserted into the clay cement; so they form a kind of terra-cotta mosaic work (_Loftus_). [Illustration: Fig. 166.—Sill of a Door from Khorsabad: Length, 40 ins. (P. & C.)] The land of Chaldea was devoid of stone for building purposes, but extremely rich in immense banks of clay, which was used for brick making from the earliest times in Chaldea. The Chaldean brick is rather more than one English foot square, and about four inches in thickness; of a dark red colour to light yellow. Nearly all of them have an inscription with the name of the king, &c. (Fig. 169). [Illustration: Fig. 167.—Fragment of Border of Fig. 166; from a Threshold of Khorsabad. (P. & C.)] The brick from Erech, or ancient Warka, gives a good idea of one of the oldest forms of Chaldean writing known (Fig. 170). It consists of an abridgment of the representation of natural objects, as all alphabets in their original state were merely pictures or pictographs. This inscription shows the stage of conventional signs or ideographic writing before it underwent the change into the _cuneiform_, or wedge-shaped writing of the Assyrians. [Illustration: Fig. 168.—Plan and Elevation of Part of a Façade at Warka; from Loftus. (P. & C.)]