The last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, relates in one of the official inscriptions of his reign how he happened to find the _timmennu_ of the earliest builders of the temple of the Sun at Larsa. King Kurigalzu (about B.C. 1350), and later Esarhaddon (B.C. 680-667), and Nebuchadnezzar himself, had repaired this venerated sanctuary, and sought vainly for the hiding-place of the talismans. “Then I, Nabonidus, inspired by my piety towards the goddess Istar of Agade, my sovereign, caused an excavation to be made. The gods Samas and Rammanu granted me their constant favour, and I found the foundation-cylinder of the temple of E-Ulbar.” It bore the name of the king Sagasaltias (about b.c. 1500). After reading the inscription, Nabonidus restored it to its place and himself made another cylinder to record his researches and his own works; he deposited it in the foundation by the side of the ancient cylinder. Modern explorers, no doubt also favoured by Samas and Rammanu, found in a sufficiently good state of preservation the mysterious hiding-places and the precious objects which had been piously placed there 550 years before our era.[16] [Illustration: Fig. 8.--Foundation-cylinder from Khorsabad (Louvre).] II. STATUES AND BAS-RELIEFS. The discoveries of M. de Sarzec at Tello, and those of other explorers in Chaldæa, allow us to go back almost to the origin of sculpture in Western Asia. Our museums possess, in fact, bas-reliefs and statues belonging to a rudimentary stage of art, the remote age of which is still attested by the archaic inscriptions which accompany them, and these most ancient [Illustration: Fig. 9.--Bas-relief from Tello (Louvre).]