Jewellery and personal decoration have only been found in a limited quantity, and not of a very good quality in design or material: the bas-reliefs furnish our best information on what existed in these articles. [Illustration: Fig. 209.—Bronze Bucket; from Layard. (P. & C.)] Gem cutting and cylinder engraving were arts very much practised in Babylonia and Assyria (Fig. 208). The cylinders usually were engraved with subjects of a religious character. The illustration shows one of the best engraved Assyrian cylinders that has yet been found. It represents the king and deities at the worship of the Sacred Tree, and the God Assur. In the hands of the deities may be seen the bronze buckets shown at Fig 209. This subject is supposed to be a copy from a bas-relief. The material of these cylinders was generally of serpentine, chalcedony, agate, black marble, jasper, &c., and they were used to impress clay documents with, in a similar way as in the use of ordinary seals (Fig. 207). CHAPTER IX. PHŒNICIAN ART. The origin of the Phœnician people remains in obscurity. According to Herodotus, we learn that they came as an Eastern branch of the Canaanitish peoples, of which race the Greeks were also a part, and who settled at the foot of Lebanon, on the Syrian sea-coast, between Mounts Carmel and Casius. The Phœnician and Hebrew languages resembled each other very closely, and from this it has been argued that the Phœnicians belonged to the Semitic race of the Hebrews. Ancient Phœnicia was a narrow strip of land, 130 miles long by only a few miles in width at its widest part. The three principal towns in ancient times were Tyre, Sidon, and Joppa; three others of importance were Arvad, Gebal or Byblos, and Accho or Acre. Arvad in the north, was, like Tyre in the south, built on a rock some little distance from the mainland. Tyre was for a long time impregnable on its rocky seat, with a channel of about three-quarters of a mile dividing it from the coast of the mainland. Owing to its peculiar position, it could defy all unmaritime nations, and it was not until Alexander the Great built an isthmus connecting it with the Phœnician coast that it fell. The inhabitants of Gebal or Byblos were, according to Rénan, more Jewish-like than any other Phœnician people.