It was the custom also in ancient Babylonia to insert inscriptions below the foundation stones of the great temples and palaces. In 1854 Place found at Khorsabad the memorial inscriptions of the great palace of the later Sargon, father of Sennacherib, a building founded in the eighth century before our era. There were five of these inscribed plates all of different metals, gold, silver, antimony, copper, and lead; the four former are in the Louvre, but the lead, which must thus have been of some size, “was too heavy to be carried off at once”; it was dispatched by raft, and was lost with most of the collection. The inscription, translated by Oppert, ends with the imprecation on disturbers which it has been the wont of great builders in all times to conjure. “May the great Lord Assur destroy from the face of this country the name and race of him who shall injure the works of my hands or who shall carry off my treasure.” At Dodona many tablets of lead have been found inscribed in Greek; these are questions to the oracle of that shrine. In the British Museum there are several tablets inscribed in Greek about the area of this book and covered with text, they are for the most part imprecations on the heads of injurious persons, and were hid as a magic rite in Temple enclosures. They are quite little stories. “Imprecation of Antigone against her accuser.” “Imprecation of Prosodion against those who misled her husband Nakron.” “Imprecations of a woman against some one who stole her bracelet.” Pausanias mentions having seen a text of Hesiod which was inscribed on lead leaves; and Pliny also tells us of lead books. A lead inscribed tablet was found in the Roman remains at Lydney slightly scratched with a stylus. [Illustration: FIG. 32.--Heart Box of King Richard.] Of the Carlovingian age there are examples of lead documents in the British Museum; one being an edict of Charlemagne himself, in which he assumes the style of Emperor of the West; and it bears his well-known cypher and the date, 18th Sept., 801. Another is signed Ludovic (Louis the Younger), 822. In the Londesborough collection there is a leaden book-cover of Saxon work with an inscription from Ælfric’s Homilies. For sepulchral use lead is especially fitted; it was customary in the twelfth century to inscribe a tablet or cross and to place it in the coffin on the breast of the dead. In the Museum at Bruges there is a tablet with a long inscription to Gunilda the sister of Harold.[18] Two were found at Canterbury of the thirteenth century with lines of beautifully drawn Lombard capitals in incised outline with lines ruled between each row.[19] [18] _Archæologia_, xxv. [19] _Ibid._ xlv. [Illustration: FIG. 33.--Inscribed Cross.]