MANUAL OF ORIENTAL ANTIQUITIES INCLUDING THE =Architecture, Sculpture, and Industrial Arts= OF _CHALDÆA, ASSYRIA, PERSIA, SYRIA, JUDÆA, PHŒNICIA, AND CARTHAGE._ BY ERNEST BABELON, _Librarian of the Department of Medals and Antiques in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris._ NEW EDITION, WITH A CHAPTER ON THE RECENT DISCOVERIES AT SUSA. With Two Hundred and Fifty-five Illustrations. NEW YORK: G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS LONDON: H. GREVEL AND CO., 1906. _Printed and bound by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, England._ PREFACE. The domain which we are about to traverse in this little work embraces all the civilisations of the ancient East except that of Egypt. It includes the Chaldæans, the Assyrians, the Persians before Alexander, the Hittites of Syria, Cappadocia, and Asia Minor, the Jews, the Phœnicians, and even Cyprus, ending with the Carthaginians and their colonies. So vast a field, which, in the monumental work of MM. G. Perrot and C. Chipiez, occupies four volumes, can only be explored here in a summary manner, and the author claims no more than to have written a modest abridgment. It must not be supposed, however, in spite of the diversity and remoteness from one another of the peoples that we have just enumerated, that the subject lacks cohesion and unity. If the reader will have the goodness to follow us to the conclusion, he will be, on the contrary, struck by the perfect homogeneity of the book and the connection of all its parts. The picture, so to speak, contains many figures, but all concur in a common action, and the spectator grasps, at the first glance, the harmony of the composition.