After all, Phœnician cylinders are rare enough. Practical before everything, the merchants of Tyre and Carthage preferred flat seals of multiple form to cylinders, the use of which was difficult; they manufactured scarabæi, scarabœoids, ellipsoids, cones, octagonal conoids, these last especially in the Aramæo-Persian period, and lastly bezels for rings. Among the numerous gems which have come down to us, and which must be attributed either to the Phœnicians themselves or to the Aramæan populations of Syria, some have still preserved their mounting: a ring in the form of a horse-shoe enabled the owner to turn the stone on its axis and to hang it from a necklace. The inscription of one or two lines, when it exists, gives the name of the owner, his father’s name, and sometimes his quality. The subjects, naturally more limited than those of the cylinders, are always of Egyptian, Persian, or Assyro-Chaldæan inspiration. There are, for instance, the winged and radiated disk, deer, lions, bulls, sphinxes, gryphons, the divine bust in a winged disk, a pontiff sacrificing at an altar, or in adoration before the pyreum. The Louvre possesses a scarabæoid of red agate acquired in Mesopotamia by M. de Sarzec; a god is seen upon it, holding a serpent in each hand, like the Egyptian Horus; he has four wings, and bears on his head the solar disk supported by two horns. The name, Baalnathan, indicates that its owner was probably an Ammonite or a Moabite. It may be admitted, with M. de Vogüé,[103] that among the Phœnician, Aramæan and Jewish intagli, those in which Egyptian influence appears exclusive are the most ancient, that is to say, anterior to the Assyrian rule in Syria. [Illustration: Fig. 240.--Scarabæoid seal.] [Illustration: Fig. 241.--Scarabæoid seal (after Menant).] From the seventh century B.C. the action of Assyria appears in the Aramæo-Phœnician glyptic art, sometimes allied to the Egyptian influence, sometimes exclusive as on a scarabæus in the museum at Vienna, bearing the name of Akhotmelek, wife of Josuah, on which a deity is seen sitting on a throne and receiving a libation from a standing pontiff (fig. 240). A fine scarabæus in green jasper at the British Museum (fig. 241), with the name, in Phœnician characters, of _Hodo, the scribe_, shows a principal scene inspired by an Assyrian cylinder, while on the field the Egyptian _crux ansata_ figures, and the scarabæoidal form of the gem is certainly of Pharaonic origin.